Dead Man's Puzzle (6 page)
Authors: Parnell Hall
“Why did you do that?” Becky hissed.
“Shh,” Cora warned. “Wait till he’s gone.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Why? He already caught us. We might as well stay.”
“You had to tell him I’m the attorney for the estate?”
“I had to tell him something. ‘We broke in to ransack the place’ wasn’t going to fly.”
“What happens when the relative shows up and doesn’t hire me?”
“Who’s he gonna hire? You’re the only game in town.”
“He may have his own lawyer.”
“That would be embarrassing.”
“Cora.”
“You worry too much. You’re like Sherry in that respect.”
“Like Sherry?”
“Don’t get testy. I know she’s honeymooning with your guy.”
“He’s not my guy.”
“That sounds like a song title. I think maybe it is.”
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Becky said.
“What am I doing?”
“You’re needling me about my love life so I’ll forget about the breaking and entering.”
“You have a love life?”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Touché. I was ready to arm wrestle you for hunky neighbor until he turned out to have a wife. I wonder if he’s happily married. Do you handle divorces? Of course you do. You handle everything. Do you think it would be tacky to be the guy’s divorce lawyer and make a play for him at the same time?”
“There was something on top of the cabinet,” Becky prompted.
“See? I knew you’d prefer breaking and entering.”
Becky pulled over a chair, climbed up on the counter, fetched down the object.
It was an empty box.
Cora jerked her thumb. “Let’s try upstairs.”
The bedroom was just as Cora remembered it, small and filthy.
“What do we do now?” Becky said.
“Ever tossed a bedroom? First we look under the mattress. Then we lift the mattress up and look for slits in the mattress. We look through the dresser, look for things taped to the back or bottoms of drawers. We look under the rug, behind the picture on the wall, which I’m going to hazard a guess is not an original.”
The picture of dogs playing poker was not an original. The glass was cracked, and one corner of the frame was sprung. Cora swung it out from the wall.
“Anything behind it?” Becky asked.
“Just a safe.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Yes, I am.” Cora let the picture swing back. “Unless this is a Matisse, it’s worthless. Did he do poker-playing dogs?”
“Not that I recall.”
Cora hopped off the bed.
There came the sound of tires in the driveway.
“Uh-oh,” Cora said.
“Who is it?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“What do we do?”
The bedroom had no windows on the driveway side.
“Come on.”
Cora and Becky crept down the stairs.
Chief Harper was waiting for them.
Chief Harper was not amused. “All right, what are you doing here?”
Cora smiled. “I was just about to ask you the same thing, Chief. I thought you’d finished with the cabin.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got a right to be here. You two have not.”
Cora shook her head. “So Brooks ratted us out? I didn’t think he was the type.”
“According to him, you’re inventorying the estate for Overmeyer’s heirs.”
“The man is a blabbermouth. That’s a shame. He was kind of cute. If married.”
Harper steamed through the digression. “Which is somewhat amazing, since Overmeyer’s only heir is currently in transit.”
“That would make him hard to contact.”
“It would if it weren’t for cell phones. I reached him in Chicago. He denies hiring
anyone
to conserve his estate.”
“Oh.”
“How about it, Becky? Did this guy hire you?”
“You can’t expect her to have that information at her finger-tips,” Cora said. “She’ll have to check her client list and get back to you.”
“Since her number of clients usually ranges from one to zero, that shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Hey, I resent that,” Becky said.
“Resent all you like. Do you happen to recall the client? The one you’re conducting the inventory for?”
“You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, Chief,” Cora said. “It’s something you should be careful of.”
“You mind telling me what you’re doing here?”
“In the house of a man we just found out was poisoned?” Cora shrugged. “Can’t think of a thing.”
“George Brooks is new in town, and clearly not used to your casual approach to the law.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, he’s awfully eager to buy the dead man’s estate. Did he happen to mention that?”
“You’re claiming that’s a motive for murder?”
“It’s better than any you’ve got.”
Harper controlled himself with an effort. He took a breath. “So, did you find anything?”
