Digging Too Deep (17 page)

“Melanie said Christine went out just after lunch,” said Mrs. Holliday. “She did see her carrying a small suitcase, but we have another patient here who never goes out without her backpack, so Melanie thought maybe Christine just wanted to have the suitcase with her.”

The social worker told Andy and Thatch that when Christine failed to return for supper, two nurses had driven around the neighborhood, checking out nearby yards and houses on foot. No one had noticed a young woman with a suitcase.

“We started searching the nearby streets after Christine had been gone two hours, and we called the local grocery store,” the supervisor told Thatch. “Then we called it in as a missing person to the police. They understand our situation and respond quickly.”

As the supervisor finished talking, a sheriff’s department car pulled up. Thatch, Andy and the supervisor watched as two deputies got out and approached. They nodded to Andy, and one approached Thatch.

“Hey, Thatch, real sorry to see you again under these circumstances. Don’t worry, we’ll find your daughter. We’ve already got two of our guys out there looking.”

The group went inside the house and into the office. The supervisor told the remaining residents that the police wanted to ask a few questions, but after a few minutes it was plain the women had no information about Christine’s plans or whereabouts.

Andy was asked, “When she called you to come pick her up, how did she sound?”

“Same as always, not excited or anything. I figured I’d come over and talk, just talk, and explain to her, as Dad and I both have over the years, that this is her home and she needs to stay here. I told her I’d be right over since it’s my day off.”

“Any case you’re working on that would connect to your sister?”

“No, sir. Nothing.”

“How about you, Thatch? I know you’re retired, but could one of your old incidents have caught up with you? Some jerk you might have stopped getting too close to the president?”

At the suggestion, Thatch grew cold. There had been so many attempts. But since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, none had succeeded over his several years of guarding presidents Carter, Clinton and the two Bushes. No assassin had got past the Secret Service and succeeded, although John Hinckley had almost killed President Ronald Reagan.

“No. No one comes to mind. Not from the political arena anyway.”

As he and Andy talked further, they heard the front door open and close. Both men spun around quickly. Thatch watched his daughter come into the hallway, followed by two deputies. He rushed to greet her. Christine was about to walk upstairs, her suitcase in hand. Thatch knew enough not to give in to the urge to grab her or yell at her for frightening them. Instead, he acted as if it were perfectly normal for her to be there and have a suitcase with her.

“Hi, darlin’. Were you going somewhere?” His voice was low and steady.

“Oh. Hi, Dad. Hi, Andy.” She put the suitcase down. “I was told by the voices in the wall that I needed to take the train to San Diego, but I waited ages at the station, and it didn’t come. These policemen gave me a ride back. I’ll just put my suitcase away, then come down and talk to you both.” Christine picked up the suitcase and went upstairs.

One of the cops said, “When we first checked the train station we didn’t see any sign of her, so we kept going. When we circled back later, there she was on the platform.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” said Thatch. “She’s never run away from here before. Guess we need to keep closer tabs on her in future.”

Tosca, concerned, called Thatch that evening. “Is everything all right? I was a little worried when you had to dash off like that,” she said.

“Yes, everything’s fine now. I appreciate your asking. So how’s the Schoenberg research?”

“I’m well and truly stumped,” Tosca said. “I’ve read everything I can find on him. One article was really interesting about a percussionist called Jackie Bertone who said that percussion is an additive to music, like a frame around a work of art. Well, the professor framed this particular bar of music. Maybe it has a hidden rhythm that means something special. It’s worth considering. Why else would he take it off the wall after I commented on it?”

“People do all kinds of things for no reason, Tosca.”

“I don’t suppose you’d like to come over for a glass of mead, would you?”

“Mead? Thanks, but I’ll bring my own brew. Maybe we can come up with an answer while the police continue their investigation.”

