by Parnell Hall
Cora went back to the TV. She’d missed most of the program, but with the DVR she could simply rewind and watch it again.
People on the TV were racing around backward at great speed when Sherry came in.
“Who was that?” Sherry said.
“Chief Harper.”
“What did he want?”
“The guy in the Guilford house was definitely poisoned. And he’d like me to interpret a crossword puzzle.”
“Did you do it?”
“Nothing to interpret. It’s an ordinary puzzle, nothing to do with anything. What you doing down here?”
“Jennifer’s asleep. Aaron’s reading a book. Mommy’s off duty.”
“That’s nice.”
“You have no idea.” Sherry sniffed. “You been smoking in here again?”
“You’re never down here.”
“I’m down here enough. Lemme see the puzzle.”
“Why do you want to see that?”
“I’m curious.”
“You deal with puzzles all day long. Why do you care?”
“Someone got killed.”
“It’s not connected.”
“How do you know? Maybe there’s some secret message imbedded in the puzzle the killer thought only the Puzzle Lady would be able to figure out. Not knowing she’s a total sham.”
“If you’re so smart, why don’t you point it out?”
Sherry stuck out her hand. “Gimme.”
Cora passed over the crossword puzzle.
Sherry looked it over. “Oh. This is pretty easy to solve. The answers are filled in.”
“I know. It doesn’t help.”
“It helps me. I don’t have to do any work. What’s the theme? Oh. Actions and animals. Bell the cat. Walk the dog.”
“You wanna tell me what that’s got to do with the murder?”
“It certainly seems a stretch.”
“Yeah, well, Chief Harper’s not going to be happy until I give him something. I suppose I could make something up.”
“Cora.”
“Just kidding. But the guy won’t leave me alone. Even if there’s no hidden message, he insists it must be one of my puzzles.”
Sherry held up the puzzle, took another look. “It is one of your puzzles.”
Chapter
10
Cora was furious. “What do you mean it’s one of my puzzles?”
“Well, actually, it’s one of mine. Which means, as far as the chief’s concerned, it’s one of yours.”
“How can that be one of your puzzles? It’s not from the newspaper. It’s a computer printout.”
“That’s how the puzzles start, Cora. It’s not like they begin in the newspaper. I compose them on the computer, print them out.”
“Are you saying someone has access to our computer?”
“No. Just to one of our puzzles. That’s not surprising. It’s not like they’re secret. It’s a nationally syndicated column.”
“That computer printout isn’t.”
“What are you getting so excited about?”
“I just got through swearing to God to Chief Harper this wasn’t one of my puzzles.”
“Of course not. It’s one of mine.”
“Sherry, this is a serious situation. I told the chief this wasn’t my puzzle. It’s not like I just glanced at it. I read the damn thing over and didn’t recognize it. Which makes me look like either a dotty old woman or a fraud.”
“I’d go with fraud.”
“Did I warn you I was not in a good mood?”
“Hadn’t noticed.”
Cora exhaled. “Oh, God save me from the contented young mother whose baby is blissfully asleep. What conceivable reason can I give Chief Harper for not recognizing my own work?”
“For one thing, it’s old.”
“Old?”
“Yeah. Four or five years, at least. I can’t even remember doing this. I think it’s one I knocked off in a hurry when Dennis was bothering me.”
“Oh, no,” Cora said. “You’re not going to play the abusive ex-husband card. You’re happily divorced, happily remarried, have a new baby. No one’s saying, ‘Oh, poor Sherry,’ anymore and dropping a conversation. Tell me about the puzzle.”
“There’s nothing to tell. It’s a puzzle I wrote for the column a few years ago. It has no significance whatsoever.”
“Hey, hey, that’s my column you’re talking about. So, tell me something. How did someone get ahold of your computer files from five years ago?”
“I doubt if they did.”
“You just said it’s a computer printout.”
“All that means is someone typed the puzzle into the computer. Anyone with Crossword Compiler could do it. Your column’s syndicated to over two hundred papers. Some of them have archives online. Where you can print out old puzzles.”
“Do they go that far back?”
“I don’t know. It’s never been an issue. But if you care, it’s something you could research.”
Cora shuddered. “What an ugly word.”
“Online research? That’s what you do all day.”
“Yeah, if it’s shopping or dating. But puzzles? My point is, I’m not going to do it. It doesn’t matter which paper it was in. If it’s your puzzle, it’s your puzzle. It would have been in one of them, right?”
“Right.”
“So anyone could have copied it. Why, I can’t begin to imagine. But they could.”
Aaron came strolling into the living room.
“Aaron!” Sherry said. “Where’s the baby?”
Aaron pulled a speaker out of his pocket. “Baby monitor. Wonderful device. If she burps, I’m on it.”
“Even so.”
“Was that Chief Harper driving out?” Aaron said.
“You’re not going to the paper now,” Sherry said.
“Never said I was. Was that the chief?”
“That was him,” Cora said.
“What’s up?”
