A Crossword to Die For

by Nero Blanc

  “I’m late … I’ll be in touch.”

  “But I—”

  Woody was gone before Belle had time to protest further. She walked to the corridor railing and looked down into the condo complex. There was not a trace of the man. Not a sound of footsteps, not a car door opening or engine starting. Belle closed her eyes. Why did she find the discovery of strangers in her father’s life so disturbing? What had she expected? Even if her father had discussed his relationship to Woody and Debbie, even if he’d described them in meticulous detail, why would she imagine those two people could feel the remotest connection to, or concern for her?

  Belle had finally succumbed to hunger and gone off for a midmorning feast. Scrambled eggs, and cinnamon toast, and grapefruit juice, and extra-crispy hash brown potatoes, and coffee—not tea—drenched with cream: She did nothing halfway. Cholesterol-hell, Rosco said of her eating habits. And he was right.

  Climbing the stairs to her father’s apartment, she encountered Debbie Hurley on her way back down. “I put the mail on Ted’s desk like always,” she sang out.

  Belle stopped. This wasn’t a situation she’d anticipated. Nor was it one she appreciated. “You were in my father’s apartment?”

  Debbie gave her a look that plainly stated: Duh! then continued in a chirpy tone. “I mean, it makes him not feel so, like gone, you know?”

  “Look, Debbie … I think we have to do things differently from now on—”

  “Oh, yeah, I know … I mean, there isn’t so much work for me anymore …”

  Belle drew in a breath. “None, actually.”

  Debbie’s face fell. She opened her mouth, but didn’t speak.

  “I’m going to be selling my father’s condo. In fact, I’ve already contacted a realtor. In order for the place to be shown, I need to pack up his books and papers and ship them up North. The rest of the furnishings—”

  “But what about his project on the Olmec civilization?” Debbie seemed stricken at the idea of forsaking “Ted’s” final opus.

  “I’m afraid it will have to be shelved. I’ll see that his extant research is delivered to Princeton. That’s the last university he worked for. If someone there chooses to continue what Father began or make use of the information—”

  Debbie Hurley’s lips compressed. She looked as if she was going to begin crying again; and Belle found herself gripping the banister as if it were capable of transmitting emotional as well as physical support.

  “I’ll also see that you get two weeks’ severance—”

  “It’s not the money—”

  Belle’s jaw tightened automatically. “No, I didn’t think so …”

  “I mean, he was your dad! You must know how crazy everyone was about him!”

  “Well, no, I didn’t,” was Belle’s unhappy reply. “I’m sorry, Debbie, but you must realize by now that my father and I weren’t close.” Belle paused. There seemed nothing more to say. As an afterthought, she added, “Oh, by the way, Woody stopped by. I had to break the news to him … It seemed to upset him quite a bit although he clearly didn’t feel like talking … at least not to me. If there are other friends or acquaintances I should contact, I’d like to have a list of—”

  But Debbie Hurley’s goggle-eyed stare stopped Belle’s speech. “Woody? Ted didn’t know anyone named Woody.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Belle closed the apartment door behind her, leaning heavily against it as she tried to make sense of Debbie’s statement and those that had followed. “Ted” hadn’t known anyone named Woody—of that Debbie had been adamant. And yet this Woody person had stood on the doorstep, looking for all the world like a man who’d suddenly discovered he’d lost his dearest friend.

  But what had he actually said? Belle tried to reconstruct their brief conversation. As she thought, she unconsciously slid the chain lock in place, then stepped back and regarded this paranoid piece of handiwork. What was she worried about? Debbie Hurley sneaking in? Or the reappearance of a man who might—or might not—have been a close friend of her father’s?

  I’ve got to get Debbie’s set of keys, Belle told herself, but made no move to seek out her father’s assistant. Instead, she walked slowly into the office as she tried to recall her conversation with the man in the tattered blue shorts.

  Maybe Debbie’s wrong, she reasoned. After all, she isn’t necessarily an authority on Father’s life; she’s only known him for a few brief months. Then Belle remembered that she herself had supplied the term “friend”—not Woody; and that although he’d definitely hinted at a long-standing association with her father, his primary concern had seemed to be whether “Ted” had been accompanied by someone when he’d died. In fact, reflecting on the scene, what Belle most recalled was the man’s sense of prickly anger—almost as if he’d expected to hear the news.

