“I don’t watch a lot of television, and reading goes well with an evening cup of coffee,” he confessed. “Do you read much?”
“I tend to go through phases where I’ll devour a few things back to back, and then I’ll go several months without reading at all.”
“Which phase are you in now?” Joe asked.
“Neither, I guess.” She realized that was a strange answer. “During the time I was researching on Lydia’s case, I got some old files and belongings that had been my dad’s. I put away most of the files because he was clear that there was nothing for me to do with them, but he left me some of his journals and I’ve been reading those.”
“Are you learning a lot about him?”
“Some,” she admitted. “I know his mind worked the same way mine does, so that’s kind of comforting. I learned that even though my parents couldn’t stand to be around each other, they still seemed to care for each other in some kind of strange way and that he had a secret code I have yet to break.”
“I’m guessing that’s a source of a lot of frustration,” Joe commented.
“You have no idea,” she confessed. “I’ve tried all the standard metrics, numbers for letters by counting the alphabet forward or backward, by removing the vowels…numbers are dates, or dollars, or file numbers…everything. I haven’t been able to get one system to make sense out of more than a single entry.”
“Do you think he meant for you to break the code?” Joe asked.
“Other than a few personal things, like his relationship with Janice, there isn’t a lot that I think mattered enough for him to save the journals, much less put them in a safety deposit box for me to take possession of five years after his death. I know the numbers mean something, because they’re all over the place, written the same way, and some of them repeat a lot.” As she said that, she thought about the journals and how many nights she’d spent with scrap paper, trying out different systems to create a code that would finally reveal what the numbers meant. She refused to give up, but she wondered if she’d ever figure it out.
They talked for a little while longer before Joe suggested putting in a movie. It was an old black-and-white John Wayne movie she’d never seen, despite her father’s appreciation for his movies. About fifteen minutes into the film, Joe put his arm around her, and she leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. Before the Duke had fired his six-shooter, she’d fallen asleep.
Through a break in the branches, Ellie could see puffy clouds swirling in a crystal-blue sky. It was the kind of day that was perfect to be outside—it had called to her most of the day at school, taunting her through the windows as her teachers droned on and on about subjects much less interesting than the shapes of the clouds above her. As soon as she’d gotten home, she’d tossed her book bag on her bed and run to the backyard, efficiently climbing six feet up to sit on the branch she considered hers and lean against the trunk while swinging her feet beneath her. The smell of the newly opened blossoms filled her nose, and she sat there watching the clouds move above her, listening to the birds sing around her, all the while wishing she could be as carefree as they were.
“Hey, Ellie,” her dad called out to her hideout in the large magnolia tree in the backyard. “Can I come up?”
“Sure,” she answered, knowing he’d come regardless of what she said. No doubt her mother had called him to come talk some sense into his daughter.
“What’s doing, little girl?” he asked, pulling himself through the sturdy branches to sit on the opposite side of the trunk from her. They never officially claimed these as their assigned seats, but anytime they came up in the tree, they ended up sitting in same place, separated only by the breadth of the trunk.
“Mom told you I came out here, didn’t she?” Ellie knew that was the only reason why he’d come here during the week.
“Yeah, but she didn’t tell me what was wrong, just that you came home from school, ran into the backyard, and refused to come back in.” He paused and gave her a chance to speak up. When she didn’t have anything to add, he asked, “Why are you hiding in the tree?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Ellie knew she was sulking and her dad would probably get the truth out of her eventually, but she was afraid to admit what was on her mind.
“You know what I do when I don’t want to talk about something but it sticks in my head?”
“What?” Ellie couldn’t imagine him hiding in a tree, so she figured it was something different than her usual response.
“I write it down,” he relayed simply. “Something about writing it out helps me understand it better, and then I can usually figure out what to do about it.”
She continued to see only what wasn’t possible. “I can’t write it down.”
“Are you out of paper?” he teased. “Maybe you need to borrow a pencil?”
“No, but once I write it down, then Mom will find it and she won’t let it go until I talk about it.”
“You could write it down and give it to me,” he suggested. “I promise not to look at it, and I’ll put it in your room at my place.”
It was a nice offer, but she still didn’t believe that her mother wouldn’t find a way to read what she was so desperate to hide.
“You know, if you’re worried about somebody reading it, you could always write it in code,” he offered. “I do that a lot, too, if I need to jot it down in my brown book and know somebody might see it.”
“What kind of code?” Ellie was a little more interested at the thought of nobody being able to understand what she was writing.
“You could make up your own. That’s what I did.”
“How do you make up a code?” she asked.
“There’s lots of ways.” He moved enough that she could hear his branch squeaking from the shift in weight. “Some people use numbers to represent letters or letters to represent ideas.”
“What do you do?”
“Well, I can’t tell you exactly, or then you’d know how to read my book when you’re waiting in the car and I’m working.” He laughed. “But I can tell you that I use the system person, place, thing represented by numbers.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ellie informed him, disappointed he wouldn’t tell her how to crack his code.
