Municipal Blondes
15
Nailed it!
AMAZING WHAT A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP will do for you now and then. With the Condo secured, I removed all my makeup, showered, and slept. I had Davy make sure I was supplied with food and coffee before he left yesterday. I finally got my luggage up out of the Mustang and checked with the building manager to make sure where I parked was okay. Now I felt safe. At least for long enough to get some sleep.
Red letter day
I told Davy he wouldn’t be needed again until party time on Thursday night. Everything else was fine in the Condo. That meant this morning I had time and energy to spend pulling pieces together. I’m monitoring a lot of accounts Brenda had set up and am tightening my grasp of her schedule. I’m guessing she moved from Acapulco pretty quickly after she arrived but if she flew internally, there probably isn’t a record I can find unless I search every flight out of Acapulco since she arrived.
I’m hoping her sense of security in having escaped will make her careless. There’s sure to be a charge on one of her credit cards or a ticket purchase or a customs record sometime.
In the meantime, everyone seems to think the thumb drive holds the mysteries of the universe and the careers of some very important people. So, I think I’d better get down to cracking it. It’s just a matter of waiting for Simon to say what’s next.
I waited and now I’m stuck. I plugged in a backup and got the familiar message asking for the encryption key. I entered the thirty-two digits in the order I’d worked out and waited. I got the same message. “Simon says, ‘Find me if you can.’ All the clues are here. Everything you wanted to know. I never expected you to get this far but I’m not making it any easier to uncover the secrets on this drive. It’s too bad you’re colorblind, Dag!” Then, “Press Esc to continue.” No deal this time, Simon. I waited.
Sure enough, there was a new message popping up after about ninety seconds. “Simon says enter the next encryption code.” Oh shit. Now I’m stuck. If I hit the wrong thing, I risk losing the whole thing again. I looked at the keyboard for a while and pressed the one key I thought might be safe. The computer went into immediate hibernate mode. Now if I can wake it up without triggering anything, I’ve got time to figure out what the next encryption code will be.
I sat back to think about it for a while. What did Simon’s message say? Too bad you’re colorblind. Simon knew Dag was colorblind and it affected the puzzle. But how? I was going to have to risk going back to the office. I locked things up and headed for the waterfront. I hoped Jordan was serious about dropping the warrant and no one was watching for me.
In and out. I can’t believe I was so dense. I’ve got two parts of the mystery and I know where the third is. Then it’s on to solving the fourth part. It was all in the file on Brenda. He left it on the desk after he searched the office. I suppose he wanted it to look like no one had been there. They did a good job.
When I read about Brenda’s tattoo, it said the tattoo was red and black. Sure enough, the detail said the 1 and d and pillow were red. Everything else was black. I checked my photo of Bradley’s tattoo and found two letters on it also in red—the b and 1. If there are two letters in each tattoo in red, they would make up a second 8-character code. What I had so far were the first and last pair if the order of the original tattoos holds true. B-1-_-_-_-_-1-d.
Dag didn’t mark any letters on either Simon’s or Angel’s tattoo as being red. But Dag was colorblind and had never actually seen them. I slipped the SIM out of my James Whitcomb cell phone and inserted my Deb Riley SIM. The first thing that showed up was a lot of voice mail. I decided to check it before I called Angel. Several calls from Jordan. I have to give him credit. He did try the cell before he tried the office. I still didn’t completely trust him but no one had burst into the office to arrest me yet. A call from Cinnamon that was too funny.
“Deb, you’ve got to call me. I’ve met a guy and he is absolutely delicious. I don’t know what to do. He hasn’t called me. I don’t dare call him. This is absolutely squeeee! Call me!”
Oh, geez! The call was from early Tuesday morning, right after my last encounter with Cinnamon at the Condo. She is going to be soooo disappointed.
Teri called. “Hey girl, where are you? We were supposed to go up to the pass to ski Sunday. Call me.”
The last call was from Angel.
“Deb, this is Angel. Give me a call, would you? Weird things are happening. I’ve had a dozen people ask about you this week. Some of them are pretty spooky. They know I gave Dag a computer thingy from Simon. If you’ve got it, get rid of it. I don’t think you’re safe as long as you have it. Call me.”
That call I needed to return right away. I went back to the Condo to make the call. I’m not ready to blow my cover completely.
“Hello?”
“Angel, it’s Deb.”
“Girl, where are you?”
“Everyone wants to know where I am,” I said. “I’m hiding out. What’s up?”
“I’ve had a string of transactions this week with a common thread. An escalating threat of ‘action’ if I don’t come up with details about where that little computer disk thing is that I gave Dag. I’m sorry, Deb, but I told them I gave it to him. Somehow, I thought it would be safe since Dag was dead. But they zeroed in on you. They keep calling to see if I’ve heard from you and asking me where you are.”
“Geez, Angel. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. No. I’m getting out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m on my way to the airport. Simon left me a nice property in Croatia I’m going to make use of. I’m sorry, Deb. I should be here for you but I’m scared. I’m leaving while I can.”
“Don’t worry, Angel,” I said. “I’d do the same thing. If I show up on your doorstep there, please invite me in.”
“Not to worry.”
“Angel, one other thing,” I said before she could hang up. “It’s important.”
“Go ahead.”
“You’ve got a tattoo. Dag told me about it but there’s a detail he missed. Which two characters in your tattoo are red?”
“The 6 and the first o,” she answered. “They’re one above the other and Simon had some rather vulgar jokes about putting them in that order. He could make a dirty joke about just about anything,” she answered. “Look, I’m at the airport and I’ve got to run now. Good luck, Deb.”
“Thanks, Angel, but one more thing,” I tried to catch her but she was gone. I was sure she could have told me what Simon’s letters were, too. I tried back but there was no answer.
b-1-_-_-6-0-1-d. There’s a word or words here and I need two more letters out of Simon’s tattoo to complete it. F-8-e-d-2-d-1-e.
Give me a hand here, guys.
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