A Crossworder's Gift (13 page)

“No, the twins suggested ‘fabulous quotations' … so we started on an Aesop binge,” Jean answered with a laugh, before turning to Hunter. “It's too bad Mary Ann came down with the flu, and had to miss the festivities this year. I always enjoy spending time with her. I love that British accent … I guess in part because it refuses to go away. Even after all these years.”

Hunter shook his head. “My wife's the one who's usually healthy as an ox, but she really got hit hard this time … I insisted on staying home with her, but she wouldn't hear of it. She also claimed she was glad to be ‘spared our verbal badinage' for once.”

Jean laughed her bright and pleasant laugh once more. “I can just hear her saying that.” Then her expression turned pensive. “I don't like to think of loved ones being separated at the beginning of another year. John's not with us, either.” She looked at Gwen. John was Gwen's husband.

“A workaholic … what can I say? There's a team of Japanese businessmen flying into Tucson tomorrow. It could result in some major input for our Sandstone Estates project.”

“Still …” Jean persisted, but Gwen shrugged off the effort at sympathy:

“Someone has to pay the bills.”

There was something aggressive in Gwen's tone, something raw that jangled the nerves. Everyone felt it; for a moment no one—including Mawme—spoke.

It was Belle who broke the awkward silence. “The crossword you're working on now, Jean, will it be part of tomorrow's competition?”

“No. It's just something she started playing around with,” Mawme stated in Jean's stead.

“She's doing more than ‘playing around,'” Joe snorted.

Mawme raised his eyebrows. “I presume we're all ‘playing around' when it comes to word
games
, Joe. I certainly don't consider this work.”

Again, tension descended upon the room, and again, it was Belle who dispelled it. “Well, I consider it work,” she said in a cheery tone. “Not unpleasant work; I certainly enjoy myself, but constructing and editing crossword puzzles
is
my bread and butter.” She smiled at Gwen, D.C., and Hunter Evans, then at the twins—while carefully avoiding the nettlesome trio of Mawme, Conrad, and Jean O'Neal. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to see if I can find that husband of mine. Shake him away from the TV and his football game so we can admire the famous sunset hitting those gorgeous red ‘Temple' rock formations … We'll see you all at dinner.”

“Libations at seven-thirty,” Mawme interjected. “Dinner promptly at eight-fifteen—with my special yearly offering dessert.”

“Yes, indeed.” Belle smiled again, although she was beginning to wish she hadn't accepted the group's invitation. As tempting as three days at the Grand Canyon had seemed, misgivings about the gathering were starting to stir in her brain. Something unpleasant was afoot, and it seemed to be pointing to a fight between one frail but power-obsessed man and another confined to a wheelchair.

D
INNER
was indeed festive, the dining room's massive stone fireplaces ablaze, flowers and greenery bedecking each table, a rolling simmer of conversation spicing the air along with the dense perfumes of rich winter foods: mulled wines, savory soups, roasts heaped with potatoes, and glazed root vegetables. The conversation at the puzzlers' special table was no less heady. Homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, and anagrams flew about with the alacrity of lexical light. Everyone seemed determined to trump a dinner partner.
Double entendres
and puns rocketed across the white linen and laden plates. The only person immune to the verbal one-upsmanship was Rosco, who sat beside Belle with an amused expression tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“A penny for your thoughts,” she whispered.

“Too cheap, by far.”

“I gather you're not daydreaming about words.”

“Depends which ones you've got in mind.”

Then Belle's attention was commandeered by Will Mawme, who announced that his much-anticipated crossword would be distributed after coffee and dessert. But he added a new caveat to the procedure: This year the puzzle was in a sealed envelope and to be completed not in each other's company, but in the privacy of the attendees' bedrooms—after the stroke of midnight.

Belle gave Rosco's foot a conspiratorial nudge. They'd have the first few moments of the new year to themselves, after all.

W
ITH
“Auld Lang Syne” sung, and “Good night's” and “Happy New Year's” exchanged, Rosco and Belle crossed the porch leading toward the hotel's lawn and the canyon's south rim. The couple was silent in the vastness of the night, the daubs of snow dotting the craggy rocks that stood sentinel over the great black chasm that had been scoured and rent by eons of river water attacking its rocky walls. Here and there in the building's long shadow, deer stood nuzzling the ice and snow in search of hidden grass, but they were also quiet; and if they glanced at Belle and Rosco at all, it was with an untroubled stare. Not one of them took flight. Instead they moved soundlessly among the junipers and piñon pines that stood ink-dark against the sky.

“Beautiful,” Belle murmured as she huddled close to Rosco. They wrapped their arms around each other and stared into a frosty night that dropped away into the lethal and jagged depths below.

“All those miners working the canyon cliffs,” she whispered. “How did they do it? Living halfway up and halfway down … What did they eat?”

“Probably not ‘double whammy butterscotch pie.'”

“I'm serious, Rosco.”

“So am I … sort of. The miners, the prospectors like that Louis Boucher fellow who lived out a solo hermit existence … explorers who charted the Colorado … I was also reading about John Wesley Powell, a guy who lost an arm during the Civil War, continued to fight for the Union, then decided to navigate the Colorado in 1869—only to have nearly half his crew of nine desert him. I'll bet his three months down there fighting the rapids didn't allow for much variety in the cuisine line.”

Belle hunched her shoulders in thought. “I'm glad I'm not an explorer—or a prospector or trapper.”

“I'm glad you're not, too—not with your sense of direction. I'd never see you again.”

Belle chuckled. “At least, I know what to do when confronted with a map. You don't even know how to unfold one.”

