Dust to Dust

Diane could see he loved decoding things. Actually, it was kind of fun.
    “Okay, now look at this other one—the jagged outline that we interpreted to mean something broken or in ruins. But look at this.” Diane turned to the page she had marked in the book and pointed at the photograph. Look at just the outline of this face of Mount Everest. The shape is the same as her symbol. Notice that her drawing of the jagged shape is always the same. It wasn’t a generic jagged-shape thing she was representing. It was this particular thing: Mount Everest.”
    “You’re right,” said Frank. “It’s the same outline. Okay, we have Tie and Everest. You are suggesting that those are the first names, right?”
    “Sort of,” said Diane. “You said you think the pattern inside the symbol is the last name. The crosshatches look like scales on the first symbol because we identified it as a snake. On the second symbol, I called them bricks in a broken wall. I think I was right, at least about the wall part.
    “When we think about drawing something that represents a generic wall, we don’t draw something made out of stucco or drywall—we think of bricks in a wall. The bricks mean wall . So, what we have is Tie Wall and Everest Wall, or rather, Tyler Walters and Everett Walters. Those are the names of Ellie Rose’s neighbor and his grandfather—the man who is trying to keep me busy with something other than investigating this case.”
    Kingsley and Frank both sat back, silently looking at the drawings.
    Kingsley nodded and stroked his short beard. “I’ll buy it,” he said.
    Frank looked up from the drawings to Diane. “Is that what the call was about just now? This Everett Walters?”
    “Yes,” said Diane. “He called Thomas Barclay. They serve together on some board in Atlanta. He wanted Barclay to fire me. Maybe he thought I’d be too busy trying to save my job to pursue this case.”
    “Thomas Barclay. Isn’t that the banker who gave you a hard time about the Egyptian artifact scandal?” asked Kingsley.
    “The very one,” said Diane. “Even Barclay thought Everett Walters was a little too dramatic in his demand. Walters must have been very insistent.”
    “Well, that’s interesting,” said Kingsley. “Very suggestive. What was it again that Ellie Rose said about them in her diary?”
    He rustled through the papers on the table until he came up with the diary translation Frank wrote.
    “If we put the names in place of the symbols, it reads: Dread seeing Tyler Walters. Tyler Walters has gotten mean since Everett Walters came into his life. Tyler Walters is just too creepy. Everett Walters scares me.” Kingsley put the list down. “Tyler lived next door to Ellie Rose Carruthers. You don’t think . . .”
    “You know,” said Frank, “just because Ellie Rose was put off by them doesn’t mean they killed her. I know that’s what’s running through your minds right now. And not to put a damper on things, but we don’t know if Diane’s decipher of these symbols is correct. I think it is, but we don’t know for sure.”
    “I know,” said Diane, “but here’s the clincher. Barclay just told me that one of Everett Walters’ businesses is Walter Ace Parcel Delivery. If I’m not mistaken, that’s the company Ryan Dance worked for, and it was in their secured parking lot that he parked his car—the car with all the evidence in the trunk that he claims someone must have planted. You have to admit, it’s worth looking into.”
    “You’re right,” said Kingsley. “My God, you’re right about that.”
    “So now you do intend to look into the Ellie Rose murder case? The one you assured those women in Gainesville that you weren’t investigating?” said Frank.
    “Yes,” said Diane. “This may turn out to mean nothing, but it’s really making the hair stand up on the back of my neck.”
    “Just checking,” said Frank. “I find it a little chilling myself.” He smiled. “I know I would follow up on it.”
    “It makes sense about Wendy Walters,” said Kingsley. “It was obvious she and Marsha Carruthers are codependent. I could see what Marsha was getting out of the dependent relationship, but I couldn’t understand what Wendy was getting. If she was trying to assuage her guilt, it would lead her to go way above and beyond the behavior of a good neighbor.”
    “Her guilt about what exactly?” said Frank.
    “That’s the question,” said Kingsley, absently pulling at his tie.