Dust to Dust dffi-7

by Beverly Connor

  “Sure thing,” he said. “You know how I am.”

  “This is just crazy,” said Diane when she hung up. “I don’t know why I was a target. It solves nothing for anyone, unless it’s some kind of revenge thing.”

  “Revenge? Who?” Frank asked. “And for what?”

  “Maybe it was just a coincidence Emory turned out to be related to Ray-Ray. Emory is from Atlanta, which is a straight shot down the interstate from Gainesville. Perhaps Marsha Carruthers and her husband are behind it. Perhaps it’s some kind of revenge for stirring up the tragedy in their lives.”

  As she said it, it didn’t seem right. The kinship thing between the two men was just too much of a coincidence. She was getting a major headache.

  “Why don’t I heat up the leftover pizza?” said Frank. “We’ll have pizza and red wine. You know how you love leftover pizza.”

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  While they waited for the pizza to warm in the oven, Frank boarded up the back door so it wouldn’t open at all.

  “I’ll have it fixed tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll call my partner and tell him I’m taking the day off.”

  “I’m sorry you have to do that.” Diane felt guilty on top of everything else. She had brought this to his house. Maybe it wasn’t her fault, but it was about her.

  “They could have been after me,” said Frank. “After all, had I been here, I probably would have been the one to answer the door. I do have Atlanta connections who might want some revenge.”

  Frank had a strange habit of reading her mind sometimes. But she probably wore her feelings on her face. She was a terrible poker player.

  “Ray-Ray after Marcella; his cousin after you?” She shook her head. “That would be too much of a coincidence.”

  They ate and drank and Diane began to feel better.

  “I finished the diary,” he said.

  “Oh? Was it hard?” asked Diane.

  “Very easy really, once I got to know how Ellie Rose’s mind worked. She must have been a neat kid. Very clever code for a kid.”

  “How did it work?” asked Diane.

  “She had symbols for diphthongs and consonant blends-letter combinations like oo, ou, th, st, ious-that kind of thing. For other letter combinations she drew doodles that represented the sound-like in a rebus puzzle. For example, for air she drew three curled wisps.”

  Frank got a piece of paper and drew the doodle for her.

  “The symbol for the consonant blend of st is a star. So if she wrote the word stair, it would be a star and these little wisps.” He drew it for Diane.

  “If she had to use a letter, she would go two up in the alphabet,” he continued. “So a would be c and z would be b. The consonant blend th is the numeral three. The word the would be written as the numeral three with the letter g immediately following it.” He grinned. “She was a good little doodler.”

  He took several bites of pizza and a sip of wine.

  “There was a little complication, in that sometimes she would change how she wrote a word. For example, the symbol for the suffix er was a drawing of an ear. Mother was sometimes oq, with the numeral three immediately following, and then the drawing of an ear. And sometimes it would be a drawing of a moth and an ear.”

  “That seems like it would take a long time to write,” said Diane.

  “Not really. The drawings were doodles, stylized versions of what they represented. If you’re going up the alphabet only two letters, you can work that out pretty fast,” he said.

  “I’ll call Ross Kingsley tomorrow. He’ll be happy you were able to decode it,” said Diane. “I got the impression he thought it would be impossible.”

  “You know, I kind of got to know her. Not just reading her diary, but seeing the way her mind worked, examining her whimsical creativity.”

  He stopped for a moment and took a drink of wine. Diane thought for a second he was going to tear up. She put a hand on his and he smiled at her.

  “As I said, she was a neat kid,” he said.

  “Anything in her diary that would shed light on anything?” said Diane.

  “Most of it was normal kid stuff. Talk about school, friends, boys she liked, teachers. There are a couple of drawings that occurred several times that I can’t decipher.”

  He drew one for her. It was a triangle over an elongated diamond shape with slightly curving sides and what looked like horns.

