The Devil's Puzzle

by Clare O'Donohue

  “Wouldn’t that have brought in a lot of money?”

  “I don’t need Roemer money, and neither did my dad.”

  “So you can’t be bought like Winston apparently was?”

  He looked at me, sort of angry and sort of puzzled, but then he grinned. “Not by the Roemers, anyway.”

  CHAPTER 50

  “It’s a beautiful evening,” Oliver said as we sipped wine on the back porch of Eleanor’s house.

  “It is,” Eleanor agreed.

  She smiled at him, and he smiled back. There was such love between them that I wanted to propose for him right then and there. It was only the dug-up rose garden a few feet away that stopped me. That, and the fact that granddaughters shouldn’t propose marriage to their grandmothers.

  I hadn’t asked Oliver what he had been doing at Mary’s, and he hadn’t offered an explanation. I was trying, in my own small way, to learn the difference between being concerned and being intrusive. Even though it was killing me.

  And I was enjoying a rare quiet evening at home.

  It wouldn’t last. Molly came down the stairs, with Jesse’s favorite detective, Greg, right behind her. Barney followed, and then Jesse rang the doorbell. None of us had spoken of Winston’s suitcase since Molly had found it almost a week earlier. Everyone agreed it had been hastily planted in Eleanor’s yard for the purpose of being discovered, so it seemed pointless to do anything but wait for fingerprint results and hope for the best.

  “There were none,” Jesse reported when he joined us on the back porch. “The case was wiped clean inside and out.”

  “But it was Winston’s?” Molly asked.

  “Yes. And the DNA results came back. The lab was able to determine that the skeleton was a close relation to Winston’s sister.”

  Eleanor sighed. “So it’s certain now. He’s dead.”

  “It’s certain.”

  We all, without meaning to, turned our attention toward the makeshift grave and stared into the night. I’d never met him, and based on all that I’d learned, I wouldn’t have liked him, but the confirmation of his death still saddened me. He had mattered—to Grace, to his sister, and to Molly. And because of that, he mattered to me.

  “I’ve only seen one photo of him,” I said, “and a grainy one in the newspaper. I’d love to see what he looked like again.”

  “I have some photos,” Eleanor said. “In the box upstairs in my closet. Why don’t you and Jesse bring it down?”

  Just a few weeks ago I had hesitated to go looking for the box, and now Jesse and I were sent to retrieve it. Though I had her permission, I still felt I was prying.

  “Where do we go from here?” I asked Jesse once we were alone in Eleanor’s bedroom.

  “Nowhere, at the moment. We’re at a dead end. I’ve told Molly it might be best for her to go home for the rest of the summer. We’re releasing Winston’s body so his family can finally bury him. I talked to his sister, and she would like to have him cremated and sent to California.”

  “I guess she wouldn’t want him buried here, given how much he hated the place,” I said.

  “It’s a fair point,” he said. “Especially since I can’t find out what happened to him. I’ve spent the last few days tracking down the places he bought his clothes, his shoes, even the ring.”

  “And no luck?”

  “None.”

  “Maybe there was something we missed in the suitcase. A secret compartment . . .”

  “The instincts of a seasoned detective.” He winked at me. “I checked. And there was. Not a secret compartment, but a small zippered pocket that had been protected from the elements. It had a plane ticket in it. New York to Lima, Peru. He was supposed to take off July 5th.”

  “And when was he scheduled to come back?”

  “He wasn’t. It was a one-way ticket.”

  “But he had a teaching job . . .”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Nell. It’s one more unanswered question.” Jesse sighed. “I feel like I’ve let his family down.”

  “It’s such an old case, Jesse. Something that’s been unsolved for so long. It would be nearly impossible to find all the answers.”

  “But the killer is alive and taunting us with evidence.”

  I heard my grandmother call out to us from the bottom of the stairs. “Everything okay up there?”

  “Yes, sorry,” I said. “We’ve found the box.”

  The five of us sat around the kitchen table and went through the items one by one. Most were old Christmas cards, yellowing letters, and a few odd recipes, as well as a box of photos that seemed to mix pictures of my grandfather Joe with shots taken only a few years ago.

  “I really need to organize these,” Eleanor kept saying. “One of these days . . .”

  “What’s this?” Molly held up a postcard sent from Santiago.

  “I remember that,” Eleanor said. “Grace was terribly worried about him. Things weren’t very stable there at the time, and Winston didn’t seem to be taking it seriously.”

  Molly turned the card around and read, “Wonderful people, but can’t stay here. Will go north to Mexico and write from there. Miss you mother, Love W.”

  “He actually came here,” Eleanor said. “It was ’73, I think. He stayed a while. Grace tried to talk him into taking some kind of teaching position, but he wouldn’t go for it.”

  “But he did eventually,” I said. “In ’75 he took a job as the head of the anthropology department at Avalon. He had to give a huge donation to get it, too.”

  “Why not just apply instead of buying his way in?” Jesse asked.

  “That was his personality,” Eleanor said. “If he applied for the job, he would have had to work his way up to chairman of the department. Winston didn’t like to wait.”

