Murder in Wonderland (7 page)

              Feeling defeated by her encounter with Rachel, Allie decided it was best to follow up on some of the more puzzling aspects of the case. Namely, the text the unfortunate woman had tried to compose just before she succumbed to the lethal dose. Rachel wasn't completely crossed off the list yet, but there was still something that moved Allie's thoughts away from her, once she added the strange act of deleting the text from Tori's phone to the list of anomalies that made Jill Metzger the number one suspect. What did "croquet mallet" mean that it was something Jill needed to erase from existence? And who was the message meant for? Sure, they said she muttered something about her lawyer before she collapsed, but that didn't mean she was texting him or her.

              A noise made Dinah jump and scurry off into the bedroom.

              A note slid underneath her door.

              She picked it up and then opened the door and poked her head outside. No one.

              She opened the note.

Case being built around you. Tomlin sure he can do it. Check corners. Don't forget croquet mallet.

                                                                      Signed,

                                                                      A friend

             
Now she did more than poke her head outside. She physically left her house and walked several yards down the driveway, surveying the entire area like a watchtower guard. Her heart thumped in her chest and into her neck. Every fiber in her being vibrated, sending urgent signals to her entire system to get back into that house and stay there.

              She rushed back in and shut the door and held it shut with two hands flat against it for a minute. Slowly she relaxed, but only slightly.

              She read the note again, almost in disbelief. Disbelief because she'd failed to see the reference to
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
until this moment. Now it seemed to leap right off the paper: The Queen of Hearts had Alice participate in a game of croquet where all the mallets were live flamingos.

              To her knowledge there were no flamingos anywhere in Verdenier. There wasn't even a zoo.

              She was beginning to wonder how old Detective Tomlin was doing on his case. He was in possession of her diary and was reading it with moist lips. It infuriated her to no end. No doubt there was a reference here and there to how much she disliked Tori Cardinal. No doubt there was a reference or two to wanting to be a member of the social elite of the Tori Cardinal variety. And no doubt, Detective Harry Tomlin was making assumptions left and right to pin a murder rap on her with this flimsy motive, and all because he couldn’t stand the fact that a woman had told him off. She knew this had to be it. What could he possibly have on her?

              Or was there something more sinister? June Brody's paranoid tale came back to her now. What if there was someone listening in on them at the library? How could she be so sure? Sure, she thought the place was safe, but wouldn’t a cop know that the
best
time to strike was when a person felt safe?

              And who was this friend? Who had access to this info? Sgt. Beauchenne? He was relatively new to this precinct. Perhaps he arrived to a den of iniquity, as the phrase went. But then there was the Lewis Carroll reference. Who knew Allie well enough?

              The questions fell like glitter around her. Answering them was an impossible task. There were too many odds and ends, like the parts of the Mock Turtle from Wonderland. This whole case surrounding her was a strange beast made from scraps.

              An idea occurred to her. Someone she hadn't really discussed the case with. Someone who knew her almost as well as Del knew her, but also knew Alice.

              She texted Ben and asked him to come and pick her up. She'd explain why when they got back to his house.

              That is, if he didn’t already know why.

              It's amazing how safe one can feel in the home of a friend. Then again, she'd felt safe in the library too.

              She had to put that out of her head.

              She was glad to know Ben. A retired lawyer, Ben had reinvented himself as an eccentric composer of music, an artist, an outsider with the luxury of having the best excuse to be one. She sat on his couch with her hands folded over her knee while he played her selections from the musical he was hoping to pitch to a Broadway producer in May.

              But to enjoy it meant she had to listen, and to listen meant that her mind had to be unencumbered. Thank God Ben was a good enough friend to notice this when he swung around on the piano bench to get her opinion.

              "Whoa, sweetheart. My playing is brilliant and my music is phenomenal, which means something has to be troubling you. Out with it."

              "So it wasn't you."

              "What wasn't me?"

              "Ben, is it safe to talk here? You have to tell me."

              He rose from the piano and walked over to her softly. "Of course. Sweetheart, what's the matter?"

              "I received an anonymous note. It said that Detective Tomlin was building a case around me being responsible for Tori Cardinal's death and that I should be careful."

              "Did you kill that poor woman?"

              "No, of course not."

              "Ok, so what are you worried about?"

              "They do put innocent people in jail sometimes."

              He waved his hand. "Statistics are over-exaggerated."

              She wanted to tell him about June Brody and the corrupt police force, but paranoia stopped her throat.

              "Ben," she said, rising from the couch, "I want to solve this case. I can do it." She walked over to the piano and thumbed through his stack of sheet music. "It's like this stuff. I can see these notes, thousands of them, but I couldn’t tell you what they mean. But they're all laid out in front of me. Do you know how frustrating that is?"

              "I think I can imagine."

              "Ben, what do you think would make someone want to murder Tori Cardinal?"

              He rose and walked over to her. "You know, I haven't a clue. I understand people not liking her. Personally, I never really had that much of a problem with her. I mean, I have a problem with everybody, and she was no different. Some days she irritated me, and other days, I don’t know, I kind of felt sorry for her."

              "You did, didn't you? Why?"

              "Well, maybe it was because she played around with a lot of men. Mostly rich old guys. I think she was terrified of winding up poor. And I think she was a terribly lonely woman with a big empty space inside her where a soul should be. That's gotta be an awful life to live."

              "You're an incredible individual, you know that?"

              He chuckled and walked into his tiny-yet-functional kitchen. "Don't let it get around. I have a reputation as a heartless bastard to uphold. Want a glass of water?"

              "That would be great. Thanks."

              He rinsed out a glass that was obviously part of a very small collection. Allie knew he lived sparsely, but didn't realize how sparsely until she saw him handle that glass.

