A Puzzle in a Pear Tree (22 page)

“The asparagus risotto was to die for. The chicken mishmash isn’t bad either.”

“I meant about Taggart’s statement.”

“Frankly, we’re plum out of insights,” Cora said. “You got anything helpful?”

“No, but you may get another statement on the late news.”

“Oh? How come?”

“I was just over at the Country Kitchen. Inspector Doddsworth is having dinner with Rick Reed.”

“Really?” Cora said, perking up. “They been there long?”

“I doubt it. They were just ordering when I left.”

“Were they, now?” Cora shoved back her plate, got up from the coffee table. “You kids carry on without me. I have other fish to fry.”

“Cora,” Sherry warned. “You’re not going to bust in on Jonathon Doddsworth’s dinner. Promise me you’re not.”

Cora’s smile was angelic.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

38

JERRY LYNCH, THE PROPRIETOR OF THE SURF & SUN MOTEL, was impressed. “You’re the Puzzle Lady in the ads. On TV.”

“Yes, I am.”

“That’s amazing.”

Cora blushed, as usual, embarrassed by her fame. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

“No, it’s amazing. The Puzzle Lady in my motel. Don’t you live in town?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then why do you want a room?”

Cora grimaced. She had to get the one proprietor in America who had to know why before he rented a room.

“It’s my niece.” Cora leaned her head in confidentially. “She’s entertaining a young gentleman, and she doesn’t need her aunt underfoot.” Cora hoped she’d be forgiven for destroying what little remained of Sherry’s tattered reputation.

“Uh-huh,” Jerry Lynch said. Cora wasn’t sure if he bought it or not. Still, he reached under the desk, produced a registration card. That didn’t suit Cora’s purpose. She’d been hoping for a registration
book.

“Motel almost full?” Cora ventured as she scribbled on the card.

Jerry snorted. “I wish. Only half the units full. At Christmastime, no less.”

“Suppose it’s the name?” Cora asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Sun. Surf. Not exactly Christmassy.”

“I suppose.”

“None of my business, but I haven’t seen much surf around here. Aren’t we kind of landlocked?”

“Had a motel on the Jersey shore. When I moved, I kept the name.”

“I see,” Cora murmured. She was wondering how to turn the conversation.

Amazingly, Jerry Lynch did it for her. “Funny you staying here, you being an amateur detective and all.”

“Why is that?”

“We got another detective staying here. English fellow. Here for the holidays.”

“Jonathon Doddsworth?”

“That’s him. How do you like that?”

“I’ll have to say hello. What unit’s he in?”

Jerry’s demeanor became disapproving. “You can
call
him if you like. I don’t encourage visiting between units.”

“Of course. What’s his extension number?”

“One-oh-seven. But he isn’t in.”

“Oh?” In light of Jerry Lynch’s strict regulations, Cora wondered what devious surveillance methods allowed him to spy on his guests.

“Car’s gone,” Jerry said.

Visions of the Bates Motel replaced by a somewhat foolish feeling, Cora smiled, accepted her room key. She was in 12, which she figured to be the last unit.

It was. Cora drove down to the parking space in front of her door. Whoever had plowed the parking lot had piled a mountain of snow up against the walkway, leaving Cora with the option of scaling a glacier or trudging back to a gap about halfway down the row. Cora chose the latter option, and found herself in front of unit 7. There was a light on in the unit. It filtered through the paper-thin curtain.

Cora cast a glance at the front office. It had a side window, through which proprietor Jerry Lynch undoubtedly kept tabs on the comings and goings of his guests. She wasn’t sure at that distance, with her frosty breath fogging her glasses, but she thought she could see his face in the window.

Cora frowned. She walked down to unit 12, turned her key in the lock, pushed the door open, switched on the light.

It was your typical motel room. A queen-sized bed with neutral blue-gray coverlet tightly tucked under a row of pillows at the head. Two nightstands, one undoubtedly containing a Gideon Bible. Over a double dresser hung a framed print of dogs playing poker. Cora wondered if it, too, had traveled from the Jersey shore.

At the foot of the bed was the TV Jonathon Doddsworth had mentioned. Cora was glad he had. The Surf & Sun was the only motel in the Bakerhaven phone book advertising cable TV.