  “Besides, he had plenty of money to throw around,” Molly said. “And he stood to inherit from Grace.”

  “And that was a substantial amount of money?” Jesse asked.

  “It was,” Eleanor said. “Several million, and that’s in 1975 money.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Elizabeth took control of the estate when Winston couldn’t be located,” Eleanor said. “At the time she set up some kind of trust for his half of the money, just in case he returned.”

  “It’s still there,” Molly said. “She wouldn’t have him declared dead, so the trust is still set up, waiting for him to claim it.”

  “She loved her brother very much,” Eleanor said. “Even though she had a family of her own, she somehow felt alone in the world without her brother. It broke my heart anytime she wrote to me about him.”

  I opened the photo box and took out a handful of pictures. I began going through them one at a time. Winston was in a few early ones, and he even seemed to smile occasionally, making him look far more youthful and approachable than either his reputation or the earlier photos I’d seen. There were also pictures of Grace. One I particularly liked was a photo of her in the backyard, the red, yellow, and pink roses behind her. She had fabric on her lap, and she was clearly handpiecing something.

  “That’s a cathedral window,” Eleanor said. “She was only half finished with it when she passed away.”

  “That’s the quilt you have hanging over the couch,” I said.

  She smiled. “It is. Grace thought, given the name, it was a fitting quilt to make as she came to the end of her life. She said it helped her think about what came next.” She took a breath and continued. “But it’s time-consuming. Large squares of muslin fabric folded and sewn like origami flowers, with little bright squares inserted into the openings. She poured her heart into it, as we all do with all our quilts. But this was special because she knew it was her last. She wanted to do it all by hand.”

  “And you finished it for her,” I said.

  She nodded. “That photo was taken only four or five days before she died, so, yes, I finished it for her. I wanted to give it to Elizabeth, but she said the quilt belonged with th
e house. Every time I look at it, though, I see Grace’s beautiful stitches next to mine. Even now I’m not the quilter she was.”

  I rested my hand on Eleanor’s. “I think she would be very proud of you,” I said. “The quilter you’ve become, the strong, independent person you’ve always been. And she’d be so happy to know you’ve found Oliver.”

  And, in a move that was quite uncharacteristic of my grandmother, she left the table in tears, stepping out to the garden before anyone could stop her.

  CHAPTER 51

  “Maybe I should go,” Oliver said.

  “No, I will. I’m the one who said whatever it was that upset her.”

  I walked out of the room looking for Eleanor, who was standing next to the ruined rose garden. “You okay?”

  “Fine, dear. Sorry about that. Just missed Grace for a moment.”

  “I’m sure you miss her all the time,” I said. “And I imagine all of this has brought up a lot of old memories.”

  “It has,” she said, before wiping her eyes. “We should go back inside.”

  “I just wanted to ask you one more thing while we’re alone. Do you know why Grace would have rented out the movie theater if she was going to Canada with you?”

  “I remember that,” she said. “She could be quite extravagant. She wanted to throw a party, a large one, and she didn’t have air-conditioning in this old house. She grew up in an era without it. So did I, for that matter. She didn’t see the point in installing it, so we lived our summers with the windows open. Except it was a very hot summer that year and she didn’t want people to faint in their lemonades.”

  “What was the party for?”

  She paused. “For Winston. To help him get to know the people in town, since he’d be living here.”

  “And Winston didn’t approve of the idea?”

  “Winston saw it as Grace spending his inheritance on people that he didn’t care about.” She looked back at his grave. “Not to speak ill of the man, but he could be quite self-involved.”

  “Did you know he was being blackmailed?”

  She looked startled. “That’s ridiculous. Who would blackmail him, and for what? He didn’t do anything other than read and study. I don’t even remember him playing sports or watching television.”

  “No girlfriends? Like maybe Glad or Mary?”

  “They were teenagers, Nell. He was too proper for something like that. He would have been more comfortable living in 1875 than 1975. He wouldn’t have chased young women, even pretty young women like Glad and Mary.”

  “It looks like he was about to marry someone,” I said. “And maybe that’s the reason.”

  “And you think that’s the reason he was killed?”

  “Could be. Or he could have been holding the ring for someone else.” I threw my hands up. “Or it could be something else entirely. There were people who were angry at him.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like Ed.” I’d been waiting to say something since I’d spoken with Glad and Mary. It had never been the right time, and now certainly wasn’t, but somehow it had slipped out of my mouth.

  “Mary told me,” Eleanor said. “She called me when you were at her house with Molly and Natalie. And she called me after your conversation with Glad.”

  “Was she reporting in on my whereabouts?”

  “She wanted to know what, well, I guess what I wanted her to say.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I know you mean well, Nell, but it was so long ago. Why does it matter?”

  “Because of that.” I pointed toward the hole in her garden. “Why did Ed think that you had been bought and paid for?”

  As she looked at me, the tears were vanishing and her clear, certain stare was back. “He was trying to ruin my life.” She grabbed my arm. “But he didn’t. It all worked out fine.”

  “Are you sure he’s not trying to ruin it now?” I asked. “Planting suitcases on your property.”

