Dead Man's Puzzle

by Parnell Hall

  “You’ll be careful?”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  “How will I know when to pick you up?”

  “You’ll hear the police sirens.”

  “Cora.”

  “I don’t know. I’d call you on my cell phone, if I had one.”

  “You don’t have a cell phone?”

  “I don’t need one. Except for breaking and entering. Would you advise me to get one just for that?”

  Becky tried to give her a withering glance without driving off the road.

  “Maybe Overmeyer’s phone is still hooked up. I can call you from it.”

  “Don’t you dare! All I need is a record on my cell phone of having gotten a call from a dead man.”

  “Relax. I don’t think Overmeyer even has a phone.”

  “If he does, promise you won’t use it?”

  “I might call my bookie. Here, this is it.”

  Becky drove up the driveway.

  Overmeyer’s cabin was on a country road where there were houses on only one side of the street. A grove of woods hid the neighbors to the north, but on the property to the south, a two-story Colonial was in plain view.

  “So much for sneaking in,” Becky said.

  “I’m not sneaking in. I’m just not leaving a car parked in front of the cabin to call attention to myself.”

  “In case the police should drive by.”

  “Well, it would spoil their day.”

  “Not to mention mine,” Becky said dryly. “When should I pick you up?”

  “Uh-oh. Not going to fly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Without appearing to stare, look over my shoulder at the neighbor’s house. Without appearing to stare.”

  “There’s a man on the porch. Looking at us.”

  “There certainly is. Which changes things. You can’t let me out and drive off.”

  “Should we pretend we just pulled in to turn around?”

  “Don’t be silly. No one drives all the way up a driveway to turn around.”

  “I can’t help that,” Becky said. “It’s either that or drop you off.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Get out of the car.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, Nancy Drew. Shut off the engine and get out. I can’t sneak in, I’ve been seen. The only thing to do is walk in like we have every right to be here.”

  “We have no right to be here.”

  “He doesn’t know that. Come on.”

  Cora got out of the car and walked up to the front door.

  Becky sat for a moment in helpless frustration. Then she shut off the engine and joined her.

  “Good girl,” Cora said. “Wait right here, act bored. Mr. Whoosy-whatsy’s still watching us. Don’t look at him. I’ll let you in.”

  “Let me in?”

  “Unless you want to crawl through the window. You don’t want to crawl through the window, do you?”

  Cora went around to the back of the house, pushed open the kitchen window she’d managed to unlock when she and Chief Harper were searching the place. With an athletic little hop, quite agile for a woman of more years than she was admitting, Cora squirmed through the window, crawled across the counter, and went to the front door to let in a rather exasperated Becky Baldwin.

  “What was that all about?” Becky demanded.

  “I had the key to the kitchen door, went around to let you in.”

  “Really?”

  “No, but that’s what I hope the neighbor will assume. Provided he didn’t see me climbing through the window.”

  “You broke into the house?”

  “Well, how did you think I was going to get in?”

  “When I dropped you off in the driveway, I was just an accessory. Now I’m a full-fledged accomplice.”

  “That’s good. It would be a shame to be a half-fledged accomplice. The girls in maximum security would probably tease you something awful.”

  “Stop trying to humor me. I’m here, I don’t like it, let’s get on with it.” Becky looked around. “What a dump!”

  “Bette Davis. Originally. Quoted by Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? What a dump!”

  “Okay, where did you search?”

  “The upstairs closet. That’s where we found the gun. In the floorboards under a box of junk.”

  “How’d you find it?”

  “The junk was so worthless there was no reason to keep it except to cover something up.”

  “Was that your deduction? It certainly sounds like you.”

  “You might pass that on to Chief Harper. He thinks I might have known the gun was there.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I resent it. The idea I might break into a crime scene to look for evidence.”

  “I can see how that would rankle. Okay, where do we start?”

  “Let’s start at the bottom and work up. That’s the cellar door.”

  “This place has a cellar?”

  “More like a crawl space.”

  “You didn’t search it?”

  “The chief did.”

  “He find anything?”

  “An old bicycle.” Cora fished a flashlight out of her purse and swung open the door. “After you, my dear.”

  “Me? You got the flashlight.”

  “Here.”

  Becky switched on the flashlight, shone it down the steps. “I don’t see why you don’t want to—Oh, my God!”

  “What is it?”

  Becky recoiled, repugnance on her face. “Did the chief tell you what’s down here?”

  “Rats and spiders.”

  “That’s the polite version. It would appear Mr. Overmeyer’s septic system leaks.”

  “The chief didn’t mention that. You see anything down there?”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

  “No, it’s why we came.”

  “It’s why you came. I’m the driver.”

  “Come on, Becky. Hold your nose and take a look.”

  Becky glared at Cora a moment, then swung the flashlight back down the stairs. “There’s a bike.”

  “I know.”

  “And mousetraps.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a row of mousetraps. More like a semicircle.”