  “It looks kind of like a snake with scales and horns,” said Diane.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said. “I can’t come up with a rebus or anything else that makes sense. I think it’s a person, but that’s as far as I got, except that it’s clear she didn’t like him. If I had a list of names of people in her circle, I might be able to decipher it.”

  “What was the context?” asked Diane.

  “Dread seeing ‘blank.’ ‘Blank’ has changed since ‘blank.’ The second blank is the other doodle I can’t figure out.” He drew it for her.

  “These are almost like Rorschach tests. The identification is in the eye of the beholder,” said Diane. She examined the last drawing. “It looks like a ruin or a broken brick wall. What do you think?”

  “I thought it looked kind of like a broken igloo,” he said. “These look like blocks. Notice that the scales in the snake-like figure are similar to the bricks or ice blocks in the other figure.”

  “Something to sleep on,” said Diane. She finished her pizza and upended her wineglass. “Vanessa will be disappointed we didn’t have Irish whiskey,” she said.

  Diane got ready for bed as Frank went around and checked all the doors and windows in the house. If they were willing to shoot off the locks with a big gun, doors were useless, she thought.

  She was sitting on the bed in her nightshirt when he came into the room.

  “You know, I was really terrified,” she said.

  Frank sat down beside her and took her hand. “It’s completely normal that you were.”

  “No, I mean I was really terrified,” she repeated.

  “And it’s really normal,” he said, grinning at her.

  “You know I’ve been in a lot of dangerous situations. I was never this scared,” she said.

  Frank was silent for several moments. “Over the past few years you have been getting happier,” he said. “It’s taken a while since Ariel’s death, but gradually your grief has made room for other emotions-like love and friendship. You’ve built a lot of that here in Rosewood. I’m not saying your life now means more to you, but you feel like you have a lot to lose, and it scares you. I believe that’s part of it. And there was also the overly violent nature of the attack. It was designed for terror. But you did well. You won.”

  Diane leaned against him. “I’m going to find out who did this to your house,” she said. “And to me.”

  Chapter 43

  Diane had hoped to get out to Marcella’s house by late morning, but she had to go to the police station first to make a formal statement. She wrote out an account and signed it before she went to Garnett’s office, hoping it would save time. It didn’t. She had to speak with Internal Affairs. It wasn’t pleasant, mainly because the incident wasn’t pleasant. But it wasn’t that bad either. They weren’t hostile, really. Stern, but not particularly aggressive. The prevailing culture in Rosewood was, if a man shot his way into your house, you had the right to shoot back. After she spoke with IA, she went to Garnett’s office.

  “Sorry about all this,” said Garnett. “You know. Procedure. Hanks will join us shortly. We had a discussion with Emory in the hospital and we thought you would be interested in hearing about it.”

  Diane was relieved that he was still alive. She didn’t want to have killed someone. “How is he?” she asked.

  “Critical but in stable condition,” said Garnett. “Only two of your bullets did any damage. The other two were stopped by his Kevlar vest. One bullet went in the arm opening of the vest and found the radial nerve but managed to miss the artery. Do
ctor said his right arm’s going to be paralyzed. His right little toe was mangled by the bullet to his foot. They amputated the toe. Still, he’s a lucky guy. Don’t go wasting your time feeling bad for him. You know what he had planned for you. If he had got you to open the front door, he was going to blow your head off.”

  Diane shivered. She did know that.

  Detective Hanks came in and pulled up a chair. He stared at her as if looking for signs of the previous evening, or maybe signs of a nervous breakdown.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” said Diane. “Just bewildered. Did he say what this was about?” she asked.

  Garnett snorted and nodded to Hanks, who gave her a grim smile.

  “He was talkative,” said Hanks. “Said he had a contract to kill you.”

  “A contract?” said Diane. “Someone put a contract out on me? Why?”

