Last Puzzle & Testament (24 page)

“I had a maid. What would be the point of getting married if my husband didn’t hire me a maid?”

“You think you could skip that domestic tidbit for the
People
magazine interview?”

“Oh, I’d forgotten about that. When did I say they were coming?”

“Next week. Cora, let’s concentrate on getting these clues before Chief Harper decides to pull the plug on this little game.”

“Hey, did I talk him out of coming with us?” Cora reminded her.

“Very nicely,” Sherry agreed. While Chief Harper had perused the new puzzle solution and speculated on the arrival of news crews in town, Cora had advanced the theory that the TV people would be sure to be monitoring his movements, and if he accompanied Sherry and Cora to the laundromat, the news reporters would certainly want to know why. “You were particularly clever since no one’s seen a news crew yet,” Sherry pointed out to Cora.

“Even if the TV people aren’t here, why should we tip off Aaron Grant? Or any of the heirs, for that matter. I mean, you and I, two local girls out on the town, can stop in and do our laundry without raising an eyebrow. We cannot stop in and do our laundry in the company of the Chief of Police without someone wondering what’s going on.”

“I didn’t say your argument wasn’t valid. I’m just surprised he bought it.”

“Chief Harper and I have a sort of understanding,” Cora said placidly. “I’m not sure what it is, but we do. Ah, here’s the street.”

“Pinehurst? I thought you said Birch.”

“Birch is off Pinehurst.”

It was. Three blocks down Pinehurst, Cora took a right on Birch and pulled up in front of the laundromat, a white two-story building with the dirty sign WASH AND DRY over the door.

“Okay,” Sherry said. “I’ll take the clothes and go look. You distract the attendant.”

“If there is an attendant.”

“Of course there’s an attendant.”

Cora pushed the door open and held it for Sherry, who went inside lugging the bag of clothes.

A long room ran from the front to the frd iback of the house. The dryers were along half of the side wall, with the washers in little clusters on either end, and in little horseshoe alcoves jutting out from the other wall. There were folding tables in the middle, and, as Sherry had predicted, a machine for dispensing small packets of detergent. The smell of soap and dirty socks was in the air.

Just inside the doorway to the left was a service counter. Behind the counter, a woman in a white apron with short, dark hair and wing-tipped glasses sat reading a movie magazine.

Cora nodded to Sherry and headed for the counter.

“Excuse me.”

The woman frowned at the interruption, but when she looked up her eyes widened, and then she smiled. “You’re the Puzzle Lady. I’ve seen you around town, but this is the first time you’ve ever been in here.”

“Well, don’t let on,” Cora told her. “People will think I never wash my clothes.”

The woman giggled as if that were the wittiest remark she’d ever heard. “And I’m so pleased to meet you,” she said. “I’m Minnie Wishburn. This is my little establishment. My husband, Ray, and I live upstairs, we take turns running the place. Today it’s his turn to go trout fishing with the boys who work the night shift at the old paper mill. And how fair is that? I mean, it’s not like
we
had a night shift.”

Out of the corner of her eye Cora could see Sherry moving down the row, lifting lids, peering behind washers, and trying not to attract the attention of the half a dozen other customers engaged in doing their laundry.

“Is that right?” Cora said. “The boys really went off fishing today, what with everything that’s happening in town?”

“Well, why not?” Minnie said. “It’s not as if
we
had any stake in the Hurleys’ millions. And you’re involved in that, aren’t you? It was in the paper. You’re the one says who gets it.”

“Well, not quite,” Cora said modestly. “I don’t say who gets it. I just referee.”

“Same thing,” Minnie said. “Now, what’s this I hear about Annabel Hurley?”

“You hear right,” Cora said. “Someone broke into her apartment and cut her throat.”

Minnie shook her head sadly. “Teenagers. Looking for drug money. Like I was telling Ray. It’s not just the city anymore.”

Cora Felton didn’t think much of that theory, but she wasn’t about to argue. “She do her wash here? Annabel Hurley?”

“Oh, yes. Every week. Like clockwork. Every Monday morning, there she’d be.”

“Is that the last you saw her, this Monday morning?” Minnie frowned. “Actually, no.”

“No?”

“Seems to me she was in twice this week. Ray even remarked on it. Here she was again, and wasn’t that unlike her, unless she was doing her spring cleaning, washing out a whole linen closet of towels and sheets, though it’s a little late for spring cleaning, as I pointed out.”

“When was this?”

“Why, just yesterday. Which is enough to give you a turn. There she is, in here yesterday afternoon, large as life, and today—” Minnie shuddered. “I can’t even bring myself to say it.”

“Washing sheets and towels?” Cora repeated.

“Oh, don’t hold me to that. Ray says that’s what she must have been doing, but the man wouldn’t notice if all of the dryers were on fire. Not that that’s ever happened, mind. But Ray, he’s just oblivious. If it wasn’t unusual seeing her twice a week, he wouldn’t have even noticed.”

Cora Felton felt a tap on her shoulder, turned to find Sherry Carter standing holding the bulging laundry bag.

“Aunt Cora. Would you believe it? I forgot the shirts. We gotta go back. There’s no point without the shirts.”

“Oh, Sherry.”

“I’m sorry. I just threw it together so quickly. Come on. We’ll have to come back later, if we have time.”

Sherry grabbed Cora Felton by the arm, practically dragged her out the door.

“You got it?” Cora said as they went down the front steps.

“In the laundry bag.”

“Where was it?”

“In a dryer.”

“
In
a dryer?”

“No, not
in
a dryer. Underneath.”

“Underneath?”

Sherry threw the laundry in the backseat and climbed in. Cora climbed in, started the car, backed out of the space.

