Puzzled to Death

by Parnell Hall

  “I told you. Tomorrow, if you make an announcement, can you leave me out of it?”

  Cora Felton shook her head. “Billy, I can downplay it, soft-pedal it, temporize it, and call it alleged. But if you think I can tell the story of Judy Vale’s murder without mentioning you, you can forget about it. You had an affair with her. Your wife knows it, Judy’s husband knows it, the neighbors know it, and half of Bakerhaven knows it. Look on the bright side: Those two little girls you keep dangling in my face are too young to know it. If it’s a small part of the story, it’s gonna fade away. And if you or your wife is the killer, it’s gonna be pretty insignificant by comparison.

  “So, do me a favor, willya? Sneak back down the road, get in your car, and go home to your wife and kids. I’m waitin’ for someone to try to kill me. If it isn’t you, get the devil out of here and give someone else a chance.”

  “WAKE UP, YOU’RE ALIVE.”

  Cora Felton opened her eyes to find her niece standing over her. Cora was on the couch in the living room. She yawned, stretched. “And no one tried to kill me?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not. And you’re due at the town hall in an hour with the solution to three murders. Otherwise, you have to play microphone tag with Harvey Beerbaum.”

  Cora moaned. She sat up. “Aw, gee, Sherry. Did I really say that? That I knew who the killer was? What a stupid thing to say.”

  “Yes. That seems to be Chief Harper’s opinion too.”

  “Yeah, I remember. I don’t suppose he solved the murders last night?”

  “You can call him and ask, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “No, I guess not.” Cora groaned, rubbed her head. Her hair looked like a rat’s nest. She fished a cigarette out of her purse, lit it, and took a drag. “Sherry. The puzzle. Thornhill’s puzzle. Did you do it for me?”

  “Yeah, I did it.”

  “And?”

  Sherry grimaced. “And it’s not gonna help. Paul Thornhill didn’t even write it.”

  Cora’s head shot up. “You’re kidding! Who did?”

  “No one.”

  Cora scowled. “What?”

  “It’s an AutoFill.”

  Cora winced and put up her hand. “Sherry, I have a headache. Could you try to talk in words that make sense?”

  “Sorry. Sometimes I forget you know nothing about crosswords. Well, Thornhill did this one on the computer. He used a program like Crossword Compiler, and he created his grid. Then he filled in his long answers that were going to be the theme of his puzzle.

  “Then he hit AutoFill. And the computer whizzed through the thousands of words in its memory and filled in the rest of the puzzle. It’s a pretty neat program. The only problem is the computer can’t differentiate, so it’s apt to use words no one ever heard of. For instance, here it throws in the word Nahuatls, which is out of place in such a simple puzzle.”

  Cora gawked at Sherry. “You’re saying the computer wrote the puzzle?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought Paul Thornhill was supposed to be this young hotshot constructor.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t know it from this. The clues aren’t very good. And his theme doesn’t even work. Here, take a look.”

  APOLOGIES

  by Paul Thornhill

  ACROSS DOWN

  1 “Maybe” (Buddy Holly hit) 1 Confederate general

  5 Juniors’ juniors (Abbr.) 2 Video’s partner

  10 Alack’s partner 3 “I was too” (Brenda Lee’s apology)

  14 Regulation 4 So far

  15 Coffee additive 5 Stupid bore (Var.)

  16 Country bumpkin 6 Greek mountain nymph

  17 Mine entrance 7 Booty

  18 Greeting 8 Angel’s wear

  19 Grad 9 With finesse

  20 Type of rummy 10 Ali Baba’s land

  21 Beginning of Elvis’s apology 11 “To Sir With Love” singer

  23 Divinity 12 Border on

  25 Mai___ 13 Trucking rig

  26 Tint 21 Charged particles

  27 Uto-Aztecan languages 22 Praise

  32 Packs away 24 British Revolutionary War general

  34 Was able 27 “___Rae” (Sally Field Oscar winner)

  35 “At the___” (Danny and the Juniors hit) 28 Distinctive atmosphere

  36 British bottom 29 “I ran all___” (Impalas apology)

  37 “I’m___” (theme of this puzzle) 30 Heavy burden

  38 Cub’s dad 31 Nimble

  39 Misery 32 Sayings

  40 ___cum laude 33 Believe (archaic)

