A Crossword to Die For

by Nero Blanc

  Belle nodded, then cocked her head to one side. “Marie-Claude, again.… But Father was robbed, Rosco—”

  “I hate to say this … but for the sake of playing devil’s advocate, it is possible that the culprit was simply a thief—stealing from a man he assumed was asleep.”

  “Arrrgh,” Belle groaned. “I hate this. The closer we get, the farther away we seem to be.”

  Rosco shook his head. “No, we’re closer than we think. We just haven’t put the pieces together properly.” He looked around the town. “I wonder where Oak Lane is?”

  Belle stepped out of the Jeep.

  “Where are you going?”

  She laughed. “Into that dry-cleaning establishment across the street. I’m going to ask them where Oak Lane is … But don’t worry; I won’t let on I’m with you. Heaven forbid you should get caught driving around with someone who asks for directions.”

  Belle stepped along the sidewalk and disappeared into the dry cleaners, while Rosco reached for the Use Your Head! crossword and stared at the answers she’d filled in. For all her complaining about the peculiar choice of words, she hadn’t made a single mistake. Her red ball-point pen marched confidently over the paper. Rosco glanced at the two corners that had so irritated her. UOLA,” he mumbled, “UOLA …”

  Belle returned a minute later. “Oak Lane is about a half a mile further down the road over the bridge. We make a right at a You Save and Tell All gas station, and it’s the next street.” Belle noticed that Rosco had a smug smile on his face. “What …? What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “I just figured why the puzzle constructor put UOLA in the puzzle instead of U-C-L-A. He couldn’t put U-C-L-A in.”

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  Rosco handed Belle the crossword. “Look at that corner. 49-Down … The answer is SHOE, and the last letter is an E, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, next word over, 50-Down: Some lodges; abbr.… Knights of Columbus … Focus on the C.”

  “Right.”

  “Keep going on the diagonal.” Rosco pointed his finger at the lower-left-hand corner of the puzzle and moved it on an angle up to the upper-right corner. “The O in UOLA has to be there to spell out the message. The constructor couldn’t use UCLA, because he—or she—needed that O.”

  Belle silently mouthed the letters that ran from corner to corner. When she’d finished she read the message aloud. “ECOLOGICAL STAIN … But what do you think it means?”

  “My initial guess is that this may come full circle back to Carl Oclen … Maybe your father—and possibly Debbie—stumbled on to something big while researching your dad’s paper on the Olmec people. For instance, maybe one of Oclen’s offshore rigs has been secretly leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and your father was going to blow the whistle on the whole thing.”

  Belle stared at Rosco. “And Oclen killed Deborah Hurley and my father?”

  Rosco thought for a long moment. “Probably not Oclen, himself … He’s not the kind of guy who’d get his own hands dirty … But money talks, Belle; and he could have hired someone to take care of business for him … Which also means that even if we’d gotten a better description of the guy who accompanied your dad to the Jarvis counter—well, it might not mean much.”

  “A hit man with peach nectar,” Belle said quietly.

  “That’s if your father was poisoned with prussic acid.” Rosco grew silent; his brow furrowed. “However, the only way that situation would play out successfully is if Oclen had prior knowledge of your father’s fondness for peach nectar … Then there’s also the matter of finding and hiring an assassin and bringing that person to Trenton in less than twelve hours’ time.” Rosco sighed. “We’re talking a lot of lucky coincidences.” He put the Jeep in gear and began driving toward Rachel Volsay’s house.

  “A lot of ifs.” Belle agreed. As she spoke, she pointed through the windshield. “There’s the bridge. And that must be Kings Creek below it … The gas station should be on the other side. You Save and Tell All, the lady at the dry cleaners said.”

  Rosco angled the Jeep onto the narrow steel-decked bridge. The creek was withered and parched from the summer’s heat. On the other side sat the USAv•AN•TELL•ALL gas station.

  “I see they like cute names around here,” Belle said.

  “The USA part is a nice touch.”

  “It must be a local brand.… Okay, now a right on Tucker.” Belle pointed to the sign at the far side of the service station.

