A Grid For Murder

by Casey Mayes

  “So, it’s a dead end,” I said, suddenly deflated by my news.

  “Not necessarily. It took someone who knew what they were doing to even pick the right leaves.”

  “That’s something, I guess,” I said as a feeling nagged at the back of my mind. I lost it just as quickly as I’d had it. I knew the worst thing to do was focus on the missing information until it came back to me. If I ignored it, I would most likely have my answer soon enough.

  “Is that all?” I asked Zach. “Since I’m in Asheville, I’d be glad to investigate anything else for you.”

  “No, that’s it for now. You can come back to Parson’s Valley anytime you’d like.”

  “I’m on my way,” I said as I drove out of the parking lot. I tried my best to ignore my subconscious and the nagging feeling that something was hiding from me, hoping the information would pop back up, but I didn’t have any luck.

  It would come to me; I was certain of that.

  I just hoped it wouldn’t be too late to help our investigation.

  INSTEAD OF GOING HOME, I PARKED BY THE COURTHOUSE once I got back to Parson’s Valley, and I was trying to figure out what to do next when a voice startled me out of my thoughts.

  “Savannah, I need to talk to you,” someone said through my open car window.

  Chapter 9

  I LOOKED UP TO SEE LAURA MOON STARING DOWN AT ME, and from the expression on her face, she wasn’t going to tell me that I’d won Yard of the Month from the local garden club.

  “What can I do for you, Laura?” I asked as I got out of my car. I didn’t like the way she’d been looking down at me, and I wanted us to be on an equal level if we were going to have a conversation that I wasn’t all that anxious to have in the first place.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked pointedly. “What did Joanne ever do to you, anyway?”

  “I could ask you those very same questions,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “Do you think there’s a chance in the world that you would like that any more than I’m enjoying your accusations?”

  “Of course not,” she said, “but I didn’t kill her.”

  “Neither did I,” I said a little more emphatically.

  “You were still there when Sandra and I left Asheville.”

  “For two minutes,” I replied. “I got out of there just as fast as you two did. Anybody could have poisoned her, including the two of you.”

  “The only difference is that I know that we didn’t do it.”

  “Are you that sure about your friend?” I wasn’t trying to sow discord, but I was honestly curious.

  “Of course I am,” Laura said, but I saw something in her glance downward that told me I might have hit too close to home.

  “I’m assuming that you’ve already heard that Joanne was poisoned, Laura. Word gets around fast in a small town, doesn’t it?”

  “For your information, the police told me as soon as they found out. I was her next of kin, you know.”

  “That’s what I heard, but to be honest with you, the news kind of surprised me. I didn’t realize that you two were that close, let alone family. I couldn’t tell anything by the way you acted toward each other yesterday at Café Noir.”

  “We had drifted apart, but lately we were getting to know each other again,” Laura said softly. “She didn’t approve of my friendship with Sandy, and Joanne never made any apologies for expressing what she felt. Still, we were beginning to work things out, and then someone stole that opportunity from me, and I want to know who is responsible.”

  “So do I,” I replied. “Why do you think I’m running all over town making everyone uncomfortable with the questions I’m asking? Why do you just assume that I was the one who poisoned her?”

  “She told me she sold her first puzzle and that she was going to show it to you,” Laura said haltingly, as though she was beginning to lose faith in her theory that I was the killer.

  “That’s no motive for murder. Inheriting her estate might be considered one, though.”

  “There’s not much of an estate,” Laura said with a hint of wry laughter in her voice. “She’ll probably have more bills than assets by the time I’m finished, and I get the privilege of spending the next six months sorting through it all.”

  “At least she owned some property,” I said.

  “Are you talking about her house? From what she told me, she’d mortgaged it to the max. Face it, there’s nothing left.”