“Good. If you figured it out from just that, then I’d need to get some of the code breakers at the office to spend some time with you,” he said with a laugh.
Her dad’s laugh mingled in perfectly with the large leaves moving from the breeze. He seemed to blend in wherever he was, and she wished that were something he could teach her.
“I got a B on my math test today,” she whispered.
“They can’t all be As,” he assured her.
“This one could have been,” she admitted, thankful for the trunk that kept him from seeing her face.
“How do you figure that?”
“Remember Ronnie?” she asked.
“Kid who lives at the entrance to the division?” Her dad had a mind like a steel trap and never forgot a thing.
“Right… He and I have been friends,” she started, suddenly afraid to talk to her dad, despite him always promising she could tell him anything. “He was talking to me a few days ago and said that some of the guys on the football team had been noticing me and that they were afraid to talk to me because they thought I was a know-it-all who never did anything wrong.”
“There’s nothing wrong with working hard and keeping your nose clean,” her dad defended.
“I know… I asked him what he thought, and he said that it wouldn’t hurt if I could get a B every once in a while.”
“So, when you took the test, you…” Her dad wouldn’t finish the story, but he seemed to know where it was heading.
“I intentionally got two wrong so I wouldn’t get another A.”
“If that’s what you wanted to do, why don’t you seem happier about it?” he pressed, not fussing at her for basically confessing she hadn’t done h
er best on something.
“Because when I told him about my grade on the way home today, he laughed and said all I needed was to wear a dress and quit breaking some of the guys’ records in gym, and all the guys would be lining up to ask me out.”
“Do you want the guys to line up and ask you out?”
“No, but one or two might be nice,” she confessed, relieved when he laughed a little at her answer.
“Why are you hiding in the tree?”
Ellie hadn’t expected that question on the foot of what she’d just told him.
“Because I’m mad at myself for trying to be something I’m not.”
“What’s wrong with that?” her dad asked. Ellie knew his persistence with the questions was trying to make a point.
“If the boys don’t want to ask me out because they like me, then I don’t want to go out with them.”
“That’s my girl,” he praised, making her feel better for the first time since she’d come home. “There will come a time when somebody is going to love everything about you, and that’s when you’ll know you’ve found the one for you,” he encouraged. “But until then, if somebody doesn’t like being shown up by a girl, then they just need to work harder.”
“I love you, Daddy,” she told him before relaxing against the trunk, shutting her eyes, and drawing in a deep breath.
When she woke up, there was soft jazz playing in the background, a small lamp lighting the room, and a fleece throw over her legs up on the couch. Joe was running his fingers through her hair in a slow, hypnotic way.
“I missed the movie, didn’t I?” she was embarrassed to ask.
“Only the good parts,” he teased in return. “But I have to admit, I like this better anyway.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything,” he assured her.
“If I could climb a rope faster than you, would you tell me to slow down so that I wasn’t showing you up?”
“If you can climb a rope faster than me, then I need to work harder to keep up.” He seemed to find the question amusing. “What’s with that question?”
“I had a strange dream, and it made me think of something.” They sat quietly for a few moments before she asked, “I know we’re still getting to know each other, but are there things you’d like to change about me?”
“Ellie, a man would be a fool to want to change you.”
“That was a good answer,” she replied sleepily.
A male voice in the back of her mind, where hazy memories resided, seemed to agree. That was the right answer.
Chapter 11
When Ellie turned on her computer Monday morning, she was surprised to see three messages, all sent with an urgent tag from George. The first was confirmation that there had been another robbery on Friday, continuing the weekly cargo theft. This one occurred in Ohio on a long haul from California to Pittsburgh. The truck was carrying recliners, and four of them were missing. The truck-stop footage that included the truck while it was parked showed the same Coke bottle floating through and then ghosting near the end of the clip. George also commented that when they emptied the truck, there was a crushed Coke bottle between the secure bar and the side of the container. The company hit was not one of the four previous ones impacted, and the trucker’s record seemed clean. In summary, it was exactly the same as all the previous incidents. This had been orchestrated by the same thief.
She went back and looked through all the files to what truck stop they had been parked at when the thefts were presumed to have occurred. The first and last one had been at a Stop and Go. They were a newer chain, usually buying out older stations and converting them into travel plazas that were open twenty-four hours a day. The second one was at a stop she didn’t recognize, but when she pulled up Fazolli’s online, she saw it was a family-owned truck stop that had recently been bought out by Stop and Go. Feeling like she was onto something, Ellie looked at the other two cases and noticed that while they had stopped at Piston’s—the corporation that held a controlling interest of their stock was the same one that owned Stop and Go outright. All these trucks stopped at stations owned by the same group. She couldn’t say for sure that it was related, but it was certainly possible this could be an inside job. She passed this information along to George and encouraged him to talk to their security director to see about the corporate policy for protecting the security feeds and data.
