Free The Haunted Lighthouse by Penny Warner

thought, remembering the years she’d spent learning to play the family piano. But since Tana had been diagnosed with severe hearing loss, Cody had given up playing. It wasn’t much fun since she couldn’t share the songs with her deaf sister. In fact, no one in the family had played the instrument since then, not even her mother, who was a good pianist and could play just about any song by ear. Now the keyboard was closed up and the piano held a permanent display of knickknacks and photos.
    Quinn pulled Cody from her sad memory. “Cody, let me see your phone again. I want to check that picture you took.”
    Cody handed her phone to Quinn. He studied the snapshot, then said, “These are letters!” With a flick of his fingers, he enlarged the screen so he could see the letters better, and read them aloud.
    “E-T-U-H-C-Y-R-D-N-U-A-L.”
    “Read them again,” M.E. said, pulling out her notebook.
    Quinn repeated the string of letters.
    “Et-uh-cyrd-nual?” M.E. asked, sounding out the letters like syllables.
    “Sounds weird. Maybe it’s someone’s name,” Luke offered. “Etuh Cyrdnual.”
    “That doesn’t sound like a name,” Quinn said. He squinted at it. “It’s got to be some kind of code.”
    “Let me try,” Luke said. He got out his own notebook and turned to the page with the reverse alphabet code. After trying to match the first few letters of the message with letters of the alphabet, he gave up. “That’s not it.”
    “Maybe it’s an anagram,” Cody suggested.
    Luke tried rearranging the letters to see if they’d spell any recognizable words. He came up with THE CRY LAND but had two
U
’s left over. He tried again and wrote LACY THUNDER with one leftover
U
. Finally, he wrote UNDER CUT HALY using all the letters, but that still didn’t make sense.
    M.E. tried it but only managed to come up with more nonsensical phrases like CHURN LATE DUY, DUEL YARN THUC, and CLUE RAD HUT NY.
    Then Cody remembered using her mirror to see under the Campanile ledge, which gave her an idea. She took the notebook from M.E. and wrote the letters down in reverse.
    L-A-U-N-D-R-Y-C-H-U-T-E
    Code Buster’s Solution found on this page
.
    “That’s it!” Quinn said. “That’s where we have to go when we get to the hotel!”
    “Yeah,” Luke said, “unless it’s been destroyed, too, and we find another dead end.”
    Cody had stopped listening to the boys. She’d spotted a man in a black baseball cap standing only a few feet away reading a newspaper that covered his face. When he turned the page, Cody noticed he had a big black mustache and dark sunglasses. Then she noticed that his newspaper was upside down.
    Whoever it was had been within hearing distance of the kids the whole time they’d been discussing the hunt for the diamonds.
    Diamond Dave?

G uys,” Cody whispered, “we’d better get out of here. I think someone’s watching us.”
    The three others glanced around.
    “Don’t look!” Cody said. “He’ll see you! Be cool. He’s over by those bushes, pretending to read a newspaper.”
    Quinn tried to look nonchalant as he surveyedthe area. M.E. put her head down and peeked around from under her bangs. Luke made no attempt to disguise his actions—he looked right in the direction Cody had indicated.
    “Where?” Luke asked.
    “Shhh! He’ll hear you!” Cody sneaked another look.
    The man was gone.
    She blinked several times, as if clearing her eyes would make the man reappear. “I … I … He was just there. Standing, like, ten feet away. Reading a newspaper—upside down!” She searched the area but saw no sign of the man. “I know I saw someone.”
    “Whatever,” Quinn said, shrugging. “Let’s take the trail to the hotel. We’ll keep an eye out to see if anyone follows us.”
    “What if he
is
following us?” M.E. asked. “And he tries to get us on the trail? Then what?”
    Luke flexed his biceps. “I’ll take care of him,” he said.
    Cody grinned.
    “Meanwhile, let’s