  41 Amusingly risque 34 Arrive

  42 Climbing plant 37 Assumes

  44 Wife of Zeus 38 Pointed remark

  45 Street guide 40 Remain

  46 Tot’s farewells 41 Suds

  49 End of Elvis’s apology 43 Come out

  54 Head cover 44 Nocturnal scavenger (Var.)

  55 Arab prince 46 Cofounder of Czechoslovakia

  56 Movie segment 47 Champing at the bit

  57 Bear or Berra 48 Reek

  58 Vocalize 49 Not so much

  59 “Exorcist” actress Burstyn 50 Leave out

  60 Prayer ending 51 Ivy-covered

  61 Eye problem (Var.) 52 Bruins’ school

  62 Burrito condiment 53 “Farmer in the___”

  63 Brew 57 Bark shrilly

  “The theme of the puzzle is sorry. His long answers are song snippets. One of his quotes comes from the lyric, I ran all the way home, just to say I’m sorry. Another comes from, I’m sorry, so sorry, please accept my apology. Love is blind, and I was too blind to see. Which only fits if you know the whole damn verse, and the answer doesn’t give you that.

  “And Elvis’s apology, I’m a fool, but I love you, dear, until the day I die, has nothing in it about being sorry, no matter how long you string out the verse. Worse than that, it’s wrong. The actual quote is, I’m a fool, but I’ll love you, dear, until the day I die. He didn’t even get that right.”

  “Sherry, I don’t know what you just said except the puzzle isn’t good.”

  “That’s the gist of it.”

  “Then I don’t understand. Zelda Zisk said Paul Thornhill was a whiz.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe he figured it’s a freebie for a charity event, why should he bother? At any rate, this thing’s electronic. It’s not gonna help you. Unless you wanna argue someone killed him for writing a lousy puzzle.”

  “Damn.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Cora looked up at Sherry pleadingly through a haze of cigarette smoke. “You’re sure about this? It’s an electronic puzzle, he didn’t even write it?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Cora looked like a child who’s just been told there’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny. She inhaled, shuddered, let out a wrenching, smoky sigh.

  “Then Harvey wins.”

  CORA FELTON WAS TRAPPED. SHE SAT ON THE STAGE OF the town hall like a prisoner in a cell. A prisoner with no chance to escape.

  On one side of her sat Harvey Beerbaum, a smug and gloating Harvey Beerbaum, who was practically drooling at the prospect of watching her fail. Harvey had spent several minutes with a sound technician, gleefully testing the second microphone with which he planned on demonstrating just how much better a cruciverbalist he was than the much-vaunted Puzzle Lady.

  Cora wondered if Harvey had any idea just how completely he would succeed.

  On the other side of her stood three giant puzzle grids on upright stands. The three grids on which the finals would be played. The three grids on which she would be called upon to comment. So far, the only comment that came to mind was, “Gee, not many black squares.” Which was certainly true. As Sherry had warned her, this was a hard puzzle, a fifteen-by-fifteen of the type found in the Friday or Saturday New York Times.

  A killer puzzle.

  In front of her, the one hundred or so contestants worked feverishly at their tables on the seventh puzzle. Some were finished, but none had left the room. Not this time. T
hey couldn’t have if they wanted to. They couldn’t have got out the door.

  In the back of the room, cordoned off by a rope, stood the spectators. Due to Cora’s promise that she would publicly unmask the killer, the crowd today was a solid wall of flesh that spilled out the town-hall doors and down the front steps.

  Which was why Cora Felton was sitting miserably next to Harvey Beerbaum, instead of slipping out for a smoke. Even if she could have made it through the crowd, the people out there would all have questions she wouldn’t want to answer. Chief Harper, for instance, would want to know what she intended to say. And she would be hard-pressed to tell him since she didn’t know herself.

  Since she didn’t have a clue.

  And so Cora Felton sat in the front of the room like a condemned prisoner, watching the giant clock tick down the minutes to her execution.

  Cora began to sweat. God, she needed a smoke. Her eyes flicked around the room, looking for a way to escape, but there was none. Directly in front of her was the Thornhills’ table, eerily empty now, its blue cardboard divider dividing no one.

