Leftovers (14 page)

“No one can prove that Andy Zoz was even here, and now that you’re telling me that a sniper was here too, it’s a pretty good bet that the phone number we had for him has been dumped. So we have nothing to go on now.” All he had to go on at this point was my word, which I was telling him came from Andy Zoz. It was hardly the type of testimony that would hold up in a court case.

I wanted to say more; however, given that Danvers now disbelieved the entire story, I knew that everything else I had told him would be equally suspect. The confession about Linda taking a bribe from NBG would also be looked on as the ramblings of an unbalanced witness—or a desperate ex-date. I wasn’t sure which label I disliked more.

Disgusted, I stood up. The area was still swarming with armed men in military gear. They were moving out from the hilltop into the hills beyond the gravesite. The Zoz family was gone. The minister was gone. The casket stood alone, waiting to be lowered into the ground. If it hadn’t been for Land’s windows, there would have been no evidence that anyone had been firing shots here a few minutes ago.

Land picked up a couple of the shells that Danvers had thrown on the ground. “These are military grade ammo. I’m not sure what’s going on with Danvers. Either he threw these here, because he knew that I’d look at them and know what he knows—or he’s just not doing his job.”

I looked at Land. “Which is it?”

He shrugged and threw the shells back on the ground. “It could be either. That’s why I told you not to trust him. I can never get a good read if he’s being honest or if he’s playing me for his own advantage.”

I could easily understand. Up until recently, I’d thought Danvers was interested in me and pursuing something more meaningful. Now I not only questioned his intentions toward me, but I found myself suspecting him of being in league with the criminals in this case.

His actions could certainly be questioned. He hadn’t taken a statement from Zoz over the phone. He’d waited until he’d arranged an open air meeting with the suspect, a meeting that no one was supposed to know about. Somehow someone had learned of the meeting and had arranged to take care of Andy before he could talk to the police. I hadn’t known of the meeting, so I figured that it was limited to just a few members of the police force. That certainly looked like someone inside the force had shared information with NBG.

I sighed. “Let’s go home. No use in being here anymore,” I said as I walked back toward Land’s car. It was a windy ride home, since we had to ride with the windows down the whole way. Not only had we not solved anything, I’d lost a whole day of profit from the food truck. At this rate, I saw myself back on my parents’ sofa watching TV.

I had begun to think that the entire mess was in my imagination by the time we reached my apartment. I had an over-active imagination, and the deaths had been the work of someone who wanted to keep a secret quiet. No conspiracy, no collusion.

However, all bets were off when we reached my apartment.

The front door was wide open, swaying back and forth in the breeze. I was glad to see that the building manager was so concerned about the security of the building. My unit sat in the middle of the U of a converted single-story motel. The building itself reminded me of nothing more than the Bates Motel, which did nothing to add to its hominess. However, it was cheap and convenient to the secured lot and most of downtown.

Land put his hand on my arm, as if I was going to run into that place without stopping to think of my own safety. Other than a TV and sofa, there wasn’t much that I had to worry about in my apartment. My parents had retained most of my valuables, since they were concerned that I would be murdered there in my sleep. I could see now where they got the impression that my death was a possibility.

Land pulled a gun from under the driver’s seat of the car. I wondered why he hadn’t used that today during the shoot-out.

As if he’d read my mind, he said, “The rifle used has a range of about three times what this pistol does. Why bother?” He made something click on it and held it out in front of him. I followed behind him, and he kept an arm out to keep me behind him—and presumably away from flying bullets.

We traced our way through every room of the apartment. Things had been trashed. Pillows were split open, mattresses and cushions turned over and dumped on the floor. Flour and sugar lay on the floor of the kitchen. All the signs of someone looking for something.

He nodded at me. “The place is clear. Get something to wear. Get those papers from your hiding place, and then you’re coming with me.”

He said it as a command. I wasn’t used to him talking to me in that tone. I started to say something, but I saw the look on his face and stopped myself. He had a look of concern and fear. I’d never seen him express these feelings, but I could read his face at that moment. He was also carrying enough firepower to protect us from any more intruders, which was foremost on my mind.

I did as he asked. I didn’t want to involve my parents in this. If I went to stay with them, then they would be in harm’s way if an attack or robbery happened there. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if that happened.

I packed a few sets of clothes in an overnight bag, since I didn’t know how long I’d be gone. I removed the piece of plaster and took all of the papers from my hiding place. I put them in the overnight bag as well. I had everything of value with me, but I still stopped and locked the door to the apartment on the way out. Land snorted as I turned the key, but I ignored him.

As we started to his place, he asked me to repeat the entire conversation I’d had with Andy Zoz in the cemetery. I went through all of it. I was impressed with myself for remembering as much as I did, given that forty seconds after being told to “look in a book” a sniper had been taking shots at us.

A thought hit me. I told Land to pull over for a moment. He took his time, found an empty parking lot and stopped the car to look at me. “Andy said that she would look in a book. Suppose she got the idea for that code from a book in their house? We’ve been trying to figure out where the code came from, but maybe Andy was right. Do you think he knew and was giving us a hint?”

Land shook his head. “I doubt it. He’d lost his wife. I very much doubt that he was going to give us some obtuse clue to how to read that letter. He would have just told us what to do.”

I nodded. That was probably right. I was trying to make this thing much more difficult than it needed to be. I was seeing conspiracies and dying clues wherever I looked at this point. I knew that I needed to either solve this or let it go, because the stress was beginning to affect me. I wanted to go back to making hot dogs and pouring coffee. I blinked my eyes a few times, wondering if I would have ever thought that I would say that.

