Two Down

by Nero Blanc

  PUZZLE 2

  13

  Belle was already ensconced in the far-window booth at Lawson’s Coffee Shop when Rosco opened the glass-paneled front door. His arrival was heralded by the noisy peal of a rusting tin bell attached to the upper hinges, an early-warning device left over from the 1950s when Lawson’s had been built. True to form, none of the aging waitresses—also relics of the poodle-skirt era—turned a mascaraed eyelash, although one shouted out a raucous: “She’s seated in the back, angel.”

  “Thanks, Martha.” Rosco nodded at the speaker as he walked past the long, green Formica counter. Martha was as much an institution as the coffee shop. She never called customers by name, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know each and every one of them—and most likely their parents, too. Martha, with her defiantly flaxen beehive hairdo and rustling candy-pink uniform, was a font of information. She prided herself on keeping her eyes peeled.

  “What happens next?” Belle asked while Rosco slid in beside her on the banquette. The motif, here, was also fifties flamingo pink, but the seats’ aging vinyl covers were cracked and the tabletop chipped and scarred. Regulars like Rosco and Belle wouldn’t have changed this homey ambience for all the tea in China, however. To them, Lawson’s was as important a landmark as Newcastle’s historic district or the resuscitated clipper-ship wharves. “Now that the inflatable’s been found?” Belle continued, then added, “I take it the discovery ensures that Al Lever is officially involved?”

  But Rosco didn’t want to discuss the PD’s role yet. He knew Lever’s conclusion that the women were now “presumed dead” would be difficult for Belle to assimilate and accept. To buy time, Rosco asked to see the second crossword puzzle.

  “I swear I’m not in any danger,” she said, placing it between them on the table’s scratchy surface. “This one was faxed—also anonymously—but I called the sender’s number. It’s that enormous new office-supply store, Papyrus, near the interstate . . . The woman who accepted the order is supposed to call me back when she returns from her lunch break . . . However, the exceedingly officious person who answered the phone said that supplying client information is a breach of privacy. In that case, I’ll simply go out there and weasel pertinent details from them . . .” Belle was on a roll; Rosco could feel kinetic energy bounce from her body; her skin smelled like gardenias and warm wool. He was sorely tempted to wrap his arm around her shoulder.

  Instead, he said, “I don’t think that’s wise, Belle.”

  Her monologue stopped mid-word; she stared in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think you should go out to Papyrus.”

  Belle continued staring.

  “Look,” Rosco continued, “if these puzzles are the work of a sicko—something I strongly suspect—then you’ll be playing into his hands.”

  “It’s a public place, Rosco . . . It’s no different than walking into Lawson’s—”

  Rosco interrupted her. “In a case of arson, who do you think is usually the most noticeable person extinguishing the blaze? The perpetrator. The bigger the fire, the more obvious that person’s heroics. And those antics aren’t confined to arsonists . . . People of that type get their jollies from participating in the chaos they’ve created. It’s a giant ego trip . . . I’ll bet this kook is hanging around Papyrus right now waiting for you—which will only escalate an already problematic situation by encouraging his behavior.”

  Belle continued studying his face. Rosco could see her weighing, then gradually accepting his theory. “Okay, so scratch Papyrus, but I still believe someone is trying to tell me something—something about Genie and Jamaica . . . Look at the clues, Rosco . . . Look at these answers.” Her fingers jabbed at the cryptic, making crosses where the Across and Down lines intersected.

  “3-Down: THE LAPPING SHORE . . . See that running down the puzzle? And, PRACTICALLY DEAD at 6-Down? Isn’t that scary? No matter what you say—and it’s convincing, I have to admit—intuition tells me this isn’t the work of a crazy . . . Someone is trying to tell us that these women are in terrible danger.”

  Martha sauntered over, armed with tall, laminated menus across which Lawson’s Coffee Shop was printed in cherry red. “Want to take a peek? Or do you two want the usual?”

  Rosco and Belle’s heads swiveled toward her in unison. “The usual?”

  “What you folks always order: grilled-cheese sandwiches, and a side of French toast with syrup, blueberry sauce, and whipped cream . . . coffee light for the lady, black for my man, here. . .” A smug smile wreathed Martha’s primrose-painted lips.

