 
### The Kumquat Legacy

### by Randal Koster

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Randal Koster

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter 1: The Dead Man

When I saw the dead man, he was sitting on a bench in Darcy Park.

I'd better explain that. He wasn't dead when I saw him that Saturday. He was old, maybe in his 90s, but right then, that Saturday, he was obviously still alive. He died the following week, in his sleep. His heart gave out, just like that. Nobody was surprised. In fact, he amazed his doctor by living as long as he did.

They tell me that he visited Darcy Park a lot, so I must have seen him before. After all, I'm always in that park myself – it's right near my house, and it's a good place to hide out from chores and homework. If I did see him before, though, I don't remember. I only noticed him that Saturday because of where he was sitting – on a bright, shiny green park bench that held a sign reading, in big capital letters, "KEEP OFF – WET PAINT". He was looking straight ahead, at nothing in particular. His fingers danced lazily up and down on the back of the bench, just above the sign.

"Poor guy," I thought to myself. "He doesn't have a clue." I slowed my bike to a stop and hopped off. "Excuse me," I said out loud. "Did you see that sign? It says..."

"'Wet paint'," he said, finishing my sentence in a quiet, crackly voice. He said nothing more; he just sat there, looking at me. He sure seemed odd. Of course, at his age, he couldn't help having a whiskery, sagging chin, wrinkles around his eyes, a freckled bald head, and thin wisps of hair coming out of his ears. But why did he choose to wear a blue suit that was much too big for him, with a bow tie on so crooked that his head looked like it was tipped to one side?

And his face – I couldn't read that at all, not with all those wrinkles. Maybe he was grinning, or maybe he was frowning. I guess I stared at him. "You mean you know..."

"All my life, I've done what I should," he explained. "I've done what all the signs have told me to do." He lifted his cane and tapped it lightly on the words "KEEP OFF – WET PAINT". "Here's another sign telling me what to do. When I saw it, I got very excited. I wanted to break a rule! I went back to my room and put on my best suit. Then I came back here and sat down."

"Oh... Okay." I suddenly wanted to leave, as quickly as possible. I didn't know what else to say to the old man, and even if I did, I wasn't going to say it. He was weird. I gave him a brief nod – my way of being polite, I guess – and then turned to pick up my bike. That's when he dropped the bomb.

"Your name's Dave, isn't it?" he asked, his quiet voice all too clear.

I froze. How on Earth did he know that? I looked back at him and saw that he had picked up a camera from somewhere and was holding it to his eye. Click! Before I knew it, he had taken my picture.

"I... I don't understand..." I stammered.

"Your name's Dave, and you have a sister named Loni and a friend named Brent," the old man said. He fell silent again. He just sat there looking at me, as before. I tried reading his face. Did it look friendly? Evil? Mysterious? I couldn't tell. If I had to guess something, I'd say it looked... sleepy.

"I have to go!" I said quickly. I jumped on my bike and sped off, only too glad to get away. I hoped I would never see him again, because now he was really giving me the creeps.

And I wished so much that he hadn't taken my picture. I had a funny feeling that somehow, the picture would find its way back to me.

I was right.

****

The strange expression on the old man's face haunted me all that morning and through lunch. I just couldn't get the image of his old, sleepy eyes and his wrinkled grin, if that's what it was, out of my head. Fortunately, though, the afternoon got busy, and I had other stuff to think about. I had just turned 13, so my family took me to the movies as a birthday present. The next day, Sunday, we drove to Los Angeles – a couple of hours away – to visit my grandparents. And then, of course, came Monday and school. My "school" is actually in our kitchen, since I'm homeschooled. My sister and I were trying to finish up several units that week, since summer was fast approaching.

We needed two weeks to finish all of our work. Those two weeks passed by very slowly – lesson, after lesson, worksheet after worksheet. I probably spent half the time looking at the clock. Finally, I handed in my final math test. "You know that horseshoe set I got for my birthday?" I asked my mom, as she scanned it. "Can I dig holes for the stakes in the front yard?"

"Oh, I guess so," she said, her eyes still on the test. "If you take Loni out there with you." That was no surprise. My mother is always trying to get my younger sister outside, out into the fresh air. Loni would much rather spend every minute of her spare time in the house, where she would read a book, play with her bizarre dollhouse, or work on puzzles. Loni is some kind of genius when it comes to puzzles, as you'll hear about later. Anyway, she won't play outside unless she's forced to. Mom was forcing her to go outside now, sending her out with me.

"Don't set up the stakes so that you're throwing the horseshoes toward the house!" my mom called out as Loni and I ran out the door. "Set it up so that you throw them across the yard sideways!"

"I know! I know!" I called back impatiently. To be honest, though, I hadn't thought of that.

I grabbed a shovel, found the perfect spots in the yard for the stakes, and began to dig. This was more difficult than you might guess. We don't get a lot of rain where I live, and the shovel kept hitting sandstone. I was hacking away it, trying to scrape through it, when Loni startled me with a hard tap on the shoulder.

"That man was looking at you!" she whispered urgently.

I lifted my head quickly and looked over at where she was pointing. Sure enough, a man in a gray suit was standing in front of our house. Right then he was looking at the numbers on our mailbox while speaking into a cell phone. He had short, neatly trimmed black hair, black-rimmed glasses, and a nose that was much too skinny and long for his wide face. He put the cell phone away and turned to face us. His eyes rested on me, and he studied my face intently. He pulled something from his pocket and looked down at it.

He looked up again. "Is your name Dave?" he called out.

I turned to Loni and whispered, "Go inside and get Mom!" She left, and I called back to him. "I might be. Who are you?" I was trying to speak casually, to show him that I wasn't nervous. I don't think he was impressed.

The man stepped forward, holding out what he had removed from his pocket. I saw now that it was a photograph. "This is you, isn't it?" he asked. I looked at the photo. It was me, all right. You've probably already guessed that it was the photo I'd been dreading, the one the old man had taken two weeks earlier. Somehow, I wasn't surprised to see it.

Fortunately, I didn't have to say anything, for at that moment, my mother opened the front door. The man, with a courteous, businesslike smile, stood tall and turned to address her. "Good afternoon, Ma'am. I'm wondering if I could have a word with you." As he stepped toward her, he reached into his vest and pulled out a business card.

My mother, still standing in the doorway, took the card and studied it. "You're a lawyer?" she asked, some surprise in her voice.

"Yes, Ma'am. I have some business to discuss regarding your son, Dave."

My mother's face tensed – in fact, her whole body tensed. She frowned as she looked back down at the card, and her eyes were filled with concern. She asked the man what it was all about, but he wouldn't tell her – he kept saying that the whole thing was rather complicated, that he would have to sit down with her and tell her the whole long story, starting at the beginning. He asked to come inside, but my mother refused. Instead, she arranged to meet with him that evening at his office, along with my dad.

The lawyer nodded to me as he left. It was a dignified nod, neither friendly nor unfriendly, and I didn't know how to read it. I'd had a lot of trouble reading people that month.

I ran to the house. "Mom!" I asked. "What's going on?"

"I don't know. Probably nothing. We'll find out soon!" She tried to sound cheerful, but she wasn't convincing. She pulled out her cell phone and called my dad. Afterwards, she said, "You two can have a pizza while we're gone this evening. And don't worry. I'm sure nothing's wrong!"

I nodded my head without enthusiasm. "What's jail like?" I asked, only half joking.

****

Okay, I admit it – I didn't really think I was going to jail. After all, I hadn't done anything. Still, the whole thing worried me a lot. What was the lawyer telling my parents? I didn't have a clue. I didn't even know what lawyers did, other than argue cases in courts. Nothing made sense.

And Loni – she was a pain, as usual. After we finished our pizza, she insisted on performing a "dollhouse" play for me – a play in which her wooden, felt, and cloth dolls acted out some kind of story, one she made up on the spot.

Loni's dollhouse plays are always ridiculous and dumb. She makes them that way on purpose. That why I almost always refuse to watch them. This time, though, the evening was dragging by so slowly that I couldn't stand it anymore – I needed something to take my mind off my problem. I looked at the clock. My parents wouldn't be home for another half-hour. "Just this once!" Loni begged. I reluctantly agreed.

Loni's eyes lit up with excitement. Without another word she found a flashlight and aimed it at her dollhouse. Then she turned off all the other lights in the house and stumbled her way back to her 'stage'. "This story stars Princey," she said proudly, holding up a small painted wooden figure. She wobbled him back and forth, as if he were dancing. Then she placed him inside the dollhouse and started the play. This is how it went:

Princey: What a hard day I had, weeping the peasants.

I'd better explain that Princey has a ridiculous accent. When he says "weeping", he's really saying "whipping". Princey is not a friendly guy.

Queen: Oh, there you are, Preencey! Good news, good news! We have raised your allowance from one meellion dollars a week to two meellion dollars a week!

Princey: Of course you deed! But where are servants? I must weep them.

(Before Queen can answer, the sounds of a heavy rapping fill the air. Soon a policeman doll appears.)

Policeman: Is this the home of the Royal Family? I am here to arrest someone named Princey. Weeping, I mean whipping, peasants is against the law.

Queen: Oh, Dear! Oh, Dear!

Princey: No problem, no problem! We find lawyer. Lawyer find eenocent boy. Boy go to jail instead of me!

Loni, her eyes gleaming, looked at me with an evil grin. She knew that those last lines would get to me. And they did. Furious, I did what anyone would have done. I grabbed a pillow off the couch and threw it at the dollhouse, scattering the characters in all directions. Boy, did that feel good!

"Hey!" Loni yelled angrily. She picked up the pillow and threw it back at me with all her might.

I knew she was going to miss. She always misses. She has terrible aim. I just had to guess where the pillow would go, so that I could catch it before it knocked over a lamp or something.

Sure enough, it was heading straight for my Mom's favorite lamp. I jumped sideways across the living room, and even though it was pretty dark, I caught the pillow easily, like a soccer goalie stopping a penalty kick.

Loni had found another pillow and was about to throw it when the front door opened. I quickly turned and watched my Mom and Dad enter the room and turn on the light. They had funny looks on their faces.

I forgot all about my sister. "What happened?" I asked quickly. "What's going on?"

My dad turned his head sideways and looked at me for several seconds. "You'll never believe it!" he said. "I don't see how this could have happened!"

"What?!" I demanded.

"Some rich old man has just died, and you've been named in his will!"

Chapter 2: The Reading of the Will

"This Cyril guy is a jerk." That's what I said to myself the next afternoon, as I squirmed about in my seat – a big cushy chair near the end of a long, polished wooden table. Cyril Morton was sitting directly across from me. His large, mustached mouth was frowning, and his dark eyes, half hidden beneath bushy eyebrows and a huge mop of brown hair, spent half their time glaring at me and the other half shut tight in concentration, as if he had to draw on huge amounts of inner strength just to put up with me. A few minutes before, when I introduced myself, he said some words to me that I'd better not write down here.

For an adult, he was acting pretty childish. I resisted the temptation to glare back at him. Instead, I sent my eyes around the rest of the table. Just to my left sat the lawyer who had found me at my house. His name, I learned, was Mr. Andrews, and he worked in an office down the hall from where we were now sitting. To the left of Mr. Andrews was a young, blonde woman who we first saw at a desk in the reception room when we got off the elevator, and across from her sat a very distinguished old man in a three-piece brown suit. He was studying some papers in front of him. He had friendly eyes, and for some reason I felt I could trust him.

I turned to my right and saw my Mom looking at her watch. She looked up at me and smiled. "It'll start soon," she said, reassuringly. She was wearing her best clothes and, unfortunately, some perfume. I wish she never wore the stuff. I tried to ignore the smell.

No one in the room spoke. We were all waiting for the old man to finish with the papers. Finally, he pushed them away. "I guess we can get started," he said, looking up. "As you know, we are here to read the last will and testament of Jeffrey Morton, who died last week at the age of 95. He was a dear friend, almost like a father to me, and I... I miss him greatly." As he said this, he quickly touched his right eye with the back of a finger. I don't think he was crying, though. He continued. "My name is Arthur Halverson, and I..."

I stole another glance at Cyril. His chin was pressed down hard on his thumbs, and his face was beginning to tremble. Apparently, he couldn't stand it any longer, for he suddenly slammed his fist down on the table.

Everyone jerked around to stare at him. Cyril, fuming, pointed at me and exclaimed, "What's he doing here? He's not family! I'm the only living relative! I'm the only legal heir! Send him home!"

Mr. Halverson took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Mr. Badger's presence will soon become clear, Mr. Morton," he said with patience. "Please let me proceed." He picked up the small stack of papers in front of him. "As I was saying, my name is Arthur Halverson, and I am the executor of this will. That means that I'm in charge of seeing that everything goes to the right people." He turned to me when he said this, implying that I wouldn't know what an executor was unless he told me. I didn't feel insulted, because he was right.

"Jeffrey wrote this only two days before his death," he continued. "It therefore takes the place of his previous will. It is all in order and is signed by two witnesses." He held it up and showed it to us. It was typed except for the signatures. Jeffrey Morton's signature was scrawly and in blue ink.

Mr. Halverson cleared his throat. "Let me read it to you now, from start to finish.

"I, Jeffrey Morton, being of sound mind and body, hereby set forth this last will and testament..."

What followed was a bunch of boring legal stuff. I won't bother you with it here. I tried to listen carefully, but my mind started wandering when Mr. Halverson started going through the lists of stocks, deeds, and property. Believe it or not, I entertained myself by watching the changes in Cyril Morton's face. What a transformation! Cyril started out looking angry and whiny, but then, as it became clear that he would inherit all of Jeffrey Morton's land and money, he started looking pleased with himself – his brows relaxed, and his mouth took on a slight, superior smile.

Mr. Halverson picked up the last page and reached for a glass of water with his other hand. Cyril used this opportunity to speak up. All traces of anger were gone, but he did sound impatient. "And the Kumquat Legacy?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the old man. "Doesn't that come with everything else?"

Mr. Halverson looked at Cyril with some irritation. "Mr. Morton," he said, shaking the paper in his hand. "I'm getting to that. The Kumquat Legacy is addressed right here." He set the now empty glass down on the table and looked around. "This part of the will is written less formally than the other parts," he said. "It's actually very interesting. Let me read it to you." Here's what he read:

It is now time to say who inherits the Kumquat Legacy. My grandnephew Cyril probably thinks that it should be his, and he is probably interrupting the reading of this will to say so. Please ignore him. He's never worked a day in his life. He spends all his time talking to his astrologers and his psychics about how to make money without lifting a finger. And now, sure enough, out of respect for my dear departed niece – his mother – he's getting all of my land and all of my money, without lifting a finger. You would think that that would be enough, and that he wouldn't need the Kumquat Legacy too. I'm sure he wants it, though.

Here's the funny thing: Cyril doesn't even know what the Kumquat Legacy is. He just assumes that it is immeasurably valuable. It turns out that he is quite right. I won't reveal its nature here; it must remain, for now, a secret. I will say that it is the most valuable thing I own, much too valuable for me to give away haphazardly.

So, upon my death, Cyril cannot simply inherit the Legacy. He will have to earn it – to show that he is worthy.

I have devised a series of challenges for him, puzzles that will finally make him use his brain. I've often imagined him turning off his television, sitting down at a desk, and seriously getting to work. For the first time in his life, he would have to see a job through, from beginning to end. Oh, the pleasure this picture brought me!

