Dust to Dust

have supportive neighbors,” said Diane.
    Samantha shrugged. “Kathy Nicholson is pretty nice. I go over to her house some. She gets kind of lonely. We talk about things. But it’s not like she can do anything about my parents. Wendy Walters means well, but I think Mother wore her down. She used to try to discourage her from drinking, but now she just helps her. You saw when I brought the tea.”
    “Why did Stacy want to speak with your parents?” asked Kingsley. “If she knew you, you could give her a lot of the answers she wanted.”
    “Not really. I was nine when El died. I didn’t know a whole lot that was going on in El’s life. Stacy thought they could tell her about the day El disappeared. I didn’t really know much about that. Except, I think my parents think it was my fault.”
    “How is that?” asked Diane.
    “We’d been fighting that day and El said she didn’t want to ride all the way to Grandma’s house with me and she was just going to stay here. She wasn’t home when we got back,” she said.
    “That wasn’t your fault,” said Diane.
    Samantha shrugged again and took a sip of drink. “Maybe not, but still, if we hadn’t fought . . .”
    “You think she might have wanted to stay home for reasons of her own?” said Diane. “And the argument with you was just her excuse?”
    Samantha raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth slightly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “Did she have a boyfriend?” asked Diane.
    “She always had boyfriends. You saw her portrait. That’s pretty much what she looked like. But it would have been in her diary,” said Samantha.
    “She kept a diary?” asked Kingsley.
    Samantha nodded. “I loaned it to Stacy to copy.”

Chapter 26
    “Your sister kept a diary?” said Kingsley.
    “Yes, like forever. I mentioned it to Stacy one time and she begged me to let her see it. I told her it wouldn’t help. See, El caught Mother reading her diary when she first started writing one and she was really pissed. That’s when she started writing in this code she made up. El was really smart. Mother wanted to read her diaries after she died, to be close, I guess. But she couldn’t make heads or tails of them. Dad packed them in a box when he packed up El’s room. Mom wanted to keep it the way it was, but it was a little too creepy for Dad. They saved her things in the basement. I took her last diary so Stacy could copy it.”
    “Did she copy it?” asked Kingsley. He leaned forward in his chair slightly. Diane knew what he was thinking. Diaries can be loaded with just the best clues.
    “Yes,” said Samantha.
    So, the copies were probably in the file that was missing, thought Diane. “What happened to the diary?” she asked.
    Samantha Carruthers hesitated and was quiet a moment. Then, quick as a mouse, she slipped her hand into her backpack, pulled out a book, and handed it to Kingsley.
    “Stacy returned it to you?” asked Kingsley.
    “No, not exactly. When I found her . . . like that, it was in her bookcase. The spine was facing out, but I saw it right away. So, well, I took it. After all, it was mine. Or, at least, my family’s. I’ve been carrying it around, hoping maybe I could figure out how to decipher it,” she said. “Jimmi said Stacy’s dad told her Stacy’s folder disappeared . . . the one full of stuff about her investigation. I figured something in the diary might be important.”
    The front of the journal had been découpaged with magazine cutouts from the television series Charmed .
    Kingsley opened it up and he and Diane looked at the writing. It was a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols.
    “See,” said Samantha. “You can’t read it.”
    “Will you let us copy it?” said Diane.
    “Sure. There’s a place in the mall where we can go,” Samantha said.
    They took the last bites of their oversized cookies, washed them down with their drinks, and threw the trash away. Samantha led them to a Mailboxes Plus store where Diane copied the entire diary. When she finished, she handed it back to Samantha.
    Sam stood for a moment, looking awkward. “You aren’t going to call my parents, are you?” she asked.
    “As you said, you are an adult now,” said Diane.
    “Yeah, but . . .” She hesitated, looking at her watch. “I guess I’d better get to the library.”
    “Thank you, Samantha,” said Diane. “Seriously, you should talk to your parents. They need to know what’s going on in your life.”
    “I’ll think about