Karen's Treasure

  “Hard to tell,” said Seth.

  I did not care about the signature. I did not care who had written it — a child, an adult, or a baboon. I was looking at the big ink X in the center of the paper. X marks the spot. That was where the treasure would be.

  “Come on, Deputy,” I said. “Let’s dig up our treasure.”

  “But it is raining,” said Andrew.

  “Who cares about rain at a time like this?” I asked.

  “I do,” Andrew answered.

  “Karen,” said Mommy, “if you want to, you can go outside by yourself. But put on your rain slicker and your boots.”

  I could not believe that everyone wanted to wait inside. Soon we would find treasure! I stomped to the closet to get my rain slicker. I pulled on my boots and took out an umbrella. (I would need it to protect the map.) Then I got a shovel out of the garage. I headed for the yard and looked at the map.

  Hmm. The X on the map was in between the hedge and the tree. It looked about halfway. I paced off the distance and stood on the spot. I took a deep breath and started to dig. Andrew knocked on the window and waved to me. I did not wave back. I had more digging to do. I dug a deep, wide hole.

  Around me the rain grew heavier. It dripped off my bangs and spotted my glasses. It leaked into my boots, soaking my socks. I looked at the hole. It was huge, like a crater. Still, I had found no treasure.

  Maybe this treasure map was just one big joke.

  More Hobbies

  The next day was Sunday. Nancy was going to another rehearsal. I called her early in the morning. I knew she would not be at a rehearsal at eight o’clock.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I am about to eat breakfast,” she said.

  “Me, too!” I cried. “I could come over right now. Then we could eat breakfast together.”

  “But I am still in my pajamas.” Nancy giggled.

  “So am I,” I told her. “And that is even better. We can have a breakfast pajama party.”

  I asked Mommy if I could go over to Nancy’s in my pj’s.

  Mommy laughed. “Okay,” she said.

  So I put on my slippers and my bathrobe and I poured myself a bowl of Krispy Krunchies. (I would add the milk at Nancy’s house.) Then I padded across the yards. Nancy answered the door in her nightgown.

  “Ta-da!” she said. She jumped in the air and did a spin. She was already practicing her ballet.

  Nancy practiced her ballet all during our breakfast party. She showed me the steps she was having trouble with.

  “And I am a little afraid of performing in front of so many people,” she told me.

  “Oh, Nancy,” I said. “Do not worry about that one bit.”

  I could not help her with her ballet steps, but I knew something I could help her with.

  “I will teach you how to curtsy,” I said. “Curtsying is very important. The better you curtsy, the more people will clap.”

  Soon it was time for Nancy to go to her rehearsal.

  “Do not forget,” I said as I walked out the door. I took a quick curtsy, to remind her how. Then I headed home. Now it seemed more important than ever for me to have a new hobby of my own. But what would it be?

  I spied the floppy hat sitting on top of my dresser. I certainly did not want to be a detective anymore. My arms still ached from all that shoveling. And my socks had not even dried. I decided to make a list of all the hobbies I could think of. I got out a piece of paper and a pencil.

  This was my list:

  Actually, I had done every one of those hobbies. The truth was I was very good at hobbies. But now I needed a new one. Oh, yes. I thought of another hobby. Ballet, I wrote. But I did not want to go to ballet class. I would leave that to Nancy.

  Later I called Hannie. Maybe her parents could drive her over to the little house and we could play. But Hannie was not home.

  “Her father took her to the store,” said her mother. “She wanted to pick up a stamp-collecting kit.”

  Stamp collecting! Now there was something I had not thought of. I wrote that down on my list. I did not think I wanted to collect stamps. But maybe I could collect something else. Hmm, I thought. What could it be? I already had a sticker collection and a seashell collection.

  I asked Mommy if she could help me think of a hobby.

  “Gardening is a hobby,” she said. “And I am about to go out and plant some flowers. Why don’t you help me?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I helped Mommy rake the garden and plant some seeds. Gardening was fun, but I did not think it was the hobby I was looking for.

