The Puzzle of Piri Reis (24 page)

"Naw. He don't, but Hogg does" He gestured to the
west. "He has them on a lot a few miles father down
on Seventy-One."

"Some business." I whistled softly.

"Yep. Me, I don't care much for the man. Typical
used car salesman, you know. Kinda greasy looking
even, but to give the devil his due, he's done built hisself
quite a business. Anything on four wheels, he sells."

We paused at the locked gate. I shook my head in
awe. "You mean buses and eighteen-wheelers, big stuff
like that?"

.-Yep. Down in San Antone, I hear. He's always bidding on school buses and that sort of thing. Last I heard,
the local school district there done bought over a hundred new buses last year."

I arched an eyebrow. "Not bad. Well, I appreciate
you letting me take a look at that pickup. I feel a lot
better now."

Jack shot me a quick glance as he pulled back into
the traffic. "Was that it?"

I nodded slowly. "That was it. And somewhere in
San Antonio, Hogg has a dealership that sells eighteenwheeler tractors. That's our next stop"

"Fine with me, but let's grab something to eat on the
way" Jack pulled into a Chubby's Barbecue where we
picked up three sliced pork sandwiches. As we pulled
away from the drive-thru, he hooked a thumb at the
back seat. "Cold beer back there"

During the next hour and a half, I tried to rearrange
my theories to take into account the new information
I'd picked up.

If Hogg was behind the eighteen-wheeler and pickup,
was he behind the other efforts to scare me off? If so,
why? However I looked at his motives, they didn't make
sense. Why would a successful businessman worth ten
or so million risk it all for a map he planned to give to
some university in exchange for a memorial to him? Unless there were reasons I had yet to discover.

Joe Hogg sold eighteen-wheelers from two dealerships, and I counted six black tractors on each lot, proving by themselves absolutely nothing.

So, now, all I had to do was figure out how to connect him with the tractor and the pickup that tried to
run me off the road.

Jack dropped me off at the hotel and headed back to
Austin.

I awakened around four, my head filled with puzzles.
Filling the courtesy coffeepot, I pulled out my notes
and tackled the last puzzle once again.

For an hour and a half, I kept running into a brick
wall, and then as I perused a fifteen-page booklet I'd
downloaded on code breaking, I ran across an example of a ciphered code that had also been encrypted.
The example was a transitional cipher used back during the Nixon administration in which the nineteen
letters of the president's full name substituted for the
first nineteen letters of the alphabet after which the
remaining seven alphabetical characters were coded
by A-F.

So, why couldn't the symbols be the encrypted code
which, once matched with the appropriate key, divulged the message?

Remembering the number of times Odom had been
referred to as an egocentric, I put in his name, Bernard
Julius Odom, and ran down the alphabet to the letter P.
Starting over with the remaining nine characters, I
tagged them A-I.

The key, if it were the key, looked like this:

I glanced at my watch and muttered a curse. I jumped
to my feet. I was running late. I'd finish the puzzle
later but now I had to first bounce my murder theory
off Chief Ibbara, if for nothing else to cover my behind; second, to replay the events of the night of October second in the Odom den as Ervin Maddox had laid
them out; and third, to learn why Edna had said nothing of Leo Cobb's threat to Odom and to verify the
Rolls she climbed into that night was Hogg's. In addition, I wanted to learn just how much of an allowance
Lamia Sue received from her uncle. I knew what Ted
had told me but I wanted to make sure. After all, she
had been blackmailing Cobb. Who's to say she wasn't
putting some kind of pressure on her uncle?

And then there was Joe Hogg. I had to wait on him. I
had less than nothing to support my suspicions but perhaps I could gain some leverage from Edna Hudson.
Of course, as far as I knew, that one night she climbed
in his Rolls might have been the first time. I didn't think
so but I would find out.

I had two pieces of business to take care of before I
left for Ibbara's office. First, I called Jimmy Tamez, a
local PI, and commissioned him to tail Joe Hogg. "If
he picks up a woman at 2112 Fairchild in the evening,
I want pictures, Jimmy. Clear ones. I've got to be able
to ID her and the car."

"No sweat, Tony"

I stared at the receiver after I hung up. If that had
been Edna climbing into Hogg's Rolls Royce, what
was going on? Had he merely happened to be driving
past and out of the goodness of his heart given her a
lift? I doubted it. Was he fooling around on his showgirl wife with a fifty-two-year-old secretary? Not likely,
but then, in my years on this planet, I'd learned the hard
way never to say never.

