The Mystery of the Pirate's Treasure

by Penny Warner

  “Hey, Cody!” Matt the Brat yelled from the sidelines. “You’re in deep doo-doo this time!”

  Ms. Stad shot him a glance that stopped Matt from saying anything else. She warned her class to stay put, then ducked under the police line and headed for the Code Busters.

  “What on earth is going on?” she asked when she reached them. “Are you all right?”

  The officer who had freed Quinn and M.E. spoke for them. “They’re fine, thanks to their quick action. And so is Mr. Bour. If it weren’t for these kids, he might have been in real trouble.”

  Ms. Stad bit her lip. Silently she gave each of the four kids a hug. “What exactly happened?” she asked again.

  Quinn shrugged. “We were just looking for the treasure that Mr. Bour had talked about.”

  “He had this treasure hunter’s map and a journal page that were clues,” Luke added. “We thought maybe the Code Busters could figure it out.”

  “But I thought that was all legend,” Ms. Stad said. “Mr. Bour was just trying to make history come alive for you students.”

  “Yeah,” Luke agreed, “but when we talked to him after the presentation, he said there really had been a treasure hunter: a descendant of Hippolyte de Bouchard who might have found the treasure. He’s the one who left behind the map and puzzle that Chad had.”

  “What puzzle?” Ms. Stad asked. “What are you talking about?”

  Cody became distracted as she watched the officers place Longbeard and Jolly in the back of one of the police cars. She wondered what would happen to them.

  M.E. answered Ms. Stad’s question. “We found a message that had a nursery rhyme hidden inside.”

  “ ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’ ” Quinn offered. “Only we couldn’t figure out what the rhyme actually meant. We were going to ask you, Ms. Stad, since you know so much about hidden messages in nursery rhymes.”

  Ms. Stad smiled proudly. “Well, let’s see. I do know that it’s a rhyme about pirates who were searching for loot that was supposedly hidden inside ‘the monkey.’

  “Oh, remember what Chad said. ‘Monkey’ means ‘cannon,’ ” Quinn said.

  Unfortunately, there aren’t any cannons at the Carmel Mission. There used to be, but they were melted down and formed into bells.”

  Ms. Stad looked at the disappointed faces of the Code Busters. She patted Cody and M.E.’s backs, smiled at Luke and Quinn, and said, “But it was still fun doing the treasure hunts and orienteering codes and other puzzles, right?”

  The kids nodded, but their hearts weren’t in it. They’d hoped to find treasure, and they’d found only dead ends, unanswered questions, and bad guys.

  “Students!” Ms. Stad hollered back to the crowd of kids watching the scene. “Time to head back to camp.” She turned to the police officer. “Are these kids free to go?”

  “I have a couple more questions; then you can have them back,” the officer said.

  “All right, I’ll have one of my parent volunteers wait for them in the courtyard and make sure they return to camp safely. Thanks, Officer.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. You’ve got some smart kids here, you know.”

  “Oh, I know, Officer,” Ms. Stad said, smiling at the group. “I definitely know.”

  The officer took down the statements of each Code Buster, one at a time. Since Cody had been the first one questioned, she sat on a bench to wait for the others and think about the puzzle. Pulling out her notebook, she flipped open to the page where she’d copied Bouchard’s journal entry. Together the Code Busters had solved the odd message when they realized “Pop Goes the Weasel” was hidden inside. But there had to be more to it …

  Quinn joined her on the bench.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I think there’s something more here.”

  “But Stad said the rhyme meant the treasure was hidden inside a cannon—and there are no cannons around here.”

  “I know, but look at these numbers at the bottom,” Cody said, pointing to the row of random numbers.

  “Yeah, so? We figured they were some kind of numeric code, remember? But we couldn’t decode them without the key. That’s how codes work, dude.”

  Cody rolled her eyes at Quinn. “I know that. But that’s just it.”

  “What’s just it?” Luke said, appearing next to them. “What are you guys working on?”

