“MLP. Do we know of anybody with those initials?” Macfarlane and Price had paged through the little black journal, and now MacFarlane was puzzling over the initial entry.
“MLP. Cktls 3/5. Dn Pltr 3/27. SLUE. Mk intrn SZ. ???”
“I had a crush on a Mary Lou Partlow in third grade,” Price said helpfully. “I remember carving those initials into the bark of a tree in the park. Got in trouble for it, too.”
“Mary Lou. Bingo,” Rhys said.
“Huh?”
“We could have gone ages with this if you hadn’t had that crush,” Rhys said with a grin. “California Assemblywoman from Long Beach. Mary Louise Pace.”
“Interesting,” Price mumbled. Hayden had written his journal entries in a kind of shorthand he appeared to have invented, something shorter than texting abbreviations and often utterly cryptic. However,
