Ghost Sudoku (22 page)

“The one has moved to the lower-left corner.”

Now Michael began sorting through the dwindling pile. “I’ve got a one in the upper right . . .” He laughed, holding up another sheet. “Here’s a double-header—a one in the upper right
and
the lower left.”

Liza regarded the little piles they’d created. “All the puzzles we did, and the number one appears only in a corner. What are the chances of that?”

“Ummmmm . . . one in nine?” Michael suggested. “That’s the chance for any single space in a sudoku, after all.”

“Okay,” Liza admitted. “But in all of these? If there’s a one in nine chance of getting a one in a given space, that means a nine-to-one chance of it
not
being a one.”

Michael shrugged. “Well, you said that there were two dozen booklets with twenty pages each. That’s two hundred and forty puzzles in all. With the booklets sealed in evidence bags, the sheriff could only photocopy the front and back pages. That’s two for each of the twenty-four booklets—forty-eight in all.”

Now it was his turn to frown.

“By the odds we just discussed, that seems kind of high. I’d have thought maybe there’d be twenty-four.”

Liza nodded. Then she started heading for the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” Michael called after her.

“I’m calling Sheriff Clements and asking him to check the other puzzles when they open those bags.” She stopped in the doorway and looked back. “He made me promise to get in touch with him if I found a clue in those puzzles.”

“And this may be a clue,” Michael said.

Liza nodded. “To what, I’m not sure. But it may be a clue.”

She called the substation in Maiden’s Bay. The sheriff wasn’t there, but the deputy on duty had his orders and relayed Liza’s call to Clements’s home number.

When he answered the phone, Sheriff Clements sounded even more tired than he’d seemed just this past afternoon. But he rallied when Liza made her report. “I don’t know what it means, either, but it does seem kind of strange,” he agreed. Clements also promised to get a full set of copies to Liza when the booklets came out of their bags.

Her civic duty done, Liza came back to the living room to find that Michael had switched on the television with the volume down low.

“I thought you were turning in early,” she said.

Slouched on the couch, he just shook his head. “All of a sudden, I don’t feel like it.”

They watched some cop show, but Liza kept losing track of the plot. Occasional lines of dialog stuck in her mind, but the scenes seemed to follow one another in an almost surreal pattern. She wasn’t sure whether this was a result of too much wine at dinner, or whether her brain was attempting to assimilate all the bizarre information that had fallen into her lap in the past few days and make it into a tidy coherent picture.

I might be able to do that with sudoku,
she thought, and not for the first time,
but real life is defi nitely not sudoku.

They watched the late news come on, presenting basically a rehash of all the developments they’d watched earlier that evening. None of it presented Liza with the magical touchstone that forced everything to make sense.

Then the late-night show came on. Predictably, the host had a field day with all the new twists in the saga.

“Things are getting even more exciting in Killacrook County,” he told the audience. “Now you know this all started out with a crooked politician being killed out there.”

He paused for a second. “It might be a bigger mystery trying to find a politician who’s
not
crooked.”

The audience hooted approval.

“So yesterday, they indicted the political boss up there, the head crook, because it turns out that the dead guy was—how can I put this delicately? He was doing the horizontal two-step with the head crook’s wife.”

A general “Whooooo!” came from the spectators. The host waved them down.

“It gets even better today. Turns out that the dear departed stole something like a million and a half dollars before he was killed. He might have gotten dead before he even had a chance to mention the money. Or the killer may have made off with the boodle, although that’s hard to believe. A politician may kill, but steal?”

He raised his eyes with a pious expression while the folks in the studio howled.

“As for the boss, his wife says the dead guy was the love of her life, and she’s not ponying up any money for hubby to get off the hot seat. Speaking of hot, here’s a shot of the wife in her brief Hollywood career.”

Somewhere, they had managed to locate a clip of Brandy in a tight, low-cut evening dress just as she was slipping the straps off her shoulders. A big CENSORED sign appeared across her chest.

