by Kathi Daley
“I agree. I haven’t even opened the box at this point. Maybe there’s something in there that will help us understand who the man really is and how, if at all, he might fit into this whole thing.”
Chapter 6
As it turned out, the items in the box were mostly personal. There were four t-shirts, a toothbrush, sweatshirt, and headphones, as well as a pack of gum, a bottle of mouthwash, and a pack of guitar picks, although no one had mentioned a guitar. There was also a little black book filled with initials followed by a series of numbers, which we speculated could be codes, phone numbers, dates, or bank account numbers, amongst other things. The most intriguing thing was a flash drive Mike found in the pocket of the sweatshirt that Tony quickly confirmed was encoded.
“So what do we do now?” Bree asked.
“I have a feeling if I can crack the code on the flash drive, there will be something on it that might help us understand the number sequences in the black book,” Tony said.
“What about the names?” Mike asked. “I wonder if we can figure any of them out.”
“All we have is a first and last initial,” I pointed out. “It will be hard to match these initials with people unless we have more information. Given the fact that Dad was interested in this man, and given the fact that the guy was only in town for a couple months if that long, I suspect the initials could be associated with people living all over the world.”
Mike flipped to the back of the black book. “The last set of initials listed is L T.”
“Lucy Thomas,” I said. “What comes after the initials? Numbers?”
Mike nodded. “Ten numbers. I guess it could be a phone number with an area code, but it isn’t a phone number I recognize. It’s too long to be a date. The first number is zero, so it could be a social security number with a zero in front, but I don’t think this is Mom’s social security number. The beginning numbers are too low.” He paused. “It could be a bank account number since they tend to be varying in length. I’ll check with Mom to see if this number matches any of her accounts.”
Tony put out his hand, and Mike handed him the little black book. “There are a lot of ones and zeroes included, which makes me think this is some sort of a code. The zeroes could have been added to designate a break in the sequence, and the combinations of ones and zeroes could link back to a binary code.” He looked at Mike. “If you want to leave the black book and the flash drive with me, I’ll work on both.”
“Okay,” Mike said. “But I want to make a copy of the page we believe relates to Mom. I’ll figure out an excuse to ask for her banking information and make sure we don’t have a match there.”
Bree began rubbing her belly in a circular motion. I could see she was getting tired, so we should probably be wrapping things up, but before Mike left, I had one last question burning a hole in my head. “Do you think we should try to get ahold of Dad? I know we aren’t supposed to use the emergency flash drive unless it’s a real emergency, and none of us are in any immediate danger, so I suppose that labeling what’s going on as an emergency might be a stretch, but I have a bad feeling about things.”
Mike looked at Tony. “How long do you think it will take to decode the flash drive we were given and access the emergency contact protocol?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t looked at it yet. I can work on that or on the flash drive we found in Theo’s things. I’ll let you decide.”
“Why do you think the flash drive given to you to use in case of an emergency is encoded?” Bree asked.
“Dad probably didn’t want the information falling into the wrong hands. He knew Tony would be able to gain access, but he didn’t want the average man on the street to be able to,” I suggested.
“What if Tony was the one in trouble?” Bree asked. “Then what were we supposed to do?”
“Bree’s right,” Mike said. “Dad wouldn’t give us an encoded flash drive to use in an emergency if Tony was the only one who would be able to access the information. I know he told us not to access the flash drive until we needed to, and I know he warned us that it was encoded, but at the very least, I think we should take a look and see what sort of coding was used.”
Everyone looked at Tony.
He shrugged. “I’m game. Maybe all that’s needed to find the key to the code is a piece of personal information that either Mike or Tess would likely know.”
“Okay, let’s take a look,” I said.
Tony slipped the flash drive given to him by Dad for emergencies into his laptop. He waited a minute for it to load.
“The first barrier of what I imagine will be many is a single word followed by a spot for five digits.”
“What word is provided?” I asked.
“Booboo.”
“Bunny,” I said.
“Tess had a stuffed bunny when she was little named Booboo Bunny,” Mike confirmed. “She carried that thing around everywhere. I clearly remember the hell we all went through when she lost Booboo Bunny and refused to go to sleep without him.”
“What did you do?” Bree asked.
“I didn’t do anything. Dad somehow found him. I can’t remember where. I do remember that for a short period of time, Dad was Tess’s hero, and she would only let him put her and Booboo Bunny to bed.” He paused. “I think that sort of hurt Mom’s feelings. Of course, Dad was off again on another adventure before too long, and Mom was back to being in charge of storytime and tuck in duty.”
Tony typed in the word bunny, which caused another word/digit combination to pop up.
“Fleabag followed by spaces for three digits,” Tony said.
“Gus,” Mike answered.
“Gus?” Bree asked.
“Mike had a friend when he was around ten or eleven who wanted Mike to adopt his dog when his family had to move, but Dad said no. Dad said that the last thing he needed was a fleabag in the house.” I frowned. “I wonder why he used that clue. The memory of Booboo Bunny is a nice memory for me, but I suspect that Mike is still mad about the dog.”
