Ghost Sudoku (24 page)

She slowed for a moment, then drove past the driveway. But she made a right at the next corner and another right after that. The properties were just as big on the next block, with overgrown areas between the houses. How had Kevin quoted his uncle? From early spring till late autumn, they didn’t have to look at their neighbors at all?

Liza found a space between a pair of bushes and pulled in. She was hidden not only from the neighbors but from any passing cars. She got out of the car. A sketchy sort of pathway led deeper into the trees.

It took a little walking and a couple of false starts, but she came out of the brush on the far side of the Redbournes’ folly.

I wonder how I’d have felt sneaking over here back when I was in high school,
Liza wondered, then shook her head and smiled.
Guess it would depend on what guy I was sneaking over with.

Her mood changed when she came around to the front of the beehive. Apparently, the crime-scene tape was down from the entrance to the folly—or had the sheriff’s people even bothered putting any up?

Chad’s hanging form was gone, too, but Liza shuddered anyway.

Kevin is right about one thing,
she decided.
This place is creepy.

She hung back from the opening. Then, taking a deep breath, she stepped in. It was cooler inside the folly, even cooler than it had been under the canopy of foliage. Darker, too. She wrinkled her nose. Not to mention a bit musty.

Liza tried to take herself back to high school, to look through her younger self’s eyes. The Grotto would have been newer then, but of course, it had been built to look ancient.

Not the most romantic spot,
she thought.
But then, just about anyplace is Inspiration Point for a teenaged boy.

She moved over to the long bench set against the far wall, the wooden piece’s self-conscious rusticity softened by a set of floral-patterned cushions. They were on the thin side, made of plastic, the sort of thing Liza associated with backyard furniture.

Not faded,
she thought. Closing her eyes, she tried to bring up the image of her brief tour with Chad. No, she recalled definitely different upholstery. The padding had stripes back then.

They’d probably succumbed to mildew years ago.

Liza found herself reluctant to sit down, though mildew wasn’t the reason.

There shouldn’t be any traces of J.J. Pauncecombe’s ancient conquests, but who knows what Chad got up to out here? The thought made Liza’s lips quirk in a wry sort of smile.

One thing was for sure. The quilted plastic upholstery was too thin to serve as a hiding place for Chad’s ill-gotten gains.

Liza spotted a smaller pillow, the sort of thing you might stick under your head while swinging in a hammock on a long summer’s day.

Who’d snooze on that bench?
she found herself wondering.
It would be like taking a nap in a tomb.

Still, wondering what kind of view she’d get out the doorway, she plumped down onto the small pillow—and got right back up as it jangled under her.

One hand went to rub her rear end while the other went for that deceptive-looking cushion. Oh, there was some padding, but there was also something metallic—in fact, a whole bunch of metallic somethings—inside.

Taking it into the light from the doorway, Liza discovered one end of the cushion had apparently been opened and then sewn up, not very expertly. She quickly unraveled the stitches, plunged her hand inside, and came out with a huge assortment of keys—hundreds of them—on several rings.

Each key had a three-digit number engraved on the head. And as Liza jingled her way through them, she discovered they all began with the digit 1.

For a moment she began to get excited.
Maybe we didn’t need the whole row or column,
she thought.
Maybe it was just the fi rst three digits.

But as she sorted through the jingling collection, that first flush of enthusiasm diminished. Some of the keys had 0s in their ID numbers, so there couldn’t be a direct connection between them and Chad’s sudoku. And even if there were, how could she tell where the matching locks were?

Could they be for safe-deposit boxes? A key collection this big suggested hundreds of banks—like a bank for every town from Allentown to Albany.

Although each ring held a different variety of keys, the keys on each ring were almost identical.

Who would rent out whole sections of boxes in a safe-deposit vault?
Liza asked herself skeptically.
And how could you mail stuff to them?