The telephone was on the bedside table. Cora checked the number. Her extension was 112.

Cora nodded in satisfaction. If phone extension 112 was unit 12, surely extension 107 was unit 7.

Cora slipped off her coat and pondered her options. With nosy Mr. Lynch watching the unit, the front door wouldn’t do.

Cora checked out the bathroom. As she had hoped, there was a window in the back wall. Small, high, and frosted, with a single metal-framed pane that could be cranked open or shut. The window bore out Cora’s none-too-glowing opinion of the motel’s design. A woman of her stature could hardly reach the crank, let alone turn it.

Under normal circumstances.

These were not normal circumstances.

Cora grabbed a towel off the rack, dried the soles of her boots. Then she stepped up on the toilet seat and climbed to the back of the toilet tank. She stretched her right leg out until her foot reached the rim of the sink. She tested it, found it would support her weight. Straddling the two plumbing fixtures, she was able to get a tentative purchase on the crank. She turned it, was rewarded when the window swung out with a creak.

Cora surveyed the open window with displeasure. It was big enough, but just barely. The buttons of her tweed jacket would surely catch on the sill. Not to mention the buttons on her matching skirt. Was she nuts? Surely she could use the door.

Cora hopped down, went to the front door, opened it, and stepped out boldly, as if she had just forgotten something in her car.

The proprietor’s face was definitely in his window.

Cora snapped her fingers, as if she’d suddenly remembered something that negated the need for whatever it was she’d forgotten, and went back inside.

She wriggled out of her tweed jacket, flung it on the bed. Likewise her tweed skirt. Clad only in her blouse, boots, and bloomers, Cora went back in the bathroom. She climbed up on the toilet and the sink, put her hands on the sill of the window, and launched herself through.

As she’d hoped, the snow broke her fall. She’d be sore the next day, but nothing was broken. She pulled herself to her feet and brushed herself off. Then, starting with twelve, she counted the bathroom windows down to seven.

To her delight, Doddsworth’s bathroom window was partially open.

To her chagrin, she couldn’t possibly reach it.

Cora looked around for something to stand on. Nothing. Any plank, box, or ladder that might exist was buried under snow.

Cora frowned. She reached down, picked up a handful of snow. It was wet, formed a dandy snowball. She could chuck it through Doddsworth’s window. . . . Wouldn’t that give the old bore a jolt when he came home?

Instead, Cora dropped the snowball, bent down, pushed it with her hand, rolled it along. She cursed the fact she had no gloves, but they were in her coat, back in her motel room. No way to get them now.

Cora rolled the ball of snow diligently, as if she were building a snowman. When it was big enough, she rolled it over to Doddsworth’s window, smushed it up against the motel wall. There. If it would just hold her weight . . .

Cora patted the huge snowball down until it felt solid. Discovered to her chagrin that she had no way to climb up on it.

Cora rolled a smaller snowball to use as a step.

Moments later she was enjoying a view of Jonathon Doddsworth’s tiny bathroom.

The toilet seat was down, which was a plus, but the tile floor looked hard. This would not be like falling in the snow.

The shower curtain rod was almost within reach. Cora pushed herself over the windowsill. The more weight she put on it, the more the dull metal edge cut into her stomach. Cora grimaced, leaned out, and . . .

Grabbed the shower rod!

Now, if the damn thing would just hold.

It didn’t.

Just as she swung her legs free, the shower rod pulled out of the wall. Cora crashed to the floor. She lay there tangled in the shower curtain, and began to have serious misgivings.

Maybe 107
wasn’t
the phone for unit 7.

Maybe one of the windows she had counted was the housekeeping and maintenance room, and this wasn’t unit 7 at all.

Maybe this
was
unit 7, but the proprietor was wrong and Doddsworth was there!

Get a grip,
Cora told herself. Doddsworth was at dinner with the TV reporter. And he’d have to be deaf not to have heard her entrance.

Cora pushed the bathroom door open a crack and peered out. There was a light on, but the unit was unoccupied.