  Behind it, at various tables, were contestants Marty Haskel, Ned Doowacker, and Zelda Zisk—all finished, of course—and former contestant Craig Carmichael, also finished after supposedly taking a dive. Cora wondered vaguely if he had.

  In the crowd she saw Sherry and Aaron, and Becky Baldwin and Rick Reed. Judy Vale’s neighbors, Charlotte Drake and the horsey-faced Betty Felson, and their respective husbands, were there too. So were Billy and Sara Pickens, who must have gotten a baby-sitter for the little girls. There was also a couple who looked vaguely familiar; it took a few moments for Cora to place them as Aaron Grant’s parents.

  Also in the crowd were Jessica Thornhill, no longer competing of course, and Joey Vale, who seemed uncharacteristically sober, either due to the solemnity of the occasion or the fact it was too early in the morning to be drunk. Both would be there seeking vengeance for their dead spouses. Both would expect answers.

  Answers she did not have.

  The craving for nicotine was very strong. Cora remembered a pack of Nicorettes she’d purchased ages ago, in one of her unsuccessful attempts to kick the habit. Could it still be in her bag?

  Cora picked up her drawstring purse, rummaged through.

  Wow. She’d brought her gun. The thought tickled her. Maybe she could shoot her way out. Yeah. Fat chance. Like Butch and Sundance at the end of the picture.

  Where was that Nicorette?

  Cora held the purse on her lap, pulled the top open, peered in.

  A piece of paper caught her eye. Thornhill’s puzzle. She’d stuck it in her purse and never looked at it. Well, what did that matter now? The computer did it anyway.

  Harvey Beerbaum nudged her.

  Cora Felton started, saw Harvey pointing and smirking, and looked at the clock. Uh-oh. Cora struggled to her feet, plodded to the microphone, said, “Five minutes,” for the benefit of the ten or twelve people still working.

  Five minutes.

  With a feeling of icy doom, Cora marched back to her chair.

  Dead woman walking.

  Cora sat down again, tried to gather her thoughts. She had a paper in her hand. What was it? Ah, yes. Paul Thornhill’s crossword puzzle.

  Like the one the killer had left on his body.

  The fact the police had withheld.

  The thing nobody knew.

  Except the killer, of course.

  But no one else.

  Cora felt a faint spark of hope. Could that do it? Could she nail the killer with that one simple fact?

  What if she revealed the puzzle?

  Chief Harper would go ballistic. It would be a major breach of trust. He would never again take her into his confidence.

  And it wouldn’t accomplish anything. The puzzle proved nothing. The killer would not be caught. The solution would not be revealed.

  She would just look like a fool.

  Even before Harvey got his shot at her.

  Cora, watching the minutes ticking by, knew there was no possible hope, no possible way to save face. Even producing all three puzzles wouldn’t help her. They didn’t prove anything. What could she possibly say about them?

  Cora had the other puzzles in her bag. She jerked them out, added Craig Carmichael’s Curious Canines and Judy Vale’s doodle to Paul Thornhill’s Apologies. She flipped through the three puzzles, read the solutions over.

  Paul Thornhill’s only depressed her further. The puzzle was, as Sherry’d said, bad. Boring. A hell of an epitaph.

  Epitaph.

  In defeat, Cora glanced at the big clock, relentlessly ticking down the seconds till her execution.

  “TIME’S UP!” HARVEY BEERBAUM ANNOUNCED. “EVERYONE stop working. If you still have a paper, hold it up and our volunteers will be around to collect it.”

  Cora sat, clutching Judy Vale’s doodle. She had an impish impulse to hold it up, let a volunteer come around and collect it. She smiled slightly, then stuffed the puzzles back in her purse.

  “All right. This is it,” Harvey Beerbaum said gleefully. “This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The judges will tally up the answers, and the three top finishers will meet in a one-puzzle play-off, right before your very eyes on these giant grids. Are all the puzzles collected? Very well. Then would the volunteers please take down the restraining ropes and let the spectators in?”

  Harvey Beerbaum had seriously underestimated the will of the people. Before the volunteers could make a move, the crowd had surged forward, ducking under and climbing over the ropes before simply sweeping them away. Within seconds, everyone from outside had shoved in, filling the town hall to capacity.