  “Karen!” Seth called me. He was working in the kitchen. “I am making a casserole for dinner,” he said. “Would you like to grate the cheese?”

  Cooking is a hobby, I thought. I would write that on my list, too. But I have done lots of cooking. I took down the grater and picked up a big hunk of cheese.

  I would have to think of a new hobby later.

  Solving the Clues

  The next day, after school, Kristy came to baby-sit again. She took Andrew and me into the backyard to play freeze tag.

  “Watch out for the hole in the yard,” I warned her. I pointed to the place where I had dug on Saturday.

  “Why is that hole there?” asked Kristy.

  “I was following the treasure map,” I said. “But it must not be a real treasure map. Because I dug in exactly the right spot and there was not one bit of treasure.”

  “What treasure map?” asked Kristy.

  “Here,” I said. “Let me show you.”

  I got the map and unrolled it for Kristy.

  “This is cool,” she said. “It is like a real-life detective story.” She pointed to the clues at the top. “What do these mean?”

  “I do not know.” I shrugged. “They look like clues. But they must be in code.”

  “Let’s figure them out,” said Kristy. “Andrew, go get us a pad of paper, please. And Karen, you get us three pencils. We will all sit at the kitchen table and work out the clues.”

  At the kitchen table? Boo and bullfrogs. I did not want to sit inside and figure out clues. I wanted to run around outside.

  Andrew brought Kristy a pad of paper. She tore off one page for each of us.

  “Hmm,” she said, looking at the clues. “They look like word jumbles, don’t they? Maybe if we unscramble the letters, we will figure out the clues.”

  Kristy handed me a sharpened pencil. She gave one to Andrew, too. Of course, Andrew could not really unscramble the letters. He does not know how to read well enough. Andrew wrote an A on his paper.

  “A for Andrew,” he said.

  “Good work,” said Kristy.

  Kristy and I set to work on the first clue:

  1. 22 paces from RWSORAB KACB OORD.

  Hmm. The first word had an awful lot of letters. I tried to unscramble them. “WAR-SORB,” I wrote. “BORRSAW,” I wrote. “ROWSBAR,” I said out loud. “Well, that is almost a word.”

  I looked over at Kristy. She was busy writing.

  “The last word is ‘door,’ ” she said crisply. I looked at her paper. She was right. OORD equaled DOOR.

  “You are a very fast unscrambler,” I said.

  “That is because I started with a small, easy word,” she said. “You are tackling the hardest one.”

  I went back to my paper. Before I could even get started again, Kristy said, “The second word is ‘back.’ ”

  Well, my goodness. She was right again. KACB equaled BACK.

  “So far,” Kristy said, “clue number one reads: ‘Twenty-two paces from RWSORAB back door.’ ” (She pronounced RWSORAB like “rewsorab.”)

  I would certainly have to concentrate very hard to work as fast as Kristy. I looked at the letters I was working on. I wrote them down in another order.

  “ ‘Barrows,’ ” I said. “That is almost a word, too. Like wheelbarrows.”

  “Hmm,” said Kristy. “Barrows. Barrow. It is also a last name. I thin
k you solved it, Karen. If you are right, the clue now reads, ‘Twenty-two paces from Barrows’ back door.’ ”

  I tossed my pencil in the air. Hurrah! We had figured out the first word jumble.

  “But what does the clue mean?” I asked. “I do not know anyone named Barrow.”

  “Maybe someone with that name lived here a long time ago,” said Kristy. “Let’s go on to the second jumble.”

  We looked at the next clue:

  2. Turn and face ERED MAREST.

  I grabbed my pencil. “I will take the shorter word this time,” I told Kristy. “You take the longer one.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  The first word was easy. I figured it out right away. “It could be either one of two words,” I reported. “It could be ‘reed’ or it could be ‘deer.’ ”

  “And the second word could be ‘master’ or ‘tamers,’ ” Kristy answered. “Or ‘stream.’ ”

  “I bet it’s ‘stream,’ ” I said.