Cora heaved a sigh of relief, switched on the bathroom light, and inspected the damage. Not too bad. The shower rod was only slightly bent. Cora straightened it, rethreaded the shower curtain, and hung it back up. She surveyed it critically, hoped the dent wouldn’t show.

Cora scrubbed a snowy footprint off the toilet seat, set a razor back on the sink, and hung up a towel. Satisfied everything was more or less the way she’d found it, she switched off the light and went into the bedroom.

The bedside lamp was on, not the overhead, which was too bad. Cora would have loved to switch on the general lighting, but the nosy proprietor would be sure to notice. So she made a hasty inspection without it.

It was Cora’s experience that men tended to live out of their suitcases, but Doddsworth was apparently staying long enough to have unpacked. His suitcase was in the closet, along with a suit jacket and two dress shirts. Cora closed the cheap accordion closet door, then turned her attention to the room.

A dresser identical to the one in her room held nothing of interest. Three drawers held clothes. Two drawers were empty. The drawer on the bottom right was stuffed with dirty clothes.

There wasn’t much else. The nightstand the light sat on held a Bible. The other nightstand held nothing.

Cora snorted in exasperation. She’d gotten banged up for this?

Then she saw it. On the floor. Leaning up against the dresser. A small leather briefcase.

Jackpot!

Cora snatched it up, discovered it was not a briefcase but a leather-bound notebook. Grinning, she took it over to the bed, unzipped and opened it. It was a binder for three-hole notebook paper. On the first page, she could see jottings in ballpoint pen.

The name
D. Taggart
topped the page.

Underneath were the notations,
Max—10:00–11:00;
S. Carter—12:00–1:00.

The name S. Carter was heavily underlined.

On the rest of the page were names and times of the other actors from the tableau.

Cora turned the page, and her face hardened. There was the notation S. Carter—Visa, followed by what was obviously Sherry’s credit card number and expiration date, and the record of her purchasing Enigmacross.

Cora turned the pages hastily. Doddsworth could be back at any moment. There were copious notes about the dart, the blowgun, and the sandbag, and copies of each of the poems. Everything she would expect to find in a good policeman’s notebook.

Only one thing was missing.

Aside from the live Nativity schedule, there was no mention anywhere in the notes of Maxine Doddsworth.

Cora frowned as she read the last written page. She riffled through the rest of the pages, but they were blank.

Next she examined the notebook itself. A slit on the inside back cover caught her eye. She reached in, felt something, pulled it out.

It was a red envelope!

Cora fought to contain her excitement, told herself the envelope didn’t necessarily mean anything. After all, Doddsworth had found the envelopes. Maybe he’d hung on to one, just for comparison.

Cora wasn’t buying it.

She flipped back to the front of the notebook to see if there was a similar pocket. There was. She reached in, felt another envelope, pulled it out.

This one, however, wasn’t red but white. It was addressed to Doddsworth in London, England. This, Cora reasoned, had nothing to do with the crime, and she had no excuse for reading the letter.

Cora examined the envelope, hoping for something to change that assessment. There was no return address. But the postmark was Bakerhaven, Connecticut. And the date was December 10, presumably just days before Doddsworth had come to America.

Cora pulled out the letter.

It was written on a single sheet of stationery, in a woman’s flowery hand.

My dearest Doddsy,

I hear you are coming to see Maxine. Do you really think that is wise? I would never stop a Father from seeing his Daughter, but even so . . . It has been many years, but nothing has changed. I still feel the way I did, and so does Horace. If you must come, and I know you will—I was
never
able to talk you out of anything—but if you must, I beg you, stay away from us. For your Daughter’s sake, as well as for mine. You cannot fix anything. You can only make it worse. I beg you to be smart.

Cora turned the paper over, read the closing.

Be smart, Doddsy.
All My Love,
Mindy.

Cora’s mouth fell open.

A car pulled up to the unit. A motor roared and died.

Cora shoved the letter back in the envelope, thrust the envelope back in the leather case. Zipped the leather case shut. Propped the case up against the dresser where she’d found it. Thanked her lucky stars she hadn’t turned on another light.

A key scraped in the lock.

On cat feet, Cora sprinted for the closet, squirmed inside, tugged the accordion door.