All along, though, I've also thought about leaving the Kumquat Legacy to a total stranger. Yes, Cyril is my only relative, the son of my beloved niece. On the other hand, he's lazy and shiftless. And besides, I myself inherited the Legacy from a total stranger. Why shouldn't I leave it to one?

But which stranger? I figured it out this last year while sitting in Darcy Park. A boy named Dave spends a lot of time there with his friend Brent and his sister Loni. These kids never guessed that I listened to their conversations as they passed by or as they shouted across the park. They didn't realize that over the months, watching them do all kinds of things, hearing them say all kinds of things, I developed a strong, positive opinion of their character. You can learn a lot about someone if you watch them long enough. Young Dave reminds me of myself, many, many years ago.

Dave should be sitting at the table right now, listening to this reading. I don't know his last name, but I did take his picture, and I'm confident that Mr. Andrews will find him. I hereby offer Dave the chance to solve the puzzles leading to the Kumquat Legacy. If he solves them first,...

"NO!" shouted Cyril, rising to his feet. He leaned over and once again slammed his fist down on the table, this time so hard that a round container of pencils in the center fell over, scattering pencils everywhere. He was angrier than ever. Maybe I was imagining it, but his mop of curly hair suddenly seemed to spread out in all directions, as if filled with static electricity. He flashed an angry glare at me and then at Mr. Halverson. "This is outrageous – and illegal!" he sputtered. "I demand that..."

"WILL YOU BE QUIET!" boomed Mr. Halverson. For an old man, he shouted with surprising force. Cyril was stunned into silence.

"Just sit down, be quiet, and listen," Mr. Halverson said, more quietly but just as forcefully. Cyril started to say something, thought better of it, and sat down, still angry. Mr. Halverson looked at him sternly for several seconds before looking down again at the page in his hand. "Now, where was I? Ah, here we go."

I hereby offer Dave the chance to solve the puzzles leading to the Kumquat Legacy. If he solves them first, the Legacy is his.

Knowing my grandnephew, I'll bet he whined out loud or shouted in anger when he heard that last bit. Please tell him to sit down, shut up and listen.

Before they leave the room, both Cyril and Dave will examine the contents of a small wooden box presented to them by my dear friend, Arthur Halverson. The contents will point the way to another box, and the contents of that will lead to a third box. Inside the third box is the combination to a safe in Arthur's home. This safe contains the Kumquat Legacy.

Both Cyril and Dave will need to travel a bit to solve the puzzles. Arrangements for travel can be made through Mr. Andrews's office, at no cost. In solving the puzzles, Dave can get help from his friend and his sister. Cyril can also get help from friends, if he has any. I doubt he does.

With this I end my last will and testament. Signed, Jeffrey Rudolph Morton.

Mr. Halverson fell silent, and he looked around the table as he set down the paper. For a moment, no one spoke. Cyril, though, was beginning to shake. Soon it was clear that, once again, he couldn't restrain himself.

"This is OUTRAGEOUS!" he shouted, repeating himself. "I'm calling my own lawyer!" And that's exactly what he did.

Maybe you can guess how I was feeling right then. Part of me was incredibly curious about the Kumquat Legacy and, more immediately, about the wooden box that Mr. Halverson had placed on the table. The other part of me was bored, impatient and frustrated, all because of Cyril. Before Mr. Halverson could open the box, we had to sit there and wait for Cyril to finish with his call. That half-hour went by very slowly. There wasn't much to do, unless you count listening to him complain into his cell phone or, a little later, watching him glare angrily around the room as Mr. Andrews, the lawyer, spoke into the phone, reading from the will. Cyril eventually took the phone back from Mr. Andrews and spoke into it again. He did not look happy.

"Are you satisfied?" Mr. Halverson asked him. "Does your lawyer agree that the will is legal?"

"He has to look at it," Cyril said, fuming. "But he thinks it probably is."

"Good! Then let's take a look inside the box, shall we?" Mr. Halverson pulled the box toward him. It was small, about the size of the boxes my sister's shoes come in. It was made of a reddish wood – my Mom said it was cherry – and a small padlock hung on a latch on its front. Mr. Halverson pulled a key from his pocket and inserted it into the padlock.

"WAIT!" shouted Cyril. "Don't open that box!"

Mr. Halverson, startled, looked up and let go of the key. "What's the matter now, Mr. Morton?" he asked, his eyes squinting with impatience and suspicion.

"I've been thinking," Cyril said. His voice was calm now – suddenly, he was trying to sound reasonable. He fidgeted the fingers of his right hand though his mop of hair. "Yes, I'm sure of it. My great-uncle is pulling some kind of crazy gag here. And somehow, poor Davy here has found himself in the middle of it." He turned to me and, scratching at his mustache, said lightly, "You don't know this, Davy, but my great-uncle was quite a joker!" He turned back to Mr. Halverson. "I'll bet Davy doesn't want to go chasing around the country or the world trying to solve a bunch of stupid puzzles for something that is probably worthless! I'll bet he'd rather have a sure thing – some cold hard cash. In fact, I'm willing to give him $5000 if he'll stand up right now and leave the room without seeing what's inside that box!"

The words hit me hard, as I'm sure you can imagine. Five thousand dollars! Yes, he was calling me Davy, which was obnoxious, but he was also offering me five thousand dollars, more money than I ever dreamed of, and I didn't have to do anything but leave the room.

I was stunned. I didn't know what to think, and I didn't know what to do. I looked at my mother. She looked stunned, too.

"What should I do?" I whispered to her.

She started to say something but stopped herself. I looked at her face. I could tell she had an opinion, but I could also tell that she wasn't going to voice it. She was going to let me decide this one all by myself. "It's up to you, Dear," was all she said.

My mind raced. Five thousand dollars... I stalled for time with a question. "Is this allowed?" I asked, turning to face Mr. Halverson.

Mr. Halverson looked annoyed – not with me, I think, but with Cyril. "Yes, it's allowed," he said slowly. "No one can make you take this challenge of Jeffrey's. You are free to accept Mr. Morton's offer." He looked at me closely. I had the impression that, like my mother, he too had some strong opinions about all this. "Tell me, my boy, what are you going to do?"

"He'll take the money, of course!" Cyril said quickly. "Here's my checkbook. Okay, five thousand dollars it is..."

"Wait!" I said without thinking. "I haven't decided yet!"

"Don't be stupid!" Cyril countered. "What's your last name again? Bancer? Banter?"

"It's Badger – and my first name is Dave, not Davy – but..."

"Dave. Of course! Dave... Badger. Like the animal, right?" Cyril kept writing, and then he tore off the check and held it in my face. "Okay," he said. "Here it is. Now take it and get out of here."

I looked at the check, and then I looked at Cyril. He was looking back at me with a smiling face that barely concealed an intense, ugly impatience. His hands kept thrusting the check toward me, commanding me to take it.

Suddenly, I felt angry. I felt like I was being pushed into something I didn't want to do, and I hate that. I've always hated that.

"Take it!" Cyril said forcefully.

"NO!" I shouted back. Before he knew what was happening, I grabbed the check out of his hands and ripped it in half.

It was a quick decision. Maybe you think I'm crazy, that I should have taken the money. You wouldn't have thought so, though, if you were there – if Cyril, with his big, phony smile, tried to force the money on you, acting as though you were nothing but a worthless pest, a buzzing fly that needed to be disposed of as quickly as possible. At that point I wouldn't have done anything he demanded, even if he told me to run out of a burning building. I sat down and faced Mr. Halverson one more time. "Can we see what's inside the box, please?" I asked.

Mr. Halverson seemed pleased about something. "Of course!" he said. Cyril glared at me. His eyes were like daggers, so I avoided looking back at him. Mr. Halverson turned the key, removed the padlock, and opened the box.

Chapter 3: The First Puzzle

"You saw what in the box?" Brent asked that night, on the phone. He continued crunching on something, probably tortilla chips. He usually eats the 'nacho flavor' kind, which smell horrible, so I was glad we weren't speaking in person.

"Three coins and a pebble," I said again. "The coins were a penny, a quarter, and one of those nickels with the buffalo on it. The pebble was small, smooth, and reddish brown."

"So what does it mean?" he asked.

"It's a puzzle!" I answered. "There was something else in the box too – a poem typed on an index card. I copied it down. Here's how it went:

Look what you've got,

And give it some thought!

Connect all the dots: X marks the spot!

Nearby you will spy

A world-famous guy.

Go to the boss and say "Kumquat!" Just try!

Brent gave a low whistle, accompanied by a clicking sound – I think some little pieces of tortilla chips were hitting his phone's mouthpiece. "Wow!" he said.

"So," I asked, "will you help me?"

"Yeah! Duh! Of course!" he said. We talked about the puzzle for over an hour. I told him everything I could remember about the coins: the years they were minted (1985 for the quarter, 2001 for the penny, and 2005 for the nickel), how dirty or tarnished they looked (they were all pretty clean), and whether they were lying 'heads up' or 'tails up' (the quarter was 'heads', and the penny and nickel were 'tails'). Describing the pebble was harder, for there was nothing really to say about it. It had no pockmarks, no discoloration, and, most unfortunately, no tiny words painted on it.

We talked and thought and talked some more, without success. We didn't have a clue about how to solve the thing, at least not yet. At one point, Brent even said, "Maybe you should have taken the money after all!"

"No way," I said firmly. "We'll figure it out." But we didn't – not that night. "We'll tackle it again tomorrow," I said finally. "Come by my house at nine!" I said good night and hung up the phone.

To my surprise, it rang again almost immediately. "Hello?" I said, picking it up.

"Is this Dave?" said an oily voice. I recognized it and winced. This was the last person I wanted to talk to.

"This is Dave," I said unenthusiastically.

"It's me, your new buddy Cyril!" said the voice, trying to sound like a buddy. "Listen – I've got some great ideas about how to solve the puzzle. I've practically solved it already!"

My heart sank, though I wasn't sure I believed him. "Um, okay!" I said. "So why did you call me?"

Cyril gave a false-sounding little laugh. "Well, it's like this," he said. "I'm impatient. Always have been. I want this puzzle solved right now, not in a little while. I thought if we pooled our ideas together, we could solve it that much faster. When we finish, I'll give you ten thousand dollars for your share of the Legacy!"

Ten thousand dollars! Twice as much as before...

"So, what have you figured out?" Cyril demanded, before I had a chance to say anything.

"Well, I don't know..."

"You tell me what you figured out, and then I'll tell you what I figured out," Cyril pressed on, his voice even more insistent. "That's fair, isn't it?"

"I tell you first?" I asked. Naturally, I was suspicious.

"Yes, yes, of course! And then I promise to tell you what I know, and I promise to give you ten thousand dollars once the Legacy is all mine. I give you my solemn word!"

His solemn word. Unfortunately for Cyril, he had forgotten something. He had forgotten that I'd dealt with him before and that I knew what he was like. His solemn word was worthless, and that made my decision easy. "Listen," I said. "I can't help you. I haven't gotten anywhere on the puzzle myself yet. I'll just work on it at my own pace. With any luck I'll catch up to you soon."

Cyril didn't respond right away. I grinned, for I knew what was happening. I had set something off inside him – he was growing more and more furious with each passing second. When he first called, he had concealed himself inside a jacket of friendliness, but now he was so hot with anger that he threw that jacket off. "You lying, conniving, worthless little brat!" he said finally, spitting as he yelled. "You tell me the answer! What do the coins and the rock mean? Well?!!"

That was the Cyril I knew. "Good night, and sweet dreams!" I said pleasantly, hanging up. I looked at the phone for a few seconds, took the receiver off the hook, and left it lying on the counter.

****

We figured out the puzzle the next day. Well, okay, my little sister did. As I sit here writing this down, I'm tempted to keep the answer a secret from you, the reader, for just a little while longer. I'm tempted to give you a clue instead. Here's a big clue: Washington appears on the quarter, Lincoln appears on the penny, and a buffalo appears on the nickel. Oh yeah – and a pebble is just a rock. A little one. Go ahead! Try solving it! You don't have to, of course, but remember this – if you don't solve it, you'll have to suffer like I did. You'll have to sit through one of Loni's dollhouse plays.

We sat at the kitchen table that morning, Loni and I, staring at a blank piece of paper. On the paper I had placed a quarter, a penny, a buffalo nickel, and a pebble. Next to the paper sat my copy of the poem. Soon Brent would be coming by to help us stare.

Twenty minutes into our staring session, Loni made a little noise. I looked up at her. She was still staring at the paper, but her expression had changed – instead of looking puzzled, she was looking very excited.

"I have to check something!" she said. "Stay where you are!" She practically jumped off her chair and ran into the den, where we keep the computer and most of our books. She slammed the door behind her. I wanted to follow her, to find out what was going on, but at that moment the doorbell rang. It had to be Brent. I got up to let him in.

"What's up?" he asked, as he stepped into the house. He was munching on a candy bar. "I haven't figured out your puzzle yet. Have you?"

"No," I admitted, "but I think Loni is on to something."

"That's not surprising," Brent said. He knew how Loni was with puzzles.

She soon joined us in the kitchen, her face beaming. "I got it!" she said.

"What is it?" I asked quickly.

Loni said nothing. Instead, she suddenly grinned to herself, as if she were about to have some fun. I had a terrible feeling that when she finally did talk, I wasn't going to like what she had to say.

"Well?" I said.

"I can't tell you!" she said slyly.

"You can't tell us?" I said, confused. "What are you talking about? Why not?"

Her smile broadened. "I'm afraid," she said, "that if you want to hear the answer, you'll have to ask Gertie!"

****

I have to explain about Gertie. You've already met Queen and Princey from the dollhouse. Well, Queen has some friends, 'Man' and 'Woman', who themselves have a 5-year-old child named Gertrude. What a monster this kid is! Spoiled, fat, and constantly throwing temper tantrums, Gertie is everyone's worst nightmare – the kind of kid that, sitting next to you on a moving bus, would make you gladly jump out the bus's window and kiss the pavement joyfully as you skidded along it. Gertie has a pear shaped head, blisters all over her face, a horribly grating voice, and, worst of all, a body that's immortal. No matter what happens to her in the particular story she's in, and bizarre things always seem to happen to her – some part of her body is always blowing up, falling off, or catching on fire – she survives to tantrum another day.

I knew all this because over the past several months, I'd suffered through lots of Gertie dollhouse plays. Over time I'd discovered ways of avoiding them, but now, Loni had me cornered. She knew the answer to the puzzle, and she would only tell me through Gertie. For just a moment I was ready to yell at her, to demand that she tell me the answer without all this stupid nonsense. I caught myself, though. I didn't want to be like Cyril.

Loni handed each of us a wooden character: I got a knight in armor, and Brent got a forest woodcutter. Loni told us that we both had to act out a part in her play. We were to have these two travelers approach the dollhouse and ask Gertie for help. I think Brent was ready to throw his character down in disgust. "She knows the answer!" I whispered to him urgently. "We have no choice!" With a disgusted sigh, he gave in.

We did as we were told. We bounced the characters along the floor to the dollhouse. Loni was waiting for us with her own character, a woman in a green skirt and white shirt.

Knight (me): We would like to see Gertie, please!

