The Sudoku Puzzle Murders (3 page)

Read The Sudoku Puzzle Murders Online

Authors: Parnell Hall

Sherry Carter was at the computer, typing a puzzle into Crossword Compiler. Sherry was a little behind in her work, which was why she’d skipped Cora’s sudoku presentation. That and her desire to let Cora fly on her own. Any Puzzle Lady appearance that didn’t involve Sherry was a godsend. Cora was good at bluffing her way through luncheon talks where no cruciverbal skills were required, but a chance of displaying actual expertise was too good to be true. Cora couldn’t solve a
TV Guide
puzzle with a pencil, two erasers, and an answer sheet. But she was an absolute whiz at sudoku. Something clicked in that loopy mind of hers, that miswired mare’s nest of nerves and impulse centers, which allowed her to make near miraculous deductions concerning motivations, inclinations, and cause and effect, just as long as it didn’t involve defining words. And intersecting words. And fitting words into five-letter blanks. And knowing whether a word was being used as a noun or a verb. Cora hated nouns and verbs. At least, she hated identifying them, classifying them, and saying how they were used in a sentence. Her teacher
tried to drum that into her head in high school, just at the time she was becoming very interested in nonverbal activities.
Cora’s language skills had suffered. Not that it had harmed her any. None of the many men she’d married had ever asked her to parse a sentence.
Sherry needed a good clue for
profligate
. Not to be confused with
prodigal
. Which she would never do unless distracted by an upcoming wedding. Good lord. If marriage addled her brain, maybe it wasn’t worth it. Maybe they should call the whole thing off.
The phone rang.
Sherry scowled. She hated phone calls when she was constructing. She decided to let the answering machine pick up. Unless it was Cora or Aaron. Sherry checked the caller ID. Damn.
Caller unknown
. That could be anything, from an unlisted number, to a pay phone, to a telemarketer. Oh, well, if it was the last, she could just hang up. But what if it was someone really annoying? Like her ex-husband? Or her ex-husband’s wife? Or her ex-husband’s father-in-law, for that matter?
Sherry frowned, snatched up the phone. “Hello?”
“Sherry. Thank God you picked up. I was afraid you’d think I was a crank.”
“You are a crank, Cora. Why don’t you get a cell phone?”
“I’d lose it. I’d let the battery run down. It would ring in a movie theater or a church.”
“When was the last time you were in church?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I must have been getting married.”
“You can leave a cell phone off, Cora. Only turn it on when you need it.”
“It could still get lost.”
“So put it in your purse.”
“You know what my purse is like? I’d have to empty it out every time I wanted to find the damn thing. It’s embarrassing, dragging out six different kinds of birth control.”
“Why do you have six different kinds of birth control?”
“Do I have any kids? I’ve never even been pregnant. Except to force a proposal out of the guy who was terminally shy.”
“You were pregnant?”
“No, I just said I was. The guy was too timid to question my finding.”
“Cora, why did you call?”
“To tell you how well it went.”
“It did.”
“I’ll say. Aaron was there and I knocked his socks off.”
“Aaron’s back?”
“Yeah. He came right from the airport.”
“He didn’t call.”
“He will. He went back to the paper to file his story. Anyway, he didn’t know I could solve sudoku. He thought Harvey was going to hang me out to dry.”
“Harvey?”
“Yeah. He surprised me with a puzzle from Will Shortz and challenged me to a fight.”
“How did that go?”
“I kicked his ass. Anyway, that’s not why I’m calling.”
“You wanna run through three or four more topics before you tell me?”
“You’re rather testy. Prewedding jitters.”
“That’s one topic.”
“That’s a
lot
of topics. That’s Aaron. And Dennis. And Brenda. And Becky. And Reverend What’s-his-face.”
“Kimble.”
“Yeah, him. Listen, has Dennis been around lately?”
“Why?”
“Why? Well, there’s a restraining order, for one thing.”
“I mean, why are you asking?”
“To find out if he
has
! Jesus, you and Aaron are impossible!”
“Aaron? Has he been asking?”
“He hasn’t even
been
here. Forget Aaron. Just listen a minute.”
“I really have to do this puzzle.”
“Right. Because you’re the brain trust, and I’m just the pretty face. Well, guess what? I got a job I can actually do.”
“What’s that?”
Cora filled her niece in on the sudoku book.
Sherry was skeptical at best. “A Japanese publisher wants
you
to do a Puzzle Lady book?”
“Yeah. Of sudoku. Is that a problem?”
“Not for me. I can’t do the damn things.”
“Well, I can.”
“Can you construct them?”