She was close—she knew it the way she knew when she was almost at the point of cracking a tough sudoku, when finding one more complicated pattern like a sword-fish would reduce the number of remaining clues until the simplest techniques would yield a solution. There had to be a connection between the nine-digit numbers in Chad’s puzzles and the three-digit numbers on the keys, a step Liza was missing . . .

Mail,
she thought.

Chad had posted the stolen cash. So there had to be a mail connection with the nine-digit numbers. She and Michael had eliminated zip codes. They couldn’t be plain addresses.

So how could I hide an address in nine numbers?
Liza asked herself.

She slowly smiled. No, the question was how had
Chad
managed to do that job?

Slipping her fingers through the key rings, Liza jingled her way back to her car. Once there, she dumped the keys and retrieved the manila envelope full of puzzles. Then she dialed the number for Ted Everard’s cell phone.

He answered, but sounded kind of frustrated. “Liza? This isn’t exactly a good time. I’m trying to get some information from Orem Whaley and my other new friends here at the elections office—”

“I have one more thing I’d like you to ask them, please,” she interrupted. “The name and address connected with voter ID”—she ran a finger along one of the rows starting with 1—“number 153742896.”

“What?” Ted’s tone began to go from frustrated to harassed.

“Just see if that number is in their records,” Liza said, “and we may find a ghost.”

“Repeat that number,” Ted told her.

Liza did, and Ted relayed it to the elections people he was meeting with. “Check your records for that voter ID,” Liza heard him order. Apparently, he had reached the point where he wasn’t in a mood to ask anymore.

“They’re looking now,” he reported. “Ah. They do have a record, for a Jane Fairfax.”

“Emma,”
Liza muttered.

“No,
Jane
Fairfax,” Ted corrected.

“Jane Austen,” Liza tried to explain.

“No, Jane
Fairfax
,” Ted repeated, this time emphasizing the second name.

Liza sighed. “Jane Fairfax is a secondary character in Jane Austen’s novel
Emma
. Chad seems to like using literary names. He used a character from
The Postman Always Rings Twice
as his alias to sign in at those motels—”

She cut herself off. “You must have an address, too.”

“Number 179 Hillside Road,” Ted told her.

“Great. Thanks, Ted. If this pans out, your troubles should be over.”

Before Ted could ask any questions, she cut the connection and started the car.

Liza got back on the highway and retraced her route back to Maiden’s Bay. She looped around downtown and her own neighborhood, heading for the hills—in this case, for the other end of Hillside Road. The part of the road she was familiar with had no development, and as she drove along, she quickly discovered that the far side was equally desolate.

In fact, the only building on the whole road was the glorified cinderblock shack with the faded CONVENIENCE sign in the front.

Liza got out of the car, stepped inside, and nodded hello to Mr. Patel. She stood for a moment, and then as a memory niggled at her, she walked with more confidence to the rear of the store, to the glass-doored freezer that held ice—and the back wall that held the rental mailboxes.

The plaques on the little metal doors started at 101. Liza ran along the rows till she found 179. Then she sorted through her three sets of keys. The first Key 179 didn’t fit the lock. But the second did.

Heart pounding, Liza opened the little door. There was a little brown parcel inside! She really didn’t think she’d be that lucky—Chad couldn’t have sent money to all the names on his ghost voter rolls. Hands shaking a little, Liza removed the package addressed to Jane Fairfax.

For just a second, she hesitated. Did this count as tampering with the mail? But there wasn’t a real Jane Fairfax, and she’d be bringing this straight to Sheriff Clements.

Liza closed and locked the mailbox and walked back out, giving Mr. Patel another cursory nod. She maintained a casual pace until she was outside the door. With those tiny windows, the store proprietor wouldn’t be able to see her as she scuttled to her car, plopping the package on the front hood. Any attempt to be cool went out the window as her fingers excitedly fumbled with the wrappings.

She had to pay some attention to picking at the tape. Chad had sealed every seam as if he intended to make his package waterproof. Finally, though, Liza managed to get the damned stuff undone. The kraft paper had been wrapped several times around, so it took a little more effort before at last she exposed the contents of the brick-like little package.

