The Devil's Puzzle

by Clare O'Donohue

  CHAPTER 38

  Only two of the Archers Rest police force had stayed behind at the station when the call about Molly came in. Six were off duty, and the other four were outside Someday Quilts, still working the scene for whatever evidence might have been left there.

  “What happened?” Jesse’s voice boomed with anger as we walked into the station.

  The two officers practically tripped over each other offering excuses. They were both good guys—Tony, just out of the state police academy, and Mike, a part-time police officer, part-time auto mechanic with five years to go until retirement—but neither had Jesse’s background as a New York police detective or his instincts about the job.

  “We were up front,” Tony said, “and we heard something in back, so we went back to investigate. The back door was open. Just wide open.”

  “Isn’t it supposed to be locked?” Jesse asked.

  The men looked at each other sheepishly.

  “It’s a shortcut to Jitters, if one of us needs to make a coffee run,” Tony said. “I really thought we had locked it. I would have sworn it. But, I guess, we forgot to lock it when we came back after the last run.”

  “Which was when?”

  “Hours ago, Chief. We haven’t left the building since maybe eight,” Mike said.

  “Okay.” Jesse glared, but he sounded calm. “So while you were both back there looking at an open door . . .”

  “Yeah,” Mike took over, “while we were back there, someone did that.”

  He pointed toward a brick that was lying near the broken front window of the station.

  “So you didn’t see anyone?” Jesse asked. “You didn’t see the brick get thrown or anyone driving off? Anything?”

  “We heard it,” Tony offered.

  “Anything unusual about what you heard?”

  “No. It just sounded like a brick through a window.”

  I felt sorry for the guys, and even sorrier for Jesse, who looked ready to burst a blood vessel. But I was most interested in the brick.

  “I think it has a note attached,” I said as I walked over and bent down.

  “Great. The criminals think we’re such idiots that they have to help us out with notes,” Jesse yelled. He turned to me. “Don’t touch it, Nell. I’ll do it.”

  After he made me, Mike, and Tony stand back, Jesse put on gloves and examined the brick. He pulled out a piece of paper that had been rolled up and stuck in a hole in the brick. “It’s an old newspaper clipping.”

  I moved forward. “Of what?”

  “It’s an announcement of Glad Warren being named president of the Garden Club.”

  “What’s on the back?”

  Jesse turned it over. “An ad for a special showing of The Exorcist at Bryant’s Cinema. Both stories have letters circled.” He slowly read each letter out loud: “W—I—N—S—T—O—N.”

  “What do either of those things have to do with Winston’s murder or what’s going on now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know right now, but I’m going to find out.”

  After he’d made photocopies of both sides, Jesse put the clipping and the brick in evidence bags to be sent for fingerprints. Then he and I sat and studied the articles. The article on Glad was the standard one for a small-town newspaper. She was described as a leading citizen, an asset to the community, and a proud native of Archers Rest. Someone was quoted as saying that Glad knew all the Latin names for the flowers, making her the ideal choice for Garden Club president.

  “Nothing here,” I said. “What about the movie ad?”

  “Nothing. It was shown as part of a week of classic horror movies. Just a listing of times for the showing as well as a special offer for a T-shirt for anyone who went to all five movies that week: I SURVIVED HORROR WEEK AT BRYANT’S CINEMA.” He pointed toward the corner of the ad, which featured an orange T-shirt with black lettering that dripped the way blood would. “I guess it was another one of Ed’s promotions.”

  “Would you wear a T-shirt like that?” I asked.

  “I’ll wear anything if it’s clean.”

  “So what was the person trying to say?”

  I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes for a moment. I was pretending to think, but really I was just tired. My eyes stung from lack of sleep and I couldn’t focus anymore.

  Jesse, on the other hand, was wide awake. “Someone is trying to point to Ed or Glad as suspects in Winston’s murder.”

  “Then why not just say it, instead of sending cryptic messages tied to bricks?”

  “Or maybe it’s the killer’s way of telling us that one of them is the next victim.”

  “Or if the killer is Glad or Ed, it could be a way to throw us off,” I suggested.

  Jesse grunted. “I think the real message is that the police of Archers Rest are such idiots that we can’t catch a vandal even when he comes right to us.”

  It was almost dawn when it suddenly occurred to me that Jesse had left Allie at the house by herself. Even though he was on the phone with the hospital, I walked over and mouthed the word Allie. He nodded, finished the call, and took my hand.

  “I’m a terrible father,” he said. “I pulled her out of bed, rang my mother’s doorbell at three in the morning, and dumped my poor sleeping child into my mother’s arms.”

  “At least she’s okay,” I said.

  “This was not how it was supposed to be. Coming back here from New York. When I was a kid, this was such a quiet town. I thought it would be a nice place for Allie to grow up.”

  “It is a nice place,” I said. “And you are a good father.”

  He leaned his forehead against mine. “And you’re exhausted. I should get you home so you can get some sleep.”

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “Everything will be okay.”

  I didn’t know if I sounded as unconvinced as I felt.

