Ghost Sudoku (20 page)

The next morning’s newscasts more than made up for that. First, the formerly monolithic façade of the Killamook machine fractured noisily into several factions. Pauncecombe loyalists angrily attacked Cy Langdon as an unprincipled political opportunist for his surprise indictment.

Langdon’s supporters generally took a more statesmanlike view—“Let the DA do his job, and the facts fall where they may.” But Liza caught a distinct whiff of hope that the Party’s grand old man would get put away for the rest of his life while J.J.’s leadership aspirations crashed and burned along with his dad’s reputation.

The local morning news shows featured fulminations from both sides, but a lot of the coverage went to Brandy Pauncecombe’s—now D’Alessandro’s—decision not to stand by her man. Or rather, that the man she decided to stand by was the deceased Chad Redbourne.

Well, it was going to come out that she was sleeping with him,
Liza thought. In fact, several Langdon surrogates were almost gleefully harping on that fact as the motive for Chad’s death.

Pauncecombe’s people looked pretty feeble on that score, what with Brandy’s public admission. Apparently, however, they weren’t ready to go after her as a scarlet woman. The reason, Ava Barnes revealed over the phone, had more to do with money than morality.

“This is something we couldn’t put in this morning’s issue.” Ava was almost chortling over the personal and political bloodletting. “Most of the marital property wound up in Brandy’s name—some sort of financial or tax dodge. The upshot, though, is that if John Jacob wants a good lawyer to deal with this murder charge, he’s got to play nice—at least until he gets a chunk of his change back.”

Liza had to hide a laugh of her own. Alvin was lucky to have kept out of the Pauncecombe case—otherwise, he might have ended up with a deadbeat client.

Brandy had a lawyer, too, a divorce attorney who went on the air to present his client as suffering through a series of husbandly infidelities before finding solace and love with an old-school friend.

By afternoon, when Pauncecombe went to the Killamook courthouse (to “discuss matters,” as his followers put it, or to “turn himself in,” as the Langdonites said), a beet red John Jacob turned up with a public defender at his side.

I guess the fi nancial negotiations must be dragging,
Liza thought.

She noticed that J.J. ran interference with the reporters. Given the expression of baffled rage on the older man’s face, Liza could understand the public relations aspects of that decision. Just twenty-four hours ago, John Jacob Pauncecombe had been top dog in this county. Now his well-connected legal friends wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole, and his wife was actively campaigning for a guilty verdict.

Liza shook her head.
God only knows what might come out if he opens his mouth.

Of course, the people having the most fun with the situation were the professional jesters of the Killamook Krew on the radio. Liza tuned them in after getting a call from Kevin. Jeff and Neal were in fine form, running various examples of political invective from both sides and making snarky comments.

In spite of the silliness, Liza found herself listening with interest. Was the owner of the station, Lawson Wilkes, working to discredit both factions while creating one of his own? Or was he angling for a better spot in the local hierarchy as some sort of power broker?

Liza tried to put all those thoughts out of her mind, turning to the computer to get some work done. She whomped up some columns to go with the puzzles she’d created, then took a break for lunch.

Looking out the kitchen window, she saw the sky clearing after an overcast morning. “I’m thinking of taking a walk with Rusty,” she told Michael. “Want to come out for some fresh air?”

“Walking with that dog-dander factory of yours is not what I’d call enjoying fresh air,” he told her. Jerking his chin at the computer, he asked, “Mind if I use your machine? I should check my e-mail and see what, if anything, is happening on the work front.”

She half walked, half jogged with Rusty all the way to the beach. As usual, he interpreted any pickup in the usual pace as an invitation to race. The reel on the extension lead whirred madly as he’d dash out in front, then stop, looking over his shoulder in almost comical surprise that Liza wasn’t keeping up with him.

They arrived at the bay front in an area empty of water-or sunbathers, so Liza freed Rusty from the lead to work off a little more energy loping around on the sand. He stopped every once in a while to sniff at something interesting but didn’t manage to find any dead seagulls or other unpleasant things to roll around in.

