A Clue for the Puzzle Lady

by Parnell Hall

  Dennis.

  And it wasn’t just the idea that he might find her.

  No, it was the idea that had been germinating in her mind ever since her friend Brenda had put it there, offhandedly, inadvertently, with a casual, facetious comment.

  What was it Brenda had said?

  You’re glad he’s on tour and not strangling young girls.

  That had been days ago. But all that time it had been ticking around in her subconscious. Bouncing around the corners of her brain, trying to come to the forefront.

  Not strangling young girls.

  Dennis.

  Strangling young girls.

  Sherry pushed herself back from the computer.

  There. She had finally voiced the thought. At least to herself.

  Could her ex-husband be a killer?

  Could her ex-husband be the killer?

  Could her ex-husband be behind all this?

  The minute she had that thought, a million other thoughts assailed her. Ugly thoughts, buffeting her from all directions.

  Yes, Dennis was violent; Dennis had a history of violence.

  Yes, Dennis hated her, hated her almost as much as he loved her.

  Yes, Dennis was handsome, personable, would be attractive to young girls.

  But was he sick enough to kill?

  Drunk, he was. Sherry knew that for a fact. Drunk, Dennis was capable of anything.

  But sober, she couldn’t see it. Somehow, she just couldn’t see it. And yet, she realized, the reason she couldn’t see it was because Dennis, sober, was so suave, sophisticated, charming, and pleasant. And if that was an act—and didn’t she know well enough that most of his posturing was an act—well, then, would Dennis be capable of murder? Could he lure and kill a young girl?

  The answer tortured Sherry.

  It was not that the answer was yes.

  It was that the answer wasn’t no.

  It was possible.

  In her heart, she knew it was possible.

  She had to get it out of her head.

  Sherry told herself if it were really possible, she would have thought of it before, it wouldn’t have taken this long. Why wouldn’t she have realized the moment she heard?

  Unfortunately, she had the answer. Brenda’d said strangling young girls. Sherry had corrected her—the girl had been hit with a blunt object—leading the discussion away from Dennis and back to the crime. But more than that, the original remark, in being wrong, hadn’t registered. Brenda had referred to strangling young girls. No one was strangling young girls. Therefore, her remark had not connected Dennis to the murders.

  Yes, it was pure semantics. But Sherry dealt in semantics. Her brain processed words in a very precise, selective manner. If a premise was misstated, it would take a long time for the truth to penetrate.

  The truth?

  Dennis?

  Did she really believe it was Dennis?

  Sherry told herself she had to think this out rationally. Because, rationally and logically, she knew it couldn’t be Dennis. It simply didn’t make sense. So, if it wasn’t Dennis, she merely had to convince herself of that fact by simple, irrefutable logic. Calmly, coolly, work it out.

  Could Dennis kill the girls?

  Yes, he could.

  But why would he kill the girls?

  Unfortunately, Sherry knew why. He would do it to get at her. To scare her. To demonstrate his superiority, strength, intelligence, cunning, ruthlessness, ingeniousness, and persistence.

  All right, grant him that. Was there anything in these two murders that pointed to him?

  Unfortunately, there was.

  The puzzle clues.

  Sherry’s ex-husband was one of the few people in the world who knew that Sherry, not Cora Felton, was the Puzzle Lady. So far, it had not occurred to him to threaten to reveal that fact. Sherry prayed it never would. But he knew it, and he could certainly use it. And if he was killing these girls, as Sherry feared he was, to get at her, then didn’t it follow that he would taunt her with the puzzle clues?

  No, it did not, Sherry told herself. And for the first time since she had had the paranoid thought that Dennis might be behind this, she was comparatively calm. Because the logic here was forceful. Although Dennis might be capable of committing the murders, he was not capable of leaving the puzzle clues. For the same reason his band would never get anywhere. Dennis was not that creative. His songs were mediocre at best. As a performer, he had gotten by on charisma, not talent. But to create a puzzle based on several words that were homonyms for letters spelling another word—Dennis simply couldn’t do it.

  So, unless Dennis had an accomplice—which made no sense—he could not be the killer. Dennis might have killed in a drunken rage. He might even have lured young girls like the spider and the fly. But not like this.

  So, the very thing that implicated Dennis also exonerated him. The puzzle clues, which he would have known to send to her, he could not have made up.

  In Sherry’s mind it was very clear.

  Because of the puzzle clues, Dennis could not be the killer.

  46

  Officer Crocket, who was somewhat overweight, resented the stairs up to Timothy Rice’s room. Timothy lived above his parents’ garage in a housing development on the outskirts of Muncie, Indiana, and while that might have been cool for a teenage boy, the steep, narrow stairs were ill suited for a portly policeman. So Officer Crocket began the questioning slightly out of breath.

  Fortunately, he had a good chance to recover while Timothy protested that he’d already told the police everything he knew. Crocket let the boy ramble, glanced around the room.