  CHAPTER 39

  After a quick—and not terribly restful—two hours of sleep, I poured coffee into myself and headed toward Main Street. Someday Quilts wasn’t open yet, and its exterior looked quiet and clean. One of the officers who had been at the scene the night before had washed the sidewalk down, removing the blood, though I could still see traces of it. It was hard to believe it had been just a few hours since I’d come across Molly lying at the spot, and harder still to believe that in just a few weeks a break-in at the school had escalated to violence. What was next I didn’t want to think about.

  Rather than go into the empty shop, I headed across the street to Jitters. Going there every morning had become a ritual for me, and I knew I wasn’t alone in that.

  “Rough night, Nell?” Ed peered at me over his newspaper. As always, his coffee and apple spice muffin were in front of him.

  “Long night would be a better description,” I said. “Have you talked to Jesse?”

  “No. Does he need something?”

  “I think he’s just checking some things,” I said.

  I decided it would be better for me not to give Ed any information about the note or the brick. Whatever he was going to say to Jesse, I didn’t want to give him a chance to rehearse it.

  “Did you know that Molly O’Brien was attacked last night?” I asked.

  “I did hear about an attack. A visitor in town. The mayor mentioned it when he came in this morning for his usual fix of caffeine and glad-handing.”

  “She’s Winston’s grandniece. Last night when she left Someday Quilts she was on her way to the movie theater to talk to you.”

  Ed frowned. “Why would she want to talk to me?”

  “It was about the fight you had with Winston in the bank just before he disappeared.”

  Ed turned white. “I remember that. It wasn’t anything.”

  “The police were called.”

  “Yes, they were.”

  “What was it about?”

  “It was about the town. He was putting us down. Calling us uneducated hicks. I was a science teacher, Nell. I went to college. I’ve traveled. I didn’t
take to some rich kid calling me a hick.”

  “Was that the last time you saw him?”

  “Yes, as far as I remember.”

  “And what about Molly?”

  “She didn’t come to the theater, Nell. Or if she did, I didn’t see her. I was in the projection booth last night. It wasn’t working correctly. Again.”

  “And you didn’t hear anything or see anyone unusual last night?”

  Ed paused. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to remember or struggling to come up with an alibi. “I had a couple of people working the front, at the ticket counter and at concessions. They’re both high school students, so they don’t come in until late afternoon, but you can come by and ask them if she stopped in. But now I have to go to the bank. And this,” he held up his muffin, “is sort of my last meal.”

  “Bad news at the bank?”

  “Bad news everywhere, Nell.” He smiled a half smile and headed out of Jitters and down Main Street in the opposite direction of the bank.

  “How’s Molly?” Carrie asked me when I reached the counter.

  I gulped down the last of my drink and handed her the cup for a refill. “Jesse got word this morning that she’s awake. She’s stable, and the doctor thinks that she’ll be able to answer questions this afternoon.”

  “Has she said what happened?”

  “Not as far as I know,” I said. “But considering how much blood there was last night, I’m just relieved she can say anything.”

  “Maybe she’ll say who hit her, and that person will confess to being Winston’s killer. Then we can put this whole mess behind us.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” I said, even as I knew that it couldn’t be that easy.

  We had to get the doctor’s approval to talk with Molly. Although he told us the injury wasn’t as serious as it looked the night before, the doctor made it clear she was being monitored carefully and needed to be treated with kid gloves—no stress, no long conversations. When we got into the room I was half expecting to see her wired to monitors, but she was sitting up, eating an individual serving of strawberry Jell-O, and watching TV.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Not bad, considering. The doctor said I had a concussion and a gash at the back of my head.” She turned her head to show us the bandage. “I need bed rest for a few days, but I’ll be fine.”

  She was bruised and scratched, with several of her long, black fingernails broken off. She looked young and a little scared. And who could blame her?

  “What happened?” Jesse asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess someone hit me.”

  “You didn’t see anything?”

  “No. I was walking down the street near the quilt shop. I heard someone behind me. The next thing I knew, Nell was standing over me, yelling my name.”

  “What were you doing at the shop?” I asked.

  “I thought you guys might still be there.”

  “It was the middle of the night,” Jesse said.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just walked back there.” She winced, either from pain or to avoid us pushing her further on the subject.

  “Where did you go when you left the shop?” I asked her. “You said you were going to the movie theater.”

  “I did go. I asked someone at the ticket counter if I could talk to Ed, and she said he was in the projection booth. I wrote a note and she took it up to him. I thought maybe he would come down and talk to me, but he didn’t. I waited about twenty minutes and then I left.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “That I was Winston’s grandniece and I believed he knew something that might help me solve Winston’s murder. Stuff like that.”

  “But he didn’t respond to the note?” Jesse asked.

  “No. The girl came back down, but she was busy and I just left.”

  “Then where did you go?”

  She seemed tired. Or maybe she just didn’t want to answer. “I walked around. I’ve been so busy since I came to town that I haven’t really seen anything. There wasn’t much open, though, so I went to a place called Moran’s Bar.”

  “You’re not twenty-one,” Jesse said.

  “I had a Coke.”

