The Multiplying Mysteries of Mount Ten

by Krista Van Dolzer

  CHAPTER 18

  I should have been freaking out as I wedged myself into the gap between the rocking chair and the near wall. There were only two people on earth who might find their way into this shed—Archimedes and the mass murderer—and I wasn’t keen on meeting either. Still, I felt strangely calm as I pulled my knees up to my chest. If it was my time to skedaddle, at least I could rightly say that I’d crashed a killer math camp.

  Something rattled the chain Munch had meticulously replaced. When it hit the ground with a dull clank, I drew a silent breath and pressed my face into my knees. The doors whooshed open with a bang, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Thankfully, I’d never borrowed any of Angeline’s body spray, so unless the human nose could detect a freshly showered twelve-year-old, my smell wouldn’t compromise me.

  My heart thumped wildly as a pair of boots clomped into the shed. I could see them through the gap between my thigh and my elbow. They were smaller than I’d thought they’d be, but that didn’t mean anything. Who said serial killers had to have big feet?

  For the first minute or two, the intruder just stood there breathing. I kept waiting for a hand to drag me up by my hair, but the black boots never moved. Either I hadn’t been spotted, or the intruder was trying to get me to relax.

  I tried to hold perfectly still, sucking long breaths through my nose, but it was dustier down here than it had been up above, and I could feel a sneeze coming on. I crinkled my nose and willed myself not to blow, but if the intruder didn’t leave soon, I’d have no choice but to give myself away.

  Finally, the intruder took a few hesitant steps—deeper into the shed. I pressed my knee against that sensitive spot above my upper lip, but before I could explode, my phone, which had been searching for a signal for days, let out a cheerful ding.

  I couldn’t decide which was more amazing, that my phone had decided to start working or that it had decided to start working now. I heard more than saw the intruder glance over his shoulder, but instead of waiting around to shake his hand, I chucked the rocking chair aside and burst out of the shed. Munch was nowhere in sight, so I dove into the grass, making a beeline for the trees.

  The clearing was less even on this side of the cabin. Rocks rolled under my feet, and a ditch nearly toppled me, but I managed to keep my balance. My breath was coming out in short, hot bursts, and my chest felt like it was on fire, but I didn’t slow down. The tree line was ten yards away. If I could just make it a little farther—

  I couldn’t finish that thought before I was tumbling to the ground, cutting a deep swath through the grass as I rolled end over end. I hadn’t heard a gunshot, but maybe I’d been breathing too hard.

  For a long time, I just lay there, listening to my heart pound in my ears. At least my phone had stopped dinging. I kept waiting for a sticky warmth to spread across my torso (or wherever I’d been shot), but the only thing I felt was a sore spot on my side, as if I’d just taken an illegal hit from a broadsword. But there was no one else in sight.

  I was about to sit up straight when a voice hissed, “No, stay down! The dude’s headed this way.”

  “Who’s headed this way?” I asked, but the voice just shushed me.

  Mom had always believed in guardian angels, and right then, I decided to believe in them, too. I curled up into a ball and pressed my cheek into the dirt, waiting for the killer to find me. But then a full minute passed, and no one finished me off. Finally, the voice said, “You’re good. He went back the other way.”

  I pushed myself onto my knees, then crawled the last ten yards to the tree line, where I promptly flopped under a bush. It could have been poison ivy for all I cared. But when something rustled in the bush next to mine, my muscles tensed to spring.

  “Relax,” the same voice said. “It’s just the Three Stooges and me.”

  I rolled onto my side, and there they were, Federico and Marshane, even Munch and Graham. Federico’s eye black was a mess, and Graham’s shirt had come untucked, but other than that, they looked all right. I tried to sit up, but the sore spot in my side, which suddenly hurt like Charles Dickens, didn’t want me to move. The adrenaline must have been wearing off.

  Marshane’s cheeks actually darkened. “Sorry about the rock,” he mumbled as he helped me to my feet. “I had to get you down somehow.”

  “That was you?” I asked, shining my flashlight in his face. “I thought I’d just been shot!”

