Last Puzzle & Testament

by Parnell Hall

  “Just the point I was about to make, Chief,” Cora said. “Aaron, you’re going to have to take off so I can get this puzzle nailed.” She gave him a look. “You know how it is.”

  “I do, and I can’t say I appreciate it,” Aaron replied. “Look here, Chief. I understand your not wanting me to print the clues. That makes perfect sense. But not knowing them is something else. What’s the harm in me knowing the solution if I assure you I’m not going to print it?”

  Cora Felton smiled. She knew what Aaron was doing. Aaron Grant, who knew Cora Felton could no more solve a crossword puzzle than she could fly to the moon, was helping to stall Chief Harper to give Sherry a chance to work on the puzzle.

  Not that she needed long. While Aaron and the Chief were still arguing, Sherry appeared in the doorway. She smiled, said, “Okay, Cora, I programmed the computer for you. All you have to do is type in the answers and print it out. Oh, hi, Chief. Aaron fill you in about Chester?”

  Cora took advantage of Sherry jumping into the conversation to beat a hasty retreat to the office. She went inside, shut the door, and sat down at the computer.

  The solution was there on the screen. Sherry had also laid a hard copy on the keyboard, just to save Cora the anxiety of having to figure out how to print it out.

  Cora picked it up, looked at it, compared it to the clues.

  ACROSS

  25. Amiable

  30. Chinese gelatin

  35. Perfect rejoinder

  40. Barbie’s buddy

  41. Do ____ (second chances)

  44. Wipe out

  48. Unfruitful

  52. Me first man

  57. Peru city

  61. Alda

  64. So far

  DOWN

  23. Attitudes

  25. Wolf gathering

  26. Monster

  27. Close recycling place, so to speak?

  31. Worry

  36. Golf course features

  45. Character in “Wheel of Time” books

  48. Stop

  49. Spry

  Cora scanned the grid hastily, noted that the long answer was laundromat. She frowned. How did you get laundromat from close recycling place?

  She studied the puzzle. Her eyes widened. Of course. Close was a homonym. Close equaled clothes. That was the so to speak. It was a clothes recycling place. A terrible, terrible pun. Which was to be expected after post office.

  Still, Cora wouldn’t have gotten it. But Sherry had, and Sherry’d saved the day. Now all Cora had to do was stall a few more minutes to let Chief Harper think she’d had time to solve this new piece of the puzzle, then she could bring him the solution and that would be that.

  Cora Felton tipped back in her chair and smiled with a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. Now that the peril was past, she felt perfectly pleased with herself.

  So what if she hadn’t gotten laundromat?

  She’d gotten Ken.

  “What’s the address again?” Cora Felton said.

  “Nineteen Birch Street,” Sherry said.

  “Think we can find it?”

  “It’s a small town.”

  “Even so.”

  Cora and Sherry were driving downtown in Cora’s car with a large bag of laundry in the backseat.

  “We should have brought some soap,” Cora said.

  “Why? We’re not actually going to do the laundry. It’s just a prop.”

  “We brought it to look natural. We’re not going to look natural if we don’t put soap in the washer.”

  “You want to waste an hour in the laundromat doing our clothes?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then we don’t need soap. Anyway, I bet they sell little packets out of a machine.”

  Cora shook her head. “Sherry, you’ve lived alone too long if you know how to do the laundry.”

  “Oh? And how did you do laundry?”

  “I had a maid. What would be the point of getting married if my husband didn’t hire me a maid?”

  “You think you could skip that domestic tidbit for the People magazine interview?”

  “Oh, I’d forgotten about that. When did I say they were coming?”

  “Next week. Cora, let’s concentrate on getting these clues before Chief Harper decides to pull the plug on this little game.”

  “Hey, did I talk him out of coming with us?” Cora reminded her.

