A Deadly Row (29 page)

Then again, maybe the distraction of creating a more complex puzzle was exactly what I needed.

I started reviewing the types of puzzles I liked to create on my notepad, but before I could make up my mind, my telephone started ringing.

Zach didn’t even look up as I answered.

It was Lorna.

“We’re still on for tomorrow, aren’t we?” she asked.

“Yes, unless you want to cancel.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said, and then she hung up.

“Who was that?” Zach asked. So, it had caught his attention.

“It was Lorna. She wanted to be sure I was still meeting her in the morning.”

“She could have been calling for another reason,” Zach said.

“What’s that?”

“To see where we were.”

“Why should she want to know that?”

“She wouldn’t, unless she’s the killer.”

“Come on, Zach. You can’t read too much into everything that happens to us.”

He shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s true. I’m just saying it’s a possibility.”

“Fine; whatever you say. Frankly, I’m too tired to argue.”

I walked back to retrieve my pad when I glanced down at the copies on the floor. I glanced from my grid to the copies and back again, and then I looked at the last clue we’d gotten.

Could it honestly be that easy, or was I letting my imagination get the better of me?

There was only one way to find out.

I studied the letters in the sequence they’d been received, and wrote the combinations below the square on the horizontal axis. And then I remembered the 4O I’d so casually dismissed. What if it wasn’t a zero, but a letter O instead? That would make it 4-O.

I added it to the others, and wrote A3, E5, E2, A4, E1, and 4O.

So far, we’d received As, Es, and an O on the last one before the oblong circles.

The first part of every sequence was a vowel.

Five columns wide had to mean A, E, I, O, and U. I knew Y was sometimes a vowel, but there wasn’t room on my grid, and if I needed it later, it wouldn’t be too hard to add.

What about the y-axis going up the rows? We had a 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Each row had its own number.

I wrote it in quickly, and then called Zach.

“Come here. You need to see this.”

“What is it, Savannah? I’m onto something here.”

“If it weren’t important, I wouldn’t ask you to look,” I said.

He came over to me, and I handed him my pad.

He stared at the grid. “There are a lot of spaces we still don’t know about though. There’s no way we could be expected to solve this with the clues we’ve gotten so far.”

“That’s why the killer sent us this last one,” I said. “He ran out of time, so this has to be the key.”

Zach took it from me, studied it, and then said, “But the question is, what lock does this key fit into?”

“I haven’t gotten that far yet,” I admitted. “Do you think I’ve lost my mind?”

“Yes, but for completely different reasons. This could actually be it. Good work.”

“I’m not there yet.”

“You’ll get it,” he said.

I laid the original clues out again, this time being careful to put them in the proper order. As I did, I stared at each note.

3A, 5E, 2E, 4A, 1E, O4.

After that, I decided to add the order they arrived in, and got something like this: 3A (1), 5E (2), 2E (3), 4A (4), 1E (5), 4O (6 or 1).

Could the sequence of the notes represent the numbers that belonged in the corresponding squares?

I laid out my grid, and started filling in numbers. When I finished, it looked rather stark.

If I only knew what it meant. As a puzzle, it was nearly empty, and if it was one of mine, there was too much information that was still missing.

I just hoped I didn’t run out of time before I unlocked the key.

“HAVE YOU HAD ANY MORE BREAKTHROUGHS?” ZACH
asked as he walked into the bedroom where I’d been working.

“No, I’m afraid I burned out my thought process. How about you?”

He grinned at me in a special way, something I’d seen before.

“You’re on to something, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Come on, don’t hold out on me.”

“I need to sleep on it, and then I have to check a few things out tomorrow.” I knew my husband’s methods. He’d talk when he was ready, and only when he was ready. Otherwise, his internal thought process could short-circuit if he spoke his theories aloud. I understood it completely, and had learned to respect my husband when he was reticent about a case.

“Good enough.” I started gathering my copies and notes.

“You don’t have to do that on my account. I could always crash in the other bedroom.”

“I don’t spend enough time with you as it is. Besides, I’m just spinning my wheels right now.”

“Don’t worry. You always do better in the mornings.”

“We can only hope.”

After we were in bed, I snuggled up close to my husband. “I’m glad you’re with me.”

“Tonight, or all of the time?”

I punched him lightly. “All of the time, and you know it. Can you believe Barton Lane is really my uncle?”

“It’s hard to grasp, isn’t it? How do you think Tom’s going to take it?”

“One thing’s for sure. He’s either going to be thrilled, or he won’t talk to his brother at all. There’s nothing wishy-washy about my uncle.”

“Which one?” Zach asked, and even though it was dark, I could hear the smile in his voice.

“That’s got a nice ring to it.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Zach asked softly.

“What do you mean?”

“He stole from your family, Savannah. I’m sure it was probably everything your grandparents had. Are you going to give him a free ride for doing that?”

“He tried to make amends,” I said.

“Too late to do your grandparents any good, though.”

“Zach, do you think I should turn my back on him because of something he did before I was even born?” While I prided myself on being my own woman, that didn’t mean that I didn’t take my husband’s advice seriously. He was a smart man, and he loved me. I respected him enough to listen to what he had to say, though I didn’t feel bound to follow it. It was a marriage, an equal partnership, at least as far as we were concerned.

“Hang on. I’m not saying that. I’m just not sure you should make it too easy on him.”