  “We don’t know. He said he doesn’t know who or why.” Hanks smirked and looked at Garnett. Diane had the feeling he was trying not to laugh. “Emory said he received an envelope in the mail with two thousand dollars and your picture and address in it. He thought it was some kind of mistake until he got a call that evening. A man claiming to know his cousin, Ray-Ray, told him he’d sent it as a good faith payment. That he was looking for a good man to do some wet work for him.”

  “Wet work? He actually said that?” said Diane.

  “Yeah,” said Hanks, grinning. “He actually said those words.”

  “The man asked him if he was up to it. If he was, he would get another fifty grand. The man said that he’d tried to use Emory’s cousin, but he was a disappointment, and he wanted to know if Emory was going to be a disappointment too.”

  “Emory asked what would keep him from just holding on to the two grand and doing nothing,” said Garnett. “The man told him nothing was to stop him, but if this went well, he would use him again. That is, if he didn’t mind doing a little traveling, like to Las Vegas and places.” Garnett gave a derisive chuckle. “Las Vegas.” He shook his head.

  “Emory said the caller told him that from time to time he would receive an envelope, just like the one he’d received about you, with information and money in it,” said Hanks. “If he did well-get this-the man would open him an offshore account for the money to be deposited directly. Emory thought he’d made the big time.”

  “Are you saying that some kind of organized crime people have put a contract out on me?” said Diane. “Are you serious?”

  “Believe me,” said Hanks, “no serious crime organization would hire this guy for anything. He was being played, big-time. No fifty grand would be sent to him after-the deed.”

  “But we don’t know who hired him,” said Garnett. “His phone records show the call came from a throwaway cell. We are going to assign a couple of men to you until this is over. We do take this seriously, no matter what kind of buffoon this Emory is. Someone out there knew he would be a good fall guy. He told Emory to make it quick and violent. If you wouldn’t let him in the door, he was to, quote, ‘blow the door off its hinges.’ ”

  “Emory may be a moron,” said Hanks, “but the man who hired him isn’t. He knew how to con Emory into doing what he wanted him to do.”

  “How do we find this guy?” asked Diane.

  “We don’t know that yet,” said Garnett. “We’re going to start with Emory’s family. There’s a chance he made all this up and it’s actually the family taking revenge because of what happened to Ray-Ray. Maybe they weren’t as estranged as they led us to believe. But if that’s the case, we still have the question, why you? Why not Hanks here, or Daughtry? They were the two officers most closely connected to Ray-Ray’s death.”

  “I have to call my security,” said Diane. “The way things are, I can’t use my museum office. I won’t bring a maniac into the museum after me. Until we catch this guy, I’ll use my office in the crime lab. Analyzing the evidence from Marcella’s may be the best way to find the answer to all this.”

  Garnett nodded in agreement. “It’s a reasonable course of action,” he said. “That’s all we have at the moment. We keep running into dead ends. Whoever the mastermind is behind this, the guy is good at covering his tracks.”

  “Please keep me informed on what you discover,” said Diane to the two of them. “Knowledge is what will keep me safe.”

  “We will,” said Garnett.

  Diane nodded. “Did you tell Hanks about my talk with Vanessa?” she asked Garnett.

  “We talked about it this morning,” Garnett said.

  “You think this woman, this Maybelle Agnes Gauthier, is our Mad Potter?” asked Hanks.

  “Mad Potter?” said Garnett.

  “What else would you call someone who made pots out of human bones?” said Hanks.

  “I guess that’s what I would call them,” Garnett said with a laugh. “Just don’t let the press get hold of that.”

  “She may have been,” said Diane. “But, so far, we only know that she was a painter.”

  “At least we have a name,” said Hanks. “Easier to ask around about a person if you have a name. I was thinking I might send someone over, one of the girls, uh, women, over to the retirement homes to ask around. Some of those old-timers might remember her.”

  “Good idea,” said Diane, rising from her chair. “If I’m finished here, I am going to the lab. I’ll be either there or at the house.”

  She left the building, followed by her two bodyguards, and drove to the crime lab.