  “Very nicely,” Sherry agreed. While Chief Harper had perused the new puzzle solution and speculated on the arrival of news crews in town, Cora had advanced the theory that the TV people would be sure to be monitoring his movements, and if he accompanied Sherry and Cora to the laundromat, the news reporters would certainly want to know why. “You were particularly clever since no one’s seen a news crew yet,” Sherry pointed out to Cora.

  “Even if the TV people aren’t here, why should we tip off Aaron Grant? Or any of the heirs, for that matter. I mean, you and I, two local girls out on the town, can stop in and do our laundry without raising an eyebrow. We cannot stop in and do our laundry in the company of the Chief of Police without someone wondering what’s going on.”

  “I didn’t say your argument wasn’t valid. I’m just surprised he bought it.”

  “Chief Harper and I have a sort of understanding,” Cora said placidly. “I’m not sure what it is, but we do. Ah, here’s the street.”

  “Pinehurst? I thought you said Birch.”

  “Birch is off Pinehurst.”

  It was. Three blocks down Pinehurst, Cora took a right on Birch and pulled up in front of the laundromat, a white two-story building with the dirty sign WASH AND DRY over the door.

  “Okay,” Sherry said. “I’ll take the clothes and go look. You distract the attendant.”

  “If there is an attendant.”

  “Of course there’s an attendant.”

  Cora pushed the door open and held it for Sherry, who went inside lugging the bag of clothes.

  A long room ran from the front to the frd iback of the house. The dryers were along half of the side wall, with the washers in little clusters on either end, and in little horseshoe alcoves jutting out from the other wall. There were folding tables in the middle, and, as Sherry had predicted, a machine for dispensing small packets of detergent. The smell of soap and dirty socks was in the air.

  Just inside the doorway to the left was a service counter. Behind the counter, a woman in a white apron with short, dark hair and wing-tipped glasses sat reading a movie magazine.

  Cora nodded to Sherry and headed for the counter.

  “Excuse me.”

  The woman frowned at the interruption, but when she looked up her eyes widened, and then she smiled. “You’re the Puzzle Lady. I’ve seen you around town, but this is the first time you’ve ever been in here.”

  “Well, don’t let on,” Cora told her. “People will think I never wash my clothes.”

  The woman giggled as if that were the wittiest remark she’d ever heard. “And I’m so pleased to meet you,” she said. “I’m Minnie Wishburn. This is my little establishment. My husband, Ray, and I live upstairs, we take turns running the place. Today it’s his turn to go trout fishing with the boys who work the night shift at the old paper mill. And how fair is that? I mean, it’s not like we had a night shift.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Cora could see Sherry moving down the row, lifting lids, peering behind washers, and trying not to attract the attention of the half a dozen other customers engaged in doing their laundry.

  “Is that right?” Cora said. “The boys really went off fishing today, what with everything that’s happening in town?”

  “Well, why not?” Minnie said. “It’s not as if we had any stake in the Hurleys’ millions. And you’re involved in that, aren’t you? It was in the paper. You’re the one says who gets it.”

  “Well, not quite,” Cora said modestly. “I don’t say who gets it. I just referee.”

  “Same thing,” Minnie said. “Now, what’s thi
s I hear about Annabel Hurley?”

  “You hear right,” Cora said. “Someone broke into her apartment and cut her throat.”

  Minnie shook her head sadly. “Teenagers. Looking for drug money. Like I was telling Ray. It’s not just the city anymore.”

  Cora Felton didn’t think much of that theory, but she wasn’t about to argue. “She do her wash here? Annabel Hurley?”

  “Oh, yes. Every week. Like clockwork. Every Monday morning, there she’d be.”

  “Is that the last you saw her, this Monday morning?” Minnie frowned. “Actually, no.”

  “No?”

  “Seems to me she was in twice this week. Ray even remarked on it. Here she was again, and wasn’t that unlike her, unless she was doing her spring cleaning, washing out a whole linen closet of towels and sheets, though it’s a little late for spring cleaning, as I pointed out.”

  “When was this?”

  “Why, just yesterday. Which is enough to give you a turn. There she is, in here yesterday afternoon, large as life, and today—” Minnie shuddered. “I can’t even bring myself to say it.”