  Rosco did as he was told, then made another quick right into Oak Lane, before proceeding down the shady street until he was abreast of Number 127. It was a small, wood-frame house, the last in a block of modest, but well-maintained, single-family dwellings. White vinyl siding and a side-facing screened-in porch completed the picture. The porch fronted what Belle assumed was a continuation of Kings Creek. Two young boys in the yard across the street tossed a baseball back and forth as a spaniel-type dog dashed between them, hoping for an error.

  “Small-town America … It has a beauty all its own …” Belle murmured as Rosco parked near Rachel Volsay’s mailbox. “Picture perfect … I think we’re barking up the wrong tree here—excuse the pun. No one living in a setting as serene as this conspires with criminals. And they don’t want to hear about possible corporate crimes, either …” She hesitated, her hands on her knees, her neck suddenly bent in discouraged frustration. “I think we should turn around and go home, Rosco. I have a feeling we’re making a big mistake, and that this is probably going to be a horribly awkward and painful situation.”

  Rosco took her hand. “Belle, we have to find out what your father did—and who he saw—before he arrived at Marie-Claude’s. If Rachel Volsay can’t help us, and if it’s obvious she’s sharing everything she knows, then we’ll make our apologies, repeat our condolences, and leave.”

  “But why not simply pursue the hired murderer scenario you started spinning? ECOLOGICAL STAIN and Carl Oclen’s possible connection … That seems a lot more logical than this.” She gestured, the motion taking in the pretty lane, the tidy houses, the kids, their pets: the total harmony and tranquillity of the scene.

  “One step at a time.” Rosco stepped from the Jeep, walked around to the other side, and opened the passenger door. “Just look at this initial stage as a trip to the dentist. It’ll be over before you know it.”

  Belle attempted a brave smile. “Where’s my novocaine?”

  CHAPTER 32

  When Rachel Volsay opened the front door, Belle was surprised to find someone so apparently calm and composed. A woman in her late fifties, Deborah Hurley’s aunt wore a tailored charcoal-gray suit and low-heeled black pumps; her wavy auburn hair had just been “done,” and gold-and-silver-toned earrings complemented her suit. However, two red and puffy eyes belied her outward ease, and the powder and rouge on her cheeks couldn’t disguise the fact that she’d been crying.

  “Yes?” Rachel Volsay looked from Belle to Rosco, visibly drawing back as she scanned his face. “I’ve already told the police everything I know … So has Mike. Mike Hurley. Deborah’s husband. I guess you two are from out of town … big-city homicide—”

  Belle interrupted with an apologetic: “I’m Belle Graham … And this is my husband, Rosco Polycrates. We were nearby and thought we should pay our respects …”

  Rachel fixed Rosco with a disapproving glare; Belle, she treated with a little more warmth. “Come in,” she finally said.

  “I … I know this is a difficult time for you, Mrs. Volsay, and we don’t wish to intrude—”

  “She was so young …” Debbie’s aunt choked back a sob.

  “Yes,” Belle answered, “yes, she was.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more of that murder talk you were spouting about the other day. It’s hard enough …” Rachel Volsay pulled a tissue from a box and dabbed at her eyes. “I have an appointment shortly—down at the funeral parlor …” Again, tears threatened to overwhelm her. “I
don’t know what’s wrong with me … I’m like a leaky bucket, but I’ve lost so many loved ones …”

  Rosco cleared his throat, and Rachel regarded him sharply. She then focused on Belle. “I’m sure your husband was close to your father, Miss Graham, and this isn’t an easy time for him either, but I’d be less than candid if I told you I liked private investigators. My late husband was a state trooper. He didn’t trust them, and neither do I.”

  Belle glanced in Rosco’s direction. “Would you be more comfortable if my husband waited in the car? Because I’d like to talk with you for a moment—if that’s agreeable.”

  In answer, Debbie’s aunt merely nodded. Then she sat stiffly in a rocking chair and indicated that Belle was also free to take a seat. A sky blue couch devoid of throw pillows or any other signs of comfort faced an equally austere coffee table. Belle chose the couch’s far corner while Rosco walked to the door:

  “My wife and I wish to intrude as little as possible, Mrs. Volsay. I have no problem waiting outside.”

