by Nero Blanc
Rosco nodded. “That’s right.”
Milt also sat on the bench. “Ever since Gordon bought that property …” he began. “First John and the vestry, and then that awful fire …” The words trailed off while Rosco considered how difficult the situation was going to be for everyone in Taneysville. Whether they’d liked Jacques Bazinne or not, his children were their neighbors, and Katie had once been the town’s brightest hope.
“We only put the final pieces together this morning, Milt … after a long talk with Paula Flynn—the real Paula Flynn, that is.”
“So … where do we go from here? What’s the next step …?” Again Milt’s words faltered. He straightened his spine, then let it sag again. He seemed old and very tired.
Rosco shrugged. “It’s all up to the authorities at this point. There’s no telling how they plan to proceed, but they won’t let it die, you can count on that … As far as Tree’s concerned, he doesn’t seem anxious to have me pursue it any further.”
“No. No, I wouldn’t think so … That’s not going to help him.” Milt glanced at Rosco, then dropped his gaze to the aged wooden planks that stretched across the porch. “Katie was a headstrong girl. Had big dreams. When she set her mind on something, no one could stop her …”
“That’s what I understand—and much too young to die. Especially the way she did.”
Milt looked at Rosco. “It was an accident; you have to believe that.”
Rosco didn’t respond, so Milt repeated a more emphatic: “It was an accident …”
“Well, yes, given … the nature of the wound … I would guess that … might have been a possibility.”
Milt stood and stepped toward the edge of the porch and placed his hands in his pockets. “The moment Gordon,” he began, then stopped. “And then that damnable backhoe … Well, I’m glad the truth is finally out … I really am … Lies and secrets are just too, too …” He shook his head, and looked back at Rosco again. “I couldn’t let her go. I loved her way too much … My heart would race just looking at her …”
In the utter silence that ensued, Rosco watched the last piece of the puzzle begin to fall into place. “You … You and Katie—”
“We were just kids … kids in love …” Milt’s words came out in a rush. “No one knew. Not even our friends … I mean, we were so young … I was seventeen; she was a year younger; and back then, well … times were different …” He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped at one eye. “You see, Katie had moved out of her sister’s house … She’d had … troubles there … My father never liked Jacques Bazinne—considered him a real bully and a brute. The classic example of how abusive some men can be … So, Dad let Katie have the room above the store, and hired her to work behind the counter after school.”
Rosco thought. “That couldn’t have sat well with Bazinne.”
“No. No, it didn’t. But legally, Jacques couldn’t make her stay home because he had no custody over her; she was only his wife’s sister … But a lot of anger surfaced because of what my dad did … Folks took sides … and Jacques’s wife, she was Katie’s older sister, she accused … Well, it was an upsetting time. I guess that’s why everyone in town was happy to think that Katie had become Paula Flynn, the movie actress. They realized the chances of a Hollywood star coming back to Taneysville wouldn’t be likely.”
Milt sat back down on the bench. He looked worn out, hunched and enfeebled by decades of secrecy. “I’ve been living with this heartache nearly all my life. And I’d give just about anything to change what happened.” He sighed.
“… Afterwards, after Katie was … Well, I turned kind of wild … got into a lot of scrapes … turned pretty tough and mean … It was May who saved me. It’s May who keeps saving me … And now I’ve got to …” His head sank toward his chest. He dabbed at his eyes again. Rosco didn’t speak or move.
“… It was the Friday night after that talent contest in Boston … Katie told me she’d won. We were meeting secretly—like usual. She said they were sending her out to Hollywood … told me she had to pack and return to Boston Monday morning early. I remember thinking how odd it was that she didn’t seem more excited … I decided it was because she’d already left me—in her mind, anyway. And that felt even worse … like I’d been forgotten …”
“She hadn’t won, Milt—at least not on Friday.”