  “Cody thinks there’s more to the puzzle,” said Quinn, “and that these numbers have something to do with it:

  10-19-12-4-23-22-19-17 4-10 13-14-23-12-22-13

  But unless we have the decoder, we’re not going to be able to figure it out.”

  “I think we have the decoder,” Cody announced. “I think it’s right here on the page.”

  Luke looked down at the message. “Where?”

  “Remember how French words are sometimes used by pirates?” Cody said.

  “Yeah,” Luke answered. “You think it’s French?”

  “No, but remember what we learned about how the French resistance used to code their messages?”

  “You mean, by counting pages, lines, and words—or letters—to encode them,” Quinn said.

  “Well, what if Bouchard’s descendant, the treasure hunter, did that, using these numbers? And instead of using page numbers, lines, and words, he just used letters?”

  M.E. came bouncing toward her friends, a grin on her face. “I’m done. That was fun. Anyway, I guess we should get back to—” M.E. glanced down at the nursery rhyme page Cody held in her lap and stopped midsentence. “Hey, what’s up?” She sat down on the bench next to Quinn.

  “Cody’s trying to figure out what the numbers mean,” Quinn said, nodding toward the journal entry. She began writing numbers in order, under each of the letters in the first row of the rhyme. Then she located the numbers written at the bottom of the journal entry and wrote down the corresponding letter.

  Checking the number 10, she wrote down the corresponding letter, which was T. The next number was 19, which equaled R. She continued to write down letters for numbers in the code until she recognized a word.

  She tried the set of letters in the next row, but the letters didn’t form a familiar word.

  After she tried the next two rows, she was about to give up when she decided to return to the top row. This time it worked—they had the second word!

  “Just one more word!” Cody said excitedly. Using the same top row, she decoded the last few numbers.

  “Whoa!” she said to the others, who were grinning at the message. “Now we really have to talk to Chad!”

  Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.

  Ms. Stadelhofer is awesome,” M.E. said, as the kids entered Community Hospital in Monterey, accompanied by Mrs. Van Tassell, one of the parent volunteers. Ms. Stad had called the Code Busters’ parents to tell them what had happened. Then, the police had gotten the Code Busters special permission to visit Chad, as a reward for their “heroic efforts.”

  “I know!” Cody said. “It was so nice of her to let us visit Chad while the other kids went back to camp. I hope he’s okay.”

  “You don’t have long, guys,” Mrs. Van Tassell said. “Remember, he’s recovering from that attack and will need lots of rest. Five minutes.”

  Cody was excited to see the docent and make sure he was all right. Not only had the police arranged for the kids to visit him, but an officer had stopped by the camp to inform the Code Busters they’d be getting a commendation from the mayor.

  He also told them that Longbeard and Jolly were being held in the county jail on charges of kidnapping, illegal trespassing, theft, and several other counts. After a brief search of the thieves’ trailer, the police found a large cache of valuable artifacts stolen from several museums in the area. They recovered most of the loot, except what the thieves had sold at local flea markets. Cody wondered if Chad knew all this.

  Two hours later the kids entered the dimly lit hospital room and found Chad lying on his back
in the bed, his head and wrists bandaged, his eyes closed. He was connected to an IV and an electronic monitor beeped as it kept track of his heart rate.

  He opened his eyes, and a smile lit up his face when he recognized the four kids. “Crikey!” he said in a gravelly voice. He coughed, cleared his throat, and said, “It’s the code-busting treasure hunters who saved my life. Many thanks to ye.”

  Cody grinned, pleased to see how well Chad looked, in spite of everything. Aside from the bandages, he seemed to be his old self.

  “How do you feel?” Quinn asked, gazing in awe at all the medical equipment in the room.

  “Better than a barnacle on a bunion,” he said.

  Cody had no idea what that meant, but she figured it was good.

  “Did you hear about Longbeard and Jolly?” Luke asked.

  Chad nodded. “I expect they’ll spend the rest of their lives in prison. Luckily, the cops found most of the treasure they stole.”

  “Yeah, they said a lot of it came from the mission museum,” M.E. said.