“Seems like she’s one of those trophy wives,” the host went on, a bemused sort of smile on his face. “Although in this case, it seems like a trophy that goes from team to team. Besides hubby and the dead guy, she was also stepping out with her stepson.”

Liza was glad the volume was down as scandalized laughter came from the TV.

The host stood shaking his head as the noise subsided. “Lost money, corruption, sex scandals—these guys should never have gotten involved in county politics. They’re obviously ready for national office.”

He smiled again at the audience. “I swear, folks, nobody could make this up.” The comedian suddenly pulled a face as he looked directly into the camera. “At least not my writing staff.”

Liza got to her feet to head for the kitchen again. This time she called Michelle Markson’s cell number.

“Liza, dear.” Judging from the tone of Michelle’s voice, the wine had been flowing freely this evening for her, too.

“Have you been playing up this late-night war with the politicians up here?” Liza asked bluntly.

Michelle laughed. “No need, dear. I pointed them in the right direction and set the machinery in motion. I don’t even need to tweak it anymore. It runs by itself.”

 

 

 

Liza had the dream that night. It was a recurring almost-nightmare she’d had ever since she was a kid. It would start in a familiar setting, in this case a classroom at Killamook High. Everything was pretty much as Liza remembered, except for the gleaming control panel set into the top of the teacher’s desk.

Fascinated, Liza inevitably touched something. That’s when she discovered she wasn’t in a room, but the cockpit of some enormous machine that rose up on towering legs and set off across the countryside, flattening everything that got in its way with gigantic feet. The metal behemoth’s first step took out most of the high school’s student body, which fled screaming across the parking lot.

As Liza frantically tried to find the stop button, the runaway monster crashed and crushed its way along Broad Street, leaving destruction in its wake. Then it smashed its way to the edge of town. Liza looked up from the fiendishly complicated control panel to see the Redbournes’ folly—and their house—ground to wreckage under the huge robotic feet.

The uncontrolled behemoth bounded forward in block-sized strides along the highway. Liza thought maybe she could get it to turn into the lake, but it plowed along. Soon Maiden’s Bay came into view. More wholesale demolition took place as the rudderless robot monster somehow made a beeline for Hackleberry Avenue and Liza’s house.

The kitchen door opened, and out came Mom and Dad. Instead of running for their lives like sensible people, they attempted to shoo the monster away from their property. Liza was treated to a close-up vision of her terrified parents clinging together, even though they looked tiny as the huge metal foot descended upon them—

Liza sat up in bed, shuddering. She hated that dream, blaming it on the Japanese cartoons her mother had bought her as a kid, hoping to interest Liza in her mom’s native language.

Gingerly, Liza rubbed her temples, where a headache already seemed to be throbbing. She spent extra time under the shower, but emerged still feeling unrefreshed.

The weather outside was foggy and misty, so Liza wore jeans and a sweatshirt as she padded barefoot downstairs. Michael was already gone, ferrying Alvin and Buck to Portland. In spite of her quiet tread, Rusty rose up from where he’d ensconced himself in Michael’s bedding, always alert for the possibility of treats.

Liza gave him one, poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot Michael had left for her, and turned on the radio. KMUC’s Killamook Krew might be sophomoric at best, but they also provided a window into the dark corners of the minds running the local political machine. And judging from last night’s monologue performance, the boys on the radio had plenty of grist for their mill.

Listening to the would-be comedians, Liza decided that the Killamook machine’s mental state was apparently schizophrenic. Noisy Neal was bouncing all over the place like a hyperactive second-grader, making mouth noises over the film clip of Brandy.

In contrast, Jeff sounded as if he were reading copy that had been vetted by the legal department.

The dysfunctional duo wallowed on until Neal used the phrase “Killacrook County” in one of his rants. The next commercial break ran three times longer than usual. As Liza listened to commercial after prerecorded commercial, she wondered what was going on behind the scenes at the radio station.

She got her answer when only Jeff came back on the air, sounding more shell-shocked than smart-assed.

