On their way, they nearly bumped into Bookacuda walking out of the dining hall with his two friends behind him. They must have had something to eat, because the boy with the curly mop of hair had a little red sauce on his chin, and Bookacuda had a toothpick sticking from the side of his mouth, like he’d just finished a meal. The girl in their trio had a map of Alcatraz open, which she folded into a small rectangle as soon as she saw them.
“Hey, Swamp Bat,” Bookacuda said. The toothpick bobbed up and down, and Emily imagined he thought it made him look tough, but more than anything it reminded her of a goat chewing on a piece of straw. “I think I’ve nearly got the solution. You?”
“Ignore him,” Emily said, as much to herself as to her brother.
Replying under his breath, Matthew said, “Why ignore him when we can do this?” Before Emily could say another word, her brother darted to a staircase just past Bookacuda. He called over his shoulder, “Hurry, Em! We want to get to it before they do.” He disappeared down the stairs.
“Matthew!” She had no idea what in the world her brother was thinking, and they were wasting time on Bookacuda when they needed to finish their clock hunt.
“There’s nothing down there. We’ve already looked.” Bookacuda seemed uncertain, though, exchanging looks with his two friends, who nodded their agreement. Even though Emily was irritated with her brother’s antics, she was more fed up with Bookacuda’s know-it-all tone.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “How do you know new puzzles don’t get laid out as the game goes on?”
His eyebrows popped up at the thought. Emily had tossed out the theory spontaneously—the question hadn’t occurred to her until just that moment—and now even she was wondering, How do I know that’s not what happens?
“Solved it!” Matthew’s voice carried upstairs.
“Solved what?” Bookacuda said the exact words Emily was thinking.
Bookacuda got to the stairwell first with Emily behind him. Bookacuda’s friends half-heartedly followed. When they reached the lower level, Emily could see over Bookacuda’s shoulder to Goldfish crackers that had been laid out on the cement floor in the shape of the number 165.
“What does that mean?” Bookacuda asked. “Is that the solution or the puzzle?”
“I’m not saying.” Matthew hiked up the stairs with Emily, leaving Bookacuda pacing around the Goldfish and attempting to figure out the problem.
“Stop gaping and help me!” Bookacuda snapped at his partners, who hadn’t moved from the stairs.
Once they were back on the main level and out of earshot, Emily asked her brother, “What does 165 mean?”
Matthew shrugged. “It was the first thing that popped in my head.” He grinned at Emily. “And you thought my snacks were a waste of space.”
CHAPTER
23
THE ADMINISTRATION WING consisted of offices and the visiting room, where the friends and family of Alcatraz prisoners had sat to speak to the inmates through a small square window. Emily and Matthew ducked into the visiting room first, but it was packed with contestants, probably because a lot of people were waiting for a chance to talk with the actors playing a prisoner and a visitor sitting on either side of the glass.
The siblings bumped against other contestants as they inspected the small room and found one broken clock. There was a player scanning a magnifying glass along a narrow, horizontal window that was nearly at Matthew’s eye level, enlarging tiny symbols.
Emily added that to her mental list of other potential puzzles they could return to in the event their clocks didn’t amount to anything, but it was getting difficult to keep track. She should have been writing these down in her Book Scavenger notebook.
They made their way to the main administration space. This area was bigger, so it didn’t feel as crowded, but plenty of contestants meandered about. Emily and Matthew peered through panes of glass into a control room that had been set up like a museum display. Two more clocks were spotted amid the old-fashioned technology and communication devices: bulky boxes covered in dials and switches, a tabletop microphone, a typewriter on a metal desk, and three of those phones with curly cords.
They turned quickly from the control room, eager to move on, but Matthew smacked straight into Lucy Leonard, who had stepped in from outside.
“You!” Emily jumped back in surprise. The woman froze, looking like she’d been caught red-handed. Outside the doorway behind her, lampposts glowed in the violet fog of dusk.
“I know who you are,” Emily blurted out.
