Nailed It!

Amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for you now and then. With The Condo secured, I removed all my make-up, showered, and slept. I had Davy make sure I was supplied with food and coffee before he left yesterday and I got my luggage up out of the Mustang. I checked in with the building management to be sure it was okay where I’d parked it and now I felt safe. At least for long enough to get some sleep.

10:00 a.m.

I told Davy that he wouldn’t be needed again until party time on Thursday night. Everything else was fine in The Condo. That means that this morning I have time and energy to spend pulling pieces together. I’m monitoring a lot of accounts that Brenda had set up and am tightening my hold on her schedule. I’m guessing she moved from Acapulco pretty quickly after she arrived, but I don’t really have an idea where she went to.

I’m hoping that her sense of security in having escaped will make her careless. There’s sure to be a charge on one of her credit cards or a ticket purchased or a customs record sometime.

In the meantime, everyone seems to think the thumb drive holds the mysteries of the universe and the careers of some very important people. So I think I’d better get down to cracking it. It’s just a matter of waiting for Simon to say what’s next.

1:30 p.m.

I waited, and now I’m stuck. I plugged in a thumb drive backup and got the familiar message asking for the encryption key. I entered the thirty-two digits in the order that I’d worked out and waited. I got the same message: "Simon says, 'Find me if you can.' All the clues are here. Everything you wanted to know. I never expected you to get this far, but I'm not making it any easier to uncover the secrets that are contained on this drive. It's too bad you are colorblind, Dag!" Then, "Press Esc to continue." No deal this time Simon. I waited.

Sure enough there was a new message that appeared after about ninety seconds. “Simon says enter the next encryption code.” Oh shit. Now I’m stuck. If I hit the wrong thing, I’m at risk of losing the whole thing again. I looked at the keyboard for a while and pressed the one key that I thought might be safe. The computer went into immediate hibernate mode. Now if I can wake it up without triggering anything, I’ve got time to figure out what the next encryption code will be.

I sat back to think about it for a while. What did Simon’s message say? Too bad you are colorblind. Simon knew Dag was colorblind and somehow it affected the puzzle. But how? I was going to have to risk going back to the office. I locked things up and headed for the waterfront. I was hoping that Silas was serious about dropping the warrant and there wasn’t going to be a problem when I got to the office. I was also seriously hoping that no one else was watching the office.

9:00 p.m.

In and out. I can’t believe I was so dense. I’ve got two parts of the mystery and I know where the third is. Then it’s on to solving the fourth part. It was all in the file on Brenda that Silas gave me, and which he kindly left on the desk after he searched the office. I suppose he wanted it to look like no one had been there. They did a good job.

When I read about Brenda’s tattoo, it said the tattoo was red and black. Sure enough, the detail said that on Brenda’s tattoo the “1,” the “d,” and the pillow were red. Everything else was black. I checked my photo of Bradley’s tattoo and found that two letters on his were also red—the “b” and the “1”. If there are two letters in each tattoo that are red, they would make up a second 8-character code. What I have so far are the first and last pair if the order of the original tattoos holds true. b-1-_-_-_-_-1-d.

Dag didn’t mark any letters on either Simon’s tattoo or Angel’s as being red. But Dag was colorblind and had never actually seen Simon’s tattoo. I didn’t know if he’d seen Angel’s or not, but I could just call up and ask her.

I slipped the SIM out of my James Whitcomb cell phone and inserted my Deb Riley SIM. The first thing that showed up was that I had a lot of voice mail. I decided to check that before I called Angel. There were several calls from Silas. I have to give him credit, he did try my cell phone before he tried the office. I still didn’t completely trust him, but no one had burst into the office to arrest me yet. There was a call from Cinnamon. This is too funny.

“Deb, you’ve got to call me. I’ve met a guy and he is absolutely delicious. But I don’t know what to do. He hasn’t called me. I don’t dare call him. This is absolutely squeeee! Call me!”

Oh geez! The call was from early Tuesday morning, right after my last encounter with Cinnamon. She is going to be sooooo disappointed.

Teri called. “Hey girl, where are you? We were supposed to go up to the pass to ski Sunday. Call me.”

The last call was from Angel.

“Deb, this is angel. Give me a call, would you? Weird things are happening. I’ve had like a dozen people ask about you this week. Some of them are pretty spooky. They know I gave Dag a computer thingy from Simon. If you’ve got it, get rid of it. I don’t think you’re safe as long as you have it. Call me.”

That was a call I needed to return right away, but I came back to the Condo before I made it. I’m not ready to blow my cover completely. Here’s how it went.

“Hello?”

“Angel, it’s Deb.”

“Girl, where are you?”

“Everyone wants to know where I am,” I said. “I’m hiding out at the moment. What’s up?”

“I’ve had a string of transactions this week with a common thread. An escalating threat of “action” if I don’t come up with details about where that little computer disk thing is that I gave Dag. I’m sorry, Deb, but I told them that I gave it to Dag. Somehow I thought it would be safe since Dag was dead. But they zeroed in on you. They keep calling to see if I’ve heard from you and asking me where you are.”

“Geez, Angel. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. No. I’m getting out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m on my way to the airport. Simon left me a nice property in Croatia that I’m going to make use of. I’m sorry, Deb. I should be here for you, but I’m scared and I’m taking off while I can.”

“Don’t worry Angel,” I said. “I don’t blame you a bit. If I show up on your doorstep there, please invite me in.”

“Not to worry.”

“Angel, one other thing,” I said before she could hang up. It’s important.”

“Go ahead.”

“You’ve got a tattoo. Dag told me about it. But there is a detail that he missed. Which two characters in your tattoo are red?”

“The 6 and the first 0,” she answered. They are in a column up and down and Simon had some rather vulgar jokes about putting them in that order. He could make a dirty joke about just about anything,” she answered. “Look, I’m at the airport and I’ve got to run now. Good luck Deb.”

“Thanks Angel, but one more thing,” I tried to catch her before she hung up, but she was gone. I was sure she could have told me what Simon’s letters were, too. I tried back, but there was no answer.

Okay, so now I’ve got b-1-_-_-6-0-1-d. There’s a word or words here, and I need two more letters out of Simon’s tattoo to complete it. f-8-e-d-2-d-1-e.

Give me a hand here guys.