  “Did you talk to anyone?” I asked. I noticed Jesse was tapping his leg, a sure sign he was getting impatient, so I stepped closer to Molly. “Or leave Moran’s with anyone?”

  “I talked to the bartender. And not about anything in particular. He told me that Jesse was overwhelmed with everything that had been happening all over town. He said we needed to get county police in here if the vandalism was going to stop.”

  “And that was it?” Jesse’s voice had an edge to it.

  She sat up a little straighter. “I saw the mayor, but I don’t think he saw me. He was talking to that woman from the committee meeting, and they seemed very serious.”

  “Glad?” I asked. “The woman who turned you down for a job at the historical society.”

  Molly lowered her eyes a little and nodded.

  “Did you talk to them?” Jesse asked.

  “No. Like I said, I don’t think they even saw me.”

  “But you talked to the mayor earlier,” I said. “What did you say to him then?”

  “Nothing. I just asked about my uncle. And I told him I was expecting some letters from my grandmother that might shed light on the whole situation.”

  “Did you tell anyone else about the letters?”

  “In the note I left for Ed,” she said. “And Nell and Eleanor know about them.”

  “Where are those letters?” Jesse asked.

  “In my tote bag.” She looked around at the edges of her bed. “It must be in the room somewhere, or maybe the nurse could tell you what they did with my stuff.”

  I shook my head, remembering the scene from last night. “You didn’t have your bag with you when I found you,” I said.

  “Someone took my bag?” Molly sat up and the pressure seemed to pain her. “Winston’s letters. They were all my grandmother had left of him. And they’re gone?”

  CHAPTER 40

  “It could have been a simple mugging,” I said to Jesse on the way back to the police station.

  “It could have been.”

  “She said she had twenty dollars in her purse plus her ATM card. Someone could have stolen her purse looking for that.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “But you don’t believe that.”

  “No.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “A dark-haired young woman standing outside of Someday Quilts. In the middle of the night . . .”

  “You think someone could have mistaken Molly for me?”

  “You did get that threatening note.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” I didn’t have an answer for that. It was possible that in the dark someone might have made that mistake. “She was hit from behind, so I guess the attacker might not have realized it was Molly.”

  “Winston also was hit over the head,” he said, “and from behind.”

  “You think it’s the same person?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But when we were talking about Molly’s tote bag, it made me wonder about something else. What happened to Winston’s stuff? If he didn’t leave for South America, wouldn’t his passport and clothes have been at the house? Wouldn’t Eleanor have found them when she and Grace returned from Nova Scotia?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “It has to be asked.” He sounded stern and ready for a fight.

  “I know. But you might want to ask in a different tone of voice, because if I know my grandmother, she’s not going to be as patient and understanding as I am.”

  He smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Ten minutes later we were at Someday Quilts, asking Eleanor the question that Jesse had asked in the car.

  “All of his things were gone,” she said. “He’d told me that he was planning to make a trip to Lima, Peru. He had som
e work at a university there and he wanted to retrieve it. Something for a new book he was writing. Then he was going to come back. When Grace and I returned from Nova Scotia in August, he wasn’t there, but we weren’t expecting him to be there. I thought he had gone to Peru. And when he didn’t return, I assumed he’d decided to stay.”

  “It didn’t strike you as odd,” Jesse asked, “that he never came back?”

  “As I told Nell, I thought it was cruel for his mother not to have a chance to say good-bye. But aside from that, his staying in South America seemed perfectly logical.”

  “Why?”

  Eleanor nearly smiled but didn’t. She could not be pushed around or intimidated. “Because it did, Jesse. Winston loved South America, and he did not love Archers Rest.”

  “And you had no correspondence with him while you were away. No letters or telegrams or anything.”

  “It was 1975, for heaven’s sake. We may not have been able to text each other or . . . what is that thing with the birds?”

  “Twitter,” I said.

  “Right, but we had the telephone. We didn’t need smoke signals or the pony express to communicate.”

  “So did you speak to him by phone?”

  Jesse was annoyed at Eleanor, and I was annoyed at Jesse for being annoyed at Eleanor. Eleanor was the only one of us who seemed relaxed.

  “What are you asking her?” I stepped in.

  “I’m asking her if she spoke to him by phone.”

  “Once,” Eleanor said. “When we arrived at the house where we were staying in Canada, I called to let him know we were there. Winston and I spoke for a few minutes before I handed the phone over to Grace. He didn’t say anything of consequence. He didn’t seem worried about anything. He just asked how the flight was and how my children were. He told me he was making arrangements for his trip. As far as I can recall, that was the extent of it. It was an ordinary call in every way except it turned out to be the last time he spoke to his mother.”

  “Did he leave you a number to reach him in Peru?”

  “No. He was supposed to, but he didn’t. That was why I wasn’t able to contact him when Grace died.” She paused. “Well, it wasn’t why, clearly, but it was why it didn’t raise any alarm bells. I had no way of knowing he didn’t arrive in Lima, and neither did his sister. She was more used to his running off than I was, so she thought nothing of it. And because she wasn’t worried, neither was I.”