  Graham would have kept apologizing, but Marshane just grinned.

  “I knew those pitching lessons would come in handy someday,” he replied.

  Munch shoved Marshane. “You didn’t have to hit her!”

  “Actually, I did.” He tipped his head back toward the clearing. “It looked like the killer was about to turn the corner, and I didn’t see you bozos coming up with any bright ideas.”

  Munch stuck out his chin. “I was gonna get her out.”

  “Well, you didn’t,” Marshane said.

  “I sacrificed my Runts to save her!”

  So they’d been Runts, not pebbles. I guess that made more sense.

  “I got myself out, thanks,” I said as I dusted off my hands. “So what else did you guys see?”

  They exchanged uneasy looks. Finally, Federico said, “Not much. He was wearing a big coat.”

  “It hasn’t been that chilly,” I replied.

  Federico shrugged. “Maybe he was hiding his identity.”

  “Or her identity,” I grumbled.

  Graham didn’t bother to ask me what I meant. “So did you find anything?”

  “A few things,” I admitted, patting the bobby pin for good measure.

  Munch wiped off his mouth. “Why’d you take off like a loose spring?”

  “Because my phone rang,” I replied, wrestling it out of my pocket. At least they couldn’t see me wince.

  Graham’s forehead wrinkled. “Our phones don’t work up here.”

  Marshane pulled his out of his pocket. “Maybe they work up here,” he said.

  While Graham surveyed the starry sky like he was worried it might fall on him, and Munch and Marshane debated the finer points of cell technology, I finally freed my phone.

  The missed call was from Toby.

  CHAPTER 19

  I scrambled onto my knees, ignoring the pain in my side. Toby had tried to call me. Toby had just tried to call me.

  I was still wrapping my brain around these facts when my phone dinged again. It caught me so off guard that I actually dropped it. With trembling hands, I scooped it up, flipped it open, and peeped, “Toby?”

  Munch and Marshane stopped arguing. Federico tried to say something, but I waved him off. I couldn’t hear a thing, not even static. Did that mean he was underground? But if he was underground, how had he called me in the first place?

  “Toby?” I asked again. When he didn’t answer right away, I feverishly scanned the screen. The voicemail icon was blinking. I felt myself slowly deflate.

  Marshane jerked the phone out of my hands. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Graham jerked it out of his hands. “Do you have any manners?”

  “Come on, guys,” Munch replied. “No more messing around. Esther’s stepdad is missing.”

  Grudgingly, Graham plopped the phone back into my waiting hand. I jabbed the voicemail button and pressed the phone against my ear. A dozen feelings crowded me, but as soon as I heard Toby’s voice, the one that cornered me was dread:

  “Esther, I—got me—truck. You—need to worry—and don’t call home again. You need to—yourself.”

  I listened to it one more time, but the message didn’t change. Something—or someone—had gotten Toby, but I could no longer call home. The killer must have found out where we lived. I’d accidentally led him straight to Mom.

  “Well?” Marshane demanded.

  I didn’t bother to reply, just pressed my phone into his hands. I was too freaked out to explain.

  Marshane listened to the voicemail, then gri
mly passed the phone to Graham, who handed it to Federico, who finally passed it to Munch. Despite the terrible lighting, I could see the blood drain from his cheeks.

  “That really stinks,” Munch whispered as he passed it back to me.

  Graham shook his head aggressively. “It doesn’t have to mean he’s captured. We couldn’t hear, like, half the words.”

  Federico shook his, too. “We heard enough,” was all he said.

  I’d jumped to the same conclusion, but hearing him say it out loud made me want to plug my ears.

  Munch lowered his gaze. “What are we gonna do now?”

  I clenched my hands into fists. “We’re gonna solve this stupid puzzle. Then we’re gonna find our friends.”

  I didn’t get much sleep that night, partly because we’d stayed out so late but mostly because I couldn’t stop thinking about Toby’s voicemail. When I woke up the next morning, I could feel the bags under my eyes from the inside of my face. Still, I clambered out of bed, unable or unwilling to give up. As of 11:10 last night, Toby had still been alive. I couldn’t let myself lose hope.