  When Diane put the crime lab in the west wing of the museum, she added an outside elevator that went only from ground level to the crime lab on the third floor. She also added a small room, a lobby and guard post, at the ground-level entrance to the elevator. It was comfortable and had its own facilities. There was a receptionist and a permanent guard on duty. Diane invited the policemen to stay there. The crime lab was secure, she assured them.

  “What about the entrance to the crime lab through the museum?” one of them asked.

  “There’s a guard on duty there as well. It also has reinforced doors and locks.”

  Diane left them in the elevator lobby and rode up to the crime lab. Izzy was there, holding down the fort while David and Neva were at the crime scene at Marcella’s house.

  Izzy looked at her wide-eyed when she entered the lab. “Are you all right?” he asked when she walked in. “Jeez, what the hell happened? I’ve been hearing some strange stuff. The news and some of my buddies said someone shot his way into your house.”

  Diane explained the events of the previous evening and her visit to the police station.

  “Those IA inquiries,” he said, “don’t worry about them. They have to do that. Nobody’s going to fault you for shooting some son of a bitch in your house. Jeez, he shot through the back door.”

  “It was very violent,” said Diane. “I intend to find out who sent him and why.”

  “This case has been strange from the beginning,” said Izzy. “Attacking Dr. Payden and making off with only a few paintings and a little pottery-what is that about? And that crazy writing on the bottom of the drawer. You know, at first it sounded like the writer was the victim, but now it looks like she might have been the perp. I don’t know what to make of it. And what about that poor Lassiter woman? None of it makes a bit of sense.”

  “No,” said Diane. “But it will soon. I won’t have people coming after me and messing up Frank’s house like that,” she said. “I’ll be in my office in the osteology lab. There are two policemen downstairs assigned to watch over me.”

  Diane went to her office and called her chief of security and told her what was going on. Diane told her she wanted to make the office wing off-limits to all but museum personnel until this was solved. She then called Andie, her assistant.

  “Dr. Fallon, I heard on the news. Was it true? Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” said Diane. “I’m working from my osteology office, for the time being. I want
you to work from the office up in archives.”

  “Why?” asked Andie.

  “Because you are in my office and I don’t want anyone in there. I’ve instructed security. And please, don’t talk about this. Just have your workstation routed up there,” she said.

  “Sure. You think someone will come here?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. The guy who broke into Frank’s house is in custody. But someone sent him and we don’t know who yet. I just want to be extra cautious and make sure everyone is safe,” she said.

  “Sure, I’ll do that. I’m really sorry this is happening,” she said. “You know, people are just crazy.”

  “That seems to be the general consensus,” said Diane.

  After her talk with Andie, Diane donned her lab coat and walked into her osteology lab. The lab was a large room with bright white walls, white cabinets, and plenty of overhead lighting. It was a bright room and cheery in its own way, with its shiny tables, sinks, and microscopes.

  Neva had been working on laser mapping the skull. Her computer drawings were spread out on the counter. They showed a pretty girl. She looked so young. Too young to be dead.

  The ceramic mask and sherds had been brought up from the archaeology lab and were lying on another table. The bones excavated from Marcella’s well were in plastic containers sitting on one of the metal tables. Diane started laying them out in anatomical order on two tables-one for each skeleton. They were broken skeletons with missing parts. It was a sad group of bones.

  She examined the skull of the female. It was small with nice, even teeth, but they were starting to decay. Without intervention they wouldn’t have stayed nice for very much longer. Was she homeless? Poor?

  Diane fit the mandible, the lower jaw, to the maxilla, the upper jaw, and held them together with one hand. She placed the reconstructed ceramic mask over the face.

  It was a perfect fit.

  Chapter 44

  Diane set the mask aside, a mask she strongly suspected was made of clay tempered with the crushed bones of its subject. When she had first seen it sitting in Marcella’s workroom, she was struck by its beauty. She saw now that the beauty was in the young girl. The mask was simply the product of a cruel and arrogant mind.