  “Around the bottom of the stair?”

  “Sort of. Convex, not concave.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I thought you were a linguist. The mousetraps do not encircle the bottom of the stair, they’re like a ball the bottom of the stair is about to kick. Only half, of course.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Cora took a breath, pushed by Becky to see for herself.

  The mousetraps were loosely arranged as Becky had said. All were sprung. None had trapped a mouse.

  “I thought he was kidding about the rats,” Cora said. She shouldn’t have. Her lungs were greeted by a blast of foul air.

  She fled the cellar, closed the door. “Okay,” she said, brushing spiderwebs from her face. “Let’s try the kitchen.”

  “You think he’d hide something in the kitchen?”

  “I have no idea why this bird would do anything.”

  “And you have no idea why anyone would want to kill him?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Cora said. “I never met the guy, and I want to kill him.”

  “That’s not very nice. So he’s got busted plumbing. Aside from that, I’m sure he was a sweet old coot.”

  “Oh, yeah? Try opening a few of those cabinets.”

  “Why? Oh, my God!” Becky said, gawking at the moldy, vermin-ridden excuse for food in the cupboard. “Do you suppose he actually ate this stuff?”

  “You’d think it would have killed him faster than the arsenic. For the full effect, try the refrigerator.”

  “I’ll forgo the pleasure. I assume you checked the freezer?”

  “It doesn’t seem to be working. At
any rate, there’s nothing in it.”

  Becky surveyed the kitchen cabinets, which stopped about a foot from the ceiling. “Did you look on top of the cabinets?”

  “Why, Becky Baldwin, I’m proud of you. Let’s have a look.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a stepladder.”

  “I think we’ll have to use a chair.” Cora eyed the two at the kitchen table with suspicion. “You’d better do it. I have to get down to fighting weight.”

  “Fighting weight?”

  Cora waggled her hand. “I usually get married about ten pounds less, start eating after the honeymoon.”

  Becky looked shocked.

  “Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Cora told her. “When you’ve had a husband or two, you’ll know what I mean.”

  Becky pulled over a chair, set it in front of the counter next to the refrigerator. She climbed on the seat of the chair, stepped up onto the counter. Peered over the top of the cabinet.

  “Anything there?” Cora asked.

  “Cobwebs and dust.”

  “What about the other cabinets?”

  Becky looked around the kitchen. “They appear empty, too. There’s something on the one over the stove.”

  “What?”

  “Can’t tell. It’s covered with dust. I have to move the chair.”

  There was a knock on the front door.

  Cora quoted the lyrics from a particularly foul rap song.

  “What do we do now?” Becky hissed.

  “Get down off that chair, and follow my lead.”

  Cora opened the front door to reveal the man from the neighbor’s porch. He was good-looking, perhaps on the younger side of middle age, brown hair with just a few flecks of gray. Cora couldn’t recall seeing him around Bakerhaven, and he was the type of man she’d be apt to remember. She experienced a tingling sensation she hadn’t felt for some time.

  “Sorry to bother you. I live next door. I don’t mean this as rude as it sounds, but, well, what are you doing here?”

  Cora positively beamed. “And who could blame you for asking. You must be new in town. I’m Cora Felton. I live here with my niece. Not here, I mean in Bakerhaven. And this isn’t her. She’s on her honeymoon. Not her, my niece. This is Becky Baldwin, attorney-at-law. She’s taking an inventory of Mr. Overmeyer’s estate prior to probating the will.”

  He smiled at Becky Baldwin. “You’re the executor?”

  Cora, not happy to see him smitten with the young attorney, jumped back in. “Of course she is. Unless Overmeyer’s great-nephew has some objection to her. Which I can’t imagine.”

  “I can’t either. Well, let me know what he intends to do with the property.”

  “Are you interested in it?” Cora asked.

  “Lord, no. But if he’s going to put it on the market, I might buy it just to keep some kook from moving in.”

  “Do you think that’s likely?”

  “Well, look at the place. Only a kook would live here. So, you’re either going to get some wack job who thinks this is the cat’s meow, or someone who wants to tear it down and start over. I don’t need a construction site next door.”

  “Of course not,” Cora purred.

  He cocked his head at Becky Baldwin. “You were on TV.”

  “Yes.”

  “Claiming Mr. Overmeyer was murdered.”

  “It’s not me that’s making the claim. It’s the medical examiner and the police.”

  “Who would want to kill an old man like that?”

  “Did you know him well?” Cora asked.

  “Lord, no. I barely knew him. He wasn’t the type of guy you’d get to know. I don’t mean that as bad as it sounds. But the man didn’t want to be neighborly. He just wanted to be left alone.”

  “Did he have many visitors?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “But you can see his house. From your front porch.”

  “I didn’t pay much attention. Frankly, the place is an eyesore. I did my best to pretend it wasn’t there.” He held out his hand. “I’m George Brooks. I didn’t kill him to get his land.”

