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.
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