Milt stared at Rosco for a long time. “So that was it … That’s why she acted so strange.” He closed his eyes tight, seeing Katie, seeing the past. “On Saturday night we took a long walk together and ended up at the Quigleys’ lane. There were no lights on so we snuck up to the house. It was unlocked—nobody locked their houses back then, not like nowadays.” Milt took a deep breath while tears began coursing down his cheeks.
“Did you go in?” Rosco asked.
“I didn’t want to but Katie insisted. She wanted to … She wanted to, you know … I’d never … I’d never done it before, but she was … She was so bold, so excited about the danger of it all—thinking the Quigleys might come home at any moment … And then when it was all over, I … I don’t know. I was so desperately in love with her, I couldn’t bear the idea of her leaving. Not after what we’d just had together.”
“What did you do?”
“I begged her not to go away … I told her we could get married … that someday I’d be taking over my dad’s store … But she only laughed at me. She said she’d rot if she stayed in Taneysville any longer … Then she marched outside—kind of mad and spiteful as if she were angry at herself as well as me. I chased after her and grabbed her shoulders. She pushed me away … And then … then we were just struggling with each other, not fighting but sort of locked together. The next thing I knew she was falling out of my grasp. She hit her head on a rock … There was so much blood … It was everywhere. All over the … There was nothing I could do.”
“And you buried her there?”
“I didn’t know what to do; and I just panicked, I guess. I was only a kid. A kid in trouble. And I’d killed the one person I …” Milt stifled a sob. “The Quigleys didn’t come back. Later, I found out they’d gone up to Maine to visit family. Their garden had been freshly tilled. Nothing showed. I took all Katie’s things out of the room upstairs … After that, everyone assumed she’d gone to Hollywood, just like she’d promised to do.”
“And then Paula Flynn began to appear in movies.”
“If I hadn’t known the truth, I would have sworn it was Katie—they looked that much alike.”
Another sob shook Milt’s frame while Rosco placed his hand softly on the old man’s shoulder. “You’re going to have to be charged, you know that, don’t you, Milt? There’ll be a trial.”
“I know. It’s been a long wait, but what I feel now is relief … the pure and simple truth is finally …” The words died away.
“Do you want me to call Lonnie? Or can I count on you to turn yourself in?”
Milt sat quietly and said nothing. After a few minutes, Rosco said, “Milt?”
“I’d like to tell May first. And Tree. I want them to hear it from me.” He stood, stepped off the porch, then turned back to Rosco. “I’m going to go talk to May … then I’ll call Lonnie.”
Milt walked slowly down the street and disappeared around the corner. Rosco remained on the bench for another ten minutes, sitting quietly with his arms folded across his chest and pondering the situation. After a while Belle pulled up. He stood, walked down to the car, and dropped wearily into the passenger’s seat.
“What was Milt’s reaction to the news about Jacques Bazinne?” she asked.
He didn’t answer right away, so she said, “Are you all right?”
He put an arm around her shoulders, then gave her a long and loving kiss. “I think it’s time we went home.”
POST SCRIPT
Across
1. Trail
5. Echolocation device
10. Work with
14. Sore
15.
Senseless
16. Rescue
17. A thought; part 1
19. Leg joint
20. Up and___, as a starlet
21. Bovine pacifiers
23. Explosive; abbr.
24. Garden tool
25. A thought; part 2
29. Lose one’s luster
30. Was once
31. Broadway hit of ’68
34. Boy
36. Ties up
40. A thought; part 3
44. Mold
45. Continental divide?
46. Regrets
47. Sch. grp.
49. Like some excuses
51. A thought; part 4
56. “Our Town” subdivision?