Woman (Loni): You mean my darling daughter? Well, one of her feet is here in my purse. Would you like to see that?

Woodsman (Brent): What!?

Woman (Loni, laughing gently): Oh, the silly dear kicked the door so hard this morning that her foot fell right off. Don't worry, though – she'll grow another one. She's immortal, you know!

Knight (me): We want to see all of Gertie, if that's okay – all of her, in one piece.

Woman (Loni): Yes, yes! Of course. Follow me, please! (She leads our characters to the other side of the dollhouse. Standing before them is a short, grungy doll with stringy blonde hair.)

Knight (me): Hello, Gertie. We've come from far away...

(Suddenly, the knight and the woodsman are attacked by huge soldier dolls that Loni has picked up. The two travelers back off.)

Knight (me): What's the matter?

Woman (Loni): You asked to see Gertie. You didn't ask to speak with her!

Note to reader: it's not too late to solve the puzzle. If you solve it, you can skip right to the end of this horrible play!

Knight (me): We would like to speak to the Great Gertie! What must we do?

Woman (Loni): Only those who sing Gertie her favorite song can speak to her. Here is a copy of the lyrics. (Loni scribbles some words down on a piece of paper and hands it to Brent and me.)

Woodsman (Brent, looking at paper): This is the stupidest song I've ever seen in my life! I'm not singing this!

Gertie (Loni, in a loud, high, screechy, horribly painful voice): Waaaaaaahhh! Make them go away! Waaaaaaaaahhh!

Woman (Loni, calmly): Poor honey Gertie! You're such a sweet sweetie – my little Pookums! Don't cry, and I'll buy you whatever you wish!

Knight (me): Actually, we will sing the song. Won't we, Woodsman?

Woodsman (Brent): Uh...

Knight (me): Won't we!

Woodsman (Brent, sighing): Oh, okay.

Knight and Woodsman, together:

Whose tantrums sound pleasant, like an angel's sweet song?

Who waddles her fat with the grace of a swan?

Gertrude! Gertrude! Gertie, she's our girl!

Her face is like pizza, a food we adore!

She gets what she wants, and always wants more!

Gertrude! Gertrude! Gertie, she's our girl!

Gertie (Loni, giggling stupidly): Hee! Hee!

Woman (Loni): Gertie is pleased, Gentlemen. You may now speak to her.

Knight (me): Gertie, what is the connection between a penny, a quarter, a buffalo nickel and a pebble?

Gertie (Loni):

Knight (me): Why aren't you telling us, Gertie?

Woman (Loni): She said you could speak to her. She didn't say she would speak back!

Knight (me, standing up and yelling at Loni as loud as I could): WHAT????

Gertie (Loni, gurgling stupidly): Cities!

Knight (me): Huh?

Gertie (Loni): Penny has Lincoln, Lincoln is city. Quarter has Washington, and that is city.

Woodsman (Brent): Buffalo is a city too!

Knight (me): And the pebble...

Gertie (Loni): Think about Arkansas.

Knight (me): Little Rock!

Brent and I stood up quickly, gladly dropping the stupid dolls. That was it! We had the answer – or at least the first part of the answer.

I ran to the den. Brent and Loni followed. I quickly pulled an atlas down from the shelf and found the page showing the United States. "Turn the scanner on!" I called to Brent. Our computer is connected to a scanner that also works as a copier. Soon we had made our own paper copy of the map.

We quickly found the four cities – Lincoln, Washington, Buffalo, and Little Rock – and marked them with red dots on the copy. "What now?" asked Brent.

"The puzzle poem says to connect the dots!" I said. I found a ruler and drew lines between every pair of dots. I ended up with a four-sided figure with a big X in the middle.

"X marks the spot!" Brent cried. "How does the last part of the poem go, again?"

" 'Nearby you will spy a world-famous guy!' I looked at the map. "And there he is! Look!" I pointed my finger at a city just a little bit east of where the X crossed. The city was named after someone famous, all right: Christopher Columbus. The city was Columbus, Ohio.

****

An unpleasant surprise was waiting for us the next day, when we got to our hotel in Columbus.

Yes, my mom, Loni, Brent, and I took off for Columbus as soon as we could. The poem had said, "Go to the boss and say 'Kumquat'". Since Columbus is the capital of Ohio, and since the governor there is the boss of the state, we guessed that we were supposed to go to Columbus and talk to the governor. After all, according to Jeffrey Morton's will, we were supposed to travel to solve the puzzles. I called the law office to arrange our flights. I spoke to the woman there I had met at the reading, the blonde one at the reception desk, and she set it up right away. We didn't have to pay a cent.

The flight was long and mostly boring, though the clouds out the window were amazing, and I enjoyed looking down at all the different shapes on the land below. I particularly liked the way the river channels cut through the desert in stringy patterns, kind of like the roots of the weeds you pull out of a garden. I played travel backgammon and hangman for a while with Brent, but he eventually fell asleep. Loni spent all of her time reading.

It was very late in the afternoon when our plane finally touched down in Columbus. My mom rented a car and took us straight to the hotel. "The governor could be anywhere this late in the day," she said. "We'll see if we can reach him in the morning. I don't know how we'll do it, but we'll try."

We brought the suitcases into the hotel room. Loni wasted no time – before I had even set down my suitcase, she was hopping back and forth between the two double beds in the room, trying to jump as high as she could.

"Loni! Stop that!" my mom barked. She sat down wearily in a chair and took several quiet breaths. "There's a reasonable-looking restaurant down the street," she said then to all of us. "We can go there in a minute. I still need to catch my breath!"

Loni jumped off the bed and ran to her suitcase, probably to get her dolls. I went over to the far bed – the better one – and put my suitcase on top of it, to reserve it. Brent, eating an apple, turned on the TV with the remote and began flicking through the channels. "Stop there!" my mom called out. "That's the news! Maybe they'll say something about the weather!"

We didn't hear the weather. Instead, we got the unpleasant surprise I mentioned above. The screen showed a man yelling at another man, one who was walking down the steps of Ohio's capital building. The yelling man had wild hair, bushy eyebrows, and a scruffy mustache. He looked very angry, practically in a rage.

You've probably guessed who it was. Yes, Cyril Morton was yelling at someone on television. We didn't hear what he was saying, though, because the newscaster was speaking, telling the viewers what they would be seeing after the commercial. "When we come back," she said, "a bizarre incident at the Governor's Mansion, apparently involving kumquats. Stay tuned!"

Chapter 4: The Second Puzzle

We sat anxiously and impatiently through commercial after commercial. I always find commercials annoying, but for some reason, these were particularly bad – some kids were eating macaroni and seemed much too happy about it, and the lady with the cat food seemed dumber than her cat. Finally, and thankfully, the newscaster returned. We all focused our attention on the screen.

"At the capital building today," the newscaster said, "the governor was assaulted by a man with – of all things – a fixation on kumquats. News 6 has obtained this exclusive footage, taken by a passing tourist."

"There he is again!" Loni shouted, pointing. "Shhh!" I whispered back. We were watching the same film clip we had seen earlier, only this time, we could hear what Cyril was saying. "Kumquat!" he shouted, standing on some steps outside the capital building. "Kumquat!" The governor, walking down the steps, turned to look at him and nodded in confusion. I'm guessing that he didn't know what to think of this bizarre man. Suddenly, Cyril sprang forward, grabbed the governor by the shoulders, and shouted "KUMQUAT!" directly into his face, shaking him gruffly. Just as suddenly, two of the people that were with the governor sprang forward. They grabbed Cyril, wrenched him away, and shoved him off to one side. The governor, looking rumpled and dazed, wiped some spit off his face with a handkerchief. He stared at Cyril in amazement. Cyril, meanwhile, was now being held back by several bystanders. He struggled furiously against them, yelling "Kumquat!" whenever he could catch his breath. As the film clip ended, a policeman was running up the steps.

"The shouting man is in police custody tonight," the newscaster continued. "News 6 has learned that city psychiatrists have him under observation." And that was it. The newscaster went on to describe a holdup at a liquor store, and we shut off the television.

"Holy cow!" I found myself saying. "What does it mean?"

"I know one thing it means," said Brent, who seemed just as stunned as I was. "There's no way I'm saying 'kumquat' to the governor tomorrow!"

****

I was in a good mood the next morning, for two reasons. First, Brent had a really good idea. "Listen," he said. "I just thought of something! We're supposed to go to Columbus to talk to 'the boss', right? Well, maybe we're supposed to talk to the boss of the city and not the state!" As soon as he said it, I knew he was right. Ohio has a governor, and the governor is in Columbus, but the city of Columbus also has a mayor. Maybe we were supposed to see him, instead...

The second reason I was in a good mood was that I figured Cyril would be out of our hair for a while. I figured that he'd have to sit in jail for at least a couple of days, as he tried his hardest to convince people that he wasn't crazy. Who knows? Maybe they'd never let him leave!

That's what I was thinking in the morning. Unfortunately, though, I was dead wrong about Cyril. Completely and totally wrong. As you'll soon see, he turned up that very afternoon and made our lives more miserable than ever.

The mayor wasn't in when we arrived at his office that morning, and according to his secretary, he wouldn't get there until after two o'clock. She didn't think we'd get to see him anyway, since his afternoon would be very busy. We weren't too worried. All we had to do was be around when he showed up and say "kumquat" as he walked past. Hopefully that would do it.

We walked around downtown Columbus for a while, and then we went back to the hotel to go swimming. After lunch, at 1:45, we sat down in the mayor's reception room and waited for him to arrive.

We were there just in time. At 1:50, the mayor stepped into the room from outside. At first glance, I thought he looked like a defensive tackle – tall, with shoulders wide enough to fill the doorway. But then I noticed his well-fitted suit, his graying hair, and his quiet and intelligent face, and I almost laughed at the thought of him ever playing football. This fellow was too refined. He was more likely to be a chess player.

He sent us a friendly smile, the kind of smile politicians often give to strangers who might be voters, and then he then said a few words to his secretary and opened the door to his office. "Kumquat!" we three kids said together, to his back.

The mayor froze. He turned around slowly. He studied us with interest. He nodded and smiled again, this time in understanding. His eyes looked different, too – they were greeting us not as strangers, but as long lost friends.

"Dolores," he said, turning to the secretary, "hold my calls. I need to speak to these people!"

"But sir! Your appointments...!"

"Hold my calls, Dolores," he repeated. He waved us in.

So, Brent was right – it was the mayor. Eagerly, we followed him into his office and sat, at his request, at a small wooden table, the only surface in the dark paneled room that wasn't covered with books or stacks of folders. We introduced ourselves. The mayor offered my mom some coffee.

Any final doubts I might have had were erased when Mayor Winston (that was his name) opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a small reddish wooden box – a box identical to the one I saw at the reading of the will, the one that contained the coins and the little rock. He set this new box down on the table in front of us. "I was expecting you," he said, looking pleased. "Or, at least, I was expecting someone. I knew someone would be looking for me, after what I saw on the news last night!"

"Were you a friend of Jeffrey Morton's?" I asked, as he fitted a key into the box's small padlock.

"Oh, yes! For many, many years! He was a great man – a very wise man – and I was happy to help him out on this treasure hunt of his. We met and talked about it less than a year ago. We decided that..."

The mayor did not complete his sentence. He was interrupted, all of a sudden, by a loud cry of "KUMQUAT!"

Everyone looked up in surprise. Yes, it was Cyril Morton. He was standing at the doorway, grasping the doorjamb for support and breathing hard, his wild hair wilder than ever. Dolores the secretary stepped quickly past him and spoke to the mayor. "I'm so sorry, sir!" she said, alarmed and embarrassed. "He ran past me, and I couldn't stop him!"

"It's fine, Dolores," said Mayor Winston. He sighed quietly. "He can be here too." Cyril stepped in, found an empty chair at the table, and moved the box so that it was right in front of him.

Mayor Winston studied Cyril's face for some time. "You are Cyril Morton," he said finally, with no delight in his voice. Cyril, still out of breath, said nothing. "I remember you," the mayor continued. "You were about the age of young Loni here when I visited your uncle in Paris. First you floated your aunt's good china in the bathtub, and then you tossed some rocks, which you called 'meteors', at the plates, hoping to sink them. Your aunt wanted to wring your neck! Your uncle said that sometimes, it was as though you wanted him to break the cycle of non-violence that has held your family in its grip for generations."

"What's in the box?" Cyril said simply, ignoring the mayor's memory. He stared at the box intently. He did not look at the rest of us.

"Yes, the box," said the mayor. "I was just about to open it." The key in the padlock produced a sharp, metallic click. Mayor Winston pocketed the padlock and raised the lid of the box. We all leaned forward to look in.

****

It's hard to describe what I was thinking when I first saw them, lying there on the bottom. I was mostly just confused. What were those two things? Golden eggs? Huge gold nuggets? Mayor Winston pulled them out and handed one to me and one to Cyril. I studied mine closely and finally guessed what it was. It was a kumquat! Not a real one, of course – just a solid metal model of one. The outside looked like real gold. The inside was some probably some cheaper metal, though the way Cyril was looking at it, I had to wonder.

"There are two sheets of paper in here as well," said the mayor, reaching into the box. "I've looked at them carefully, and they are identical. You can each have one." He handed one sheet to Loni and one to Cyril. Loni held it up so that Brent and I could look at it with her. This is what we read:

Another mayor, another city.

Hand the mayor this kumquat pretty!

The gift will buy a revelation –

The mayor has the combination.

Here's where to go:

1. Arkansas, New Mexico, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, Iowa, Wyoming, Missouri, Colorado, South Dakota

2. Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland.

3. South Dakota, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, Wyoming, Arkansas, Missouri, Colorado

4. Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wisconsin.

5. Oregon, Utah, California, Washington, Arizona, Idaho.

6. Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota.

"What does this mean?" Cyril demanded. "These are states! How are we supposed to find the city with the right mayor?

Mayor Winston shook his head. "You know I can't answer that. You're on your own now." He turned away from Cyril to look at the rest of us. He smiled. "It was a great pleasure meeting you," he said, pushing his chair back and standing up. "I hope you'll let me know what happens!"

"Absolutely!" I said. We thanked him as we got up to leave.

****

Soon we were out in the afternoon air, greeted warmly by the afternoon sun, a gentle breeze, and a cloudless sky. I pulled the golden kumquat from my pocket and was about to study it when I saw the look on Loni's face. She was eyeing it excitedly. I could tell she wanted to hold it herself. Grinning, I handed it to her. She held it before her eyes, the kumquat's surface shining brightly in the sun. We were all dazzled. She seemed to be holding a tiny star.

We stared at it. How I wish I had been looking around, instead. Remember when I said that Cyril would make our lives miserable that afternoon? Well, now was his moment. He approached us quietly, from behind. None of us heard him. When he reached us, he snarled loudly, "What kind of deal is this?"

We all jumped. "What's the matter?" Brent asked, when he caught his breath.

"You took the better kumquat!" Cyril snarled. "That's cheating!"

"They're exactly the same," I argued. "Identical!" I wondered what he was getting at.

"Identical?" he said. "Hah!" Then, without warning, he grabbed Loni's wrist with one hand and used the other to snatch the kumquat. Loni screamed.

"Hey! Give that back!" Brent shouted. It was too late. Before we could do anything, Cyril was running down the steps to the street. A taxi was waiting for him there.