  “Ay, I’ve had my eye on them for some time,” Chad said. “I noticed things went missing right after they visited the place. I didn’t have any proof, but I banned them from returning. Still, they kept trying to sneak in and help themselves to more loot. That’s why I chased them out of the museum during your tour.”

  “Why did they kidnap you?” Cody asked.

  “They heard me talking about the treasure with you kids,” Chad explained. “They knew you had a copy of the map, so they went looking at your camp. When they found the drawing in your stuff, they stole it. But you guys wrote all the clues in code.” Chad grinned. “Pretty clever,” he added.

  Quinn’s eyes lit up. “I knew it! I knew they stole the map out of my stuff. We saw them snooping around the camp area—well, we didn’t actually see them, but we saw someone flashing Morse code and we found a toothpick and some footprints. I knew it had to be one of them.”

  Chad took a breath, coughed, and adjusted himself on the bed.

  “Are you all right?” Cody asked, worried that the old man might have more serious injuries than they thought.

  “Fine, just a bit stiff from being tied up in that van.”

  Cody was relieved that Chad would be fine.

  “So you still haven’t told us how you got kidnapped,” Luke said.

  “Or about the treasure,” Quinn added.

  “I’m getting to that,” Chad said, a twinkle in his eye.

  Cody smiled. At least his storytelling skills hadn’t been affected.

  “When those scallywags found out they couldn’t read your map, they wanted the original,” Chad continued. “They came back to the museum and made me hand over the real map. I thought they’d leave me alone, but they conked me over the head and took me with them. Tied me up and threw me in that van of theirs. Thank goodness you found me. Otherwise, I’d have been …” He drew his finger across his throat.

  Cody shuddered at the thought. Maybe it was true. If they hadn’t come in time, Chad might not be here right now.

  “Yikes!” M.E. said, speaking for all of them.

  “Kids, it’s time to go,” Mrs. Van Tassell said. “Mr. Bour needs his rest so he can get back to being a wonderful docent at the museum.”

  The kids nodded and began to shuffle out. But before they reached the door, Chad said, “Wait a minute. One more thing. Did you figure out the solution to the journal entry?”

  The kids turned back to Chad.

  “We found the nursery rhyme—‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’ ” Cody replied. “Our teacher told us ‘monkey’ meant ‘cannon’ and that’s where the pirates hid the money. But we never saw any cannons at the mission.”

  “And we finally figured out what the numbers at the bottom meant,” Quinn continued. “Each one represented a letter in the first line of the rhyme. The message turned out to be ‘treasure at museum.’ Do you think the treasure is actually hidden somewhere in the museum?”

  “Oh yes,” Chad said, “but not the kind you’re thinking of. There’s no silver pieces of eight or gold bars. The real treasure is in the two-hundred-year-old artifacts that were found at the mission. In total, they’re worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s why Longbeard and Jolly were so eager to rob the place.”

  Quinn held up a hand. “Hey, was there ever a real Bouchard ancestor?” he asked Chad. “Or was that just another one of your stories?”

  “Oh, he was real, all right,” Chad said. “And he found plenty of treasure—all in the form of valuable artifacts that he donated to the museum.”

  “Then what happened to him?” M.E. asked. “Did he get rich?”

  “No. But after donating his finds to the mission, he got rich in other ways.”

  “How?” M.E. asked.

  “After fifty-some years of treasure hunting, he retired and went to work as a docent at the museum, where he could see his treasures every day while sharing them with others,” Chad said.

  “Just like you?” M.E. asked.

  Cody caught something in Chad’s eye—a glint of mischief? Was he telling another one of his wild stories? And then she gasped. “You’re part of the puzzle! That’s your map and your journal!”

  Chad’s toothy smile widened.

  The other Code Busters looked at her, frowning. “What are you talking about?” asked Quinn.

  “Don’t you get it?” she said. “ ‘Chad Bour’ … the letters are an anagram!”

