Ghost Sudoku (17 page)

“So what brings you here?” she asked as she hung up. “I hope it’s not a cash advance. That was another advertiser canceling a spread.”

“A lot of that going on after that editorial you published?”

Ava grimaced. “Enough. I also got harangued by John Jacob Pondscum and lectured by Cy Langdon on twisting his words and, quote, ‘misrepresenting the actions of a few bad apples in the country administration over a period of decades.’ ”

“They really should have that engraved in stone over the entrance to the county center,” Liza quipped. But she looked at her best friend with concern. “Are you sure this was a good idea, Ava? If this doesn’t pan out, it may cost you your job.”

“It’s a little late to second-guess myself now,” Ava replied with a shrug, then grinned. “I’ll tell you this, though. We haven’t sold this many papers since Obama got sworn in. I’m actually thinking of going back for another press run.”

“Will that make up for the ads you’re losing?”

“Not hardly,” Ava admitted.

“I liked the execution,” Liza said. “Instead of coming out for Massini and Clements, you slammed the whole Killamook machine.”

“Well, so far neither of them has come out on the record about the editorial.” Ava pursed her lips. “Liza, we’ve been tiptoeing around this mess for years. I thought it was long past time for some plain talk on the subject.” A hint of a smile crept over her face. “Do you know how long I’ve had that list of scuzzballs ready to go into an editorial?”

“You probably compiled it about a week after you came back here,” Liza said sweetly. “Oh, by the way.” She dug the CD out of her shoulder back and handed it over.

“What’s this?” Ava asked.

“A little padding for my pillow,” Liza replied. “I figured I’d bring it in person in case the wires for your high-speed Internet access got cut.”

“Well, you didn’t have to cross enemy lines,” Ava told her. “Yet.”

“Besides,” Liza said, “I wanted to see you instead of just yakking on the phone.”

“Yeah.” Ava nodded. “Thanks.”

Her phone started ringing again. “What do you bet this is another Killamook coward trying to pull an ad?”

 

 

Liza drove home, but she didn’t get much accomplished once she got there.

In the course of a couple of days, she’d first put Bert Clements’s badge on the line, and then stirred Ava Barnes into a course of action that could endanger her job.

With friends like me,
Liza thought, ruefully shaking her head,
who needs enemies?

She tried to come up with a few additional pieces for her column, only to butcher the puzzles through inattention. The longer it took to get each sudoku to work, the shorter she got with Michael until he finally left to take a walk. Then she scolded Rusty until she finally decided to take
him
for a walk.

The afternoon was clear and cloudless, but Liza’s skin crawled with that electric sensation that usually came between the thunderheads piling up and the first stroke of lightning lancing down.

Something had to be coming, she just wasn’t sure what.

Leading Rusty past Mrs. Halvorsen’s house, she noticed her neighbor’s bus-sized Oldsmobile parked in the driveway. Then the door opened, and Mrs. H. waved her in.

“We came back for a quick bite to eat.” The older woman’s color was high, and she looked sprightlier than she had in a long while. “Then it’s off again. Suppertime is a good chance to catch people at home and get their signatures.”

She ushered Liza in. “We’ll have something for you, too,” she assured Rusty.

Buck and Alvin sat at the kitchen table, overstuffed sandwiches in front of them, their plates mounded with coleslaw and a big green pickle. Michael sat with the same setup, giving Liza a shamefaced wave.

“You were right to escape,” she told him. “It was getting too close to tell who’d snap at you worse—whether Rusty or I would.”

When she went to help Mrs. Halvorsen at the counter, she got chased to a seat. A moment later her neighbor deposited a supersized sandwich in front of her, then put down an equally large one for herself, which she tucked into with gusto.

“Mmmmph!” Mrs. H. chewed and swallowed. “I forgot.”

She returned to the counter, rustled around in paper wrappings, and came up with several pieces of turkey, which she wrapped into a loose roll. “Here you go, Rusty.”

Mrs. H. tossed the turkey, and the dog made it disappear in midair.

