Arsenic and Old Puzzles (8 page)

19  Like a ski run

20  Lizards popular as pets

21  First baseman in a comic routine

22  Run-throughs

23  More of the message

29  Davis of film

31  Send, so to speak

32  Lavender, for one

35  Set the pace

37  Old PC screens

38  Ill temper

39  Humble in position

41  Does a bakery job

42  Keister

43 “-ite” compound, often

44  Tribal leader

46  Lint-collecting body part

48  Forest clearing

50  Still more of the message

52  Sunlit areas

57  Trinity member

58  Putting out

60  With freedom of tempo

64  End of the message

65  Did penance

66  To__ (just right)

67  Suffix with Brooklyn

68  Upper crust

69  Does fairway work

70  Patch up

Down

  1  Namely

  2  Almanac tidbit

  3  Beanery handouts

  4  Name in frozen dinners

  5  Caucuses state

  6  Insults, playfully

  7  Like Reynard

  8 “Peter and the Wolf” bird

  9  Head over heels

10  Clay-Liston result, briefly

11  Dance like Hines

12  Poetic preposition

13  Half a diam.

18  Body art, slangily

21  Big hunk of cheese

24  Gusher

25  Heston title role

26  Marx Brothers’ specialty

27  Out-and-out

28  Capone adversary

30  D-Day invasion town

32  Tuscany city

33  Chain sound

34  Like King novels

36  Did some batiking

38  Beeb watcher

40  Transplant need, maybe

45  Pet store array

47  Parade day

49  A lot like

51  Abounding in trees

53  Payback time for Wimpy: Abbr.

54  Goes up

55  Lavatory sign

56  Veep who resigned

59  Hobo fare

60  Sleazy periodical

61  Beehive State Indian

62  __ mot

63  Aardvark’s tidbit

64  “How Dry __”

Cora took a look. “So, you wanna solve it?”

“Not really, but you’re not going to let me alone until I do. Even though it means absolutely nothing.”

“We don’t know it means absolutely nothing.”

“Yes, we do. We figured it out by deductive reasoning.”

“Would you just solve the damn thing.”

There were footsteps in the hall, and Aaron came in, carrying Jennifer on his shoulder. He looked half asleep. “What are you girls doing?”

“Sherry was doing a Google search, and now we’re going to do a crossword puzzle. What’s new with you?”

“The baby woke up. She wants to nurse, and I’m not equipped.”

“Sorry, Cora. Duty calls.” Sherry took Jennifer from Aaron.

“Where you going?” Cora said.

“Nurse her and put her back to bed.”

“What about the puzzle?”

“Harvey Beerbaum’s going to do it.”

Sherry and Jennifer went out the door.

“What’s that all about?” Aaron said.

Cora filled Aaron in on the murder.

“Hmm. Town drunk. Not worth getting out an extra. Unless it turns out to be poison.”

“You won’t know in time to do you any good. Dan Finley will leak it to Rick Reed. By the time you get out an extra, it will be all over the tube.”

“I could write it now,” Aaron said.

“What?”

“Assume it’s poison, and write it now. We could have it on the street before Rick even aimed a microphone.”

“Could you really do that?”

Aaron made a face. “Nah. It’s not like we have newsboys screaming on street corners. The
Gazette
gets delivered. It’s only sold in half a dozen stores. Half of those are convenience stores that are really out of town. And none of the stores on Main Street even have a rack outside.”

“Whoa, back up!” Cora said. “It’s the mother who’s supposed to have postpartum depression. You’re not competing with television. You’re a successful young journalist. People read your stories, not because you’re the first on the scene, but because you put an intelligent spin on what Rick Reed has already mangled.” She put up her hand. “That being said, if I can get you a scoop, I will. In the meantime, it’s five in the morning. So, unless you’d like to take a whack at this crossword puzzle…”

“I’ll leave that to Sherry.”

“Then I’m going to bed.”

Chapter

16

Cora woke up
at a quarter to ten. She knew it was a quarter to ten because the digital clock said so, and there was no arguing with cold, hard numbers. A clock face you could misread, particularly if the minute hand and the hour weren’t that different in length, but the numbers didn’t lie. Unless some of the lines were burned out, like in that digital watch Cora used to have that made the four look frighteningly like half a swastika. But the clock on her dresser was in depressingly good repair.

Cora got up, padded in the direction of the bathroom. Stopped short at the sight of a piece of paper shoved under her bedroom door. She picked it up. It was the solved puzzle.

Cora sat on the bed, read the puzzle over.

After careful examination, she was delighted to be able to report that it didn’t mean a damn thing.

Cora got dressed and drove into town. She seldom made breakfast for herself. Not when Mrs. Cushman’s Bake Shop provided such tempting treats. This morning, Cora had an apricot scone and a latte. Mrs. Cushman made the latte. The scone, like all her baked goods, she trucked in from the Silver Moon Bakery in Manhattan.

Chief Harper came in behind her, ordered a large black coffee and a blueberry muffin.

“Just getting up, Chief?” Cora said.

“Are you kidding? It’s my second time today.”

“Your second blueberry muffin?”

“Let’s not count calories. It’s unfriendly to count calories.”

“Any progress on the case?”