“He brought me a crossword puzzle. Duly solved by Harvey Beerbaum. Turns out it’s one of Sherry’s old puzzles, which is sort of embarrassing since I told him I’d never seen it before.”
“What does it mean?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Is that what you think, too?” Aaron asked Sherry.
“That’s the general consensus.”
“That’s depressing. What did the chief have to say? Anything I can write?”
“Not now, you can’t,” Sherry said. “Hasn’t the paper gone to press?”
“We could get out an extra.”
“Not for this,” Cora said. “The doctor confirms the victim died of poison. The only question is which poison. There were traces of more than one.”
“Oh, that’s interesting.”
“Yeah,” Sherry said. “You should write it. There’s nothing more exciting than a columnist speculating on an outcome with no facts.”
Aaron put up his hands. “Whoa! I got the monitor in my pocket and I’m not going anywhere. I just want to know what’s up.”
“The wine and the stomach contents went to Danbury for quantitative analysis. Should get it tomorrow.”
“Harper going to call you when he does?”
“You want me to tip you off?”
“It crossed my mind.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Is this the puzzle?” Aaron said, picking it up.
“That’s it,” Sherry said. “Cora and I can’t make anything out of it.”
“Maybe you’re too close to it,” Aaron said. “Maybe you need the point of view of a total outsider.”
Aaron studied the puzzle. Cora could practically see his mind going. As a brilliant journalist, he was used to figuring things out. But only in terms of a story. Not in terms of word games, though he often played them with Sherry. In the puzzle business, Aaron was strictly an also-ran.
“All right, hotshot,” Cora said. “Put us to shame. What’s it mean to you?”
Chapter
11
The phone rang at three A.M. The phone in Cora’s bedroom. Not the phone in the kitchen, which rang everywhere else in the house. But the private line, installed just for her. Chief Harper had that number, which was to be used only for emergencies. At three A.M. it pretty much had to be an emergency.
It was.
“Cora?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s been a break-in at the Guilford house.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“No, but the sisters aren’t happy. Seem to feel it’s my fault.”
“Anything taken?”
“I can’t tell.”
“You’re out there now?”
“Yeah.”
“Want me to come over?”
“Could you? I’m not good at dealing with women in their nightclothes.”
“You mean I have to dress first?”
“Wish you would.”
“See you there.”
Cora pulled on her Wicked Witch of the West dress, a tattered smock the went on quickly and hid a multitude of sins. Not that there were any sins lately—Cora’s love life had been depressingly dull.
Was she getting old?
Cora snuck out of the house, nodded in satisfaction that Sherry and Aaron’s light was still out. She got in the car, started the motor, let it idle, didn’t gun it. She inched the car gently toward the top of the drive, coasted down. She neared the bottom before she snapped on her headlights.
Cora was worried about finding the Guilford house in the dark. She needn’t have been. The bed-and-breakfast was all lit up. Even down the side street it shone like a beacon in the night. Cora pulled in behind Chief Harper’s cruiser, went up and rang the doorbell.
Harper answered the door.
“The sisters are in the living room. If you could deal with them, I’d be grateful.”
Cora found Edith and Charlotte huddled together, talking animatedly in whispers. They were decked out in layers of silk, cotton, and lace, some of which might have been nightgowns and some of which might have been robes, though Cora had no real clue which was which. She could tell the sisters apart, however. The one in curlers and a hairnet was Edith. The one with cold cream on her face was Charlotte.
“Ladies,” Cora said. “How awful to have a break-in. Are you all right?”
“We’re fine,” Edith said. “It’s just very upsetting.”
Cora wouldn’t have known it. The woman’s eyes sparkled. Clearly, now that the police were on the scene, she and her sister found it very exciting.
“Of course it is. So how did the intruder get in?”
“Oh, oh, let me show you.”
The living room of the Guilford house was spacious, anchored at one end by the mantel of a working fireplace, and at the other end by an old-fashioned window seat.
Edith marched over to the window seat. “He came right through here.”
“Was the window locked?”
“It is now,” Edith said, raising her eyes at her sister.
“I locked the window,” Charlotte said.
“So you say.”
“So I say because so I did. I remember it specifically.”
“You could remember it from the night before.”
“No, it was last night. I know, because I was thinking that poor man is dead, and we should lock up.”
“And how do you lock the window?” Cora said.
“With the latch. Right here.”
Charlotte pointed out the lock. It was the typical window latch, a circular piece of metal on the top of the lower window that twisted into a metal slot on the bottom of the top window.
“It’s locked now.”
“Yes,” Edith said. “I locked it when I found it open.”
“You woke up and found the window open?”
“That’s right.”
“Your bedroom is upstairs?”
“Of course.”
“What made you come down and check the window?”
“I heard someone moving around.”
“You came down by yourself. That’s very brave.”
Edith smiled patronizingly. “No one’s going to hurt me. Not in my own house.”
Chief Harper shot Cora a glance, as if to say, see what I’m dealing with?
“Are you sure nothing’s missing?” Cora said.