  While Belle thought, she began opening file cabinet drawers in preparation for packing her father’s effects, but the volume of paperwork all at once seemed more than she wanted to tackle. Instead, she decided to begin with the photos. She knew she’d feel a good deal more comfortable with the gazes of those unknown faces stashed safely out of sight.

  She found a box and started pulling pictures off the wall. The snapshots and portraits of her parents she would save, and the ones whose backdrops were obviously academic. But when she came to the photo of her father as a fisherman, and the one taken in the mystery restaurant, she paused. What’s the point in keeping those? She laid the restaurant snapshot on the desk, then reached for the picture of the boat. Something was taped to its back. Belle turned over the frame, found an envelope, cut it free, and turned it face up. In her father’s old-fashioned script the word “Woody” appeared as plain as day.

  A cry of triumph rang through her brain: Miss know-it-all’s not as smart as she thinks she is! Then the obvious secrecy of her father’s behavior turned puzzling. Belle slit open the envelope. Inside was a purchase paper—a receipt for a 42-foot Hatteras fishing boat. The paper was dated four years earlier, and Theodore A. Graham was listed as the boat’s new owner. The yacht broker was Sunny Day Boats of Sanibel.

  “Lemme think now … It was three … no, four years ago … Yeah, that’s right … four and change … ’cause it must have been March. The weather was gorgeous. Real nice. Mellow, you know … before the heat starts to build …” The owner of Sunny Day Boats graced Belle with a broad, untroubled smile, then leaned back in a well-padded swivel chair while she almost simultaneously leaned forward. She yearned to interrupt him and hurry along the process, but forced herself to bide her time. “Jimbo” Case was clearly a man accustomed to a slower rhythm in conversation as well as in life. “I tell ya … The Gulf in March is darned near perfection itself … I take that back. It is perfection.”

  “So my father paid you in cash?”

  Case nodded slowly. “I mean, how’s that for a salesman’s dream? Dr. Graham and Woody were the easiest customers I ever did see.”

  A puzzled frown creased Belle’s forehead as she pushed the official papers across the yacht broker’s desk top. “My father is the only name listed, Mr. Case.”

  “Jimbo, please! Call me Jimbo, or Big Jim, if you’d prefer. Some folks have a fondness for one way of speaking; some another … I’ve been Jimbo near as long as I’ve been on this earth, and Big Jim, well … you can imagine how long that nickname’s tagged around after me …” He held up two large hands and allowed himself a low, good-natured chuckle that rolled across his ample belly. “I never was no puny kid … So … Now, none of that Mr. Case business. I know you people up North go in for the formality bit, but it makes folks down here downright uncomfortable—”

  “Jimbo … My father’s name—”

  “Good girl!” Case grinned again and peered at the form. “You’re right as rain, little lady. Theodore Graham appears to be the sole owner. However, I distinctly recall Woody’s part of the transaction. Heck, he was the guy who tooled around in that pretty little Hatteras. Not your dad. I don’t rec
all ever seeing Dr. Graham at the helm …” Case’s previously serene brow also creased. “Come to think on it, I don’t believe he spent a whole heap of time aboard, either … So, you know what I’m thinking, little lady? I’m thinking your daddy bought the boat … I mean he was a professor, an upstanding member of society, and all that …”

  Belle nodded. As opposed to Woody? she wanted to interject but didn’t.

  “… So he buys the boat, and Woody pays him back … Or some such scheme … ’Cause otherwise why would Woody be beboppin’ around in the Hatteras without your dad? I mean, everyone around about here assumes that boat belongs to Woody … And I’ve got to admit, before you came waltzin’ in here, I’d plumb forgot the whole transaction … Except the cash part.” He beamed again, the expression benign and smug. “That was sweet.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know Woody’s last name, would you?”