  “Then she must not have shared everything with you,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” From the way Laura was looking at me, I had no doubt that she was in the dark about Joanne’s land deal with Harry Pike. I debated sharing the information with her, but I knew that she’d find out sooner or later. And then another thought struck me. Why not tell her now and see how she reacted?

  “Check the courthouse records,” I said. “That’s what I did. Joanne had a great deal more money than you think.”

  “I’m sure you’re mistaken,” she said. A point suddenly occurred to her. “Why were you snooping into Joanne’s life, anyway? What motive would you have to do that?”

  “I’m going to solve her murder myself and clear my name in the process, Laura, whether anyone else likes it or not. I would have thought you’d be delighted to have someone working to find the real killer, so those of us who are innocent won’t stay under a cloud of suspicion.”

  “I want to find her killer more than you do,” Laura said plaintively.

  “Then I suggest you visit the courthouse, and then look me up,” I said. “The records are all there. You just have to know the right questions to ask.”

  Laura stared at me a second, and then said, “What can it hurt?” as she turned and headed toward the courthouse basement.

  In all honesty, I hadn’t expected such a burst of loyalty toward Joanne from Laura, and it surprised me. I could think of a few reasons she might be feeling it, though. If she hadn’t killed her cousin, she could sincerely be regretting the times in the past that she’d fought with Joanne, and the moments still ahead of them that she’d now lost.

  Laura’s reaction to Sandra’s name when I’d mentioned it had shown a flicker of doubt in her eyes. I was curious to see if Sandra had equal doubts about Laura, and there was only one way to do that. I’d spoken with all of the suspects save one anyway.

  It was time to find Sandra, and see if her motives for murder were any stronger than mine or anyone else’s on my list.

  SANDRA OLIVER WAS AT HER DESK WHEN I WALKED INTO the law firm where she worked as a receptionist. She looked startled to see me. “Savannah, what are you doing here? I don’t have you on my appointment schedule for today.”

  “That’s because I’m not on it,” I said. “I was hoping to speak with you for a few minutes, if you have the time.”

  “Sorry, I’d love to, but I’m awfully busy at the moment,” she said.

  I looked around the empty waiting room. The furniture was at least two decades old, and mismatched at that. The carpet was starting to fray on one edge, and the curtains hadn’t been cleaned since the Reagan administration. It wasn’t the most prosperous place in town, if the furnishings were any indication.

  “Is that so? Is Nathan in his office?” Nathan Haggerty was a brash young lawyer who’d come back to Parson’s Valley after graduating from Duke Law School. He’d received offers from some big firms, but he ultimately decided small-town law was what he wanted to do, so he’d bought out a dying law practice from his uncle and was trying to make a go of it. He and my husband had become good friends since we’d moved to town, though the two of us weren’t all that close.

  “He’s gone, but I have work of my own to do,” she said.

  I couldn’t argue with that, but I still wanted to speak with her. “Surely you get a break sometime during the day. This won’t take long, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “No, I’m sorry, but I can’t,” she said, clearly not sorry at all.

 
“That’s fine,” I said as I turned back toward the door. “I just thought you had a right to know what I heard about you. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I’ll go ahead and let Zach know. Don’t say I didn’t come here and try to get your side of it first.” I was bluffing, but I had to believe that Sandra couldn’t tell. At least that was what I was counting on.

  “What did you hear?” Sandra asked, her voice nearly shouting now.

  “It’s okay, really. I understand all about your situation. You’re a busy woman; I get it.”

  “I’m due for a break after all,” she said as she stood from her desk chair. “I can give you five minutes.”

  “That should be all I need. May we go outside, or do you need to stay here and answer the phones?”

  “Don’t worry about it. If we get any calls, the machine will pick up,” she said as she walked me to the door.

  Once we were outside, I had plans to get her talking about Laura and her relationship with Joanne, but Sandra was clearly not interested in anything but my bluff.

  We were barely out onto the porch when she stopped and looked at me. “What did you hear, Savannah?”