  “Washing sheets and towels?” Cora repeated.

  “Oh, don’t hold me to that. Ray says that’s what she must have been doing, but the man wouldn’t notice if all of the dryers were on fire. Not that that’s ever happened, mind. But Ray, he’s just oblivious. If it wasn’t unusual seeing her twice a week, he wouldn’t have even noticed.”

  Cora Felton felt a tap on her shoulder, turned to find Sherry Carter standing holding the bulging laundry bag.

  “Aunt Cora. Would you believe it? I forgot the shirts. We gotta go back. There’s no point without the shirts.”

  “Oh, Sherry.”

  “I’m sorry. I just threw it together so quickly. Come on. We’ll have to come back later, if we have time.”

  Sherry grabbed Cora Felton by the arm, practically dragged her out the door.

  “You got it?” Cora said as they went down the front steps.

  “In the laundry bag.”

  “Where was it?”

  “In a dryer.”

  “In a dryer?”

  “No, not in a dryer. Underneath.”

  “Underneath?”

  Sherry threw the laundry in the backseat and climbed in. Cora climbed in, started the car, backed out of the space.

  “What do you mean, underneath?” Cora demanded.

  “There’s a filter on the bottom. A lint catcher. You’re supposed to open it up to clean out the lint.”

  “And it was in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Taped?”

  “No. But leaning up. If you were looking for it, you couldn’t miss it.”

  “Did you look at the clues?”

  “No, I just shoved them in the bag.”

  “Wanna look now?”

  “Sure. I’ll feel real foolish if it’s something else, like a warranty for the dryer. But it looks like the other envelopes. Lemme dig it out.”

  Sherry groped in the laundry bag, came up with the manila envelope. She unclasped the envelope, pulled out a page

  ACROSS DOWN

  50. _____ a hatter 37. Fraught with incident

  53. Stove 42. Took off

  54. Friend (fr) 46. Thought

  58. Fifteen? 47. Style

  62. Consumer 51. “Bather by the Sea”

  63. Observing artist

  65. “Luck be a _____” 54. Dead heat

  66. Shortstop 55. room

  56. Playwright

  59. “Lady tramp”

  60. Coloring

  “It’s the clues, all right,” she said.

  “What’s the long one? Or do you know the number?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Cora frowned. “Fifteen? I thought we’d done that section.”

  “No.” Sherry shook her head. “The clue’s fifteen.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the clue. For number fifty-eight across. F-i-f-t-e-e-n. With a question mark. Fifteen.

  “What could that be?” Cora said.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Can you solve it from the other clues?”

  “I don’t have the grid. It would be a little like playing mental chess.”

  “Could you do it?”

  “If I concentrated and—Uh oh.”

  “What?”

  “Looks like we’re being followed.”

  Cora glanced in the rearview mirror. Her eyes widened. The vehicle tailgating them was a Channel 8 News van.

  “Oh, my God, it’s the TV people,” Cora said. “They’re right on our tail.”

  “Maybe they just want to get by.”

  “Maybe. Think I should pull over?”

  “If they’re following us, they’ll stop too.”

  “Sure. And I don’t wanna talk to ’em,” Cora said. “Okay, it’s time for the oh-my-God-we-forgot-the-undies routine.”

  “What?” Sherry said.

  “Like you pulled in the laundromat. Only this time I’m pretending we brought our underwear, but we left them there.”

  There was a real estate agency with a circular driveway on the edge of town. Cora veered into the driveway, circled around, and peeled out, heading back the way they came.

  “Did we lose ’em?” Cora asked.

  “Momentarily,” Sherry said. “By not signaling you made them overshoot the driveway. They’re turning around now.”

  “So they are after us!” Cora’s eyes gleamed. She stamped on the gas. “Okay, start the banjo music!”

  “Banjo music?”

  “Don’t you remember the car-chase music from Bonnie and Clyde?” Cora’s head started bobbing to it as the Toyota took off. “Or was that before your time?”