  “He didn’t kill Winston,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  The certainty was gone. She looked at the hole in the ground. “I don’t know anymore,” she said.

  The next morning I sat in my car, unsure of what to do next. I wanted to talk to Ed, but the theater was closed. I could have gone back to Mary, but I wasn’t sure I could handle another conversation that twisted and turned until I didn’t know what to think. There was only one person left who could offer me advice: Maggie. Even though she’d suggested I drop the whole thing, I knew that as a friend, she would at least listen.

  As I was driving over to Maggie’s house, I saw Jesse talking with the mayor. I waved hello, and Jesse motioned for me to stop the car.

  “Everything okay?” I asked as soon as I parked.

  “Fine. We’re just going over the plans for the anniversary,” Larry said. “I think there will be quite a lot of people in town, thanks to this.” He held up a New York newspaper with a small article that was headlined: ARCHERS REST CELEBRATES 350 YEARS OF MURDER AND MAGIC. It went on to detail the rumors about John Archer all the way to the skeleton of “a once-prominent citizen who now is said to haunt a local home.” Next to the article was a photograph of Eleanor’s house.

  “She’s going to kill you,” I said to the mayor.

  The mayor wasn’t concerned. “It’s good for the town. It will bring in people, and that will bring in business. Your grandmother may be a little upset, sure, but wait until her shop is swamped with customers. She’ll forgive me.” He grabbed the paper from me and walked into city hall.

  “He’s working on a Sunday?” I asked Jesse.

  “He works every day.” He turned to me. “His heart is in the right place, you know.”

  “I’ll let you tell Eleanor that.”

  “You want to get something to eat?” he asked.

  “I’m actually headed to Maggie’s.”

  “That should be fun.”

  “It should be,” I told him, “I’m just not sure it will be.”

  Five minutes later I rang Maggie’s doorbell, and waited. I could hear shuffling and voices, but it took several minutes for Maggie to open the door. And when she did, she didn’t open it all the way.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  Maggie stepped outside and closed the door behind her. “Absolutely, Nell. What would you like to talk about?”

  “Can we go inside?”

  She looked back at her door. “The place is a mess.”

  “I don’t care.” I sighed.

  Maggie didn’t budge.

  “Okay,” I tried again. “I was talking to Eleanor and she said that Ed had tried to ruin her life.”

  Maggie nodded. “I guess this is something we have to talk about inside.” She opened the door.

  CHAPTER 52

  Maggie led me inside the house, and I saw immediately what she had been trying to hide. Ed was sitting on the couch, looking worried and upset.

  “If one of you is going to confess to something, I’d better call Jesse,” I said.

  “What we have to confess does not require law enforcement,” Maggie said as she directed me to a brown leather chair across from the couch.

  She sat down next to Ed and patted his hand.

  “Oh my God,” I said without thinking. “You and Ed had an affair. He’s your son Brian’s real father. Is that what you’ve been hiding?”

  Ed and Maggie burst out laughing. While I was glad to see the tension diminish, as the laugh went on I felt increasingly stupid. When they finally were able to compose themselves, Ed and Maggie turned to each other, seemed to wordlessly consult, and then turned back to me.

  “While I would have been proud to have been Maggie’s better half,” Ed said, “if anyone could be better than Maggie, I was actually in love with a different woman that year.”

  I hesitated but guessed anyway. “Eleanor.”

  He smiled. “Eleanor.”

  “And she was in love with you?”

  “She was caut
ious, of course. She had the children to think about, but I think she could have been persuaded to that way of thinking eventually.”

  “What stopped her? Was it Winston?”

  “No,” Maggie said. “It was me.”

  “You?”

  “I didn’t think Ed was ready for marriage, for an instant family. He was . . .”

  “Struggling with maturity,” Ed said. “Eleanor came to talk to me one day in early June about the nature of our relationship.”

  “I persuaded her to,” Maggie said.

  “It terrified me.” Ed shook his head. “I backed off. We’d only been dating for a few months, and while being with Eleanor was a dream, instant fatherhood was . . . well, it was more than I could imagine for myself.”

  “So you broke up?” I asked.

  “We broke up.”

  “And never spoke again until the other day? Glad said you disliked each other.”

  “We did speak, but only politely, and only when we had to,” he said. “That was my choice, not Eleanor’s.”

  “But it wasn’t because of the breakup, it was because of what happened after.” Maggie nodded at Ed, encouraging him to continue his story.

  “A few weeks later I went over to the house to talk to Eleanor,” he said. “To tell her I’d changed my mind. But Winston wouldn’t let me speak to her. He wouldn’t even let me in the house. A few days after that, Eleanor, Grace, and the kids were in Canada. Gone for a whole month.”

  “When did you argue with Winston?”

  “July 3rd. I remember distinctly. I was going into New York for the holiday and I went into the bank to get some cash. It was before ATMs, you remember, so I had to get it there. Winston was just leaving the bank manager’s office. He saw me and, well, one thing led to another.”

  “Because he’d kept you from talking to Eleanor? Why would he care about your relationship? Eleanor wasn’t in love with him. Was he in love with her?”

  Maggie shook her head. “No. Nothing like that.”