Thirteen Diamonds

up, down, ending at the bottom.”
    “And my car has an additional anti-theft feature, a transmission lock. If you key in an additional four digits it becomes locked in Park for a fixed amount of time, like a time-lock on a safe. The code is seven, two, three, one.  How would you remember that?”
    “I'll have to think about it,” I said. “Let's have dessert.”
     
                       *    *    *
     
    I signed up for dish detail with Sandra and Mark, while Albert and Carol took a walk down by the creek. I was glad to be away from Carol for a spell, and the kids apparently were too. Mark asked me whether I'd solved the oddball puzzle yet. I hadn't; my mind couldn't concentrate on things like that at the moment. I wondered whether it would ever be able to again.
    After we had finished the dishes, Sandra and Mark went outside, too, with Mark carrying Winston in his backpack. They invited me to go with them but I didn't feel like being outside on such a beautiful, sunny day. I'd rather be inside nursing my wounds.
    As I walked past the bench that stood just inside the front door I saw Carol's purse, sitting open. I opened it wider to see what it contained. I saw the usual stuff a woman carries for any possible contingency and also a black spiral notebook. It looked like the kind that busy people use to record their appointments. I pulled it out.  I didn't feel guilty; she owed me.
    I opened it up and found an hour-by-hour account of her days: appointments, meetings, Silver Acres events, the schedule of a busy executive. And boring as heck to anybody else. I was about to return the notebook to her purse when I idly opened it to the back. There were a number of pages available for notes. I glanced randomly at a few jottings, again not of interest to the average reader.
    Then I saw something strange. Block letters filled one page, but they didn't make any sense. The letters appeared to form words, but they weren't words. At least not English words. Nor were they words in any other language I had ever seen, especially since vowels were under-represented and not present at all in some of the “words.”
    This must be a code! Carol didn't want anybody to know what she had written here, which of course immediately piqued my curiosity. After taking a look through the windows beside the front door to make sure none of the walkers were returning, I carried the book to my bedroom at the back of the house and sat down at the desk we had brought from Silver Acres.
    I should be able to break a simple substitution code, which this probably was. I pulled out a sheet of scratch paper and starting making notes. I needed to count how many times each character occurred. E is the most common letter in the English language and anyone who has ever watched Wheel of Fortune on television knows that the most common consonants are L N R S T, if you don't count the number of times H and D appear in “the” and “and.” A, O and I are other frequently-used vowels.
    I heard the front door open and the voices of Albert and Carol floated in to me; I had become engrossed in my analysis and had forgotten about them. In a panic I realized that they were at this moment standing beside Carol's purse.
    I glanced around my room for a hiding place. I hadn't yet unpacked a number of boxes. One contained manila folders that held information about my investments. I took Carol's notebook and shoved it at random into one of the folders, along with the sheet on which I had been making my notes.
    Then I went into the adjoining bathroom and closed the door until my heartbeat and breathing subsided to a normal level. After a while I felt I could face them and opened the door. I walked to the front of the house to find out where people were. The voices told me that everybody, including the young folks, were in the family room.
    Since that room was out of sight from the front hall, perhaps I could sneak the book back into Carol's purse. I went around a corner and saw that the purse had disappeared from the bench. Carol had picked it up. With a dragging step I continued on to the family room.
    A baseball game beamed from the television set; Sandra and Mark were watching both the game and Winston. Carol, as I had feared, sat in an easy chair and was rummaging through her purse.
    She said, “I was sure I brought my appointment book with me.”
    Albert, who stood beside her, said, “If you like you can call me from your office tomorrow