Lucy Leonard shifted her weight from foot to foot, like she was eager to keep moving, but at Emily’s words she gave a tentative smile.
“Who am I?” she asked.
“You wrote The Twain Conspiracy. Our mom is a huge fan.”
“No way!” Matthew said. “You’re that same lady from the theater? You look a lot different up close. My sister’s not kidding, either—our mom really is a huge fan. She dragged us to hear you talk the other—”
“Matthew!” Emily thwapped her brother. Dragged made it sound like they hadn’t been interested in going, which was true, but he didn’t need to tell the author that.
“Well, it’s great to know your mom is a fan. Make sure to tell her I said thank you for reading my book.” Lucy Leonard smiled. “Now, those puzzles aren’t going to find themselves, right?” With a small wave, she darted away.
A question popped into Emily’s mind. “Ms. Leonard,” she called after her. “What’s your username?”
Lucy stopped and turned. “My what?”
“For Book Scavenger. What’s your username?”
“It’s, uh…” She scrunched up her face, appearing perplexed by the question. “I don’t have one.” She gave another wave and was off.
Emily stared after her, frowning. Matthew poked her shoulder. “There’s more to the administration area that way,” he said, pointing through a doorway.
“Okay…,” Emily said absentmindedly.
You didn’t have to be an avid Book Scavenger player to be here for Unlock the Rock. It was possible to register for the event on the website and do nothing else, although the majority of people here probably played Book Scavenger, or at least were fans of Mr. Griswold’s games. There was something in the way Lucy Leonard was approaching Unlock the Rock that seemed so odd, so different from everyone else. She was here by herself and working solo, it seemed, and her approach with the block puzzle when she’d joined their team on the pier had been pretty laid-back. It almost didn’t seem like she was that interested in playing the game, but then why else would she be here?
“Emily.” Her brother’s voice drifted over from a nearby room.
Emily followed the sound and found him inside an office sparsely furnished with a plain table, two chairs, a watercooler in the corner, a bench, and an old-fashioned Coca-Cola chest. Folded over the back of one of the chairs was a gray raincoat.
A big window looked outside to the lighthouse. This office also had the same interior window that closed it off but made it possible for Alcatraz visitors to view the inside.
“Are we allowed in here?” Emily asked.
“The door was ajar,” Matthew said.
“Matthew, we don’t have time to waste.” If the puzzle they were trying to piece together and solve ended up being a dead end, they would need time to find the correct ones for Roy’s solution. “There aren’t any clocks in here. Let’s go.”
“Wait—look at what’s on this desk.”
On the tabletop there was a set of keys, a typed sheet of paper, and an envelope. Matthew picked up the paper and held it out to Emily. “This is the sheet Mr. Roy read from to start the game.”
“What are you doing?” Emily asked. “Don’t mess with his stuff.”
“How do you know this isn’t part of the game? Remember how James and Mr. Quisling said something seemed off about him? It got me thinking that maybe he was acting. Maybe we’re supposed to find these things.”
&n
bsp; Emily bit the inside of her lip, considering this. To her, Errol Roy had seemed genuinely anxious. If his stage fright had been an act, then he deserved an Academy Award.
“You do what you want,” she finally said. “I’m checking the rest of the area for clocks.”
She left Matthew behind in the office with the Coca-Cola chest and walked through a doorway labeled WARDEN’S OFFICE. Several other teams were searching for puzzles and scrutinizing various details. One group seemed to think the framed images hung on the wall made up a rebus puzzle, and a duo was figuring out a math problem similar to the one Emily’s group had solved in solitary confinement. This one used small wooden blocks set up in a pyramid.
Emily finished checking the administrative offices and added two more broken clocks to their list. She was making note of the time and location in her Book Scavenger notebook when a man roared from back down the hall, “What do you think you’re doing?!”
CHAPTER
24
EMILY RAN BACK into the room where she’d left her brother. Matthew had his back to the desk and his hands up as he faced Errol Roy.
