more.”
“If the Newton number is what this line is about,” I said. “It’s a big assumption, but we have to start somewhere. Wally, what did you discover?”
Wally tapped some keys on the keyboard. “My verse says, ‘Ilion, New York, is starting a war.’ I focused on numbers, too, and while nothing jumped out at me, this is what I came up with.” He adjusted the glasses on his nose. “Ilion is the name of the ancient city of Troy, famous in legends. However, Ilion, New York, is a really small town in the middle of the state. It is only 2.5 square miles and has a whopping population of seventy-eight hundred people. German immigrants founded it, and the town doesn’t seem to have been involved in any major war, Civil, Revolutionary, Native American or other. The town wasn’t even incorporated until 1852. There’s nothing historically significant about Ilion that I could find—it’s just a proverbial small town in America. I can give you the coordinates, but a quick run at them didn’t turn up anything spectacular codewise. Route 51 goes through the north of the village. That’s all I’ve got so far unless you want me to dig deeper and come up with population density, census numbers, and household numbers.”
None of it meant anything to me. I tried to swallow my frustration. “I don’t know, Wally. Let’s see what Frankie found.”
She took a bite of an apple, set it down. “Well, I didn’t find any numbers, so I hope you’re not too disappointed,” she said. “My verse read, ‘Tulinsky, it means something to you.’ Obviously, it means nothing to me, but I pulled up everything I could find that had Tulinsky in it, so maybe that will help you. There’s only one place in the world I found called Tulinsky, and it’s in Russia, where it’s apparently super cold most of the year. I asked Wally to look at the town coordinates in case it meant something numberwise, but he found zip. There was also nothing significant, historically or numerically, about the town that I could find. Other than that, the only Tulinskys I could find were people. Did you know there are millions of people with the last name Tulinsky? However, if I narrowed it down to the most famous of the Tulinskys, they are, in this order, a chemist who had several patents on cell therapeutics, a musician who played the blues, and a popular children’s book author.”
“Nothing jumps out at me.” I sighed and put my forehead in my hands. “This riddle is too hard. Why would he give me something so hard?”
Wally put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not too hard. He said only you would understand it. He had to write it so if someone else got ahold of it, it wouldn’t make sense to them.”
“But it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“It’s going to make sense to you,” Wally said. “Keep working it. It’s not supposed to be easy.”
“You’ve got this, Angel,” Frankie said. “We just need to give you more information. The answer will be there. It’ll jump out to you. I’m sure of it.”
I blew out a breath and rubbed my temples. “Okay, keep digging on your two verses. I’m going to try and tackle the last verse. Maybe it’s the key.”
I pulled it up on my screen and read it. Check number nine, and you will be through. What was that supposed to mean? Check the number nine how? I went back to the previous line. Tulinsky, it means something to you. Actually, it didn’t, but maybe it should. I’d never been to Russia, never even heard of the town before. Frankie had said some of the famous people were named Tulinsky. A chemist, a musician and a children’s author.
It means something to you.
I glanced up. “Frankie, can you pull up the info on the Tulinsky who was a chemist and send me a few of his famous patents? I’m going to check out some of the songs written by the musician Tulinsky. Then, if you have time, can you shoot me the bio and few of the book titles written by Tulinsky the author? Maybe something will pop from this round of material.”
“On it,” Frankie said.
After a few minutes, she forwarded me her list on chemist John Tulinsky. I read through the list, shaking my head. She’d listed a bunch of complicated medical cell therapies, which were way over my head. The patents and the content meant nothing to me