  “Always? We always order that? I didn’t realize we’d become so predictable,” Belle murmured.

  “Everyone is, angel. Not to worry . . .” Heavy-duty support garments creaked beneath Martha’s uniform while her left hand extricated a pencil from her lacquered hairdo. She poised the pencil above a pad marked Guest Check in faded lime-green lettering. “. . . So, what’ll it be while you two palaver about that missing actress and Tom Pepper’s hoity-toity wife?”

  This time it was Rosco’s turn to look stunned. But Martha didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Why else would you lovebirds look so frazzled?” Then she marched off toward the kitchen, yelling: “Double cheddar melt and Froggers, extra crisp on the Froggers.”

  Shy grins crept over Rosco and Belle’s faces. Involuntarily, they sat up straighter—and farther apart. Both toyed with their stainless-steel cutlery. Belle was the first to resume conversation, returning doggedly to her narrative as if Martha hadn’t said a word.

  “Of course, there’s another nautical theme here, Rosco . . . 14-Across: St. Elmo’s Fire actress; 41-Across: Beam & L.O.A., e.g; 46-Across: Morro——, 1934 shipwreck; 35-Down: Lifeboat actor . . . And here . . . look at this! 26-Down: Mayday! Could anything be more plain? Mayday! From the French m’aider . . . The international call of distress! And what’s the answer? S.O.S.!”

  Belle’s tone had increased in speed and fervor; her cheeks were flushed; turning to face Rosco, she almost glowed. “I know I’m right, Rosco. I just know it! . . . Wait, don’t answer yet. There’s more . . .”

  Again, her fingers stabbed at the crossword puzzle. “See this? Starting at 19-Across? A series of three lines across that combine to form a quotation from Macbeth? Everyone in theater knows it’s unlucky to say the play’s name . . . It’s referred to as The Scottish Play instead . . . So, that’s a message in itself.”

  “It’s no good, Belle,” Rosco finally said.

  “You’ve got to hear me out, Rosco. This wasn’t constructed by some media-crazed weirdo. This is a warning. And it was sent to me, because I can discover the hidden meaning. ‘FALSE FACE MUST HIDE,’ she quoted, ‘WHAT FALSE HEART DOTH KNOW.’ ” She clasped her hands in impatience; her fingers were taut. “I even looked it up. Me! . . . And this one from Hamlet at 10-Down; it’s from the famous ‘mirror to nature’ speech: ‘. . . show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image’!”

  “Belle. Please . . . listen to me . . .” Rosco slipped his hands around hers. “It’s no good because Lever has decided to shift the investigation’s focus. And with justifiable cause. I saw the dinghy. It has a mile-long gash . . . It’s totally deflated. It could never have supported human life. If those women were on it, they weren’t there for long . . .” Rosco took a beat while allowing Belle to process the information. “ ‘Missing—presumed dead’ is how Lever’s officially listing their disappearance . . . I’m sorry, Belle.”

  Belle stared at the crossword puzzle. Rosco could see tears forming in her eyes. “But . . .” she said, “but . . .”

  “And, whether you like to hear it or not, this puzzle—and the other one—are the work of a nutcase. A smart one, I grant you, but a lunatic nevertheless . . . And I am genuinely concerned about your proximity to such a person. Especially someone so obviously clever.”

  Belle looked out the window. Across the street was the limestone, granite, and marble home of the Newcastle Herald, the Evening Crie
r’s rival newspaper. The building stood, noble and imposing, a paean to the turn-of-the-century publishing industry. The grassy area fronting the facade and the cars parked neatly at the curb were dwarfed by the Herald’s lofty demeanor.

  “I want to publish this puzzle,” Belle said while still gazing at the street. “In my column. I want to invite the constructor to come forward and claim authorship.”

  A clatter of dishes interrupted them. Soon the table was piled with cholesterol hell. Belle absentmindedly dabbed whipped cream on a slice of grilled-cheese sandwich, then ate it without seeming to notice.