“Were you going through my coat?” Mr. Roy’s skin flushed purple, visible even through his wispy, long white hair and beard.
“I thought—”
“No, you didn’t. That’s exactly what you didn’t do. Think.”
Emily wasn’t the only one who came running at the sound of shouting. A crowd gathered outside the glass windows. Fiona’s mother pushed her way into the room with Fiona right behind. “Is everything all right, Mr. Roy?” Mrs. Duncan asked. She stood next to Roy, and Fiona wedged in between her mom and Matthew. It felt as if everyone were positioning themselves against her brother, so Emily stood close to his side.
Mr. Roy was shaking, clearly still angry, but he was also taking in the faces of contestants staring through the windows of the room, and Mrs. Duncan’s head tilted with concern.
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice lowered to a normal volume. “This hoodlum was going through my things.”
“Oh my!” Mrs. Duncan pressed a hand to her neck. “Did he steal from you?”
“No!” Matthew insisted. “And I wasn’t going through his things.”
“A lot of things have gone missing today,” Fiona piped up. “Someone also stole my charm bracelet.”
“Your bracelet fell off on the ferry,” Emily snapped.
Fiona’s eyes widened, all innocence and poor me. “Well, I thought it fell off. I never found it, so I don’t know for sure.”
Maddie, Nisha, and James appeared, squeezing between the onlookers clogging the entrance to the room.
“What’s going on?” Maddie asked.
Mr. Roy sagged into the chair. “Can everyone please leave now?” He tugged at the collar of his sweatshirt, flapping it open and closed as if to cool himself off. The room was getting quite crowded.
“Let’s give the man some space while we get to the bottom of this,” Mrs. Duncan said.
“There’s nothing to get to the bottom of,” Matthew insisted.
Fiona acted like a security guard, trying to guide everyone back from Mr. Roy in the chair, but Matthew shrugged her off.
“Bug off!” he said.
“Is everything all right?” Mr. Griswold’s voice called out, and soon he came into the room. Everyone shifted and bumped against one another to make space as he scooted sideways between Emily and Matthew to stand next to Errol Roy.
“There’s a thief among us, Mr. Griswold!” Fiona said.
“I knew there was a thief,” Maddie crowed. “My backpack was stolen earlier.”
“Jack found your backpack,” Emily corrected Maddie. “It wasn’t stolen.”
“We need to find out what happened,” Fiona’s mother said.
“Is everything all right, Errol? Are you okay?” Mr. Griswold asked.
Mr. Roy’s head was in his hand. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I’d like to be left alone.”
“Everything is most certainly not fine,” Mrs. Duncan sniffed. “Mr. Roy caught this young man red-handed stealing from him.”
“No, he didn’t!” Matthew gripped the straps of his backpack so tightly his knuckles whitened.
Errol Roy looked up sharply. “I never said that.”
Maddie sized Matthew up. “You were right next to me after the tram crashed and my backpack went missing.”
Matthew rolled his eyes. “Go look for Scooby snacks, Velma.”
Mr. Griswold held up his hands. “All right, let’s just—”
“That’s right!” Fiona wedged herself onto Matthew’s other side. They stood eye to eye, but her curly hair gave her extra height. She tipped a finger toward Matthew’s nose. “You were the kid next to me on the ferry at the exact moment my bracelet went missing.”
Matthew winced, which Emily thought had more to do with being called a kid by Fiona, but the wince read like he’d been caught in a lie.
“You can’t say it was the exact moment,” Emily argued. “You don’t know when you lost it.”
“When it was taken,” Fiona corrected.
“Seriously?!” Matthew tugged on his green-sprout hair, and his elbows bumped both Maddie and Fiona away from him. “I. Didn’t. Take. Anything! From you or anyone else. This is nuts.” He turned to Emily. “You’ve been with me the entire day. Tell them.”
Emily felt like she was trapped in an elevator with eight people crammed in that room around Errol Roy. For the first time that evening, the frigid prison was feeling warm, uncomfortably warm even with all eyes on her.
