Circle of Bones - Kling Christine - Страница 43

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“She’s out there. Surcouf. Close by. It’s like I can smell her.”

The deck breeze ruffled his shaggy hair and rippled his T-shirt where it hung from his arms. She was fascinated by the pent-up, almost manic energy in him.

“Why here? Why Guadaloupe?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Why was she encouraging him? Maybe she was nuts, too. But she had to admit she was curious about this code thing. She’d always enjoyed a good puzzle, and like her brother, she was pretty good at them.

He swung around to face her again. “In the last eighteen months of his life, my father flew down here twice, landed at Pointe-a-Pitre, stayed several weeks. It’s all in the journals here.” He picked up one of the volumes and began to thumb through the pages. “It was right after his second stay that Theo and I got the anonymous donation. He found something here. Maybe it was the actual wreck. I don’t know. There were only two more journal entries after that. But those two entries don’t read like the rest of the pages. The words don’t make sense; the sentences don’t connect, and sometimes the words aren’t even words. It’s got to be a code. Take a look.”

He placed the open book in front of her. The handwriting on the page was uneven, almost chaotic. It leaned left in places and to the right in others. In some places, the letters were neat, and in others, the script was barely legible. Riley knew nothing of handwriting analysis, but it didn’t take an expert to see that this was the writing of a disturbed individual. On the final page, she read:

Dear son,

Wits end is where I am. Spent a bit of time there. Expect to be there til the end of days. Got to stop. Them. American president is part and parcel. What goes up must come down. Not a nickel to my name. It’s all yours now. Got to stop. Them. The Creoles sing a song in the islands. It’s called Fais pas do do. Like this.

Fais pas do do, Cole mon p’tit coco

Fais pas do do, tu l’auras du lolo

Yayd d’dir

Y’did yd

Jamais fais do do.

Cole leaned back in the seat opposite her and his shoulders slumped. “But I’ve tried everything. I’ve searched the text for a hint that he used a book code, tried various field ciphers. For a while, I thought the coin’s date was a key to the cipher. Then I figured that a letter/number substitution was giving me the longitude and latitude of an area off the west coast of the island. That’s why I was diving out there yesterday. None of it’s worked.”

“This is a weird version of a well-known French lullaby. Don’t go to sleep, Cole my little coconut, Don’t go to sleep, you will have a treat, then those weird letters as a chorus, and finally, Never go to sleep.”

“I know. I had a friend translate that much. Give me some credit. I get that he’s telling me to never be caught sleeping. But the code? I don’t have a clue. Yet I know it’s the key to this thing.”

He lifted the lockbox aside, and she saw there were still a few objects in the bottom. “What’s that?”

“It’s just some other stuff the old man sent me over the years. Kid’s stuff.”

“Anything might be relevant.”

“No, it’s this coin,” he said pointing again at the heavy gold piece. “I’m sure of it.”

She picked up the coin again. “Have you got a magnifying glass?” Riley asked. “There’s a mark here, a scratch or something that I can’t read.”

“Sure.” He disappeared into the wheel house and when he returned, he handed her a small leather case. Inside was a round brass magnifier. There was a ring around the lens with three slender legs that kept it about an inch off the table.

“Nice,” she said. She turned the ring round the lens and saw that it adjusted the height to focus the lens. “I’ve never seen one of these.”

“It’s an old chart magnifier I found at a nautical flea market. My eyes aren’t so good when it comes to the fine print on charts – or anything else for that matter.”

 Riley slid the coin under the lens. The nude angel’s arm crossed the tablet and he held a pen of some sort in his hand. She saw the big letters above that hand that spelled out the word “Constitution.” But there was something else. Beneath the angel’s hand where a drape of fabric crossed the tablet, there appeared to be something scratched into the gold. She moved the coin back and forth in the light hoping to make it more clear in the reflected light.

“What’s that written on the tablet?” she asked.

“Like I told you, Dupres designed this coin to honor the new French Constitution.”

“No, under the word. Beneath the angel’s hand. In tiny script.”

He leaned forward, his arms resting on the table, his head touching hers as he peered at the coin. “What are you talking about? There’s nothing under it.”

“Yes, there is.” She adjusted the outer ring on the chart magnifier, trying to bring the image into focus. “I think it’s a number.”

“What? Let me see.” He took the magnifier from her hand, slid the coin across to his side of the table, and squinted into the eye piece, one eye closed. “I don’t see anything.”

She put a hand on her hip and leaned back. “Okay. You think I’m making it up? Aren’t you the one who told me you can’t make out the fine print on charts?”

He sat up straight and without a word, pushed the coin and the magnifier back across the dinette table.

She lined up the coin and the eyepiece. “Have you got any better light?” she asked.

He got up, brought over a flashlight, a sheet of paper and a pen. She repositioned the magnifier and coin on top of the paper while Cole angled the beam under the lens. “There,” she said. “That’s it.”

“What is it? What does it say?”

“It’s three digits.” She stopped before saying any more. Her pulse began to throb in her neck, and she tried to slow her breathing.

“Yeah? I’m listening. What three digits?”

 There had been an inquest after her brother’s death. She’d read the court documents that described how the frat boys had tied off the end of the old musty sleeping bag so he couldn’t escape, the signs of his struggle as his asthma made his throat constrict, the condition of the body. She’d once teased her brother about that pocket pencil protector with his collection of pens and pencils. He’d used one of them to write on his hand.

“Are you okay?”

 She was sitting up, staring into space. His voice brought her back. She blinked. “Sorry.” She ran her hand over her eyes then picked up the pen and started to write. Three numbers. Three-two-two. She was looking at what she had written, but she was seeing the police photo of the pale hand, hearing the husky voice of the New Haven detective asking her parents if the number meant anything to them.

“Riley? You look like you’re going to throw up. What’s wrong?”

She realized she’d started rocking and rubbing her hands on her thighs as though trying to warm herself up. Forcing herself to stop, she laced her fingers together, rested her hands on the table. “It’s about my older brother,” she said. She took a deep breath. “He died his freshman year at college. A fraternity hazing. It was his asthma. He suffocated trapped inside a sleeping bag. Didn’t have his inhaler. Before he died, he managed to write three numbers on his hand.”

In the distance, she heard the whine of her outboard approaching. Finally. Theo returning with her dinghy. She’d been afraid he would stay away all night. But maybe Theo understood more than she was giving him credit for. Maybe he knew that after hearing all these tales about gold coins, shipwrecks, murder, conspiracies, and secret societies, she would be counting the minutes until he returned.

“There’s Theo,” she said. “I need to go. Now.” And, she thought, I need to figure out how or if any of this connects to Michael.

Cole reached across the table and placed his hand on top of hers. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

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