by Parnell Hall
Either way, Cora didn’t like it.
Chapter
15
“Are you following me?”
Sergeant Crowley cocked his head at Cora. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s a simple enough question, Sergeant, even for a police officer. But let me break it down for you. Are you having me tailed? Have you authorized surveillance? Are detectives from your department, or any other department, or any other policemen that you know of, following me around to see what I do?”
“Wow,” Crowley said.
Cora grimaced. “‘Wow’ was not the response I was hoping for.”
“You were hoping for a denial?”
“I was hoping for an answer. Preferably an honest answer, but even a lie would be better than ‘wow.’”
Crowley exhaled, shook his head. “You’re an exhausting woman.”
“That’s what my ex-husband Frank said. It’s one of the reasons he became my ex-husband.”
“Is that why you’re not married?”
“No. Frank was several husbands ago. Don’t change the subject. Look. I’ve never had a case with you before. I don’t know how you work. Letting me go with what you had on me was not exactly by the book. Even my lawyer couldn’t understand it, and for a woman who looks like a centerfold, she’s pretty damn sharp.”
“What’s this about someone following you?”
“Someone followed me home, and it wasn’t a stray puppy dog.”
“Who was it?”
“Still acting like it wasn’t you? Interesting.”
“If someone’s following you, I’d like to know.”
“Why?”
“Don’t be silly. It could be a lead.”
“And you have so few.”
Crowley exhaled through his teeth. It occurred to Cora he could use some dental work. “I let you go because I don’t want to waste my time on you. I got a murder to solve. You didn’t kill the guy. You had no reason, and with your lawyer making a stink about the ballistics evidence, it’s a cinch the bullet isn’t going to match. On the other hand, if someone’s taking an interest in you, it’s something I should know.”
“You’ve almost got me convinced it isn’t you.”
“You want me to take a polygraph?”
Cora smiled. “That could be a pretty good bluff.”
“I told you. I don’t bluff.”
“Just what someone bluffing would say.”
Crowley waggled his fingers next to his temples. “Snakes. You got snakes in your head. Okay, lady. You say you’re being followed. You got anything concrete to go on? I don’t suppose you got the plate?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
Cora took out the license plate number, passed it over.
“This is a Connecticut plate,” Crowley said.
“Sorry. I know you can’t trace them.”
“Yeah.” Crowley snatched up the phone. “Perkins. Trace a license for me. Connecticut plate, number two, seven, nine, three, eight.” He hung up with a flourish.
“Showoff,” Cora said. “You’re saying you can trace a Connecticut plate?”
Crowley shrugged. “Just routine.”
“Oh, yeah? Bet you fifty bucks you can’t trace that plate.”
“I don’t want to take your money.”
Cora nodded. “I understand. Little much on a sergeant’s salary.”
Crowley exhaled again. “You’re on, lady.”
They shook hands.
The phone rang.
“Fast enough for you?” Crowley said. He scooped it up. “Okay, Perkins, what you got?” The smile froze on his face. “Run that by me again.” He listened, said, “Double check it.… No. I’m sure you did. Do it again.” He hung up the phone.
Cora cocked her head, smiled. “Earful of cider?”
Crowley scowled. “What?”
“Never saw Guys and Dolls? Sky Masterson tells Nathan Detroit what his father told him to do if a man ever offered to wager he could make the jack of spades jump up out of the deck and squirt cider in his ear: ‘Do not bet this man, my son, or you will wind up with an earful of cider.’”
Once more, Crowley let out a breath. Cora could practically see steam. “I got hustled.”
“Big-time. At least you’re quick on the uptake.”
Crowley looked pained. “You going to make me pay off a sucker bet?”
“They’re the only ones I make.”
The sergeant whipped out a billfold. He made sure Cora couldn’t see how much was in it while he took out a ten and two twenties.
Cora stuck the bills in her purse. “The plate’s unregistered. To get your fifty bucks back, tell me who issues unregistered plates.”
“Love to. Can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“No one does. Do I win the bet?”
“What bet? I didn’t bet you. I offered money for service. You can’t provide the service.”
Crowley leaned back in his desk chair, studied Cora thoughtfully. “I don’t know why you’re torturing me. I let you go.”
“Yes, you did. But I know damn well you’re ready to arrest me again on the slightest provocation.”
“I ought to arrest you for gambling.”
Cora grinned. “Oh, that would look good in court. I can just hear you on the witness stand explaining how it happened.”
“While you’re in such a good mood, I wonder if you’d mind taking a look at the crossword puzzle?”
“Why? No one could solve it?”
“Oh, they solved it. They just couldn’t make anything out of it.”
“Then I probably won’t. Go ahead. Pass it over.”
Sergeant Crowley opened his desk drawer, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to Cora.
“I can touch it?”
“It’s a copy.”
Cora scanned the puzzle:
Need a clue?
Here you go
Inner five
Center row.
