“No. He told me.”
Sam stood up. Roxy popped up as well. “All right, Stan. As long as I never see you again, we can forget this meeting.”
Stan stood slowly and inched his way toward the hall, eyeing Roxy. Suddenly, he turned and rushed out the door.
“Good girl,” Sam said enthusiastically, rubbing Roxy’s head. “That’s my good girl. Someone deserves a treat.”
Amy followed Sam into the kitchen where he kept the dog treats.
“So Brent used someone in his parents’ network to get information on where I was working. That had to be after our encounter at the doctor’s office because I hadn’t started working yet—”
“What encounter?”
Amy told the story, a brief version. “That’s how I learned he was telling everyone I got an illegal abortion.”
“I can just picture our petite Raksha standing up to Brent and giving him hell. I would have liked to have been there just for that moment.”
“It was delicious, but I was about to pass out from fear at the time. I couldn’t fully appreciate it.” She sat at the kitchen table. “Anyway, Brent didn’t have a problem using the family network to find my place of work, but after that he looked for a lowlife like Stanley to follow me.”
“Yes, I found the little tidbit about not telling his parents very interesting.”
“He doesn’t want his parents to know he screwed up, that this issue, whatever it is, which was supposed to be long buried, has surfaced and become a threat.”
Sam nodded. “And if he could get his hands on the notebook and destroy it, the problem would be solved, his parents none the wiser.”
Amy grinned. “But that’s not going to happen.” She pulled the notebook and the copies out of her purse. “We need to distribute these copies as soon as possible.”
Sam took two and disappeared for a few minutes. He returned with an addressed envelope.
“I put one in my fire safe.” He held up an envelope. “I’m going to send this one to an ex-girlfriend.”
Amy raised her eyebrows. “An ex-girlfriend?”
“Linda. She’s been a great long-distance friend since I returned to the land of the living and went back to school.” He put his hands up defensively as he sat down. “Nothing more. We never really clicked in the physical department. She lives in Jersey now. We just talk on the phone on a rare occasion. I can trust her to hang on to this for me. Another copy safe, somewhere unexpected.”
“Sounds good.” Amy nodded. A flicker of jealousy had emerged and dispersed. “I’ll take the original to the Patels for their safe-deposit box. Then we each have a loose copy to work with.”
“I want to read it in the original booklet form first,” Sam said.
“Oh, here’s an idea. We can cut the copies out. Fashion them into booklets. Do you have tape?”
Sam looked at her incredulously. “Who doesn’t have tape?”
“I don’t know,” Amy retorted. “I was just asking.”
He grinned. “It’s a good idea. There may be something in the placement of the pages. Are you ready?”
“Absolutely.”
Amy leaned in as Sam slowly opened the cover.
The very first page was simple, a rudimentary sketch of a crosshair.
“Oh my God,” Amy shouted. “This is a murder.”
“Relax. It’s also a circle and a plus sign.”
“Is there some mathematical significance to a circle and a plus sign?” Amy asked hopefully.
“Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t jump to conclusions just yet.”
“A murder would explain the need to send her far away and shut her up.”
Sam frowned ever so slightly. Amy could tell he doubted his own advice about not jumping to conclusions. “It could also be a globe, an indication of position.”
“So she’s somewhere along the equator? In Ecuador… or Nigeria perhaps?”
“Possibly.”
He flipped a page. On the left there was a picture of a well. On the right, a poem.
“A well, Sam. People can throw bodies into wells.”
“Really, Amy? Calm down.”
“You have to consider the possibility.”
“Duly noted. May I read the poem?”
“Of course.” Amy settled down and listened to the odd pairings.
a pot of gold
has taken my tongue
to the realm of Pat
where I’m now from
your silver hides
in his peaceful spring
together at last
it will us bring
as I change
moons will grow
eternal love
I now know
“Weird, but clearly full of clues,” Sam muttered.
“The first one is obvious. They paid her for her silence. She would assume you didn’t know that if she’d only just disappeared. You wouldn’t know about the Richardsons.”
“Something keeps bugging me,” Sam said, distracted and frustrated. “She assumed I would find this and start searching for her. But how in the hell did she expect me to find this thing lodged between the boards of her birdhouse?”
“Did she leave a card with the birdhouse?”
“She left no notes, no messages, nothing.”
“It was the last birdhouse she made, right?”
“That’s it,” he shouted. “Thank you, Amy. That’s it. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.”
“What?”
“She left the Build Your Own Birdhouse book on the desk. It was the only book there. Didn’t faze me because I knew she had just finished the clover-covered one. It seemed only natural that the book was still out. Everything else was in the drawers.” He put his head in his hand. “As a matter of fact, it was too tidy. The only thing on the desk was the book and her pencil holder. No scattering of paperwork. Her desk never looked that neat. Why didn’t I notice that?”
“Don’t beat yourself up. When a girl disappears, people are thinking abduction or runaway, not cryptic clues in a birdhouse.”
He turned to Amy and looked her in the eyes, years of heartache etched in his own. “If I were thinking straight, I would have looked more diligently for clues. Not just clues she might purposely leave behind, but crime scene clues, and clues like the ridiculously clean desk.”