Feeling like she’d accomplished something important on the case, she sat back and stretched, reaching her hands toward the yellow stain in the center of her ceiling.
“At ease.”
Phil’s voice surprised her, and she jerked her hands down, wondering how she could have been so distracted that she didn’t hear him coming.
He held up his cane covered in ninjas and grinned. “The wife replaced all the rubber tips with a new material that’s quieter so I can get the jump on people a little easier.”
“I’m going to suggest she attach a bell to them before sending you off to work if you keep sneaking up on people,” Ellie responded with a straight face.
Phil eased himself into her guest chair and looked at the files on her desk. “You’re doing good work with Miller’s nephew. He’s pleased you’re coaching him along to help him cut his teeth.”
“He seems to follow direction well, but it’s hard to picture someone with so little individual initiative being related to Miller.”
“Even a bulldog can have a poodle in his family tree,” Phil answered sagely.
“Careful throwing out comments like that… If you decide to retire, a fortune-cookie factory might try to recruit you.”
“Do you think they’d throw in a window?” Phil asked. “Sometimes I think the lack of sunshine down here is getting to me.” He looked around her office and then suggested, “Why don’t we head to that coffee shop you favor and see if he’ll let us borrow his office again.”
The look on his face make it clear this wasn’t an offer she should refuse, so she nodded and followed him out. “Joe may need his office, so we may have to have our drinks in the shop itself,” she warned him.
Phil shook his head. “You’re such a smart woman, but in this one area, you’re completely blind.”
“Do I want to know what you’re talking about?” Ellie asked.
“That man would no more refuse to let you use his office than I would be able to take off running.”
“It’s his business,” Ellie reminded him. “He may actually have to work.”
“I’m sure he does, but you wait and see how he reacts when I tell him we need a secure place to talk.”
Ten minutes later, they were moving into Mocha Joe’s. Ellie found herself wondering if she would ever get used to thinking of the Goth girl behind the counter as Nicole. When she looked up from the small book in her hands, she nodded at Joe’s office.
They continued to the counter, despite the information of where the store’s owner was hiding. “I’ll have a tea and one of those fancy strong drinks this one usually gets when she’s here,” Phil ordered, not giving Nicole much to go off of.
Not daunted by the lack of information, she spun around and got busy. After producing two drinks, she hesitated and looked between her customers, causing Phil to prompt her.
“This is where you tell me what I owe you.”
After rolling her eyes, Goth girl explained, “Yeah, but I don’t think I’m supposed to charge her, and since you’re with her, I figure it applied to both of you.”
“Here.” Phil put a twenty-dollar bill in her hand and turned around, leaving Ellie to carry both cups. “Keep the change, or keep it all, whatever you think is best.”
Phil used his stick to bang on the door to Joe’s office.
His voice was unusually hard when he yelled out, “I told you I’m busy.”
Ellie laughed, happy to see she was right about Phil being presumptuous to think they could come in and take over.
Phil nodded that she should announce they were
there.
She obliged. “Too busy for a quick hello?”
The door opened amazingly fast to reveal a smiling Joe. “Never,” he assured her, taking a second to look her in the eye before moving his attention to Phil and extending his hand. “It’s good to see you again, Phil.”
“Likewise,” her boss agreed. “I know this is an inconvenience, but I needed a private place to talk to Ellie and wondered if we could impose.”
Joe immediately stepped out and motioned for them to take his office. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine, fine,” Phil mumbled in a way that didn’t seem to convince Joe any more than it had Ellie. “We just need a place away from everybody else to do a little planning.”
After settling down on the opposing loveseats, Ellie waited for Phil to reveal why he’d brought her here. This was only the second time he’d insisted on their meeting privately, so she had to assume there was a good reason for it.
“Miller was full of interesting news,” Phil began after tasting his tea. “He seems to think that Garrison isn’t interested in hurting you but feels strongly that somebody close to you is definitely a target.”
“I thought we’d come to that conclusion already,” Ellie replied, disappointed this was all Phil seemed to have to share.
“True, but Miller is convinced for some reason that Janice isn’t enough of a target because too many people close to her know that you and your mother aren’t close,” Phil explained. “If his point in striking is to change your life by taking away the person who you are closest to, then I’m afraid I have to agree with him about keeping the detail on Janice but not worrying too much about her.”
“Then who does the almighty Miller seem to think is the target?” Ellie snapped.
Phil looked down at the cup in his hand. “You know, it still amazes me when I think about how the guy who created this blend of flowers and grass clippings was the one who fired the single perfect shot to save your life.” He glanced around the office and then nodded at a picture on the desk behind Ellie. “And that same person being the closest relative of your neighbor, the one you’ve probably spent more time with in the last few years, is definitely a coincidence that’s hard to ignore.”
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