Five packs of hundred-dollar bills had been rubber-banded together, creating a pile about two and a fraction inches wide, five and a fraction long, two and a half inches tall—and worth a cool fifty thousand dollars.

Liza took a deep breath at the sight of all that money.

Just as well she did, because a second later something slipped round her throat and pulled tight.

 

 

 

Whoever was trying to strangle Liza yanked heavily on the wire around her neck, dragging her back on her heels. She scrambled to get her feet under her, then straightened her legs with the next yank on the wire, ramming the back of her head into her attacker’s face.

The choking pressure on her throat slackened, and Liza managed to twist loose. She turned, blinking stars from her eyes, and saw . . . Brandy Pauncecombe.

Her old high school rival had both hands to her face, but she was unmistakable—especially with that gold-scaled snake belt dangling from her fingers. That dropped to the dusty graveled parking lot, slipping away unnoticed as Brandy gingerly pressed and winced.

“By doze!” she exclaimed in a nasal voice. “You bitch, you broke by doze!”

Brandy’s fingers curved into claws. “I’be godda kill you!”

She launched herself at Liza, who still had one hand at her throat as she tried to suck in air.

Liza barely had time to twist aside to avoid the attack. Brandy’s perfectly manicured nails left a set of shallow scratches on Liza’s cheek about an inch down from her right eye.

Brandy blundered past but pivoted round for another go. This time, Liza was ready for her. She didn’t bother with this scratching stuff. She brought up her fists as she’d learned in childhood roughhousing with an older brother and his friends and from later self-defense courses.

When Brandy came at her this time, Liza brought her head down and her fist out in a solid jab that connected perfectly with Brandy’s already damaged nose.

The pain must have been too much. Brandy’s big brown eyes rolled back in her head, her knees buckled, and she dropped to the gravel pavement.

Liza waved her fists for a second more and then dropped them as she heard the distant scream of a siren come closer and closer. The police cruiser pulled up and Curt Walters came out, one hand on his holstered pistol, his eyes staring.

Well, he had a lot to look at, Liza had to admit—Brandy stretched on the ground, the open package of hundred-dollar bills scattered on the front hood of Liza’s car, Liza’s face . . .

Feeling a sting, Liza raised a hand to her cheek. Her fingers came away bloody. Immediately, her publicist persona took over.
I hope we can get some concealer on that before any cameras turn up.

Meanwhile, Kurt walked carefully toward her, shaking his head. “You decked Brandy Pauncecombe,” he said, his voice almost accusing. “And I missed it!”

Things moved quickly after that—again, Liza had the mental image of clinging to a rampaging machine. Sheriff Clements arrived, impounding the cash and Liza’s collection of keys.

“How did you know to send—” Liza began.

“Got a call from Ted Everard,” Clements cut her off. “Took him a little while to put things together—he had to call your husband.”

That must have been fun,
Liza thought.

“When he heard about the mailing and the puzzles, he connected them pretty quick to your request for a ghost voter address and got on the horn to me.”

He sent a concerned glance at her throat. “Might have been better if we’d gotten here a little earlier.”

Liza gingerly felt around, wincing.
Oh, great, bruises. That means more concealer, and I don’t think Mr. Patel sells any.

The sheriff used some of Liza’s key collection to open a few more boxes and find additional brown paper parcels. Then he got on the phone to the postal authorities and got Liza and Brandy back to the Maiden’s Bay substation—in different cars.

Liza gave a brief statement—or rather, a quick series of suggestions for the sheriff’s upcoming press conference—while holding cold compresses to her scratches and bruises. Frankly, some of the stuff Clements pointed out didn’t make either of them look good.

“So, moving in next door, the murderer had the perfect spot to maintain surveillance on you,” he said severely. “And you were so wrapped up in your deductifying, you never noticed a silver BMW on your tail—or sitting on the other side of Patel’s postage-stamp-sized parking lot.”