“How hard can it be? You plug in nine numbers and take some of them out.”
“I think there’s more to it than that.”
“Yeah, well, the guy’s gonna call you to make a deal. I told him you’re my business agent.”
“Wonderful. Any terms in particular you’d like me to negotiate?”
“I want a camper, a driver, and a chance to direct.”
“It’s a book, not a movie.”
“Oh, well. Do the best you can.”
It took Sherry awhile to get back into the puzzle. She just couldn’t concentrate. It bothered her that Aaron hadn’t called. She wondered if she should call him at the paper. No, he’d said he’d call her. She didn’t want to bother him at work.
Bother. That was all wrong. She wasn’t a bother. She was the woman he was going to marry. A call from her could never be a bother.
Sherry went to the phone, picked it up.
Even so.
There was no reason to be obsessive.
Sherry put the phone down again.
Told herself it wasn’t just that she didn’t want to give him a chance to ask if she’d heard from Dennis.
Sherry put it out of her mind, attacked the puzzle.
She was nearly finished by the time the phone finally rang.
Chief Harper was cleaning out his garage. He’d been meaning to do it for months. Actually, his
wife
had been meaning for him to do it for months. He’d been putting it off. Cleaning out the garage never pleased him the way it pleased her. He was not happy to see the assortment of junk the family had amassed since the last time his wife had prevailed upon him to do it. Nor was he happy with the inevitable tag sale that followed each cleaning. Clara’s bike with training wheels would always have a special significance for him. Even when she went off and got married. And wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to give to
her
daughter? Granted, the tires were flat and the kickstand was missing, but you didn’t
need
a kickstand with training wheels. And that rust would surely clean right off with WD-40.
Oh! There was a set of old golf clubs. The ones he’d stored in the garage when he got that new set that seemed way too big to hit such a small ball. But that’s how they all played nowadays. To be fair, the new clubs were pretty nice. But they didn’t have a pitching wedge, just a sand wedge. And he’d managed to lose his eight iron somewhere on
the back nine. Why someone hadn’t found it and turned it in was a matter for a police investigation. At any rate, his new clubs were an eight iron and a pitching wedge down, and he always snuck them out of the old bag when he went golfing. He wondered dispiritedly how much his clubs would sell for without them.
Then there was the croquet set with the coat hanger for a hoop. And the lawn mower that still worked but didn’t start very often. And the scrap wood that wouldn’t have taken up so much room if it were piled neatly. And the living room rug his wife had made him save for just such an occasion. If he dragged it outside it would probably rain. If he didn’t drag it outside, he couldn’t get at the storm windows behind it.
Chief Harper was in a foul mood by the time he wrestled the rug outside to find Cora Felton standing in his drive.
“What do you want?” Harper snarled.
“Whoa, Chief. Whatever’s buggin’ you,
I
didn’t do it.”
“What brings you here? Want to buy a rug?”
“Sorry, Chief. Police business. But if you’re busy … .”
Harper put up his hand. “Actually, I could take a break. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m interested in someone.”
“Who?”
“The Japanese gentleman who was at my talk at town hall.”
Harper smiled. “It’s a sad commentary on our diversity that you can describe him as such.”
“I’m broken up. Did you see him?”
“I was distracted. My wife was going on about cleaning the garage.” Harper stole a guilty glance over his shoulder for fear she was standing there.
“Listen, can you run the guy for me?”
“Run him?”
“Do I have to translate police lingo? Check him out. See if he’s got a record.”
“In Japan?”
“If that’s where he’s from. Guy shows up, says he’s from Japan. How should I know?”
“Did he look like he was from Japan?”
“He looked damn good. Lean, hard, muscular.” Cora noticed the expression on Chief Harper’s face, hurried on. “I’d like to know if he’s legit.”
“Why?”
“He wants to put me in a book.”
“A book?”
“Yeah. Of sudoku.”
“He wants to publish a book of your puzzles? The man is clearly a scoundrel. Shall I put him under arrest?”
“Fine, make fun,” Cora said. “But I don’t want to get involved in a business venture with someone who isn’t kosher. Particularly someone from another country who I can’t get ahold of if I want to wring his neck.”
Harper frowned. “This doesn’t sound like you, Cora. Investigating a business deal. That’s not your style.”
