The Codebook Murders

by Leslie Nagel

  “Their mistake. You’re a critical part of the team here,” she gushed. “This old building would crumble without you.”

  “Got that right. I oversee the custodial staff for the whole district. Spent the last two days overseein’ repairs.” He perched his broad backside on the desk and waved a gnarled hand as he warmed to his theme. “Coupla classrooms here and at Harman got flooded when the windows broke. Ruined some equipment, and the carpets need to be dried out or replaced. We’ll be patchin’ and paintin’ right up till the start of school at this rate, and of course we still got all the regular summer maintenance to get done. Been on my feet nonstop. Not enough hours in the day, especially for what I’m paid.”

  For someone so pressed for time, he seemed more than willing to take an unscheduled break, she thought. As if he’d read her mind, he glanced at the wall clock, and she cast about for something to say. “You’ve, ah, been working with your staff since the storm?”

  “Put in ten hours yesterday,” he grumbled. “Have to keep an eye on the younger men, check on ’em every hour or so, or they’d spend all day foolin’ on their damned phones. Worked straight through lunch runnin’ my crew, not that anybody cares.”

  This gave her pause. If he’d truly been supervising others all day, Vance probably wouldn’t have had time to execute a daring daylight break-in of her home. On the other hand, driving around the school district from building to building was hardly a waterproof alibi. When he checked the clock again, she decided to cut to the chase.

  “Speaking of our big rescue, there was something in that backpack I found in the tunnel. A journal belonging to Regan Fletcher. Do you remember her?”

  Vance straightened abruptly, that unidentified emotion returning, darkening his face and causing the veins in his neck to bulge. “What you want to go pokin’ into that old mess for? Girl’s dead.” And good riddance, his tone seemed to imply. He stood, picked up the grips, and turned toward the ladder.

  “Yes, she’s dead.” Charley took a deep breath. “She was murdered, and you lied to the police. Regan didn’t dump trash in the cafeteria that day. You and she argued about something else.”

  She stated it with total confidence, and immediately knew Marc had guessed rightly. Vance whirled to face her, his mouth tight. The silence stretched. In his rain slicker, hunched over in the tunnel, nothing visible but his lined and weathered face, he’d seemed smaller and, well, elderly. Now Charley could see that Merritt Vance was still a big man, well muscled, with huge work-roughened hands. He held the heavy grips in his left hand and began smacking them into his right palm. They were eye to eye, putting him at about five foot ten. She lifted her chin and stood her ground.

  Then he grinned, a baring of crooked and discolored teeth that didn’t reach his beady eyes. “What the hell does it matter anymore? I’m retiring in December. Besides, it ain’t the deal it once was.”

  He walked to the open window and pointed down. After a moment’s hesitation she moved to stand beside him, careful to keep some distance between them. Muggy air that did nothing to cool her perspiring face moved sluggishly past broken glass. Directly across, a row of darkened windows in a red brick façade stared blankly back at her, the bulk of the school cutting off her view of the surrounding neighborhood. Below her she could see a one-story roof dotted with skylights.

  “Forty years ago that down there was one of two courtyards, open to the sky. The original building was laid out in a figure eight. Ten years ago, when they wanted more space, they roofed in both of ’em and added more classrooms and offices.”

  “I remember,” Charley murmured. “They started construction right after we graduated. I don’t remember ever going into either courtyard.”

  “They wasn’t meant to be got into,” Vance said. “They was just big holes so rooms and halls would have windows and some daylight, back when air-conditioning and electricity weren’t easy to come by. Both of ’em was just dirt and weeds, with only one door apiece. That one”—Vance cocked his thumb—“opened from a science room. Old Ferguson the biology teacher had me build him some raised planters. He filled ’em with dirt and had his students do experiments out there with vegetables, spliced some trees, tried his hand at hydroponics. Always left me to clean up the mess. When he retired, all that stopped. But that was what gave me the idea.”

