Something's Knot Kosher (10 page)

I told her about Li'l Ape Man.

“That's a real name?”

“I know, right? Anyway, we now have three possible suspects who could've hired Levesque to kill Russell.”

“But why would the big Ape hire someone to go after Birdie? Does that make sense to you?”

“I'm thinking more and more that Rene Levesque was sent to retrieve something from the house. Something either valuable or incriminating. Do you remember the red diary with the encrypted text and numbers we found in Russell's bedroom safe?”

“Yeah. Birdie brought it with her. She was actually studying it tonight, trying to decipher the code.”

“Tell her to make sure nobody else besides us knows she has it. I have a strong suspicion that diary holds the key to Russell's murder.”

C
HAPTER
17

The hearse sat idling in front of the hotel at eight sharp Wednesday morning. This was our second day out, and I wondered how Russell's remains were faring in the summer heat. Would the air-conditioning in the car make a difference?

Today we all dressed in blue denim. Lucy wore an orange blouse tucked into her jeans and pink shoes. Birdie wore a short-sleeved white T-shirt with her overalls and Birkenstock sandals, with white athletic socks. I wore a pink T-shirt with my size sixteen stretch denim jeans.

Jazz sported sunglasses, tight-fitting blue jeans, and a blue striped shirt with the cuffs perfectly rolled back. Even Zsa Zsa wore a tiny blue denim sundress with tiny white buttons. He examined each of us and threw up his hands. “Thank God we're not carrying banjos.”

Lucy pressed her lips together and checked her cell phone. “Let's just get the heck out of here.”

Whoa. Someone was in a foul mood this morning. Had something happened back home?

“Have you heard anything more about Tanya and the boys?”

“Nothing.” She tucked her phone into her purse. Lucy turned down my offer to take a turn at the wheel. “I need to feel in control of something today. Might as well be the driving.”

We settled back in our usual positions in the Caddy and followed Earl onto Interstate 5 heading north.

Birdie shifted sideways in the front seat and smiled at Jazz over her shoulder. “You're unusually quiet this morning, dear. You just picked at your eggs. Didn't you sleep well?”

“It's never the same as your own bed, is it?” He sipped a cup of coffee to-go from the hotel breakfast bar.

Especially when you were nursing a hangover.

His phone started playing “We Are Family.” He opened it and appeared to be staring at a picture of something. “Oh, God!” He gasped and then punched in a number. “No, no, and no! Those prints are all wrong. How many times do I have to tell you? He's Deep Winter, not Clear Summer. Put him on the phone.”

Jazz's voice turned to honey. “Johnny, I forbid you to choose those prints. They scream airstream trailer on the road to Mississippi. Right now I'm thinking Urban Pirate is the way to go. When I get back, I'll fix you up with a wardrobe that's truly chic.
D'accord?
”

He closed the phone and rolled his eyes. “Movie stars.”

Zsa Zsa seemed to be happy snuggling on the seat next to Arthur. The huge shepherd sniffed at her dress and whined.

I reached for my Double Wedding Ring quilt and adjusted it in the hoop. “Would you like to try your hand at quilting, Jazz?”

“Absolutely. Do you have a thimble?”

I passed the quilt over to him along with the sewing kit. He tried to wear my metal thimble, but his fingers were too big.

“Does anyone in the front seat have anything larger?” he asked.

Birdie reached into her supplies and found a leather finger cot. “Try this, dear.”

The arthritis in Birdie's hands had swollen her fingers, so her thimbles were considerably larger than mine. Jazz was able to jam the more pliable covering onto the middle finger of his right hand.

I leaned toward Jazz to give him a tutorial. “I find the easiest way to keep the stitches flowing is to position my left hand under the quilt and use those fingers to guide the needle back up through the batting to the quilt top.” I could have saved my breath. Jazz had already filled the needle with perfectly spaced stitches.

“Ta da!” He smiled and showed me his handiwork. “Am I doing this right?”

I kept forgetting Jazz was an experienced tailor. “Excellent. You're a natural.”

“I'm going to make a quilt when we get back to LA. Maybe you can give me some pointers.”