She shrugged. “Perfectly straightforward, Sergeant.”
“What does it mean?”
“Clearly it’s referring to a sudoku.”
“A what?”
“You mean you didn’t find it? Unbelievable. A clue like that screaming for attention.”
Crowley practically ground his teeth. “Look, lady. You’re good at what you do. Believe it or not, we’re good at what we do. That does not include interpreting enigmatic clues from crossword puzzles.”
“Enigmatic? Wow. You’re lucky you made sergeant, talking like that. Most cops say ‘enigmatic’ get assigned to a desk.”
“Are you having a good time? I’m not. I would imagine in that small town you live in—”
“Bakerhaven.”
“I would imagine you don’t have more than one crime at a time. Here it’s a little different. I got dozens. You know which one has priority? They all do. So you’ll pardon me if I don’t get all excited when you mention some suduko.”
“Sudoku.”
“Whatever. You wanna enlighten me on the subject?”
“Sure, Sergeant. I will try not to take offense at the fact you have never heard of my line of sudoku books. They’re puzzles. If you happen to have two or three hours to spare, I might be able to explain a simple one to you.”
“You might explain why I should give a damn.”
“You said you want to know what the crossword puzzle means. The crossword puzzle is clearly referring to a number puzzle. Specifically, a sudoku, a nine-by-nine number puzzle that is very popular outside the NYPD.”
“How does that help?”
“It tells you what you’re looking for. Which makes it easier to find.”
Crowley gave Cora a hard stare. He snatched up the phone again. “Perkins. You know what a sudoku is?… Then find someone who does. Have ’em review the crime scene evidence, see if anything like that turned up in the apartment.”
“I can’t believe no one would have mentioned it,” Cora said.
“Again, your field of expertise, not mine.”
“Yeah, but with a crossword puzzle on the body. I’d think it would ring a bell.”
“You have a point, or you just trying to rub it in?”
The phone rang. Crowley scooped it up, listened, slammed it down.
“Good news?” Cora chirped.
Crowley made a face. “Perkins spoke to the detective who reviewed the evidence. No puzzle.”
“There’s gotta be,” Cora said. “What about the medical examiner?”
“What about him?”
“Maybe he found something in the clothes.”
“He’d have said.”
“Even if it didn’t seem important?”
Crowley snatched up the phone, had a brief conversation with Perkins, put it down.
Cora’s eyes twinkled. She tipped back in her chair. “You married, Sergeant?”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t proposing. Just passing the time. Assuming it will take your boy a little while to browbeat the medical examiner.”
“That’s not the way it works.”
“How does it work?”
Crowley looked at her sharply. “What do you care?”
“I’m just a country girl from the sticks, trying to make my way in the big city.”
“Didn’t you used to be from New York?”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I don’t know. Just seemed like you were.”
“Really? I’ve been in the country so long, I barely remember the city.”
“And yet you own an apartment.”
“Which is rented. The rental covers the maintenance, brings in pocket change. Win—win. Of course, once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker. Seems like only yesterday, and it’s been fifteen years.” Cora realized that made her seem old. “I recall I’d just turned twenty,” she hastened to add.
Crowley laughed.
“You find that funny?” Cora said.
Crowley shook his head. “Lotta women been married several times before they were twenty. We just booked one. On prostitution. I don’t think all her marriages were legal, though.”
Cora nodded. “Some of mine weren’t either. Since you ducked the question, I assume you’re married.”
The phone rang. Crowley scooped it up, not, Cora noted, without some relief. “Yeah?… Really?… Well, I’m sure he was. Could you ask him to fax it over? Without handling it any more than he already has. If he’s really sorry, tell him I need it now.”
Crowley hung up the phone. “It’ll be right here.”
“If the doctor cooperates.”
“Perkins has him by the short hairs. He’ll cooperate.”
He did. Perkins knocked on the door less than five minutes later, handed Crowley the fax.
Crowley held it up for Cora.
“I assume this is what you mean?”
“You’ve never seen a sudoku before?”
“I’m sure I have. I’m sorry it didn’t make a big impression. Can you solve it?”
“Just watch me.”
Cora whizzed through the sudoku in less time than it took the doctor to send the fax.
She looked at the solution, whistled.
“What is it?”
Cora handed Crowley the sudoku. “Look at the middle row across.”
Crowley looked at the sudoku.
“What about it?”
“What are the five numbers in the middle of the row?”
Crowley read them off. “Two, seven, nine, three, eight.”
Cora cocked her head at him, smiled. “Ring a bell?”
“No,” Crowley said irritably. “What are you getting at?”
“It’s the license plate number Perkins couldn’t trace.”
Chapter
16
Becky Baldwin pushed the long blond hair out of her eyes, tapped the pencil against the yellow legal pad on her desk. “What the hell is going on?”
“I have no idea,” Cora said.
“But it’s all about you. Which makes no sense. But it has to.”