The human diners might not have been as quick to devour their meals as Rusty, but they were as thorough. Liza sat back with a sigh of repletion as Mrs. H. filled her coffee cup.

“Just a half,” Liza said. Experience had taught her that her neighbor favored a high-octane brew. She took a sip and puffed her cheeks in a silent whistle.

“After stoking the furnace, I want to make sure my thermostat is up,” Mrs. Halvorsen confessed. “It wouldn’t do to poop out—not when we’re going to Killamook this evening.”

Liza couldn’t help her smile. “Now there’s something I’d like to see.” She could just imagine Mrs. H. turning up at people’s doors with the large, implacable-looking Buck on one side and roly-poly Alvin on the other, probably looking as though his feet hurt.

“From the look of all those piles of paper in the living room, you’ve already collected a lot of signatures,” Michael said.

“We need as many as we can get, and then some,” Mrs. H. looked downright severe as she answered. “Those people are sure to challenge every name they can.”

Her guests had to hide smiles to hear the Killamook machine referred to that way.

Looks as if “those people” will have to try pretty hard to get the better of Elise Halvorsen,
Liza thought.

Buck suddenly spoke up. “Langley,” he asked Michael, “would you mind staying here while we’re out?”

He nodded toward Mrs. H.’s living room and the signed petitions stacked there. “I’d feel better having someone around to keep an eye on them.”

“Uh—sure,” Michael said, taken aback.

Liza just shook her head in admiration for Buck’s clear-eyed, if cold, assessment. They were dealing with a bunch of crooked political types, after all. These guys were past masters of the art of the dirty trick.

“I’ll stay with you,” she offered, giving Michael a smile. “Double the guard.”

Michael looked a little less spooked. “And we have Rusty to watch the perimeter.”

That got a general laugh.

Mrs. H. graciously allowed her guests to take care of the dishes. Then she, Buck, and Alvin said good-bye and went off to do battle for truth, justice, and democracy.

“So,” Michael said after the door swung shut, “what are we going to do now?”

“What have you got in mind?” Liza asked.

“Did you ever get to see the guest room upstairs?” Michael’s eyebrows started waggling almost in semaphore.

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” came her reply. “I even tested out the bed, so I don’t need to try it again.” She shot him a look. “Especially since I don’t think Buck would appreciate us messing up his room.”

“Did you say messing
in
his room?” Michael teased.

“Come watch TV,” Liza told him. “We need to keep alert in case any of those political operatives come to mess with Mrs. H.’s petitions.”

Michael sighed. “I think we can catch some sort of news show.”

They barely got settled on the couch when Liza’s cell phone began bleating. She checked the ID screen—Sheriff Clements.

Her hand wavered a little as she raised the phone to her ear. But her voice sounded steady as she said, “Sheriff, I hope this won’t be unpleasant news.” She glanced uneasily at the TV.

“Part of it is good news for you,” Clements told her. “It looks as if you can be officially crossed off the suspects list.”

“I . . . guess that’s good,” Liza replied. “But from the sound of it, there’s more.”

“You see, there was a small window of opportunity where we couldn’t place Chad Redbourne, and you could conceivably have caught up with him,” the sheriff explained. “But now we know where he was.”

“And where was that?” Liza asked.

“At close of business today, a delegation of local bankers came to talk to me,” Clements said. “Seems they were getting questions from several different quarters about their financial dealings with the Party. That led to some questions among themselves—and finally sharing their information with me.”

Liza tried to cut to the chase. “So what exactly was Chad doing?”

“Making withdrawals from various Party accounts,” Clements replied. “Between two hundred to three hundred thousand per bank. All in all, he walked off with something in the neighborhood of a million and a half dollars.”

 

 

 

“Well, in these days of trillion-dollar bailouts, that sounds like a drop in the bucket,” Liza said into the phone.

“I suppose so,” Clements agreed. “But it probably represents years of chiseling away at the twenty million bucks the county has to get by on each year.”

“So now you have a whole new motive to work on for Chad’s death.” Liza made shushing motions as Michael looked up and was about to say something. “The question is how did he manage to make off with so much?”