“How many hoops should he jump through first? Would seven be too many? Are three not enough? What’s the magic number?”

“Nope, I’m not going to do it,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Let you work out your frustration on me. I know you’re as torn as I am about the whole thing. Let’s table it for now, shall we?”

I realized that he was right. I’d been projecting my ambivalence onto him, and that wasn’t fair for either one of us. “How’d you get so smart?”

“It helps marrying the right person,” he said as he hugged me. “You’ve been training me to be a better man since the day we met. Who knows? Someday you just might succeed.”

“I think we’ve both done pretty well.”

“You bet.”

Soon, I heard my husband snoring softly, but my mind was in too much of a whirlwind to just drift off like that. Zach could turn his thoughts off at night like they were on a switch, but I wasn’t that lucky. How would Uncle Thomas react to his brother? Would they force me to take sides if the two of them clashed? Should I have made it a point to give that money—cash that we could have used—back to a man who was worth millions?

There were just too many questions, and not nearly enough answers.

I didn’t think I’d ever get to sleep, but I must have at some point, because I woke up the next morning groggy from my nightmares. Fortunately I rarely remembered them for long, but in this one, I was being chased by a long line of letters and numbers. They’d formed a perfect line and were holding hands as they chased me through one of my own puzzles.

The image had been enough to jolt me awake.

Zach was still sleeping, so I slipped out of bed and decided to take a shower. The multiple jets helped a little in bringing me fully awake, but I could feel the lack of real sleep, and I knew I’d pay for it through the day. When I’d been in my late teens and early twenties, I’d been able to pull all-nighters writing papers or studying for exams, but the older I got, the more I felt missed minutes of slumber, let alone the hours I’d lost last night.

I wasn’t a coffee drinker by nature, but I loved sweet tea. After my shower, I placed an order just for me; a pitcher of sweet iced tea, and a stack of cinnamon sticks.

I tried to be quiet as I got dressed, but I heard Zach’s voice from under the covers. “You had a rough night, didn’t you?”

“Sorry if I woke you,” I said.

“Which time; now, or when you shouted out the sequences were after you?”

“Oh, no. Did I actually say that out loud?”

“You did. Care to share your nightmare with me?”

I shook my head. “Not before I’ve had something to eat.”

“Savannah, you know it’s just superstition, don’t you? Your bad dreams really won’t come true if you tell them to someone else before you’ve had breakfast.”

“I know it’s irrational, but I won’t do it, so stop asking.” There was a knock at the door, and Zach popped out of the bed like he was on springs.

“Easy, tiger. I ordered some sweet tea to perk me up, and some cinnamon sticks just because I could.”

“Not breakfast for me? I’m starving.”

I laughed and threw a pillow at him as I walked to the door. “I’ll order you something as soon as I answer that.”

“Yes, but will you share with me until mine gets here?”

“We’ll see,” I said.

 

“Sweet tea and cinnamon sticks,” the voice said.

I was surprised when I opened the door to find Garrett standing there. “Wow, I didn’t realize the manager of the hotel delivered room service.”

He smiled at me. “Not normally, no. But I’ve been told you are to receive VIP treatment during the rest of your stay.”

“Funny, I thought I already was.”

As he pushed the tray inside, he said, “No, ma’am. You got Important Person treatment before. The Very was added sometime last night.”

“Trust me, there’s no need to go all out. I’m sure you have other duties to perform around here.”

“Until you check out, that’s not the case. If there’s anything you’d like, all you need to do is ask.”

“Well, for starters, could we have a repeat of yesterday’s breakfast order? My husband’s a little peckish this morning.”

Garrett smiled then retrieved a radio from his pocket. After a whispered conversation, he said, “It’s taken care of.”

“I need to get one of those,” I said with a grin.

“That’s not a bad idea,” the manager said.

Zach came out wearing a bathrobe. “I smell something delicious.” He looked surprised to see that Garrett was still there.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said.

“Was that really the hotel manager just delivering your breakfast to you?”

“I wouldn’t call it breakfast. It’s more like a snack.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m guessing Barton had a chat with him last night. It appears that our level of service just went up a notch.”

“Where do you go from platinum?”

“That’s what I wanted to know. You have to give Barton credit for one thing. He doesn’t do anything in half-measures.”

Zach reached for a cinnamon stick, and I decided not to smack his hand away. “What about me?”

“I’m sure you’ll be taken care of, too.”

“Then let’s order my breakfast.”

“I took the liberty of getting a repeat of yesterday for you. You don’t have any problem with that, do you?”

“Not unless you expect me to share,” he said with a smile. “I’ve got time to shower.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. I’m guessing this won’t take long.”

“I’ll be quick,” he said.

“In that shower? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

He made it out in time, beating his breakfast by a full thirty seconds. After Garrett brought the food in, he handed me a small radio. “For you.”

“I was just teasing.”

“This will eliminate the need for you to go through the switchboard. It’s set to my frequency. If you need anything, you have only to ask for it, and it will happen.”

“Wow, so it’s a magic radio.”

Zach was ignoring us, diving into his meal.

“You might say that,” Garrett said with a smile.

After Garrett was gone, I helped myself to a glass of tea, and grabbed a stick from Zach’s plate.

“Hey, you’ve got your own.”

“But they aren’t as hot as yours are,” I said.