“What the hell—?” Ham bucked and twisted to wriggle out from under us.
I grasped the counter edge and pulled myself up, offering a hand to Kerry. She shucked the shower curtain and stood, still clutching the clipboard. She looked from Ham to me to the toilet and back to Ham. “I might have known you wouldn’t put the seat down.”
“You hit me,” Ham complained, rubbing his forehead. A lump was already rising and I suspected he’d have a lovely bruise.
“We thought you were the burglars who trashed the place,” I said.
“Sorry,” Kerry said in a noncontrite voice. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.” She ran her fingers through her hair to straighten it and twitched her blouse into place.
“It’s my house. And I wasn’t sneaking. I showed up to meet you and found that mess downstairs. I was hoping the bastards who did it were still in the house so I could rip their heads off and stuff them up their—” He cut himself off. “This is gonna damage the value of the house, isn’t it?”
Ah, dependable Ham. More concerned about the bottom line than anything else.
“It doesn’t look like they did any permanent damage,” Kerry said, reverting to her professional Realtor voice. “You might have to replace the refrigerator—”
An approaching siren cut through her words. The police. Finally.
We all trooped downstairs to explain to the same Boy Scout–age officer who’d been here when I’d found Ivy that there was no immediate threat. As he toured the house, making notes and taking photos of the damage, Ham turned to me, suddenly suspicious. “What are you doing here anyway, Amy-Faye?”
I was glad Kerry and I had come up with a cover story. “I thought it would be nice to have a few photographs to display at the funeral. Don’t you think so?”
“Ah, um, sure,” he said.
“Do you have any that would work?” I asked sweetly, 99 percent sure he wasn’t the sentimental type who would cherish family photos.
“Uh, I’m sure you’ll get better ones here,” he said, hitching up his jeans, which his paunch had pushed down. “Ivy was more into family keepsakes than me. Of course, she had all this space to keep them in”—he gestured broadly—“while I’m lucky to have a roof over my head most of the time. Not anymore, though.” He smiled with satisfaction. “Soon as this place sells, I’m gettin’ a condo, one of those nice ones going up on the north end of town, or maybe in Grand Junction. I’ve got plans. Big plans. I could tell you about them over dinner.”
His usual leer was absent. He actually seemed eager to share his ideas with me, maybe with anyone, and I felt a twinge of guilt as I turned him down. “I don’t think so.”
“Suit yourself.” He wandered away to keep tabs on either the cop or Kerry.
I was on the verge of leaving, ready to consider the whole “search Ivy’s house” thing a bust, when the brass mail slot suddenly opened and the mail carrier thrust circulars and an envelope through it. They plopped to the floor, the envelope sliding almost to where I stood. The address was written in what looked like it might be Ivy’s handwriting, and there was no return address. From out of nowhere, I thought about Sam Spade mailing himself the locker key in The Maltese Falcon, and without stopping to think about it, I bent and scooped up the letter. I didn’t have time to look at it. I heard footsteps behind me and barely had time to slip the letter under my shirt before Officer Ridgway reappeared. Pretty sure that tampering with the mail was a felony that could land me in federal prison until I hit menopause, I plastered a look of total innocence on my face and turned to face him.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” he asked. “The bathroom’s just there.” He pointed.
Apparently, my “innocent” look came across as “queasy.” “I’m fine,” I assured him, edging toward the door. “But late. Yes, late. I’ve got an appointment. With . . . someone.” I was absurdly conscious of the envelope’s corner pricking my skin. Could he see its outline through my blouse?
His brows drew together. “I could get you a glass of water.”
Stop being nice and let me out of here, I wanted to scream. “Uh, thanks, but no time.” The envelope crackled as I turned. Had he heard it? I kept walking, pulled the door open, and stepped onto the stoop. Realizing I’d been holding my breath, I sucked in air. I’d make a terrible spy. Hurrying down the sidewalk, I made it to my van without being stopped. Kerry might wonder where I’d disappeared to, but she was deep into Realtor mode and wouldn’t miss me immediately. I’d call her later to explain. Leaving the envelope inside my blouse, I started the van and drove off.
* * *
Al was at class when I got back to the office, so I had the place to myself. Pouring myself some iced tea from the pitcher we kept in the mini fridge, I went into my office and shut the door. Paranoid. I pulled up my blouse and peeled the envelope from where it was now sticking to my damp skin. It was a garden-variety business-sized envelope. Nothing special. I studied Ivy’s name and address, written sloppily—in haste?—in black ink. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the handwriting was Ivy’s. I flipped the envelope over and my finger traced the V of the sealed flap. It gapped slightly on one end and my letter opener fit easily into the space. Last chance. I could drop the envelope in the nearest mailbox and no one would ever know I’d taken it from Ivy’s. It was probably only a come-on from a dentist’s office or mortgage broker—one of those ads they tried to get you to open by making it look like an actual letter.