  It was your typical teenage room, clothes on the floor, rock stars and baseball and basketball players on the wall. No pinups, Crocket noted. Timothy’s mother probably collected the laundry once a week, prohibiting calendar art. Timothy had a TV with some video game or other—Crocket was not clear on the various distinctions—a hi-fi system for cassettes and CDs, and a computer and modem. The computer, centrally placed, seemed to dominate the room. Crocket got the impression that for all the sports posters, not to mention his Indianapolis Colts T-shirt, Timothy Rice was more nerd than jock.

  “All right,” Crocket said, when the boy finally ran down and stopped complaining. “I know this is difficult for you, but I just have a few more questions. I’m sure you want Dana’s killer caught.”

  “Of course I do. I just don’t see how I can help.”

  “Well, why don’t you let us be the judge of that. Just help us any way you can.”

  Timothy Rice had sandy hair and tortoiseshell glasses. He pushed the glasses back up on his nose and said, “What do you want to know?”

  “Do you remember her shoes?”

  “What?”

  “When Dana came to see you, just before she left—what kind of shoes was she wearing?”

  “Why?”

  “Because there weren’t any on the body, and they’ve never been found.”

  Timothy shuddered. “Body.”

  “I know. It’s upsetting. But if you could help us out. You happen to remember her shoes?”

  “Sure. She was wearing sneakers.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Dana always wore sneakers.”

  “Do you happen to know what kind?”

  “Nike.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. She wore Nike. I wear Reebok. See?” Timothy hiked the leg of his blue jeans, lifted his foot. “See. Reebok. We used to kid about it. You know, like a commercial parody. Anyway, that’s what she wore.”

  “What about her socks?”

  “What about ’em?”

  “What kind were they?”

  “White, of course. What else do you wear with sneakers?”

  “Uh huh,” Crocket said. “And when she came over here—the last time you saw her—did she give you any idea she was going to leave?”

  “No, she didn’t,” Timothy said. “I’ve been
over this a hundred times. She was upset, she was real unhappy, and she was complaining. But she never said anything about running away.”

  “Why was she upset?”

  “About her grades, of course.”

  “Her grades?”

  “Yeah. She had terrible grades.”

  “Lots of kids get bad grades. They don’t run away.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, can you think of any reason why Dana did?”

  Timothy Rice sat in his desk chair, swiveled it around, typed idly on the keyboard of the computer. The computer was off. “I guess it was Mr. Foster.”

  “Who?”

  “The math teacher.”

  Officer Crocket felt a sudden rush of adrenaline. Good God. Something concrete. At last. The girl was involved with her teacher.

  He tried not to sound too eager. “What do you mean, Timothy?”

  “Oh. The math teacher scared her off. She flunked his course. Flat out flunked. Her other grades were bad, but this was the worst. He gave her a straight F.”

  That was not what Crocket wanted. Now he tried to hide his disappointment. “Too bad,” he said. “But no reason to run away.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Timothy said. “It was the way he humiliated her.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Foster offered her a chance to pass. Just barely, with a D minus, but still, better than flunking the course.”

  “Wait a minute. Her teacher offered to change her grade?”

  “That’s right. If …”

  “If what?”

  “She did what he wanted.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Corrected her final.”

  Crocket blinked, stunned by the anticlimax. “What?”

  “He gave her back her final, asked her to correct it.”

  “Her final?”

  “Yeah. Her math final. The one she flunked. Foster asked her to correct everything she had wrong and hand it in again.”

  “Why didn’t she do it?”

  “She was going to. She just couldn’t bear it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s why she came over. To ask me to help her. You gotta understand, Dana wasn’t very good at math.”

  “She came here to ask you to help her with her final?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you wouldn’t do it?”

  “What do you mean, I wouldn’t do it? Why wouldn’t I do it? Actually, there was nothing to do. I got an A on that final. All she had to do was copy my answers.”

  “She didn’t have to write out the problems?”

  “No, just the answers. Pretty stupid, huh? Did he really think she wasn’t gonna get ’em from somebody else?”

  “And she came over here to do that?”

  “Right.”

  “Then why did she run away?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes,” Crocket said, trying hard to be patient. “But when I asked you why she ran away, you said this teacher might have been a reason. But, if all she had to do was write the answers, and she came here to get ’em, and you were willing to give ’em, well, what went wrong?”

  Timothy thought a minute, then swiveled his chair around. “I think it got to her. The sheer stupidity of it. See, it was multiple choice, a, b, c, or d. So if the guy only wanted the answer, that’s all you gotta write. But, no, just to be mean, the guy says you gotta write out the whole answer. As if the answer meant anything without the question. See, I think Dana would have been willing to write the letters. Or even write out the problems, though it would have been more work. Because there would have been a point. But writing the answers, just for the sake of writing them—well, that’s like writing ‘I was a bad girl’ on the blackboard a hundred times.”

  “So Dana never corrected her test?”

  “She started, got fed up, and quit. That’s why I say, maybe that was the last straw, made her run away. I don’t really think that, I think it’s pretty stupid, I only say it ’cause you’re pressing me for a reason.”

  “Uh huh. But you say Dana started to correct her test?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And that’s when she got upset and left?”

  “Yeah. ’Cause it was stupid.”

  “I see,” Officer Crocket said. He furrowed his brow. “Was there anything in the test itself that might have upset her?”