  It wasn’t until I was halfway down the stairs that I remembered I should be careful. We’d done everything we could to cover our tracks the night before, but if the director had found out by some awful twist of fate, we were about to get busted.

  I hesitated on the last step, bracing myself for an explosion, but the first thing I noticed when I entered the mess hall was that it was empty. Trays were scattered around tables, and the enormous vat of oatmeal that Mr. Pearson had been tending was no longer steaming. It felt like I’d crawled into a painting that was only halfway done.

  I tightened my grip on the railing and was about to all-out scream when I spotted clumps of people milling around the common room. Director Verity’s neat bun was looming near the front, and Mr. Sharp’s shiny bald head was hovering off to the side. The rest of the math nerds were spread out in a line behind them.

  “—is that supposed to mean?” Oliver was asking as I sidled up to him.

  Munch considered that, then shrugged. “I think it looks like Belarusan Wheel of Fortune.”

  They were facing the chalkboards, one of which had been wiped clean in the middle of the night. The math nerds’ calculations had been reduced to swirls of chalk; in their place was another puzzle:

  BO YKU DJKW WAFT’S RKKI OKQ YKU,

  TAMJ YKU’GG STFY KUT KO HY WKQDQKKH

  Someone had printed off each letter on its own piece of paper, kind of like a ransom note made of cut-up magazines. But the last time I checked, “BO YKU DJKW WAFT’S RKKI OKQ YKU, TAMJ YKU’GG STFY KUT KO HY WKQDQKKH” didn’t spell anything.

  I gritted my teeth. This had the work of a mass murderer written all over it. While we’d been infiltrating his lair, he’d been infiltrating ours.

  I must have been making a face, because Graham arched an eyebrow at me. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? that eyebrow seemed to ask.

  Carefully, I shook my head. Unless Graham was fantasizing about dueling our killer, we weren’t thinking the same thing.

  The director cleared her throat. “Well, number crunchers,” she said strangely, “it looks like someone has treated us to a substitution cipher.”

  “By erasing my work,” Brooklyn grumbled. “I’ve been working on that derivation for the last two and a half days.”

  “My sincere apologies,” she said. “But you know what they say—the math camp must go on!”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Are you saying that these puzzles are more important than your campers?”

  Director Verity’s cheeks flushed. “No, of course not,” she replied.

  I aimed my chin at the cipher. “Did you put that there?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s not a fair question.” She poked me in the ribs. “We don’t want to ruin it.”

  Marshane rolled his eyes. “Which is a fancy way of saying no.”

  She opened her mouth to answer, then snapped it shut again. Marshane might have concluded that Director Verity was off the hook, but I couldn’t decide which was more incriminating, that she’d tried to defend herself or that she’d just given up.

  While everyone argued about the cipher’s origins, I whipped out my sketchbook and dug around for a pencil, but the only writing instrument my pocket contained was a spare paintbrush. After licking the tip to loosen up the residual paint, I copied down the cipher—the last couple of letters were kind of muddled, but whatever—and tucked my faithful sketchbook back into my jeans’ waistband. If the cipher could appear while we were sleeping, it could disappear while we were eating, and I strongly suspected that it was the killer’s work.

  The director raised her hands. “Calm down, everyone. Calm down.” She paused for Federico to stop shaking Whistler’s shoulders. “I meant to save our workshop on cryptography for later, but in light of this turn of events, it does seem appropriate to give you some kind of primer.”

  “What about breakfast?” Munch demanded.

  “We’ll eat shortly,” she replied. “It will keep, won’t it, Mr. Pearson?”

  Mr. Pearson’s lip curled up, but instead of saying no, he swallowed the lump in his throat and disappeared into the kitchen.

  She set her sights on us. “Have a seat,” was all she said.

  I sat down next to Munch, whose scowl looked sharp enough to cut. I patted myself down, wishing that I’d thought to bring more than that one pack of Corn Nuts. The only thing I found was a lonely orange Tic Tac, but before I had a chance to offer it to Munch, he jerked a peach out of his pocket and sunk his teeth into its fuzz.

