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“She told you in person?” Sean asked.
“No, she sent in a note. It was on my desk this morning when I got in.”
A few minutes later Sean and Michelle were rushing up the steps to Alicia’s cottage. They burst through the door and Michelle called out, “Viggie? Viggie!”
She hurtled up the stairs and threw open Viggie’s bedroom door. The room was empty and she clattered back downstairs. She and Sean searched the rest of the cottage.
“No sign of her,” he said, his voice panicky.
“Where the hell is her guard?” Michelle demanded.
The door to the cottage opened and Alicia walked in. She was holding a bundle of papers and looked very tired. She seemed surprised to see them there and then said in a scolding tone, “Okay, you two, I’ve run every possible configuration of these damn notes through our strongest computer programs and came up with gibberish every time. So either the code is beyond our capability to decipher it, or it’s not code at all, which is the conclusion I’m fast coming to. I did find out the name of the song. It’s ‘Shenandoah,’ from the nineteenth century. Anyway, what do you know, it has lyrics, not many, none of it spectacular, but it has words. So I had the brilliant idea that perhaps the lyrics were the key to the code. I hit them with everything we had, in every conceivable combination. And do you know what? It was still all gibberish.”
They just stood there staring at her.
“What is it?” she said suspiciously.
“Where’s Viggie?” Michelle asked quietly.
Alicia looked at her watch. “She’s in school. She’s been in school since eight o’clock.”
“She’s not there, Alicia,” Sean said. “The teacher said someone left a note on her desk this morning saying that Viggie was sick.”
She gave them both searching looks. “I’ve been up all night trying to make sense of this garbage. You were supposed to look after her.”
“She was fine early this morning,” Michelle explained. “She came to my room a bit before dawn. Then she went back to her room.”
“Then what?” Alicia said.
Sean and Michelle looked at each other. Sean said in an uncomfortable tone, “Then we left to run down some leads.”
“Leaving her alone!” Alicia exclaimed. “You left Viggie alone? Again!”
“We thought you were here,” Michelle explained.
Alicia threw the papers up in the air. “You thought I was here? How the hell could I be here when you gave me this mess to deal with?” She drew several deep breaths. “Her guard is supposed to escort her to school. I requested a new one directly after that other fool let Viggie wander away and almost drown.”
Sean looked at her curiously. “Who did you request the guard from?”
“Champ.”
Michelle said, “Champ picked me up at nine to go to the plane.”
“What are you talking about, what plane?” Alicia said fiercely.
“Just calm down, Alicia. Viggie might have just gone off by herself,” Sean said.
“Look what happened the last time she did that!”
“She’s right, Sean. I’m going to check down by the river.”
“I’ll get a security team to start looking over the grounds here,” he said.
They both headed out, leaving Alicia Chadwick staring helplessly down at the mess of papers.
CHAPTER
74
