“Why do I think Wolf wouldn’t let us into Abby’s house to look through all her books? And who would she have left the message for? There would have to be another person who would understand and know where to look,” said Mars, irritation creeping into his tone.
“Like Wesley?” I asked.
His eyes met mine briefly before he returned to his earnest task of building sandwiches so thick with turkey, cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce that we wouldn’t be able to bite into them. “Does Wesley know about the codes?” he asked.
“I haven’t said anything to him, but I asked Tilly about them. She could have told him.”
“A book.” Mars gestured toward me. “If it were you, what book would you use as a key?” He brought the sandwiches to the table with two tall glasses of sparkling cider.
“One that wouldn’t attract attention. A book I could carry with me without raising eyebrows or causing people to notice me. Like an Agatha Christie book.”
“Swell, she wrote dozens of books. How would we ever figure out which one it was?”
“Abby would have to use a book that Wesley had access to,” I mused.
Our eyes met. “Tilly’s cookbook,” we whispered simultaneously.
“It’s perfect. She could leave messages in it for him and no one would notice. Except . . .” I tried to recall what Tilly had said. “I think she took it home with her each day. It was only that last day that she left it there. Because she knew she wasn’t coming back, or so Wesley could read the message she left for him?”
Mars bit into his sandwich and grabbed the cookbook pages. He glanced at the list of codes I had written. “We used to do this for fun when my brother and I were kids. Okay, how does it work? What does the first letter stand for?”
“If I knew that, I would have already unraveled the code.”
“There are no page numbers.”
I bit into a sandwich. Either it was pretty good, or I was way hungrier than I thought.
“GPP251,” he read aloud. “Does that mean anything to you?”
Clearly it didn’t. But as I swallowed, a thought came to me. “Grandma Peggy’s Pumpkin Bundt Cake. GPP.”
Mars flipped through the recipes. “Got it! So if the numbers are a guide, then the first two would be the line? And the last number would be the letter? No. That doesn’t seem to work.”
“Oh, this is going to be tedious.”
“Maybe not. According to your list, there are only twelve codes.”
I examined the list of codes. “Hold everything! Look, the last numbers go from one to twelve. Maybe that’s the order of the letters? Go to line one.”
“I’m there.”
“What’s the fifth letter?”
“That would be P. So according to your theory, P would be the first letter in the message.”
“Right.” I put my sandwich down. “What’s the next one?”
“R P C one four two.”
“Roasted Parmesan Chicken.”
“That would give us an E.”
“PE? Oh gosh. I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with Grandma Peggy!”
We worked our way through the letters. The result was PEYTONPOULON.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mars squinted at the letters.
“Maybe something on the Internet can descramble it.”
Mars borrowed my laptop and typed PEYTONPOULON into the Google search bar. “It’s a name!”
Chapter 28
Dear Sophie,
I read recently that a guest should never bring anything to a dinner party. That goes against everything I was taught. Is that the new rule?
Party Pooper in Five Forks, South Carolina
Dear Party Pooper,
It is always gracious to bring a hostess gift to a dinner party. Wine is the most conventional item. Whatever you bring, even if it’s your favorite wine, do not expect your hostess to serve it. He or she may have a carefully planned menu with specific wines chosen for the dishes being served. An exception would be if you have severe allergies or other food issues. It can be smart to bring a dish you can share with the others.
Sophie
“There are a bunch of articles about Peyton Poulon.” I jumped to my feet and looked over his shoulder. I read aloud. “A young woman who contacted police in the belief that she might be Peyton Poulon is not the missing girl. DNA has confirmed that the young woman is not the biological child of Hannah and Kurt Poulon. Peyton was abducted at age two from the home of her babysitter, Abigail Jensen.”
“Could that be our Abby? Or does this mean Abby is actually Peyton?” Mars opened a new tab and searched the name Abigail Jensen. A grainy newspaper image of Abigail Jensen came up immediately.”
“Is that her?” I asked, returning to my sparkling cider.
Mars huffed. “I can’t believe this. It’s definitely her. She looks older now, of course. Abigail Jensen is Abby Bergeron. She kidnapped a child!”
“It said the child was stolen from her home,” I corrected.
Mars read aloud. “Abigail Jensen was arrested yesterday for the abduction of two-year-old Peyton Poulon, who has been missing from a suburb of Milwaukee. Peyton was in the care of Jensen at the time of her disappearance. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Peyton is requested to notify the authorities.”
“Arrested? I think we now know what that burden from her past was.”
“The next one says, ‘Abigail Jensen is out on bond in the matter of the disappearance of Peyton Poulon. Hannah and Kurt Poulon, Peyton’s parents, have issued the following statement. ‘We live with the hope that Peyton is still alive and well. If she is in your care, please return her to her loving family. If you have any information at all as to her whereabouts, we beg of you to notify the police immediately. An anonymous hotline is available.’”
He continued, “Finally, there’s one that says, ‘Police have dropped all charges against Abigail Jensen in the matter of the kidnapping of two-year-old Peyton Poulon due to lack of evidence. The case remains open, and police continue to investigate.’ ”
“So she got off! Maybe she didn’t do it. But why would she write Peyton’s name in code?”
“She was obviously trying to alert someone. But why write the code? Why not tell someone?” asked Mars. “She could have told me at dinner. That would have been a lot more interesting than her stories about Benton.”
Mars shook his head. “This is crazy. The code is probably meaningless and we’re reading something into it that was never intended. Plus, it’s stupid to leave a message in code. Most people would have thrown these codes out. Who would have noticed them besides the next ghostwriter?”
“It wasn’t the best choice, but maybe she thought Benton would see them. There is a chance that he’s a spy.”
Mars laughed. “Will you stop with that? He’s not a spy.” “I told you about the Coke can in the trash.”
“That was strange but I don’t think it means he’s a spy. But I’ll grant you that he clearly likes to play games.” Mars sat back and mused. “He’s quite sociable. I enjoyed his company at Natasha’s dinner.”