  “I understand that Joanne stole something valuable of yours,” I said.

  She looked at me sharply. “Where did you hear that? Is your husband reporting back to you, or have you been listening in on his telephone conversations?”

  “I wouldn’t dare. No one knows how sacred he holds those values more than I do,” I said, neatly skirting the question. It was a favorite trick I’d picked up from Jenny. If you don’t like the question, ignore it and answer one of your own. At the very least, it confuses the daylights out of people, and they rarely call you on it. Now, if she’d only allow me to deflect from her real question. “Is it true? Did Joanne steal something from you?”

  “No, of course not. It’s nonsense. What have I lost of value?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” I admitted.

  “There was nothing. If you don’t believe me, you should speak with Laura about it.”

  “I already did,” I said.

  That scored. Sandra looked long and hard at me before she spoke. “When did that happen?”

  “Right before I came to speak with you,” I said. It was true, every last word of it. If she made her own inferences from what I said, I couldn’t be held responsible, could I?

  “Are you saying Laura told you about something?” she asked.

  I just shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter how I heard it, does it?”

  “It matters to me,” she said.

  “Why? You already denied it ever happened.”

  She was stewing about telling me something; I could tell by the way she pursed her lips. If I just gave her enough time, maybe not more than a few minutes, I had a feeling she’d volunteer something I needed to hear.

  Just as she was about to break, I heard a familiar voice behind me. “Savannah, are you harassing my receptionist?”

  It was Nathan Haggerty.

  “Hello, Nathan,” I said. “Sandra and I were just chatting.”

  Sandra looked as though a spell had been broken within her. She glanced at her watch, and then said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  Once she was back inside, Nathan looked at me curiously. “Why do I have the feeling I just interrupted something?”

  “Beats me,” I said, not wanting to drag the young attorney into the investigation if I could help it.

  He let it go. “How’s Zach doing with the Clayton investigation?”

  “How did you hear he was working on the case?”

  Nathan laughed. Every time I looked at him, I had to fight the urge to ruffle his hair, but just because he was young didn’t mean that he wasn’t more than competent. I’d have to watch my step around him, or I’d end up telling him everything.

  “Come on, give me a little credit. You were seen with the victim not long before she died, and you’ve got a motive to kill her. It doesn’t take a Herculean effort to figure the rest of it out.”

  “As a matter of fact, he is working with the Asheville police on the homicide, but it’s nothing official.”

  “I heard about the chief’s embezzlement. I was kind of surprised they didn’t offer the job to Zach.”

  “They did,” I said, “but he turned them down. There’s a Captain North from the state police serving as acting chief for the moment.”

  “That wouldn’t be Gretchen North, would it?” He had a wry smile on his face as he asked the question.

  “I’m not sure. Why, do you know her?”

  He whistled softly under his breath. “Only by reputation. She’s supposed to be the best there is.”

  “Do you mean besides my husband?”

  Nathan laughed with genuine emotion. “Of course, that’s exactly what I meant.” His cell phone rang, and as he answered it, he looked at me and said, “Excuse me.”

  After a brief conversation, he put the phone away and said, “Sorry, but I have to go. Tell Zach that we need to go fishing again before he forgets how to bait the hook.”

  “You can tell him yourself, but I will give him your love.”

  Nathan made a face. “Don’t do that; he’ll think I’ve gone soft. Give him my regards, instead.”

  “You men are something else. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside just hearing it,” I said.

  Nathan smiled, and then ducked into his office. I hadn’t managed to shake Sandra up enough to talk to me in detail, but I had a feeling that if I took another run at her later, I might have more luck.

  In the meantime, I’d spoken with everyone in Parson’s Valley that I needed to, at least for the moment.

  It was time to head back home and organize my thoughts concerning everything that I’d learned so far.

