The Woman with the Cipher Tattoo

The Woman of Mystery

From the Journals of Dipper Pines:
Sunday, June 16:
        Mabel was more help than I thought she'd be. This morning, she persuaded Grunkle Stan to take us out to the lake. We got here two days late for the annual Opening Day for Fishing, but there'll be plenty of people out in boats on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Soos said we could use his boat, but he and Melody would stay to run the Shack because there were buses full of tourists just lining up to visit the Mystery Shack. It's one of Wendy's days off, but her family had something planned, and she couldn't come with us to the lkde

"Mabel!"
"You're being too matter-of-fact, Bro-Bro! You gotta put your heartbreak in every line! What's a tragic unrequited love if you don't let people know it's even there?"
Dipper had to laugh at that. "Tragic unrequited- what would you suggest?"
Mabel stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and looked upward as she thought. "Hmm... write this: 'Wendy couldn't come with us, yet I yearn for her with all my heart, all my soul, all my being! I feel isolated in an unfeeling, cold universe! I sure wish she was here so we could smooch."
Instead, Dipper crossed out the mistake and went on: XXXX lake. I miss her.

Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan took Soos's boat - he claimed it had been repaired, but as far as Dipper could see, that meant he'd salvaged the steering wheel from his old one and had installed it for his new one. Well, not new, exactly. It was used, but seemed in decent shape. While the two older Pines twins took it out in the lake for some fishing, Dipper and Mabel, using the excuse that they wanted to visit with some of their old friends, stayed on shore.
They made a beeline for the ranger station. Tate McGucket was there, as usual, in his olive-drab Lake Ranger uniform, his tucker's hat pulled low over his eyes - so low it was hard to tell he even had eyes. For a few minutes, Tate was busy selling bait to some out-of-towners, but once they had paid and left, there was a lull. Mabel broke the ice: "Hi. I really like your sideburns. They add a touch of rebellion to your regimented uniformed appearance. Want to spill your guts about a cold case?"
"Very subtle, Mabel," muttered Dipper as Tate stared down at Mabel as if she was a centipede waving cheerfully up at him from his morning scrambled eggs. Dipper cleared his throat. "Mr. McGucket, you probably don't remember us-"
"Sure I do," he said shortly. "You're the Pines kids. Last year when all the craziness broke out, you and your uncles rescued the rest of us." But he didn't smile or sound exactly warm.
"Yeah, well... you know we couldn't have done it without your dad's help."
"Huh."
Dipper rubbed the back of his neck. "Look, sir, we know that things aren't smooth between you and your dad-"
"My dad's dead," Tate said flatly. "David D. Granger. He and his wife took me in when my father abandoned me and drove my mother away. They both passed away a few years ago."
"Yeah, see, that's kinda what we want to talk to you about," Mabel said. "We'd like to find your mother for you."
"Nobody's found her for seventeen years," Tate snapped. "You kids can't do anything."
"maybe now, but there's always a chance," Dipper insisted. "Look, even if we can't bring her back, wouldn't you at least like to know what happened?"
Tate just shook his head and turned his back. "Wait," Mabel said. "Mr. Tate, do you at least have a photo of your mom that we could see?"
The ranger sighed, dropped his chin, and finally reached into his hip pocket for his wallet. He opened it and showed them a picture of a woman holding a baby. Dipper stared at it, trying to memorize it. He vaguely recognized the baby as a much younger Tate McGucket. The woman wasn't beautiful - sort of pretty, in a fresh-faced, small-town way - and something beside her had been trimmed out of the picture. 'Fiddleford,' Dipper suddenly realized. 'Tate cut his dad out of the family picture.'
"What's this on the back of her right hand?" Mabel asked, pointing to a small, hardly visible mark.
"Dunno," Tate said. "Birthmark maybe. I can remember she had it, but no details. Now I have work to do. Get out of the station and don't ever talk to me again unless it has to do with the lake or with trouble."
Outside, Dipper hurriedly made a sketch in his journal. "Mabel, am I crazy, or did that mark on the back of her hand look like this?"
He showed her.
"It's a triangle," she said. She slapped her palms to her cheeks. "Bill Cipher?"
Dipper shook his head. "All I could see of it was just a little blue-outlined triangle. But if it was an image of Bill.... well, that would mean there was something really fishy about Tate's mom."
From the Journals of Dipper Pines:
        One the drive back to the Shack, I asked Grunkle Ford if he remembered Mrs. McGucket having a tattoo on her hand. "No," he said slowly. "If she had one, I never noticed it. Why?"
Mabel blurted out that we were planning to try to learn what happened to her - why she ran away, where she went, and where she is now.
Grunkle Ford turned around in the passenger seat of Grunkle Stan's car to look back at us. "Kids, I know you mean well, but at this late date, I don't think there's a thing you can do. The police looked for her and turned up no clues."
"Wait, wait," I said. "I thought she disappeared after you went through the Portal."
"Better tell him, Poindexter," Grunkle Stan growled.
Ford sighed. "Very well. Dipper, I know because I asked about her last fall, after the town had settled back to normality-"
"Hah!" roared Grunkle Stan. "That's a laugh!"
"You know what I mean," Grunkle Ford said. "I knew that my old assistant and friend Fiddleford was still unhappy, and I learned why. Sheriff Blubs let me look at the old records. Law enforcement in Roadkill County was better in the old days, and I found a missing-person report and follow-ups. Nobody could learn anything. Mrs. McGucket was there one day and gone the next, and there was no hint of how or why she left. it was just a dead end."
"Was there no description?" I asked. "Did it mention the tattoo?"
"There were photos and a written description," Ford replied. "I don't remember a visible tattoo in the photographs, and I'm sure the description didn't mention one." He smiled sadly. "Believe me, kids, I really appreciate what you want to do, but you might as well give up."
"Never!" Mabel yelled.
"Atta girl, Pumpkin!" Stan said.
Grunkle Ford grumbled, "There you go, Stanley, encouraging them to go on pointless and maybe dangerous quests."
"Yatta yatta yatta," Grunkle Stan shot back. "Mabel, Dipper, you go right ahead. You have one Grunkle's blessing."