  “No. How could there be?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just wondering. Do you happen to have the test?”

  “Of course.”

  “Could I see it?”

  “Sure.”

  Timothy Rice jerked open the drawer of a file cabinet by the desk. Crocket noted that despite the clutter in the room, his papers were neatly filed.

  Timothy pulled out the math exam. “Here we go.”

  Officer Crocket came, looked over his shoulder.

  It appeared to be a typical final exam. Half a dozen pages, typed, mimeoed, and stapled together. On the top it said: Algebra II Final Exam, Mr. Foster. Next to that, circled in red pencil, was the inscription: 96 – A.

  Timothy noticed Crocket looking at the grade. “Got one wrong,” he said. “Careless. Misread a sign.”

  “Ninety-six isn’t bad,” Crocket said. “So, Dana started copying off this?”

  “Right,” Timothy said. “Writing down the answers. As I recall, she got the first three right. Actually, not that bad. Three out of four. Seventy-five percent. If she kept up like that, she’d have had a C. Unfortunately, she had the next four wrong. Her grade on the test was forty-six. That’s pretty bad when you consider it’s multiple choice.

  Even if you didn’t know anything and just guessed, by the law of averages you’d get a twenty-five.”

  “Uh huh,” Crocket said. “Show me what Dana did.”

  “She just did problem four. She started five, never wrote the answer. This is the one she did.”

  He pointed to it.

  Crocket looked over his shoulder, read:

  4) The graph of 2x = 3y + 5 is a:

  a) circle

  b) parabola

  c) hyperbola

  d) line

  “That’s the one she did,” Timothy said. “Then she started number five and quit.” He grimaced. “It was a little my fault. She started writing number five on the same line, instead of underneath. Foster’s a real stickler, would have made her do it again. When I pointed that out, Dana got mad. Said, ‘I circled it, for goodness sakes, that’s not good enough?’ She folded her paper up, crammed it in her pocket. Wouldn’t look at it again. She left right after that. That’s why I say, it’s stupid, but maybe that had something to do with it. Running away, I mean.”

  “Uh huh,” Crocket said. “So, what did she write, exactly?”

  “The answer. And the start of the next question. Here, I’ll show you.”

  Timothy Rice took a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen. He wrote on the paper, held it up for Crocket.

  Officer Crocket took the paper, read what Timothy Rice had written:

  4) D – LINE (5).

  47

  He sat on the stool, sipping his drink, and pretended not to notice the young girl at the end of the bar.

  She wore shorts and a tank top a size too small, and wasn’t that revealing in more ways than one? Her blonde hair was curly, her eyes were blue. An all-American girl. Young. Very young. Old enough to be in the bar, but just barely. She’d be carded if she wasn’t known, maybe even had a fake ID.

  Very young.

  Good.

  He liked them young.

  He smiled, sipped his drink.

  She was watching him. Even without looking he could tell. She was interested. And he didn’t even have to make a move. He could just sit here, wait till she came up to him.

  He raised his glass, sipped his beer. Casually, arrogantly. Gave her a little profile. He swallowed, exhaled, leaned back. Crooned a few notes. Soft, low, but audible enough to ca
rry across the bar.

  I’m the pied piper, follow me.

  He knew she would.

  It was just a matter of time.

  He picked up his glass, tossed down the rest of his beer, signaled to the bartender to draw another. He never once considered sending one to the girl. That was for losers. Not for him. Women bought him drinks. She’d buy him one before long. Maybe even pick up his tab.

  He smiled at the thought.

  A businessman came in and sat at the bar.

  Between him and the girl.

  Bang, right in his line of sight.

  What arrogance! What colossal gall! Couldn’t the guy see what was going on here? Comes in, plunks his briefcase down, opens it up—why didn’t he just build a wall between them?—takes out a newspaper, unfolds it, and holds it up.

  Unbelievable.

  Who was this, the girl’s father come to protect her? The guy couldn’t do a better job of screening him off if he tried.

  He was saved from having to say something by the bartender, who arrived to take the businessman’s order—martini, very dry—and the fact that after placing the order the guy found the page he wanted and folded the paper up.

  And took out a pen.

  It drew his eyes like a magnet to the newspaper on the bar.

  To the black-and-white grid.

  The familiar face of Cora Felton.

  He frowned. His smile became a sneer. He inhaled, exhaled, clenched his fists.

  The Puzzle Lady.

  Thought she was such hot stuff, didn’t she?

  The Puzzle Lady.

  Thought she was too smart for him.

  Well, he’d show her a thing or two.

  He snatched up his beer, took a sip, wiped his mouth. He wasn’t concerned if the girl was watching him. She was no longer an object. He’d completely forgotten about her, didn’t even notice. There was only one woman on his mind now.

  Sherry.

  She should never have done this to him. She should have known better. She should have learned.

  She would learn.

  He’d see to it.

  She’d be sorry.

  Dennis drained his glass, and called for another beer.

  48

  Mortimer Pinkham, the examiner of questioned documents, raised his eyebrows. “All this? You have to be kidding.”