  I WALKED INTO THE COTTAGE, FLIPPING THROUGH THE MAIL as I went. It was mostly bills, but I found a long envelope with my name on it among them, and I tore into it. My syndicate was a little erratic in my pay schedule, but the envelope was unmistakable. I pulled out the check, and realized that it would be quickly devoured by the bills already sitting on the counter.

  Such was the life of a midlist puzzlemaker.

  I threw the stack of letters on the coffee table and saw Joanne’s puzzle still sitting there from the day before.

  Picking it up, I glanced at it to see how difficult she’d made her first puzzle. I could remember my first one, as complicated as I’d ever made one. I had been petrified that everyone would be able to figure it out instantly. Instead, I got several complaints about how hard it had been, and after that, I’d lowered my sights a little. At least Joanne hadn’t made that mistake, too. As puzzles went, it wasn’t bad. I liked the way she’d used threes as a theme in one of the logic puzzles, and I was surprised that she’d been able to come up with it. It was a little more sophisticated than a neophyte’s puzzle should be, with patterns appearing within the puzzle beyond just the solution.

  I kept staring at it long past when I should have chucked it into the recycling bin.

  There was something familiar about it.

  And then it hit me.

  There was every reason in the world it should look memorable to me.

  I was pretty sure that I was the one who’d created it.

  “ZACH, I’VE GOT A PROBLEM,” I SAID A FEW MINUTES LATER when I called my husband’s cell phone.

  “Did someone threaten you? I told you to be careful nosing around town, Savannah.”

  “That’s not it,” I said, “but it’s still bad news. It turns out I may have had more of a motive to kill Joanne than we first realized.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I took a deep breath, and then plunged into it. “Do you remember the puzzle she published in the Asheville paper?”

  “I’m not likely to forget it. Why?”

  I tapped the paper with a finger as I explained, “I took a good look at it today, and there was something about it that looked real
ly familiar. It should. I created it two years ago.”

  There was a long pause, and then Zach asked, “Savannah, I don’t mean to be obvious, but how can you be certain? There have to be a limited number of ways to come up with those puzzles. Isn’t it possible it’s just a coincidence?”

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  I tried to keep the exasperation I was feeling out of my voice. “Zach, a puzzle has the creator’s fingerprints all over it. It just takes a trained eye to see it. This is one of mine. I dug through my files and found the original. She didn’t change a thing on hers. The empty spaces are identical, along with every solution. It’s mine. There’s no doubt about it.”

  “Who have you told about this?”

  “Nobody. The second I discovered it, I called you. Why?”

  I could hear him take a deep breath on the other end of the line, and then he said, “Don’t share this with anyone just yet, okay?”

  I thought about that for a few seconds. “Isn’t that concealing evidence? You can’t just bury this. Your principles are too important to you, Zach.”

  “Savannah, don’t be stupid. Do you honestly want North to think you killed Joanne? Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” I knew my husband loved me, and that he’d do just about anything in the world for me, but I couldn’t let him cover up information on an active case, no matter how bad it would make me look.

  “I’ll come up with something. In the meantime, put that paper and your original puzzle in a safe place. We might need them both.”

  “I’ll take care of it, but I don’t like this one bit.”

  “What do we gain by telling North right now? It’s only pertinent if you killed Joanne. You didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then we’re not even obstructing justice, as far as I’m concerned.”

  I whistled into the phone. “Are you listening to yourself, Zach?”

  “Good-bye, Savannah.”

  After we hung up, I wondered about Zach’s decision to conceal this new evidence from Captain North, but I had to trust his instincts about it. What he’d said made sense. I hadn’t committed the crime, so there was no reason the state police captain needed another motive for me to have done it. Was that really true, or was I starting to slide on the slippery slope that had already gotten Zach? As I sat there, I realized that acting rash would only get me in trouble, so I decided to do what my husband had asked me to, at least for the moment. I took both papers and stashed them in our fireproof safe in the master bedroom closet. Why anyone would want to steal them was beyond me, but I trusted my husband’s gut feelings.