by Joni Folger
C.C. made a sweeping curtsy. “I bow to you, O Cunning One.”
“As well you should,” Elise said with a chuckle. “It just made sense. Besides, I don’t think he’s had much time to peruse the journal. Like I said, he’s been pretty busy lately. You heard about Harmony?”
C.C. nodded. “Word travels fast in this little burg. So sad. Does Jax have any leads?”
“There hasn’t been much to go on, but there’ve been a few other developments just this morning regarding Uncle Edmond’s death.”
She explained about being hauled into the station with Ross and Caroline, Ross’s recount of his meeting with Edmond, the anonymous tip, and Carlos’s arrest.
“Wow! How did I miss all the fun?” C.C. asked with a stunned look. “Does Jackson really think Carlos killed your uncle?”
“I don’t think so, but he has to go by what evidence he finds. I can’t imagine Carlos killing anyone, and I don’t trust this mysterious call implicating him. Unfortunately, I’m starting to think Carlos may have been involved somehow in whatever Uncle Edmond was mixed up in.”
“Ooh, betrayal, murder, and intrigue—oh my! Geez, you could write a book, and it would sell like hot cakes!”
“Yeah. It is kind of deliciously sordid, isn’t it?”
“Who would have thought something like this would happen here in little Delphine, Texas? Amazing.”
“Yeah, and really convoluted.”
Knowing her friend couldn’t resist a good puzzle, she picked up some of the journal copies and waved them in C.C.’s face. “I think Carlos is being set up by the real killer, though, and the link we need may be hidden in Uncle Edmond’s coding. You up for it?”
C.C. stared at the pages for a moment, and Elise could almost hear the wheels turning in her friend’s head.
“Absolutely!” she finally said with a grin. “Let’s do it.”
They cleared the coffee table and sat down on the floor on either side, spreading out the pages in front of them.
“Okay, I’ve pretty much figured out the first half dozen pages, or so,” Elise said. “Most of the initials in the beginning were easy to match up, though a few are still a mystery. The four or five pages after that were also a cinch. Those entries catalog his wagers out at El Diablo with Denny Rodriguez—wins, losses, what he owed—that kind of thing. But after that it gets really weird.”
“What do you mean ‘weird’?”
“Well, look here.” She gestured to the pages in question. “On first glance, it’s formatted to look like paragraphs, see? But instead of letters it’s all numbers. I’m guessing the numbers at the top of each page represent dates and maybe times. But the rest of it—it’s like he was doing this bizarre savant writing with random numbers.”
“Let me see,” C.C. said, taking the pages for a closer look.
She studied the odd script for a few minutes. Just when Elise was starting to get impatient, her friend began to smile. Then the smile turned to a chuckle.
“Okay, do you want to let me in on the joke?” Elise asked. “What’s so funny?”
C.C. looked up from the pages she held and laughed out loud.
“C.C.! What?”
“Cake and pie, baby!”
Elise gaped at her friend. “You’ve figured it out? Seriously? That fast?”
C.C. nodded. “Easy peasy, girlfriend. This is definitely a number cipher. The military has used these kinds of codes for decades.”
Elise felt an adrenaline surge and couldn’t contain her excitement. “So you can read it?”
“Well, that’s the tricky part. You have to know the template, but basically, it looks like one of the simpler ones. In other words, he used a specific number for each letter of the alphabet. One for A, two for B, and so on. Lots of newspapers print ones where each letter stands for another letter, so this is kind of like that.”
“Oh my God! You, my friend, are a genius.”
“Yes … I know,” C.C. said and patted her short bob.
“Well, what does it say?”
Her friend blew out a breath. “Unfortunately, that’s going to take some time.”
Elise grinned. “Then we’d better get busy.”
Twenty
It took several hours—plus a myriad of snacks and too many diet sodas to count—but Elise and C.C. slowly made headway into deciphering Edmond’s journal notes.
“Seriously, girl, it’s so past my bedtime,” C.C. complained, flopping back onto the carpet and rubbing her eyes. “We’ve been at this for hours, and I have to work in the morning. Are we going to pack it in anytime soon? Because I gotta tell you, I think my eyeballs are starting to melt.”
“I know, mine too,” Elise agreed. “I just want to get through this next section.”
“El! I’m tired!”
“Okay, okay, but listen to this,” she said and read from the section she’d just decoded. “Now, you know how furious Uncle Edmond was when Daddy left the vineyard to Mom, but when she wouldn’t cave to his demands to give him the south quadrant, it sounds like he went really berserk. That’s when he agreed to steal my notes on the hybridization process for Henry Kohler—which, I might add, Henry lied about when we were there the other day.”
“Yeah, but you already figured that, right?”
“Uh-huh. But he also talks about Carlos. Edmond wrote here that Henry was holding something over Carlos’s head to make him help.” Elise read a bit more. “Oh my! He has some really nasty things to say about Henry.”
“Does it say what Henry had on Carlos to make him help with the theft?”
“No, but that must have been what Carlos was about to tell us earlier.”
C.C. sat up. “Wait—earlier? What are you talking about?”