  “Idea for what?”

  Vance grinned again. “The other courtyard. That one was mine. Only entrance was through a supply closet. Because of where the locker rooms ran, the only windows were off hallways on two sides. Up above was the basketball grandstand, so there weren’t no way to see down into it, neither. I planted yews and ornamental grasses around the edge. That shit grew six feet high and more, totally hid the middle.”

  “What for? What did you do out there?”

  “Grew pot.” He chuckled as her mouth dropped open. “Personal use only, of course. Never sold to any of the kids—I’m not a monster.”

  Charley pictured the courtyard, imagined illegal drugs growing just beyond the windows where students walked every day. Then it clicked. “Regan found out,” she guessed. “She threatened to tell. That’s what you were arguing about that day.”

  The grin disappeared. “That girl, everyone thought she was the be-all and end-all. A favorite with the teachers, sweet as molasses when she wanted somethin’. Unless you said no. Then things got ugly.” He smacked the grips against his palm again.

  “What did Regan want?” Charley moved a step away from the open window so that Vance was no longer between her and the door.

  “A master key to the building, and another one to student lockers.”

  “Keys.” At some level, Charley had known it would be something like this. “Did you give them to her?”

  Vance snorted. “ ’Course I did. This was 1978. Drugs inside a school? I’d have done more than lose a great job.” Smack went the grips. “I’d have gone to jail. Hard time. Rotting in a cell till I was an old man.” Smack. “Not like I could’ve destroyed the evidence, though I cleaned out what I could pretty damned quick after that. They used dogs to sniff drugs in schools back then, same as now, and that yard surely reeked of it.”

  Charley turned over this new information about Regan in her mind. Her mental picture of the dead girl was evolving, and not for the better. “Do you know why she wanted the keys?”

  “No idea.” Smack. “She used ’em, though. I caught her in here late at night a few times.”

  Charley came to attention. “You did? Where, exactly, did you see her?”

  “Coming out of the library once, the main office twice.”

  “The library?” Her mind immediately went to Berkeley Dye’s doodle of a book. A library book?

  “Another time I’m pretty sure she’d been down in that tunnel,” he continued. “The lights were on in the ticket office, and she hadn’t closed the hatch all the way. Anybody else found it like that, I’d have got the blame. You say you found her journal down there?” He moved toward her. “Does it say anythin’ about…our arrangement?”

  She took a step toward the hallway, maintaining her distance. “I don’t know. It’s in code.”

  That pulled him up short. “Code? What for?”

  “Well, I assume to keep anyone else from reading it.”

  He snorted again. “Damn kids. Well, like I said, don’t none of it matter now. Still, if she did it to me, she might’ve been screwin’ over other people, too. Not a nice girl, that Regan, no sirree. Might be all sorts of dirt in that book of hers.”

  Charley regarded him with no little degree of surprise. This was an insightful comment, and she wondered if she’d underestimated Vance. Perhaps everyone had, all these years.

  “Were you there that night?” As she asked this final, critical question, she watched his eyes, wondering if she’d know whether he lied. “At the big football game when Regan went
missing?”

  Vance stared at her for long seconds before giving an exaggerated shrug. “That was my job, wasn’t it?” he growled. “I watched the first half, then I locked the ticket booth and headed across Schantz to do a sweep of the school.” Smack went the grips. “Chased a pack of vandals out. Little bastards. Had to bring in a foundry specialist from Cleveland to repair the damage. Cost a fortune.” He took another step toward her. “Where’s that journal, missy? It’s school property.” Smack. “You need to give it back.”

  “There you are, Charlotte, dear!” Heddy Jones stood in the doorway, the determined glint in her light green eyes belying her pleasant tone. Vance retreated a step as she advanced with a flutter of skirts and sparkly scarves. “The citizens’ inspection tour of the storm damage is moving on. We mustn’t keep the superintendent waiting!” Heddy glanced pointedly at the broken window, then at Vance. “I’m sure this person would like to get back to work.”