  The happy smile turned thoughtful. “Come to think on it, no … Woody’s just Woody … like I’m Jimbo … Last names don’t always stick with us boat crowd. Woody must be short for something … Woodson, Woodburn … Heck, I’d call myself Woody, too, if I was stuck with a mouthful like that …” Jimbo let out a small harumph and said, “Heck, maybe he plays the clarinet, and somebody made a joke …”

  A thousand additional questions peppered Belle’s brain, but she’d begun to intuit that Big Jim Case was not the man to answer them. She returned the purchase papers to her purse, then stood, a polite smile affixed to her face. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the boat is moored, Mr. … Jimbo?”

  The sunny expression returned to Case’s wide face. “There you go, little lady. You’re getting the hang of it …” He stood, extended his hand, and shook Belle’s while exuding the steady charm of a person adept at selling things. “Sure, I know where she’s moored. She’s at the Anchorage Marina … A nice setup. A real class act.” Then his eyes and mouth turned genuinely sad. “Sorry about your dad, little lady. I’m sure he’ll be powerful missed …”

  Belle produced another falsely hearty smile. “Thank you … Jimbo.” Then she turned toward the door.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something, little lady?”

  “I put the bill of sale back in my purse—”

  “Like, maybe the name of the boat? The Anchorage is a real big facility. Hunting up a no-name Hatteras is gonna be tough.”

  Belle nodded and smiled again. By now she recognized how this game was played. “You wouldn’t happen to remember it, would you?”

  “Why, sure I do! It’s Wooden Shoe … Like in the kiddies’ poem … ‘sailed off in a wooden shoe’ …”

  Belle finished the line in her head: “into a sea of blue.”

  The Anchorage was a marina, resort, and upscale shopping complex rolled into one: a miniuniverse of verdantly landscaped walkways, tile-roofed buildings, and palm trees threading their spiky leaves against an azure sky. Oversized terra-cotta pots of pink and coral geraniums clustered at every turning; thatched gazebos invited sitting, and bike stands stood at the ready, sporting not racing machines but giant three-wheelers for relaxed and leisurely pedaling. Belle studied the scene; she couldn’t imagine her father comfortable in such a Sybarite’s paradise, but then she hadn’t pictured her father as a yacht owner, either.

  A teenaged attendant in khaki shorts and a blue polo shirt emblazoned with white scroll letters announcing The Anchorage was busy sweeping a single fallen geranium leaf into a pristine metal canister. When Belle asked directions to the marina, he looked at her as if she’d lost her marbles.

  “You mean, by the water?” he asked.

  Belle didn’t retort that marinas—given the origin of the appellation—were always on the water. After all, she was the one who’d asked the stupid question. She hurried down the walkway toward the shore.

  But there, as Big Jim Case had suggested, a sea of large—and larger—boats greeted her: hundreds upon hundreds, so it seemed. Where Wooden Shoe floated among them, Belle didn’t have a clue.

  She found the marina office, where another remarkably easygoing and unrepentantly male greeted her. “Hey there, young lady.”

  “I’m looking for Wooden Shoe—”

  “Woody’s boat?”

  “Mmmm.” Belle nodded.

  “You just missed him, pretty lady. Sorry to say.”

  Belle pasted on what she imagined resembled a disappointed but hopeful smile. “I’ll be on the island another day or two, so I can stop by—”

  “Oh, you won’t find him coming back by then … When ole Woody heads out, he’s gone a couple of weeks or more … sometimes upward of a month or two. The man’s what they call a free spirit—”

  “Was his friend Ted usually on those trips?”

  “Who?”

  “Ted Graham … Theodore Graham … Did he ordinarily accompany Woody—”

  “You mean, ship out with him?”

  Belle nodded again.

  “With Woody?”

  Belle felt as though she’d been trapped in an endless game of twenty questions. “That’s right.”

  “I never heard of anyone named Ted Graham … But I’ll tell you right now, Woody never takes anyone on that boat of his. Oh, an occasional fishing buddy for a day, but never for an extended stay … Like I said, he’s a free spirit … Goes where the breezes flow.”

  Belle considered the information. “You wouldn’t happen to know his full name, would you?”

  The man studied her, his expression suddenly less friendly. “Sure I do,” he answered, although the information wasn’t forthcoming.