  Kristy agreed. “That would make sense,” she said. “A stream would definitely be something that would be on a map.”

  We had done it again. We had figured out the second clue. “Turn and face reed stream,” it read. Or, “Turn and face deer stream.”

  “But what is Deer Stream?” I asked.

  Kristy shrugged. “I do not know. Let’s go on to the last clue.” We looked at it:

  3. Walk to the nearest QUERCUS COCCINEA.

  I took the first word and Kristy took the second. We worked and worked on those two jumbles. And what did we come up with? Only a long list of more jumbles.

  “I do not think these letters spell anything that is really a word,” I said.

  “They have to,” Kristy insisted. I chewed on the end of my pencil. The front door swung open.

  “Hello,” called Mommy. “I am home!”

  Andrew ran to Mommy. He waved his paper in her face. “Look!” he cried. “I have unscrambled my name!”

  While Kristy and I had been trying to solve our clues, Andrew had been working, too. He had written the letters of his name all across his piece of paper.

  ARNDWE DANERW EDNARW

  NDEWRA WADNRE RWANED

  At the very bottom, he had written his real name.

  “Good work,” said Mommy.

  Kristy and I looked at each other. Oh, well. I guess Andrew was the only one who had solved all of his jumbles.

  The Last Clue

  Lucky for me, Kristy was going to sit for us again the next afternoon. And the rest of the week, too. That would give us lots of time to work on our mystery. And we would need every minute. We still had to figure out what the clues meant.

  When Kristy arrived, we set right to work. Or at least we tried to. Kristy picked up the map and stared at it.

  “Okay,” she said. “We do not know what these clues mean. So we should write down everything we are confused about. Then, at least, we will know what it is we have to figure out.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  Kristy made a list of our questions. The list said:

  1. What is Barrows’ back door?

  2. What is Reed or Deer Stream?

  3. What is QUERCUS COCCINEA?

  “Question number one,” said Kristy, reading it over. “We need to figure out what Barrows’ back door is. We have already guessed that it is probably the name of some people who lived around here a long time ago.”

  “But they do not live here now,” I said. “So how do we figure out which house was theirs?”

  Kristy thought for a moment. “I am sure the town keeps records of who owned the houses,” she said. “I think those records would be at the Town Hall. Let’s go there and look up the information. At the very least, that will give us a good start.”

  Kristy wrote the words Go to Town Hall after our first question. Then she looked at question number two.

  “Hmm,” she said. “ ‘What is Reed or Deer Stream?’ Maybe that is the name of a stream that is somewhere near here. I think the library has books about Stoneybrook. We can look at those books. Maybe we will find our answer there.”

  “Another good idea,” I said.

  After question number two, Kristy wrote the words Go to the library. Then she went on to question number three. This one was harder.

  “ ‘What is QUERCUS COCCINEA?’ ” she read. “I do not have any ideas yet about this one,” she said. “Do you, Karen?”

  I rested my chin in my hands and stared at the paper.

  “It has to be a jumble,” I said. “But I do not understand why we cannot solve it.”

  “Well,” said Kristy, “solve it we will! I am not going to leave here today until we figure it out.”

  Kristy sounded as if she meant business. She poised her pencil in the air. “On your mark, get set, go!” she said.

  And so we set to work. (This time Andrew played with his Legos on the floor beside us.) Still, when Mommy got home from Andrew’s school, we had not solved the jumble. Charlie walked into the kitchen behind Mommy. He had come to pick up Kristy and drive her home.

  “How is it going, guys?” he asked.

  “Terrible!” I cried. “Kristy and I cannot solve this word jumble. We have worked on it a long time. In fact, we have worked way too long. I think this jumble is a trick. I do not think there is an answer to it at all.”

  “Let me see it,” Charlie asked.

  Kristy handed Charlie the treasure map. She pointed to clue number three.

  “ ‘QUERCUS COCCINEA,’ ” he read. “That does not look like a word jumble. That looks like Latin to me.”

  “Latin?” said Kristy. She peered over his shoulder at the map.