  Charley needed no further encouragement. Without another word, she stepped through the door and started down the hall. Heddy followed, and when they had rounded the turn and reached the steps, Charley started giggling.

  “ ‘Citizens’ inspection tour’?”

  “I thought a nice, imaginary crowd might be helpful. It sounded as if things were getting a teensy bit out of hand. Let’s keep moving, shall we?” Heddy started down.

  “How much of that did you hear?” Charley asked. “Actually…” She laid a hand on Heddy’s arm. “Thank you. I should have started with that. I had it under control, but—thanks.”

  “You are most welcome. No man left behind, and so on,” Heddy said airily. “That’s what Vanessa said when she insisted I return to provide backup. Very exciting. As to what I heard, I should say Mr. Vance is quite capable of bashing in a young girl’s skull with a stone. And despite the recent legalization of marijuana—long overdue, in my opinion—his risk of imprisonment forty years ago would have been a very sound motive for murder. Now, let me see. Was it left or right?”

  Charley led the way along a short, sloping corridor. They turned down a connecting hallway and headed up a set of wide, shallow stairs that led to the Senior Hall. This was where the upper-grade lockers and classrooms were located, in addition to the main administrative offices, trophy cases, and the school’s front entrance. At the far end a set of double doors accessed the backstage area of the auditorium.

  Not long ago this hall had also been the scene of a gruesome murder, the third victim in the Book Club Murders case and Charley’s first crime scene. She hadn’t returned to this spot since that night. She squared her shoulders and took the remaining steps two at a time, Heddy following at a more sedate pace.

  Charley reached the top step and halted. Sunlight streamed through the glass panes of six heavy wooden doors, the formal entrance to the building. This was how she remembered it from her own time as a student. The high-ceilinged space was flooded with light, unlike her last visit—was it just eight months ago? Then it had been nighttime, and the Decades Class Reunion had been in full swing, several hundred people eating, drinking, and dancing in the two gymnasiums downstairs, while up here a killer had stalked and killed a member of the Agathas Book Club: a wife and mother; a lover of books, parties, and good food; a friend.

  Charley paced down the hall, observing its carved walnut wainscoting, rows of silent lockers, and closed doors. The tile floor gleamed from a recent polishing. Composite class photos lined the walls, generations of students who had ruled this school in their day before moving on to, presumably, bigger and better things. She stopped beneath the one from her senior year.

  “Carpenter and Cartolano,” she announced. She and Frankie beamed from the second row, hair in those massive fluffs popular ten years ago, their pictures surrounded by the faces of classmates she hadn’t seen since graduation.

  Heddy smiled fondly. “You two girls.” Four frames down, Marcus Trenault’s photo was centered with three others, an honor reserved for class officers, VICE PRESIDENT in flowing script under his name. “Nice mullet.”

  “I’m telling him you said that,” Charley teased.

  “Pssst, get a move on!”

  Frankie and Vanessa stood at the far end of the hall, beckoning. As Charley hurried past the spot where the body had been found, she wondered briefly whether any of the current students knew what had happened there. Frankie met her with a sympathetic glance and a swift hug. As ever, Charley thought as she returned the hug, her best friend knew exactly what she needed.

  Vanessa stood before the intricately carved double doors that led to the backstage area. Dismissal was a few minutes away, and the muffled sound of voices suddenly spiked in volume.

  “Where have you been? It’s almost one o’clock. This place is blowing my mind, by the way.” She pointed. “A drinking fountain made of Rookwood tiles? My old high school looks like a penitentiary.”

  “Never mind that.” Frankie skipped over to a nearby door with the words GUIDANCE OFFICE on a brass plaque. She tapped the glass. “A book with a four-number title? What if it’s a yearbook?”

  The women stared at one another. “Frankie,” Charley said at last, “you are brilliant.”

