Dust to Dust

upside down. I still don’t.”

Kingsley didn’t mention the diary. It had more to do with the Carruthers murder, and the Gainesville visitors wouldn’t have wanted to revisit that. If the diary came up later, he told Diane, he would give it to them. Diane thought they were about ready to go. Then Stark spoke up.

“What about that newspaper article?” said Stark. “That has been very uncomfortable for us, and unfair.”

Diane was hoping they wouldn’t mention it.

“I sympathize,” Diane said. “As I am director of the museum, newspaper articles have been the bane of my existence lately. We didn’t have anything to do with the article.”

By we, Diane meant Kingsley and herself. They would assume, however, she also meant Webber. If Lynn wanted to come clean, fine, but Diane doubted she would. Too much to lose.

Stark nodded. “It had a lot of inaccuracies,” she said.

“I agree,” said Diane.

The meeting broke up and Diane called Frank and asked if he felt like having a guest. She knew he had been busy all day repairing the house. She wished she had been there with him.

“Sure. I’ll order Mexican,” he said. “And I have an idea about the names I couldn’t decipher.”

Chapter 48

Diane cleared the table after the dinner of enchiladas, Spanish rice, and chiles rellenos Frank had ordered, and brought out fresh brewed raspberry-chocolate coffee. Frank was laying out the decoded diary pages on the table and explaining to Kingsley what they meant.

“You’ve impressed me,” said Kingsley. “You talk like this was easy.”

“It was fairly easy,” said Frank. “Just a little time-consuming. Fortunately, there’s not much to do in a motel room.”

“That’s right, you just got back from, where was it, Nashville? I’d think there would be a lot to do in Nashville,” said Kingsley.

“I’m not much into nightlife,” said Frank. “Ben, my partner, and I are pretty boring.”

Frank gave Kingsley a code sheet with all of Ellie Rose’s little doodles and what they represented. He had another sheet with symbols for proper names that he couldn’t translate.

“Most of the names were friends from school, judging from the context,” he said. “If I had a list of her friends, I could figure out who she was talking about in each instance. Most of what she wrote about was related to the normal concerns a girl her age would have. Lots of drama, but nothing serious. It’s these two names that are the ones of interest.” Frank pointed to two doodled symbols in the list. “They are the only ones she seemed to be truly wary of.”

Frank showed Kingsley larger drawings of the two doodles. “Diane and I thought this one looked like a stylized snake with scales and horns. And the other one looked like some kind of a masonry ruin-bricks or something. I thought maybe it looked kind of like an igloo-at least, the blocks reminded me of ice blocks. At any rate, the jagged outline looks like something broken,” said Frank. “Note that the snake scales in the first symbol are small versions of the larger blocks in the other symbol.”

“You said you had a flash of what they might mean?” said Diane.

“If they are names, what if the outline represents the first name and the inside pattern represents a last name? That would make these two symbols represent two people who share the same last name. For example, Ellie Rose might have represented my name by using a hot dog with small doughnuts inside it, and my daughter’s name would be a star with doughnuts inside.”

“Doughnuts?” said Diane and Kingsley together.

“I don’t get it,” said Kingsley.

“You know, Dunkin’ Donuts. That’s one type of coding Ellie used-a kind of rebus soundalike: Duncan- Dunkin’.”

Diane laughed.

“Like the Brick twins, Snake and Jagged,” said Kingsley, grinning.

“Sort of,” said Frank.

The phone rang. Diane rose from the table, carrying her coffee with her, and answered the phone.

“Diane, uh, Thomas Barclay here. How are you? Read in the paper you had some kind of dustup at your home.”

Dustup? Yes, that’s what it was, a dustup. Diane frowned and sat down in the living room and took a sip of hot coffee. Thomas Barclay was one of the museum board members, one whom she struggled to get along with. He was a bank president with a forceful personality.

“Yes, there was an incident here. A man shot the lock off the door and forced his way in with a gun and tried to kill me. I’m fine. I was able to shoot him before he shot me,” she said. She realized she sounded sharp, but calling what happened to her a dustup pissed her off.

There were several moments of silence.

“My God, a home invasion-here in Rosewood. What were they after?”

“Me, apparently,” said Diane.

Barclay seemed to be at a loss for words. “Do the police have someone watching your house?” he said.

“Yes, they’ve had someone with me all day.”

“Good, good,” he said. “The reason I called is-well, I got a curious call from a friend. A man I serve with on a board of directors in Atlanta. Name’s Everett Walters.”

“The name sounds familiar,” said Diane. She waited for him to get to the point.

“He’s a good man. Usually very sensible. He said his son over in Gainesville has a very good friend and neighbor that you’ve been harassing. Of course, I told him that was unlikely. But the thing is, the thing that makes it difficult is, he insists that the board, the museum board, get rid of you. Says your behavior is casting a bad light on the museum. I told him we don’t have the power to fire you. He said we need to do something, that his son’s friends suffered a terrible tragedy and now you are causing them immeasurable suffering on top of it, and you have to be stopped. What’s this about?”

“It’s not about museum business and I’m sorry that a member of the board was dragged into it. You need not worry about museum involvement. You can tell your friend, Mr. Walters, that the Gainesville police will be handling things from here on out,” she said. “We’ve turned everything over to them.”

He was quiet again. Apparently Barclay had never been on an advisory board before. He much preferred making policy, rather than merely expressing his opinion. He would have liked very much to be able to fire Diane, or at least to curtail her powers. Not being able to do either, he made an effort to be polite.

“All right. I’ll tell him the police will be handling it. I’m sure that will be a comfort,” he said.

“I’m sure it will. You said he is usually very sensible,” said Diane. “How well do you know him?” Diane thought it very odd that he would call with such a vehement request. She could see him asking Barclay to look into it, or to find out what was going on. But to request that she be fired? That was a little over-the-top. Had Wendy leaned hard on him for Marsha Carruthers’ sake?

“Oh, we go back,” said Barclay in his best bank president’s voice. “He owns several businesses in Gainesville and Atlanta.” He said it as if that were Everett Walters’ measure of worth. She supposed that for Barclay it was.

“Everett Business Supplies, Walter Ace Parcel Delivery, Night Couriers. His son is chief of oncology at the big hospital in Gainesville and is being looked at to run for a congressional seat. Has a grandson in law school. Good solid family. His father was the one who started the family business. Good tradition. Everett’s not given to histrionics-I wouldn’t have thought.”

Apparently Walters’ call sounded a little over-the-top to Barclay too. That was interesting.

“It’s unfortunate he bothered you with this,” said Diane. “I assure you, he has exaggerated to the point of absurdity. There is no reason to worry. I hope the rest of your evening is uneventful.”

“Yes, ah, yours too. Terrible about the home invasion. Just terrible. Here in Rosewood you don’t expect that kind of thing. Well, good-bye, Diane.”