“Mousetraps,” Cora said.
“Huh?”
“In the cellar. There’s mousetraps.”
“Yes, I was down there.”
“You didn’t mention mousetraps.”
“I said rats and spiders.”
“I thought you were trying to scare me.”
“I was.”
“I mean I thought you were making it up.”
“You find anything else?”
“The sewer pipe’s broken.”
“Relating to the crime.”
“How do you know someone didn’t kill him for having a broken sewer pipe?”
“Okay. Enough shenanigans. I got a murder to solve. And I can’t solve it if I’ve got to spend all my time chasing you around. In case I wasn’t clear before, let me be explicit. This cabin is off-limits. Don’t go in, don’t drive by it, don’t look in the window, don’t inventory anything that might happen to be there. And for God’s sake, don’t remove anything from the property under penalty of death. You haven’t removed anything from the property, have you?”
“Absolutely not,” Cora said.
“Or do you have anything on your person right now that you intend to take from the property?”
“Gosh, you have a suspicious mind, Chief.”
“You agreed just a little too readily.”
“There’s no pleasing you, Chief. I agree with you, you’re unhappy. I don’t agree with you, you’re unhappy. What do you want us to do?”
“What do I want you to do?” Chief Harper cocked his head. “I want you to avoid any TV interviews in which you give out information not already released by the police.”
“Becky must have misunderstood you, Chief. I don’t know how that happened.”
“Yeah. Well, this time let there be no mistake. I want you to get in your car, drive off, and don’t come back here for any reason whatsoever. Is that clear?”
Cora patted him on the cheek. “Crystal.”
As soon as Becky dropped her off, Cora hopped in her car and sped back to the cabin. The front door was locked, but the kitchen window was still open. Shimmying through was a pain. It also upped the chance Brooks would call the cops, but that couldn’t be helped.
Cora went straight to the bedroom, stood up on the bed, lifted down the picture frame. Recalling lines from the Dylan song about looking like Robert Ford but feeling like Jesse James did not cheer her. She glanced over her shoulder for potential assassins. Finding none, she flopped the picture down on the bed, pulled off the folded piece of paper taped to the back of the dog art. She rehung the picture, pelted down the stairs, and was out of there faster than you could say elderly housebreaker.
Cora felt bad about holding out on Becky. She wouldn’t have held out on Sherry, if her niece had been the one helping her search the cabin. To a certain extent, Cora realized that was why she’d done it. She felt guilty about using Becky in Sherry’s absence. It was as if Sherry had gotten married so Cora had gotten a surrogate niece. Not exactly, the pilfered paper said. Withholding the evidence kept Becky outside the pale.
Cora raced into the house, locked the front door behind her, as if that would keep Chief Harper out. It kept Buddy in, and he wasn’t happy about it, yipping his displeasure until Cora threw him a dog biscuit to shut him up.
Cora flopped her purse on the kitchen table, yanked out her precious find. It was a single sheet of paper folded into eighths. The Scotch Tape was still on. Four strips diagonally across the corners. Cora pulled them off with a reasonable amount of care for her level of excitement.
She unfolded the paper.
There was writing on it, which became evident only when it started to unfold. That was good because any writing on the outside would have been ripped off by the tape. But the writing was on an interior fold. It couldn’t be seen when the paper was folded in eighths or quarters, only when it was unfolded into halves.
Cora spun the paper around.
It wasn’t a message. It was merely numbers. Numbers and dots scrawled on the page in a haphazard fashion. To a woman whose husband had played the ponies—for the life of her, Cora couldn’t remember which husband—it looked like some bookie’s scratch sheet, a secret record of bets and races the cops could never figure out that made sense only to him.
Or made no sense at all.
Cora sighed.
Was this what she’d risked Chief Harper’s wrath for?
Of course not. The numbers weren’t the message. Overmeyer had scrawled his message on the
back
of an old piece of paper because he didn’t have a
clean
piece of paper. Probably hadn’t in years. The message was on the other side.
Cora turned over the paper.
Groaned.
It was a crossword puzzle.
