“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 up,” said Diane.
“That makes me shiver every time I think about it. I don’t know how you remained so calm during all that,” she said.
“I wasn’t really all that calm,” said Diane.
“You did well. I’m very impressed. God forbid, if I’m ever in that situation, you are the one I want by my side to protect me. But the reason I called, Mother said she remembered getting letters about the Gauthier family when we were in Europe. She said the letters were from Laura Hillard’s great-grandmother, Ernestina. She kept mother up-to-date on all the Rosewood gossip in those days,” said Vanessa.
Laura Hillard, Diane’s psychiatrist friend, and her family went several generations back as residents of Rosewood.
“Does she remember what they said?” asked Diane.
“No. She got so many letters during that time,” Vanessa said. “When Daddy was ambassador, our life was a whirl-wind.”
“I don’t suppose she saved the letters,” said Diane.
“Well, that’s the thing. She’s insisting that Harte and I go up in the attic and look for them. She can’t remember exactly where they are stored, and you know how big our attic is. It’s going to be like finding the lost Ark in the government’s warehouse,” said Vanessa. “Harte told me to use that analogy. She said, since you love science fiction, that you would understand it.”
Diane laughed. “I do, and it’s a good analogy.”
“Oh, I’m glad. I know how you hate bad analogies. Poor Thomas Barclay still hasn’t recovered from your scolding of him over the ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire’ reference.”
Diane smiled to herself. “Thomas called this evening. A man named Everett Walters is wanting him to dismiss me from the museum. Do you know an Everett Walters? He owns some businesses in Atlanta and Gainesville.”
“Dismiss you? This person thinks he has a say in who is director of my museum? For what reason did he think you should be fired?”
Diane could almost see the look of indignation on Vanessa’s face. She related the conversation she had with Thomas Barclay.
“I think Walters wants me away from that case in Gainesville. I won’t get into that. It’s a really long story,” Diane said.
“I’ll call Thomas,” Vanessa said.
Nothing infuriated her more than people messing with the museum.
“Everett Walters? The name sounds familiar. Yes, the Everett Walters I know has a son, Gordon Walters, who, I believe, is a doctor. I’ve heard talk of him running for Congress. I don’t know why he thinks that makes him qualified. Doctors can be so arrogant. Is that the same Everett Walters who called Thomas?”
“That’s him,” said Diane.
“I hope Thomas gave him an earful, but I doubt it. I’ll let you know if we find anything in the attic,” she said.
Diane looked at the clock sitting on the fireplace mantel. It was too late to call Detective Hanks. Besides, it would be better to wait and see if Vanessa found anything. She went back to Frank and Kingsley. They were still discussing possible scenarios for who killed Ellie Rose.
“Vanessa thinks she might find some more information about the previous owners of Marcella’s house,” said Diane as she sat down. “That’s Detective Hanks’ case-the one with the strange boot print connection to Stacy Dance’s crime scene,” she reminded Kingsley. “It was Vanessa’s mother who remembered the name of the family who owned Marcella’s house years ago. Vanessa said her mother just remembered that Laura’s great-grandmother wrote letters to them while they were in Europe about the latest gossip involving the Gauthier family. Apparently they were…”
Diane stopped. Frank and Kingsley were staring at her, both with surprised looks.
“What?” she said.
“You don’t speak French,” said Kingsley.
“No. I’m not good with languages. I barely spoke enough Spanish and Portuguese to pass for the village idiot when I was in South America.”
“The Anglicized name for Gauthier,” said Frank, “is Walters.”