Puzzled to Death

by Parnell Hall

  “I know you didn’t. So who do you think did?”

  “Kill him,” Joey muttered. “Kill the son of a bitch.”

  “Who?” Cora prompted. “Who you gonna kill?”

  Joey’s face crumpled. “Poor Judy. Poor little Judy.” This time his hand unerringly snagged a full bottle of beer. He took a huge swallow, held the bottle in both hands.

  “You had a fight with Judy,” Cora said. “You accused her of seeing someone.”

  “Billy Pickens.”

  “Yes. Billy Pickens. Is he here tonight?”

  “Better not be.”

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “Did what?”

  “Killed your wife?”

  Joey’s face reddened murderously. “Son of a bitch? That son of a bitch killed my Judy?”

  “No, no, Joey. I was asking if you thought so.”

  Joey looked bewildered again. “Why would he do that?” His face twisted. “Poor Judy …”

  “Yes. Poor Judy.”

  Cora was not entirely unhappy with the conversation. Incoherent as Joey Vale was, he’d confirmed what his neighbors had said. That he suspected the man seeing his wife was Billy Pickens. And Judy Vale had had a visitor last night, because she’d turned out the front light. In all likelihood that visitor murdered her. Joey Vale might not be able to come up with a reason why Billy Pickens would have strangled his wife, but Cora Felton could come up with several. In Cora’s estimation, Billy Pickens was rapidly moving to the top of her suspect list.

  Right behind Joey Vale himself.

  AARON GRANT PARKED HIS CAR IN THE DRIVEWAY, SKIPPED up the front steps, and rang the bell.

  Sherry Carter opened the door with a grin.

  “You look happy,” Aaron observed. “What’s up?”

  “Cora’s snooping,” Sherry said, ushering him in.

  “Oh?”

  “She’s out pumping Joey Vale. Not that she thinks there’s anything to it, but Chief Harper told her not to, and she took it as a personal challenge.”

  “You try to talk her out of it?”

  “Heavens, no. The crossword-puzzle contest was driving her to drink. I’m grateful for any distraction. You want some coffee?”

  “I’d kill for coffee.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Sherry washed out the automatic-drip coffeemaker, filled it with water and ground coffee beans, and switched it on. “Your column done?”

  “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s not very flattering.”

  Aaron shrugged. “If my column wasn’t done, you’d accuse me of rushing over here to pump you for information.”

  “So, what’d you write about?”

  “The murder, of course.”

  “And Joey Vale’s release?”

  “That’s part of it. Not a big part, mind you, but still a part.”

  “What do you mean, not a big part?”

  Aaron Grant sat at the table. “Joey Vale had the misfortune to get released the same day he got picked up. Bad timing. In terms of publicity, I mean. Now, if he had been released tomorrow, that would be big news. ’Cause we’d have already reported his arrest. As it is, the headline is BAKERHAVEN HOUSEWIFE MURDERED. A sidelight is Husband Detained and Released.” He grimaced. “Very poor from a news standpoint. I mean, one day later you get the headline HUSBAND CLEARED. The Bakerhaven police yesterday dropped all charges against Joey Vale, husband of murdered housewife Judith Vale, when an autopsy on the body determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that the victim was killed at a time her husband was not home. That only plays if we’ve had a day to report the murder and his arrest.”

  Sherry watched the coffeemaker burble. “You make it sound personal, Aaron.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not personal, it’s just how it is.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Sherry leaned on the counter, looked at him. “What part of the story did you cover?”

  “I covered Joey Vale’s arrest.”

  “And subsequent release?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So it’s personal. HUSBAND RELEASED was your headline.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Where’d you get your facts? I don’t imagine you talked to Joey Vale.”

  “He wasn’t talking.”

  “You talk to his attorney?”

  “I interviewed her, yes.”

  “What did she have to say?”

  Aaron grinned.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  He put up his hand. “No, no. Nothing personal, I assure you. It’s just when Becky was explaining how her client had been proved innocent and released, I got the impression she was disappointed.”