Lucy glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “We all will, hon. If you're serious about learning how to quilt, you can join the three of us on Tuesday mornings.”

Jazz put the palm of his hand over his heart. “Me? Really? I'd love to!”

Birdie twisted the end of her braid. “You know, dear, a quilt doesn't have to be made out of cotton, and it doesn't have to be used as a blanket. You can use whatever fabric you want. You can hang it on a wall, decorate a tabletop, or turn it into clothing. And if you don't like traditional piecing or appliquéd designs, you can make up your own. Look up Art Quilts on the Internet, and you'll see thousands of exquisite pieces of fiber art. You'll be limited only by your imagination.”

Jazz pulled out his phone again and launched a search. He began scrolling through dozens of photos of fiber art, turning the phone slightly so I could also see the screen. “This gives me an idea. I'm going to make Johnny a quilted coat with wide lapels and a swallow tail.” He smiled. “What do you think?”

I could easily imagine Johnny Depp in such a getup. “I think it's very Urban Pirate.”

Jazz beamed. “I'm also going to use the fabrics from all the shirts I sewed for Rusty over the years and make a quilt. I'll sleep under it every night so I can always feel close to him.”

I handed him a spool of white quilting thread. “Many people do that. They're called memory quilts. I made one for my daughter, Quincy, out of her childhood dresses when she went away to college. She still uses it. And I've seen some gorgeous quilts made with old necktie collections.”

“Maybe I could do that, too,” he said.

I showed Jazz how to copy my stitching pattern. “Outlining a quilt pattern with stitching is called echo quilting. Block pieces are sewn together using a quarter inch seam allowance. So if you're echo quilting near a seam, try to stay at least a quarter of an inch away from it to avoid having to push your needle through multiple layers of fabric. Of course, some people like to stitch in the ditch. That's when you quilt right inside the seams. Those stitches sink down and become invisible.”

Jazz continued to echo quilt around a ring pieced in red wedges. He was off to a good start, so I turned my attention to the farmland rolling by. Soon my mind wandered back to Birdie's recent conversation with Denver. He'd be waiting for her when we reached our destination to talk about what he wanted back from Russell. Would she be safe?

The morning traffic slowed as we headed toward Sacramento, moving at an uneven pace. Birdie removed something from her tote bag and I caught a flash of red—the diary. “I've been trying to make sense out of the cryptograms. I'm sure Russell used a simple substitution cipher.”

Jazz perked up. “What are you talking about? What are cryptograms?”

“That's where the letters of the alphabet are replaced by other letters. But so far, I'm stumped. There aren't enough encrypted words for a pattern to emerge. If I can spot a pattern, I can begin to crack the code.”

“I still don't get it,” Jazz said. “What was Rusty doing making up codes?”

Birdie glanced at me and pursed her lips. I could tell she realized she shouldn't have mentioned the diary in front of Jazz. We were supposed to keep it secret.

However, since the cat was out of the bag, I decided we might as well let Jazz know what was going on. He might even be able to help us make sense of what Russell had written. “Birdie found this diary in their home safe. Russell appeared to be keeping a secret record of some sort. She's trying to figure out what it is.”

Jazz blinked several times. “How does a cryptogram work?”

“Well, suppose you were faced with a paragraph of encrypted words. They'd look like gibberish. So the first thing you'd do is find the letter that appears most frequently. In the English language, that letter is
e.
You'd plug the
e
in the encrypted paragraph. Then you might see that it occurs at the end of several three-letter words. The most common three-letter word is
the,
so now you know which letters stand for
t
and
h
and you can plug those in. At this point you know three letters in the paragraph. From there you might see other patterns emerge that allow you to guess at other words.”

Lucy waved a hand. “Sounds too hard for me, hon. I'm not that good with words.”

Birdie turned her face toward Lucy and smiled. “The process is intuitive, but with practice, I'm sure you'd catch on, dear. Unfortunately, Russell's diary doesn't have whole paragraphs. The encrypted words are in a list. There's not enough context to guess at patterns.”

Jazz reached his hand toward Birdie. “Can I take a look?”

She passed the red diary to the backseat.

