Beverly Connor - Dead Past

“I know,” said Diane. “I’ve been dribbling out information about Juliet-mainly because at first I didn’t know it was related to the Cipriano murder. It was just something I was doing to help one of my employees. Also, there’s some sensitive personal information on Juliet involved. But now it’s something we need to solve, because I think she is in danger.”

Diane went over the whole story of Juliet with them. She told them about Juliet’s memories and how Diane thought the fear of new dolls sprang from another crime Juliet had witnessed, and that being a witness had led to her kidnapping.

“Those are the crimes you had me look for in Arizona and Florida?” said David.

“Yes,” said Diane.

“You’ve been working on this mystery while you were working on the other crimes in Rosewood?” said Frank. “And running the museum?”

“Yes, and I haven’t been doing a very good job of any of it, but that’s going to change. Jin, did the TV program give any personal information on the Sebestyens?”

“Some. Not a lot. As I recall, Quinn Sebestyen was a math professor at a community college. His wife was a schoolteacher. The kids were good students. Everyone liked them. They were, by all accounts, an ordinary couple, an ordinary family. No marital problems that anyone was aware of, no great debt, no vices. The police couldn’t find any reason they would disappear on their own or why anyone would do them harm. The best they could come up with was that someone kidnapped them or murdered them for some unknown reason.”

“Did they ever vacation in Glendale-Marsh?” asked Diane.

“I don’t remember that town being mentioned in the TV program,” said Jin.

“Call the detective in charge of the case and ask him. See if he’ll send us more information,” said Diane.

“You think the Sebestyens are the dead people Juliet saw?” said David.

“Yes, I do,” said Diane. “How’s this for an hypothesis: Juliet was visiting her grandmother who lives at the beach in Glendale-Marsh, and she struck up a friendship with a little girl, one of the tourists. The little girl was Melissa Sebestyen. The genealogy chart Beth just provided to us shows that Melissa’s father, Quinn, was the grandnephew of Leo Parrish; Quinn’s grandmother was Leo’s twin sister. In the letters Leo sent home to his sister he probably sent the code and maybe even a book. It probably became a family heirloom. When Leo didn’t come home from the war, no one could crack his code. Quinn grew up with the story about Granduncle Leo and his hidden fortune in Florida. Quinn taught mathematics at a community college. Perhaps he inherited a family trait for being good with numbers and codes. He deciphered Uncle Leo’s code and went to Glendale-Marsh to find the treasure.”

“Where does the doll come in?” asked Frank.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps Quinn, being of a fanciful frame of mind, hid the code in his daughter’s doll for safekeeping, or perhaps the little girl hid it there.”

“Why would a kid do a thing like that?” said Jin.

Frank laughed.

“I’m just hypothesizing,” said Diane. “Maybe she knew the code was important. Maybe the doll was a courier. Anyway, Melissa knew it was there because she told Juliet the doll had a secret. That’s something a kid tells another kid. None of the adults would have told Juliet that.”

“I’m with you,” said Frank.

“Someone besides Quinn knew about the hidden fortune-actually, a lot of people did-but this someone knew that Quinn had a line on where to find it,” said Diane.

“Maybe Quinn told someone,” said David.

“Not if Quinn’s the one hiding the code in the doll,” said Neva. “That sounds like secretive behavior to me.”

“OK, maybe someone who was looking for the code tracked down Leo Parrish’s descendants-like Beth did,” said David.

“That’s a good possibility,” said Diane.

“Other relatives must have known about the treasure,” said Frank, “The ones who stayed in Glendale-Marsh. Even if they weren’t close to the sister, they knew Leo would confide in her-they were twins. And they could have passed down the story from one generation to the next just like Leo’s family did.”

“Oh, I like that,” said David. “It’s very neat.”

“Whoever it was,” continued Diane, “followed Quinn Sebestyen to Florida, tried to get the information from him, and ended up killing his entire family. Juliet came over to her new friend’s house and found them dead and wrapped up in plastic. She ran home to her grandmother, perhaps being chased by the killers.”

“How did Juliet get the doll?” asked Jin.

“Her grandmother thought she stole it. When she asked Juliet where she got it, Juliet said a friend gave it to her. Juliet doesn’t have much memory of that time,” said Diane. “We may never know. But the killers did not get Juliet or the doll in Glendale-Marsh, and she went home to Arizona. They followed her there to get the doll, not knowing that the grandmother back in Florida had kept it. They were probably afraid that Juliet recognized them. They kidnapped her and when they didn’t get the information they wanted from her, they left her for dead.”

“Why did they suddenly resurface now?” asked Neva. “It’s been, what, twenty years?”

Diane thought for a moment. She looked at Jin; then it dawned on her.

“I think,” she said, “for the same reason that Juliet’s nightmares began again after all these years. The television program. I’m willing to bet that Juliet watched the program or at least caught some of the advertising for it and it triggered the nightmares.”

“And you think the killer saw the same program and was afraid the cold case squad had a renewed interest in the disappearance of the Sebestyen family, and that Juliet might remember something?” said Neva.

“Yes. And it also renewed the killers’ interest in getting the doll and the code they never found,” said Diane.

“You keep saying they, ” said Frank. “You think there was more than one?”

“I think there were and are at least two,” said Diane. “A man and a woman. In the very moments before Juliet was discovered missing, a jogger was reported to have fallen in front of Juliet’s home. I think the woman was a decoy to attract the attention of the adults to the front of the house while the man kidnapped Juliet from her backyard. In the library when I heard the odd phrase about palimpsests, I believe it was a woman’s voice. It definitely wasn’t the voice of the man who took the doll from me.”

“It’s a good story,” said David. “It might be true. I think the first thing we need to do is track down the other relatives of Leo Parrish. What were their names?”

“Oralia Lee and Burke Rawson,” said Neva looking at the genealogy chart.

“I’ll start with Juliet’s grandmother,” said Diane. “She may know them, or she may know someone I can call in Florida who knows them.”

Just as Diane was about to get up to call Ruby Torkel, there was a knock at the door. They all looked over at it as if it might be the cardboard cutout of Darth Vader. No one ever knocked at that door.

“Who could that be?” said Neva. She got up, walked over, and looked out the peephole.

“Kendel,” she said and opened the door.

Kendel, looking tall and sleek in her fur-trimmed chocolate brown cashmere sweater, matching wool slacks, and high-heeled brown leather boots, walked in carrying a package.

“Hi. I wasn’t sure of the protocol for entering this place. I suppose people usually call first. I see Anna found a Darth Vader. She’s been looking for one for a month.”

David brought a chair from one of the workstations and Kendel sat down at the table with them.