59. Chihuahua cheer
60. Greek peak
61. Gawker
63. Hibernia
65. Thinker of the thought
68. “___Is a Doggone Good Thing”
69. “Married to the Mob” star
70. Ruby and Sandra
71. British gun
72. Belonging to a certain Hardy heroine
73. Finishes
Down
1. Repair
2. Allergic response?
3. Topic
4. Blow up
5. Letter opener?
6. Billfold item
7. Civil rights grp.
8. Void
9. Turn scarlet
10. Question
11. Swahili, Kikuyu, Zulu, et al.
12. Shindig
13. Canine and wisdom
18. Bear in the sky
22. Take the helm
26. At ease
27. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner
28. Horseman of 1775
29. Shaved ice drink
31. Towel word
32. Damper dust
33. Playwright Levin
35. Turn scarlet
37. The Seine, basically
38. Compass point
39. ’60’s grp.
41. Active lead-in
42. Wood product
43. Russian range
48. Classify
50. Cat call?
51. Cowardly namesakes?
52. “The Radical” writer
53. Enthusiasm
54. It’s often in dispute
55. Clubs
56. One of the Woodys
57. Surrendered
58. Lock
62. “Travels in the Congo” author
64. Dusk to Donne
66. Sighs of relief
67. Literary monogram
To download a PDF of this puzzle, please visit openroadmedia.com/nero-blanc-crosswords
Turn the page to continue reading from the Crossword Mysteries
CHAPTER 1
To use the old Hollywood vernacular: Back in April, Chick Darlessen “couldn’t get arrested.” Of the six pilot scripts he’d submitted to various television studios the previous fall, each and every one had been “shot down” by some twenty-eight year old “suit,” a person literally half Chick’s age, with comments that had ranged from insensitive to downright abusive.
“… Chick, baby, honey, nobody’s doing Westerns anymore. Who knows from horses these days? Horses-smorshes. They shoot them, don’t they? Har. Har … We’re thinking fresh, here, innovative. You want animals, they gotta be cute animals … Small animals … A talking weasel. Now that might be something new … And remember, it’s the gal-pal market we’re selling to. Maybe a mother weasel … A nag, yes, but no horses. Please.”
“… Darlessen, sweetheart, extraterrestrials in the Nevada desert? Been there, done that. Everyone has. Give us something that’ll grab the viewers and won’t let go. I’m talking figuratively, of course …”
“… The concept? Too pricey, Darlessen. It’s also a big fat downer. You want a mature audience, you don’t peddle death. No one likes a hero who croaks. No one needs a history lesson … Who’s this Patrick Henry guy, anyway? ‘Give me liberty, or give me death.’ Who talks like that? Nobody. Think interactive, Chick. We’re selling corn flakes here. Oat squares. Fiber for a healthy diet. Give us something we can put in a box and you’re gold, baby …!”
And so the litany had gone, all winter long and well into spring. Every studio “pitch” meeting Chick Darlessen’s agent had arranged ended with a brush-off more callous than the last, sending the screenwriter further and further into the depths of depression, and deeper and deeper into debt. He needed work so desperately, and was so broke, he’d taken a part-time job with a phone-sales bank—a job at which he was spectacularly ill-equipped. While he watched his fellow “marketing consultants” sweet-talk their way into endless sales and commissions, Chick only heard the angry click of receivers dropping back into their cradles. Often he didn’t even get a chance to name the product, and by the Fourth of July he was three months late on his rent.
But then, on August 19, something just short of miraculous had happened—his uncle, Bartann Welner, unexpectedly dropped dead. Chick was Uncle Bart’s sole surviving heir; and although Bart had just turned ninety, they’d been close, living only a few block from one another for the past twenty years and taking lengthy walks into the Hollywood Hills on an almost daily basis. Until his sudden demise, Uncle Bart had been as healthy as an ox. In fact, the joke between uncle and nephew was that the old man might well outlive the younger.
Initially, the thought of financial gain from Bartann Welner’s estate seemed slim. Uncle Bart had been no more affluent than Chick, living on Social Security and a modest Screen Actors Guild pension he received from doing film stunt work in the 1940s and 1950s. The funeral costs alone could have put Chick in the poorhouse, but two weeks prior to his untimely death, Bart had been the Grand-Slam Winner of one million dollars on the TV program Down & Across, a crossword puzzle-themed evening game show.