Downstairs in the gift shop, I took care of my second
piece of business. I purchased a small spray pump, half
filled it with water, and dropped it in my pocket.

From behind the seat in my Silverado, I retrieved
my bag of tools and rummaged through it, pulling out
a vial of Luminol from a previous case. I dropped it in
my pocket with the spray pump.

Chief Ibbara listened to my little theory, then
promptly shot it down. "It could have happened that
way, but I've got a justice of the peace who declared it
an accidental death"

The lanky chief's reaction was what I had expected.
Who could blame him? No sense in borrowing trouble, and that's exactly what the chief would be doing if he ignored the justice of the peace's ruling. "Just as
long as you know, Chief. But, there is another factor involved that makes me think this is more than simply a
missing map."

His bushy eyebrows knit. "Oh?"

"On the way down from Austin last Tuesday, an eighteen-wheeler ran me off the road."

A wry grin played over his swarthy face. "Welcome
to Chicken Run," he said, referring to the name given
that ninety-mile stretch of interstate from Austin to
San Antonio because of the penchant of truckers to
play chicken with smaller vehicles.

"There's more to it than that, Chief." I quickly detailed the incidents from the room tossing to the latest
attempt at Devil's Backbone, with the exception of the
setup with Lamia Sue Odom. When I finished, I paused.
"I didn't mention it at first because I figured it was just
another one of those incidents on the highway. But now
I'm asking myself why."

He pursed his lips and gently stroked his mustache.
"The map is worth a lot of money, right?"

"Yeah. That's what they say"

He smoothed his wavy hair. "I'm not telling you
anything you don't know, but it's been my experience
that people will pull a lot of crazy stunts for money"

He was right, of course, but I still felt there was
more here than a mere theft. I changed the subject. "I
heard about Lamia Sue Odom. A San Antonio detective
questioned me. I'm sorry"

With a grimace, he muttered, "Sure hated that. She
was my cousin. We weren't all that close but she was
family. Her funeral's tomorrow." He paused and grew
reflective. "She pulled a lot of stunts she shouldn't.
But I'll give her credit. She didn't do it in my jurisdiction and put me on the spot"

I frowned, wondering if he meant what I thought he
meant. "Are you talking about-"

"I'm not talking about anything."

When I saw the knowing look in his eye, I nodded.
"I understand. Any leads?"

With a growl, he replied, "They won't say. There was
enough drugs in her system to kill her but someone
wanted to make certain and strangled her."

"Oh?" I remembered the red marks on her throat.

"Yeah. Small hands, the ME said."

"Small man or a woman, huh?"

"Yeah.

Just my luck, I told myself. Everyone on my list was
five-eight or less.

Ibbara paused a moment, then leaned back in his
chair and propped his feet on his desk. "Any closer to
finding the map?"

"No." It was a lie but I figured the fewer who knew of
what little success I'd gained the better. "Teddy gave
me a list of possibles. Dead end on them" I paused.
"It's still in that house somewhere. There's a couple of
puzzles I'm trying to figure out. I think they are the solution." I had no sooner uttered the words than I wished
I'd kept my mouth shut.

A frown knit his eyebrows. "Puzzles?"

I explained the two prints on the wall in the den.

A grin played over his swarthy face. "Hey, I'm not
bad at puzzles. Why don't I go over there with you and
see what you've got?"

I had wanted to be alone in the den so I could check
for traces of blood, but I forced a laugh and pushed to
my feet. "Come on. I won't turn down any help."

Wearing her usual one-piece print dress with her thin
belt about her waist, Edna opened the door and smiled
brightly, keeping her left hand at her side. "Louis, how
good to see you" Her face crumpled into tears. "Wasn't
it terrible about Lamia Sue?"

Ibbara put his arms around Edna and hugged. "Terrible. I know you'll miss her."

"We all will," she replied, backing away and brushing at the tears in her eyes. She smiled weakly at me.
"Hello, Tony"

.'Edna."

"Teddy isn't here."

Louis explained. "That isn't why we came over. We
wanted to take a look at Uncle Bernard's office"

"Yeah," I said. "Chief Ibbara claims he's a whiz at
puzzles. We'll soon see"

Edna accompanied us to the den. I pointed out the
two puzzles on the wall. I didn't tell him of the work I
had done on them. "There they are, Chief. So, what do
you think?"

Print Number One

Print Number Two

He whistled softly. "What makes you think those are
puzzles? And what do they have to do with the map?"

"Leo Cobb-you know Leo?"

Ibbara nodded. "Yeah"

I paraphrased Cobb's remarks. "Cobb said that
Odom once told him they were the solution to finding
the map"