“After all his years of service, he was something of a trusted employee in the machine,” the sheriff replied. “It’s a problem finding good help. Often it comes down to a choice of filling a job with someone loyal but incompetent, or competent but ambitious. After all, you don’t want your underlings using their positions to create a power base to unseat you.”

“And which was Chad?” Liza asked.

“He was that rarest of men,” Clements said, “competent but controllable.”

Liza thought back all those years—to all the times she saw Chad flinch whenever J.J. turned up. And when she’d seen him in his office just a few days ago, Chad admitted that he had no stomach for the rough-and-tumble of the courtroom. Oh, yeah, the Pauncecombes would have no problem controlling him.

“Since he was useful and dependable, he got tapped for a variety of jobs—including bagman,” Clements went on. “He was cleared to use all sorts of accounts. The bankers weren’t surprised to see him making withdrawals—it was just the size of them. But all Chad had to do was hint darkly that John Jacob had something big in mind, and they came up with the cash.”

“Something like a quarter of a million apiece,” Liza shook her head. “Looks like Chad decided to get ambitious somewhat late in life.”

“Yeah,” the sheriff said. “Right before it ended.”

“At least you’ve got a whole new motive for the killing.” Liza tried to joke. “If you see anybody buying themselves a fleet of Cadillacs—”

“I’m just grateful that it’s distracted the boys in the machine so they haven’t been concentrating on making life difficult for me.” Clements gave a dry laugh. “Hell, they may even have to come to me and ask nicely if I’ll look into it for them.”

“Well, good luck with all of that,” Liza said. “I don’t know if she’s been formally in touch with your people, but Mrs. Halvorsen has organized a petition drive for you. She got a little steamed when Chad’s replacement invalidated all the previously collected signatures.”

“My campaign manager called me about the saturation campaign. Frankly we were a little worried that it might be some kind of dirty trick by John Jacob and company. It’s a relief to hear that it’s for real.”

They said good-bye, Liza clicked her phone shut, and then she turned to Michael, telling him about the missing million and change.

As she spoke, her mind was racing the way it usually did when she finished up a sudoku. Was this the missing piece of the puzzle that finally allowed the picture to make sense?

“So now we’ve got an explanation for the packed bag,” Michael said when she’d finished her update. “Although it seems one piece of luggage is missing—the boodle bag.”

Liza frowned, still unable to get everything to fit together. “We—well, I—had thought that this was a case of kill first and ask questions later. After killing Chad, the murderer would have found the packed bag as a nasty surprise—something to be gotten rid of quickly. That’s why the stuff was so messily returned to the dresser.”

Michael nodded. “But if we take the money as a motive, then the killer must have known that Chad was getting ready to leave town.”

“Here’s another question,” Liza said. “Why go to all the trouble of faking a suicide?”

“To gain time?” Michael suggested. “It certainly confused the issue.”

“But gain time for what?” Liza pressed the issue.

“The obvious answer would be for a getaway,” Michael replied. “I guess the sheriff will be looking for anybody who took off on a sudden vacation.”

Liza shifted on the couch in annoyance. “But was the suicide necessary? I mean, we only found out about the missing money now.”

“The killer couldn’t be so certain about the bank managers being reticent. And you yourself saw that the machine might have learned earlier—with J.J. Pauncecombe and Oscar Smutz visiting the bank.”

Liza nodded, but reluctantly. Some parts of the machine might have known. But given John Jacob’s way of dealing with the bearers of bad tidings, had the news made it all the way up the food chain?

“Still, she said, “it was a tremendous risk, hanging around the murder scene—not to mention actually having to move and pose the dead body.” Remembering her first glance of Chad’s hanging form, she shuddered.

But she didn’t stop talking because something else was bothering her. “Whoever committed the murder had to have spent a good amount of time around Chad’s place. They had to know about the folly and about the steel piping around the inside. Otherwise why would you trundle the dead body and a rope all the way out there? There might be nothing to hang him from.”

Liza stared at the TV screen, but didn’t see anything. Or rather, what she was seeing was stuff that had happened almost twenty years ago, visions of the guys on the football team jostling Chad Redbourne.