  “If you’re right,” Heddy asked, “which one was Mr. Dye doodling about?”

  “Probably one from the years Regan and Carter were at school here. They used to keep a complete set in this office, going back to the twenties.” Charley rattled the locked door, then cupped her hands on the glass and peered inside. “Can we get in here?”

  Vanessa inquired, “Can’t you ask your janitor pal?”

  “About that.” Charley related all she’d learned from Merritt Vance. Heddy described her own contributions to the encounter just as a group of students emerged from the far stairwell.

  “Charley?” They all turned to see PJ sprinting down the hall. “Guess what? I think I figured out what the code is!”

  Charley cringed as his words attracted the attention of several students. The auditorium doors opened and a dozen teenagers streamed out, chattering excitedly. Katie waved and pushed her way through the throng.

  “We’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I’m Titania!” she squealed. “One performance only, next Friday afternoon, the last day of the summer term. Will you come?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Charley promised. “It’s my birthday, but the party’s not until that evening.” There was no sign of Kendall yet, but several animated voices floated out to them from the auditorium, a few stragglers and, presumably, their teacher. She turned to PJ, who was trying very hard not to stare at Katie. “What’ve you got? And please, keep your voice down. I don’t think we need to announce this to the entire school.”

  “Huh?” PJ blinked as he returned from a distant planet. “Oh, right. Sorry, I was just so psyched, because I’m pretty sure the code is a book cipher! Book ciphers work by replacing words in the plaintext of a message with the location of words from the book being used as the book key. It uses page numbers and word counts on the given page. See?” He tapped his phone and held it up so they could all see the displayed image.

  42/216 11/109 88/6 215/5

  “What you’re looking at,” he began, “is a four-word sentence. It starts with the two hundred sixteenth word found on page forty-two of the book key. The second word is the one hundred ninth word on page eleven, and so on. Get it?” When everyone signaled their comprehension, he continued. “The problem is, whoever decodes this has to have the exact same book, identical version, or the decoding doesn’t work.”

  “Clever.” Vanessa folded her arms. “Except we have no idea what book Regan used.”

  “It could literally be anything, which is what makes it impossible to crack by an outsider,” PJ said.

  Frankie asked, “How about a yearbook?”

  PJ wrinkled his nose. “Maybe, except those things don�
�t have many words, and the layouts are weird, which would make word counting potentially problematic. You want to pick something with lots of words, so you have every possible word you’d need to create your messages.”

  “Messages?” Charley recalled a detail from that morning’s session with Dye’s files. “According to Carter’s testimony, he and Regan exchanged coded messages. They left them in dead drops around town and school. The police checked them all when she was still considered missing, but they didn’t find anything. I wonder if she used the same book key for those as she did when she wrote in her journal?”

  “That would make sense,” he acknowledged. “You get familiar with a book, using certain words over and over again.”

  “Also,” Vanessa mused, “she’d want to keep the coded journal and the book key safe. If I was hiding stuff from my parents, the more books to hide, the trickier it all gets.”

  “If we’re right, then Carter knows what the book key is.” Charley frowned. “I know I said we wouldn’t bother him, but if we want to decode that journal, we might not have a choice. Plus, it might be helpful to know where those dead drops were.”

  “Oh, I read about this part!” Heddy exclaimed. “Carter mentions them in his first interview with Dye. One was in a hollow tree. Another was someplace inside Wright Library. Regan worked there after school a few days a week. Because it was a public building, Carter could come and go freely without risk of tipping off her parents.”

  Katie’s eyes sparkled. “Secret messages! This might be something I can help with. My cousin works at the library. I’ll ask her if she’s ever heard of any secret hidey-holes. The original old building has been remodeled and added onto a bunch of times. Still, it’s worth a try. I’ll swing by on my way home and check it out.”

  “I’ll go with you,” PJ said quickly. “But before we take off: I noticed something else that might be important. The journal entries? They change.”