  “I really advise against that, Belle. You don’t want to flush this loon out into the open. With Lever’s official read, this thing will blow over, and Mr.—or Mrs.—Psycho will disappear. On the other hand, if you give this type of person additional attention, you risk further upsetting an imbalanced psyche. There’s also a matter of ‘transference’—turning you into this character’s weird obsession.”

  Belle stabbed a piece of French toast dredged in blueberry sauce and maple syrup, then chewed with fierce concentration. “But if my theory is correct, Rosco, and the puzzles have genuine linkage to the case, then printing this crossword will send a message that we’re ready to talk.”

  14

  The offices of the Evening Crier were not so handsome or so stately as those of the Herald, but they were far more lively. Voices ricocheted along the corridors, bouncing though open doors that smelled of too many frenzied humans working at too frantic a pace. Although Belle could never think under such rattling conditions, she enjoyed her sojourns to her office—if only to watch in wonder as a tide of verbiage and ink flowed down stairwells, up halls, around watercoolers and computer terminals to create a daily newspaper filled with fact and whimsy. Belle was part of the whimsy.

  So was Bartholomew Kerr, whose Biz-y Buzz, with its whiff of British elitism, had become the newest staple of Newcastle society. Kerr was so fond of affixing pseudoroyal titles and pet names to those fortunate enough to appear in his columns that a stranger to the city might have imagined that the entire global monarchy had encamped on the Massachusetts shore.

  “Naturally, he’s doing everything in his power to connive a means of acquiring those precious photographs,” Kerr was now complaining to Belle, “but I intend to foil those efforts at every turning.” The gossip columnist trained his enormous glasses upward onto Belle’s face as if the lenses were telescopic in intensity. “And that’s all I have to say on a very sordid subject.”

  Standing in the Crier’s second-floor corridor, a wide red-and-black linoleum avenue intersected by doors with frosted-glass panels, two elevators, a janitorial supply room, and numerous pendant fluorescent-light fixtures, Belle realized Kerr’s statement was misleading in the extreme. Obviously, he had a good deal more on his mind. And, knowing Bartholomew, he didn’t intend to remain silent for long.

  “Simply because the man boasts of a national readership—although of dubious powers of discernment, I might add—doesn’t mean I should acquiesce like some junior scrivener . . . like some hopeless neophyte . . .”

  Belle hadn’t the slightest idea what had so enraged Bartholomew, but she was enjoying the display. She breathed in the invigorating pressroom scent of waxed linoleum, spilled coffee, and endless reams of inky paper as she listened to Kerr pour forth his disgust. His accent, she decided, must have been created somewhere in the middle of the North Atlantic; it wasn’t English; it definitely wasn’t American or Canadian. She wondered if acquiring a new voice and persona could occur mid-flight, like a spy changing clothes and hairstyle in a plane’s rest room.

  “. . . So tawdry, really . . . attempting to cajole another member of the fourth estate into relinquishing sources and photographic information . . . Almost demanding the negatives? Well, negatives, my dear girl, is exactly what he received from me, in the form of: ‘No, no, no!’ Now, if he’d requested that I consult with him on the subject . . . suggested I maintain my own byline . . . What do you think Annabella?”

  “Belle,” she corrected automatically while Bartholomew Kerr just as quickly said, “You know, my dear, it simply makes no sense whatsoever for you to abbreviate your handsome moniker . . . It makes you sound like someone Ethel Merman would have played—to the hilt, I might add . . . Belle Starr, the outlaw bandit queen . . . Besides, Annabella Graham has such a mellifluous—and dare I say germane—association with your craft: ‘Anna-Gram’ is how it would be pronounced in the dear old motherland. Of course, you can appreciate the connection—”

  Belle winced. “Please . . . Bartholomew . . . I was tortured with that nickname when I was a kid—”

  “No matter, then . . . Tant pis . . . tant pis . . . Well, I’m off to do more electronic battle with the odious toad who torments me . . . I assume his next suggestion is that we meet in some darkened hotel bar to hand off these print negatives—as if exchanging government secrets . . . I did that once, in Istanbul, you know, but the quarry was the offspring of a prince—and that young gentleman’s bride . . . Ah, well, giddier times . . . giddier times . . .”

