The Secret of the Puzzle Box

by Penny Warner

  Cody’s flag had three vertical stripes—green, white, and orange—representing Ireland. Mika drew a white flag with a red circle in the middle for Japan. Quinn’s flag for China was red with yellow stars in the corner. M.E. drew the flag of Mexico, which had green, white, and red stripes, plus a coat of arms in the middle—a picture of an eagle with a cactus and a snake. Since Luke didn’t know what part of Africa his ancestors might have originally come from, he decided to draw the flag of Haiti—blue on top and red on the bottom, with a white stripe and a coat of arms in the center.

  When they were finished, they packed their backpacks and headed outside, locking the door to the clubhouse behind them. They were about to head down the hill when something flapping in the wind caught Cody’s eye. She looked up to see a flash of color. On a branch of one of the trees that held up the sides of the clubhouse, someone had tied a flag. It had three vertical stripes: one green, one white, and one red.

  “Hey, M.E.!” she called to her friend. “Did you put that flag up there?”

  The kids turned around to see the green, white, and red flag waving in the air.

  “No,” M.E. said. “That’s not my flag.”

  “It looks like yours,” Cody said.

  “No, the Mexican flag has a coat of arms in the middle of it. That one is plain.”

  “What country is it from?” Mika asked.

  Luke got out his cell phone and looked it up. “That’s the flag of Italy.”

  “So who put it there?” Quinn asked, staring up at it.

  “Look!” Luke said, pointing down the hill. Just a few feet away was a small paper flag attached to a twig that was stuck in the ground. The flag was red, with a V shape cut into the right side.

  “I know that flag. It’s on one of our decoder cards,” Luke said. He dug into his backpack and pulled out the International Alphabet Flag Code card. “That’s the letter B.”

  “Look there,” Cody said, pointing down the path. “Another one.” This time the flag was blue on the top half and red on the bottom half.

  “That’s an E,” Luke called out. “I think someone’s sending us a message!”

  The kids began following the flags down the hill, reading off each letter. M.E. took notes along the way. When they reached the bottom of the eucalyptus forest, she read the message aloud, stumbling on a few words that were misspelled.

  Code Busters Key and Solution found here and here.

  “So who’s trying to scare us with that stupid message?” M.E. asked.

  Cody crossed her arms. “I think I know,” she said, remembering Ms. Stad’s discussion about where everyone was from. “Someone in our class said his relatives were from Italy. I’ll bet that the same person left the Italian flag at our clubhouse and made those flag messages.”

  “Matt the Brat!” they all said at once.

  On Friday, the day of the trip, the Code Busters were beyond excited. They’d spent the past few days digging into their family backgrounds and learning about their ancestors. It turned out that six kids in Cody’s class, including Mika, had relatives who’d passed through Angel Island before settling in California. Cody’s family didn’t have any connection to the island, but that didn’t stop her from looking forward to the day’s adventures.

  At the Berkeley Marina, the students from Mr.

  Pike’s and Ms. Stad’s classes lined up for the Angel Island Ferry, all carrying backpacks loaded with their camping gear. Cody wasn’t surprised to see Matt the Brat show up wearing an eye patch, carrying a plastic sword, and sporting a fake tattoo of a Jolly Roger pirate flag. Ms. Stad confiscated the sword, made him put the eye patch in his pocket, and just shook her head at the tattoo.

  After everyone was aboard the ferry, the teachers passed out maps of Angel Island, plus a new puzzle for the students to solve. This one was written in semaphore code, often used at sea by sailors. The hidden message was supposed to give the students their first clue for their scavenger hunt on the island. The kids broke up into groups, and the Code Busters met at the bow of the boat so they could solve the puzzle together.

  Code Busters Key and Solution found here and here.

  By the time the Code Busters cracked the code, they were even more excited about the trip.

  “I wonder where we’re going first,” Quinn said, looking at the map of Angel Island. “I mean, besides camp and the visitor’s center.”

  “Maybe the military base,” Luke suggested, pointing to the West Garrison at Camp Reynolds.