"Get back here!" I shouted. I ran down the steps after him.

The cab was pulling away just as I reached it. It stopped about thirty feet down the road, and Cyril stuck his head out the window. "I'll have these things compared by experts!" he called out. "You want things to be fair, don't you! You have my word that you'll get it back!" Before I could respond, the taxi sped off and was hopelessly out of reach.

****

We sat down on the steps, shocked into silence. Cyril had both kumquats. We doubted if we would ever see either of them again.

The taxi had been sitting right there, at the foot of the steps. Cyril must have paid the cabby to wait for him. He must have known that he would want a quick getaway. Though I'm sure he didn't know about the golden kumquats when he first arrived here, he must have planned to cause some kind of trouble all along. The taxi was ready for him.

I looked over at my friend and my sister. They were both resting their heads on their hands. All that trouble for nothing. No treasure. Brent must have been really depressed, for he held a granola bar in his hand but didn't eat it. My mom was quiet too. I think she wanted to say something but didn't know what.

I sighed and leaned backwards. Somehow, we had to get our kumquat back. We had to have a plan.

This is going to sound stupid, but I wanted to be the one to come up with the plan. Loni had solved the first puzzle, and Brent had figured out that we should talk to the mayor instead of the governor. So far, I hadn't contributed anything – not really. That was starting to bug me, more than you can imagine.

And suddenly, it hit me. Maybe it was luck, but suddenly, I did come up with a plan. Not a great plan – I would be amazed if it actually worked – but it was a plan, and it was better than nothing.

I wondered what the others would think about it. "Hey," I said aloud, "I have an idea. Have you guys noticed anything about Cyril? Other than the fact that he's a big jerk and has crazy hair?"

Brent looked up and thought for a second. "I don't know," he said without enthusiasm. "I guess he shouts a lot. And he gets mad easily."

"Right!" I said. "He gets mad easily! I think can use that to get our kumquat back!"

****

We packed our bags quickly back at the hotel and drove to the airport. The others sat on a bench by the ticket counter while I called the lawyer's office on the telephone.

"We're in luck!" I announced, coming back. "Cyril is booked on the 6:00 flight to Los Angeles. I got us tickets on the same flight."

My mom shook her head in wonder. "I'm glad we're using someone else's money for this," she said. "Do you know how much it costs to get tickets for a same-day flight?"

I shrugged, not wanting to think about such things. "Look – we have to keep an eye out for Cyril. If he gets past us, there's no hope!" I quickly organized a watch. My mom and Loni would monitor the doors on one side of the terminal, while Brent and I would keep track of the other end. First, though, I went to the gift shop and bought two of the biggest hats I could find – mine was a goofy one with the word "Columbus" stitched above a picture of the Santa Maria, and Brent's said something like "Oh, My! Oh, My! Ohio!" Brent and I also pulled some different shirts out of our suitcases and threw them on. I didn't think Cyril would recognize our clothes, but I didn't want to take any chances.

The next hour was slow and boring. We stared at those terminal doors like hawks, watching hundreds of people go in and out, with no sign of Cyril. And now it was five o'clock. Where the heck was he? I began to worry that I had gotten the day wrong – if he was supposed to leave the next day at six o'clock instead of today – when I felt a tug on my sleeve. It was Loni.

"He's here!" she said, panting. She had run as fast as she could from her post. My mom had followed in a quick walk and soon joined us.

"Did he see you?" I asked quickly.

"No!" she said proudly. "My face was behind this magazine!"

I looked at the magazine, which she must have found discarded on a bench somewhere. She had been reading Business Executive Quarterly! Fortunately, Cyril didn't notice. We looked across the room at the check-in line. We could see him standing there, pacing in place, looking impatient.

"Let's get in position," I said, putting on my new hat and drawing it down over my eyes. "It's show time!"

****

The line moved slowly forward. One by one, people placed their carry-on luggage on the conveyor belts and stepped forward through the security scanners. The security guards, or whatever you call them, directed the line and watched each person carefully.

There were about 20 people ahead of me when I took off my hat and tapped the person just ahead – Cyril – on the back. He turned to face me. "Hey!" I said. "What a surprise! I thought that was you!" I tried to sound friendly.

He stared at me. He looked totally shocked. His eyes bugged out, and his mouth hung open stupidly. No words came out, though.

"You took our golden kumquat," I said calmly. "Can I have it back now?"

Cyril's eyes became slits. I could tell that he was thinking hard. "I don't have it," he said finally, his voice filled with phony dismay. "It was stolen!"

"What?!" I cried. "Stolen?"

"Yes," he said, more quickly now. "I got mugged on the way back to my hotel. The thief – he was... a big ugly bald guy, with a gun – he stole my money and also got away with both kumquats. I don't have mine any more, either! And all I wanted to do was have an expert look at them, to help us both out! The police can't do much, of course. What a stinking world this is!"

I smiled inwardly. I knew he would come up with something like this. I took a breath. "I don't believe you," I said. "I think you're lying!"

The words hit him hard, just as I hoped. Cyril looked stunned all over again. "What? Me? Lie? How dare you!"

"You're lying," I continued. "You have my kumquat. Give it back!"

Cyril's voice rose. He was becoming angry. "I don't have them!" he said fiercely. "I was trying to do you a favor, having them looked at by an expert. And now you accuse me of stealing? Leave me alone!"

I pressed on. "You're a big dirty liar. You have my kumquat. It was not stolen."

Cyril's face turned a familiar deep red, and his eyes bugged out more than ever. His head began to quake, and this sent the ends of his wild hair jumping around in all directions. He looked almost too furious to speak. "I don't have them!" he finally shouted, this time loud enough for just about the whole terminal to hear. "They were stolen! Do you hear me? Stolen!"

"No kumquats?" I asked innocently.

"No kumquats!" he shouted. "I don't have any golden kumquats!"

Of course, everyone around us was now staring at him. "Golden kumquats?" one woman asked another. "What's he talking about?"

Cyril turned around in fury, ready to ignore me, to pretend that I no longer existed. To his surprise, he found himself at the front of the line. The guard was motioning him forward.

Cyril stepped up quickly and placed his small suitcase on the conveyor belt. "Your shoes too, sir," the guard said. Cyril removed his shoes, placed them on the conveyor too, and stepped forward through the scanner. Instantly, it responded with a loud beep.

"Step back, sir," the guard said. "Make sure your pockets are empty and try again."

Suddenly, Cyril stopped looking angry. Suddenly, he looked worried. "Maybe it's my belt buckle," he chuckled lamely to the guard. He took his belt off and placed it in a plastic basket. He then reached into his pocket, found his keys and some coins, and put them in the basket, too.

Trying to look confident, he stepped through the scanner again. BEEP! "This way, sir!" the guard said, sending Cyril toward another guard, who stood against the wall in back.

I didn't see what happened next, because Cyril positioned his body to block my view. Brent, though, saw everything. Brent, hiding under his hat, had gone through the scanner just ahead of Cyril and was now standing quietly beside the other guard.

Brent told me later what happened. The second guard's metal detector went off right in front of Cyril's jacket pocket. Cyril winced and, with a backward glance to make sure I couldn't see, reached in and held something out to him. "It's probably just these," he said quietly. "Completely harmless, but I suppose they are metal."

The guard took them in his hand. Suddenly, Brent pulled off his hat. "Those are the kumquats!" he said, loudly and excitedly. "The golden kumquats! The ones you just said were stolen from you!"

"You have my kumquat?" I said. I had stepped through the scanner by then and now appeared at Cyril's side, looking shocked. "You told me – heck, you told everyone here – that you didn't have any golden kumquats!"

Cyril ignored me. "Heh! Heh!" he chuckled to the guard. "These kids are nuts. You know how they are these days. Video games and junk food. Their minds are a mess! Listen, can I have my things back now?"

The guard looked at him uncertainly and then looked back down at the two golden kumquats in his hand. He must have heard Cyril's shout earlier, so he knew that Cyril was lying. Still, it wasn't the guard's place to deal with arguments like this. I faced the guard and spoke. "This fellow and I each got one of these things from the mayor," I said. "If the mayor asks you, would you be willing to tell him what you've seen and heard here today?"

"What?" the guard asked, newly confused. "Mayor Winston?"

"Yes," I continued. "You'd be able to describe this fellow easily enough, wouldn't you? Wild hair, buggy eyes, face like a ferret? I'm sure that if the mayor heard this fellow here had both kumquats and wouldn't give ours back, he would make a phone call to southern California. He would have this fellow disqualified, and I would get the Legacy!"

"Disqualified? Legacy?" stammered the guard. "What are you talking about?"

Cyril knew he was beat. He spoke up quickly. "Wait a second!" he said. "We don't need to bring the mayor into this. I see my mistake now." His fingers stroked his mustache, as if he were in deep thought. "Yes, yes, of course! How silly of me! One of those kumquats is yours. The thug who mugged me stole the two golden tangerines I had, not the golden kumquats. I always get those things confused! Heh, heh! Silly me!"

"So... you're saying that one of these things really does belong to the boy?" the guard asked slowly.

"Yes, yes! Of course!" Cyril said. "A stupid mistake on my part. I'm so embarrassed! We needn't trouble the mayor." He held out his hand and waited expectantly.

"We haven't finished inspecting you," the confused guard said.

I held out my hand. "Can I have mine?" I asked. To my relief, the guard, still looking confused, dropped one of the kumquats into it. I gripped it tightly. I wasn't about to lose it again.

Cyril fumed at us as we left the security area. I didn't mind. What a jerk! Let him fume! There was nothing he could do about it now. We had our kumquat back, and we were back in the race. Brent and I waited for Loni and my mom to join us, and the four of us walked to our plane's departure gate.

****

We were sitting at the gate a few minutes later. Loni found an airline magazine and opened it to a page showing a map of the United States. She sat there and stared at it intently. She was also holding the list of states from the second puzzle.

At twenty minutes to six, I nudged her. "It's time to get on board now," I said. "They're calling our seating zone!"

She looked up at me and, for a moment, acted like she didn't remember who I was.

"Loni?" I said. "Let's go!"

"What?" she said, her mind obviously elsewhere. Then she looked very serious. "No!"

"No?"

"No! No!" she said. "We shouldn't get on that plane!"

"Loni, it's time to go," my mother said sternly, as she stood up.

"No, Mom!" Loni persisted. "We shouldn't go home. We need to fly somewhere else! I've solved the second puzzle!"

Chapter 5: Cyril at his Worst

Loni pulled my mom aside and whispered into her ear. Loni held up the airline magazine and pointed to an inside page, her finger moving around in random circles. I leaned forward to see what she was pointing to, but she jerked the magazine away. She wouldn't let me see anything.

"We'd like to welcome aboard all remaining passengers on Flight 1067, with service to Los Angeles," a loudspeaker said somewhere.

I looked at the gate. A small line of people – the rest of the passengers – were standing there, handing their boarding passes to the airline workers and getting ready to step out on the jetway. If we wanted to catch our plane, we needed to be in that line. My mom, though, wasn't moving. Loni had handed her the magazine and the list of states from the puzzle, and now she (my mom) was studying them intently. She was even moving her finger inside the magazine, just like Loni.

"Mom," I said. "We should..."

"Just a second, Honey!" she said absently. "We have time yet!"

Several minutes passed. "This is the final boarding call for Flight 1067, with service to Los Angeles," the loudspeaker said. "All passengers should now be on board." My mom acted like she didn't hear. She was now staring off into space, thinking hard.

I tapped her on the arm. "It's now or never!" I said urgently. "Should we get on the plane?"

She waited a second before answering. "No," she said.

"No?"

"No," she repeated. "Loni's right. We're not going back to California, at least not now. We're going somewhere else!"

"Where?" Brent and I asked together.

I watched her face. Something like a smile was forming, though she tried hard to hide it. "You'll have to ask your sister!" she said finally. "I promised her that I wouldn't tell you!"

****

As I write this down, I face another difficult decision. On one hand, I want to tell you the whole story and not leave anything out. I want to tell you exactly what happened. On the other hand, if I do tell you what happened next, you will suffer. You will have to read another of Loni's horrible dollhouse plays.

Yes, that's how Loni chose to tell us the answer to the second puzzle. I think I will write it down. If you choose to skip to the next section, I won't blame you.

We were back at the same hotel in Columbus – in a different room this time – before Loni would say anything at all about the puzzle. "I need some help explaining the answer," she said sweetly, as she opened her suitcase and dumped it out on the bed. I was amazed at what I saw. She had packed almost no clothes for the trip: one shirt, one pair of shorts, and – as far as I could tell – one sock. Most of the suitcase had been stuffed with small wooden or felt dolls.

My mom stared at the dolls with dismay. "I knew I should have helped you pack!" she muttered.

The dolls that tumbled onto the bed came from all five of Loni's dollhouse families: the Belchmans, the Snottersons, the Grumpberries, the Gasdudes, and the Druffers. Each of the five families included at least a dozen children, all with precisely the same annoying personality, as far as I could tell. You heard about Gertie in the last dollhouse play. Well, all the dollhouse children are like that.

"Sit down, please!" Loni said to Brent and my mom. "It's time for a show! Dave, come over here."

I sighed loudly – extra loudly, to show my disgust. There was nothing I could do, though. I had no choice. I wanted the answer to the puzzle, and it would probably take a long time to figure it out myself. Gloomily, I stepped forward and reached out for one of the wooden dolls. As I did, I looked over at Brent. He was laughing into his hands. Obviously, since he wasn't involved himself this time, he thought the whole thing was pretty funny.

"You get to be Neighbor Joe," Loni said happily to me. "He just moved into the house between the Snottersons and the Belchmans. Neighbor Joe must get them to stop fighting!"

"Loni! What does this have to do with..."

"Just do it," she said, interrupting me. I answered with another huge, loud, angry, and impatient sigh. I did sit down next to her, though, and I did hold my doll forward. Loni controlled two other dolls.

Here is how the play went. As usual, Loni's characters have ridiculous accents, which I tried to capture here with some unusual spelling.

Neighbor Joe (me): Good day! I'm your new neighbor, Neighbor Joe. I was wondering... Could you tell me the solution to the second riddle of the Kumquat Legacy?

Mr. Belchman: Never mind thott! Snotterson called my leettle Weelliam's peecture a screeble!

Mr. Snotterson (stepping up): But eet ees a screeble!

Mr. Belchman: Oh, is thott so?

(Mr. Belchman jumps on Mr. Snotterson's head and knocks him down. Mr. Snotterson jumps up and starts kicking Mr. Belchman. They start pounding their heads together.)

Neighbor Joe (me): Stop it! Don't fight! Look – I will take the peecture – I mean picture – into my house. Mr. Belchman, I will enjoy Little William's beautiful artwork every day. Mr. Snotterson, you won't have to look at it, since it will be in my house. Now, can you two be friends?

Mr. Belchman: Yase, I gase so.

Mr. Snotterson: Yase, yase! The baste of frainds agane!

(They start dancing around, apparently happy.)

Neighbor Joe (me): Good! Now who will tell me the answer to the second puzzle of the Kumquat Legacy?

Mr. Belchman: My boy Weelliam weel. He ees een the back, coloring een a coloring book.

Mr. Snotterson: You mean he makes more screebles?

