PrologueAloud crack of thunder startled me from asound sleep. I had been dozing in the back ofthe car, but I was now fully awake. Sheets ofrain pelted the car, and my father slowed us to a crawlas the wipers struggled to keep up with the waterstreaming down the windshield."Wow, it''s really coming down," I said."Well, at least we''re almost home," my dad respondedtersely. He concentrated on keeping the car centeredin the road as he drove through the pouring rain.I could barely make out the Welcome to Maynardsign as we crossed the town line. Lightning flashed,illuminating the hillside on the right of the two-lanehighway.
A winding road led up the hill, and as therain lessened, I could just make out the dark mansionperched at the peak. As I continued to stare at thehouse, I thought I saw a wavering light in the middlewindow on the top floor. Another flash of lightningblinded me. When the darkness returned, I squintedthrough the rain, but the light was gone.Chapter 1Stephanie Lewis squinted at the tiny handwritingin the margin of the book. At first, it lookedlike someone had just been doodling. Whenshe put her nose almost to the page, however, shecould just make out the tiny writing.The strange symbols didn''t mean anything to her,but she carefully copied them into her notebook anyway.
Stephanie had spent the afternoon at the libraryworking on a social studies project. Her family hadmoved into the area at the beginning of the schoolyear, so the project to track the history of Maynardwas helping her to learn about her new town. Thepaper only had to be three pages long, but Stephaniehad already collected almost seven pages of notes.The latest book she was studying, A Short History ofMaynard, was anything but short. It was almost fourhundred pages long. It was on page 213 that Stephaniefound the cryptic note.Maynard, like most small towns anywhere, doesn''treally have enough history to fill four hundred pages,but it still has enough stories to be interesting. It wasfounded in 1874 by Herbert Maynard.
Herbert wasthe first mayor of the town, which in the beginningconsisted primarily of other Maynards. The extendedfamily had made its living mining the veins of richblack coal from the caves just north of town. By theearly 1900s, the town had grown to almost a thousandpeople, and Herbert Maynard had grown verywealthy. He built a sprawling mansion on the tallesthill overlooking the town and less than a football fieldfrom the entrance to the caves that had given his family,and the town, its start. But he only got to enjoy twoshort years in his new home as he and his wife, Olivia,were struck down with yellow fever in 1904 and diedjust days apart in their master bedroom. They werenot to be the only ones to die in the mansion.After Herbert''s death, his sons, Urban and EustisMaynard, took over the mining operation, but itwasn''t long before disaster struck. A landslide in 1908buried almost a dozen miners, and the brothers wereforced to seal off the cave system.
With the closing ofthe coal mine, most of the men in town were suddenlyunemployed, but Urban and Eustis started MaynardManufacturing and quickly put everyone back towork. The company prospered making canvas tents,farming tools, and buggy parts. The invention of theautomobile eventually forced them out of the buggybusiness, but by then World War I had kicked intofull gear and the brothers made a small fortune sellinghelmets and ammunition to the army. When the warended, Maynard Manufacturing employed almost halfof the residents of the growing town. Urban remainedsingle, but Eustis married, and he and his wife,Martha, had a son named Douglas in 1916. The fourlived a luxurious life in the family mansion, their everyneed promptly tended to by a staff of cooks, butlers,and housemaids.While the Depression of the 1930s hit the countryhard, Maynard Manufacturing kept their doors openand the town employed. It was said that the Maynardfamily lost a fortune in the stock market, but it didn''tseem to faze them.
They continued to live the life ofroyalty.While they remained wealthy, bad luck continuedto follow them. Urban was electrocuted when he wastrying to repair a faulty light switch in the basementof the mansion. Eustis died four years later when hetripped and fell down the main staircase. Douglasmarried and had a son, Cletus, in 1940, but his wifedied during childbirth. In 1958, Douglas died onChristmas Eve when he fell off a ladder while placingthe angel on top of the Christmas tree.That left the eighteen-year-old Cletus as the lastremaining member of the Maynard family. He wentto college and earned a degree in history.
He marriedhis college sweetheart and returned to the mansion.In 1965, Cletus''s wife, Elenore, came down witha bad case of pneumonia. For days, Cletus sat by herside as she grew steadily weaker. The only doctor intown tried everything he knew to cure her, but shedied early on a Saturday morning. Cletus made thelong walk into town that afternoon. After planningfor his wife''s funeral and burial, he returned to hishouse on the hill. He was never seen again.More than fifty years later, the Maynard mansionstill stands on top of the hill, but no one from theMaynard family lives there.
The town now owns it andoperates it as a museum. Busloads of kids still visitthe Maynard House on field trips to learn about thetown''s history. Since this is usually done in third gradeand she hadn''t moved to town until fourth, Stephaniehad never been there. She bet her friends Justin,Jordan, and Catherine had all been there though. Shewould have to remember to ask them during the nextmeeting of the Math Kids.The Math Kids began as a club to solve mathproblems. Stephanie and her friends were all in thehighest math group in their class and loved to work ondifficult problems. And they were pretty good at ittoo! They had won the fourth-grade math competitionat McNair Elementary last month and would competeagainst the other schools in town in the spring.
The Math Kids had used their math skills to solvesome other tricky problems too, including trackingdown a kidnapper, figuring out a fifteen-year-old bankrobbery, and even capturing some burglars trying torob Stephanie''s house.Stephanie squinted again at the tiny handwritingin the margin of the book. What did the strange symbolsmean?Could this be another case for the Math Kids?.