“I told you. It was this afternoon when we went out to the vineyard so Jackson could search Carlos’s truck.” Elise glanced up from her notes, watching the cat jump down from his perch in the Papa-san chair and saunter over to rub against C.C.’s arm. “Carlos kept apologizing to Ross about coming forward. Just before Darrell found the wallet, Carlos said that he wouldn’t have squealed on Ross, but that he’d had no choice.”
“What did he mean by that?”
Elise nodded and jabbed her finger in C.C.’s direction. “That’s what I asked him, and he started to tell me, too, but then that damn Darrell hollered that he’d found the wallet, and Carlos didn’t finish. All he got out was I had to protect before he knocked me and Ross out of the way and ran off. I got the impression he felt he needed to protect someone.”
“You think it was Sancia?”
Elise shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Wow. Not only murder, mayhem, and intrigue, but possibly blackmail as well? This just gets crazier by the minute.”
Elise did a bit more decoding. “He says the three of them met frequently down by the river in the evenings but alludes to the possibility of others being involved in the scheme.”
“Does he say who or give initials?”
“No, but he writes here, I wonder who’s really pulling the strings for this deal because it’s definitely not HK.”
“Sounds like he didn’t actually know who else was involved.”
Elise put down her pages and stretched. She was starting to get a kink in her neck from hunching over, and like her friend, was going to need to sleep soon. “One of the other people could have been Denny Rodriguez. His initials are in here all over the place.”
“Denny?” C.C. wrinkled her nose and made a comical gagging sound. “That guy is the creepiest, if you ask me. Makes my skin crawl. But okay, what would be his motive for joining Henry’s espionage party? I mean, other than the fact that it’s sneaky and illegal. I can’t see the guy giving a damn about your hybridization process—no offense.”
“None taken.” Elise shook her head then shrugged. “Yea
h, it’s a pretty thin theory. I don’t think he gives much thought to anything other than drugs and his gambling business.”
“Hey, how about Pam Dawson? Do you think she might have had anything to do with this?”
Elise yawned and leaned back against the sofa. “I don’t know. Our Pammie is crazy as a loon, that’s for sure. She would fit right into this mess, but she’s not mentioned much in the journal so far.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. She’s been running the Pit for how long now; she’s certainly smart enough to be calling some of the shots.”
“True.”
“And, not to speak ill of the dead, but your uncle was dumb enough not to have a clue about it.”
“Unfortunately, also true.”
“Plus, you said yourself that you caught Pam and Henry together at her restaurant, and then later at your uncle’s funeral, they were together again. Could be more going on there than just a little comfort, you know?”
“Good point.” Elise thought about it for a moment then frowned. “Still, she was pretty rabid about wanting to know where the money she’d lent Uncle Edmond had gone. Although, like you said, she’s wily—could have been just an act.”
C.C. rubbed her eyes again. “All I know for sure is that I’m done for tonight.” Pulling her sandals out from beneath the coffee table under Chunk’s watchful eye, C.C. slipped them on and gathered her belongings. “I’d love to stay and help you figure this out, but I gotta get home.”
“Yeah, I need to go to bed too. Thanks for your help, my friend. I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you.”
She walked C.C. to the door and watched her friend head down the stairs.
“Ciao, darlin’,” C.C. said over her shoulder. “Call me tomorrow.”
“Will do.”
Elise closed the door then turned and leaned against it. Glancing toward the living room, she thought about what they’d learned tonight—and how much more there was to uncover. Knowing she was probably too tired to make much headway, she figured the smart thing would be to give up and turn in—come back to it when she was fresh. Still, she desperately wanted to dig out more of the secrets the journal pages had to offer.
After a short debate with herself, she decided to work another thirty minutes and then go to bed. She would take the entire mess with her to the vineyard and work on it in the morning as well. Before long, she’d have the entire thing deciphered—and hopefully the killer revealed.
Adding to what she could learn from the journal, having a sit-down with Sancia Madera sometime in the next day or so was also a priority. Although with Carlos taken into custody, she’d have to be careful in her approach with the woman. Sancia would probably be a wreck and reluctant to talk, but Elise had a feeling she knew a whole lot more than any of them suspected.
Looking down at Chunk—who looked up at her and yawned—she nodded. “I know, buddy, but it’ll only be another thirty minutes or so. I promise.”
Sitting down on the carpet, she scooted up to the coffee table and got to work.
Running. She was in the south quadrant of the vineyard and racing between rows where grapes hung thick on her new hybrid vines. Out of breath, Elise caught a glimpse of Uncle Edmond at the far end of her row and struggled to catch up. But no matter how fast she ran, she couldn’t seem to close the distance.
“Uncle Edmond! Wait up. I need to talk to you about your notebook!”
He turned and smiled, then disappeared around the end of the row.
That’s when she heard the music. Celtic music to be exact. Wait—that was her cell phone ring tone. But where was her phone?
Distracted and patting her pockets in search of it, she tripped and began to fall in slow motion …
And woke up with a start—smacking the side of her forehead on the coffee table as she tried to sit up too quickly.