“What do you mean, underneath?” Cora demanded.

“There’s a filter on the bottom. A lint catcher. You’re supposed to open it up to clean out the lint.”

“And it was in there?”

“Yes.”

“Taped?”

“No. But leaning up. If you were looking for it, you couldn’t miss it.”

“Did you look at the clues?”

“No, I just shoved them in the bag.”

“Wanna look now?”

“Sure. I’ll feel real foolish if it’s something else, like a warranty for the dryer. But it looks like the other envelopes. Lemme dig it out.”

Sherry groped in the laundry bag, came up with the manila envelope. She unclasped the envelope, pulled out a page

“It’s the clues, all right,” she said.

“What’s the long one? Or do you know the number?”

“
Fifteen.
”

Cora frowned. “Fifteen? I thought we’d done that section.”

“No.” Sherry shook her head. “The clue’s
fifteen
.”

“What?”

“That’s the clue. For number fifty-eight across.
F-i-f-t-e-e-n.
With a question mark.
Fifteen.

“What could that be?” Cora said.

“I have no idea.”

“Can you solve it from the other clues?”

“I don’t have the grid. It would be a little like playing mental chess.”

“Could you do it?”

“If I concentrated and—Uh oh.”

“What?”

“Looks like we’re being followed.”

Cora glanced in the rearview mirror. Her eyes widened. The vehicle tailgating them was a Channel 8 News van.

“Oh, my God, it’s the TV people,” Cora said. “They’re right on our tail.”

“Maybe they just want to get by.”

“Maybe. Think I should pull over?”

“If they’re following us, they’ll stop too.”

“Sure. And I don’t wanna talk to ’em,” Cora said. “Okay, it’s time for the oh-my-God-we-forgot-the-undies routine.”

“What?” Sherry said.

“Like you pulled in the laundromat. Only this time I’m pretending we brought our underwear, but we left them
there
.”

There was a real estate agency with a circular driveway on the edge of town. Cora veered into the driveway, circled around, and peeled out, heading back the way they came.

“Did we lose ’em?” Cora asked.

“Momentarily,” Sherry said. “By not signaling you made them overshoot the driveway. They’re turning around now.”

“So they
are
after us!” Cora’s eyes gleamed. She stamped on the gas. “Okay, start the banjo music!”

“Banjo music?”

“Don’t you remember the car-chase music from
Bonnie and Clyde
?” Cora’s head started bobbing to it as the Toyota took off. “Or was that before your time?”

“Aunt Cora! We are
not
having a car chase with the TV people.”

“Of course not,” Cora agreed, flooring the accelerator.

“So you wanna slow down? You just hit eighty.”

“That was just to give ’em a thrill.” Cora eased up on the gas, glanced in the rearview mirror. “Okay, here they come. Let’s lead ’em back to town.”

“To the laundromat?”

“Heaven forbid. I was thinking of the police station.”

“You’d sic the media on Chief Harper?”

“Better him than us.”

Cora drove into town, pulled up in front of the library just opposite the police station. The Channel 8 van pulled in alongside.

Sherry and Cora got out of their car to find Rick Reed, the young, handsome, smooth-talking, ambitious onewseim">-camera reporter, climbing out of the van.

Sherry grimaced.

Sherry and Cora’s previous encounter with the TV newsman had not been felicitous. Rick Reed had hit on Sherry, and tried to embarrass her aunt. The fact that neither attempt had been successful had not been for lack of trying.

“Well, well, ladies.” Rick flashed his best on-screen smile. “This certainly is a happy coincidence.”

“Oh, yeah,” Cora said. “Major coincidence. Tail us for five miles, then pretend we met by accident.”

“I’m pretending nothing of the kind,” Rick Reed said.

“The coincidence is that we have another murder involving a crossword puzzle.”

“Well, the fact is we don’t,” Cora Felton said. “And we won’t be needing
that
,” she added, pointing to the camera the two assistants were unloading from the back of the Channel 8 van. “I’m not giving an interview.”

“You don’t want free publicity?”

“I don’t want free publicity from you. The last time you filmed me you made me look bad.”

“No,” Rick Reed said. “Actually, the last time I filmed you I made
me
look bad. I figured the Graveyard Killings might be my stepping-stone out of here. Didn’t work out that way.”

“Too bad,” Cora said, sounding suspiciously sincere.

“A lot you care.”

“Actually, I do. I’d be thrilled to see you leave.”

Rick Reed flushed, turned to Sherry Carter. “What about you? You still angry with me?”

“
Angry
isn’t the right word,” Sherry said. She pointed to the assistants, who were busy setting up the camera. “Didn’t my aunt say she wasn’t giving an interview?”

“She’s not the only one in town. There’s lots of other people to interview. On the other hand, if I want to point the camera at her and have her say ‘No comment,’ I have that right. She might not want to talk to me, but she can’t tell me what to shoot.”

“Too bad,” Cora said. “Off the record, I was going to give you a hint.”

Rick Reed’s handsome nose twitched. Sherry could practically hear the wheels whirring in his wee brain. He suspected a trap, but didn’t want to pass it up.

“Why would you do that?” he asked suspiciously.

“Don’t be dense. To get you off my back, of course.”

He frowned. “I’m willing to believe you’d like to point me in another direction. Why should I believe it’s the
right
direction?”

Cora shrugged. “That’s up to you. All I’m saying is I’m willing to talk as long as you keep the camera turned off. You want to listen, fine, no obligation. You can sort through and believe what you want. If you’d rather not listen, that’s fine too, because then I don’t have to bother.”

Rick, visions of a major metropolitan news anchor dancing in his head, promptly said, “I want to listen.”