maniac came to Marcella’s place. She gave him a brief description of the evening’s events. She tried to play it down, but the facts of the incident being what they were, it was hard to put a no-big-deal face on it.
“Diane, my God, why in the . . . ,” he said. “Are you all right? What the hell was that about? You say he’s related to the guy who was killed here?”
“I don’t know what it’s about, and yes, they’re apparently related. I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow. Right now, I’m going to bed to get a good night’s sleep. Tell the policemen there to keep a lookout. And David, be careful. Be extra paranoid.”
“Sure thing,” he said. “You know how I am.”
“This is just crazy,” said Diane when she hung up. “I don’t know why I was a target. It solves nothing for anyone, unless it’s some kind of revenge thing.”
“Revenge? Who?” Frank asked. “And for what?”
“Maybe it was just a coincidence Emory turned out to be related to Ray-Ray. Emory is from Atlanta, which is a straight shot down the interstate from Gainesville. Perhaps Marsha Carruthers and her husband are behind it. Perhaps it’s some kind of revenge for stirring up the tragedy in their lives.”
As she said it, it didn’t seem right. The kinship thing between the two men was just too much of a coincidence. She was getting a major headache.
“Why don’t I heat up the leftover pizza?” said Frank. “We’ll have pizza and red wine. You know how you love leftover pizza.”
“Sounds good,” she said.
While they waited for the pizza to warm in the oven, Frank boarded up the back door so it wouldn’t open at all.
“I’ll have it fixed tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll call my partner and tell him I’m taking the day off.”
“I’m sorry you have to do that.” Diane felt guilty on top of everything else. She had brought this to his house. Maybe it wasn’t her fault, but it was about her.
“They could have been after me,” said Frank. “After all, had I been here, I probably would have been the one to answer the door. I do have Atlanta connections who might want some revenge.”
Frank had a strange habit of reading her mind sometimes. But she probably wore her feelings on her face. She was a terrible poker player.
“Ray-Ray after Marcella; his cousin after you?” She shook her head. “That would be too much of a coincidence.”
They ate and drank and Diane began to feel better.
“I finished the diary,” he said.
“Oh? Was it hard?” asked Diane.
“Very easy really, once I got to know how Ellie Rose’s mind worked. She must have been a neat kid. Very clever code for a kid.”
“How did it work?” asked Diane.
“She had symbols for diphthongs and consonant blends—letter combinations like oo, ou, th, st, ious—that kind of thing. For other letter combinations she drew doodles that represented the sound—like in a rebus puzzle. For example, for air she drew three curled wisps.”
Frank got a piece of paper and drew the doodle for her.
“The symbol for the consonant blend of st is a star. So if she wrote the word stair, it would be a star and these little wisps.” He drew it for Diane.
“If she had to use a letter, she would go two up in the alphabet,” he continued. “So a would be c and z would be b. The consonant blend th is the numeral three. The word the would be written as the numeral three with the letter g immediately following it.” He grinned. “She was a good little doodler.”
He took several bites of pizza and a sip of wine.
“There was a little complication, in that sometimes she would change how she wrote a word. For example, the symbol for the suffix er was a drawing of an ear. Mother was sometimes oq, with the numeral three immediately following, and then the drawing of an ear. And sometimes it would be a drawing of a moth and an ear.”
“That seems like it would take a long time to write,” said Diane.
“Not really. The drawings were doodles, stylized versions of what they represented. If you’re going up the alphabet only two letters, you can work that out pretty fast,” he said.
“I’ll call Ross Kingsley tomorrow. He’ll be happy you were able to decode it,” said Diane. “I got the impression he thought it would be impossible.”
“You know, I kind of got to know her. Not just reading her diary, but seeing