“Ouch!” she cried and collapsed back down on the carpet.
Rubbing the tender spot above her right eye, she took stock of her whereabouts. She was in her living room, on her back with her head halfway underneath the table. Surrounded by journal papers, she’d obviously fallen asleep there last night while working.
So much for thirty minutes and then to bed.
Turning her head, she came nose to nose with the fat cat. “What are you looking at, you big lump? Did you sleep under here, too?”
When he just continued to stare at her with an inscrutable look, she decided she’d better get up and answer her phone, which was still ringing.
Rolling over and being very careful not to bang her head again, she crawled over to her purse and pulled out her phone. “Hello?”
“Elise, where the hell are you, and why aren’t you here yet?” The annoyance in her brother’s voice grated on her nerves. She wasn’t completely awake yet and didn’t appreciate his tone in the least.
“I’m at home, Ross. Therefore, it would stand to reason that I’m not there yet because I’m here!”
“Very funny, smart-ass. Seriously, do you know what time it is?”
“Since I fell asleep on the living room floor last night and your call just woke me, that would be a no. But I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
She heard his beleaguered sigh on the other end of the line.
“It’s half past eleven, El. We were supposed to meet here at nine to discuss Carlos’s situation, or did you forget?” There was a brief pause before he asked, “And why did you sleep on your living room floor?”
“I was doing some research into— Never mind. Look, I’m sorry I’m late. Give me an hour, and I’ll see you then.”
She didn’t wait for his response, hanging up before he could haggle over time. Ross was the punctual one in the family. Elise thought his obsession with time often bordered on OCD, but Ross was Ross. Of course, she couldn’t really point fingers. She had issues of her own, like being almost incapable of punctuality in any form.
Scraping the journal pages together, she dropped them into her briefcase and headed into the bathroom to shower. She’d better get it together and get out to the vineyard before her dear brother had a complete meltdown.
Fifty-five minutes later, she was feeling quite pleased with herself as she guided her sports car through the gates at River Bend. Since she was running so late, she didn’t bother to stop at the residence as she normally would. Instead, she drove directly to her brother’s home, bypassing the greenhouse as well.
“It’s about damn time,” Ross said when he met her at the door. “I was about to talk to Sancia without you.”
She gave him a dirty look as she crossed the threshold. “Dude, chill out. Is there any news? Any new developments?”
“No. Haven’t heard a peep yet. Lyle Ingram met Carlos at the station yesterday and was going to be there when he was interviewed first thing this morning.”
“Then what’s the rush? Relax. Sancia’s husband has just been arrested in connection with a murder; the last thing she needs right now is you bouncing off the walls like a damn pinball.”
“You’re a tad surly today considering you slept until almost noon. Were you out of diet soda? We’ve got some in the fridge if it will improve your mood.”
“Ha, ha. You’re killing me here.” She wasn’t about to tell him that he was spot on. In her rush to get to the vineyard, she’d missed her morning quota of caffeine and she was feeling it. It was all she could do not to whimper.
“For your information, Caro just went to get Sancia. They have a pretty close relationship, and she thought it would be a good idea to provide some support while we talk to her.”
“Have you said anything to Mom or Maddy?”
“No. They know just the basics about what happened with Carlos, but I didn’t tell either of them that we were going to talk with Sancia. Thought we’d see what we could find out first.”
Elis
e smiled and patted his cheek. “Such a good boy.”
“Bite me,” he said with a chuckle.
“You know, for a family that prides itself on honesty and full disclosure,” she began as she followed him into the living room. “A few of us have been decidedly sneaky and tight-lipped lately.”
He stopped in the middle of the room and turned to her. “If that’s a crack about me not telling anyone about my meeting with Uncle Edmond, I could point out that you’ve held onto a few things yourself. The whole Stuart debacle—the job offer and possible move to Dallas?”
“Hey, I said a few of us, didn’t I? Don’t be so defensive.”
She thought about the journal pages in her briefcase, and guilt sprang to life in her head. Though Jackson and C.C. knew about the journal, it was still another thing she hadn’t told anyone in the family about yet. Maybe she should tell Ross now, get it out in the open.
“Ross, there’s something I’ve been meaning to—”
She didn’t get any further as Caroline entered the room with a miserable-looking Sancia. All thoughts of the journal went out of her mind as she took in Sancia’s splotchy face and puffy eyes. It was obvious she’d been crying, and Elise’s heart hurt for the woman. But who could blame her? Elise felt another pang of guilt about the conversation they were about to have. It wouldn’t be easy, that was for sure.
“Come on over here and have a seat on the sofa, Sancia,” Caroline said with a gentle tone. “Can I get you anything? Something to drink?”
Sancia Madera dabbed at her eyes as fresh tears began to fall. “Maybe some water, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Caroline smiled at the woman. “It’s no trouble at all. I’ll be right back.”
Sancia watched Caroline leave the room and wept softly.
“Sancia, I’m so sorry for what’s happened,” Elise said. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it, and Carlos will be home before you know it.”