Uncle Bart had been a crossword “junkie” for as long as Chick could remember. He was born on the same day the first puzzle appeared in a newspaper: December 21, 1913, and could complete the Sunday Times puzzle in less then fifteen minutes—in ink. Bart was born to be the Grand-Slam Winner, and as Gerry Orso, the host of Down & Across, had said at the show’s close, “Let’s hear it, folks—despite his age, Bart Welner has kicked butt here tonight!”
The check for the million dollars had yet to arrive, but Stan McKenet, the producer of Down & Across, had informed Chick that it was “in the works”, and “not to worry. As soon as that show airs, the check is in the mail.”
And Chick wasn’t worried. The payment would appear; an estate lawyer would perform his magical legal mumbo jumbo, and Chick would would have the lucre in his hands. But the real pot of gold, as far as Chick was concerned, wasn’t the promised inheritance; instead, it lay inside a manila envelope he had found while clearing out his uncle’s refrigerator. At first he’d assumed the envelope had been placed there to prevent something from leaking into a half-eaten bowl of moldy peanuts. But there were no apparent stains on the paper, and when Chick turned it over, he was intrigued by what Uncle Bart had handwritten on the outside: ANATOMY OF A CROSSWORD. Inside the envelope, Chick had discovered a neatly typed treatment for a TV movie of the week, and accompanying crossword puzzle, and a handful of articles clipped from newspapers published in Massachusetts and Vermont.
Chick never had any use for crosswords. He’d once tried to tackle one in the back of TV Guide but found he’d had no flare for word games. He was only able to wrangle two answers after studying the thing for forty-five solid minutes—and if he hadn’t been a Larry Hagman fan, he wouldn’t have solved the Genie clue. His mind just didn’t move in a lateral direction. It had always been full steam ahead. But, after perusing Uncle Bart’s treatment, Chick realized he’d hit the jackpot.
Less than a minute later, he was on the phone, punching in the numbers to his agent, Lee Rennegor. Given the screenwriter’s current deplorable status, however, he was asked to “hold” for a considerable period of time before the great Renn
egor himself got on the line. And even then, Chick wasn’t permitted to speak.
“No more animals, Darlessen … No more monsters. No more messages. No more dead people—”
“Lee, this is good. This is the money concept. I’m talking possible series here. No, make that a definite.”
There was an audible sigh on the other end of the line. “You’ve never heard the term, ‘six strikes and you’re out’? It’s over. I can’t get you in another door. The Chick Darlessen keys have been thrown away.”
Chick’s lie number one: “Lee, I’ve come up with a fabulous story concept. Movie of the week—or pilot … you call it. Get me into FOX, ABC, CBS, I don’t care. A cable network? Showtime? That’s all I’m asking, and I’ll sell this baby in twenty minutes. Ten … Five, even.”
“It’s over, Chick.”
“Lee, Lee, Lee, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying it’s over.”
“I don’t believe I heard you say that.”
“If you were listening closely, you would’ve heard me say it three times.”
“Lee, I can wrap this up in one word: Crossword … Puzzle.”
Lee groaned; no one said writers could count. Counting was the agent’s job. “This doesn’t have anything to do with your dearly departed uncle, does it?”
Lie number two: “Nothing. Nothing at all. I came up with this completely on my own.” Chick silently nudged Bart’s handiwork under the couch with his foot, somehow suspecting that Lee might be able to spot the envelope through the phone line. “This is hot, Lee. Just what the studios have been asking for. Interactive, smart, a cast you can identify with, people you can feel for … sexy, even … It’s the whole nine yards.”
“Okay …” Another sigh. “Let’s have it.”
Lie number three: “I’ve been doing some research. I spent all day yesterday at the library, and I pulled up some very interesting articles from a number of newspapers in the Boston vicinity.”