“We’ve been over this before.”
“It just happened. You just told me about it.”
“Yeah, but it’s the same concept.”
“Right. The killing had to do with you. Because of the crossword puzzle. Which makes no sense, because the killer must have known I was bringing you, but he couldn’t. Because I didn’t know I was bringing you. I just decided it that day.”
“Well, that’s not quite true, is it?” Cora said.
“What do you mean?”
“You asked me the day before. And then that night I asked Aaron about theater tickets. And he asked around to see if he could get some. Which is how we wound up at the play. So Aaron knew I was going, and presumably the people he asked knew I was going.”
Becky shook her head. “I would hate to have to sell that to a jury.”
“Why?”
“The killer invites me to a meeting in New York. Even that’s an assumption, but say he does. The killer invites me to a meeting in New York. I decide I’m going to bring you. He finds out I’m bringing you and says, ‘Oh, great, the Puzzle Lady, I’ll give her a puzzle.’ So he devises a crossword puzzle and a sudoku that, taken together, yield the license plate number of the car he’s going to use to follow us home.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? I’m an editor. I read this in a manuscript, I throw it across the room.
“I mean, come on, give me a break. Not only did the killer decide to work this license plate number into the crossword puzzle once you were involved, but the plate in question is a totally bogus one manufactured specifically for that purpose.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” Cora said.
“It’s enough to make your flesh crawl.”
Cora fished a pack of cigarettes out of her purse.
“You can’t smoke in here.”
“My flesh is crawling. You expect me not to smoke when my flesh is crawling?”
“What did Chief Harper say?”
“I haven’t told him.”
Becky stared at her. “You haven’t told him?”
“It’s not his case. It’s out of his jurisdiction.”
“If a killer’s tailing you around town, it’s in his jurisdiction.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Of course not. A car with a license plate that matches the clues left at the scene of the murder is probably unrelated to the crime.”
Cora lit her cigarette, took a deep drag. “Oh, that feels better.”
“Wish I smoked,” Becky said.
“Want one?”
“I could use an Ativan.”
“That I do not have. Wanna adjourn to the bar at the Country Kitchen?”
“I thought you stopped drinking.”
“You look like you could use one.”
“I’m all wound up. I’m antsy. You said wait, you had something to tell me, and hung up the phone.”
“Well, I couldn’t spill it on a pay phone. It would have taken forever. I’d have never got out of New York.”
“You could have given me the general idea.”
“Right, right. You’re an attorney. You summarize the situation in one short, pithy sentence.”
“So what do the cops think?”
“They think I’m a major pain in the ass, and they wish they’d never heard of me.”
“About the case.”
“I thought that was about the case. As far as the murder’s concerned, they have no idea who killed him or why.”
“Did he have any enemies?”
“I have no idea.”
“I thought you had that sergeant wrapped around your finger.”
“What made you think that?”
“I don’t know. Just your manner.”
“My manner? Not his?”
“What are you asking?”
“Just trying to figure out what you saw.”
&nbs
p; “I saw you lapse into flirty mode. And the guy did let us go.”
“He had good reasons.”
“I’m an attorney. You’re apprehended at the scene of a shooting with a recently fired gun. Your saying it’s not the murder weapon is probably not a unique defense in the annals of crime detection.”
“The claim was made by an attorney demanding a ballistics test.”
“What’s the attorney supposed to do? Claim it’s not the murder weapon and object to a ballistics test?”
“Yes, but—”
“Cora. All I said was you seem to have worked your feminine wiles on the sergeant, and you flew into more defenses than I raised against the murder charge. Looks like I touched a nerve.”
Cora took a deep drag on the cigarette, blew it out again. “Yeah. I guess I’m a little touchy since I broke up with Barney.”
“Well, come back to earth and focus on the problem. It would appear a killer followed us home.”
“With clearly no intent to do us harm,” Cora said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he could have. He doesn’t want to. He wants to play a game. He wants to play with me, not you. Or he would have left a legal puzzle, not a crossword.”
“Not knowing you can’t do them.”
“Hey. Haven’t you gotten enough jabs in?”
“Yeah, yeah. Fine. So what are we going to do about it?”
“Only one thing we can do. Wait and see what happens.”
“You don’t think we need protection?”
“I’ve got a gun. I don’t think he’s after you.”
“You don’t think?”
“Want me to get you a gun?”
“No.”
“So just take normal precautions. Don’t go out alone after dark.”
“Wonderful.”
“Hey. I’m not worried.” Cora considered, frowned. “Sherry’s not going to be happy.”
Chapter
17
“This is creepy,” Sherry said.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure you and Jennifer are safe,” Cora said, and bit her lip. She knew it was a stupid thing to say the minute the words were out of her mouth.
Sherry immediately picked up the baby. Jennifer, who’d been playing happily on the living room floor, burst into tears at this rude interruption of her fun.