Mr. Belchman: Screebles! Screebles! You call them screebles?

(This time, it's a big fight. They start throwing each other into the wall and hitting each other over the head with little doll buckets, grunting and shouting at each other. Soon they were fighting on top of my head, bouncing up and down.)

"LONI!" I cried, batting the dolls off of me and sending one of them clear across the room. "Stop it already! Just tell me – what is the answer to the puzzle?"

Loni set her dolls down and smiled. "William told you," she said. "You have to color in a coloring book."

"What..."

Before I could think of anything more intelligent to say, she found a marker pen in the bottom of her suitcase and handed it to me. Then she handed me the map of the United States from the airline magazine. "Color in the states in each list," she said. "See what happens!"

Color in the states. Hmmm... Could that really be it? According to my sister, I was first supposed to use the marker to color in Arkansas, New Mexico, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, Iowa, Wyoming, Missouri, Colorado, and South Dakota. It seemed like a lot of work, but I had to admit that it was better than playing with her dolls. I sat at the desk in the room and got started. Soon I saw what she was getting at.

With the help of Brent and Loni, we soon colored in the states from the other five lists, on different maps. (Loni had taken several airline magazines with her from the airport.) Finally, the answer to the puzzle stared out at us, plain as day. This is what we saw:

"Boston!" I cried.

"That's right!" said Loni gleefully.

"Yes, that's where we're going," my mom said. "First thing tomorrow morning!"

****

So, all we had to do was fly to Boston, find the mayor, and present our golden kumquat. The mayor would then hand us the combination to a safe back in California, a safe that contained the Kumquat Legacy. Needless to say, we were excited the next morning as we drove to the airport and boarded an early Boston flight. The flight was short, and we landed in Boston before ten o'clock. We made it out of the airport quickly, stopping only once at a newsstand to get Brent a snack.

The subway – they call it the "T" – comes straight to the airport in Boston, so we didn't have to bother with a taxi to go downtown. I enjoyed that subway ride a lot. I liked the idea of traveling through a dark, musty tunnel, far beneath the city. It made me think of the gophers back home, weaving their way through the maze of tunnels that crisscross our backyard. Now I knew what that was like.

Amazing as it was, though, the subway did not impress my mom. All she did was complain about the smell and the noise. I admit that whenever the subway car came to a stop, the tunnels and underground stations were filled with a terrible screech. Loni covered her ears every time.

We eventually screeched to a stop at the Government Center station, where we hopped off and climbed some dirty stairs into daylight. I asked a passerby where we could find the mayor's office, and he pointed to a tall, modern-looking building just beyond a large plaza tiled with red brick. A golden kumquat weighed down my pocket as I followed Loni and Brent through the plaza and into the building. My mom stayed behind on a park bench with our suitcases.

A quick look at the building directory sent us to the elevator, which took us to the third floor. And there, halfway through the mayor's reception room, we ran into a wall. It wasn't a real wall, of course. What we ran into was Hobart Grumly, a man who works for the mayor and helps her figure out her schedule. We knew his name from the shiny brass nametag that was clipped to his dark blue suit, just to the left of his dark blue tie. Beads of sweat were dripping from his bald head into the black hair that covered the stems of his glasses. I wondered how he could be sweating so much in the air-conditioned building.

"You can't see the mayor today," he said sternly, in response to our questions. "She's tied up – all day – in very important meetings. Give me your names and your business, and I'll decide if she should see you. It won't be before next week."

"Next week!" I cried. His words took me by surprise. "We can't wait a whole week. We have to see her today!"

Hobart Grumly shook his head grimly. "Sorry!" he said. "Absolutely impossible!"

Brent tapped my shoulder. "Forget this," he said. "Let's just say 'kumquat' when she walks by, like we did in Columbus."

That was the wrong thing to say. In a flash, Hobart's face was filled with shock and horror. "You'll do no such thing!" he said severely. "The mayor is not to be pestered. If you approach her, I'll throw you out on your ear. Do I make myself clear?"

I think I stared at him. I don't remember exactly. In any case, he was staring hard at us, sternness oozing from every pore of his face. "You shouldn't even be in here without your parents," he added, frowning. We muttered a few apologies and backed away, toward the hall and the exit. What a grouch! We had to find a place where we could talk in private. We had to figure out what to do.

Just inside the hall, we passed a gray-haired fellow in a light brown suit. "Is my boss Grumly givin' you a hard time?" he asked, chuckling softly. I nodded miserably. We were about to walk on past when he spoke again. "That's Grumly for ya. Always taking his job too seriously. Never willing to bend the rules." His smile broadened. "Fortunately, he's not the only one who knows the mayor's schedule."

We turned to face him. "Can you help us find her?" Loni asked quickly. Yes, he was a total stranger to us. We didn't care. We looked at him eagerly, expectantly.

"Maybe!" he said. "I may be able to help!" He took a step back and looked through the doorway, I think to make sure that Grumly wasn't listening. Satisfied, he turned back to us. "What exactly do you want? To talk to her about something?"

"We have to show her something we found," I said. "She'll know what it means. It will only take a few seconds of her time. I'm sure she wants to see us!"

"Secret business, eh?" He chuckled again. "I love secret business! Fortunately for you kids, you don't look too dangerous, so I really don't mind helping you. Grumly and his attitude!" He shook his head, pulled a small book from his vest pocket, and opened it. "Let's see here... Early this afternoon the mayor's down at the river for some ceremony on a boat. From there she has to visit with several people – I guess I don't know exactly where that will be. Your best bet is to try the river. Here are the directions to the dock." He scribbled something on a blank page, tore it out, and handed it to us. "Mel drove her down there. That's his license plate number on the paper, at the bottom. Just knock on the window of the car and tell him Roger sent you. He'll help you out!"

What tremendous luck! We thanked him again and again. Soon we were outside the building again, back into the brilliant sunlight. To find the mayor, all we had to do now was get to the river and talk to this Mel.

****

We decided to take a cab. We hailed one that was driving by. I just stuck my hand out, and it stopped. My mom, getting in the front seat, asked the cabby to take us to our hotel first, so that we could drop off our bags, and then take us to the dock.

The city passed by us in a blur as we wove in and out of traffic. At first I thought our cabby was some kind of maniac, the way he was driving, but then I noticed that all of the drivers were driving recklessly, narrowly avoiding collisions as they elbowed their way between other cars and tweaked their way through intersections just as the stoplights were changing. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief when we finally left the cab and stepped onto the banks of the Charles River.

And what a river! I had never seen one this large before. It was moving so slowly, I couldn't even tell which direction it was going. A lot of sailboats and a few other larger boats dotted the water in both directions. The banks of the river were mostly bare grass or rock, for the buildings of Boston on our side and Cambridge on the other side stood back from the river, just beyond the highways that sped alongside it. Several large, old-looking bridges spanned the Charles, connecting the two cities. The bridges were full of cars.

We were standing on a grassy plot not far from a small boathouse and dock. Here, rocks lined the river. I took a look at the water lapping the shore between the rocks. Yikes! The Charles River may seem beautiful and majestic when viewed from a distance, but it sure looks scummy up close. I shuddered at the thought of putting my hand in it.

"Where are we supposed to go?" Loni asked.

"Well," I said, pointing to a parking lot near the boathouse. "Let's check those cars."

I read aloud the license plate number of the car we were looking for, and Brent ran ahead and found it. "You want to do the talking?" he asked, when we caught up to him.

"I guess so," I said. Gathering up my courage, I walked up and tapped on the window of the sedan. Immediately the window rolled down, and I found myself facing a short, wiry, black-haired man in a black jacket and a black cap.

I took a breath. I felt very awkward. "Roger sent us!" I said nervously. "He said that you can help us meet the mayor. We need to discuss something very important with her!"

"Name's Mel!" he shouted at me, sticking out his hand. I shook it. "Yeah, I can help you," he continued, still speaking way too loud. "I got a call from Roger on the cell, and he told me all about your talk with Hobart Grumly. I hate that guy." Mel opened his car door and hopped out. He headed toward the dock. We followed him.

"The mayor's on that boat over there," he said, pointing to a large tour boat in the middle of the river, about a quarter of a mile away. "She'll be there for another hour, and then I have to drive her to Newton for something."

"Can we go out there?" Brent asked.

"We'll wait right here," my mom answered, before Mel could say anything. "You kids can show the mayor the kumquat when she comes back to her car."

Mel shook his head. "Sorry, Ma'am, but I don't think you want to do that. Hobart Grumly himself is coming down here by taxi to meet with the mayor. They're supposed to discuss some business in the car while I'm driving her to Newton. He'll be waiting here when she gets back to shore. From what Roger told me, he won't be happy to see you."

"Well," said Brent, exasperated, "what can we do then?"

Mel leaned over and patted a rowboat, which was lying upside-down on the dock. "We can take this!" he said. "I'll row you out there!"

My mom started to say something, but Mel spoke up again, interrupting her. "Look – I know what the mayor is doing on that boat. She has to give a five-minute speech at a ceremony that lasts a full two hours. Most of the time she'll be sitting in a chair along the side of the boat, bored out of her gourd." He grinned. "It'll be a cinch to paddle up alongside and quietly get her attention. She'll probably appreciate the distraction!"

My mom needed more convincing, but we kids were very persistent. We pointed out that if we didn't catch the mayor now, we might have to stay in Boston for a whole week. Finally, with a weary and uneasy sigh, she gave in. Mel turned the boat over and plopped it into the river alongside the dock. We crawled in and found places to sit on the planks that spanned the boat.

"Shouldn't there be oars in here?" I asked, pointing to the boat's empty oarlocks.

Mel, still on the dock, nodded. "Of course! They're right here!" He reached down and grabbed two oars that had been lying on the dock. And then...

Well, it still makes me angry to think about what happened next. You'll never believe it. In a flash, Mel dropped his friendly expression. He also dropped one of the oars back down on the deck and used the other one to push our boat away from the dock, toward the middle of the river! It all happened so fast, we didn't have time to respond. The push was very hard, and the boat moved quickly away from the shore.

"Hey!" I shouted toward the dock. "What are you doing!? What did you do that for?"

"Sorry, kids!" he shouted from the dock. "But a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks!" As we continued drifting into the river, drifting farther away in an oarless boat that we couldn't steer, we watched in amazement as Mel scurried off the dock, ran to his car, and drove away.

****

"Cyril!" I said after a stunned silence, as we drifted through the scummy water. "He's behind this! It's the only thing that makes sense!"

"But it doesn't make sense!" Loni argued. "Are you saying that he solved the puzzle and knew to come to Boston? He went on the plane to California!"

"Did you actually see him get on board?" I asked her. My sister thought for a moment and shook her head. I looked at Brent and my mom. They shook their heads, too.

Suddenly everything – everything – made sense. "I didn't see him get on, either," I said. "I think I have a good guess for what's been going on, and it's not good." Discouraged, I looked to my side. The shore was about 20 yards away, and it was still receding. I gazed down at the scummy water, and I shuddered again at the thought of swimming through it – or of even putting my hand in it, to paddle. The boat was too heavy for that to work, anyway.

"Well?" Brent said, answering my silence.

I looked at him. "Cyril didn't figure out the last puzzle," I said with conviction. "He didn't even figure out the first one. He let us figure them out for him!"

"But how..." Brent began.

"He has money. He's rich, remember? I'll bet he paid the lady in the lawyer's office – the blonde one who's been buying our plane tickets, arranging our travel – to tell him where we were going. It would be easy enough, for no one could ever prove that he didn't solve the puzzles himself. Remember – all he had to do was find out the name of the city that solved each puzzle. The rest of the instructions, like bringing a kumquat to the mayor, were already spelled out for him."

Loni thought about this. "But the blonde lady helped us in Columbus! She told us which plane Cyril was getting on..."

I nodded. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. As far as she knew, the plane he was taking had nothing to do with any puzzles. To her, it probably seemed like an innocent thing to ask about."

Brent's eyes widened. "Do you think he followed us to the mayor's office in Columbus?"

I thought it over. "I'll bet he did," I said. "Yeah, it makes sense. The blonde lady could have told him what hotel she had arranged for us. When he got out of jail, he probably went to our hotel and sat in his rented car at the curb, waiting for us to do something. We led him not to the governor, as he expected, but to the mayor! And at the airport in Columbus, he waited, in hiding, to see if we would get on the plane. When we didn't, he didn't either. Later, he called the blonde lady and found out that we were going to Boston."

"He paid Mel, too!" Loni said angrily, looking at the shore and the empty parking space that once held Mel's car.

"He paid Mel and Roger!" Brent added. "I'll bet neither of them works for the mayor. The mayor isn't even on that boat! We've been tricked!"

I nodded. "For all we know, the mayor is back in her office right now, talking to Cyril."

We all fell silent again. Then Loni spoke up. "Uh-oh! I think we've got another problem!"

"I know," Brent said. "It's almost two o'clock, and we still haven't had lunch."

"No, not that," Loni said. "This boat is leaking. We're taking on water!"

****

We had to act fast. Fortunately, the leak was small, and the water wasn't gushing in – at least, not yet. Brent saved the day when he found a paper bag jammed under the siding at the very front of the boat. It was somebody's lunch trash – the remains of a fast food meal. Inside we found two paper soda cups. Brent and my mom went to work right away with the cups, bailing out the bottom of the boat.

Meanwhile, I took off my red shirt and slowly stood up. I know you're not supposed to stand up in a boat, but I had no choice – I had to be sure that someone would see me. The boat started rocking back and forth as I struggled to gain my balance. Loni, scared of tipping over, let out a little scream. Brent started to curse me but stopped himself, probably because my mother was there.

"Calm down," I said. "We've stopped rocking!" My mom and Brent continued bailing while I waved my shirt back and forth over my head, hoping to attract the attention of one of the other boats. Loni did her part, too. She's always been a good screamer. She kept screaming "HELP" as loudly as she could. Her high voice carried well over the water.

The whole thing was embarrassing, but it worked. After ten minutes or so, we could see one of the sailboats reverse its direction and head straight for us. "What's all the noise?" asked a friendly young woman as the sailboat pulled up alongside us. She was sitting in the front of the boat, below the sail. According to her T-shirt, she went to Boston University. A young man, maybe her boyfriend, sat in the back, guiding the boat with the tiller.

"We're stuck!" Brent said, scooping cupful after cupful of water out of the boat. "We don't have any oars, and our boat is leaking!" Turning to me, he added, "It's coming in faster now!"

The woman looked amused. "Why on earth would you leave the shore without oars?" she asked.

"Could you do us a favor?" I asked, before Brent could say something sarcastic. "The oars for this boat are sitting on that dock over there. Would you mind getting them and bringing them to us?"

"No problem!" the woman's boyfriend said. "I'll be right back. Now don't go anywhere!!" They both laughed at this last joke as they left us. As I said, the whole thing was totally embarrassing.

Within a few minutes, they were back, handing us the oars. We flooded them with thank-yous, and I began rowing back to the dock. It wasn't until the sailboat was gone that I noticed just how bad things were getting. The water was really gushing in now, and we had about three inches of standing water in the bottom of the boat. One of the paper cups was now torn up and useless. Brent was cupping his hands together and splashing water out as fast as he could. Loni was doing the same thing. My arms ached as I moved the heavy boat forward, inch by inch.

"Faster!" Loni yelled.