Tosca hung up the phone. She was attracted to Thatch, but he surely was an odd duck. She hadn’t seen anyone else in Newport Beach wearing a cowboy hat. This was sailing country. Maybe Mr. MacAulay fancied himself another Dennis Weaver, who wore a Stetson playing the Marshall Sam McCloud character in a TV detective series set in New York. He stuck out like a sore thumb. Or perhaps Thatch fancied himself a private investigator now that he was retired. She knew many cops became security guards and joined private detective agencies. Well, that’s what she herself was focused on, solving both crimes and getting promoted, so he’d better not interfere too much. The man obviously had excellent contacts with law enforcement, and she was truly appreciative of his help, but if she wanted to return to her London newsroom in a blaze of glory, Thatch would need to step aside.

“Good evening, Tosca. May I come in?” Thatch called out through the open top half of the Dutch door.

“Reach in and pull back the bolt,” she said, smiling as she came toward him. She pointed to his package. “Six cans of beer?”

“My favorite. One for you?” At her refusal, Thatch opened the refrigerator door in the small kitchen and, taking one can from the pack, put the remaining five beers on a lower shelf. He opened the can, took a short drink and sat on the sofa.

“No, no, not there,” said Tosca. “I’ve set everything out over here.”

“Everything?”

“Look, it’s obvious to me that Schoenberg, the professor and the finger bones in the rock are all connected, and now we have a clue with the framed music.”

“That’s pretty thin as far as solid evidence goes,” said Thatch. “But,” he added, eyes twinkling, “I’ll humor you. Maybe I’ll pick up a few more Cornish words.”

“Humor me? Don’t worry, I’ll convince you yet. Come on, sit here.”

Thatch settled himself at the marble and glass table and studied three small stacks of papers. All music scores, they were arranged by date indicated by a yellow stick-on note.

“I looked up Schoenberg’s concordance of melodies,” said Tosca, touching the pile to her left. “My particular melody, as I call it, the one on Whittaker’s wall, is attached to fourteen songs. Maybe each of the titles is a clue, so that’s this first pile. The second one represents his most acclaimed compositions, and the third stack is all the Schoenberg compositions written during the final year of his life.”

“Why did you categorize them this way?”

“I’ve no idea,” she shrugged, “but they all have notations on them. Perhaps we could follow along chronologically with his thought processes.”

“You spent all day finding these? Not much here.”

“I’ll have you know that Schoenberg’s legacy includes essays, lectures, poems, letters, philosophical musings and tons of other writings. It took me hours of research to find that out. He was extraordinarily prolific and wrote in German, English and even French, but I found nothing on numerology except these.”

Thatch picked up a piece of paper. “What’s this note about Frank Zappa? He’s a rock guitarist, not a classical musician.”

“Surprised? J.J. was, too. Zappa was a Schoenberg fan. Listen to some of his CDs. Your son probably has some. Another interesting fact I found out is that the brain responds to harmony. Schoenberg’s harmonies were atonal, or disharmonious. I wonder if a sociopath who listened to that stuff a lot could become affected by it.”

Thatch got up and took another can of beer from the refrigerator. While there he reached down to the floor and picked up Tosca’s jug of mead. “More?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She watched as he poured the liquid gently into her glass. His hands, she thought, could cup a football or a woman’s full breast with equal sureness.

“I don’t know about music turning someone into a sociopath,” said Thatch, “but it can affect teenagers, especially if they’re tripping out. As far as Whittaker is concerned, we need to stick to the facts. I don’t see anything on these music scores that’s going to help us, so let’s run down the list of things that involve groups of numbers.”

“All my hard work gone to waste? All right, let’s hear your own brilliant theory.”

“The most obvious is that they are phone numbers, maybe international numbers. Read them out to me again.” He closed his eyes and prepared to listen.

“The first set of numbers,” she said, reading from her notes, “is 3225718 followed by 11640666. I don’t know any international dialing code that matches them. I call the UK all the time, and you have to dial 011 first for whatever country you’re calling.”

“I know. Despite all my travels abroad, I can’t come up with any that resemble these either, but we can’t discount the possibility that they are phone numbers. Maybe he threw in a couple of extra twos or sixes as a code. What else? They could be bank account numbers, but there aren’t enough digits, and there are too many for a safety deposit box number. Maybe invoice numbers?”

“I vote for a countdown on the Doomsday Clock or a pattern for knitting socks.”