Amy touched his hand. “You weren’t thinking straight, Sam. Be gentle with yourself. Let’s focus on what we have here and we may find her yet.”
“Right. The notebook.” He reread the poem silently.
Amy said the first line aloud. “A pot of gold has taken my tongue. We agree that this is about the hush money?”
“Agreed.”
“To the realm of Pat where I’m now from.” She shook her head. “Brent is such an idiot. If he were smart, he would have taken the notebook and destroyed it right then. Emma wouldn’t have been the wiser. The use of where I’m now from is clearly an attempt to tell you where she was going.”
“That seems logical. Pat is the only thing capitalized, so it’s probably a name.”
“Realm means kingdom but also, how do you say it, area of specialty?”
“Yes, so Pat is either a leader or a specialist of some sort.” He put a finger on his chin. “Realm could also mean social class, Amy. If you stretch it.”
“As in ‘Amy is not from the Richardsons’ realm’?”
“If you stretch it.”
“And maybe this Pat is the person who was murdered. Then the realm would be the land of the dead.” She pointed to the well on the left page. “They threw Pat in a well. I’m telling you.”
Sam’s face went white. “If the realm is the land of the dead, that means they killed Emma too,” he said solemnly.
Amy looked at the words where I’m now from and realized the implications. She wished she’d kept her macabre ideas to herself. On the other hand, Emma’s death could be a real possibility. Sam’s spiritual epiphany was most likely the delusi
on of a loving brother grasping at straws.
He shrugged, suddenly unconcerned. “I don’t believe she’s dead. I already told you.”
“Okay. I understand.”
“How could she write a poem about being dead before she was dead? That’s silly.”
Unless she knew the end was near. “You’re right, Sam. I’m sorry.”
He moved on. “Your silver hides in his peaceful spring.”
“That one is very interesting,” Amy said. “Silver, not gold like in the first line… but it could still refer to the general concept of money.”
“Money in the mattress springs?” Sam proposed.
Amy chuckled. “Too cliché. His might refer to Pat. And I have to say it, peaceful can mean death—”
“All right! I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Or perhaps, whatever the secret is, it happened in the spring.”
“Or in the winter which is volatile. In the spring, all is quiet again, peaceful. The deed is done. The secret is safe.”
“Except Emma knows the secret.”
Sam nodded. “And that’s a problem.”
Amy took a turn and read the next passage. “Together at last it will us bring.”
Sam looked very pleased. “Now that makes it clear Amy isn’t dead.”
“How?”
“She wouldn’t want to draw me to the realm of the dead, to be together in death.”
Unless she’s waiting for you there, Amy thought but had the sense not to say aloud.
Sam continued. “She definitely wants me to follow the clues to find her. But why didn’t she make the clues easier?”
“She had to get them by Brent. Although I wish I could’ve consulted with her at the time. The boy’s not all that bright. A little less ambiguity would have sufficed.”
“She couldn’t just come out and say, ‘They shot an important guy named Pat and dumped him in a well.’”
“Important guy. Realm. Good, Sam. People like the Richardsons live in their little kingdoms, one bigwig ready to dethrone the other. We could easily search the names of Colorado’s most influential persons for the name Pat, Patrick… Patricia even.”
“Wouldn’t we know of the murder of a Colorado bigwig?”
“Maybe. Unless people assumed he went on an extended vacation.”
“Permanent vacation.”
“Or there’s a cover-up that involves the press,” Amy said.
“Now we’re talking conspiracies?”
“Almost every unsolved murder is a conspiracy.”
Sam grimaced. “How do you come up with that?”
“The odds of a person committing a murder that absolutely no other human knows about are low. Whenever there are two or more people who know something and agree to keep it quiet, you have a conspiracy. That’s the dictionary definition. Look it up.”
“Okay, I get it.”
“Besides, I wouldn’t put it past the Richardsons to be involved in a huge conspiracy involving threats and money. The whole nine yards. Politicians, reporters, anyone can be bought.”
“All right then. We’ll look into missing Patricks and Patricias. Shouldn’t be that difficult. Then again, they are not necessarily from Colorado. Could be anyone across the globe who interfered with something the Richardsons were up to.”
“Something else illegal,” Amy whispered. “Something big, worth murdering for.”
“All right. Let’s keep that in mind. Next verse. As I change moons will grow.”
“Not sure about this one. Aging? Passing of time?”
“Yes. She may be indicating it will take many months to find her.” Sam put his head in his hand. “It would have been months. Now it’s years.”
“Sorry. But it’s a good guess. She may have anticipated it would take several months for her to properly relocate. Maybe she traveled to several spots to hide her trail.”
“It makes a lot of sense. If she wanted to disappear completely, it would take some effort. She couldn’t just move to Colorado Springs and call it a day.”
“Wait a minute,” Amy said. “Springs, a well. Don’t discount that entirely. There are probably dozens of cities with the word Springs in them. Not all of them are in Colorado. It would tie in both the peaceful spring and the well drawing. A well is a spring.”
