Mountain Ice (David Dean Mysteries)

The first page of the notebook looked like this:

8m2f3km8m7ay7aa297867a88m4gkm38r366v2b7fpb452m4g5a v2d4528m2agfam4ra38ak4692fd7j284k3n263km8848m3ab39-r3f825 b45f3fkx8m2m278 m7av22f64r2529f4r8m788m2b2fm7n262d87f9 383a4ma4j4697a367pmg99629m2f2v2f278mbp8m3fv67fs28ax 3fay3824d8m2j469385p 844y2f8m2r3f94r845398m3a544b4d 8m2ab4 s27f9rm3as2pv5278m4d8m4a2rm4n3a3829m252vg88m2 d57b23ad54z2fd7a8x 3'n28532984a622y7663fn73fx Bpb3f9r4f'852627a2b2d54b7668m78m7am7yy2f29a3fj252nxB7583f d35a8n3a3829b27f9jm7fk29bp63d2x

Fred O'Connor's eyes lit up. "I'll bet it's a Civil War code! Dang!"

Dean stared at the notebook. "The Civil War was over thirty-odd years before this was written." But he didn't pooh-pooh Fred's suggestion. Donnie nodded his head in agreement.

"Why would a minister's wife have a code book?" Dean asked no one in particular.

"Why does anyone have a code book?" Cynthia answered. "So someone else doesn't know what's written in it. Maybe it's a diary. If she didn't have a place she felt was safe enough, maybe she wrote her journal in code."

"Good point," Fred said, rubbing his chin like a Chinese scholar. "Now all we have to do is break it!"

Dean continued to examine the script. "Secrets from her husband the minister? I'm having a bit of trouble with that." Then he added, "If it is in code, we're the wrong crowd for trying to break it."

"Not necessarily," Cynthia answered, studying the notebook. Dean gave her a questioning look. "Is there some activity in your background that you haven't told me about, Madam Spy?" he chided. "No. But any code a minister's wife of the last century put together can't be all that sophisticated, can it? After all, we're not dealing with Mata Hari. Look, there is some punctuation!" Closer study showed an occasional comma and apostrophe.

"Perhaps it's like those puzzles in the newspaper where they simply substitute a different letter for the real one," Fred offered.

Dean shook his head. "The trouble with that theory is here we have letters and numbers. The newspaper cryptograms are limited to replacement letters. What do the numbers mean? And the puzzles in the newspaper break the words apart. This girl's code, if it is in fact a code, is mostly one continuous line, with hardly any punctuation. That would be a dickens to solve."