  After the front door closed, Belle turned toward her unwilling hostess. “He’s a good person. He only came along as a way of comforting and supporting me.”

  “I’m sure he is.” The words were toneless. Rachel sighed and reached for another tissue. “You’ll have to forgive me … In the last few days, I’ve been just at sixes and sevens—”

  “Of course you have,” was Belle’s soft reply. She paused and took a long and steadying breath. “Mrs. Volsay … when we spoke the other day—”

  “I told you I don’t want to hear about that murder stuff again, Miss Graham. Whatever happened to your father and my Deb are two different—”

  “Belle.” She tried for an encouraging smile.

  “Belle.” Rachel Volsay used her visitor’s first name, although her demeanor didn’t mellow. “Your dad seemed like a nice enough man when I met him, and everyone knows my Deb was a pure angel—”

  Belle sat forward on the couch. “So, you did meet my father?”

  “Yes. I thought I told you that when we talked on the phone.” Deborah’s aunt’s swollen eyes narrowed with increasing mistrust. “He dropped by … Told me he was passing through, and wanted to meet ‘the lady Debbie thought so highly of’ … It would have been the day before he died …”

  “The day before he died.” Belle repeated the phrase.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Belle nodded slowly. “So … So, Father came here before he was scheduled to visit me in Newcastle … But I guess it wasn’t like having a total stranger visit, because Deborah must have spoken of him.”

  “Deb and Mike, both. They were very fond of him.”

  Belle took another breath and tried for a brighter smile. “Did my father seem distracted, or upset about anything? Or did he mention if he was paying other calls nearby?”

  “If he had other people to see, he kept it to himself,” was the starchy answer. “As to his being upset: He wasn’t in the least. In fact, he couldn’t have been more pleasant or charming. But you must know that.”

  “Yes,” was all Belle could think to respond. Everyone in the universe, it seemed, knew a different Ted Graham than she. “What did you talk about—if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Nothing much …” Rachel Volsay allowed herself to lean slightly back in the rocker. “He brought me up-to-date on how Deb and Mike were doing in Florida. Commented on how pretty the creek must be when it’s full. I told him he couldn’t imagine how nice … And you can’t, either. When the butterflies come—or in daffodil season—why, it’s just like a picture book. When Deb was a kid, she and all her friends used to fish in it, and build dams in the spring. Regular little beavers, they were … Oh, and we talked some about my sister, and of course, Deb’s sister—my other niece …” Rachel Volsay’s face creased with sudden fury. “That damn disease! The doctors tell you it’s a family thing—a ‘predisposition’ … like the Tollivers—”

  Belle interrupted what she intuited was going to be another lengthy aside. “Mrs. Volsay, I know how much my father relied on Deborah—”

  “And he should have done. She was a wonderful girl. Real steady—”

  “And how much she helped him with all his research—”

  “He told me that. As I said, he was real nice.”

  Belle straightened her spine. It was now or never if she was going to start tackling the serious questions. She tried for a third and even more engaging smile. “Debbie said that my father had started carrying a notebook with him. One of those composition books with the black and white covers. When his body was found, it wasn’t among his effects … Do you happen to remember if he had it with him when he stopped by?”

  “The one he drew pictures in?”

  “Yes,” Belle said although this was a new piece of information: her father as a budding artist—as well as a naturalist.

  “Sure, I remember it. He sketched the house and the street … No offense, but they weren’t very good … And he went down to do a drawing of the creek—and the birds … Deb told me he was a birder.” Rachel paused to think. “She was real concerned about what happened to that notebook, too … Looked all over the house for it when I told her he’d dropped by for a visit.”

  Belle felt her shoulders tense up. “But she didn’t find it?”

  Rachel shook her head. “If it had been anywhere in this home, Deb would have unearthed it. Like a terrier, she could be—”

  “So my father must have taken it with him when he left you?”

  “Must have.” Rachel shrugged. “I told her that, too. I don’t mean to be impertinent, but I don’t see why you’re so interested in a cardboard book with some not very good pictures in it. Unless it’s sentimental?”