“Good point. And Emma could be my silver. She is someone valuable to me. She is hiding in a spring, or a place called spring.”
Amy smiled. “Let’s look at the last one. Eternal love I now know. That is about as basic as it gets. She had a lover, someone helping her.”
“Remember she was a spiritual person. God is also eternal love.”
“Oh,” Amy cried. “That gives credence to your old nunnery theory.”
“It does. And I find that more plausible than a lover, frankly.”
No guy wants to picture his sister in bed with a boy, but you can let this go for now, Amy. She touched his shoulder. “We’re getting somewhere. Lots of possibilities to explore.”
“I agree.” He flipped to the next page.
On the left an intricate woven pattern and on the right a crescent moon and a math problem.
“This is interesting,” Sam said. “Eight times ten plus one. Eighty-one divided by the square root of eighty-one. That’s nine.”
Amy wasn’t listening. She was pointing at the picture on the left. “I know this. I just saw this.” She disappeared for a moment and returned with the Irish folklore book. “Look.” She pointed to an identical drawing in the book. “It’s a trinity knot, a Celtic symbol that also means eternity.”
Sam examined the pictures and read a passage out of the book. “Christians believe it represents the Holy Trinity.”
“Another religious reference.”
“We’re getting closer,” Sam said. “The math problem translated to nine. But I also find it intriguing that the number eighty-one appears twice as you solve the problem. Once on top when you finish the top line. And once on the bottom before you take the square root.”
“The moon could mean month. September? Maybe the crime happened in September.”
“Or she wanted me to meet her in September.”
“During a crescent moon. Waning I think. Give me a second.” When Amy walked back into the kitchen, she had her nose in the Astronomy book. “Yes, crescent on the left means waning. We can look up the approximate date of the waning crescent moon in September of the year she disappeared.”
“But if the moon is waning, it is not growing. See the poem. Moons will grow. Maybe we’re supposed to flip the moon to a waxing crescent.”
“That’s getting complicated.”
“This whole thing is complicated,” Sam cried in despair.
“Another possibility is for you to meet her nine months after the day she disappeared… Maybe nine months during a waxing or waning moon. When did she disappear?”
“June.” He thought about the date for a moment. “Oh my God. Fifteen years ago today actually.”
Amy did a quick calculation. “June plus nine months is March. Could also refer to the first day of spring. The spring reference. Let me look something up on your computer.”
“This is getting too complicated.” Sam walked into the living room and collapsed on the couch. Roxy followed at his heels, her tail wagging. “Time for a walk, girl?” Sam sighed. “I’m sure ready for a walk.”
“Let me look this up and I’ll join you.”
Amy caught up with Sam and Roxy as he was walking out the door. She grinned. “Get this. There was a waxing crescent moon on the first day of spring the year after Emma disappeared.”
Sam groaned. “It’s all too much, Amy. It could be anything.”
“That’s why we have to see where the clues overlap. If it was as easy as writing a poem, she could have skipped all the drawings. Spring in the poem, first day of spring. Growing moon. Those overlap.”
They walked into the park. Sam frowned and rubbed his head. “I feel like it should be simpler.�
��
“All the spring and well references overlap. That’s simple.”
“I guess.” Sam stopped abruptly and asked Roxy to lie down. She complied. A man hurried by them.
“Roxy didn’t like him either?”
“Nope.”
“Any idea why?”
“She’s a good judge of character.”
Amy looked at the man’s retreating form. “Should we be worried he’s one of the Richardsons’ minions?”
“I doubt it. We’ve seen the quality of persons Brent engages. And as far as we can gather at this moment, his parents are totally unaware of what we’re up to.”
“Still makes me nervous.”
“Roxy will take care of you.” He bent over and patted her on the side of her flank, his dark cloud finally dissipating. “Let’s get back home, girl.”
They walked in silence.
“There’s one more picture in the notebook, I believe,” Sam said.
“Oh?”
“Might as well add it to the growing pile of clues.”
They sat down at the table and looked at the final clue. Simple and almost disappointing. It was just a three-leaf clover.
They stared at it, almost overwhelmed by its simplicity after all the other clues.
“A patch of clover grows over the grave of Pat?” Amy suggested.
Sam sat back and gazed at the ceiling. “The birdhouse,” he mumbled. “We should have taken apart the whole thing. It was covered with a clover pattern. Maybe more clues.”
“Let’s go to your folks’ house.”
“It’s probably already back in the tree.”
“I doubt there are any nesters in it yet.”
“I can’t go back there now, especially after realizing it’s the fifteen-year anniversary of Emma’s disappearance. I don’t know if my mom takes note of that. As sheltered as she tries to appear, I’m sure that date is etched into her mind.”
“That’s okay,” Amy said. “It seems too circular anyway. A book of clues hidden in a birdhouse referring you back to the birdhouse to look for more clues.”
“I wouldn’t doubt any possibility at this point.”
Amy jumped up. “I know.” She grabbed the Ireland book again and flipped through its pages. “The three-leaf clover also symbolizes the Trinity. It could be just an echo of the trinity knot.”
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