  “Or the hospital,” M.E. said.

  “Maybe we’ll get to fish at the cove,” Quinn said, referring to Ayala Cove, their arrival point.

  “I hope it’s the immigration station,” Mika said, after finding it on the map. “I talked to my grandmother last night and found out more about my great-great-grandfather, Hiraku Takeda, and his wife, Yuka. They were actually there for six weeks before they could leave the island. And the whole time they weren’t allowed to see each other.”

  “How sad,” Cody said. “Why couldn’t they be together?”

  “My grandmother said men and women were kept in separate areas and the doors were locked, so they couldn’t even visit,” Mika explained.

  “Wow, that’s awful,” M.E. said. “I would hate to be away from either of my parents for that long.”

  Mika nodded. “My grandmother said Hiraku and Yuka would put tiny secret gifts and messages for each other in little boxes, called Koyosegi puzzle boxes. Then they’d hide the boxes in different places around the island so they wouldn’t be found by the guards. With each box, there’d also be a clue about where the next box would be hidden.”

  “That’s so romantic!” M.E. sighed. “I wonder where all their hiding places were.”

  “My grandmother told me some of them,” Mika said. “And she said that Hiraku hid one puzzle box so well that Yuka never found it. After they got off the island and were together again, they obviously couldn’t go back for it. So it might still be there!”

  “Wow!” said Cody. “Maybe we’ll find it.”

  “I hope so,” said Mika. “Hiraku was also a poet. He wrote a lot of poetry under a pen name—Senjin. So maybe he left some poetry behind too, like the Chinese poems we’ve studied.”

  “How cool would it be if we could track down something of his?” Quinn said excitedly. “We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled.”

  After a ten-minute ride, the ferry pulled up to Ayala Cove. Cody noticed a flashing light coming from high up the hill and pointed it out to the others.

  “What is it?” M.E. asked.

  “It looks like Morse code,” Quinn said, squinting at the light that continued to flash on and off.

  “Is it a flashlight?” Mika asked.

  “Looks like it,” Quinn said, squinting at the light.

  “Can you read the message?” Mika asked.

  Quinn studied the pattern and began to call out the letters. M.E. wrote them down as fast as she could.

  Code Busters Key and Solution found here and here.

  “Weird,” M.E. said, after the light stopped blinking. “What do you think it means?”

  Quinn shrugged. “And who sent it? And who’s it for? Someone on the ferry?”

  Cody immediately thought of Matt the Brat, but there was no way someone on the island would be sending him a Morse code message. She glanced around and noticed another ferry passenger staring out at the island. He had a big tattoo of a pirate flag on his arm, much like Matt’s, except this one looked real. The guy caught her watching him and quickly disappeared inside the cabin.

  Before she could think more about it, the teachers and chaperones escorted the students off the ferry and onto the dock. Cody glanced up at the rising hill where the light had come from, but the light was gone. She looked back at the ferry, but the man with the tattoo was nowhere in sight.

  “This place is so cool!” M.E. said, checking out the landing area. “It’s like being in the countryside.”

  Cody nodded as she
looked around. It was a beautiful place, dotted with tall trees, surrounded by blue water, and home to all sorts of wildlife. But there was a loneliness about the place that made her feel a little homesick. The island was so quiet, so far away from the activity of the mainland. She couldn’t imagine how lonely some of the immigrants must have felt.

  “Follow me to the tram, everyone!” Ms. Stad called out.

  The kids hoisted their backpacks and headed for the blue and white tram that was waiting to take them to the campsite on the other side of the island. Cody was glad she’d be sharing a tent with M.E. and Mika. Ms. Stad had allowed all three to be buddies. Quinn and Luke would be together in another tent. At night the Code Busters planned to communicate in the dark using flashlights to send Morse code messages. Remembering what she’d seen from the ferry ride, Cody wondered, briefly, who else on the island knew Morse code . . .

