“A kid who’s all grown up and playing games with us,” I said, tapping the photograph.
“What did the aunt tell you about her?” Taverner asked quietly.
I shrugged. “Evgenia said she was a bad seed, and maybe she is. That would certainly fit with torching Benscombe. But I don’t know. The behavior she described could have just been that of a grieving kid. Galina visits and brings her cookies, but I don’t think they’re close.”
“Any idea where she is?” Akiko asked.
I shook my head. “Auntie Evgenia is not exactly a reliable witness these days.”
“She’s nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake,” Natalie put in helpfully.
“She is struggling with dementia,” Mary Alice corrected.
“She did say that Galina loves opera—and opera singers. She used a particularly foul Russian word to describe her. Other than that, no leads,” I said.
As the words left my mouth, I realized it was a lie. I stuttered to a stop so quickly, the others stared.
“What is it?” Mary Alice asked.
“Maybe nothing—but,shit.” I got up and went for my bag, rummaging for the things I’d thrown in as we were packing on the ferry. I’d been in such a hurry, I hadn’t really clocked it at the time, but there it was—the diary I’d taken from Pasha’s nightstand. I don’t know why it ended up in my tote. Suppressed guilt, maybe? Knowing I’d need to come clean to the others at some point about screwing up the mission by taking it? Or maybe I really was just getting sloppy in my old age. In any case, I flicked it open, looking for anything that might give us a clue. I skimmed entries for all the expected appointments—tailor, dentist, shoemaker, jeweler, hatmaker. His whole life was a series of services designed to make him polished and presentable. All he was missing was a Build-A-Bear checkup for his teddy.
But then I flipped another page and there it was, a chain of symbols Pasha had jotted down the week before, on the dateLilian Flanders had been murdered. A string of numbers, thirteen of them, beginning with a 7 he’d written backwards.
And then I realized exactly what it was.
I held up the diary as I went back to the table. “There might be something in here.”
Helen took the planner and studied it. “Smythson,” she said, eyeing the watermark on the Nile blue paper. “Very nice.”
“Your day planner?” Nat asked.
“Not mine. Pasha Lazarov’s. I lifted it from his stateroom when I did the hit.”
Mary Alice stared. “You stole from him?” There was no mistaking the judgment in her voice.
“Yes. I’d just made the hit and was going back through the stateroom when I saw the diary. I thought it might have something useful in it, so I was flipping through when I heard a noise on the stairs. My exit was cut off and I had to move quick.”
“That doesn’t explain why the diary went with you,” Helen said, handing it back to me like it was a piece of dirty laundry.
“Because it was still in my hand and I got spooked,” I told her. “At least that’s what I thought at the time. But now I think I might have taken it because I knew what these numbers were. Subconsciously, I mean.”
“We have rules about that sort of thing for a reason,” Helen said coldly.
“I know, Helen.”
She looked at me hard for a long moment, and I realized she was truly pissed. But that was not a now problem, I decided.It was more important to dig out whatever information we could from the planner.
“Look.” I flipped the diary to the correct page to show the others. “The day Lilian Flanders was killed in Maine, Pasha has a note in his diary.” I pointed to the string of numbers.
Mary Alice peered through her bifocals. “It could be a phone number, but that doesn’t make sense. The seven at the start is backwards.”
“Because it isn’t a seven,” I said grimly. “Pasha was Bulgarian which means his first alphabet was Cyrillic.”
“Is aG,” Minka said, pointing her fork at the page for emphasis.
“Exactly,” I said. “I thinkGalinakilled Lilian Flanders.”
They were quiet a minute, and the only sound was one of the cats washing itself.