She hadn’t been in the room when Roy confronted her brother, but if Matthew had been going through his coat, she was certain he thought it was a prop in the game, as he’d said. Emily knew her brother wouldn’t steal. The same items Emily had seen when she’d been in the room before were still there: the set of keys, the letter Roy had read from, an envelope—
“I can’t believe you,” Matthew said. Emily realized he had misread her hesitation as doubt about his innocence. “I wouldn’t steal.” He shook his head. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
“No, I didn’t—” Emily waved her hands, trying to grab back the minute she’d been lost in thought so she could speak up firmly in defense of her brother.
Matthew slid his backpack off his shoulders and offered it to Mr. Griswold. “I’ve been with Emily and her friends this entire afternoon, so if I really was a thief, I’d have the bracelet on me, right? Here. Go through my stuff. You’ll see.”
“Matthew, I’m not accusing you—” Mr. Griswold’s eyes were soft and kind, but her brother was angry and determined to defend himself.
“I’ll show you myself.” Matthew yanked the zipper open and pulled out the empty bag of Goldfish, his flashlight, a calculator … He slammed all the contents of his bag, one by one, on the desk next to Mr. Roy’s things. Emily knew her brother, and she could tell this wasn’t a show or an act—he was genuinely upset.
“See? That’s everything. None of it is yours, Maddie—or Fiona’s or Mr. Roy’s.”
Fiona shrugged, not impressed. “You could have put my bracelet in a pocket.”
Matthew shoved his hands in his pocket and jerked to a stop, like it had been filled with jam. He drew his hand back out. A charm bracelet dangled from his fingers.
CHAPTER
25
“I KNEW IT!” Fiona shouted. She plucked the bracelet free. For once Matthew was stunned into silence, and Emily was stumped, too. How could that be? She absolutely believed her brother wasn’t the thief.
But how would a missing bracelet have ended up in his pocket if he hadn’t put it there?
“Shame on you,” Fiona’s mother said to Matthew. She elbowed her way in front of Fiona and refastened the bracelet on her daughter’s extended wrist, at the same time snapping at Mr. Griswold, “Are you going to just stand there—”
“Ma’am, I’m sure there’s—”
“Or are you going to do something?”
“Oh, but he did! The proof was in his pocket,” Mrs. Duncan said.
“I didn’t take anything—” Matthew tried to interject, but Fiona’s mother continued.
“He should be kicked out of the game—and perhaps his whole group of friends as well! After all, how do we know he acted alone?”
“I wasn’t a part of it,” Maddie spoke up. “I’ve been a victim as well.”
“Oh, please,” Emily muttered.
Maddie’s face flushed and she stood ramrod straight. “You know what? I don’t need this.” She spun around, pushed past James and Nisha, and left the room.
“Maddie,” Nisha called after her weakly, but Maddie continued to nudge past the other contestants until she was out of sight.
Emily was too annoyed with Maddie for attacking her brother and being so dramatic about her backpack to feel anything other than good riddance.
“All right, everybody, calm down,” Mr. Griswold said. “Matthew, why don’t you come with me? We can talk about this elsewhere. Privately,” he added when Fiona’s mother tried to follow.
Emily helped her brother collect his strewn items and put them back into his backpack. “You know I didn’t take that bracelet, right?” he asked, fixing her with a piercing stare, reading the nagging question written across her face: How did it get in your pocket?
But she said, “I believe you, Matthew.”
He nodded and walked out behind Mr. Griswold.
* * *
With Matthew talking to Mr. Griswold, and Maddie having stalked off, it was down to Emily, James, and Nisha to figure out the clocks. They regrouped in the dining hall and sat at an empty table next to the gruff prisoner who’d mugged a face at Mr. Griswold when the game had kicked off in this same room well over an hour ago. The prisoner looked up from his chili-filled bread bowl and growled at the trio like a territorial dog.
The Alcatraz Escape Page 11
