The Merchant of Menace (19 page)

“
What now, Sherlock?" Shelley asked.

“I dunno. Do you suppose it's a simple letter substitution?"

“Maybe. If we dump them all together, alphabetize, and count each letter, we should be able to figure out which one represents E. It's the most common."

“Big help. We'd know one letter," Jane said. "Maybe it's a foreign language. It does look like a language, doesn't it. I could ask Mel if Lance was fluent in something or other."

“And you don't think he'd wonder just a bit why you're asking? I presume you didn't mention having copied this disk."

“You've got a point. My dad! My dad knows languages!"

“Can you E-mail him?"

“Yes, I'll do that. Let me print this one out. They're in the Netherlands. Heaven knows what time of day or night it is there now."

“Probably about two in the morning," Shelley said.

“I'll do that right after we print all the files out. You know, I do those letter substitution things in the puzzle magazines sometimes. If that's what this is, it shouldn't be that hard to do.”

Shelley was doubtful. "But Jane, those give you clues. Like all the words in the list have to do with carnivals or something. And when they're sentences, they're real sentences with lots of 'the's and 'for's and such. This is just the man's personal notes. They're probably just phrases."

“It can't hurt to try anyway.”

Jane made duplicate copies of each of the small files on paper, one set for her, one for Shelley, and sent an E-mail to her father before they abandoned the cold and rather damp-smelling basement.

“My family will think I've run away from home," Shelley said. "I can't remember if I even mentioned I was coming over here, I was in such a rush. I'll work on this at home and give you a call if I figure anything out.”

Jane dinked around with the printouts for nearly an hour and got nowhere. It was no wonder, considering what a long day it had been, that she felt brain-dead. It was still Sunday, the day that had started out with church. But that morning seemed like it was days and days ago. She'd put the coded messages away somewhere safe and let her subconscious work on them while she was busy with other things. She got another sheet of paper and started making yet another list of reminders to herself.

The day after tomorrow was Christmas Eve day. Her shopping was done, but a lot of wrapping remained. Note: Get more tape and ribbon.

Christmas Eve day was also the normal trash pickup day. Would they send the monster trucks around on what was normally a half holiday? She hoped so. The parties she'd given had generated so much trash that if she didn't get it out this week, it would become a whole Dumpster load by the next week. Note: Put out trash and recycle.

That made her think about Sam Dwyer and his fanatic recycling. She had a lot of plastic-coated paper plates. She'd just put them in a big bag. But if she were to recycle them, would they go in the plastics bin or the paper bin?

Her mind was going. No question about it. She remembered the "fortune" she'd made up at the Chinese restaurant — that her daughter would take care of her when she was old and dotty and wanted to wear her panties on her head. At the rate she was going, that might be next week.

She waited up, half watching television, half napping, playing (and losing) a few games of solitaire on her laptop until Katie and Mike had both come home. Then she went upstairs and took a long, soaky bath. When she got out, she was shocked to discover that it was only ten o'clock. It seemed like the middle of the night. Would this day never end?

While she was soaking, she'd thought of some other things that had to be done tomorrow and went back downstairs to fetch her list. Note: Call Marty. Her sister Marty was living in Tupelo this year. Unlike Jane, who had vowed not to move out of the neighborhood, let alone move around the world once she no longer had to, Marty and her husband couldn't stop moving.
"It's the only way I get my closets and drawers cleaned out,"
Marty told her.

Jane had long since given up putting Marty's addresses and phone numbers into her book in ink. Just pencil. But wherever Marty went, it was never Chicago. They hadn't laid eyes on each other for at least five years. Marty and her jerk of a husband also always seemed to find someone to impose themselves on at holidays, so Jane had to call her the day before to pass along her good wishes.

