Dust to Dust

Diane bid him good-bye and hung up the phone. She took the phone to its station and went back to the table.

“What was that?” asked Frank.

“Thomas Barclay, from the bank-a member of the museum board. Wendy Walters’ father-in-law is calling museum board members. Or rather, he called Thomas Barclay, at any rate, and asked him to fire me for harassing Marsha Carruthers and her family.”

Kingsley looked at her with an expression of puzzlement. “You’re serious? He did that?”

“That’s what he said.”

“It sounds like the Carruthers are using their neighbors to put pressure on you to stop the investigation,” said Frank. “A little late for that.”

Diane didn’t say anything. She was staring at the drawings.

“Diane? Are you there?”

It was Kingsley’s voice. But Diane didn’t say anything. She barely heard him, she was so interested in Ellie Rose’s doodles.

Chapter 49

“Diane,” said Frank, “you thought of something. I can tell by the trance you’re in.”

Diane didn’t answer. She walked over to one of the bookcases in the living room and pulled out a desk encyclopedia and flipped through the pages. She was coming to understand how Ellie Rose’s mind worked too. Diane put the encyclopedia back and pulled down a travel book, thumbed through it, and replaced it. She pulled out a geography book and looked through it. It had the picture she wanted. She grabbed a bookmark from the basketful Frank kept on the shelf and marked the page. She took the book to the table, sat down, and pulled the drawings over to her and studied them.

“Did Ellie Rose ever truncate a name in her representation of it?” Diane asked Frank.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“For example, if she were writing about me, might she use a drawing of dice, or rather one die, to represent the syllable Di, rather than symbolizing the whole word Diane?”

“Sure. The symbol she used for Atlanta was a sun with squiggly rays,” Frank said.

“I don’t get it,” said Kingsley.

“Hotlanta,” both Diane and Frank said together.

“Oh, of course.” Kingsley grinned.

“Okay,” said Diane, pointing to the drawing of the snake. She paused, trying to organize her thoughts. “We called this a snake because this top triangle looks kind of like the head of a snake, and the elongated, curved diamond shape below it looks like the body of a snake-and maybe she did that on purpose-making a symbol with a double meaning. But this drawing could also represent a tie,” said Diane.

“A tie?” said Kingsley. “Like neck ornamentation?” he said, pulling at his own brown and tan striped tie.

“It could,” said Frank.

His eyes twinkled. Diane could see he loved decoding things. Actually, it was kind of fun.

“Okay, now look at this other one-the jagged outline that we interpreted to mean something broken or in ruins. But look at this.” Diane turned to the page she had marked in the book and pointed at the photograph. Look at just the outline of this face of Mount Everest. The shape is the same as her symbol. Notice that her drawing of the jagged shape is always the same. It wasn’t a generic jagged-shape thing she was representing. It was this particular thing: Mount Everest.”

“You’re right,” said Frank. “It’s the same outline. Okay, we have Tie and Everest. You are suggesting that those are the first names, right?”

“Sort of,” said Diane. “You said you think the pattern inside the symbol is the last name. The crosshatches look like scales on the first symbol because we identified it as a snake. On the second symbol, I called them bricks in a broken wall. I think I was right, at least about the wall part.

“When we think about drawing something that represents a generic wall, we don’t draw something made out of stucco or drywall-we think of bricks in a wall. The bricks mean wall. So, what we have is Tie Wall and Everest Wall, or rather, Tyler Walters and Everett Walters. Those are the names of Ellie Rose’s neighbor and his grandfather-the man who is trying to keep me busy with something other than investigating this case.”

Kingsley and Frank both sat back, silently looking at the drawings.

Kingsley nodded and stroked his short beard. “I’ll buy it,” he said.

Frank looked up from the drawings to Diane. “Is that what the call was about just now? This Everett Walters?”

“Yes,” said Diane. “He called Thomas Barclay. They serve together on some board in Atlanta. He wanted Barclay to fire me. Maybe he thought I’d be too busy trying to save my job to pursue this case.”

“Thomas Barclay. Isn’t that the banker who gave you a hard time about the Egyptian artifact scandal?” asked Kingsley.

“The very one,” said Diane. “Even Barclay thought Everett Walters was a little too dramatic in his demand. Walters must have been very insistent.”

“Well, that’s interesting,” said Kingsley. “Very suggestive. What was it again that Ellie Rose said about them in her diary?”

He rustled through the papers on the table until he came up with the diary translation Frank wrote.

“If we put the names in place of the symbols, it reads: Dread seeing Tyler Walters. Tyler Walters has gotten mean since Everett Walters came into his life. Tyler Walters is just too creepy. Everett Walters scares me.” Kingsley put the list down. “Tyler lived next door to Ellie Rose Carruthers. You don’t think…”

“You know,” said Frank, “just because Ellie Rose was put off by them doesn’t mean they killed her. I know that’s what’s running through your minds right now. And not to put a damper on things, but we don’t know if Diane’s decipher of these symbols is correct. I think it is, but we don’t know for sure.”

“I know,” said Diane, “but here’s the clincher. Barclay just told me that one of Everett Walters’ businesses is Walter Ace Parcel Delivery. If I’m not mistaken, that’s the company Ryan Dance worked for, and it was in their secured parking lot that he parked his car-the car with all the evidence in the trunk that he claims someone must have planted. You have to admit, it’s worth looking into.”

“You’re right,” said Kingsley. “My God, you’re right about that.”

“So now you do intend to look into the Ellie Rose murder case? The one you assured those women in Gainesville that you weren’t investigating?” said Frank.

“Yes,” said Diane. “This may turn out to mean nothing, but it’s really making the hair stand up on the back of my neck.”

“Just checking,” said Frank. “I find it a little chilling myself.” He smiled. “I know I would follow up on it.”

“It makes sense about Wendy Walters,” said Kingsley. “It was obvious she and Marsha Carruthers are codependent. I could see what Marsha was getting out of the dependent relationship, but I couldn’t understand what Wendy was getting. If she was trying to assuage her guilt, it would lead her to go way above and beyond the behavior of a good neighbor.”

“Her guilt about what exactly?” said Frank.

“That’s the question,” said Kingsley, absently pulling at his tie. “Did someone in her family kill Ellie Rose, and did she know about it?”

“Jeez, it’s beginning to sound like a Shakespearean tragedy,” said Diane. She started to offer more coffee when the phone rang again. She left them at the table wondering if Wendy was some variation of Lady Macbeth and went to answer it.

“Diane, it’s Vanessa. How are you?” she asked.

“I’m doing well. No real lasting effects. Frank replaced the doors today. You’d never know they had been shot