  “Disappointed? Disappointed how?”

  “That she didn’t have a murder suspect to defend anymore.”

  “You wrote that?”

  “I most certainly did not. I’m telling you that in strictest confidence, and I do not want to be quoted as having said it. And that’s the extent of my dealings with Becky Baldwin,” Aaron said. “Just enough to provide me with a story. Not the story. Just a story.”

  “You came over here hoping for something better so you can have the story tomorrow?”

  “I came over here for coffee,” Aaron said patiently. “It’s not as close as the diner, but you make better coffee.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” Sherry told him.

  Aaron got up from the table. “That’s too bad. When did you say your aunt was getting home?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Aaron moved closer, put his hands on Sherry’s waist. “But she’s out investigating a murder. That could take some time.”

  Sherry reached up, touched his cheek. “I thought you came for coffee.”

  “Coffee’s overrated.” Aaron nuzzled her ear.

  “I’m not sure you can use a word like overrated in terms of coffee—” Sherry began before Aaron cut her off with a kiss.

  “YOU’RE GLOWING,” CORA SAID.

  Sherry flushed. “I’m not glowing.”

  “Trust me, I’ve seen glowing, and you’re glowing.”

  “You must be drunk.”

  “Not with the size drinks they serve in the Rainbow Room.” Cora pushed by Sherry into the kitchen. “Ah, coffeepot’s full. Made a batch and didn’t drink it. Wasteful. You know there are poor people going through the whole day with no caffeine at all, and here you are wasting a whole pot.” Cora stopped, pinched Sherry’s cheek. “But that’s all right. You’re glowing.”

  “Aunt Cora, please.”

  “Hey, nothing wrong with that. I’ve glowed enough in my day.” Cora poured a cup of coffee, added milk, stuck it in the microwave. “So, did he have any news?”

  “Who?”

  “Aaron. Did he have anything on the murder?”

  “Nothing new.”

  “So he was here. Boy, I’m good.”

  “Aunt Cora.” Sherry decided it was time to change the subject. “Did you get anything on the murder?”

  “I’ll say.”

  The microwave bleeped. Sherry took out the coffee, handed it to Cora. “So what have you got?”

  “A suspect.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  Cora took a sip of coffee. “Joey Vale.”

  “I thought he had an alibi.”

  “He does.”

  “So?”

  “So,” Cora said, “that’s why I suspect him. He doesn’t just have an alibi. He has a perfect alibi. By all accounts he was in the Rainbow Room during the only possible hours the crime could have been committed.”

  Sherry looked at her aunt in exasperation, tried to determine despite Cora’s assurances just how many drinks she might have had. “Aunt Cora, if he couldn’t have done it, he couldn’t have done it.”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I find a perfect alibi extremely suspicious. An innocent man rarely has a perfect alibi. Why? Because he doesn’t need one.
So he doesn’t plan one. Ergo, he doesn’t have one. On the other hand, a man who intends to commit a crime goes out of his way to provide himself with a perfect alibi.”

  “Yeah, but if committing the crime was a physical impossibility—”

  “Who says so? That numbnuts coroner? How much faith do you put in what he says? He didn’t see the body till twelve hours later, but he constructs a two-hour window when the crime must have happened? Give me a break.”

  “You dispute the autopsy report?”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s gospel.”

  “No, Cora. But the guy went to med school. His finding is based on something. He didn’t make up his autopsy report just to frustrate you.”

  “Maybe not, but I’d like to know what it’s based on. Stomach contents and body temperature, most likely. Well, if he knows exactly when she ate, that’s one thing. But I’ll bet he doesn’t. The husband had a fight with her after work and stormed out. Which left her home alone. She could have eaten at any time, because there’s no one to say when she did.

  “So that throws out stomach contents as an accurate barometer. Which leaves body temperature. As I recall, under normal circumstances the body cools one and a half degrees Fahrenheit per hour after death. The doc says she was killed between nine and eleven. Those would be the outside limits, so the median time would be ten. The doc saw her around ten o’clock the next morning. The body temperature of the corpse would indicate she was killed approximately twelve hours earlier. Twelve hours at one point five degrees per hour would be eighteen degrees. Normal body temperature is ninety-eight point six. Take away eighteen, the body temperature would have to be eighty point six degrees when the doctor saw her. I wonder if it was.”

