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Liv leanedover from her cross-legged position on the rug in front of one of Tam’s big windows, stretching sore muscles. Banging her head against a wall, was how Davy had described it. Good metaphor.
She’d never liked puzzles. Her opinion was that communication between human beings was already difficult under the best of circumstances.
Of course, in this case, Kev had had a good reason.
The quiet was oppressive. Tam had gotten bored with “your boyfriend’s tedious little project” long ago and had retreated to her tower workroom, leaving Liv to wring her lonesome, stressed out brain alone and unassisted. Liv could hardly blame her. This was hell.
She wanted to make a significant contribution to this godawful puzzle. To be something other than a dead weight slung around Sean’s neck, or alternately, his sexual plaything. And as far as that went, she still couldn’t get used to herself cast in the role of a sexual plaything.
She wasn’t the type. She was a serious, independent, hardworking woman who favored baggy dresses, cotton leggings and flat shoes. Here she was, legs shaved, made up, dressed up, lotioned and perfumed. Wearing a frilly green bra and underwear set. Getting all hot and bothered imagining what Sean would do if he saw her in it. Whew.
Eyes on the prize, she lectured herself. Concentrate.
She studied the key Sean had scrawled for her. A no-brainer, he’d explained. Kev had used the code they’d cut their teeth on as babbling babes. He’d written out the alphabet, and working back to front starting with Z, had written under it the names of the McCloud family with no letter repetitions. Jeannie, Davy, Connor, Kevin, Sean McCloud. That yielded JEANIDVYCORKSMLU, which left ten unused letters to insert into the key in back to front alphabetical order. Thus, her own name was written KLFIFZ QSTFWKVV. Numbers remained unchanged.
Clear as day. Easy as pie. Go for it. Knock yourself out, babe.
Bwah-hah-hah. Those McClouds could take their damn babbling baby code and stick it where the sun didn’t shine.
Proof on the flash drive in EFPV. HC behind count birds B63.
Damn those difficult, convoluted McCloud men. EF had to be Endicott Falls, but PV? She didn’t have a clue. The urgency in the faded, coded scrawl made her uneasy and sad.
Count the birds. The first sketch was a lake, with nine wild geese flying over it. Then two eagles, perched on a branch. Then a waterfall, no birds, but she’d decided that the lack of birds signified zero. A mountain crag, no birds. Seven swans. Nine gulls on a beach. Seven ducks in a pond. Nine two zero zero seven nine seven. OK, she’d counted them. So? Anyone? And what the hell was HC? Or B63?
Some crucial bit of info had to be missing. It made her crazy.
She got to her feet with an angry sigh, pacing the rug until she found herself in front of the picture window, looking down at the waves as they washed creamy foam over the sand. The clouds were high, the sky a brilliant white. She put the paper flat against the glass, smoothing the torn edge she’d ripped so long ago, so as to shove only half a sheet of thick folded paper into her bra.
The window illuminated a paler border where a strip of the fibrous paper had been torn away. The border of thinner paper extended higher than she’d thought, all the way up to the line of code. She took it off the window, examined it from above. It looked like normal paper again.
She spread it on the glass. Her stomach tightened as she stared at that paler stripe. She rummaged for the folder, and pulled out the water-stained cover of Kev’s sketchbook. Inside those two pieces of battered cardboard was the other half of the sheet of paper Kev had written his fateful note upon. The one she’d ripped in two.
She pried it out, smoothing out the fibers at the extreme edge, longing for a magnifying glass. But there was no need, she realized, when she put the pieces together. She could see with the naked eye that some loose, fluttery fibers were stained with ink. Her heart thudded.
She’d done paper restoration work in libraries in eastern Europe on her studies abroad. She had a good eye, and a delicate touch.
She placed the two pieces together, smoothing down the feathery curling layer over the bottom sheet, into what she hoped was their original conformation. The smudges of ink corresponded to the last character in the last word. QPRI, which, decoded, had become EFPV.
There was a faint, broken line on the bottom of that I. It was, in fact, not an I at all. It was an L. She had ripped off the bottom of Kev’s L, fifteen years ago. She almost wanted to scream as she groped for Sean’s key. The code L, coincidentally, corresponded to the L in the alphabet. So it was not EFPV. It was EFPL.
That was an acronym she knew. It tickled her brain, maddening her. It was stamped on the insides of her eyelids. She could see it, floating there. She could smell ink, paper. Hear the ka-chunk sound of a date stamp, coming down on a card with a lot of other dates on it.
The kind of card that got stuck in a library book. Kev had flagged her down outside the library. The Endicott Falls Public Library. The EFPL. Oh, God.
She put her hands over her mouth and burst into tears.
Count the birds.She had, with endless speculation as to what that seven digit number could refer to: an address, a telephone number, a safe deposit box? But if EFPL was the library, Kev must be talking about a call number. 920.0797. HC had to be Historic Collection. Which meant it was an old book, from Augustus Endicott’s original library, which had been donated to the town upon his death. Which made perfect sense, since B63 was the book’s old Cutter number. Of course.
Oh, God, how simple, how banal. How wonderful and awful. All these years, all this pain, for a few lost paper fibers. How could she not have recognized the configuration? How could it have escaped her?
She was as embarrassed as she was elated.
She clapped her hands over her mouth, muffling shrieks of triumph into crazy keening squeaks. She grabbed the phone Sean had left her, and dialed Sean’s number. It went to voicemail. She could have howled.
All jacked up, full to bursting, and no one to share this exalted, euphoric moment with. She paced the room, still squeaking, jumping up and down. Clutching the phone, trying to breathe. She wished she had the kind of family she could share a giddy triumph like this with.
Which reminded her. Three days had gone by without any report to her parents. That was a bit harsh. And she felt much more kindly disposed to the world on the wake of her triumphant breakthrough.