Rusty contented himself with chasing after the tide with loud barks and then retreating as it came back in. After a while of this, he trotted back to Liza.

“Good boy,” she said, petting him. “You certainly showed those waves who’s boss.”

Clipping the leash back onto Rusty’s collar, Liza headed home.

She came into the kitchen to find Michael making iced coffee and listening to the radio. KMUC’s political pundit was on, trying to keep the discussion to national issues while his callers vociferously went back and forth on the local split in the Party.

“Even with the stupid jokes, I liked the morning guys better than this stiff.” Michael retrieved a container of milk from the refrigerator and then gestured to the sweating glass full of coffee and cubes. “Want one?”

In fact, he gave his to her and constructed a new drink for himself. Liza splurged on a little sugar to go with the milk, stirred up the mixture, and took a sip.

“By the way,” Michael said as he poured more lukewarm coffee from the pot into his glass, “Ted Everard called. He sounded a bit surprised to have me answer.”

Liza managed to avoid spraying coffee out her nose as she turned to face him. “Did he mention whether they found that sudoku collection of Chad Redbourne’s?”

“He just asked that you call him back,” Michael replied, “while sounding somewhat disappointed. I’m still trying to decide if that was because you weren’t here or because I was.”

Liza definitely was not going to get into that. She decided to try and keep things light. “Well, I’ll ask when I call him back.”

It took a couple of rings before Ted picked up on his cell.

“You’re catching up with me just as we’re in the middle of clearing out of Casa Redbourne,” he said as loud voices gave orders in the background. “The good news is that we found your puzzles.”

“With Chad’s treasure?” Liza asked with a laugh.

“Not with his million dollars, unfortunately—that’s the bad news,” Ted told her. “The puzzles were in a manila envelope. We found it while shifting around the living room furniture. You remember how they had a made-to-order set of low bookshelves backing that big white couch?”

That cut Liza’s laugh short. “Yeah, at parties they’d put bowls of chips and stuff on them—but nobody was allowed to eat them on the couch.”

“Well, Chad must have put the envelope on the top,” Ted said, “but it wound up slipping between the shelves and the sofa.”

Liza frowned in thought. “I’d think a million bucks and change would take up a little more space than an envelope.”

“If you piled up 150,000 hundred-dollar bills, you’d end up with a stack between five and six feet tall,” Ted replied. “Taken with the other dimensions of U.S. currency, that would mass in at a volume around a thousand cubic inches—about the size of a large attaché case.”

“Just like in the movies. And how much would that weigh in at?”

Ted muttered for a moment, doing some calculations. “Figure at one gram per bill, that would mean fifteen kilograms—more than thirty pounds.”

“That’s pretty big and heavy,” Liza said. “What were you looking for, a false back on the bookshelves?”

“I thought maybe a slit in the back of the couch,” Ted admitted, “with the cash substituted for the original stuffing.”

“No luck, though?”

He sighed. “It wasn’t in the freezer, or up the chimney, or in the toilet tank, either. We checked the basement, the attic, and the garage. There were no removable floorboards, and no loose bricks out in the terrace. And after a reasonably thorough going-over on the grounds, there were no signs of digging—except for what the squirrels had gotten up to.”

“So what’s next?” Liza asked.

Ted sighed. “Well, in light of the DA’s—precipitate action, let’s call it—Sheriff Clements had been holding off on any formal discussion of the missing money.”

“In other words, he wanted to present the whole thing wrapped up in a ribbon in case Langdon shut him down,” Liza translated.

“That’s pretty much it,” Ted agreed. “So what he’s planning on now is doing up a written report and delivering it to the prosecutor’s office. As soon as it’s in Langdon’s hands, he’s going to run a press conference to make sure the information gets out.”

Liza shook her head. Clements faced a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” choice. The Pauncecombes were already using the Party machinery against him. Annoying Cy Langdon by bringing up unwelcome evidence would turn the anti-Pauncecombe faction against the sheriff, too. But if he just turned the info over to Langdon and kept quiet, some rabble-rouser like Oscar Smutz could accuse Clements of not doing his job. Well, the last thing Liza would expect of Bert Clements was a cover-up.