  “Aunt Cora.”

  “I’d just love to get a look at that autopsy report, see what that quack’s basing his time of death on. You suppose Aaron could get a look?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Even if you asked nice? I bet he’d do anything if you asked him nice.”

  “I think I need a coffee,” Sherry declared. She prepared another cup, switched on the microwave. “Okay, Cora. You went off on a tangent. You were telling me why the time of death doesn’t rule out Joey Vale. I have no doubt you could get the coroner quite rattled with a barrage of questions. But, assuming your math is correct, and assuming he figures like you, and assuming the body temperature was eighty point six and indicated Judy’d been strangled between nine o’clock and eleven—can you advance any theory about how Joey could have done it?”

  “Are you kidding? Of course I can.” Cora warmed instantly to the subject. “Joey Vale gets home two in the morning, croaks his wife. So he drags her corpse into the kitchen, pulls all the food out of his deep freeze, dumps the body in, and closes the lid. After a couple of hours he pulls the body out, replaces the food, leaves her on the kitchen floor. The body temperature’s been altered enough the medic puts the time of death between nine and eleven instead of one and three A.M., like he would have if it hadn’t been tampered with.”

  Sherry pulled the coffee out of the microwave. “Joey Vale has a deep freeze?”

  “How should I know?” Cora said airily. “No one’s let me see the crime scene. Say he doesn’t have a deep freeze. So he takes out all the shelves and stands her upright in the refrigerator. Same result.”

  “Oh, for goodness sakes!”

  “I should see the body. If she was cramped in an unnatural position, I bet I could tell. And I bet that doctor couldn’t. Now, there’s a thought. Rigor mortis sets in, and she’s frozen solid. I wonder if you could mistake one for the other.”

  Sherry sipped her coffee, revised her estimate of how many drinks her aunt had had. “That’s very interesting, Cora. Do you have any theories that don’t involve sticking the corpse in the fridge?”

  “Oh, sure. Illusion.”

  “Illusion?”

  “Yeah. Joey Vale creates the illusion he’s in the Rainbow Room when really he’s not.”

  Sherry grimaced. “This sounds worse than the deep freeze.”

  “I don’t mean he wasn’t there at all. I mean he creates the illusion he never left.”

  “And just how does he do that?”

  “This one I kind of like,” Cora said. “Joey Vale’s in the Rainbow Room shooting pool. As a lot of the pool players will testify. I watched how it works. It’s a coin-operated pool table. The winner wins a dollar and the right to play the next challenger. The guys who want to play—it’s mostly guys—put up quarters on the edge of the table to mark their spot. There’s usually a row of five or six quarters of people waiting to play.”

  “What has this got to do with the illusion of Joey Vale being in the Rainbow Room?”

  “Joey’s playing eight ball. He loses. He pays the winner a dollar. He puts a quarter on the table to hold his place for the next game. He’s now the fifth or sixth quarter in line. When his quarter comes up, he plays again. But that’s four or five games later. Say the games take ten minutes apiece. What’s to stop Joey Vale from losing the game, paying off the winner, putting up his quarter, and heading for the men’s room—but instead of going to the john, he slips out the door, drives home, knocks off his wife, drives back, and slips in the bar? In all likelihood, he’s standing there watching them shoot pool a good two or three games before his quarter even comes up again. When it does, as far as anyone in the place is concerned, he’s been there all the time.”

  Sherry Carter blinked. “Would that work?”

  “I don’t know. I would guess it’s about a ten-minute drive from the bar to his house. Add in the time to kill his wife, it’s cutting it close, but it could be done.”

  “It’s cutting it very close,” Sherry said, “and in that case how do you account for the visitor that she turned out the light to meet?”