              "People said such horrid things about her. And yes, she deserved much of the insults. But there was a very guarded, secret side to her that showed itself to only a few people. Some of those old guys probably saw a little of it. I'm gay, so of course she was ok showing to me." He winked at her and handed her a glass of water.

              She drank, feeling it cool and cleanse her slowly on the way down.

              "She gave June Brody a deck of cards once."

              "A deck of cards?"

              "It was so random. We were talking—"

              Allie's mind rushed along the pages of her favorite book. Wonderland was populated with cards, from the knave of hearts who stole the tarts to the number cards that populated the Queen's palace.

              "Honey? Did you hear what I said?"

              "I'm sorry. What was that?"

              "I said June gave the deck to me."

              "Wait. Why?"             

              "She said she didn’t want to keep it. You know, the dead girl's stuff."

              "Wait. I'm confused. Why did Tori give June a deck of cards?"

              "She'd ask her to hold onto them. It was on account of her dead husband's will being in the hands of probate and all that and she didn’t want them to touch these cards because they were a collector's item and she wasn't sure how much the deck was worth and so forth. I've seen it happen before. People remove little things. A priceless heirloom or an ashtray or just something sentimental, to keep it from being sold as part of an estate sale or whatever. Anyway, Tori gave June these collectible playing cards to hold. Then after the murder—God, it still sounds weird saying that, doesn't it? After the murder, June gave them to me. To be honest with you, I forgot I had them until just now."

              "Benjamin, do you think I could have a look-see at those cards?"

              Ben produced the deck from the top drawer of his kitchen counter.

              Allie took the deck, unbelieving. "These are them?"

              "They are."

              She chuckled. "These?"

              "Yeah, why?"

              "You’re sure these are the ones Tori gave her."

              "Yes, I'm sure. What's wrong with them?"

              "Nothing, except that they're ordinary Bicycles. I thought maybe they were going to be, like, I don’t know, fancy old Italian cards or something. Not a deck of red Bicycles I could buy down at the supermarket."

              "Are you sure?"

              "Are you forgetting Tom was a poker player? There was always a deck within arm's reach wherever one sat in our house. There still is."

              She stared at the box for a moment.

              "Mind if I take these out and look at them?"

              "You can start a game of solitaire if you want. I don’t care."

              Allie spilled the deck into her hand and began to thumb through.

              "I'll be over here," Ben said, "You know, in case you need a hand massage or fashion tips. Otherwise, you mind clueing me in on what you're looking for?"

              "I'm not sure, really."

              "Alrighty then. I'm going to practice," he said, heading back to the piano.

              As Ben began to play a slow, brooding tune, Allie passed the cards one by one between hands, then stopped, went backwards, stopped again.

              She walked over to the piano. "Uh, ok, actually, I know what I was looking for now. Do you know when she gave June this deck?"

              "When? I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago? Three weeks? Four? I don’t remember."

              "Was it before or after my invitations to the book club went out?"

              "Oh it was after. Way after. I remember because she said Tori had been complaining about having to read a silly kid's book and go to your house on a weekend and all that. Sorry, hon."

              "Do you mind if I hold on to these for a little while?"

              "Be my guest. I don’t even like solitaire."

              She left, her mind racing in a new direction. Perhaps, she thought, the Mock Turtle wasn't such a strange creature after all.

              "I want to show you something."

              She and Del sat at Allie's dining room table. The eye was watching them. Allie had a pad and pencil before her. She took out the deck of cards and opened it.

              "You gonna do a magic trick?"

              Allie smiled and spread them out face-up on the table. "Look." She pointed to the queen of hearts and then slid it out from the rest of the pack.

              There, to the immediate left of the queen's picture, someone had written something in tiny block letters, so neat it looked as though a machine had put it there.

KW-ALICE

cel

qa

ul

omt

rte

              "This is a code," said Allie.

              "Ok," said Del.

              "It took me a while to get it, but I got it. This up here..." She pointed with the edge of a pencil to the word
Alice
. "'KW' stands for
keyword
. There are a few different classical ciphers that use keywords. I tried them all. This one is called a columnar cipher. Here's how it works."

              She drew the letters A, L, I, C, and E on the paper, evenly spaced apart. Underneath each, she drew a series of numbers.

A   L   I   C   E

1   12  9   3   5

              "Now. Under each letter is the number indicating their position in the alphabet."

              "Not for nothing," said Del, "but you really need to get out more. How do you know this stuff?"

              "Wikipedia. Now look. All you have to do is arrange the letters in each row as columns under the letters in numerical order. So..."

              She drew again.

A   L   I   C   E

1   12  9   3   5

C   R  O   Q   U

E    T  M   A   L

L    E  T

              "And so when you read it horizontally, left to right:

'CROQUET MALLET.'" She traced the words with the pencil.

              "That's pretty amazing. I mean, you’re amazing, my darling. How the hell?"

              Allie sat back. "Wanna know what it means?"

              "Um, yeah."

              "Flamingo."

              Del stared at her. "You lost me."

              "From
Alice
's
Adventures in Wonderland
. The Queen of Hearts has them play a game of croquet. The balls are hedgehogs and the mallets are live flamingos."

              "Well, that's lovely, it really is, but what does it mean?"

              "That I don’t know."

              "Ok. Good. I'm not the only one confused."

              "I'm not confused, just puzzled. There's a difference."

              "You have too much time on your hands."

              "No I don’t. I just like puzzles."

              "So what’s the next step, Holmes?"

              "The next step is I try to find out why Tori Cardinal encoded the word flamingo—twice. And at the same time I try to figure out what her death means to each and every one in that room."

              "Meaning?"

              "Meaning I have to go talk to some people."