“I guess the sheriff must really feel strongly about this,” she said. “I know how he feels about talking with the media.”

“That’s why he’s got that female deputy—Brenna Ross—doing the talking in Killamook while he lies low in the Maiden’s Bay substation.” Ted broke off. “Excuse me. Can you hold for a second?”

He must have put his hand over the cell phone’s pickup. Liza could hear the bass rumble of a voice—the sheriff’s, she guessed—but she couldn’t make out any of the words.

Ted took his hand away. “The sheriff said he’d bring the booklets with him. You can copy a few of the puzzles in an hour or so.”

“Tell the sheriff thank you,” Liza said in surprise.

That cynical voice in the back of her head chimed in, sounding remarkably like Michelle Markson.
Why should he be so obliging when he’s up to his ass in alligators?

Such thoughts kept Liza a little distracted—not to mention somewhat nervous that Ted would start asking pointed questions about her choice in houseguests—until the end of the phone call. She hung up and looked around the kitchen, discovering that Michael had disappeared while she had been talking.

Liza drifted into the living room to find him slouched on the sofa, staring at the blank screen of the television.

“It’s unhealthy, sitting in front of the TV with nothing on,” she told him.

“Drafty, too, I guess,” he replied. “Unless you decided to sit beside me with nothing on . . .”

“I think we’d shock the neighbors.” Liza did sit beside him, fully clothed, and gave Michael a quick recap of what Ted had told her.

“So was he disappointed?” Michael asked.

“About not finding the money?”

“About not finding you home to answer his first call—or finding me instead,” he said. “You said you were going to ask him.”

“I forgot,” Liza admitted.

The conversation pretty much died after that. They slouched side by side in silence until Liza stirred. “I’d better put on something a bit less disreputable.”

“Getting dressed for Ted?” Michael just wouldn’t let it go.

“I’d say it was more for Sheriff Clements,” she replied. “A sign of respect for his office and all that.”

She went upstairs and exchanged her sloppy top and shorts for a more decent T-shirt and a pair of khakis.
That way, I’ll look as if I’m half in uniform,
she thought.

Coming back to the living room, she found Michael still on the couch.

“I’m going,” she said.

“You’ll be very early,” he told her.

“Not if I walk.”

Then you’ll just be early,
that snarky interior voice put in.

She gave Rusty a pat as he lay dozing in the pool of sunshine from the window and then started for the door.

“What about me?” Michael called after her.

So Liza came back and patted him, too.

The walk downtown was pretty uneventful. No media trucks clogged Main Street in front of City Hall. Of course, they were all in Killamook, getting the sheriff’s news but not the sheriff.

The deputy on duty passed her back to the inner sanctum—or rather to the cramped room that served as a combination interrogation chamber and branch office for Bert Clements. He and Ted sat around the table that the sheriff used as a desk when he wasn’t looming behind it to browbeat the truth out of alleged miscreants. Chad Redbourne’s puzzle collection was strewn across the table, each improvised booklet enclosed in a clear plastic evidence pouch.

Clements greeted her with a nod. “Think you can tell us a little more about these, Liza?” He tapped one of the booklets in its protective plastic. “Ten sheets, folded together and stapled to make a book. Two puzzles per page, make it forty per booklet, and I count two dozen booklets. With all this, it’s a wonder that Chad Redbourne found the time to fix the county’s elections, too.”

“A labor of love,” Liza told him. “At least, that’s what I figured when Chad pulled those things out of his desk drawer. And by the way, it’s not two puzzles per page. It’s one puzzle and its solution.”

“Yeah,” Ted said, “I noticed that.”

“Did you try to work out any of them?” Liza asked.

“We thought we’d leave that to the professional,” Clements said with heavy irony. “I’m afraid you’ll only be able to copy the puzzles that show.”

“You’re hoping to find incriminating fingerprints on these?” Liza tried to hide her dismay. If that was the hope, Clements was getting pretty desperate. “I mean, Chad probably showed these to whoever came into his office.”