“What’s my style?”
“Oh, rushing in headlong without looking where you’re going, then escaping unscathed when you get into trouble.”
“That flowed trippingly off the tongue, Chief. Can I assume you didn’t just make that up?”
Harper raised his hand. “I was explaining to someone why I hadn’t arrested you as a public nuisance. I forget who. But it seemed to do the trick.”
“You couldn’t just say I’d been a big help to you?”
“Right, right,” Chief Harper said. “That’s how I like to portray myself. Totally incompetent without you.”
“Can you run the name?”
“What is it?”
Cora read Hideki’s name off the card.
“Sounds Japanese.”
Cora gave him a look.
“All right, I’ll run it when I get in tomorrow. Think you can stay out of trouble till then?”
“Think you’ll be done with your garage by then?”
“You want that name run or not?”
“Please.”
Cora gave Chief Harper the business card.
A police car pulled up and Dan Finley got out. The young officer was a Puzzle Lady fan. He smiled and waved when he saw Cora.
“Hi, Chief. I couldn’t get you on the phone.”
“Yeah. ’Cause I was in the garage.”
“Couldn’t get you on the radio, either.”
“Probably ’cause it’s not on. I’m off duty, Dan.”
“Sorry, Chief. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Know what?”
“There’s been a murder.”
Dr. Barney Nathan, dapper as ever in his red bow tie, rose from the body and declared, “This man is dead.”
That came as no surprise. The gentleman in question had half his head missing. The left half, Cora observed from her vantage point just behind Chief Harper. Cora had a healthy way of looking at corpses, treating them as puzzles to be solved, rather than human beings on whom gruesome, painful, and, ultimately, deadly things had been done.
The mystery in this case was where the hell was the gentleman’s right eye? A gory mass of bone, tissue, and brain that marked the spot where it should have been, offered no immediate clue. Had someone laid the man down and bashed his head in with a rock? Not likely. Then the missing features would be present, if altered. These gave the impression of having been sliced away. Whether by a pickax, or a chain saw, or …
Cora found there might be a small flaw in her philosophy of
distancing herself from the carnage. She felt most decidedly lightheaded, if not queasy. She steeled herself, hoped Chief Harper wouldn’t notice.
He didn’t. The chief, pretty much in the same boat, was steadying wobbling knees. He kept his eyes on the doctor rather than the corpse, said, “Can you give me a little more than that, Barney?”
The dapper doctor might have been speaking at a physicians luncheon. “Certainly. The decedent has been dead at least twelve hours. Killed by a blow to the head with some sharp object, most likely not here.”
“How can you tell?”
“The gentleman is missing half his face. If the fatal blow had been struck here, you would expect to see some evidence of it. But that’s really your department, isn’t it?”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. That’s also your department. I would say he was around forty-five or fifty, five-foot-eight, a hundred and sixty pounds. Give or take part of his head.”
“You thinking of doing stand-up, Doc?”
Barney frowned, lowered his voice. “Frankly, I’m a little giddy looking at the damn thing.”
“Not a pleasant sight, that’s for sure,” Harper said. “All right, let me check for ID, you can get him down to the morgue.”
“Sure.”
Chief Harper looked at the body, hesitated. “Dan?”
“What?”
“You want to see if he’s got a wallet?”
“Oh.”
Clearly no one wanted to go near the corpse. Cora considered volunteering. She was afraid she’d lose her lunch. In front of the medical examiner and the police. She’d never live it down.
Dan approached the body. The dead man wore a sports jacket and slacks. Dan pushed the jacket aside, found a wallet in the hip pocket of the pants.
“His name’s Walter Krebb. From New York City. At least according to his driver’s license. Assuming it’s him.”
“Isn’t there a photo?”
“Yeah, but …”
Harper put up his hand. “Okay, okay. Anything else?”
Dan gave the body a once-over. “He’s got something in his jacket pocket.”
“Please tell me it’s not a crossword puzzle.”
“No. It’s a—Well, actually.”
“Damn it, Dan!”
“It’s a newspaper. One of the smaller New York papers. The
New York Star
. Folded open to the puzzle page.”
“That
can’t
mean anything. Can it?”
“No. Except it’s her puzzle.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a Puzzle Lady puzzle. See, Chief?”
Dan held it up. The newspaper had two puzzles on the page.
One was a sudoku.
The other bore Cora Felton’s smiling face. The copy read:
The Puzzle Lady has some advice in case an unexpected guest drops in for dinner.
ACROSS
 