ACROSS
1 Pre-op wash
5 “Zorba the Greek” setting
10 Indian king
14 Juno, to the Greeks
15 Crude carrier
16 Four Corners state
17 Start of a message
19 Old TV clown
20 Kind of point
21 Nervously excited
23 Reactionaries of 1917
26 Beach color
27 Wheel rotator
28 Large cask
29 Is down with
32 Hum or seethe
35 Part 2 of message
38 Blow one’s mind
40 Big gobbler
41 Impressive spread
42 Part 3 of message
45 Vegas calculation
46 E. Lansing school
47 Mensa high marks
48 Sukiyaki ingredient
50 Good name for a cook?
51 “The Hustler” locale
55 Executed First World War spy
59 Pushover school course
60 Snobbish attitude
61 Part 4 of message
64 Holiday season, for short
65 Davy Jones’s locker
66 Downwind, nautically
67 Early Cosby series
68 Wipe again
69 Cassandra, for example
DOWN
1 Comic interjection
2 Moves, in realtor lingo
3 “Fear of Flying” author Jong
4 Britney Spears photographers
5 Miler Sebastian
6 Ipanema’s city
7 Graceland’s former resident
8 Adolescent
9 Galley goof
10 Apply, as cream
11 All-inclusive
12 Charlie Parker’s music
13 “Hi, sailor!”
18 1,059 another way
22 Tucker who sang “Strong Enough to Bend”
24 School-zone sign
25 Tithe amounts
28 Ketchup ingredient
29 Like some candy
30 Part of U.S.N.A.
31 “The ___ the limit!”
32 Toto’s creator
33 “Ball!” callers
34 Early film actress Pitts
36 Sock part
37 Loud hubbubs
39 Archie Bunker’s wife
43 0 degrees latitude
44 “Cock-a-doodle- ___”
49 Went by plane
50 In-your-face style
51 Pierced
52 “Oh, look ___” (shopper’s remark)
53 Paris school
54 West Coast NBA hoopster
55 60’s–70’s dress
56 Intentions
57 Bend in a sink’s pipe
58 Marathon, for one
62 Hearing aid
63 Whatever amount
On her way to the police station, Cora bumped into Harvey Beerbaum.
“Well, what do we do now?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I solved the puzzle and a man is dead.”
“I don’t think it’s cause and effect.”
“Don’t be silly. Mr. Overmeyer was murdered. The puzzle is a valuable clue.”
“You solved it.”
“Yes, but I don’t know what it means.”
“Join the club.”
“How can you be so calm about this? We’re involved in a murder.”
“Maybe you are, Harvey. I have an alibi.”
He looked shocked. “You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m joking.”
“How can you joke about a thing like that?”
“Make up your mind, Harvey. You just told me to say I was joking.”
“Have you talked to Chief Harper?”
“Yes, have you?”
“What does he think?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
“I asked you first.”
“He thinks it has something to do with the puzzle.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Okay, he
doesn’t
think it has something to do with the puzzle.”
“Cora.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Harvey. But you solved the puzzle. Surely you noticed all the references to computers in it.”
“What?”
“You didn’t notice? Well, take another look. I have no idea what it means, but if you think of anything, let me know.”
“There was nothing in the puzzle.”
“That’s what I would have said, too. But the man is dead.”
“My goodness.”
Harvey hurried off, no doubt to look at the puzzle.
Cora felt bad for deceiving him. And for not trusting him. It was one thing to let him solve a puzzle when it didn’t mean anything. And before she knew it was a murder. It was something else to let him solve a puzzle she’d pilfered from a crime scene under the eyes of the cops. It simply wouldn’t do. He would have too many scruples. He would have a nervous breakdown. He would want to go to the police.
He would make her life a living hell.
No, there was no way Harvey was getting a look at the puzzle.
Of course, she couldn’t show it to Chief Harper, either. She couldn’t admit she had it. And he’d just want her to solve it. Assuming he didn’t throw her in jail.
Cora hurried down to the police station just in time to meet Overmeyer’s heir.