Note: Call Uncle Jim. He was a lifelong friend of her parents who had retired from the army and was a tough old Chicago cop now. Though he was no relation in blood, he was dear to her and she always had him over for holidays and any other time she could snag him. She needed to make sure he knew what time to come for Christmas dinner. Had she wrapped his present yet? She ran back downstairs to check. Yes, the big red foil package. It was a fine leather briefcase. He'd rumble about it, say she'd better start watching how she threw away her money, claim that if the punks on the street didn't steal it, the punks in his office would. But he'd treasure it anyway.

It was only 10:20. Jane was still too wound up from the long day to sleep. But if she got in bed and was ready to sleep, maybe it would creep up on her. She called to the cats, who insisted on sleeping in her bed, gathered up the coded messages, turned off the television and downstairs lights, and made her way slowly up the stairs, tripping over Max and Meow and dropping her pencil.

Mike had his stereo booming out something awful. She tapped on his door, opened it, and asked him to turn it down. "I have to drown out Willard," he said. The big dog was sound asleep in the middle of the floor, his snoring almost as loud as the music.

“Make sure you send him outside one more time before you go to bed," she said. "Unless you want a cleaning job in the morning.”

Katie was, naturally, on the phone. Getting her a line of her own was among the smartest things Jane had ever done. Katie made a "wait, wait" gesture and ended her conversation. "Mom, I was just thinking, since you have to have the pipes fixed in that bathroom, why don't you redecorate it? It's kinda ratty-looking. We could go out and look at wallpaper and sinks and stuff after Christmas while I'm out of school."

“I think that's a great idea. I'll get a bid from Bruce Pargeter when he comes back tomorrow.”

Todd was already asleep when she peeked in his room. How
could
he sleep through Mike's music!

She went to her own room and the cats made a beeline for the bed. The Johnsons had turned off their Christmas lights and music, so she could have her curtains open again. It had been disconcerting these last few days to wake up in a darkened room.

She pulled the curtains back and looked at the wreck of their backyard. The police had certainly churned up the snow with their rakes. As Jane's eyes adjusted to the relative darkness outside, she noticed that one space between the houses must have been raked clear down to the grass. There was a dark area.

She squinted her eyes. The dark area looked almost like a person.

Actually, the dark area looked
exactly
like a person.

She reached once more for the phone and dialed Mel's number.

Jane
woke
at
nine in a
state of instant panic. '? Bruce Pargeter was coming over to work on the broken pipe. More important, Mel would certainly check in and she was desperately eager to hear what he'd have to say about the events of last night.

She'd been unable to get to sleep until almost four in the morning and now staggered put of bed, bleary and tired and pointedly avoiding looking out the bedroom or bathroom windows. She could hear voices downstairs. She showered and dressed hurriedly and threw on a bare minimum of makeup. Just enough that the bags under her eyes wouldn't actually frighten impressionable young children. Not that there were likely to be any around.

“Mom, Mel called while you were in the shower," Mike said when she came downstairs. "Said she was probably going to be okay. He's stopping by in a couple minutes.”

Jane nodded and made her way to the coffeemaker. Thank God! Mike had started it for her. She poured a cup, added lots of cream and sugar, and gulped it down as quickly as she could. Ah… caffeine!

“What's that noise?" she asked Mike as she came closer to full consciousness.

“Bruce Pargeter. In the basement fixing things," Mike said.

Jane looked at Katie, who was excavating her cereal for raisins. "You can buy boxes of raisins, you know," Jane said. "All by themselves."

“But they aren't sugary or wet," Katie said. "What went on last night?"

“Somebody tried to bump off that reporter," Mike said. "The redheaded woman, Ginger.”

“Why?" Katie asked.

Mike shrugged. Jane said, "We don't know.”

“Maybe Mel does," Mike said. "Here he comes.”

Katie, still in her robe and fuzzy slippers, went away to get dressed.

“You, too, Todd," Jane shouted into the living room where her youngest was cruising television channels. "No slobbing around in jam-mies.”

Mel looked as exhausted as Jane felt. She wondered if men didn't sometimes wish they could use makeup to spruce themselves up a bit. "Ginger's okay?" she asked, as she slipped some bread into the toaster for him.