“Don’t get facetious, Tosca. This is serious business,”

“Right.” She sighed and drank more mead. “A birth date? Let me check when Schoenberg was born.” She opened a bulging file folder. “September 13, 1874. So that’s 9131874. No, that won’t fit either. Damn. My eyes are sore. Let’s take a break. How about banging out a tune on that banjo thing of yours?”

Thatch grinned. “It’s called a ukulele, honey. I’ll go get it.”

He returned from his truck with the musical instrument and began to play. Soon he was singing, too. Tosca found she couldn’t take her eyes off him, finding his complete absorption in the music giving her an unexpected thrill.

After ten minutes he set the ukulele down and said, “Let’s get back to business.”

“Maybe these are measurements,” said Tosca, “like a certain number of paces forward, back and sideways. There was a Sherlock Holmes case like this. He paced off from an oak tree and found buried treasure.”

“I doubt we are seeking buried treasure.”

“You’re right. More like another clue. Haiden’s the type who likes to play games, judging by the Schoenberg score. So if it’s another clue, maybe it tells where to find it, like an address. Something like 32757 Eighteenth Street and 116406 Sixty-Sixth
Street?”

“An address?” He stared off into the distance, through the open door. “Read the numbers again. No, let me see them.” He studied the sheet of paper. “Hey! When you read the numbers out you didn’t tell me there was a period in the first set of numbers and a minus mark with the second. An address! Tosca! You’re a genius. Of course that’s it.” Thatch jumped up and hugged her.

“Thatch, you’re smothering me. So the numbers are an address? Then it must be in New York, though I didn’t think house numbers ran that high in Manhattan.”

“No, no, no, not a street address. Jeez, I’m such an idiot. How could I have missed it?”

“What is it then? You said that’s it, and now it’s not? You’re driving me crazy. Hey,
skiansekigyon,
where are you going?”

Thatch ran through the front door, took the steps down three at a time and after a couple of minutes came bounding back. He was carrying a small device with a short, thick antenna.

“What was that you called me?” he said. “Anything like the Cornish word for idiot?”

His eyebrows raised when Tosca blushed as deeply as the first time they’d met.

“Never mind,” she said, “but it wasn’t rude. On the contrary. Tell me, what’s that in your hand? Hope it’s not some newfangled iPod. You’ve probably got a thousand country western songs on it. Are you going to answer my question?”

“This is a portable GPS unit. Global Positioning System. Runs on batteries.”

“I know very well what a GPS is,” said Tosca. “I have the application on my iPhone. Most cars are equipped with them to give directions to an address. Is this one different?”

“No, standard. In addition to maps, the unit shows latitude and longitude.”

“Why do we need to know that?”

“Because that’s what Whittaker’s numbers represent, if I’m right. They’re a precise address.” He switched on the device and punched several keys. “Look, see these numbers? They’re coordinates. They represent where we’re standing right now. Here’s your house, where that little arrow is pointing. Remember that movie,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind?
The military were given the coordinates of the mountain so they could meet the space ship. Using a globe, they traced the longitude from the South Pole westward across the U.S. until their fingers met to pinpoint a mountain called Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Today, they’d have used a GPS.”

“Are you a movie buff?” said Tosca, amused.

“Don’t change the subject. I’m punching in Whittaker’s numbers. Let’s see what the GPS comes up with. It’ll tell us the exact location.”

Tosca watched intently while Thatch pressed a button and entered the numbers. The small screen sprang to life, showing a map. He stared at it without speaking for several moments.

“Well? Don’t just stand there. What’s the address?” said Tosca.

“There isn’t one.”

“So it’s not working? Ha! Out of batteries?”

“No, Tosca. It is working, but it’s not a street address nor a city. It’s a vast expanse of nothing, but a magical place. We call it Anza-Borrego. I know it well. We go there camping all the time. In fact, there’s a Borrego Springs Resort, very popular spot. Its latitude is 33.25762, and the longitude is –116.40619. Can’t think why I didn’t catch on to this sooner. The area we want is farther south of the Springs, and it’s all desert.”

“Desert? Do you think that’s where the professor hid his next clue? Where is this desert?”