The Sholes Key (An Evans & Blackwell Mystery #1)

by Clarissa Draper

  She heard a noise and looked up from the screen. Had she locked the door? Did she even shut it? She tended to forget details like this when she was writing, always in some other world. Looking toward the corner of the room, she heard her old Basset hound whimpering. “Oh, Maxwell, did I forget to feed you? I think I forgot to feed myself, too.”

  Getting up, she turned off her monitor and turned on the room light. “Come on. Let’s go see what we can eat.” He followed her down the hall, sauntering slowly behind her. Eleven years old and partially blind, he never did well with the stairs, so she had moved her writing room downstairs. That way he could keep her company while she wrote.

  Checking the front door before she entered the kitchen, she saw it was unlocked. “Look at me, I forgot again. Anyone could come in and steal my things.” She laughed and shook her head.

  Peeking into the dark drawing room, everything seemed in order. She looked down at Maxwell sniffing furiously into the room from the doorway. “What do you smell?” she asked him. “Sorry Maxi-baby, there’s no food in there. Come on, let’s go to the kitchen. You must be starving.”

  In the kitchen, Maxwell lopped toward the patio doors. “Do you need out?” she asked, following behind him. “You can do your business while I get your bowl.”

  Unlocking the door, he squeezed between her legs and went over to his favorite spot to lift his leg. A nice breeze met her face. She noticed a light coming from the house next door. The neighbor’s son was up in his room. The boy’s head bobbed up and down. He must be listening to music, she thought.

  It reminded her of her son Scotty when he was that age. It was records then, not all this mp3 business. Scotty lived in Chicago, married to an American; they had three beautiful children. Her grandchildren were in their teens now, amazing how time flies. She had added Chicago to one of her tour stops. Almost a year now since she had seen them. Sending money wasn’t enough anymore. She planned to purchase two outfits each for the three girls, but her son had told her to give them money instead. Apparently, the girls’ taste in clothing changed faster than they could say Banana Republic.

  After she slid the door shut, she went to the cupboard beside the fridge and pulled a can of dog food from the shelf.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” she said aloud, “if I didn’t have to plan dinners every night? I could just enjoy the same thing every night with a wag of the tail. Lamb stew. Yum, I can’t remember the last time I ate lamb stew.”

  Glancing out the window above the sink, she watched Maxwell wandering about the yard. Buying him bones was useless. He immediately took them outside and buried them. It didn’t matter how many she gave him, it was always the same. Unfortunately he could never find them again. He dug and dug and only came away with muddy feet.

  With her fingernail, she squeezed under the tab and pulled the metal lid back. When she looked up at the window again through the slight reflection, she almost didn’t see the man standing behind her. It didn’t matter anyway. She didn’t have a chance; not a chance to turn around, not a chance to react, not a chance to scream.

  The man had wrapped something around her neck and pulled it tight. She dropped the can into the sink, and dog food flew everywhere. It splattered onto the worktops, the cupboards, and the window. Her fingers clawed at her neck. He was too strong. She reached back and tried to scratch him. She didn’t know if she did. She was getting weaker; her head, everything, was going black. Her arms fell loosely as her legs collapsed beneath her.

  Chapter 16

  Sophia stood motionless in the hall, listening to the commotion inside her flat. She bent down and gently set the dishes on the floor. Different scenarios ran through her mind. Theo, in anger, could be searching her house. She discarded that notion almost immediately. He would never do something to jeopardize a relationship vital to a case, would he? What about Marc? How would he get into the building? Could it be the killer?

  She dialed Theo’s mobile number first.

  “What?” Theo said. “Did you ring to apologize?”

  Loud music blared in the background. “Where are you? You’re not in my flat?”

  “Why would I be there?”

  “There’s someone inside, Theo,” she whispered and peered through the crack in her door.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Just stay on the line while I enter.”

  “No, wait. I’m coming over!” he yelled. “Don’t go in. Sophia, don’t go in.”

  Sophia approached her door and called out, “Hello? Who’s here?” She heard voices and said, “I can hear you in there. Who is it? My friend and I are in the hall.” Sophia placed the mobile’s speaker on. Theo’s shouting reverberated down the hall.

  Suddenly, a man poked his head from the kitchen.

  “Stanley!” shouted Sophia. “Why do you keep doing that?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Scaring me.” She rang off on Theo. “Why are you in my flat?”

  “Your sink,” he replied. “Don’t you remember saying it needed repairing?”

  “Right, and the plumber is here at this hour? It’s late.”

  “Yes, in your kitchen as we speak. I’m sorry about the late hour. The problem under your kitchen sink has leaked to the flat below, causing damage. I rang you and knocked and assumed you were out.”

  Sophia followed Stanley into the kitchen. Plumbing items littered her floor. The doors under her sink were open, and the legs of a man appeared from it. He was yanking on a pipe with a wrench. When finally it let go, water poured down onto him.

  “Shit,” he said and quickly crawled out from the small space. “Do you have some bath towels?”