“Not okay. But she'll make it," he said. "She's suffered frostbite, a concussion, and has a broken wrist. She only regained consciousness about an hour ago."

“Did you get to talk to her?"

“Yes, but she wasn't making much sense. Hadno idea what she was doing in a hospital. The last thing she seems to remember is talking to me in your driveway. The doctor says she'll probably get more of her memory back, but may not ever remember what happened to her."

“So you don't know who hit her?"

“Nope. It wasn't that much of a blow, though. But it must have thrown her against the gas meter at the side of the house and she hit her head on it and apparently snapped her wrist trying to break her fall. At least, that's what the emergency-room people speculated. They were a lot more concerned with her temperature. She must have laid there in the cold for several hours. If she hadn't been wearing a hat and gloves and a heavy coat, she'd have probably died of exposure."

“Do you think that means whoever it was didn't mean to kill her?" Jane asked.

“Whatever the original intention was, she was left to die. It comes to the same thing as far as I'm concerned. If you hadn't peered out the window and seen her, she would have."

“Is this a tribute to what you call my snooping?”

He smiled. "I guess it is. It saved Ginger's life.”

While he was feeling mellow and benevolent, Jane needed to ask something else. "What about the computer disk I found? Have the people in your office read it yet?"

“Nope. There are files on it, but they're password protected. They're going to have to get help from the F.B.I. probably. They have super-duper computers that can run through thou- sands of combinations of letters and numbers until they hit on the right one.”

Jane poured another half a cup of coffee and debated with herself for a few seconds. " 'Guardian; " she said.

“What?"

“ 'Guardian' is the password."

“How the hell would you know that?" Mel asked. He held up his hand. "No, wait. I'll bet you made a copy of that disk before you gave it to me. Am I right? I should have known! Jane, that was evidence. You had no business messing with it!"

“It wasn't evidence while it was just an unidentified disk in my house," she said. "It was just an unfamiliar… thing."

“You know the law on this? Never mind. How did you figure out the password?"

“Shelley and I figured it out rationally. It's our secret.”

Jane wouldn't have thought it was possible for human features to express both gratitude and irritation at the same time, but Mel managed it. He went to the kitchen phone and dialed his office. "Harry? Try the word 'guardian' on that disk. Just a hunch." He winked at Jane. "Right. I'll wait. A foreign language? What language? Find someone who recognizes it. Okay, I'll call back.”

He hung up and stared at Jane. "Why didn't you tell me that part?"

“You didn't give me the chance. I sent a piece of it to my father though. He'll know. Stay here. I'll show you the printout of the files."

“The printout of the files," Mel groaned. "Are you setting up your own annex to the police department?"

“I might, if I had the extra space," Jane said over her shoulder as she went to the living room to fetch her papers.

Mel studied the sheets. "Looks Eastern European to me. But then I don't know anything except enough Spanish to order a dinner and a few obscene French phrases."

“Oops, your toast's gone cold. I forgot it." Jane put in two more slices while Mel continued to peruse the papers she'd handed him.

“Have you remembered anything else Ginger said when she was talking to you last night?" Mel asked.

“I told you the whole thing then. She wanted to interview me, I said no. She asked if the police had found the disk and I told her no again. I didn't think I should have told anyone and wasn't positive it was the right disk anyway. I feel bad about that now."

“Why? You did exactly the right thing," Mel said.

“But she was probably over in the Johnsons' yard looking for it when she was attacked. If she'd known it had been found, nothing would have happened to her."

“You can't know that, Jane. Someone may have been following and watching her and would have cornered her somewhere eventually."

“Was there any physical evidence in the John-sons' yard? A bloody glove or anything like that?”

Mel frowned. "There is one odd thing. Footprints, we think."

“You think?"

“It's hard to tell. We must have stepped on every inch of the snow yesterday while we were raking it up. The whole yard is footprints. But there are a couple strange ones near where Ginger was."