That evening, as the twins washed and dried the dishes after dinner, Dipper said, "I think we have to do it. We have to go question Fiddleford himself."
"I like him," Mabel said. "I don't want to upset the poor old guy."
Dipper shrugged. "I like him, too, but we'll be careful not to hurt his feelings. We'll walk up the old Northwest Mansion tomorrow. Maybe he can tell us something about the tattoo, anyway."
"Tomorrow?" Mabel wailed. "I'm supposed to meet Candy and Grenda tomorrow! We've got a whole school year to catch up on! Can't we do this on Tuesday or Wednesday instead?"
Dipper stared at her. "Well... okay, I'll go see Fiddleford on my own, okay? You have your reunion party with your friends, and then later on, we'll get together and I'll tell you whatever I learned."
"If anything!" Mabel said, pointing dramatically toward the ceiling in emphasis.
"That happened to be the night that the attic of the Mystery Shack was invaded by about three thousand dancing (and talking) mice, but with Mabel being diplomatic and Dipper being logical, the Mystery Twins were able to placate the Queen of All the Mice (who was actually a cat - mouse by adoption, though) and relocate the annual "Time to raid the Humanz Pantriez" concert and ball to a better location. (Mice can't spell, and that's a side issue, so we'll skip it.)

From the Journals of Dipper Pines:
Monday Morning: Wendy was a little late getting to work, but I talked Soos into letting her drive me up the old Northwest Mansion anyway.
"Thanks," I told her was we climbed into her battered old green car. "Um - just checking, but you do have your drivers' license now, don't you?"
"Absolutely," she said, firing up the engine.
"And you've had it long enough that you can drive with a teen in the car, but no adult, right?"
"Positively not!" she said, stepping on the gas. We tore out of the Mystery Shack lot, throwing up a rooster-tail spray of dust and gravel. "You want me to pick you up later, dude?" she asked.
I was holding on the side of the seats desperately. "Um, no, that's all right. I've got some other things to do downtown. I'll walk back."
"Cuz it's no bother," she said, as if I hadn't answered her. "An' Soos is like, 'Sure, dawg, if it's for Dipper."
The old car had no air conditioning, but she had the windows rolled down. I loved the way her long red hair whipped in the breeze. "You're looking awfully good, Wendy," I told her.
"Well that's about a half step up from 'I'll treasure your cooties always,'" she responded cheerfully. "Seriously, Dip, thanks. I'm feelin' good. School's out, Dad's eased off on me being a lumberjack, and best of all, you guys are in town again. And, hey, don't think I haven't noticed that you've grown up a few inches. You're gonna catch up to me before long, dude!"
"I wish. I just thought you seemed extra cheerful today."
She laughed at that. "We'll, I'm a little more upbeat than Tambry, maybe." After a moment of silence, she shrugged. "I always feel a little happier after we visit my mom."
"Wait, what?"
"In the cemetery," she explained. "Me and Dad and the boys. We go four times a year to tidy up the grave and bring her favorite flowers. And I know it's kinda dumb and all, but we each have a little alone time at the grave, and I sit and talk to her. Catch up on things, you know? I feel better afterwards. Dorky, huh?"
"I don't think so," I told her. My voice sounded softer than I'd meant it to.
She cut a donut in the broad brick-paved courtyard in front of the old Northwest Mansion and let me out. "Catch ya later, dude!" she called as she made the tires squeal.
I stood watching her go bucketing down the hill. Mabel is right. I'm not over Wendy yet.
I don't know if I'll ever be.
I don't even think I want to.