Don’t be such a ditherer. I sliced the envelope neatly along the top seam, laid the opener on my desk, and withdrew a single sheet of folded paper. Impatient now, I unfolded it and found myself looking at what was clearly a Xeroxed ledger page. The paper was lined and slightly askew, as if the book it was copied from wasn’t aligned quite right with the copier. An orderly series of numbers made up each entry. At first, I thought the numbers were dates, because they were grouped in threes and separated by slashes. The first two groups read 1/26/10 and 8/14/43, but then the third group was 51/2/2, which couldn’t possibly be a date. They weren’t telephone numbers or social security numbers. Lock combinations? Nobody had this many locks. As I puzzled over the page, I realized the numbers at the ends of each line didn’t fit the pattern. They weren’t separated by slashes. The last numbers on the first line were 10000 and on the second line 1550. That pattern continued down the page. Huh.
It dawned on me that maybe the entries were written in a code of some kind. The thought made me drop the page, and it wafted to the floor. Retrieving it, I tried to think why Ivy would have a ledger page with coded entries on it. If I was right about the handwriting, she’d mailed it to herself. From where? I picked up the envelope. The cancellation stamp said it had been mailed from right here in Heaven the day she died. I shivered involuntarily. How could that be? Ivy had been home on the day she died. It made no sense that she’d mail herself something from her house.
My office door opened suddenly and I gave an involuntary shriek and dropped the page again.
Al poked his head in. “Jumpy today, huh, boss? Anyway, I’m here. Anything you need me to do for the Boy Scout picnic? I think I’ve got the Finkelstein event under control.” His gaze fell on the paper, which had landed near his foot. “I’ll get it.”
“No!” I lunged for the page and snatched it up as he reached for it.
He eyed me warily. “What is that, anyway? A bill? You’re not late with the rent again, are you? Mr. O’Donnell’s not kicking us out, is he?” Worry sharpened his tone; he depended on what I paid him to pay his tuition.
“I was only late with the rent once,” I said with dignity, “and Mr. O’Donnell completely understood. Sometimes clients are slow paying up.” I folded the page and tucked it into a file on my desk. “It’s nothing. Did you manage to get a copy of the newspaper wedding photo the Finkelsteins wanted?”
We talked business for a few minutes and my pulse gradually returne
d to normal. By the time Al returned to his desk, I knew what I was going to do. The idea should have come to me immediately. Surely Maud, my conspiracy-obsessed friend, would know something about codes. Didn’t codes and conspiracies go together? I left the office at three thirty, telling Al he should leave, too, since we’d be working at Ivy’s funeral and the Finkelsteins’ party tomorrow, and the Boy Scout picnic on Sunday, and drove the short distance to Maud’s.
Chapter 10
Maud was happy to abandon the Web site she was building for an architecture firm when I told her why I was there. We were in her office, a former bedroom at the back of her house that held two powerful computers, three large monitors, a scanner, a shredder, and her political campaign button collection. A framed collage of photos showed a young Maud stabbing an IMPEACH poster into the air outside the White House, celebrating with college friends after the Roe v. Wade decision was announced, shoveling ash from a family’s roof in the wake of the Mount St. Helens eruption, and laying a single daisy atop a mountain of tributes left for John Lennon outside the Dakota building. Later photos showed her with Joe in Nicaragua, South Africa, the Galápagos, and what looked like Antarctica. There was not a piece of paper, writing implement, or filing cabinet in the place. Despite being almost thirty years my senior, Maud was way ahead of me on embracing technology. She prided herself on doing everything digitally and constantly hectored me to make my office a paperless environment. I wasn’t as evolved as she was; I couldn’t imagine not being able to cross items off my lists with a satisfying slash of my pen.
She was completely unconcerned about my possible incarceration on mail-tampering charges. “Ivy’s not going to complain about you swiping her mail, is she? Fuhgeddaboutit. You don’t think the police or the FBI hesitate to read people’s mail when they want to, do you? They do it all the time, probable cause be damned. Watergate was our wake-up call—I circulated a petition calling for Nixon’s impeachment—but we rolled over and forgot about it. Now there’s the NSA collecting our metadata, which we know about courtesy of that weasel Snowden.”
“I’d have thought he’d be your hero,” I said.
She shook her head. “On balance, he did this country a service, but he’s a coward. If you believe in what you’re doing, you stand pat and face the consequences; you don’t turn tail and suck up to a psychopathic cretin like Putin. Did Daniel Ellsberg run off to Moscow after leaking the Pentagon Papers? Did Sherron Watkins head for the hills after outing Enron?”
“I’m guessing ‘no’?” I wasn’t going to admit I didn’t recognize either name.
“There is no such thing as privacy in this country anymore. Big Brother is alive and well and lurking in spy satellites and traffic cams,” she said. “It’s even worse online. The government spies on your credit card spending, your mortgage activity, and even your medical status. Doctors aren’t converting to digital records because they want to, you know. No, the government is forcing them to so they can mine those records and know what kind of mental issues you have, what kinds of drugs you take, and whether or not you use birth control. You running off with a letter is small potatoes by comparison.”
I wasn’t sure two wrongs made a right, but I knew she wasn’t going to turn me in, so I handed over the ledger page.