  “I guess I should fess up,” Belle admitted. “Woody and my dad are old friends … army buddies, in fact … if it is the same Woody … Ted Graham was … is another pal … Anyway, since I was passing through Sanibel, I thought I should say ‘Hi.’ Dad would be furious if I didn’t … In fact … in fact, he gave me some personal papers to pass along should I happen to run into him …” Even as she spun out the story, she realized it had a major hole. If she knew the name of the boat, why wouldn’t she also know the true identity of its owner? Belle’s smile grew brighter and broader in the hopes her interrogator wouldn’t notice the flaws. And she was in luck.

  “Horace Llewellen, of course. Least that’s what’s printed on the Hatteras’s Coast Guard documentation. But I’ll betcha he doesn’t let your dad or this Ted Graham character ever call him Horace.”

  Belle grinned. “I guess not … So, you’ll tell Woody I was asking for him?”

  “When—and if—I see him.”

  “When you see him, of course … Nothing urgent … But I do want to pass along the information from my dad.” Belle produced a business card from her purse. “He can contact me here.”

  The man took the card, peered at it, and cocked his head to one side. “Crossword puzzle editor, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “In Massachusetts …”

  “Yup.” Belle felt her smile muscles growing weary.

  “You should move down here, pretty lady. I read somewhere that Sarasota County—that’s north of here—is the crossword capital of the country … maybe even the world.”

  “Is that so?” Belle considered this reply less than stellar, but it was all she seemed able to muster.

  “You have to be pretty brainy to do those things, don’tcha?”

  “Well, it takes a certain—”

  “Me? I can’t even remember that rule about ‘i’ and ‘e’ and ‘c.’ But I know P-O-S-H: Port out, starboard home.” He tucked Belle’s card in his wallet. “I’ll be sure to tell ole Woody to give you a jingle … but it may be some time.”

  Strolling back through the marina toward her car, Belle experienced a combination of relief and dissatisfaction. Jim Case’s breezy assumption that her father had purchased Wooden Shoe and then transferred the title to a friend who lacked a retired professor’s stable financial history seemed not only reasonable but a foregone conclusion—which made Horace Llewellen merely another
unsolved mystery in the larger unknown that had been her father’s existence.

  Belle considered how little she knew of the Theodore Graham who’d bought boats and formed friendships—and who’d also apparently inspired a good deal of fond admiration. She sighed, and as she sighed, her eyes strayed to the ground, causing her to run almost square into a man hurrying along the marina walk toward her.

  “Excuse me, miss.”

  “Oh!” Belle jumped. What she saw as she glanced up was a dark suit, a starched white shirt, a hat shaped like a fedora held formally in one hand. In the near distance behind the man’s back idled a motor yacht of voluptuous size and sparkle. It looked newly minted, and its crew, busy attaching docking lines, looked freshly equipped, too.

  “Excuse me, miss,” this impeccably accoutered specimen repeated. “I have just come from Europe—directly.”

  Belle turned around, imagining he was addressing someone else. No one was nearby, and it dawned on her that he’d mistaken her for someone else. But before she could rectify the situation, he continued. “I have been gone a good while. Can you tell me the name of the bartender in this establishment?”

  Belle stared at the suit, at the hat, at leather shoes so polished their reflection stung the eye. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been here before … But you might inquire at the marina office … or in the restaurant …”

  It was only after she returned to her father’s apartment that she considered how odd the exchange had been. And what an unfamiliar accent the man had had. It wasn’t Western European, she thought. Maybe from the East? A Slavic language perhaps? Or Israeli? Or maybe Russian or Ukrainian with an overlay of British schooling? The only certainty was that it seemed entirely too exotic to encounter in a quintessentially American resort like the Anchorage on Sanibel.

  Belle continued sorting through books and belongings as she pondered this newest curiosity. Gradually she became aware of a voice talking into a phone next door. Angry and insistent words stabbed their way through the open veranda door. Belle walked outside; the voice hissed and growled in the air, but its owner was invisible behind the dividing wall that separated one veranda from another. “Nyet,” she heard, and then a string of loud sounds whose meaning she couldn’t remotely fathom.