  When everyone was seated on the tram, Ms. Stad and Mr. Pike gave the usual lecture about safety, reminding them to stay with their buddies, to listen to the chaperones, and not to leave the camp alone. The island was only five miles all the way around, but the climb to camp was two and a half miles of steep terrain, and with backpacks and supplies, that would have been a lot. Cody was grateful the tram ride made the trek easy. She looked out at the view of the Pacific Ocean and Golden Gate Bridge as the tram made its way past Camp Reynolds and the West Garrison military base. She found it hard to believe this peaceful, natural island was surrounded by busy city life.

  Just as she spotted Alcatraz, the notorious prison island also in the middle of the bay, the tram stopped. They’d arrived at camp!

  “Where’s the bathroom?” Matt called out as he jumped from the tram. “I gotta go!”

  “The latrines are right over there.” Ms. Stad pointed to a couple of outhouses just beyond the campsite.

  “Gross!” Matt said, holding his nose. “I’m not going in there!”

  Ms. Stad smiled patiently. “It’s there or nowhere.”

  “Then I’ll hold it!” Matt said and stomped off to put up his tent.

  Cody, M.E., and Mika looked at one another and giggled. He couldn’t hold it until tomorrow morning.

  “All right, everyone,” Ms. Stad said. “Remember what the coded message said. Pitch your tents, set up camp, and meet at the visitor’s center with your sack lunches. And bring jackets. It gets windy on the island.”

  With the help of the chaperones, the students got busy putting up their tents and storing their gear. They’d been warned to keep all their food in the wooden camp cupboards so the raccoons and other wildlife wouldn’t eat everything. Cody stowed the chocolate chip cookies her mother had made for her and closed the latch. When the girls finished setting up camp, they got their lunches and jackets and met up with Quinn and Luke. The Code Busters followed Mr. Pike’s group, taking a shortcut down the hill to the visitor’s center.

  After the last stragglers arrived, including Matt the Brat and a couple of chaperones who brought up the rear, the kids ate their lunches at the picnic tables. Cody watched the fishermen on the docks, the seagulls overhead, and the boats out on the bay as she nibbled at her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then Ms. Stad and Mr. Pike handed out their next scavenger hunt clue.

  Cody looked at the paper. At the top, she recognized the familiar symbols of pigpen code. But below that, the page was filled with small drawings. This didn’t look like any of the codes or puzzles she’d seen before.

  Ms. Stad began to explain. “Students, your first clue is written in pigpen code. Decode it to learn your first destination. And the rest of the puzzle is written in symbols used by many American Indian peoples. Figure out what these symbols mean using the chart we’re passing out now. On the way to your first destination, take snapshots of the five clues. Then wait for everyone else when you get there. You may begin the scavenger hunt!”

  The Code Busters gathered in a circle to work on the message written in pigpen code.

  Code Busters Key and Solution found here and here.

  Next, the kids went to work on the American Indian symbols.

  Code Busters Key and Solution found here and here.

  “Okay,” said Quinn when they’d finished, “we have to find and take pictures of these five things, so keep an eye out.”

  “This should be easy,” M.E. said. They began their hike back up the hill toward Camp Reynolds, with their chaperone trailing behind them.

  It wasn’t long before Luke spotted a bird sitting on a tree limb and took a picture with his phone. Next, Quinn pointed to the mountain range ahead of them and snapped a picture. They had to hike a bit before they found running water in a small creek, and they didn’t see a fence until they were nearly to the West Garrison.

  “That’s four down!” said Luke.

  “But we’re still missing the animal tracks,” Mika added.

  Instead of looking around them as they had been doing, the kids focused on the ground, searching for animal tracks. Mika checked her phone for a list of wildlife they might find on the island. “There aren’t any squirrels, rabbits, foxes, skunks, opossums, or coyotes on Angel Island. Only deer, raccoons, birds, and rodents.”

  “Rodents?” M.E. said, scrunching her nose. “You mean, like, rats?”

  Cody shivered. She didn’t want to think about a bunch of rats running around the island. They totally creeped her out. She’d found one the size of a small cat at her last home and hadn’t slept well for a week afterward.