“Ah, code! Lovely, lovely code,” she said. “I think I know you,” she told the numbers. She swiveled to face her computer. Her short-nailed fingers danced over the keys as she searched various Web sites faster than I could have typed in the URLs. Her booted foot tapped constantly. Her concentration was total; I was pretty sure she’d forgotten I was in the room. Knowing she wouldn’t miss me, I wandered to the kitchen for a drink and returned with a glass of water just as she said, “I knew I was right.”
Spinning the chair to face me, she announced, “I am a genius, and you are pretty bright yourself for bringing this to me.”
I smiled at her completely inoffensive, because totally accurate, self-assessment. “So what is it? The numbers.”
“It’s a code, of course. Do you want the good news or the bad?”
I hated that game. “Both.”
She nodded. “It’s one of the simplest codes ever, a book code.” At my blank look she continued. “Blindingly simple. Look.” She pointed to the first trio of numbers. “The first number is the page of the book, the second is the line on the page, and the third is the letter on the line.”
I studied it. “So, each of those groups of numbers adds up to one letter?”
“Exactly.”
“That is easy. So what does it say?”
“Ah, there’s the tricky part. Unless you know what book the coder is using, there’s absolutely no way to break this code. That’s the bad news. The coder can use any text. The Beale ciphers used the Declaration of Independence. Benedict Arnold—slime-bag traitor—created a book code using Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. Chances are, whoever put this together didn’t use either of those. The codebook could be the Kama Sutra—”
“I thought that was just pictures.”
“—The Joy of Cooking, or the Harry Potter books. Anything. Do you think Ivy wrote this?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure the handwriting on the envelope is hers, but this seems different, although it’s hard to tell with just numbers. But see how the zero on her address is fat and round and the zeros on the copied page are narrow and have kind of a tail at the top?” I used my forefinger to underscore the difference.
“You’re right. Well, that makes it all the harder. If it was Ivy, you know her well enough to at least guess at what book she might have used to create the code. When you don’t even know who the coder is, you don’t have a prayer of deciphering it.” She handed the page back to me.
“Do you think this might be related to her death?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
Her certainty both amused and dismayed me.
“Think about it,” she commanded, reading my skepticism. “Ivy makes a copy of this page somewhere and mails it to herself, which is strange to start with. Then, probably on the day she mails it, or the day after if she missed the mailbox collection time and it sat in the box overnight, she keels over dead from oleander poisoning. How could it be possible that two such unusual events are not related?”
“It’s got to be theoretically possible,” I argued halfheartedly. I didn’t want the page to be linked with her death, because if it was, I had only one course of action open to me.
She gave me a look.
“Fine,” I conceded grudgingly. “Fine. That means I’ve got to take this page to the police.” And tell them where I got it. Which would land me in jail, where the flower of my youth would bloom and wither in the presence of tough women named Big Mama or Nina the Knife. Flower of my youth? I really needed to be choosier about what I read.
“Why would you do that?” Maud asked.
I knew Maud didn’t trust any uniformed person, with the possible exception of a Girl Scout, but this was too much. “Come on. They’re the ones who can find out where the page came from and who wrote it. Maybe they can get fingerprints off it.” Mine and Maud’s—yikes. “We don’t have the resources to do that.”
“Balderdash,” Maud said. “We know far more about Ivy’s life and habits than the police do. We’ve got a much better chance of figuring out where she got this page. Besides, the police aren’t even investigating anymore, are they?”
“The case is . . . dormant,” I said, supplying Detective Hart’s word. “But I’ve still got to give this to them.” I couldn’t see a way around it, even though I didn’t want to have to confess to purloining Ivy’s mail. “Maybe this will kick-start the investigation again.”
Maud snorted. “Let’s at least make a copy. We can see if the other Readaholics have any idea where Ivy got this.” She twitched the page from my slack grasp and ran it through
the scanner. It appeared on the monitor moments later.
I had to admit it was pretty slick. “I suppose I should get this over with,” I said glumly. It was four o’clock. The police department would still be open.
“Want me to go with you?” Maud offered.
I was touched since I knew she’d rather bathe in bat guano than willingly engage in civil conversation with a member of the government’s legitimized forces of oppression. The thought that she might not keep it civil made me say, “I got this. Thanks, though.”
* * *
Ten minutes later I stood outside the police department for the second time in two days and the second time in my life. I’d come straight from Maud’s, not wanting to give myself an opportunity to chicken out, but I hadn’t figured out what to say. Part of me wanted to stuff the page in a manila envelope and deliver it with an anonymous note saying it was Ivy’s. However, the police might not take it seriously, might think it was a prank, if I just slipped the envelope under their door in the dead of night. Sucking in a deep breath, I pulled open the door.
I expected to see Mabel at the counter, but her shift must have been over because Officer Ridgway sat there, filling out forms. A coffee maker sputtered behind him; other than that, the building was quiet.
“Hey,” he said when he noticed me. “Are you feeling better?”
His unrelenting niceness grated on me. “I need to see Detective Hart about Ivy Donner’s case,” I said.
“No need.” He gestured at the forms spread on the counter in front of him. “I’ve written up the whole thing. Probably kids. They might brag about it to their buddies, though, and then we’ll catch ’em.”
The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco Page 10