Harper glanced around the bakery. It was still crowded, even at ten in the morning. “Let’s not talk here.”

Cora followed the chief down the street to the police station, which was only a tempting half block from the bakery, increasing the allure. Cora wondered which came first. Had the cops seen the bakery and decided to open the station? Or had Mrs. Cushman figured it couldn’t hurt to open a bakery near the cops?

The Bakerhaven Police Station, like most other houses in town, was a white frame building with black shutters. Harper went up the front steps, held the door for Cora.

Dan Finley was at his desk. He looked bleary-eyed. Cora wondered how early Chief Harper had called him in.

“Anything happen?” Harper said.

“In the five minutes you were gone? Not a thing.”

“Great.”

Harper led Cora into his office, closed the door. He sat down, put his coffee and muffin on the desk.

Cora flopped into a chair, sipped her latte. “What’s up, Chief? You identify the corpse?”

“Ned Crumley.”

“Glad you can joke about it.”

“Well, what else can I do? I got two men killed for no apparent reason under the most bizarre circumstances. Unless the Guilford sisters poisoned them, I don’t see how it was done. If they did, I have to congratulate them for committing the most stupid and obvious murder in the history of law enforcement. Sit the man down and feed him poison, call the cops when he dies. It’s hardly the perfect crime.”

“On the other hand, Chief, they’ve got you convinced they didn’t do it.”

Harper opened his mouth, closed it again. “Damned if they haven’t. Could they be that diabolically clever?”

Cora put up her hands. “Whoa. I was kidding. Don’t go off the deep end.”

“See, even you ridicule the suggestion. We have an absolutely senseless crime that doesn’t adhere to any pattern. We have an unidentified corpse who materialized in town without using any mode of transportation. We have a serial killer unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. This is an absolutely unique sort of crime.”

“Yes, and no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. Driving home last night I had the funniest feeling. Granted, it was four thirty in the morning and I hadn’t had any sleep. Still, I couldn’t help feeling there was something very familiar about it.”

“What?”

“I have no idea. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever encountered. I wish my brain was working right. It’s been tough ever since I turned—”

Cora broke off. Her face flushed.

“Turned what?” Harper said.

“Turned into my driveway and went home,” Cora improvised. “I felt like something was wrong, but I was too tired to figure it out.”

Harper let it go, as if that was what Cora had meant to say. He knew damn well she was talking about her last birthday. He wondered which one it was.

“You get the report back from the lab?” Cora said.

“No. Now I’m waiting on two of ’em. We should get the results on the first murder soon, but they’re taking their own sweet time. Luckily, nobody gives a damn.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, it isn’t a very sensational murder, is it? An old man and an old drunk poisoned for no reason. Rick Reed hasn’t even bitten. You can bet Dan Finley’s tipped him off, but he doesn’t think it’s worth the bother. And that, I have to admit, is the saving grace. No one’s pushing me to solve this crime. Not that they won’t, but right now expectations are low.”

“You invited me over here to tell me nothing?” Cora said.

“I invited you over here to eat your scone. So I won’t have to admit in public I got nothing. Well, I got one thing.”

Harper took a paper off his desk, passed it over. “Here’s the puzzle. Harvey solved it.”

“Seen it, Chief. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Huh? You went over to Harvey’s?”

“No, Sherry copied the puzzle off the Internet.”

“How the hell did she do that?”

“I had the date from the paper. She plugged it in, found a puzzle archive. She’s clever that way. I studied the solution to the puzzle, and it is my pleasure to tell you it doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I certainly don’t.”

“I suppose you’re right. Of course, if it had said cyanide…”

“Yes, that certainly would have made a difference,” Cora said sarcastically. “Or if it had named the killer. A neat trick, to have known who did it way back in 2005.”

“Yeah. I was hoping there’d be some tie-in with the sudoku. But Harvey couldn’t find one.”

“Harvey solved the sudoku?”

“Not as fast as you could, but he solved it.”

Harper handed her a copy.

“Well, that’s fine work, Chief. Harvey may not have been as fast, but I guarantee you he got the same numbers I would have.”

“Does it suggest anything to you?”

“Nothing you could print in a family newspaper.”

“Ha, ha,” Harper said. “Well, hang on to it. And the crossword, too. Maybe something will dawn on you later.”

“That’s fine, Chief, but I guarantee you it won’t.”

Cora folded the papers, and stuck them into her floppy, drawstring purse.

Chapter

17

Cora left the
police station, went down the side street to Becky Baldwin’s. She found the young attorney hunched over her desk.

“What you doin’?”

“Believe it or not, I’m paying my bills. They don’t tell you in law school. That’s over half of what the job consists of, and no one pays you to do it.”

“You up to date on the second murder?”

“I know there was one.”

“At the Guilford house.”

“So they say.”

“Who’s they?”

“Confidential sources.”

“Give me a break.”

“Dan Finley. Who also tipped off Rick Reed. Who couldn’t care less.”

“Oh?”

“Said there wasn’t anything sexy about it.”

“In other words, you don’t have a client yet.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, you’re sexy. If you had a client, Rick Reed could interview you.”

“Ha, ha.”

“I wasn’t kidding. Without you, there’s no story. All they’ve got is Police Have No Leads. Throw in a defendant, they got an angle.”