"I'm rowing as fast as I can!" I responded, panting.

It was hard work, and it seemed to take forever, but we did it – we finally made it back to shore. One by one, we stepped gratefully onto the solid planks of the dock. Wearily, we tied up the boat, which was now practically underwater. "What a disaster!" my mom muttered as she sat down on the dock, removed her wet shoes, and wrung out her socks. "I came out here with you kids to keep you safe, and what do I do? I expose you to dysentery!"

"What were you doing with my boat?" growled a guy in a turtleneck and a captain's hat, stepping up behind us.

A whole hour – sixty full minutes – was spent talking to this guy and to the policeman that he called. We finally convinced them that we were not trying to steal the boat and had not caused it to leak. Grudgingly, the turtleneck guy finally let us go. We trudged up the hill and found a footbridge over the highway. We walked straight into town, our wet shoes squelching loudly.

"Obviously, we need to go back to the mayor's office!" I said, searching the streets for a cab.

"And obviously, we need to get some lunch!" Brent added.

"No, obviously we need to go straight to the hotel and get washed up!" my mother said. There was no arguing with her. She was still worried about us catching some disease.

****

It was almost five o'clock when we made it back to the mayor's office. We had showered and changed, and even though my shoes were still wet, I had to admit that I felt better. Loni was wearing some of my socks and a pair of my shorts. She looked ridiculous, but I didn't care. It was her own fault for not packing properly.

I didn't expect to have any luck at the mayor's office, but it seemed like the right place to go. After all, what else could we do? You can imagine my surprise when, after stepping off the elevator on the third floor, we ran straight into Hobart Grumly, who – amazingly – looked happy to see us. "Kids! You came back!" he said, shaking my hand. "I apologize for my behavior earlier. When I told the mayor that some kids were talking about kumquats, she told me to send anyone mentioning kumquats straight to her office. 'Blast my schedule!' she told me. 'Just send them in!' So, that's what I'll do. Follow me, please."

Hobart Grumly flashed us a huge smile. Here's a guy, I thought, who can completely change his personality whenever he wants, depending on who he thinks he's talking to. A perfect guy for politics. We followed him into a large room at the end of a long, paneled hall, where he introduced us to the mayor, a short, oldish woman with curly hair and glasses. "Welcome to Boston," she said, standing up and extending her hand across her large, glass-covered desk. We each shook hands with her. She motioned us to some chairs near her desk, and we sat down.

"Do you have something for me?" she asked. Nodding, I stood up, reached into my pocket, and pulled out the golden kumquat. She didn't seem surprised to see it. In fact, she held out her hand for it. I placed it there and sat down again.

"Very good," she said. She reached into a drawer of her desk and pulled out a small cherry wood box, identical to the ones we had seen before. "I have something for you, too," she said. "I've been expecting you."

We waited, patient and eager. She removed the lock. Then, with a sly look, she opened it very, very slowly, to tease us.

And then, to our dismay, we saw her frown in surprise.

"That's funny," she said. She continued staring into the box. Furrows crossed her brow, furrows that matched her frown perfectly.

I couldn't keep quiet. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"It's this box," she said. "There were papers in here!" She turned the box around and held it up so that we could see inside. We did see something on the bottom of the box. Etched into the wood there – actually burned into the wood – was the following word and set of numbers:

Combination: 56-11-11

The box itself, though, was empty.

The mayor continued to frown. "When I opened the box this afternoon," she said, "there were two yellow sheets of paper inside: two copies of what seemed to be some kind of poem. I didn't have time to read it, but I got the impression that it was a clue of some sort – something you needed to figure out this 56-11-11 business. And now both copies of the poem are gone!"

A clue! That would make sense. The combination wouldn't be as simple as 56-11-11. That would be too easy. The late Jeffrey Morton – the man who came up with the other two puzzles – would have something tricky up his sleeve. But what? The clue would tell us. Somehow I knew that we needed the missing clue to figure out what the numbers really meant.

My heart sank. I asked a question, even though I already knew the answer. "Excuse me, but earlier today, why did you open the box?"

"I had to. Some unpleasant man with wild hair gave me a golden kumquat. He earned the right to look inside." She sat back in her chair and thought for a while. "When I opened it, we both saw the papers. The unpleasant man asked me if I had seen them before. I told him that I hadn't, that this was the first time I had ever opened the box. He grabbed one of the papers and started reading it excitedly." The mayor thought some more. "At that moment, one of my staff came in with some emergency, and I had to step out of the office for a minute. When I came back, the box was back on my desk, padlocked shut, and the man was gone. I'll admit that I haven't had time to look inside again until just now. That was unfortunate. I'm sorry, kids!"

I looked at Brent, Brent looked at Loni, and Loni looked at me. We all knew what this meant. "Cyril!" I muttered in anger, for the second time that day. "He stole the clue! This doesn't look good!"

"Are you kidding? " Brent said, with pain in his voice. "This time, it looks absolutely hopeless!"

Chapter 6: Scamming the Schemer

We did the obvious thing first. Before we even left the building, I used my mom's cell phone to call my Dad back home. I asked him if he would drive to Arthur Halverson's house and try the combination 56-11-11 on the safe there, the one that held the treasure. We knew it wouldn't work, but it was worth a shot.

Two hours later, my dad called us back at the hotel. "Hi, Dave!" he said, chuckling. "Do you still smell like a river?"

I ignored the joke. "What about the safe, Dad?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "I went over to that fellow's house, expecting to try the combination you gave me, but I couldn't. The combination uses letters, not numbers."

"What? Letters?"

"That's right. There are six dials on the safe, located in a single row along the top edge of the front door. Each dial includes all the letters from A to Z. By positioning the dials, you can spell out any six-letter word you want."

"The combination is a six-letter word!" I said to Dave and Loni, lifting my head from the phone.

"I suppose it could be 2 three-letter words," my dad corrected me. "Or any combination of words totaling six letters. Or maybe even a six-letter abbreviation!"

"True," I said into the phone. "Hmmm... 56-11-11. There must be a way to turn those numbers into letters."

"If there is," my dad said, "I'm sure you kids will figure it out!"

I thanked him for the information, and I told him we would be on a plane the next day, headed for home. As I turned off the phone, I thought about what he just said. "You kids will figure it out." Right! Fat chance of that. What hope did we have, without the stolen clue?

****

We argued a lot that night about what to do when we got back. Brent and Loni wanted to go straight to the lawyer's office and tell them what Cyril had done. We could even have the mayor herself call in and back us up. We could force Cyril to return to us our copy of the clue.

I didn't think that was a good idea. "Look," I said, "If we do that, do you know what Cyril would do? He'd say that he took our copy by accident and that he'd be happy to return it to us. But he wouldn't give us back the real clue. He'd give us a phony clue, similar to the real one but changed in important ways. And who'd know? How could we ever prove otherwise? We'd be stuck again, right where we are now."

"I guess you're right," Brent finally agreed. He shook his head. "If only the mayor hadn't told him that she never saw the clue herself!"

"If only she had seen it!" I said. "Then she could just tell us how it went!"

Loni looked annoyed. She looked at Brent and then at me. "Stop talking about what should have happened," she said. "Start talking about what we should do now!"

I nodded. My sister was right. "Okay!" I said, thinking it through. "Here's the first thing we'll do. We'll let Cyril think he fooled us. We'll pretend we don't know anything at all about a clue being missing."

"And how will that help?" Brent asked, unconvinced.

"Well, if he doesn't think we're after him, he'll let down his guard. That's important. Think about it – to get the clue back, we've got to go on the attack! And we don't want him know it!"

****

Our attack began four days later. It took us that long to come up with a plan that might work. In the meantime, we thought, and we thought, and we worried, and then we thought some more.

We worried, of course, because Cyril might be solving the puzzle on his own and opening the safe as we sat there thinking. On the morning of the third day, I couldn't stand it anymore. I called Arthur Halverson at his home to find out how Cyril was doing.

"That jackass has been in and out of here a lot these last few days," he told me. "Two days ago, he sat at the safe and started trying, in order, every possible combination of letters. He lost patience – and started yelling at us – right about the time he got to AAAGOL. Yesterday, he was trying every six-letter word he could find in the dictionary. He got as far as 'airway', and then he threw the dictionary down in disgust and stormed out of the house."

"What's he doing today?" I asked.

"He's here again, of course. He's downstairs, staring at the safe. Whenever I walk by he stops me and asks me all kinds of foolish questions. 'What was the name of my uncle's parrot?' he asked me. 'What was his favorite card game?' He's driving me crazy! Oh, and every once in a while he pulls a yellow sheet of paper out from his shirt pocket and stares at it. I asked him about it once, and he thrust it back into his pocket and said it was nothing."

"Yellow, huh?" I said, remembering the color of the stolen clue. I thanked Mr. Halverson for his information and hung up the phone.

I knew then that we had to come up with an idea soon. Cyril may not be clever about solving puzzles, I thought, but he sure is persistent. He might accidentally stumble on the right answer at any moment. I focused again on the problem. How could we get our clue back? What was his weakness?

The answer came, at long last, during a phone call with Brent an hour later. "Cyril hasn't solved it yet," I was telling him. "But he's working on it."

"What if he gets someone to help him?" Brent asked. "Someone smart! Then it's hopeless, right?"

"No," I said. "I still don't think that'll happen. Cyril would never trust anybody with the final clue. He'd worry that they would find out about the treasure and get to it first. He'll keep the clue a secret from everyone for as long as he can."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Brent agreed. "You know, from what you told me, he's conceited enough to think that his uncle wanted him to win all along. I'll bet he would ask his uncle for help right now, if he could. Too bad for him his uncle's dead!"

"Yeah, it's a shay-eee-ay-eee-ay-eee..." Yes, I chose that moment to start stuttering. I had reason to. At that moment, an idea – the idea –was taking shape inside my head. I took a breath. "Hold on, Brent," I said into the phone. "Let me think for a sec!" My mind raced. When I spoke again, I was very, very excited. "I've got it!" I cried. "The idea we've been looking for!"

"What?" he asked.

"Cyril's uncle!" I said. "How about if he offers Cyril some help?"

****

We constructed the advertisement on the computer that afternoon. When it was finished, we printed it out and looked at it. "This should work," Brent said. Here's how it read:

CONTACT THE DEAD!

Do you need the advice of a dear, departed friend or relative?

Do you have a problem that only a dear, departed loved one can solve?

THEN GO SEE EMILY ANN!!

Miss Emily Ann Sorenson, Channeler: Your Gateway to the Spirits of the Afterworld

\-- 'A youngster with the gift of otherworldly gab!' – Spirit Quarterly

\-- 'Emily Ann is just a child, but she's the best. She'll put you in touch with anyone!' – Seer's Catalogue

\-- 'She knows how to raise your spirits!' – Medium Magazine

Appointments Only, Please. Call 805-555-3145

"Yup," I agreed. "This is good."

Getting the advertisement into Cyril's hands turned out to be pretty easy. All we had to do was drive over to Arthur Halverson's house and leave it in the bathroom near the room with the safe, making it look like a piece of junk mail that someone hadn't thrown away yet. We did have one problem – while we were planting the note, Cyril showed up at the house unexpectedly, ready to tackle the safe again. We managed to run out the back door of the house just as he came in the front door. He never saw us.

And it worked! We got the call the next day. Actually, Loni got it, since she was the one carrying around our mom's cell phone – that was the number listed in the ad. The call came at dinner, and she answered it with her mouth full of food. Though I only heard her end of the conversation, I could pretty much guess what Cyril was saying.

"Hethlo?" Loni said into the phone, her mouth struggling with some half-chewed chicken. She quickly chewed and swallowed as she listened intently. "Yes," she said. "It's simple, really. I go into a trance, and the spirits speak through me." She listened and then spoke some more. "Yes, yes! Any secrets you might have would be absolutely safe. The trance is so deep, I never remember anything the spirits say." More listening. "Yes, sir. I'm sure I can help you. Let's see... I have an opening for tomorrow at 4:00PM." She gave him an address and a few more instructions, thanked him for calling, and hung up the phone.

"We're all set!" she beamed at me, stuffing another forkful of chicken into her mouth.

I knew better. "No, not yet!" I said. "A lot can still go wrong!" I reminded her that we would need a lot of luck for our plan to work. Still, I was very excited. My own next bite of chicken tasted especially delicious.

****

Cyril arrived at Brent's house the next day. That was the address Loni had given him. Loni had told him to climb the stairs to the loft above the garage and to knock on the door three times. That's what he did.

The door opened, and my dad appeared, wearing a long orange silk robe, a white turban tied tightly around his head, and a single, large golden earring in his left ear. It was a clip-on earring. Though he was a good sport about wearing the costume, he refused to get his ear pierced for it. Anyway, he looked perfect. He bowed slightly as he looked at Cyril. "Welcome to Miss Sorenson's loft," he said, forcing a slight, mysterious accent. "You are Mr. Cyril Morton?"

Cyril nodded. "I want to talk to my dead uncle!" he said. "My great-uncle, really." He stood on tiptoe, trying to peer over my dad's shoulder. "Where's the girl?" he asked impatiently.

"She's here, sir. But first – we have a question for you. How did you hear about Miss Sorenson? We sent the ad with her new phone number to only a few people, people deemed worthy of her services. Your name is not on our list."

"A worthy friend showed it to me," Cyril lied. Without warning, he suddenly turned himself sideways and stepped past my father, into the loft.

He must have been impressed by what he saw. Loni and my mom had spent all morning and most of the afternoon decorating the small room. Elegantly draped sheets covered every wall. A single dim light from the ceiling cast an eerie glow on the old wooden coffee table in the middle of the room and on the throw pillows that were scattered around it. On top of the table was something truly impressive – a glowing yellow-green sphere, about seven inches in diameter. Cyril couldn't know it, but the sphere was really just an old bowling ball that we had covered with fluorescent paint. We had placed it, holes side down, on top of an old ashtray. Burning incense in the corner was filling the room with a vaguely sweet aroma. Mysterious music, the kind you sometimes hear in Indian restaurants, drifted in from hidden speakers.

Loni was sitting on one of the throw pillows, in front of the table. The costume she wore did two useful things: it made her look mystical, and it totally disguised her. She had on a blue silk robe, wire-rimmed glasses, a flowing reddish wig, and some freckles that my mom had painted on her with make-up. Like my dad, she wore a turban. Loni's turban, though, was huge – it was as big as her head. It had to be big, because that's where we hid another speaker. I'll get to that in a minute.

"Is this our next client, Punjar?" Loni asked, looking at my dad.

"It is, Miss Sorenson," he replied, bowing slightly. He turned to Cyril. "Please sit down, sir. And pardon our temporary workspace, out here in the suburbs. We hope to be working downtown again by the end of the month."

Cyril sat down. He pointed a thumb at my father. "Will he be listening in on our session?" he whined.

"He will be sitting in the corner, listening to music on headphones," Loni said. "You will be able to hear the music coming out of them. He won't be able to hear anything else."

Cyril grunted, apparently satisfied. "Okay," he said. "What do we do? I want to speak to my dead uncle."

Loni nodded. She gazed for some time into the glowing bowling ball, waving her hands over it. Then she recited her practiced speech, full of words she had picked up off of some psychic's website. "Our universe, as you know, consists of multiple concentric spheres of reality, each touched by infinite tangential planes of consciousness. Our connection to the spiritual plane is fairly clear today. We should have no trouble." Cyril grunted again.