  Belle nodded, and manufactured what she hoped was a decent lie. “Yes, it was sentimental. I’m trying to locate everything he owned.” Then she considered the fragments of information Rachel Volsay had supplied; the only possible conclusion seemed to be that Theodore Graham had recorded important and potentially incriminating data in his notebook, that Deborah Hurley knew this, and that when she’d learned it was missing, she’d immediately flown north to her aunt’s home in the hopes it had been inadvertently left there.

  “Did Debbie get a chance to visit with you often? Or was last week’s trip a surprise?” Belle’s tone was conversational.

  “A surprise. A nice surprise … Mike could get her cheap standby tickets on account of she was a military dependent. He comes up a lot too; technically he’s still stationed in Bayonne. Florida’s just temporary duty for him …” Rachel’s mouth tightened, and her voice wavered. “Like I said, it was a nice surprise … But I wish … I wish … Well, if she hadn’t come up here when she did …” The words trailed off. Rachel hung her head.

  They sat quietly for several moments, Debbie Hurley’s aunt staring down at the soggy tissues clutched in her lap, and Belle looking around the immaculate, if strangely impersonal, room. Eventually her eyes settled on a table beneath the window, and its sole decoration: a small box inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

  “I don’t want to take any more of your time, Mrs. Volsay. And again, I apologize for the intrusion … But there’s one more item I can’t account for—a box my father may have brought with him. It was blue—”

  Rachel Volsay didn’t hesitate a second. “Bright blue. I thought it was an odd color for a man … He seemed quite worried about it.”

  “Worried? What do you mean?”

  “Well, he wouldn’t let it out of his sight. Even took it with him when he went to the bathroom.”

  Rather than sit in his Jeep, Rosco had walked the thirty feet to the end of Oak Lane. There was a large yellow street sign surrounded with a dozen red reflectors reading DEAD END, and he found himself wondering how many unsuspecting motorists had ended up plunging their cars into the creek before the New Jersey Highway Department had deemed it necessary to post the warning. Next to the sign was a park bench. It had a bronze placard indicating
that it had been placed there by the residents of Oak Lane in 1998 in memory of Rosa Tolliver. Rosco sat on the bench and began tossing pebbles into the creek bed. Several small birds started up out of the undergrowth surrounding the stream’s far side while in the treetops an eruption of noisy cawing was followed by the swooping flight of one and then two argumentative crows. Rosco looked up and followed their movement as they disappeared from sight.

  A voice startled him out of his reverie. “I don’t think I know you.”

  Rosco turned around and saw a man standing about fifteen feet away on the road. He wore a dark suit that seemed out of place on a sunny summer morning on a tree-lined lane.

  “Are you talking to me?”

  “Sure am.”

  “Well, I’m not from around here …”

  “That much I figured. I don’t mean to seem rude, mister, but there are a lot of children in this neighborhood … We try to keep an eye out for strangers.” The term “unwelcome and possibly predatory strangers” remained unspoken but very much present.

  “A good policy,” Rosco replied with an affable nod. He stood. “I’m visiting Mrs. Volsay … Or I should say, my wife is visiting Mrs. Volsay. I’m just waiting for her to finish up.”

  The man smiled for the first time. The smile dropped years from his face, placing him in his early thirties. “You’re not Rosco, are you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.” Rosco stepped forward.

  The man extended his hand. “Mike Hurley here.”

  “Of course. Sorry, I guess I expected you to be in uniform.”

  They shook hands. Rosco looked away briefly, then brought his eyes back to meet Mike’s. “I’m sorry about Debbie. That’s got to be … That’s got to be devastating … I’d be a wreck if anything happened to my wife.”

  Mike didn’t answer for a moment. His young face creased in pain. “Yeah … Yeah, thanks. You’re right … It hasn’t been easy.”

  “Do the police have any clues—a description of the car or any idea who was driving it?”

  “Nothing yet. But two of the officers went to high school with me—they’ve got everyone in the department on the case. I’m sure they’ll come up with something.”