  Sophia grimaced. All she had were her fluffy white ones. As she pulled three large towels from her shelf, her mobile rang.

  “Why the hell did you ring off?” Theo asked. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s the plumber. I’m fine. No need to come over. I’ll tell you what his bum crack looks like tomorrow.”

  Sophia excused herself and went to hide in the other flat while they fixed her pipes. She went back to Lorna’s code, but it kept reminding her of her argument with Theo. Exhaustion made her want to cry. Only a few months ago she’d been on track with her life and her career. Now, she was involved in not only one mess but perhaps three. She had pried into Theo’s life when he was someone who needed to trust her. Yet, she had no issue asking Crystal for the information about him. She deserved the reaction she got.

  She pushed Lorna’s code away and instead took out the items relating to Yuri’s code—all the items found in the forest. She taped the code to the whiteboard then laid out the Bible. Yuri was counting on her to solve it and soon. Up to this point, she didn’t have the time, with her life full of complications. Tonight she needed to focus.

  The photo of the ship came first. Liam had informed her it was the Thomas Nelson. She still had no idea what that meant. Based on previous codes, the photos would be clues to the title, author, or publisher of a book. An Internet search revealed Thomas Nelson to be a publisher. She would start there.

  Next, she opened the Bible and took out the three lines of numbers.

  10.5.9

  15.8.27

  3.27.21s

  Fortunately, she had received a Bible from Yuri before. Last time the numbers had pointed to scriptures. The first number would be the Bible book, the next the chapter, and last the verse.

  The first verse was from the Second Book of Samuel, chapter five, verse nine:

  “So David dwelt in the fort,

  And called it the city of David.

  And David built round

  about from Millo and inward.”

  The second was from Ezra, chapter eight, verse twenty-seven:

  “Also twenty basins of gold,

  Of a thousand drams;

  And two vessels of fine copper,

  Precious as gold.”

  The third was from Leviticus, chapter twenty-seven, verse twenty-one:

  “Bu
t the field, when it goeth out in the jubilee,

  Shall be holy unto the LORD,

  As a field devoted;

  The possession thereof shall be the priest’s.”

  Now she would have to take all the words from all three verses and try to match it to a title printed by Thomas Nelson. The first word from the first verse, the second from the next and so on.

  After trying combination after combination, it finally hit her.

  “Yes. He is quite a good fellow,” Sophia said. She looked at the clock. How did three hours pass? After she placed all the related code items in the bedroom’s hidden safe, she locked up the second flat for the night.

  Chapter 17

  Damn that woman, thought Theo. Damn all women. How did Sophia manage to sneak into his life? One day he’s existing, and the next she arrives to add a completely new dimension of pain. To top it off, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  He slammed down his mobile and car keys on the table beside his bed. Without undressing, he crawled into bed and threw the covers over his head.

  “You’re home late,” he heard a woman utter in Greek.

  He poked his head out from under the blankets. “Did I wake you?” he asked. He sat up in bed and brought his knees to his chest.

  Agneta stood in the doorway, in pajamas. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “of course you can.”

  She walked into the room and sat on the edge of his bed, at his feet. Her dark frizzy hair draped her face, lighting up her eyes. “Why didn’t we have children?” she asked him in Greek. “Didn’t we want children?”

  He put his fist to his mouth to regain his composure. The one thing he was glad she never had to remember again was Adrian. He looked deep into her eyes. Did she remember? “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. We were married six years, no?”

  He nodded.

  “Why did we never have children?” she asked again.

  At the door, his mother listened with her head down. They had decided as a family never to mention the topic of Adrian, a topic that had caused Agneta so much pain. They never had.

  “Can I have children?”

  “Yes,” he finally uttered, “yes, Agneta. Yes.” He grabbed her hand. “We tried. It just didn’t go as planned.” It wasn’t a lie. They had tried; for five years, they’d tried. Four miscarriages before she finally carried for eight months. That was when they lost the fifth. That was when they lost Adrian.

  They had a photo taken of him at the hospital before the nurses took him away. Agneta cried for days and blamed her every action. If only she hadn’t taken that walk. If only she’d eaten the liver. If only she’d prayed more.

  Theo had held his emotions in check and remained strong for her, but inside it tore him to pieces. Eleven months later, when a drunk driver decided to run that red light and took his wife away from him too, Theo’s world had turned black. A hateful, hateful black.

  Agneta sat there for a few moments, running her fingers through the folds of the blanket. It was a quilt she had bought at a craft show in Reading. “Do you remember the blanket?” He remained hopeful. This was the first time they had really talked in weeks.

  Agneta shook her head.

  “Do you remember anything?”

  She looked blankly into his eyes, and he had his answer.

  “You must hate me,” she said.

  “I don’t hate you.”

  She gave him a slight nod and left the room. He cried himself to sleep.

  Chapter 18

  The next morning, Sophia left her flat in search of the book. She’d done this ritual before—thirty-eight times to be exact. Yuri, the long-time Russian mole, had been sending codes and information to her for over three years. They had a system and it worked. Though they had never met, Sophia felt she knew him, as if he was her uncle.