Mike shrugged. “I guess he just wanted to provide clues he was confident we’d remember. What’s next?”
“The next clue is Fort followed by spaces for nine letters.”
“Grayskull,” Mike said.
Tony tried it. “That works.”
“Grayskull?” Bree asked.
“Grayskull was a secret hideout I had around the same time I tried to talk Dad into letting me keep the dog,” Mike informed her. “When Dad threatened to take the dog to the pound if I didn’t get rid of it, I hid Gus there for several weeks until Bobby Brewster was finally able to talk his mom into letting him keep the dog.” Mike frowned. “I didn’t know Dad knew about that.” Mike’s gaze grew distant. “Dad was so forceful when he told me to get rid of the dog or else. I’m sort of surprised I didn’t have to suffer the or else since I’d clearly disobeyed him, and he clearly knew about it.”
“Maybe he wasn’t the ogre he made himself out to be,” Bree said.
“If he wasn’t an ogre, he would have let me keep the dog,” Mike insisted. “God, I wanted him. At the time, I really thought that I’d never be happy again if I couldn’t have him. I was glad that Bobby’s mom gave in and let him live with them. At least I was able to visit him. If Dad had actually taken him to the pound as he threatened to do, I don’t know what I would have done.”
I smiled. “I should have known your secret fort would be named something to do with He-Man.” I looked at Bree. “Mike was obsessed with the show when he was a kid. He even had He-Man bedsheets.”
“Aw,” Bree said.
I looked at Tony. “What’s next?”
“Bedbugs followed by six spaces.”
“Dad would say: ‘Good Night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite’ when he put us to bed,” Mike said.
“Yeah, but how does that lead to a six-letter word?” I asked.
“Maybe your dad is trying to get you to think of bedtime in general. Is there a book
he often read at bedtime or a story he told?”
“I loved Goodnight Moon,” I said.
“I liked The Hobbit,” Mike said. “Hobbit has six letters.”
Tony tried it. “Nope. Try again. Maybe it’s a book or story you both liked?”
“There was this book about a girl and a boy whose Dad was a spy,” Mike said. “I forget the title, but Dad did read it pretty often.”
“Oh, I remember that,” I said. I rolled my eyes. “I think it was called Spy Dad.”
“Six letters. That has to be it.” Mike sat forward in his chair.
Tony typed the words “spy dad.” “That’s it.”
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now, we need a message.”
“So you got in?” Mike asked.
“We made it to a message board. There’s only room for a short message. I suspect the site will be deleted once the message is read.”
“Let’s just say that we have information that might be important about a certain friend, and we have questions in need of answering and are requesting a conversation,” Mike suggested. “If Dad is willing to talk to us, he’ll find a way to contact us.”
Tony typed in Mike’s message and hit send.
“I’ll work on the flash drive Theo left next,” Tony said.
“Sounds good,” Mike said. He looked at Bree. “We should get going. Call if you find anything.”
“I will,” Tony promised.
Mike looked at me. “Stop by the office tomorrow while you’re out on your route. We can catch up.”
“Okay.”
I got up and hugged Bree after Mike had helped her up, and then I walked Mike, Bree, and Leonard out to his truck. I’d hoped we would have more by this point, but I felt like we had a good start. A baby, a murder, and a mysterious boyfriend didn’t necessarily sound like clues that went together, but given everything I’d learned about my dad over the past few years, I suspected that a causal link was exactly what we’d end up finding.
When I returned to the house, I found Tony sitting on the sofa staring into space. “What’s on your mind?”
“There’s something about this whole thing that isn’t sitting right with me.”
“Such as?”
“Theo’s disappearance, for one thing. If Theo left of his own free will, he would have stopped by your mom’s and taken the little black book and the flash drive with him even if he didn’t care about the other items he left behind. I feel sure about that. The notes he’s been compiling in the black book look like they go back in time several years. It seems that the data was important to him. I don’t see him voluntarily leaving without it or the flash drive.”
“So do you think that he was forcefully removed from White Eagle – probably by Dad?”
“I won’t be surprised if that ends up being true. But then I have to ask why the little black book and the flash drive were at your mother’s house in the first place. The toothbrush and clothing make sense, but why would he be carrying around items like the little black book and flash drive?”
“Good question. Maybe…” I began just as Secret started to cry.
Tony looked toward the stairs. “I’ll get her. She’s probably hungry if you want to make a bottle.”
“I’m on it,” I said, getting up and heading to the kitchen. Is this how it would be when Tony and I had kids? Would we work together as a team to take care of our children? We really did make a good team, and when we put our heads together, we were excellent at coming up with plans. Instead of agonizing about whether or not a baby should be in our immediate future, perhaps we should sit down and discuss it and try to come up with a plan. We’d done that for our wedding, and that had worked out fine. Maybe a baby plan would work out just as well, and then I could stop worrying about everything. The secret of our wedding plan’s success was that both of us knew what was important to us and where we were willing to compromise. Perhaps a baby plan approached with the same set of expectations was exactly what we needed.
