Hearts Divided (Cedar Cove #5.5)(45)
Helen telephoned yesterday to discuss the final details for our trip to British Columbia to celebrate my birthday. She wants to tour Victoria in a horse-drawn carriage after high tea at the Empress Hotel. I voted “yes” on that suggestion, of course, and we both want to browse the shops for tins of good English tea. I’d like to find a new Scottish wool blanket, also, just a small one to cover my lap while I’m reading on rainy winter days. Is there anything special we can pick up for you, Clara? I wish you were going with us—it just won’t be the same without you there. But next year, the three of us will spend my birthday somewhere equally fun.
I’d better get busy. I’ll let you know the moment I hear from Chloe about her date with Jake.
All my love,
Winifred
Chloe carried a large glass of ice water and the stack of essays onto her back deck and set them on the glass table in the shade of the patio umbrella. She dropped into a wrought-iron chair. Stretching out her legs, she crossed her ankles and sighed with pleasure. The late-afternoon sun slanted across the gray-painted wood deck, warming her bare legs. The umbrella’s shade blocked the sunshine from her upper body. Still, the heat and bright sky were a welcome change from the showers and gray days of two weeks earlier.
Only in Seattle do you need a wool sweater under your raincoat one week, and two weeks later, you can sit in the sun wearing shorts with a tank top, she thought. Gotta love this city.
She straightened her arms over her head and arched her back, stretching luxuriously. Then she pulled the stack of essays closer, picked up the top one and began to read. Red pencil in hand, she worked her way through half the pile before taking a break.
Jake had called earlier to fill her in on developments since last night. They hadn’t found any identifying information or fingerprints in the abandoned sedan. The truck owner had reported his license plates stolen this morning and had no idea why they were on a sedan. Gray was running the VIN number in an attempt to trace the car, but he expected that the sedan had been stolen, too.
Jake also mentioned that he’d spent most of the day at his company’s current work site in Black Diamond. During the night, someone had broken into the Morrissey Demolition storage shed and stolen dy***ite. The foreman of the road construction crew swore nothing was missing from his list of equipment and supplies, so it appeared the thief had targeted only the explosives.
Jake sounded frustrated with the dead ends and delays, and she was just as disappointed as he was when he had to cancel their dinner plans. She’d settled for a mixed salad with slices of barbecued chicken, eaten on her patio in the sunshine.
Taking a water bottle with her, Chloe returned to the deck and sank into her chair again. It was now almost eight o’clock. She picked up the next essay, but two paragraphs in, she frowned and sat up straighter. Each paragraph had a group of letters—gibberish—enclosed in parentheses.
She flipped to the cover sheet to check the writer’s name, and to her surprise, there wasn’t one. The other necessary elements were present—class title and number, professor’s name, date, the title of the essay: “The American Military: Friend or Enemy?”
Even more puzzled, she went through the stack of essays on the table, then her list of students enrolled in the class. There were five fewer essays than students, but three of them had already contacted her and been given permission to deliver their work late. One of those students had broken his arm in a pickup game of football; one’s National Guard unit had been activated and she was training in Yakima; the third was at a funeral in Tucson. The remaining two students had distinctive writing styles and she felt sure she could rule them out.
If none of the students registered in her class had written this essay, then who had? Chloe knew anyone could have dropped the paper through the mail slot in her door; students delivered work that way all the time. She didn’t remember finding this particular document on her office floor and filing it with the other essays, but it was more than likely she’d done so without giving it a thought. Still, why would anyone have gone to such lengths—writing and delivering a paper for a class in which he or she wasn’t even registered?
She picked up the mysterious essay to resume reading where she’d left off, and by the time she’d finished, her inner alarms were shrieking. There was something decidedly off-kilter about the essay. Not only were all the paragraphs interspersed with parentheses enclosing collections of letters that she couldn’t understand, but the author made angry, disparaging remarks about the military in general and the Marine Corps in particular. Something about the gibberish in the parentheses felt vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t seem to grasp why.
The essay ended with a paragraph alleging government collusion to conceal the truth about the death of marines in combat situations abroad. Thee was a specific reference to military personnel dying in Afghanistan.
Chloe stared at the typed pages, trying to see a pattern that might reveal a hidden message or a clue that might tell her the identity of the writer. Unfortunately, she found nothing that made sense.
Gran could probably take one look at this and know if the writer had hidden a message in the words.
She pushed back her chair decisively, gathered up the papers and hurried into the house. She dropped the stack of essays on the table and ran upstairs to collect a light sweater. She grabbed her purse, slipping her feet into leather sandals, and after checking to make sure all the locks in the house were secure, drove to Winifred’s.