“Yes, this is definitely Rusty's handwriting.” He flipped through the pages. “You're right. This list doesn't give you much to go by. But here on the first page are two words in English.
Crazy Plot.
What do you make of that?”

Birdie twisted the end of her long white braid. “I think he left a hint of what the diary is all about—a list of evidence of some sort.”

Was this what Denver Watson wanted back? Did the diary refer to something Denver had done or was planning to do? Or did the list document all the times Li'l Ape Man had texted, stalked, and harassed Jazz? What about Francisco Conejo? How could he be connected to this mysterious record?

Jazz handed the diary back to Birdie and sniffed. “Do you think this is what got him killed?”

Birdie nodded. “Yes. That's why it's so crucial to crack his code. At any rate, I need to make a stop soon.”

Lucy contacted Earl on the two-way radio, and he led us to a sprawling truck stop on the outskirts of Sacramento, with a restaurant, mini mart, showers, and a parking lot the size of two football fields.

As soon as Lucy parked the car, she checked her cell phone.

“Any news?” I asked.

“Junior stayed up all night calling all their friends, but nobody's seen her.” I looked at Lucy's face reflected in the rearview mirror. She raised her hand and briefly swiped away a tear. “I'm so afraid she's absconded with those boys. What if she never intended to go to Hawaii? What if she just said that to throw us off the trail? They could be anywhere.” Tears now spilled down her cheeks. “Ray Junior is so close to his boys. His heart is breaking, not to mention mine and Ray's.”

“Listen, Lucy, how old is the oldest boy? Nine? Ten? He knows how to use the phone. He'll call his dad.”

Birdie patted Lucy's arm. “Martha's right, dear. When he realizes what's going on, he'll get in touch.”

“I hope so.” She helped Birdie walk to the restroom.

Jazz and I also headed for the restrooms, but he stopped suddenly and grabbed my arm. “Oh my God. Red car at two o'clock.” A tall man wearing a T-shirt and baseball cap got out of a bright red sports car at the far end of the parking lot and headed for the mini mart.

“Jazz.” I put my hand on his arm. “Is that the red Porsche you were telling me about? Is that Li'l Ape Man?”

He turned to me, face ashen. “I can't be sure. He's too far away. What'll I do?”

Great. Now we not only had to worry about an assassin following Birdie, we had to worry about a crazed stalker following Jazz. “Well, we could sneak over there and find out.”

“And then what? You've got to think this through, Martha. He's dangerous.”

“Don't forget, I've got a Browning.” I patted my purse.

“How could I forget? You almost shot me.”

By the time we came back out of the restrooms, the red car at the far end of the parking lot had vanished. Jazz walked the dogs and Earl stood by the hearse smoking a cigarette.

When he saw Birdie, Earl limped toward her. “How was your room last night, pretty lady?” He leaned toward her. “Did you sleep okay?”

“It was quite pleasant, thank you.” Birdie still seemed clueless that Earl was hitting on her. “And you? Did you get some rest?”

He dropped his cigarette and ground it under his shoe. “It was okay. But a man gets lonely. Sure would be nice to share a bed with someone again.”

Lucy edged over to where I stood and whispered, “Should we rescue her?”

“He's probably harmless. I think she can handle herself. And anyway, there are more serious things to worry about right now. Jazz thinks he might have seen Li'l Ape Man following us in a red sports car.”

Lucy covered her mouth at the news. “Good Lord! That's all we need.”

“Let's hope it turns out to be nothing. But just the same, keep your eyes peeled while you're driving. I'll also be on the lookout.”

I stopped Jazz before he got back in the car. “I just told Lucy about Li'l Ape Man so she can watch to see if he's tailing us. I think it's time you tell Birdie about him too.”

“I'm so upset.” His voice quivered and he fanned his hand in front of his face. “Do you think we should call the FBI agent?”

“Not yet. Not until we know for sure that was him.”

Jazz stood for a few seconds gazing at the large semis and their drivers. Then his expression lightened. “You know, I'm feeling inspired right now. Instead of Urban Pirate, maybe I could do Johnny in Trucker Chic with lots of leather, plaids, and denim. I could embellish with grommets and chains. What do you think?”

“Don't make any hasty decision.”