Chapter 7
Thursday, May 20
I woke the following morning and reached for Tony, but his side of the bed was empty. Opening my eyes, I leaned up on my elbows and looked out the window. It was still pitch black outside, so I knew it was early. I supposed the baby might have awakened, and Tony had gotten up with her, but I hadn’t heard her cry. Sliding my legs to the side, I got up and pulled on a robe. When I went downstairs, I found Tony sitting on the sofa in front of the fire feeding Secret. All three dogs were sleeping on the floor in front of the fire, so I made my way around the sleeping canines, being careful not to wake them.
“I didn’t even hear her cry,” I said, sitting down next to Tony. “I know you were up late working on the code. You should have woken me, and I would have gotten up with her.”
“Actually,” Tony said, yawning as he leaned his head close to mine. “I never did go to bed. I’d just finished the decoding when I heard Secret moving around, so I went up and got her before she woke you.”
I looked down at the baby in Tony’s arms. She was staring intently at Tony as she suckled her bottle. I had a feeling it was going to be hard for both Tony and the baby when she was finally returned to her mother, assuming, of course, that returning her was the outcome, as I know we all hoped.
“So, were you able to find out what Theo had on that flash drive?” I asked.
Tony nodded. “The flash drive contains data. Names, dates, locations. I suspect that Theo is a spy of some sort and the information on the flash drive has to do with whatever it is he’s into.”
“Is there a way to tell what he’s into?”
“Not without context. I suspect your father knows, so hopefully, he’ll contact us, and we can ask our questions.”
“Do you think either Theo or my dad is involved in Anton’s murder in any way? Do you think my dad knows who killed him?”
Tony paused and then answered. “If Anton’s murder is related to whatever else is going on with the baby, then yes, I do think your dad at least knows about Anton’s death. I’m still not sure how Theo fits into all of this. If, however, Anton’s murder is unrelated to Theo or the baby, then chances are your father may not have paid much attention to a local murder and might not know any more than we do. I guess we’ll just need to wait and ask him.”
I laid my head on Tony’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you were up all night. You must be exhausted.”
“I’m okay. I can nap when Secret naps today.”
“Is all of this going to put you behind with the project you were working on?” I knew that Tony’s software clients were the sort of people who were generally pretty demanding.
“I was ahead of schedule when this all started, so I’ll be okay. And it’s not like I can’t get any work done. Secret sleeps a lot, and even when she is awake, she’s pretty content to watch me work.” Tony smiled down at her and then turned to look at me. “I think she might be older than we initially thought.”
“Oh. Why is that?”
“I remember someone mentioned three or four months when she was first left with Mike, but I’ve been doing some research, and her development is much more closely aligned with a baby in the five to six-month range. Yes, she is small for six months, but she might have been a preemie who is still trying to catch up in terms of weight and length.”
“She’s really alert, and she does reach for things.” I looked down at her hands which were cupping the bottle Tony held. “I’ve never really spent much time with babies, so I have no idea what is normal, but she does seem older than three months for sure.”
“I’m assuming that your dad will be back for her sooner rather than later, but I guess if he isn’t, we might want to make sure she has everything she needs for normal development. I almost feel like we should take her to a pediatrician.”
I snuggled in closer to Tony. “No, we can’t do that. At least, not yet. But I do get what you’re saying. I wonder if she needs supplements to the formula.”
“I’ll do some research for now, but if this goes on too long, we might want to talk to Mike and figure out a plan to make sure this baby is cared for as she should be.”
I glanced at the clock. I still had more than an hour before I had to get ready for work. “Are you hungry? I can make us some breakfast.”
Tony glanced down at the baby. “I think she’s falling asleep. Why don’t you go ahead and jump in the shower, and I’ll put the baby down and make us some breakfast.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. How does whole grain pancakes with fresh berries and whipped cream sound?”
“Like heaven.”
“Okay, then. You go and get ready for work, and I’ll get everything ready. By the time you come down, it should be getting light. We can eat our pancakes and watch the sun rise.”
I hated to leave Tony and Secret home to nap without me, but I had a route to do, so I kissed Tony goodbye after our wonderful meal and headed out. When I’d driven through town on my way to pick up the mail I was to deliver, I’d noticed that Mike wasn’t at work yet. Deciding to knock out at least some of my route before I sought him out, I started at the south end of the downtown section and headed north. I figured I’d reach Mike’s office around mid-morning, which should be a good time to catch him.
“Morning, Millie,” I said to Millie Martin, the owner of the home and decorating store.
“Morning, Tess, Tilly. It’s a beautiful day.”
“It really is,” I said as I placed a pile of mail on her counter.
“I guess you heard about Anton,” she said as she picked up the pile and began sorting through it.
“I did hear. It’s such a shame. I guess the two of you must have been friends since you both played in that Thursday night bowling league.”
She nodded. “When Lola from the supermarket told me that Anton had been found dead on the beach, I honestly thought she was joking. Of course, then I saw her face and realized she wasn’t. According to Lola, Anton drowned, and Lola doesn’t think it was an accident. I don’t suppose you know anything.”