  “Her husband gets there first. The light is out, Joey comes up the path, Judy figures he’s her visitor and opens the door. Which makes it easier for Joey. He strangles her, thank you very much, leaves the body on the linoleum, and goes back to the bar. Right after that the mystery guest arrives, gets no answer, finds the door locked, and finally gives up. Or finds the door open, walks in, finds Judy dead as a mackerel on the linoleum, panics, and splits. Either way, it works pretty nice for Joey Vale.”

  “I thought the neighbor saw the mystery guest arrive. So why didn’t she see Joey Vale?”

  “Oh, but she did. What she saw was Joey Vale arriving. She says she went to sleep right after that. Joey Vale arrived and killed his wife. The witness, Mrs. Roth, went to bed and missed seeing Joey Vale leave, and she missed seeing the mystery guest arrive and leave, either in frustration or in a panic, depending on whether the door was locked or open, take your pick.”

  “I don’t like it,” Sherry said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a horrible timetable. You’re assuming this guy’s smart enough to kill his wife and give himself an alibi—well, look at the huge risks he takes. He could be seen driving away from the bar. He could be seen driving back. He could be seen driving along the road. And when he gets home and sees the light out—if he’s any smart at all—he’ll figure it’s off because his wife’s lover’s coming. In fact, that would have to be part of his plan, because if the light was on, he should know he would be seen by Mrs. Roth going into his house. So he’s gotta plan on the light being out. He knows the man’s coming, but he can’t know when, so here’s someone who could catch him in the act of killing his wife. It’s just a very bad bet.”

  “Yeah, but it’s possible,” Cora insisted. “And the police let Joey go on the grounds it wasn’t possible.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sherry said, unimpressed. “You got any theories that don’t involve such strict timetables?”

  “Sure. Joey comes home, has a brouhaha with his wife. Pastes her one, knocks her unconscious. While she’s out cold, he trusses her up like a chicken, gags her, stuffs her in a sack, sticks her in the trunk of his car. Drives to the Rain
bow Room and shoots pool. Sometime between nine and eleven he slips out to the parking lot, pops the trunk, croaks his wife, goes back inside, and shoots pool for the rest of the night.”

  “And no one saw him lug her body in and out?”

  “Dark when he leaves, dark when he comes back. Works for me.”

  “I’m not sure it will work for Chief Harper,” Sherry observed.

  “Never fear. I wouldn’t try to sell the chief on anything unless I had more to go on.” Cora chugged down the rest of her coffee, put the cup on the table, exhaled happily. “Well, it’s certainly been a productive night.” She looked at Sherry and repeated smugly, “Glowing.”

  “I DON’T SEE WHY YOU DON’T WANT TO DEMONSTRATE,” Harvey Beerbaum said peevishly. Harvey had come up with the bright idea that during the Friday-night festivities to kick off the tournament, he and Cora would demonstrate the art of crossword-puzzle construction by creating a puzzle on the spot in front of everyone. “It would be such fun. And we’d take turns. You’d add a word, I’d add a word, you’d add a word. Of course we could try to trip each other up.”

  Cora Felton, who could no more construct a crossword puzzle than she could a suspension bridge, would have loved to trip Harvey Beerbaum up there and then—physically, forcefully, and right on his erudite rump. “Fun for us, maybe, but for the participants? Boring, boring, boring. They don’t want a lecture, they want to play. I thought Friday night was going to be fun.”

  “It is, it is,” Harvey said. “I merely thought we could take ten minutes out to construct an uncomplicated puzzle.”

  Cora avoided looking at Sherry Carter, who was among those in attendance at the town hall for the tournament committee meeting, played instead to Iris Cooper. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that this convention shouldn’t be to glorify us. Now, the celebrities are another matter. Some of them are constructors, aren’t they? How about getting them to donate a puzzle?”

  Harvey Beerbaum frowned, but Iris Cooper said, “That’s not a bad idea. We introduce it as a fun puzzle from the pros to do as a warm-up.”

  “Are you sure this tournament is even happening?” a committee member put in dubiously. “I heard a rumor the police were going to close us down. On account of the killing, I mean.”