  “Yes,” Charlie answered. “We learned about this in biology. Flowers and plants and trees all have Latin names that are their scientific names. Maybe this is the name of a plant or a tree.”

  Mommy had come into the kitchen. She heard what Charlie said. “I have a book you can look in,” she said. “It is a book about trees.”

  “Great!” I exclaimed.

  Mommy gave me a Look. I knew I was supposed to use my indoor voice, but I was very excited.

  Mommy got the tree book down from a shelf. In the back was an index. It listed all the names of the trees, including the Latin names. I ran my finger down the page. There it was.

  “Quercus coccinea!” I shouted. (I could not help it.) “Page sixty-three.”

  I turned to page 63. The whole page was about Quercus coccinea. It turned out that it was a kind of oak tree.

  “We have two oaks,” said Mommy. “The one by the birdbath — ”

  “And the one with the tree house,” I said.

  I had to admit, I was getting excited about the treasure again. This Henry Carmody was a tricky boy. He had made a very clever treasure map. I ran upstairs to get my detective hat.

  “Detective Karen. On the case again!” I cried.

  At the Library

  The next day, when Kristy arrived to babysit, she called to us from the front door.

  “Karen! Andrew!” she cried. “Grab your things. Charlie is waiting in the driveway. He said he will drop us off at the library.”

  I scrambled to get my things. Then Kristy, Andrew, and I piled into the Junk Bucket. (That is the name of Charlie’s car.) As we drove down the street, Charlie pointed to the trees in the yards. “Look,” he said. “There is a Quercus coccinea. And there is another Quercus coccinea.”

  I giggled. “And there is a Frupidu lapadu,” I said. I did not really know what a Frupidu lapadu was. I just made it up. It sounded like a funny name.

  “And there is a Goopy-goop coochy-coo,” Andrew chimed in.

  Charlie pulled into the parking lot of the library.

  “Will you need a ride back?” he asked.

  “I do not think so,” said Kristy. “If we are there when the library closes, Mrs. Kishi can give us a ride home.”

  Mrs. Kishi is the head librarian. She is also the mother of one of Kristy’s closest friend
s. Sometimes it seems as if Kristy knows everyone in town. That is good for me. It means that everyone in town knows me, too.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kishi!” I called out when we walked in the door.

  “Shhh!” Mrs. Kishi waved her hands to quiet me.

  “Oops!” I clapped my hands over my mouth. “I forgot I was in the library.”

  Mrs. Kishi smiled. “Are you here to pick up some new books?” she whispered.

  “Oh, no,” I told her. “We are here to do some serious research. We have to find out if there is a stream in Stoneybrook called Deer Stream. Or maybe it would be called Reed Stream. Kristy said we would be able to find some books about Stoneybrook here.”

  “Indeed you can,” said Mrs. Kishi. She led us to the reference section. “Are you looking for a map? One that has details of the land?”

  “That sounds perfect,” said Kristy.

  Mrs. Kishi reached up to a high shelf. She lifted down a large, heavy book. She blew the dust off the top, then brought it to a table for us to look at. Inside were lots of pictures of Stoneybrook as it had looked many years ago. The people in the pictures were wearing funny-looking clothes. In one picture, people were even riding in a horse and buggy.

  Toward the back of the book was a photograph of the town. The photograph had been taken from a plane. (Kristy said that was called an aerial photograph.) There were hardly any houses in Stoneybrook back then.

  Kristy pointed to a spot on the map. “That looks like the little house, doesn’t it?”

  Hmm. It was hard to tell. The house she was pointing to looked only like a small roof on the map.

  “Yes,” Kristy said, “it is the little house. Look.” She traced her finger across the photo. “There is Stoneybrook Academy. Up here is the high school. And here is McConnell’s Brook.” (That is a brook that runs behind our house.)

  “Are you sure that is McConnell’s Brook?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Kristy. “Look. It is labeled.” Kristy squinted at the photo. “Oh, my gosh!” she said. “The label says ‘Deer Stream.’ ”