I gave Land directions to the Zoz place. I knew that no one would be at the house. If the sniper knew that Andy was back in town, the last place Andy would hide his family would be at the family home. He was probably on the run again, and who knew when I would see him again.

The woman who had moved into their place said that she’d bought it with all the furnishings. That would include the books. I just had to make sure that the current owners were gone.

The lights were out when we arrived at the house. That meant that the home would be empty, since I couldn’t believe anyone went to bed at 7 p.m. My crimes now seemed to be a family affair, since I’d already broken into Mariel’s place. So I didn’t much care when I went to the back door and broke a pane of glass in the door. I unbolted the door and swung it in. I listened for an alarm system, but nothing happened. All was quiet.

Land and I headed inside. He still had his gun with him. He carried it low now, since there wasn’t an immediate danger. We scanned the basement and then the first floor. There was an office/library near the front of the house, and we found hundreds of books in the room.

Land groaned. “Just another dead end,” he said, flopping down in a chair.

I started scanning the books on the shelves. I went slowly, trying not to skip any title. I didn’t know all of them, but I knew a great many of them from my recently completed education.

I suspected that I was looking for a mystery or a biography of a codebreaker like Alan Turing. Those made the most sense in terms of finding a clue in a book. As I went shelf by shelf, I found a large number of science fiction tales along with children’s classics. I did find a book of Sherlock Holmes tales and another of Agatha Christie short stories. I put these at Land’s feet as I continued to peruse.
While Faulkner was hard to understand, it did not constitute a code,
I thought.

I was on the next to last shelf when a title struck me. It wasn’t a mystery, but I remembered the scrap of paper from the hotel room. It had read “s web.” The book in front of me was Charlotte’s Web. The book didn’t have a code in it from what I remembered about it; however, the coincidence was too much to be random. I pulled that book down and gave it to Land. “I think this might be the book.”

Land skimmed the pages. “Are you supposed to be the little girl or the pig?” he asked with a smirk.

About ten pages into the book, he stopped flipping through it. “There are underlined words here.” He continued to flip through the pages. “And here. And here.”

I jumped down from my perch. I was getting close to solving the code, which could only help us to learn what the hell was going on in Capital City. Part of me wanted to work through the code here and now and get this over with. However, the rational part of me realized that not only were very bad people looking for this code, we were in someone’s house without permission. Even though the lights were off and no alarm had sounded, a nosy neighbor might ask questions or call the police. I didn’t want that interruption now.

Land could see I was anxious to go, but he encouraged me to finish reviewing the shelves. I climbed back up to the top shelf and looked at the titles on the last shelf. Nothing stuck out at me, so I came down again and we left.

I’d never been to Land’s place, so it was something of a surprise when we reached a high-rise apartment building and he pulled into the underground parking garage. I had not expected this at all. I guess I’d thought that, given his salary, he’d be living in dire straits like me.

We passed the security guard at the door. No wonder he’d wanted to come here. The guard was not a grandpa in need of some extra cash. This guy was a lineman with a gun obviously holstered under his jacket. While he might not survive against a sniper, I knew that he’d raise an alarm before he went down.

Land’s apartment was much nicer than mine was. The furnishings were spartan. He had a lamp and a sofa in the living room. He didn’t offer to show me the rest of the place, and I was in too much of a hurry to push to see it.

I sat down on the floor and pulled out the papers again. I set the book down next to me and looked at all of them. Close as I was, I still had no idea how to solve this code.

Land laughed as he sat down beside me. “Still no clue, eh?”

I shook my head. Today had been too much for me to start trying to pretend that I didn’t need some help to get through this. “Not a clue.”

“This is a book code. You have to know the book to get started. The code refers to page and line numbers and maybe word numbers. So, 3145, would be page 3, line 14, word 5. There aren’t any leading zeroes, so the code is going to be even tougher to break. You’ll have to wait to complete each word before you can hope to solve the next word. Let me show you.”

The first set of numbers was 145239. We looked on page 14, but there were no underlined words. So we moved to page 145 and looked to line 23. The 9
th
word was underlined. The word was “help.”

Something told me that we were on the right path with that word. We progressed slowly through the lines of numbers I’d written down. Some words used the entire word. In other cases, only a portion of the word was underlined. In those cases, it either was a word in its own right or had to be combined with another word to make sense.

At one point, I stopped and looked at Land. “What is it?” he asked.

I swallowed hard. This was getting scary for me. “It’s the third number that I took from the woman’s cellphone. 1016. It’s part of the code we’re breaking.”

Land actually smiled at me. I was scared to death of what we’d learn, and he was practically grinning. “Good. It means we’re getting close. They must have seen the letter at some point and tried to make sense of it. We’re farther ahead, which is always where you want to be when you’re working against a group like this.”

It was tiring and painstaking, but finally we had the letter. It read as follows:

Mari,

NBG is after me. I took money from them to give them permits. To do what they wanted. Now they want my silence. I’m afraid. Very afraid. If anything happens to me, let the police know.

I sighed. Hours of detailed work, and I got a letter that pretty much told me what I already knew. NBG wanted to own the food truck market for some reason and paid Linda off to get it. I still didn’t know why. I still didn’t know who was behind the deaths. People had been killed over a letter that didn’t give any details. It just seemed like an awful waste.

“And this is why I hate codes,” Land repeated. “You can give this to Danvers, or you can make use of it yourself.”