  “Give him your card,” Cora told Becky. “Your business card. You got one with you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Good, let’s have it.”

  Becky pulled a card out of her wallet, started to hand it over. Cora snatched it. “Pen.”

  Becky gave her a look, fumbled in her purse. Came out with a ballpoint. Cora snatched that, too, scribbled on the card, handed it over. “There you go. Now you got Becky’s office number and my home number. You see anything out of the ordinary, give us a call.”

  “I certainly will.” Brooks nodded, smiled. “Sorry to bother you. Got to get back to my wife.”

  Cora’s face fell a mile.

  Chapter 16

  “Why did you do that?” Becky hissed.

  “Shh,” Cora warned. “Wait till he’s gone.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Why? He already caught us. We might as well stay.”

  “You had to tell him I’m the attorney for the estate?”

  “I had to tell him something. ‘We broke in to ransack the place’ wasn’t going to fly.”

  “What happens when the relative shows up and doesn’t hire me?”

  “Who’s he gonna hire? You’re the only game in town.”

  “He may have his own lawyer.”

  “That would be embarrassing.”

  “Cora.”

  “You worry too much. You’re like Sherry in that respect.”

  “Like Sherry?”

  “Don’t get testy. I know she’s honeymooning with your guy.”

  “He’s not my guy.”

  “That sounds like a song title. I think maybe it is.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Becky said.

  “What am I doing?”

  “You’re needling me about my love life so I’ll forget about the breaking and entering.”

  “You have a love life?”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “Touché. I was ready to arm wrestle you for hunky neighbor until he turned out to have a wife. I wonder if he’s happily married. Do you handle divorces? Of course you do. You handle everything. Do you think it would be tacky to be the guy’s divorce lawyer and make a play for him at the same time?”

  “There was something on top of the cabinet,” Becky prompted.

  “See? I knew you’d prefer breaking and entering.”

  Becky pulled over a chair, climbed up on the counter, fetched down the object.

  It was an empty box.

  Cora jerked her thumb. “Let’s try upstairs.”

  The bedroom was just as Cora remembered it, small and filthy.

  “What do we do now?” Becky said.

  “Ever tossed a bedroom? First we look under the mattress. Then we lift the mattress up and look for slits in the mattress. We look through the dresser, look for things taped to the back or bottoms of drawers. We look under the rug, behind the picture on the wall, which I’m going to hazard a guess is not an original.”

  The picture of dogs playing poker was not an original. The glass was cracked, and one corner of the frame was sprung. Cora swung it out from the wall.

  “Anything behind it?” Becky asked.

  “Just a safe.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Yes, I am.” Cora let the picture swing back. “Unless this is a Matisse, it’s worthless. Did he do poker-playing dogs?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  Cora hopped off the bed.

  There came the sound of tires in the driveway.

  “Uh-oh,” Cora said.

  “Who is it?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “What do we do?”

  The bedroom had no windows on the driveway side.

  “Come on.”

  Cora and Becky crept down the stairs.

  Chief Harper was wa
iting for them.

  Chapter 17

  Chief Harper was not amused. “All right, what are you doing here?”

  Cora smiled. “I was just about to ask you the same thing, Chief. I thought you’d finished with the cabin.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got a right to be here. You two have not.”

  Cora shook her head. “So Brooks ratted us out? I didn’t think he was the type.”

  “According to him, you’re inventorying the estate for Overmeyer’s heirs.”

  “The man is a blabbermouth. That’s a shame. He was kind of cute. If married.”

  Harper steamed through the digression. “Which is somewhat amazing, since Overmeyer’s only heir is currently in transit.”

  “That would make him hard to contact.”

  “It would if it weren’t for cell phones. I reached him in Chicago. He denies hiring anyone to conserve his estate.”

  “Oh.”

  “How about it, Becky? Did this guy hire you?”

  “You can’t expect her to have that information at her finger-tips,” Cora said. “She’ll have to check her client list and get back to you.”

  “Since her number of clients usually ranges from one to zero, that shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Hey, I resent that,” Becky said.

  “Resent all you like. Do you happen to recall the client? The one you’re conducting the inventory for?”

  “You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, Chief,” Cora said. “It’s something you should be careful of.”

  “You mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

  “In the house of a man we just found out was poisoned?” Cora shrugged. “Can’t think of a thing.”

  “George Brooks is new in town, and clearly not used to your casual approach to the law.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, he’s awfully eager to buy the dead man’s estate. Did he happen to mention that?”

  “You’re claiming that’s a motive for murder?”

  “It’s better than any you’ve got.”

  Harper controlled himself with an effort. He took a breath. “So, did you find anything?”

  “Mousetraps,” Cora said.

  “Huh?”

  “In the cellar. There’s mousetraps.”

  “Yes, I was down there.”

  “You didn’t mention mousetraps.”

  “I said rats and spiders.”

  “I thought you were trying to scare me.”