  I nudged him and mouthed, Nice.

  He half nodded, half shrugged. You want some? he mouthed back.

  Shuddering, I shook my head. I’d sworn off eating unpeeled peaches. It felt like eating caterpillars.

  “—lots of applications, from internet security to online bank transactions,” Director Verity was saying. “But the substitution cipher is as fine a place to start as any.”

  “Bor-ing,” Brooklyn said. “If I’d wanted to learn about ciphers, I would have just googled them at home.”

  I felt my eyes widen. She wasn’t usually so snippy, at least not to the adults, but Director Verity took her attitude in stride.

  “Yes, but even gifted learners must start somewhere,” she replied. “And seeing as someone has kindly provided an example, I think we should soldier on.”

  Brooklyn made a face, but at least she held her tongue.

  The director scanned the common room. “Can anyone explain the basics of a substitution cipher?”

  Marshane blurted the answer: “Each letter substitutes for another letter in the alphabet, so you just have to figure out which letter substitutes for which.”

  “Very good,” she said. I guess she didn’t mind that he hadn’t raised his hand. “Can anyone add anything else?” She motioned toward the kid who never spoke. “Ravi?”

  “It’s about looking for patterns,” he said without meeting her eyes. “The most commonly used letters in the English language are E, T, and A, followed by O, I, and N, so if you figure out which letters are used most often in the cipher, you should be able to make at least a few educated guesses.”

  “You can look for combinations, too,” Graham said. “If the same three-letter word keeps popping up, it’s probably ‘and’ or ‘the.’ ”

  “Or ‘you,’ ” Marshane replied.

  Director Verity nodded. “There are lots of variations, but it sounds like you get the idea.” She beamed at each of us in turn. “Great job, my little number crunchers!”

  Ravi blushed so hard I thought his head might explode. I socked him in the shoulder by way of congratulations, then noticed Mr. Pearson brooding in the corridor. He must have reappeared during Ravi’s monologue.

  “Breakfast is getting cold,” he said, though it sounded more like, Your breath stinks.

  “Thank you,” the director said, returning her attention to the math nerds. “Time to feed tho
se hungry brains!”

  While they scrambled to their feet, I kept an eye on Mr. Pearson. I couldn’t say that he looked mad, but he didn’t look glad, either. I gave him a wide berth as I trailed along behind the others, sneaking peeks in his direction when I knew he wasn’t looking. The last thing I wanted to do was aggravate that man again.

  CHAPTER 20

  My sketchbook stuck to my back as I gulped down a bowl of oatmeal and trudged back into the common room for Mr. Sharp’s workshop. When he handed out the paper, I took an extra for good measure, and when he turned his back, I quickly scribbled down five words: “Storage room at nine tonight.”

  Mr. Sharp and Ms. Gutierrez might have been seeing each other, but he was nowhere near as interesting. Whenever he had to present, he kept his eyes glued on his notes, so as soon as he started, I wadded up my secret message and lobbed it at the back of Munch’s head. It bounced off his shoulder and calmly rolled under his chair, but somehow, he played it cool. When Mr. Sharp sneezed into the crook of his elbow, Munch bent down and scooped it up.

  By the end of the workshop, my secret message had made the rounds. Munch destroyed the note by tearing it into tiny pieces and devouring each one, and then we just had to wait—and not give ourselves away. Somehow, the math nerds played it cool. By 8:59, the usual suspects were assembled in the storage room. I took my normal place in the corner by the buckets, then waited for the others to quickly settle into theirs.

  “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the situation’s gone from bad to critical.” I pulled out my sketchbook and smacked it down on a bucket. “Now we have not one but two puzzles we really need to solve.”

  Graham shook his head. “Maybe we don’t need to solve it.” He scanned the room through narrowed eyes. “Maybe one of us invented it.”

  The others hemmed and hawed, but I just stood there blinking. Though it shamed me to admit it, that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.

  “What about you, Munch?” he asked. When the tips of Munch’s ears turned red, Graham’s gaze swung across the room. “Anything to add, Marshane?”