“There doesn’t appear to be.” Edith glanced around the room. “Not that there’s anything much to take.”
“Did you look?”
“Where?”
“Did you open drawers? Did you look in the window seat?”
“There’s nothing in the window seat.”
“How do you know?”
“We never keep anything in the window seat.”
“Why?”
“Because we forget that it’s there. Like Charlotte’s sewing kit. We left it in the window seat, forgot it was there. We looked for it all over, couldn’t find it. We haven’t kept anything in there since.”
“Uh-huh.” Cora raised the lid of the window seat, looked in. She lowered it, turned to Chief Harper, who was peeking in the door. “Chief. I think I solved your break-in.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I’m willing to bet it’s the drunk passed out in the window seat who did it.”
“What!?”
Harper strode over, raised the lid. “Oh, my God.”
The man in the window seat was about sixty years of age, with a scraggly white beard, liberally stained with red wine and tobacco. He wore tattered blue jeans and a Van Halen T-shirt that was probably last washed when Van Halen was still performing. His arms were folded over his chest, and his hands were clamped firmly around a bottle of what appeared to be the vilest rotgut known to man. If he’d paid a dollar for it, he’d been taken. Indeed, Cora figured, he’d been overcharged even if it was a gift.
“You know him?” Cora said.
“Sure. That’s Ned Crumley, the town drunk. He’s a frequent flyer down at the station. We have him sleeping it off in lockup every other week.”
“Well, it looks like he tied one on this time,” Cora said. “I’m amazed he got the window open.”
Edith and Charlotte bustled over. “What is that man doing in our window seat?” Edith said indignantly.
“At the moment, not much,” Cora said. “He’s passed out.”
“No, I mean, why is he here? That man has no right to sleep in our window seat.”
“I’ll be sure to point that out to him,” Chief Harper said dryly. “Well, as Cora said, it would appear that the break-in is solved. As soon as we get the gentleman out of your way, you can lock up and go back to sleep.”
“You going to carry him?” Cora said.
“Not if I can help it. Let’s see if we can wake him up and get him walking.”
Chief Harper extracted the wine bottle from between the drunk’s fingers, handed it to Cora. “Ned must have been really plastered. It’s not like him to pass out with booze still in the bottle.”
Harper reached down, shook him by the shoulders. “Come on, Ned. Let’s get up.”
Ned didn’t move.
“Come on, buddy. You can sleep anywhere you want, but not here.”
Ned’s head rolled sideways, hung down.
Harper’s face froze. “What the hell?”
“Oh, no,” Cora said. “Don’t tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Charlotte said. “What’s wrong?”
Edith’s eyes widened. “Oh, no! Is he dead?”
“He’s dead, all right,” Harper said. “And that’s not all.”
Harper whipped out a handkerchief and used it to carefully hold up the crumpled paper that had been in Ned’s coat pocket.
It was a sudoku.
Chapter
12
Sam Brogan wasn’t happy. The cranky officer was seldom happy, but being awakened at
four in the morning on a night he wasn’t supposed to be on duty didn’t sit well. Sam had strung the crime scene ribbon as if it were a garrote with which he wished he could strangle someone. But having to fingerprint Cora Felton was the last straw.
“This is stupid,” he said, rolling her fingers in the ink pad.
“You think I like it?” Cora said.
“If you don’t like it, you shouldn’t have touched the bottle.”
“Chief Harper handed me the bottle.”
“Harper handed you the bottle?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I gotta do his fingerprints.”
“You don’t have them on file?”
“The chief hasn’t been booked that often. I try to arrest as many people as I can, but when you keep arresting your chief you get a bad reputation.”
“All right, you gotta fingerprint the chief. You gonna grouch at him?”
“No. Your fingerprints are your fault. The chief may not know any better, but you should.”
“Can I quote you on that, Sam? The chief doesn’t know any better than to contaminate crime scenes?”
“You quote me on that and I’ll deny it. It not what I said and you know it.”
Sam rolled the last finger onto the fingerprint card.
“You want a mug shot, too?”
“I want a nap. I want to go home and go to bed.” Sam stroked his moustache. It didn’t stand out so much with his five A.M. stubble. He closed the ink pad, stowed the fingerprint card in a plastic envelope. He held up the bottle of wine. “I don’t know how he could drink this stuff.”
“Evidently he couldn’t. You mind if I wash my hands now? I hate to leave such visible prints at a crime scene.”
“Knock yourself out.”
Cora went to the kitchen sink, washed her hands with dish soap, scrubbed away the worst of the ink. The remaining faint traces would take days to wear off. She dried her hands on a paper towel, tossed it in the trash, and followed Sam Brogan out into the hall.
Barney Nathan came in the front door. It had taken the doctor a little while to respond to the call. He was wearing slacks and a white shirt, open at the neck.
Cora blinked. “Oh, my God. Hell must have frozen over. Barney Nathan, without a red bow tie. Sam, get the crime scene camera. Snap off a few shots so I can prove I wasn’t dreaming.”