  Luke got out a pencil and wrote down the name on a sheet of his notebook paper. He happened to be a master at unscrambling letters and words.

  “Bouchard!” Luke exclaimed.

  The kids stared at Chad Bour—aka Bouchard.

  “Are you really a descendant of the pirate Hippolyte de Bouchard?” M.E. asked.

  Before Chad could answer, a nurse appeared in the doorway. Mrs. Van Tassell nodded at her and said, “Time to let Mr. Bour rest.”

  “Wait, one more second,” Chad/Bouchard said. “I have something for your Code Busters Club.” He reached over to the table near his bed and picked up a small velvet sack that lay there.

  “Where did you get that?” Cody asked.

  “Tucked it into my sock so those two wouldn’t find it,” he answered. Pulling apart the strings at the top, he opened it, stuck in two fingers, and withdrew something shiny.

  “I want you kids to have this, to thank you for all you’ve done. You truly saved a ‘man overboard,’ and I’ll be forever grateful.”

  He handed the silver coin to Cody. She knew immediately what it was—a real piece of eight! From a real treasure hunter!

  “Cool!” she said, holding it up for the others to see.

  Chad handed her the velvet bag. As Cody started to replace the coin inside, she felt something touch her fingers. She pulled out a piece of paper that was rolled up like a tiny treasure map. She unrolled the paper and read the words from a familiar camp song, using the mirror app on her cell phone:

  Code Buster’s Solution found on this page.

  Cody smiled at Chad, then rolled up the paper and inserted it back inside the bag along with the coin. The Code Busters thanked the old man and reluctantly waved good-bye. Cody wondered if she’d ever see Chad Bour again.

  As they walked back to Mrs. Van Tassell’s car, Cody held the velvet bag tightly in her hand. She knew exactly what the Code Busters would do with it. Keep it, hide it, and create a map to its secret location so only they would be able to find it.

  Suddenly, a thought came to her.

  “Mrs. Van Tassell!” she cried. “Can we stop by the mission one more time before we go back to camp? I think I know where the real treasure is!”

  Quinn, Luke, and M.E. looked at Cody as if she’d lost her mind.

  “What are you talking about?” Quinn asked. “Chad told us where the treasure is—in the museum. It’s the artifacts.”

  “That’s where he thinks it is,” Cody argued. “But I think we’ve all missed something.”

&n
bsp; “Like what?” Luke asked.

  “Well, if I’m right, I’ll show you,” she said. “Please, Mrs. Van Tassell? It’s really important. And it’ll only take a few minutes, I promise.”

  Mrs. Van Tassell checked her watch. “All right, but make it quick. Your teacher was nice to let you go to the hospital, and you don’t want to take advantage of that.”

  Cody sat back in her seat, fingers nervously fidgeting with the velvet bag that held the silver coin. The clue had been there all along. While the kids hadn’t found any cannons on the mission property, there had been cannons when Bouchard searched the mission.

  Most of the early cannons were made of bronze—and Ms. Stad said the mission’s cannons had been melted down and turned into bells. The large bell in the middle of the mission plaza—the one with the crack—was bronze. Cody remembered noticing something shiny inside the crack. At the time, she figured it was just a play of the light. Now she thought otherwise.

  Maybe it was silver.

  Mrs. Van Tassell drove into the mission parking lot. Cody quickly got out of the car, followed by the other Code Busters and Mrs. Van Tassell.

  “Come on!” she cried. She made a beeline for the center of the mission, where the cracked bell had been placed among a bed of flowers. She ran up to it and peered closely at the crack, hoping she hadn’t just imagined what she’d seen. Pulling out her phone, she tapped the flashlight app and shined it into the crack.

  Definitely shiny!

  “Do you see?” Cody asked, standing back so the others could get a look.

  “I see a crack,” M.E. said.

  “Look closely,” Cody commanded.

  Quinn stared at the jagged line on the bell. “Wait a minute, M.E.! Can I have one of your barrettes?”

  M.E. looked at him strangely but removed the metal barrette from her long brown hair and handed it to Quinn.