1 Frank of the Mothers of Invention
6 What a star may stand for
11 “Proved!” letters
14 Hunter in the sky
15 Spiked, as punch
16 “Eewww, gross!”
17 Advice part 1
19 Prior to now
20 Slam-dance
21 Abbr. on a telephone
22 Cockeyed
24 Results in
26 Takes the plunge?
27 “Sit down and have __ !”
31 Desdemona’s love, in opera
33 Advice part 2
35 Add fizz to
39 Enters, as a controversy
40 Attitudes
41 They happen
42 Advice part 3
43 Gooey treat
45 Oneness
46 Bill of Rights defenders: Abbr.
49 How a telegrapher went once
51 “The Sound of Music” name
53 Rural water source
54 Slangy beliefs
58 Chip off the old pot?
59 Advice end
62 Evolution figure
63 Former hurler Ryan
64 Piccolo cousin
65 Cowboy sobriquet
66 “__ never believe me!”
67 Reason
 
DOWN
 
1 Kind of lens
2 It flows through Florence
3 Thanksgiving desserts
4 Swanky
5 Member of a small colony
6 Put in one’s place
7 Acquires a liking for
8 Build up
9 Leaves in a bag?
10 “Giant” author Ferber
11 Big shaker-upper
12 Encouraged, with “on”
13 Graceful craft in the Persian Gulf
18 Forever and a day, seemingly
23 Under oath
24 1974 hit subtitled “Touch the Wind”
25 Aristotle’s teacher
27 “ … even __ speak”
28 Young Cleaver, familiarly
29 Third planet from die Sonne
30 Ties
32 React to a surprise, perhaps
34 Old-fashioned denial
36 When Romeo meets Juliet
37 German: Abbr.
38 Catch sight of
40 __ pony
42 New Jersey resort
44 Shilly-shally
46 Trip to the plate
47 Thin flapjack
48 Paint base
50 Having a high pH: Abbr.
52 Huff or puff
54 Dot of land
55 Flabbergast
56 2000 pennant winners
57 __’ Pea
60 Kabuki alternative
61 Failing grades
“Oh, hell,” Chief Harper said. “Cora?”
“Yes?”
“Does this mean anything?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Well, you wrote it, didn’t you?”
Uh-oh. There it was, the direct question. Luckily, Cora had been evading direct questions all her life. “You think I know what the answer is? All the crossword puzzles I’ve ever seen? You think I remember this?”
“Okay, so solve it.”
“Oh, sure. Throw a bloody corpse in my lap and ask me to solve a puzzle. A puzzle that’s got nothing to do with anything. If the guy
had a puzzle pinned to his chest by a knife in his heart, okay, it would be another story. But a puzzle from a paper? Come on.”
“I’d still like it solved.”
“Fine. Give me the paper. I’ll fill it in at home.”
“It’s evidence.”
“Of what? The guy’s reading habits? You wanna give it to me, I’ll solve it. You don’t, that’s okay too.”
“You want me to Xerox it?” Dan Finley offered.
“Good idea,” Harper said. “The puzzle and the sudoku.”
“You want me to solve the sudoku too?” Cora said.
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Then it can’t hurt.”
Dan Finley went off to photocopy the puzzle. Cora took the opportunity to inspect the crime scene. The body had been found in the back lot of the abandoned Tastee Freez, closed up ever since the Dairy Queen opened a half a mile closer to town and ran them out of business. If the owner of the Tastee Freez had killed the owner of the Dairy Queen, Cora wouldn’t have been surprised. But this wasn’t him.
Harper wandered over to Cora, said, “See anything?”
“You’re asking for my help?”
“A little louder, Cora. I don’t think the EMT guys heard you.”
“For what it’s worth, Chief, the corpse is not from town. According to the doc, he wasn’t killed here. So the killer’s probably not from town either. Everything points to the fact the guy was killed elsewhere, someone drove through town and dumped the body. If that’s true, your sole responsibility will be getting the case into the hands of the proper authorities.”
“Uh-huh. And just who would that be?”
Cora waggled her hand. “That’s the only problem.”

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