“Hey, they make great beer coasters if you don't unfold them … Look, people who go out to tame the wilderness don't even have maps. That's what make them
explorers
. They navigate by the sun and moon and stars.”

She slipped her arm down to squeeze his waist. “And they never order up second helpings of cappuccino mousse.”

“It takes a he-man to kill off a couple of moose.”

“Don't start, Rosco. I've had enough word play for one night.”

“How about a smooch, then? Something else those miners didn't get a whole lot of.”

She turned her face to his, but in the midst of their embrace a cloud of mist began advancing from the canyon's edge. At first it was wispy, like steam blowing off a pot of creamed soup; then the mist became fog, which grew in density: a white miasma billowing upward to obscure both the ravine and the path wavering along its treacherous border.

“Time to find higher ground,” Rosco said.

“But not necessarily loftier intentions.”

W
HILE
R
OSCO
and Belle retreated to the cozy comfort of their room, another guest in another wing of the hotel was engaged in an anxious and whispered conversation. The mode was via cell phone as the speaker had opted to avoid the El Tovar switchboard. The room was dark, another precaution intended to prevent late revelers in the corridor outside or on the porch below from realizing the inhabitant was still awake.

“But I'm telling you he knows! … Yes, I'm sure! … He spelled it out in that damn crossword puzzle he landed on us tonight!” The voice cracked with fear and anger.

“What do you mean you've ‘got it under control'?” A sharp sigh, a nervous and shallow breath. The tone lowered, but the level of emergency did not.

“No, I'm sure the others don't have a clue … They wouldn't. Especially if they didn't know what they're looking for. Unless you—Wait! I hear someone outside the door!” The speaker stood stock still until the laughter weaved off down the hall. Another sigh, this one more panicky than before.

“What should I do? What should
we
do? You tell me … I don't want to risk being caught going to his room, but … What do you mean, you'll ‘take care of it'? … That's not possible! You aren't—”

But the connection had been severed.

There's a Hitch!

ACROSS

1.  Boston campus; abbr.

4.  Pig-poke connector

7.  Black bird

10.  Likely

13.  Fracas

14.  Ariz, neighbor

15.  Mr. Kingsley

16.  Classic car

17.  Ladies who go way back; abbr.

18.  Hitch hair-raiser

21.  Hockey org.

23.  Mr. Fassbinder

24.  ___Riban

26.  Georgia, once; abbr.

27.  Windbag?; var.

31.  College board member?

33.  Airport info

34.  Mr. Hunter

35.  “Out of___”

36.  Wind dir.

37.  “I'm all___”

38.  Nashville campus; abbr.

39.  Lou's partner

40.  Arena in 51-Down

41.  Den___

43.  Randolph Scott film

44.  Kindest

47.  New Zealand fish

48.  Egyptian king

49.  Shines again

50.  Actress Dyan

52.  Meadowlands' athlete

53.  Let go

54.  Hi-ho's in the Alps

56.  Me in Metz

57.  Hitch hair-raiser, with “To”

61.  It lit Ingrid's light

64.  VCR reading

65.  Poetically above

66.  FBI & ATF cousin

67.  Presidential monogram

68.  Day-___

69.  “The Sacred Wood” poet's monogram

70.  Chicago trains

71.  Call upon

DOWN

1.  Steamed

2.  Ms. Lupino

3.  Hitch hair-raiser

4.  Like JFK Airport

5.  Gov. arts support

6.  Loath

7.  Hillside shelter

8.  Newborn

9.  “A friend___is …”

10.  Weapon

11.  ___brained.

12.  2000 lbs.

19.  “The___of the Worlds”

20.  Annoyed Asta utterance

22.  Watering

24.  Sch. grp.

25.  Sandy sound?

26.  “Lifeboat” locale

28.  Hitch hair-raiser

29.  Rhine feeder

30.  TV ltrs.

32.  Fort Worth campus; abbr.

33.  The last word

36.  Cloud in Cluny

37.  100 Centavos

39.  Preservative; abbr.

40.  Smith & Jones film; abbr.

41.  Cartoon sot's word

42.  “Gotcha!”

43.  Counter treats

44.  Meadowlands athlete

45.  California airport letters

46.  Recipe meas.

48.  Like Hades

49.  Live

51.  Ditty from “Annie”

52.  “Weary Blues” poet's monogram

55.  To be in Brest

56.  Arts degs.

57.  Gear tooth

58.  Internet co.

59.  “The Man Who Knew___Much”

60.  Slippery one

62.  Film speed letters

63.  Engine additive

To download a PDF of this puzzle, please visit
openroadmedia.com/nero-blanc-crosswords

M
ORNING
found the hotel still swathed in fog so thick and cumbrous that all views of the canyon's distant north rim had vanished; and even the south rim trail immediately fronting El Tovar was completely obscured. Only the few piñons beside the entry portico were visible, but they looked like ghosts, looming eerily out of clouds of suffocating vapor while the ravens perched in the trees' branches squawked and fluttered their wings as if to rid themselves of the air's unaccustomed weight.

Rosco, Belle, and several of the puzzlers who had gathered for breakfast regarded the scene with heavy hearts.

“I guess there won't be any hiking out to Maricopa or Powell Point today,” D.C. observed.

“Not unless you want to wind up dead,” Hunter Evans answered. “I'd stepped outside when this fog blew in last night … You know, there's not much in the way of a guard rail in some spots on the trail.”

“We were outside, too,” Belle began, “near the—”

“Guess we must have missed spotting each other in that pea soup.” Hunter poured himself another cup of coffee. “Where's Will this morning? I'd like to strangle the old buzzard. His crossword kept me up half the night.”