  For the safety of both parties, she knew where her mole lived but was under strict orders never to meet in person. If she had a message for Yuri, she informed Crystal who informed another officer who lived in an apartment across the street from Yuri. The officer in the apartment would then place a pot of fake tulips in the window.

  Yuri followed the same routine every day. At seven every morning, he bought a Russian newspaper, walked to his local library and did the crossword puzzle. On the occasion he had a message for Sophia, his lapel held a single red rose. Sophia’s message would be printed on the crossword—in Russian—pointing to a specific library filing system card. Another intelligence officer retrieved the crossword, decoded it and retrieved the card. The card was then sent to Sophia who cracked the message—always a set of GPS coordinates to a box hidden somewhere in England.

  Although the plan was complicated and took many agents, Yuri insisted upon it. And The British government, who liked Yuri and the information he supplied, insisted she follow it. Now that she had the title of the book from the Bible code, she could decode the message from the box in the forest. The message most likely contained names and details of illegal activity.

  In the library, Sophia took a walk through all the aisles and examined the people: four library workers, a mum and her son reading a book in the children’s section, and three students studying quietly in the corner. She stumbled around the fiction section, running her fingers along the base of the spines. She stopped. The book was not there. Frustrated, she headed toward the library’s computer and typed in the title. How many people would want to read this exact title? Did she wait too long to crack the code? Had someone else found it?

  The book appeared on the screen. It was exactly where she had looked. Perhaps she had missed it.

  “Can I help you?”

  Sophia turned around to see an ashen-faced man in a cardigan behind a cart of books. “What book are you looking for?” he asked.

  “I searched the computer. It says the book is checked in.”

  Looking at the piece of paper she handed him, he replied, “Some books go missing.” He pushed the cart past her.

  “All right.” She accepted his answer but knew she would search every book in the library if she had to. It had to be in fiction; she returned to the section again.

  “Maybe it’s mistakenly shelved or on my cart here. What’s the book title?” He appeared in her aisle.

  “David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.”

  “We have plenty of those.” He laughed then stopped suddenly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. I’ll help you find it.” He left the cart and strode to the fiction shelves with his long legs. When he found the Dickens, he pulled the book from the shelf and handed it to her.

  Sophia opened the cover and then closed the book. “This may sound absurd, but I’m looking for a specific Copperfield. One printed by Thomas Nelson and Sons. It’s an older copy.”

  “Are you sure?”

  What did that mean? Of course, she was sure. “I’m aware these are more modern copies—soft-back—but does this library by chance have older, rarer books?”

  “Yes. Follow me.” He led her to another part of the library. “We don’t want children using these copies for school assignments. We keep them back here.”

  On a shelf in the back corner of the library sat the book, a beautiful, old book. “May I?” she asked as she gingerly lifted the blue book from the shelf.

  The man shrugged. “Why does this copy interest you in particular?” He peered over her shoulder into the book.

  “I’m currently studying pagination in rare books and heard this copy has unique markings,” she said and flipped to page two hundred nineteen. “See this marking here at the bottom of the page?”

  He nodded. That lie seemed to satisfy him, and he left her alone as she copied the key she needed from the pages. The information from the code could save the lives of hundreds of people. She prayed she got it right.

  Chapter 19

  Life was no cheerier for Theo the following morning. Dorland came into the incident room and said to Theo, “Deveau
wants to see us.”

  When they entered Deveau’s office, their boss motioned them to chairs in front of his desk.

  DI Shields stood by the window, holding a cherry pastry snugly in one hand while juggling the napkin and coffee cup in the other. Mumbling something that sounded like a greeting, he quickly focused on more important matters—his stomach.

  Winters stood against the wall and gave them a quick nod.

  “We held a press conference earlier this morning,” Deveau started.

  “Press conference?” asked Theo. “Why was I not invited? This relates to my case as well.”

  “Shields spoke to the press because Margaret Hill is his case,” Deveau said. “If we find Lorna’s body, you can take the press conference. Now that being said, the press wants to stir up the public, meaning we have to get these solved. Shields, since you have a body, where are you on this case?”

  Shields put his cup of coffee on Deveau’s desk and fiddled with the napkin. In his efforts to clean the pastry off his fingers, he only managed to tear the napkin apart and stick it to his fingers. Red fingerprints marked up the yellow manila folder as he tried to open the file. He licked his fingers to separate the pages and then pulled the napkin off his tongue.

  “Autopsy has not been done yet,” Shields stated. “But it will be done today. Both of us will be there.” He motioned to himself and Theo. “The body has been frozen, so they have to wait until it is properly thawed before they can cut it apart. However, we did get some of the forensics back.” Shields read from the file. “There were no fingerprints, hair, or DNA. The killer may have been wearing a hat or had a shaved head. Rose petals and wine glasses had no fingerprints. There weren’t even traces of alcohol in the glasses. Brand new, cheap, bought from a local Sainsbury.”