“We—that is, I—would like to apologize to the good folks of Killamook for, um, taking the county’s name in vain during this tragic period. I guess murder is no joke, and certainly the investigation has been stressful for a lot of people.”

Certainly, Jeff’s nasal voice sounded pretty stressed. “So Neal will be taking, um, a bit of a time-out at the station management’s request, and we’ll be continuing with the adventures of the Killamook Krew, just a little, er—short-handed.”

The morning show limped along without its usual banter, with the best exchange coming between Jeff and the newscaster. “You can’t get yourself suspended, Jeff,” the news guy had pleaded. “I can only fill five minutes out of every hour. What will we do for the other fifty-five?”

Liza made herself some toast to go with her coffee and turned off the radio. She was just washing the breakfast dishes when the kitchen phone jangled. Grabbing a dish towel, she walked across the room and picked up the handset.

“We opened the evidence bags and looked at the puzzle booklets,” Sheriff Clements announced. “All of them have ones in a corner.”

“So it’s not just dumb luck.” Liza wasn’t sure whether or not she should be pleased that her hunch had panned out.

“I guess Redbourne had a reason to do it.” Clements’s voice took on more of a sour tone as he continued. “Too bad we have no idea what that reason might have been.”

“Maybe you should check in with a real crime-buster like Oscar Smutz,” Liza suggested.

That got a snort of laughter from the sheriff. “Anyway, I had all the puzzles copied for you. They’re in my office in Killamook.” He paused for a second, then explained, “I have some people I need to meet here today. Suppose I leave an envelope for you with the desk deputy?”

“That would be fine,” Liza said. “I’ll get over there later today.”

She hung up and looked down at Rusty, who simply sat watching her with his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

“No need to let the sheriff in on all the glamorous details of my exciting life,” Liza told the dog. “I have to take you for a walk, and then do some laundry—wash your dander off poor Michael’s bedding, or he’ll sneeze his fool head off.”

She went upstairs to put on her shoes, got a load of washing into the machine, and then got Rusty’s leash.

The fog had cleared a bit, but the air was still misty as they stepped outside. Liza saw her next-door neighbor was also up and doing. Mrs. Halvorsen stood in her garden, a hooded Windbreaker keeping away the worst of the damp.

As soon as Rusty spotted her, he went bounding over with a low “Woof!” of hello.

Mrs. H. bent to pat his head.

“Digging for earthworms?” Liza asked with a smile.

“No, just looking and planning,” the older woman replied. “That nice Mr. Foreman was kind enough to bring in the start of a rock garden.”

Liza looked at the substantial pile of stones that had appeared in one corner of the garden plot. “I guess it was nice to have a strapping type to do some of the heavy lifting.”

“I’ll miss him,” Mrs. Halvorsen said suddenly. “And that sweet Alvin.”

Liza wasn’t sure which surprised her more—Mrs. H.’s admission or the description of Alvin Hunzinger, cutthroat defense attorney, as “sweet.”

Well, she certainly had a couple of very full days with Alvin and Buck, what with the investigation and then the petition drive, not to mention the rock garden
, Liza thought.
I guess this would come as a bit of a letdown.

Touched by the suspicion that her older friend might be feeling a little lonely, Liza said, “If you don’t have anything more pressing than garden planning, how about a girls’ lunch? I have to go over to Killamook to get something from the sheriff, and I wouldn’t mind the company.”

Mrs. H. beamed. “What a wonderful idea! I’ll go in and get spruced up a little . . .” She broke off, looking at Liza’s casual outfit.

Liza smiled at her. “I’ll do the same, after I finish taking my friend here for his walk.”

They made a quick round through the neighborhood, and when they got back, Liza climbed the stairs to find some more formal casual attire.

“Guess it’ll have to be my car,” she said when she got next door.

Mrs. H nodded. “Yes, Michael is making sure the Oldsmobile gets a little exercise.”

They drove over to Killamook and down Broad Street.

“The sheriff’s office is behind the courthouse,” Liza said, not sure whether her neighbor knew where that office might be.