  “Aunt Cora! We are not having a car chase with the TV people.”

  “Of course not,” Cora agreed, flooring the accelerator.

  “So you wanna slow down? You just hit eighty.”

  “That was just to give ’em a thrill.” Cora eased up on the gas, glanced in the rearview mirror. “Okay, here they come. Let’s lead ’em back to town.”

  “To the laundromat?”

  “Heaven forbid. I was thinking of the police station.”

  “You’d sic the media on Chief Harper?”

  “Better him than us.”

  Cora drove into town, pulled up in front of the library just opposite the police station. The Channel 8 van pulled in alongside.

  Sherry and Cora got out of their car to find Rick Reed, the young, handsome, smooth-talking, ambitious onewseim">-camera reporter, climbing out of the van.

  Sherry grimaced.

  Sherry and Cora’s previous encounter with the TV newsman had not been felicitous. Rick Reed had hit on Sherry, and tried to embarrass her aunt. The fact that neither attempt had been successful had not been for lack of trying.

  “Well, well, ladies.” Rick flashed his best on-screen smile. “This certainly is a happy coincidence.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Cora said. “Major coincidence. Tail us for five miles, then pretend we met by accident.”

  “I’m pretending nothing of the kind,” Rick Reed said.

  “The coincidence is that we have another murder involving a crossword puzzle.”

  “Well, the fact is we don’t,” Cora Felton said. “And we won’t be needing that,” she added, pointing to the camera the two assistants were unloading from the back of the Channel 8 van. “I’m not giving an interview.”

  “You don’t want free publicity?”

  “I don’t want free publicity from you. The last time you filmed me you made me look bad.”

  “No,” Rick Reed said. “Actually, the last time I filmed you I made me look bad. I figured the Graveyard Killings might be my stepping-stone out of here. Didn’t work out that way.”

  “Too bad,” Cora said, sounding suspiciously sincere.

  “A lot you care.”

  “Actually, I do. I’d be thrilled to see you leave.”

  Rick Ree
d flushed, turned to Sherry Carter. “What about you? You still angry with me?”

  “Angry isn’t the right word,” Sherry said. She pointed to the assistants, who were busy setting up the camera. “Didn’t my aunt say she wasn’t giving an interview?”

  “She’s not the only one in town. There’s lots of other people to interview. On the other hand, if I want to point the camera at her and have her say ‘No comment,’ I have that right. She might not want to talk to me, but she can’t tell me what to shoot.”

  “Too bad,” Cora said. “Off the record, I was going to give you a hint.”

  Rick Reed’s handsome nose twitched. Sherry could practically hear the wheels whirring in his wee brain. He suspected a trap, but didn’t want to pass it up.

  “Why would you do that?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Don’t be dense. To get you off my back, of course.”

  He frowned. “I’m willing to believe you’d like to point me in another direction. Why should I believe it’s the right direction?”

  Cora shrugged. “That’s up to you. All I’m saying is I’m willing to talk as long as you keep the camera turned off. You want to listen, fine, no obligation. You can sort through and believe what you want. If you’d rather not listen, that’s fine too, because then I don’t have to bother.”

  Rick, visions of a major metropolitan news anchor dancing in his head, promptly said, “I want to listen.”

  “Then keep your camera off.”

  Rick Reed pointed his finger. “Ernie, don’t shoot this. Okay, what you got?”

  “I take it you know the background or you wouldn’t be here. Annabel Hurley is dead, it’s a murder, she was one of several heirs competing for an enormous estate.”

  “And that’s where you come in,” Rick Reed said. “There’s a puzzle involved, and you’re solving it.”

  “Not quite. There’s a puzzle involved, and I’m watching them solve it. But that’s not your story.”

  “What is?”

  Cora Felton glanced around, hoping against hope for Chief Harper to come out of the police station, or for medical examiner Barney Nathan to come walking up, or for attorney Arthur Kincaid to drive up in his car. Of course, nothing of the kind happened.