Loni looked up at him. "Did you bring the item I requested?"

Cyril nodded. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a sock. "This belonged to my uncle," he said, handing it over.

Loni accepted it and draped it over the bowling ball. "Now, before we can start," she said, "You'll need to hold onto this."

She handed him something. Fear suddenly clutched at my stomach and held it tight. For some reason, Loni wasn't following our script – she was starting to make things up on the spot! I wished I could see better from where I was hiding. Brent and I were in an adjacent room, also above the garage, and we were peering into Loni's room through a dark crack in the adjoining door. We saw Cyril staring, confused, at the item in his hand.

"What is this?" he asked. "Some kind of wooden doll?"

Oh, no! Not one of her dolls! I wanted to throttle her. Brent did too. He started to groan. I nudged him sharply, and he stopped. With heavy hearts, we watched what happened next.

"This is Princey," Loni said gravely. "He will act as a focal point, a way for the spirits you seek to find you. He will concentrate your aural energy into an aural beacon, transmitting the energy lines across the metaphysical barriers that separate us from the spiritual world. The aural conduits, as always, follow coherent planes of transcendence, which is why we require such images of our alternate selves, images like the one you are holding. Do you understand?"

"Yes, yes!" Cyril said, obviously lying again and sticking the doll into his shirt pocket. "Can we get on with it? I'm in a hurry."

I sighed with relief. Our luck was holding out – Cyril actually bought all that rubbish. My sister must have spent a lot of time on that website. She continued. "Punjar," she said. "It is time for you to leave us." My dad nodded. He put on his headphones and sat in the corner. He closed his eyes and began listening to his private music. He bopped his head back and forth to a quiet beat.

"I will now," Loni said, "release my mind to the universal aural consciousness. Please do not be alarmed by what you see or hear."

Loni put both hands on the glowing bowling ball, just to either side of the sock. She started to chant. "Sim Balla Balla Bow! Sim Balla Balla Bow!" She repeated the chant again and again. Over the course of a minute, her eyes grew hazy, and her head began to swoon back and forth. Still, she chanted. "Sim Balla Balla Bow! Sim Balla Balla Bow!"

Then, in an instant, her head froze, tilted to one side. Her mouth was partly open. Cyril looked at her, amazed.

Her face stayed frozen like that, silent, for a full minute. Cyril looked around the room nervously. He looked at my dad, who was still sitting in the corner with his eyes closed, still smiling and bouncing his head. Then Cyril looked back at Loni. He seemed unsure about what to do. He almost looked ready to jump up and leave.

"Cyril?" said a thundering voice. "Is that you?" The voice was me. I was speaking softly into a microphone that was attached to an electronic sound system, one that caused my voice to sound very deep. The voice was sent to the speaker hidden in Loni's turban via a wireless transmitter. To Cyril, the voice appeared to come straight out of Loni's frozen mouth.

Cyril, amazed, stared at Loni. His eyes bugged out, and his hands clutched at his knees. Finally he got the nerve to speak. "It's me, Uncle Jeffrey! It's me!"

"This is not Jeffrey!" I said coldly. "This is Rudy!"

Cyril look confused. "Rudy? Uncle Rudy? Uh... I don't understand..."

"I owned that sock for a while, before I gave it to Jeffrey. Now what do you want?"

I guess I'd better stop and explain how I knew about this Uncle Rudy. While Loni and my mom were decorating the room, and while Brent was fixing up the microphone and the sound system, my dad and I talked to a man who once worked as a butler for Cyril's Uncle Jeffrey. We got his name and address from Arthur Halverson. The butler told me a whole bunch of stuff about Cyril – stuff we could use to convince him that he was really talking to spirits. I knew exactly what his Uncle Rudy would say.

"I want... uh... to speak to Uncle Jeffrey." Cyril looked nervously around the room and then at the ceiling before returning his gaze to Loni's frozen face. "Why do you sound so strange? Your voice was never that deep!"

"It's because I'm speaking from the Great Beyond, you idiot!" I said through Loni's mouth. "Now before you say another blasted thing, tell me – was it you who dumped all that fruit punch powder into my swimming pool back in 1981? Don't lie to me!"

As I said this, Brent went to work. He pulled a black thread at his side, a thread that was connected under the door to a vase on a bookshelf. The bookshelf stood along the far wall, to the right of Cyril. The vase fell to the floor with a crash. Cyril jumped.

"Well?" I thundered.

"Um, yes... that was me," Cyril admitted, starting to sweat. "You see, I was... I was filming a movie. I was going to call it 'Blood Bath'. I know you would have loved it! I guess I never finished it."

"You stupid, moronic, ignorant, incompetent, conceited jerk!" I barked. Brent pulled another thread, and a book tumbled off the bookshelf. Cyril jumped again. Panic filled his face. "I can't stand the idea of talking to you more, even now that I'm dead," I continued. "I'll go see if Jeffrey is around. You wait there."

The room fell quiet. Once again, Cyril looked anxiously around him. He turned and stared behind him at the door, perhaps thinking about fleeing, and this gave Loni a chance to straighten out her neck and stretch a crick out of it. She was back in position – frozen with her head tilted and her mouth partially open – when he turned around again.

"Cyril! What are you doing here?" came a slightly deeper voice from her mouth. I had made the voice sound deeper by turning a knob on the sound machine.

"Uncle Jeffrey? Is it you this time?" Cyril's voice was filled with both hope and fear.

"Yes, it's me. Why on earth – har har! – are you pestering me?"

Cyril spoke in earnest now. "Uncle," he said. "I'm having trouble with the combination to the safe, the one that holds the Kumquat Legacy. I know the combination is 56-11-11, but I don't know what it means!"

"Hmmm..." I rumbled. "56-11-11. I remember. I also remember that I gave you a clue."

"Yes," Cyril protested. "But it doesn't tell me a thing! It makes no sense!"

"Ah, but it does make sense," I returned.

"No, it doesn't!"

"Does too!"

"Does not!"

"Does too!"

"Uncle!" Cyril exclaimed, his voice raised to a shout. "Tell me what the clue means!"

"Hmmm...." came my deep voice. I paused and forced Cyril to wait anxiously for a while. Then I said, "You know, to be honest, I don't even remember exactly what I wrote."

"I've got it right here!" Cyril said excitedly, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a yellow sheet of paper and held it under the dim light of the bowling ball. He read the following aloud:

The combination's not absurd.

Just change the numbers to a word.

Solving this puzzle should not take a century.

The answer is clear – it's elementary!

"And that's it!" Cyril added. "It doesn't say anything else!"

We had it! Brent, using a tiny flashlight, scribbled down the verse. He gave me a thumbs-up sign and switched off the light. Feeling incredibly satisfied – more satisfied than I'd felt in a long, long time – I spoke again into the microphone.

"That poem is clear enough," I said. "What's the problem?"

"I keep telling you – it makes no sense!" persisted Cyril.

"Tell me this, Cyril," I continued. "Did you steal young Dave's copy of the clue when you were in the mayor's office?"

"Certainly not!" Cyril exclaimed.

Brent pulled on a black thread, and a dish fell from the bookcase, smashing into pieces on the floor. "Tell me the truth!" my voice thundered.

Cyril's eyes darted around wildly. He was speechless for a second. Finally, he blurted, "Yes... I... I guess so... Listen, Uncle! I knew that deep down, you really wanted me to win, so I thought it would be okay!"

"Cyril! You demented dollop of donkey dung! You moronic mound of monkey muck!" I had turned up the volume on the machine, so my whispered voice came out of Loni's mouth with a deafening roar. "That was low, even for you! You must never, ever mess with Dave, his family, and his friends again!"

"But, Uncle...", Cyril stammered.

"And if they solve the puzzle first and earn the Kumquat Legacy, you must leave them alone, or else!"

"But it's supposed to be mine! You know that!"

The voice persisted. "YOU MUST LEAVE THEM ALONE!" While I spoke, Brent silently opened the door to the adjoining room and picked up a rope that we had earlier placed on the floor. Cyril, of course, did not see him; the doorway was dark, and besides, he was focusing far too much on Loni's face and my words to notice anything else in the room. Brent pulled gently on the rope. The bookshelf started to move forward, away from the wall.

On cue, my dad sprang into action. "Sir! Watch out!" he cried, in his silly accent. His headphones flew off as he grabbed Cyril's arm and pulled him away. As soon as Cyril was clear, Brent gave a sharp pull, and the bookcase fell over, smashing the now empty chair.

Cyril, shaking, stared at the fallen bookshelf. Meanwhile, my sister's head righted itself, and she looked around in wonder. "What happened?" she asked innocently, rubbing her neck. "I feel so tired!" Her young girl voice seemed very different from the deep, bellowing voice of a few moments before.

She suddenly seemed to notice the bookshelf lying before her on the floor. She glanced up at Cyril in amazement. "Wow!" she said. "Did you do that?"

Cyril said nothing. His eyes were wild with fright. His whole body seemed to vibrate, as if the fear inside him were about to explode, about to send little pieces of him all over the room. He frantically grabbed at the Princey doll in his pocket and threw it on the floor, as if that would send his dead uncle away.

And then, suddenly, without warning, he pushed my father aside and ran out the door. The squeal of his tires pierced the quiet neighborhood air as his car shot down the street.

Cyril never troubled us again.

Chapter 7: Legacy Revealed

We had the clue, but we still had to solve the puzzle. "I hate to say this," Loni said that evening, as she, Brent, and I sat at the kitchen table, each holding a copy of the poem. "I really, truly hate to say it, but Cyril's right. This clue doesn't tell us much. It basically just says that we need to change the numbers 56-11-11 into a word. We already knew that!"

Loni wasn't sounding confident, and that wasn't a good sign. I was sort of expecting her to solve the thing right off. To be honest, because I was counting on her, I hadn't really tried solving it myself yet. Suddenly, I was a little disgusted with myself. It was time to stop being so lazy and get to work. I read the clue through once more, carefully this time. I picked it apart – line by line and word by word. Soon Loni and Brent were doing the same thing. The room became very quiet. The only sound was the rustling of paper and some chewing from Brent's direction. He had helped himself to some blueberry muffins from our refrigerator.

What was the poem's secret? On the surface, there wasn't much to it.

The combination's not absurd.

Just change the numbers to a word.

Solving this puzzle should not take a century.

The answer is clear – it's elementary!

'Century' was a strange word to be using. Why was that in there? Maybe this was some kind of time puzzle? I thought about that for a while but didn't get anywhere, so I started on another idea. Maybe, I thought, Jeffrey Morton used the word 'century' only because it rhymed with 'elementary'. Maybe 'elementary' was the key word. Maybe...

I don't know how it happened, but something clicked in my brain, and suddenly I had the answer! "Be right back!" I shouted excitedly. I had never felt such a thrill in my life. I ran out of the kitchen and into the den.

As I ran, it occurred to me that just one week earlier, Loni had run into the den when she needed an atlas to solve the first puzzle. I remembered how she had shut the door behind her, keeping me out. How obnoxious! I left the door open.

I ran to the bookshelf. Unlike Loni, I didn't need an atlas; I needed an encyclopedia. I pulled down the volume "P" and began thumbing through it. 'Pepper', 'Perch', Persimmon' – oops! Too far. Ahh. There it was – big and beautiful. Exactly what I was looking for. I studied it for a few seconds and found that I was absolutely right. I had the answer! I knew the 6-letter word that would open the safe!

Something moved behind me. Turning, I saw Loni and Brent looking over my shoulder at the open encyclopedia. "Periodic table?" Loni asked. "What's that?"

****

I decided not to tell her, at least not right away. Twice this last week, she had forced me to live through a stupid dollhouse play. Now, it was payback time. I handed the book to Brent and said, "Don't let her see that!"

Brent held the book away from Loni. He studied it himself for a few seconds. "You're right!" he cried. "You did it, Dave! We've got it!"

"What is it?" Loni asked irritably. She leaned over to look at the book. Brent pulled it farther away.

"Sit down, Loni," I said. "It's time for a little lesson."

She looked at us with disgust. "Just tell me!" she pleaded. I said nothing. I just stood there, waiting. Finally, she sat down. She had no choice. She wanted to know the answer.

I paced back and forth in front of her, rubbing my chin in thought. I hoped I looked like a college professor. "The periodic table is a chart that describes the elements," I said. "It was the word 'elementary' in the clue that led me to it."

She still looked annoyed, but now she also looked confused. I knew she didn't know what elements were, since she was a couple of years behind me in school. It was time for me to educate her.

"Atoms," I said, "are the building blocks of everything. All the things you see around you – even you yourself – are made of molecules, and every molecule is made of atoms. Now, here's the interesting thing. Very, very interesting, indeed! There are only about a hundred different kinds of atoms. That's it! One hundred different building blocks that can be put together in different ways to make anything you want! Anything at all!"

I looked down at her. "Do you know what the different kinds of atoms are called, little girl?" I asked.

Now she was really annoyed. Excellent! Her eyes squinted with impatience. "Elements?" she asked.

"That's right! Elements! Very good. The different kinds of atoms are called elements. Now listen carefully. Every element has a number associated with it, a number that gets bigger as the element gets heavier. Every element also has a symbol. Hydrogen, being the first and lightest element, is assigned the number 1 and is given the symbol H. You've heard of the term H2O for water? The H stands for hydrogen."

"So the word that will open the safe is..." Loni asked.

I ignored her. "The O in H2O stands for oxygen," I continued. "Oxygen is the eighth lightest element and is given the number 8. It has the number 8 and the symbol O. The periodic table tells you this."

"I get it already," Loni said. "Can I please see the book now?"

"What would you do if you had the book?" I asked.

"It's obvious. I have to find out which elements have the numbers 56 and 11. And then I have to find out the letter symbols for those elements. Right?"

She was quick, no question about it. "Okay," I said. A grin was back on my face as I turned to Brent. "Go ahead and tell her," I said.

"Elements 56 and 11 are barium and sodium," Brent said, looking down at the book. "Barium has the symbol 'Ba', and sodium has the symbol 'Na'. So, there you go!"

"56-11-11," Loni said. "Barium-Sodium-Sodium, or Ba-Na-Na. Banana!"

I grinned again. Lecture over.

****

After that, we wasted no time. Fifteen minutes after solving the puzzle, at about 8:00 PM, my dad was driving the three of us kids to Arthur Halverson's house. My mom came along, too.

We had to drive along the beach to get there. The sun had just gone down, and the sky above the ocean was glowing with a mixture of oranges, reds, and purples. I didn't tell my dad how nice it looked. I wanted him to concentrate on getting to the safe quickly and, well, safely.

We tumbled out of the car as soon as we pulled into Mr. Halverson's driveway. We ran to the door. When Mr. Halverson opened it and saw the excitement in our faces, he became very excited himself. "You've got it?" he asked. "You know the word?" We nodded eagerly. He invited us quickly inside.

"Cyril hasn't been here all evening," he told us as he led us through hallway after hallway of the large, stately house. "I'm a little surprised. I wonder what's happened to him."

We looked at each other. "Maybe he's hiding under his bed, afraid of ghosts!" Brent suggested innocently. Loni grinned. I laughed – I couldn't help it.