  Finally, she spotted what looked like animal prints in the dirt. “I think these are raccoon tracks,” she said, taking a picture.

  “Great!” Quinn said. “Now we have all five. Let’s find Ms. Stad.”

  The Code Busters, along with their chaperone, were the first group to arrive at the destination—Camp Reynolds. They showed their pictures to Ms. Stad and were rewarded with snacks of fruit, cheese and crackers, and bottles of water. “You can explore the area nearby until the others arrive, but don’t wander out of sight. We’ll meet in half an hour in front of the hospital building.”

  Tired from the thirty-minute climb, the kids sat down on a short cement wall and enjoyed their snacks. When they were finished, they decided to look around the garrison, which once housed artillery batteries that protected the island from Confederate ships during the Civil War. A few years later, Camp Reynolds was established as an army camp. Back then the camp had a church, bakery, blacksmith, shoemaker, laundry, barber, and trading store.

  “Let’s go inside the barracks,” Luke said, pointing to one of the decrepit buildings that still stood nearby. The kids followed him into the empty barracks and looked around, trying to imagine what it must have been like for the infantrymen to live there so long ago. Cody tried to picture life without computers, cell phones, and the Internet.

  “It’s creepy in here,” M.E. said. “And there’s probably rats. Let’s go.”

  Outside, Mika pointed across the road. “Look. A cemetery! Let’s check it out and see if there are any famous names.”

  They walked over to the small, weedy cemetery surrounded by a white picket fence. M.E. brought up the rear. She didn’t like creepy places, and cemeteries were definitely creepy. The others started reading off names and dates from the headstones and crosses.

  “A lot of these graves are for people who died on Alcatraz,” Quinn said. “They have their prisoner numbers on them, plus their names. I wonder why they were buried here instead of on Alcatraz.”

  “Because Alcatraz is solid rock,” Luke said. “That’s why they call it the Rock. You can’t bury anything in it.”

  “Whoa! Look at this one,” Cody said, pointing to an old gravestone. “It says CAPTAIN BLACK—KILLED IN A MUTINY.”

  “This one says ZEKE MELVIN—DEAD FROM GUNSHOT WOUNDS,” Quinn added, indicating another stone.

  “This person must have drowned,” Mika told the others. “It says, FOUND ON THE BEACH. That’s so sad.”

  Just as Cody bent down to read another he
adstone, she heard a crunch behind her. She stood up, the hairs on her neck tingling, and glanced around. She had the oddest feeling someone was watching them. Probably Matt the Brat, she thought, although she hadn’t seen him since they left the starting point.

  The sound came again—this time from behind a tree beyond the fence. Cody grabbed M.E.’s hand. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

  M.E. appeared to be frozen. She barely nodded, but her wide eyes told Cody that her friend had also heard the noise.

  “Who’s there?” she called out. Quinn, Luke, and Mika hurried over to Cody and M.E.

  “What’s going on?” Quinn asked, straining to see where Cody was staring so intently.

  “I heard something—or someone. It came from out there.” Cody pointed to the trees in the distance.

  Luke took a couple of steps forward. “I don’t see anything—”

  Just then a figure darted from behind one of the trees and ran deeper into the thick forest beyond the cemetery.

  “There he goes!” M.E. squealed, pointing.

  Luke looked as if he might take off running after the lurker, but instead, he shrugged.

  “He’s gone, whoever he is,” he said. “We must have scared him away.”

  “Do you think it was Matt?” Mika asked, remembering the last time they thought someone had been following them.

  “Probably,” Luke said. “He’s always spying on us.”

  “Hey,” came a voice from the opposite direction. “What are you guys up to?”

  Standing just outside the picket fence at the other end of the cemetery was Matt the Brat.

  “None of your business,” Luke called back.

  Meanwhile, Cody frowned and peered at the trees where the lurker had been hiding.

  There was no way that lurker could have been Matt the Brat. Not unless Matt could be in two places at the same time.