Ghost Sudoku (21 page)

“We’re hoping he was a little more selective than that,” Ted said. “Although our real hopes are on the envelope these booklets were found in.”

“Was there a particular reason Redbourne showed the puzzles to you?” Clements asked.

“The obvious one—my column,” Liza replied. “And then he asked me about the possibility of getting them published.”

“I guess they will be, if you put them in the newspaper.” The sheriff leaned his chair back on two legs. “And, of course, you’ll let us know if you find anything surprising in them.”

When Liza stared at him, Clements just shrugged. “After all, you’ve managed to wring some pretty surprising stuff out of puzzles like these before—phone numbers, account numbers . . .”

“Well, I don’t think we’re going to find how many steps from the old oak tree the treasure is buried,” she warned. “Besides, Chad did all this long before he took any money from the banks. As I said before, these puzzles are just a labor of love.”

“Oh, don’t talk to me about love,” Clements growled. “We had some people out canvassing with photo arrays on a more thorough basis than your single investigator could do—hitting all the shifts at the various motels, for instance. The results were waiting for me when I came in.”

“And?” Liza asked.

“Oh, it’s just dandy. The clerk identified Brandy Paunce—D’Al—whatever she’s calling herself this week,” The sheriff looked just about ready to spit. “The thing is, that clerk didn’t pick out the picture of Chad Redbourne as the other person in the room.”

He looked up at Liza. “For all her talk about finding true love, the lady was also bonking J.J. Pauncecombe.”

 

 

 

“You don’t look exactly surprised,” Ted Everard said, looking up from his chair.

Liza shrugged her shoulders and threw out her arms. “My neighbor Mrs. Halvorsen mentioned hearing gossip along those lines. So surprised, no. But I am icked out a little. I mean, he is supposed to be her stepson.”

“Technically speaking,” Sheriff Clements rumbled. “But they had been going out together.”

“Don’t I know it,” Liza mumbled. “In fact, the way I heard it, J.J. got Brandy the job that put her and the old man together.” She made a face. “You don’t think that even then, they—”

She vigorously waved her hand as if to fan away a bad smell. “Let’s not even go there.”

“It certainly took some nerve,” Ted observed.

“Maybe not as much as you think,” Liza said. “People are afraid of John Jacob Pauncecombe, but these days they seem more afraid of how he’ll react if they tell him something he doesn’t want to hear.”

She shot a look toward the sheriff for confirmation, and saw him reluctantly nod. “As someone who got his head bitten off for unwelcome questions, I can attest to that.”

“And it seemed to be pretty effectively managed, unless more canvassing turns up anything different,” Liza said with a grin. “J.J. took Brandy north of town, Chad took her south.”

“Sort of makes you wonder what you’d find if you took the picture collection due east,” Ted suggested.

“Thanks, but we have enough complications as it is,” Clements told him. “I just upset Cy Langdon’s applecart by offering a money motive for Redbourne’s death. Now I’m going to come up with an equally viable suspect.”

He planted his elbows on the table, laced his fingers together, and rested his chin on his joined hands. “How do you think J.J. would react if he discovered that he wasn’t just sharing Brandy with his dad, but with Chad Redbourne?”

“Messy,” Liza said.

“Not just personally, but for the case,” Ted added.

The sheriff slowly levered himself up from the table as if he were very, very tired. “Let’s get what pages we can copied for you,” he told Liza, and then paused. “And if by chance . . .”

“Right,” she assured him. “If a clue leaps up and bites me on the butt, I’ll be sure to call you.”

Liza stretched the walk back home by stopping off at Castelli’s for some more supplies. She arrived to find the status pretty much quo. Michael was still on the couch, and Rusty still snoozed on the carpet. She aroused interest in at least one of her housemates as she produced the photocopies of Chad’s puzzles.

“I was thinking of just entering them and letting the computer do the solution,” she told Michael, “but it might be more fun to solve them by hand.”

So she just entered each of Chad’s creations into the Solv-a-doku matrix and printed them out, sharing the stack with Michael.

For the next couple of hours, the house was quiet. It reminded Liza of Sunday afternoons early in their marriage. The entertainment budget was pretty small, but they could afford one of those digest-sized sudoku magazines. They’d find the middle pages, bend the magazine back, and then tear it in half down the spine. Michael got one chunk, Liza the other, and they’d just lounge around and solve until it was time to make dinner.

Now, however, Liza kept glancing at her watch as she worked to finish off a fairly difficult puzzle.

The good news is that some of Chad’s work is quite publishable,
she thought.
The downside is that I’d like to fi nish this one before the evening newscasts start.

She was in the backstretch by the time the news started, working through the chain reaction at the end of any sudoku. “If a two goes here, then a five goes there, and that leaves only an eight in this space,” and so on. Liza had her solution by the first ad break and would have been quicker except she kept staring at the developing story. Brenna Ross, looking pretty good on camera, explained Chad’s million-plus embezzlement in a brief clip. Then came Cy Langdon, fulminating about the Sheriff’s Department releasing information that might be important to a case (or rather, damaging to his). After that performance, though, an embarrassed Langdon had to try and explain how information about another possible suspect had leaked from his own office.

I guess John Jacob still has some followers working for the DA,
Liza thought.