We soon reached a room at the far end of the house. "Here it is!" Arthur Halverson said, pointing to a black cube of steel in the corner of the room. "Why don't you go ahead and try your word?" I squatted down in front of the safe and examined the dials. There were six of them, just as my dad had said. I turned the first one until the letter B was aligned with the tick mark at the top. Then I set the next one to A.

"Banana?" Arthur Halverson said, as I positioned the fifth dial. "Is that the word?"

"Banana and kumquat," I said, not turning around. "I guess Jeffrey Morton had a fondness for funny-sounding fruits!"

I turned the last dial to A. Click! A muffled metallic sound came from deep within the safe. The door fell open a little ways, about a centimeter or so. My fingers eagerly grabbed the top of the door and pulled it all the way open...

****

I peered in. We all peered in, for we were all incredibly excited. Part of me expected to see the glint of gold, or maybe a tall pile of diamonds or rubies, each stone sparkling with magical light. I even positioned my hand to catch any jewel that might roll off the pile and out of the safe, onto the floor.

Nothing like that happened, though. In fact, when I saw what was inside, excitement drained from my body like water through a catcher's mitt. Stacked within the safe, in several piles, were notebooks, folders full of whitish paper, and more piles of papers tied together with string. A stack of computer disks sat near the front. And that was it. Nothing more.

Brent must have been as disappointed as I was. "Papers?" he exclaimed. "What kind of treasure is this?"

"I have no idea," I said, frowning. I mustered up some enthusiasm, reached into the safe, and pulled out a folder. A single sheet slipped out and fell to the floor. I picked it up and looked at it.

What I saw surprised me. It seemed to be the middle of some story. "That's weird," I said. "Listen to this!" I read the following aloud:

...the masts! Swab down the decks! Stack the barrels! Heave! Haul! Move! And bring me my dinner!" The commands ceased never. Never! I had no rest from the chains and the whip. Not with Captain Crick there, the hateful monster. Crick, with one eye, one nostril, and ten teeth. My master, my enemy! Enemy of all who roamed the seas! He and his horde of pirates. Evil deeds and evil smells. For me a living hell!

I was a slave to these pirates. A life of wounds, heat, blisters, scars, calluses, rash. And fever. And pain. Fie, I swore that someday I would have my revenge.

Revenge came soon. I began by capturing the seagulls. They would link me to the honest people ashore. Late night, a full moon. The waves rocked our ship gently. The watchman, full of ale, fell asleep. All were asleep. All but me. I found a thin rope, tied the end into a loop. I crept across the deck.

I set down a dead fish. In time, the first seagull appeared. It pecked away at the rotting carcass. I crept closer. Closer. I threw the loop around its head,...

I stopped reading. "And what? What did he do with the seagull?" Loni asked.

"I don't know," I said. "That's it for this page. It must continue on another one." I opened the folder and saw that it contained a whole stack of typewritten pages, probably all part of the same story. And that's what it was – a story! Interesting enough, I guess, but hardly a treasure.

Suddenly, though, I noticed a large stack of shinier papers behind the typewritten pages. The shine was from lamination – each of these sheets was protected by a coating of plastic. The sheets themselves were ancient, cracked, and yellowed. Scrawled on them were words handwritten in black ink.

I looked closely at the scrawls. They were not easy to read. The handwriting was poor, faint, and very odd.

"What's it say?" Brent asked, starting to look interested. I looked over at my friend and at my sister, who were sitting quietly beside me. I suddenly realized that they weren't raiding the safe themselves. Wow! I guess they figured that because I was the one mentioned in the will, I should get to see everything first. I appreciated that.

I looked down again at the paper. "It says, 'had... to train... the... ship's... rats...to steal...' At least, I think that's what it says. It goes on from there. It's really hard to read!"

"Ship's rats?" Brent said. "Maybe it's from the same story you just read." I handed him the laminated sheet. "Wow!" he added. "This is really old!"

I shook my head. "I don't understand this," I said. I put the papers back into the folder, handed the folder to Loni, and reached into the safe for another one. This folder contained another stack of typewritten papers and another large stack of laminated sheets. The papers inside the plastic were again cracked and yellow with age. They did look different, though. They were smaller in size, and the faint handwriting on them looked distinctly female.

"Is it another story?" Brent asked.

"I'll see," I said. I started reading. I guess I started muttering to myself.

"What is it?" demanded Brent and Loni, together.

"Huh?" I asked, looking up.

"You just said, 'I don't believe this!'" Brent exclaimed. "What don't you believe?"

"Listen to this!" I said. I began to read aloud.

My name is Rowena Callaway. I received the Kammecott Legacy from dear old Mr. Thomas, the milliner. He must have heard about the adventures I had during the war. He must have thought they would fit in well with the rest of the legacy.

The time has come to set my adventures down in ink. Yes, the time has come to document my secret life as Eliza Fingilly, maidservant to Landon Hopewell, the wealthy landowner. Mr. Hopewell, who is now very old, would be astonished to learn that my true job when I worked for him was to obtain secret information from his friends in the British army, secrets that I could pass on to General Washington.

Let me start my story at the beginning. My family lived...

"General Washington?" Brent interrupted. "For real?" I nodded. I showed him the original, on the yellowed paper. There was no doubt that it, like the others, was very old.

"There's a blue folder in there!" Loni said suddenly. "Off to the side, sitting by itself!"

She was right. "I'll get it," I said. I pulled it out and opened it. Inside were three pieces of paper, stapled together. The top of the first page said, in large letters:

The Kumquat Legacy: An explanation for Cyril or Dave.

"This is it!" I exclaimed. "It's a message from Jeffrey Morton!"

"Read it!" Loni said excitedly.

"Well, duh!" I said. Of course I was going to read it. Here's what the whole thing said:

The Kumquat Legacy: An Explanation for Cyril or Dave.

First, let me congratulate you. The puzzles you have solved were not simple. You have earned the right to the Kumquat Legacy. It is now time to tell you exactly what it is.

Its correct name is the Kammecott Legacy. It was started in the 1600s by Alistair Kammecott of England. Cyril heard me mention it once and thought I said Kumquat Legacy. I never bothered to correct him. After all, why should I? It was none of his business.

Alistair Kammecott was an assistant historian in the Royal Court of London. It was his job, along with other historians, to record the events of the day for future generations. He sometimes liked the job, but he faced a big problem. He was sometimes forced to record things in accordance with royal prejudice. That means that he could only write things that made the people in power – the royal family and their friends – look good. He sometimes found himself exaggerating and even lying in his reporting just to please them.

This upset Alistair Kammecott, for he was a great lover of the truth. He decided to do something about it. He would start his own, private history – one that would never be seen by the royal house. He would write about things as they actually happened. And that's what he did. In the safe you will find a notebook containing all of his secret reports.

I stopped reading for a second and looked up. Everyone was watching me intently, listening carefully to everything I was saying. From the looks on their faces, I could tell that no one understood yet what Jeffrey Morton was getting at. For that matter, neither did I. I continued reading.

Kammecott also wrote about his own experiences – his own story. He tells, for example, of a secret club that he started in London, a club that existed solely for the purpose of letting club members make fun of the royal family in front of each other – to dress up like them, talk like them, and generally make them look stupid. As you will see, these personal reminiscences set the standard for the Kammecott Legacy, the treasure you see before you.

Alistair Kammecott died an old man and secretly passed his writings to Oswald Simms, a clockmaker in old London. Oswald also wrote about his personal experiences, expanding the Legacy. Read his story when you can; it's fascinating. It's mostly about his amazing inventions – monstrous contraptions designed for the strangest tasks. One machine, for example, used gears and gravity to shovel snow from his front walk all by itself. That way, Oswald could stay inside in the winter, warm, comfortable, and sipping tea. He also wrote about how his neighbors chased him out of town when his fish-cleaning machine went haywire and chased a visiting bishop over the side of a bridge. Poor fellow!

Oswald eventually passed the Legacy to John Featherstone, a young man who moved to America with his family and had the misfortune of being kidnapped by pirates in Florida waters.

"Hey! That's the guy with the seagulls!" Loni said, interrupting.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I guess so!"

"You mean he was real? That that really happened?" Brent asked. He didn't seem to believe it.

I shrugged and said, "I'm not sure. Let me read more."

He had some amazing adventures, both on the ship and much later in his life, when he worked as a fur trapper in French territory. John Featherstone grew old and passed the Legacy to Edgar Thomas, a milliner in Boston, who in turn passed it to Rowena Callaway. She, believe it or not, served as a spy during the Revolutionary War. She eventually passed it to Mildred Spenser, who passed it to Emmitt Louder, and so on. The complete list of heirs, along with the dates they held the legacy, is attached to this letter.

I encourage you to read the stories. They are all fascinating, and – more important – they're true. Each holder of the Legacy was encouraged to pass it on to someone likely to have an interesting story to tell. The chain of lives is secret and wonderful. As far as I know, nothing else like it exists anywhere in the world. I was proud to be a part of it.

Anyone who isn't Cyril is probably wondering why I would consider letting him have it.

"Yeah!" Brent said. "That's exactly what I was wondering!"

"Shhh!" Loni said. I read on.

This is a good question. The answer, though, is simple. I've begun to wonder if the Legacy should no longer be such a secret. I've spent the last twenty years, off and on, "cleaning it up": photocopying the originals, typing them into a computer after modernizing the English a little, printing out typed copies, and even laminating with a special plastic some of the older papers, those that were in danger of falling apart forever. The whole thing is ready for the world to see, and Cyril, in his greed, would ensure that they saw it.

He would do so because the Kammecott Legacy is exceedingly valuable. The stories on their own, of course, will interest people, but much more important, some of the writings expand and challenge our understanding of the past. Apparently the history books have been wrong about certain things – certain important things. People would pay a fortune to find out about this. Cyril, if you are reading this message, I suggest you show the Legacy to a host of publishers and let them fight about who can pay you the most money for it. We can let the world in on the secret, on this fresh new portal into the past. You, in turn, will add a huge sum to your riches.

Dave, if you are reading this, you have a choice. You, too, can sell it and become rich. You might want to consider something else, though. When I said in my will that the Kumquat Legacy is the most valuable thing I own, I wasn't talking about how much money you could get for it. I was talking about something else entirely. Here's something you should know: part of me is not convinced that the Legacy should be published. Read the stories, Dave. Make up your own mind. I guess that's all I'll say about it.

Congratulations again! And may you enjoy the Legacy as much as I have!

\-- Jeffrey Morton

I set down the paper. I said nothing, and neither did anyone else. I turned around. The three grown-ups standing behind me stared at the papers in my hand. They looked stunned.

Brent was the first to break the long silence. "Wow," he said. "Stories!"

His tone was respectful, but I corrected him anyway. "Not stories," I said. "Histories!"

****

We had the darnedest time dealing with the safe. My mom wanted to leave it behind. "Just take all the folders with you in a box!" she said. "That would be the easiest thing to do." I shook my head and stood my ground. The safe came with the Legacy. Besides, I was secretly thrilled at the idea of having a full-size safe in my room, especially because there were instructions inside on how to change the combination.

The safe wasn't huge, but it weighed a ton. Fortunately, Mr. Halverson had a strong hand-truck, and we managed to roll the whole thing out to the driveway. The hardest part was getting it into our van. We ended up using several long, strong boards as a ramp and rolling the safe up the ramp with a symphony of grunts. Finally it plopped into the back of the van, which bounced a little before settling into its new position, closer to the ground. My parents looked at the van doubtfully.

"We'll make it home," my dad said finally. He thanked Mr. Halverson and shook his hand. We all shook his hand.

"I hope you'll let me know what you decide about the Legacy, Dave," he said. He seemed truly interested.

"I will," I said. "I promise. Right now, though, I have no idea."

"Of course you don't. These things take reflection."

He waved cheerfully as we drove away.

****

All this happened six months ago. I'm in the eighth grade now, and I'm still home-schooled. Brent still stops by in the afternoon to raid our refrigerator and to play video games. He usually wins, but I'm getting better. This weekend we're going camping in the mountains with our dads. Next week, my aunt and her family are visiting from Iowa, which means that Loni and I will have to clean our rooms. Unfair!

Loni is still as obnoxious as ever. Just this morning I poured some cereal into my bowl and then left the table to get some milk. When I got back, her Gertie doll was in the bowl, covered with flakes. "Don't move her!" Loni exclaimed. "She's playing hide-and-seek with William!" Annoyed, I started pouring milk on the flakes and on the doll. "Don't get her wet!" Loni screamed, knocking the bowl out of the way. We both spent the next five minutes sweeping up flakes, wiping up milk, and being chewed out by my mom.

Believe it or not, we got a Christmas card from Cyril. "Just thought I'd send you the best wishes of the season," he wrote. "If you need any help understanding the Kumquat Legacy, please let me know. I'd be happy to help." I grinned. He still doesn't know what the Legacy is, so he must be incredibly curious about it. Fortunately, he's also deathly afraid of pestering us. I imagined him looking around nervously as he wrote the card, holding it up all over the room to show his invisible uncle that he was being polite.

As for what I did with the Legacy, well, I haven't done anything yet. It's still sitting in my safe, in a corner of my room. Actually, I did do something with it. I read it – the whole thing. There are twenty-five secret personal histories in there, most of them pretty amazing. Twenty-five may seem like too many, since it's been around for less than four centuries. It turns out that several of the heirs were already old when they received it, and some passed it on to others long before they died.

So, will I ever sell it? Brent and I talked about that a few weeks after we first opened the safe. "You could be rich, Dave!" he was telling me, as he tore the wrapper off a candy bar in my backyard. "Who knows how much you'd get? Maybe so much that you'd never have to work a day in your life!"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Who knows?"

"So? Are you going to sell it?"

"Maybe someday. I don't know. It's not that simple," I told him.

"Why not?"

"Well, if we sell the Legacy to some publisher, the chain will be broken. It will end with us."

"Right!" he said. "So what?"

He obviously wasn't convinced. I sighed, knowing that it would be hard to explain. I tried anyway. "One of the guys in the Legacy," I said, "wrote something that sort of makes sense. Let's see... How did he put it... He said that it's easy to think of our own time as being the most important ever. But it's not. Not when you think about it. People have had adventures and have thought about important stuff for thousands of years, even longer. With any luck, people a thousand years from now will be doing the same thing. People, no matter when they live, are pretty much the same – that's the whole idea. The different generations are just links in a long, long chain. The Kumquat Legacy – I still like calling it that – is a miniature version of that chain."

"What is this?" Brent laughed. "Are you some kind of a philosopher all of a sudden?"

I grinned back, knowing that he didn't understand. He couldn't understand, not until he read the Legacy himself. I convinced him to read it that very day.

We haven't talked about it much since then. Based on something he said later, though, I'm pretty sure he agrees with me. So does Loni. So, at least for now, the Legacy stays in the safe.

Actually, I have made one other decision. I've decided to add the story you just read to the Legacy. It would be my contribution, my link in the chain.

Well, it would be my first contribution. After all, who knows what I'll be able to write about ten years from now...

– THE END –

Thanks for reading! As I bet you can guess, this work is complete fiction; any resemblance between any character in this book and any actual person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The author thanks his two beautiful daughters (Teri and Cyndi) for inspiring certain aspects of the plot. They know which ones I'm talking about!