  Belle had begun to edge her way down the corridor. Bartholomew might be amusing, but she reminded herself that she was on a mission.

  “. . . If I wind up missing like La Nevisson, my dear, tell the constabulary that I’m hors de combat.”

  Belle’s ears pricked up. “What’s this about Jamaica Nevisson?”

  Bartholomew smiled with the smugness of a man who knows himself superior to all mortals around him. “That’s precisely what you and I have been discussing . . . This perfectly wretched reporter from The Globe who’s been telephoning and e-mailing me unmercifully, harassing me at all hours simply to obtain photographs of our vanished actress—a series I shot at the Patriot Yacht Club dinner dance . . . the last known likenesses of her, as it turns out. There are also several of you, Belle, in the not-too-distant background . . . I must say, you and your swain looked simply splendid that evening—”

  “Is this the same man who snapped those bizarre pictures of Jamaica on Catalina Island?”

  “I wouldn’t have the foggiest, my dear.”

  But Belle recognized the falsity of this statement. Kerr knew very well who the man was. What she didn’t understand was why the columnist would lie.

  “Flack is simply another sordid huckster, Annabella . . . a benighted devil attracted to tragedy . . . the desire of the moth for the flame—”

  “ ‘The desire of the moth for the star,’ ” Belle murmured unintentionally while Kerr pivoted his oversized spectacles in her direction. “It’s a line from a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley,” she added. “The conclusion is: ‘The devotion to something afar / From the field of our sorrow.’ ” Belle’s bright eyes flashed with a sudden revelation. “What did you say this man’s name was again, Bartholomew?”

  “Who? Reggie Flack?”

  “Flack . . . yes, that’s it . . .” Her brain raced through a myriad of possible connections to the name or word. Then she remembered the mysterious crossword puzzle she’d received on Wednesday. The word FLACK was one of the answers; the clue had been Antiaircraft fire, var. She remembered it because the constructor could have used another definition—and omitted the ubiquitous var. Flack was the colloquial term for a press agent.

  “I see you’re noodling over serious thoughts, Belle—” Kerr began in a prodding tone, but she cut him off.

  “And this Reggie Flack wants the photos you shot at the Yacht Club?”

  “Dear me! Have I been talking solely to these dreary walls?”

  “Why does he want them?” Belle demanded. “What’s in the pictures?”

  Kerr’s answer was a flippant: “You, for one thing.”

  But Belle ignored the remark. “What does Flack intend to do with photographs of a social gathering in Newcastle?”

  “I imagine the man is obsessed with La Nevisson. Whatever else could it be, my dear? Assuming you are not his obsession . . .”

  “His na
me appeared—” Belle stopped herself—although not in time. Kerr’s sharp ears never missed a single innuendo or inadvertently dropped secret.

  “Yes?” he said.

  Belle considered her options. She could either confide in Bartholomew or lie; if there were less extreme choices, they wouldn’t have entered her decisive mind. Belle’s thoughts flew forward, gauging possible outcomes. If she maintained secrecy, discovering new information on Flack would be extraordinarily difficult. But, if she confessed all to Bartholomew, what would be the result? On a sudden whim, she decided to share her suspicions about Jamaica’s and Genie’s disappearance.

  “I received a peculiar crossword puzzle on Wednesday,” she said. “The word FLACK was in it . . .So was JAMAICA . . . and GENIE . . . and ORION. There were also numerous nautical themes. And, quotations from Much Ado About Nothing—a play Jamaica did in Boston. Very well, too.”

  “Oh, my dear,” was all Bartholomew could think to say.

  “Rosco felt it was the work of a sick prankster, and I was inclined to agree—until today. Today I received a second cryptic. Not only does the nautical theme continue, but the Shakespeare quotes do as well . . . Now, I seem to recall that this Globe photographer liked to reference the Bard.”

  “Oh, my dear!” Kerr repeated in a burbling gush. “I believe you’re quite right . . . This is all terribly exciting. What do you—”

  But Belle’s brain had spun forward. “I intend to publish this newest crossword, Bartholomew,” she said, “in hopes of flushing the constructor out into the open—sending a message that his voice has been heard . . . But now I’m wondering if you could do me an enormous favor.”