That night I got Cindy to translate bits of various postings in the diary I’d found in Vivienne’s attic. It was definitely a diary belonging to Alain, Vivienne’s father and French dentist, according to Eddie. There seemed to be nothing unusual in it, nothing out of the ordinary. He wrote about his daily life, mentioned his work, life in Paris, his wife and daughter. Pretty standard stuff for a diary. The dates posted were during the war and in the middle of one page, Alain had written numbers instead of words. For some reason, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
I read the numbers over and over.
12 15 21 9 19 12 1 16 1 18 21
Everyone was bedded down for the night. Cindy was asleep and Napoleon was quiet under his cloth. Baskerville was at the foot of my bed, softly corking out little doggie snores and I reached down to pat his curly head. I snuggled in, still thinking about the numbers, fell asleep and dreamed I was turning the dial on a combination safe. My eyes blinked open, the clock read that I’d been asleep only a few hours but I awoke excited, almost refreshed. I was a puzzle-solver and the numbers were another kind of puzzle, a code maybe. Pulling the comforter over my head, I nodded off assured of my next move.
The next day Mrs. Murphy volunteered to take Napoleon again, so I went to work, happy in the knowledge that there would be no dog/bird fight at my apartment when I was gone. The animals had settled into an uneasy truce, occasionally punctuated with a feather-flapping, yapping, down and out fight to the death, supposedly. Napoleon still called Baskerville a ‘dirty dog’ who, in turn retaliated by barking when the bird was trying to sleep. They were both looking a bit frayed around the mouth and beak, and I wondered for the umpteenth time when Eddie was returning. I hadn’t heard from him in a week now—our designated babysitting time had ended with no Eddie in sight. Cindy tsk-tsked about how he was taking advantage and I had to agree with her. But I also had to admit that I wanted a few more days to see what I could see. My curiosity indeed had gotten the better of me and I was going to see this thread through to its eventual outcome. Small or mighty, a puzzle was a puzzle needing to be solved. And that’s what puts the spring in my step, the perfume in my air. Without bursting into song, I live to solve life’s little mysteries.
At the movie theater, Megan and Butch also seemed to have negotiated some kind of truce. They weren’t firing at one another when I arrived that morning, a little late because of having to lug that awkward bird cage over to Mrs. Murphy’s house.
“I thought Bob’s poem was the best last night.”
Butch rolled his eyes. “I know poetry is completely subjective, Megan, but that guy can’t rhyme his way out of a paper sack.”
Megan blinked, eyes wide, her hair striped green and pink today. She put fists on her hips. “Butch, what you know about poetry is…”
“I know what I like and that guy’s couplets were crap.” He looked past her to recite,
“ ‘I wandered in a shroud
Watching the landscape of many thrills,
That made my head become bowed
With spine-tingling chills.’ ”
I tried without success to bite back a smile that soon turned to a laugh. Megan had the good sense to laugh too and the three of us were holding our stomachs laughing as hard as we could. Kevin and Bobby glanced at us with puzzled expressions on their faces.
“That…ha…not only sucks, Megan, but it was a total rip-off from William Wordsworth,” Butch said.
“He could make couplets however,” added Megan with a smirk, “just maybe not too successfully.”
I swallowed another chuckle. “I gather you’re going to Megan’s poetry group now, Butch. Kinda fanciful for punk rocker, wouldn’t you say?”
His face actually blushed under his purple Mohawk. As colorful as Megan, I could tell he was really a nice guy, just expressing himself in unique ways. “I write songs for the band and Megan said practicing with a poetry group might give me some ideas.”
Megan busied herself with cleaning the candy counter and straightening the boxes of candy.
“She did, did she? Huh.” I wasn’t going to get in the middle of this one for all of Wordsworth’s couplets. “Let’s get to work.” Reaching into my pocket, I took out a tissue and a slip of paper dropped on the floor. Butch bent down to retrieve it for me.
“What’s this, Lucy?” He read the paper before handing it to me. I wondered how honest I should be. Looking into his face, his violet eyes were clear and appealing, honesty shone and I shrugged. Why not?
“I found this, this set of numbers in a book in an attic yesterday and I’m pretty sure it’s a kind of code. I haven’t had time to figure it out though.”
Butch nodded, touched the paper with a long finger. “It’s a cipher actually.”
Megan’s head swung back around as my jaw dropped. “How do you know?”
“I like doing the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper.” He leaned forward with interest, took the paper out of my hands. “I like to play with words, being a songwriter.”
“And that interest extends to codes and ciphers?”
A shoulder moved up and down. “It’s all of a piece.”
I let that slide. “What’s a cipher?”
“It’s a secret message, each letter is replaced by a number. This one doesn’t look too difficult.” He looked around. “Got a pen back there, Megan?”
She nodded and handed him one. Butch flipped the paper over, wrote all the letters of the alphabet and corresponding numbers from one to twenty-six over each one. Then, flipping the paper back and forth a few times, he circled letters and wrote out two words: louis laparu.
I looked over his shoulder as he worked. Megan watched intently from behind the candy counter. Good thing we hadn’t started showing any movies yet. People would have had to wait until we were done. I wasn’t going to stop now.
“It’s a name,” said Butch.
“Louis Laparu.” I added.
Megan glanced at me. “Someone you know?”
“No.”
“What book was this written in?” Butch asked. He handed the slip of paper back to me. We all stared at it.
“It belonged to my landlord’s grandfather.”
“Huh.” Megan pushed strands of pink hair back from her face. Her boldly lined eyes held the question. “Why were you in his attic?” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re investigating something, aren’t you, Lucy?”
Before I could respond, Butch chimed in. “For that detective agency you’re working for?”
“Yes to Megan, no to Butch,” I said smugly.
Megan opened her mouth and I cut her off. “Let’s get back to work. We’re opening soon. Butch, you’re on tickets today and I’ll ask Bobby to run projectors.”
Moving away, I could hear a soft mumbling behind me and I knew they were wondering what I was doing. That’s all right. I was wondering myself. The paper in my hand held a big clue to this mystery—the mystery of the French- speaking, Nazi-hating parrot. That’s what I had christened it in my mind. Since no one was paying me, certainly not the Bret Holmes Detective Agency, I felt I should keep this to myself. Well, Cindy aka Doctor Watson, knew but that was it. The fewer who knew, the better. I had a nagging feeling that maybe I was running in circles and there was nothing to any of this. Too bad that feeling was in direct conflict with the puzzle-solving part of my brain who kept asking, “Why disguise a name, stick it in a locked chest in an overlooked attic for fifty years?”
Wish I had the answer to that. I’d win the full ten points.
* * *