  Ordinarily, Harvey would have been nettled at having his authority ignored. Today he was merely pleased so many people were on hand to witness his triumph over the Puzzle Lady. Harvey’s introduction of Cora was smug. “And now, before we get to the final event, my colleague, Miss Cora Felton, has an extremely special announcement. Miss Felton?”

  Cora rose from her chair, stepped up to the mike. “Thank you very much, Harvey,” she said sweetly. She grabbed the mike stand, said crisply with complete confidence, “It is time to unmask a killer. I’ll try to be brief, because I know you’re all eager to see the play-off. But first we have the little matter of these murders to solve.

  “We are here today largely thanks to Jessica Thornhill, who made this extra day of the tournament financially possible. I see Jessica in the crowd with Chief Harper. If she could come up here with me … Here, Jessica. Take my seat.”

  All eyes were on the young widow as she made her way to the front and sat down.

  “Also in the crowd I see Joey Vale. As Joey pointed out to all of us, he is every bit as interested in this matter as Mrs. Thornhill. Just because he does not have her vast resources, the death of his spouse is no less tragic, and the solution to the crime every bit as crucial. I am going to ask Joey Vale to come up here too.”

  Joey Vale stood up. Though his flannel shirt was unbuttoned and his eyes were bloodshot red, he had at least shaved and combed his hair, a vast improvement from his previous appearance. His demeanor was also better. He made his way to the front of the room, allowed himself to be offered a chair on the other side of Harvey Beerbaum.

  “Good,” Cora Felton said. “So, there we have the two interested parties in the case. The third victim, Felicity Roth, alas, had no close living relatives. Her murder is nonetheless heinous, and her killer must be found.

  “And how can we do that? Only by reviewing the evidence. The evidence and the suspects.

  “Here is what we know.

  “Judy Vale died first. Her death was shocking, brutal, tragic.

  “And yet …

  “When it happened, no one was surprised. Because everyone knew who killed her. Her husband, Joey Vale. He had a history of violence, she had a history of infidelity. A familiar pattern. He’d beat her up, she’d pay him back by sleeping around. Furious, he would beat
her up again. And so on. It had been going on for ages. No one was surprised when Joey finally went too far.”

  “Hey,” Joey Vale protested. “You got me up here for this?”

  “Please,” Cora said. “I have to lay out all the facts and theories. That doesn’t mean they’re true.”

  Cora turned back to face her rapt audience. “To continue, the case against Joey Vale looked rather bad. However, he had an alibi. At the time of the murder, he was at the Rainbow Room shooting pool. Was his alibi any good?” Cora waggled her hand. “Yes and no. It would have been possible for him to have left the Rainbow Room just long enough to commit the crime. Not likely, but possible. So Joey Vale’s alibi was not enough to rule him out.

  “Which brings us to the murder of Mrs. Roth. Which clarifies things greatly.”

  Cora pointed at Joey. “The murder of Mrs. Roth exonerated Joey Vale. He has a perfect alibi for it. Not like his alibi for the murder of his wife, an alibi that appears perfect. For the murder of Felicity Roth he has an alibi that is perfect. On the night Mrs. Roth was killed, Joey Vale was in jail. During the entire time that the murder could possibly have been committed. No tricks, no illusions, no ifs, ands, or buts. The facts are unequivocal. Joey Vale simply couldn’t have done it. He is not the killer.

  “So who is?

  “At this point, more suspects begin to appear. Mrs. Roth was seen at Fun Night talking to several people, including Paul Thornhill, Marty Haskel, and Billy Pickens. Which is very significant when you consider the location of her house and when you consider she was subsequently murdered. In all likelihood, Felicity Roth saw Judy Vale’s killer.

  “So who was that killer?

  “At this point, we don’t know.

  “Now we must flash ahead to the murder of Paul Thornhill. Mrs. Roth talked to him at Fun Night. A significant fact. We knew it, but we ignored it. So, in a way, we are to blame. For it’s now obvious Felicity Roth spoke to Paul Thornhill because he knew something about Judy Vale’s death.”

  Cora Felton spread her arms. “How is that possible? Judy Vale was killed a good three days before Paul Thornhill even came to town. What is it he could have known?