Dipper saw that Fiddleford had posted a sign above the doorbell:

IFFEN YOU ARE SELLIN' I AIN'T BUYIN'!
IFFEN YOU ARE A FRIEND, COME IN!
YOU WILL KNOW HOW TO AVOID THE DEADLY TRAPS.

Dipper rang the doorbell anyway, but found the door unlocked itself and pushed it open. "Uh - hello?"
There was no answer, except for his echoes.
He stepped inside and the door closed behind him. "McGucket?" Now that he was actually in, and the door behind him was closed, the vast house seemed to absorb his voice completely, now letting it die away with even an echo. "Fiddleford?"
A chair walked toward him. "Halt," the chair ordered in a dignified sort of Queen Anne voice. "Identify yourself, please."
"Uh - I'm Dipper. Dipper Pines."
"Dipper Dipper Pines, to verify your identity, complete this phrase: 'When Gravity Falls and Earth becomes Sky-'"
"Uh, 'fear the beast with just one eye?'"
The chair arms suddenly bristled with what were possibly weapons and its accent changed to pure hillbilly: "You askin' or tellin'?"
"Telling! It's 'fear the beast with just one eye!'"
The weapons disappeared and the chair arms did a complex hambone-type slapping on its cushion, ending up by smacking one leg. "Heehee! We done kicked his butt good, didn't we? Pass, friend. Fiddleford's yonder in the West Wing."
"Thank you, sir - or ma'am. What do I call you, anyway?"
"Miaow."
"Uh - come again?"
Back to the vaguely British accent: "Fiddleford adopted a stray cat and let her name me after he invented me. I'm a chair man. You can call me Chair Man Miaow."
"O-kay. I think I'll go over there now."
Dipper opened a number of doors and went down half a dozen corridors before he found the right one. In what was once an enormous kitchen - used, no doubt, for the Northwest family's famous families -  Fiddleford had set up a complex lab that looked as if it were capable of everything from quantum experiments to complex chemical investigations to advanced electronics tinkering to cooking a chocolate cake. Fiddleford had been sitting on a stool, doing something with a soldering iron. He looked up - Dipper saw the his bronze-rimmed specs now had two green lenses, not just one - and his bushy beard split into a grin. "Dipper Pines!" he said in his hillbilly creak of a voice. "Come in, come in, How you doin', boy? Good to see you."
"Uh, thanks," Dipper said. "You - you're looking pretty, uh, much yourself, too."
"Got my teeth all fixated up!" Fiddleford announced, showing a mouthful of choppers a Great White might envy. He sighed, "Didn't do much good, though. The townfolk still think I'm a kook." He shrugged. "I don't mind so much. They leave me mostly alone, at least. Sit down, sit down, I got some work to do, and then we'll talk a little. Over there's fine."
Dipper went to a corner, where a chair - not, he hoped, a robot in the form of a chair - stood beside a little round table with a framed photograph on it. He sat in the chair and looked at the photo.
It was his wedding picture of young Fiddleford and his bride. They both looked happy - though happily awkward.
Unfortunately, he couldn't see the back of her right hand at all, but he studied the face. It was a little younger than the one on Tate's photo, still not beautiful, but the joy of a wedding gave a special light to her eyes. Dipper glanced over - Fiddleford was leaning so far toward a printed-circuit board, that his big nose nearly grazed the workbench surface - and then took out his cell phone and took three quick photos of the picture.
"There, now, by cracky!" Fiddleford announced, hoping off his stool. "Your uncles told me you'd be a visitin' this summer. Say, I found some local lore you might want to investigate. I'll get the file together for you later. What time is it? You had breakfast, Dipper?"
"Yes, thanks."
"Well, I ain't. Come with me an' I'll rustle up some grub for myself and you can have some orange juice or somethin'. The sound good?"
"Fine," Dipper said. "Uh, sir? This is a very pretty lady in the photo with you. Who is she?"
Above the white beard, the color drained from Fiddleford's face. "Uh - I, I - I can't rightly recollect. All them hits with the memory gun, I - I - oh, shucks, Dipper, I done forgot. I... just realized I - I have stuff ta - you can find your own way out, can't you?"
The old man shifted off rapidly, vanishing through a door in the far wall. Dipper grimaced.
"'I'll be careful not to hurt his feelings,'" he muttered, feeling a pang of regret. "Sure I will. I blew it."
He left the lab. Miaow met him in the hallway and led him out. Before he opened the front door to leave, Dipper said, "Just as a matter of curiosity, the cat who named you wasn't Queen of the Mice by any chance?"
"Not that I am aware, sir."
And then Dipper was out on the portico of the mansion, wondering what to do next.