The operatic performance ended with Brandy D’Alessandro/Pauncecombe caught on the street by a camera crew, steadfastly reciting “No comment” in response to a series of awkward questions about her relationship with J.J. Pauncecombe.

“Tacky,” Michael commented as the broadcast moved on to Congressional follies.

Liza had her reply interrupted by excited knocking at the kitchen door.

When she opened it, she found Mrs. Halvorsen flanked by Buck and Alvin. “Did you just see the news?” Mrs. H. demanded, her eyes just about popping from a mixture of outrage and titillation.

“Yes,” Michael said, joining Liza at the door. “I was just saying how tacky I found the whole interview with Brandy.”

“I don’t know,” Liza said. “Even not liking the woman, I ended up feeling sorry for her.”

“I’d always heard things, but I find it sort of shocking to see it all over the TV,” Mrs. H. complained. “Still, I guess you don’t have smoke without fire.”

Buck blinked, trying to follow that chain of logic. “Be that as it may, one thing is certain. The murder investigation is moving in very different directions now, and you certainly aren’t considered a suspect anymore—which is why Michelle sent us up here in the first place.”

“Yes,” Alvin added with a portentous nod. “Our work here is done.” Then he grinned at Liza. “Not that it hasn’t been fun.”

“Oh, you just liked being mistaken for Telly Savalas,” Liza told him, “not to mention striking a blow for democracy in Killamook County.”

“That was kind of different,” Buck admitted. “But I think we should be getting back to L.A.”

“Besides,” Mrs. H. announced, “the petition drive is finished. We got more than twice as many signatures as required.”

“Congratulations!” Liza hugged her neighbor.

“You didn’t leave the petitions all alone next door, did you?” Michael asked.

Liza wasn’t sure if he was joking or being serious.

Mrs. H. certainly took him seriously. “No, they were submitted to the elections office. Your friend Ava even sent a photographer.”

That way Chad’s successor whatsisname—Orem Whelan—can’t claim deniability about the delivery of petitions or about the number of them,
Liza thought.
Not if I know Ava.

“Anyway,” Buck said, “we’ve made reservations for the morning flight from Portland.”

“I offered to drive them to the airport, but they won’t hear of it,” Mrs. Halvorsen complained.

Liza shared a quick glance with Buck, Alvin, and Michael. Getting to PDX and back would be a long drive for an older woman.

“I guess we’ll just have to make some cab driver a very wealthy man,” Alvin said.

“Don’t be silly,” Michael responded. “I’ll give you a lift.” He turned to Liza. “That is, if I can get a car.”

“Oh, use mine.” Mrs. H. grinned at her guests. “It’s an old boat, but you’ll certainly have more legroom than you’d get in Liza’s compact.”

With that settled, she invited Liza and Michael over for supper. “I’ve got a roast in the oven, surrounded by potatoes and onions,” she said. “And with these two not around to eat up the leftovers, I’ll be eating them for the next week.”

“I’ve got some decent red wine,” Liza said. Michael followed her back to the living room, where she rooted in some of the still-unpacked cardboard boxes in the corner.

“Nice wine rack,” he kidded her.

“And a couple of nice bottles of wine,” she replied, pulling them out.

The impromptu farewell celebration left everyone pleasantly full and slightly buzzed as they said good night.

Liza and Michael strolled across the lawn in the growing darkness. Rusty met them eagerly at the door—too eagerly.

“Guess who has to go for a walk,” Liza said. “I know you have to get up pretty early for your date tomorrow morning. Do you want to turn in?”

“Not before I finish this,” Michael replied, picking up the sudoku he’d been working on when the news started.

Liza took Rusty on a quick tour of the high-interest sniffing spots around the neighborhood, let him do his business, and returned.

Michael had returned to his spot on the couch. But a quick glance told Liza that he was working on a new puzzle.

“Did you get stuck, get bored, or get finished?” she asked.

He gave her a shamefaced smile. “Finished. But I thought I’d like to try another.”

“So will I.” Liza picked another puzzle from the pile, and they sat together in companionable silence again.

Michael finished his sudoku and then reached for yet another.

They finished at almost the same time, their hands brushing as they both went to the pile.

Both of them smiled. “We ought to hang these up side by side,” Liza joked. Maybe it was seeing the puzzles beside one another, or maybe it was the agreeably muzzy feeling from all that wine with dinner.

Liza frowned and a question showed on her face. “How are these puzzles similar?”

Michael shrugged. “I don’t know. What? They both have eighty-one spaces?”

Now he frowned a little, peering harder at the sheets of paper Liza held up. “It’s not the number of clues, or the shape of the original puzzle.”

Michael shook his head. “Okay, I give up. What is it?”

Liza grabbed his pen and began blacking out all the spaces on the puzzle but one. Then she did the same with the second puzzle and showed them to Michael again.

“Both of them have a one in the first space.”

“Huh.” Michael gave her a quizzical look. “I don’t know that I’d really have noticed that.”

But Liza was already going over the rest of the puzzles they’d done. “Here’s another one.”

Then she began stacking some of them. “Look in the last line of this one—and this.”

“Now the one is in the final space of the puzzle,” Michael said.

After a little more shuffling, Liza held up three more. “And here?”