Ghost Sudoku (6 page)

“And then?”

“Then I can put their head on a stick in my front yard next to the mailbox.”

 

 

That flippant reply just made Ava more dubious, but in the end she gave Liza the address she wanted—after extracting a promise of more columns ASAP. On that agreement, they hung up.

Liza still sat in her improvised living room office space, regarding the Killamook address she’d written down with satisfaction. Then Rusty came over, nudged her knee, and real life intruded on her revenge fantasies. A quick tour of the kitchen revealed that she was out of dog food—and the people-food situation wasn’t that much better. Liza had made a concerted effort to use up all the perishables before leaving on vacation. She didn’t want to come home to find some gray or green muck growing on something she’d left in the refrigerator.

“Shopping,” she said. “And I’m still carless until I get up to Portland. Looks like a case of going back to Mrs. H. again.”

By the time she’d gotten Mrs. Halvorsen’s Oldsmobile, done her shopping, and fed Rusty, it was early evening. The rain had stopped, replaced with a watery overcast that shadowed the setting sun.

“Looks later than I think,” Liza muttered as she drove along the coast of the bay.

She turned off onto side roads, making her way into what her mother would have called an upper-middle neighborhood. The homes were still modest enough, but the building lots were bigger, with plenty of shrubbery to ensure privacy.

Pulling up at the address, Liza realized she’d been here a couple of times for some excruciating high school parties—the kind where parents forced the supposed host into inviting people over and only good manners forced the invitees to respond. None of the cool kids came, in spite of the pool, the extensive barbecue, or the expensive sound system in Chad’s backyard.

A scrap of gossip floated up from her memory—Mom mentioning that the Redbournes had retired to Arizona in search of a sunnier lifestyle.

So I guess Chad is alone in there,
Liza thought.

She parked at the end of the drive and walked up to the front door. Nobody answered when she rang the bell, but she could hear music—The Clash, if she wasn’t mistaken—blaring from those famous outdoor speakers.

Maybe he’s in the backyard and doesn’t hear the bell.
Liza moved round to the garden gate and opened it. “Hey, Chad?” she called. “You out here?”

She stepped onto the stone terrace that had been quite the big thing back in the day, sniffing for any trace of barbecue. No smells, no Chad.

Could he have recognized my voice and decided to hide?
Liza sighed. That would be classic Nerdbourne behavior.

Well, I didn’t hear any doors slamming. So if he’s hiding, he’s out here,
Liza thought.
And that leaves . . . the Grotto.

If the terrace brought the Redbournes into the local landscaping avant-garde, their architectural folly pushed them way over the top. They’d actually built a combination arbor and cave, a beehive-shaped, ivy-covered structure in a wooded corner of their property. Nowadays Liza could smile at the pretension. Back in high school, unkind souls had sniggered that the best make-out spot in town belonged to the kid least likely to use it.

Liza headed over in that direction, expecting to catch a few branches in the face. But apparently there was still a path of sorts, the undergrowth trimmed back.

“Chad,” she called, “come on out. No sense in making this ridiculous.”

She stepped to the mouth of the artfully rough stone structure, peering into the dimness inside. Yes, it was still nice, dark, and private, perfect make-out territory. And it hadn’t been abandoned. The cushions on the rustic wooden bench in the back looked new.

Will I have to poke around under there to root him out?
Liza thought in exasperation.

She rolled her eyes . . . and that’s when she noticed the feet dangling just above her head.

 

 

 

Liza lurched into reverse with a squawk—and rammed into something soft but unyielding behind her.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and she realized it was
someone
, not something. Without even thinking, Liza thrust back with her elbow, catching the owner of the hand in the solar plexus.

He let out with a squawk even louder than the one she’d made. Then, gasping, he stumbled back . . . and tumbled over a wheelbarrow Liza hadn’t even noticed.

She’d already whirled to confront . . . a stranger. No, he looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t quite place the bald head, the doughy face—

The stranger scrambled up from the undignified heap he’d made, trying to keep one eye on Liza while his gaze kept being drawn to the dangling form in the folly.

Liza’s one glance had told her that was Chad Redbourne suspended up there. That had been enough for her.

She lashed out with her foot, sweeping the guy’s foot out from under him. He crashed into the wheelbarrow again, yelling, “What are you doing?”

“You’re not getting out of here.” Liza’s voice came out a lot more hoarsely than she’d intended, as if she were breathing hard through a tight throat.

The man’s hand darted under his suit jacket, and Liza stopped breathing altogether.

The thought galvanized her into action. She just about tore the cell phone from the pocket of her jeans, shouting, “I’m calling 911!”

The man’s hand came into view also clutching a phone. “No,
I
am!”

 

 

Sheriff Clements shook his head, looking from Liza to the pair of feet still gently swaying in the entrance of the beehive structure. “Maybe I should just give you my office number to put on speed dial, and we can eliminate the middleman.”

“I—I didn’t expect to find . . . that.” Liza jerked her head in the direction of Chad’s hanging body, squeezing her eyes shut.

That didn’t erase the image that seemed engraved behind her eyeballs—an image she feared she’d see in a lot of night-mares to come. Chad drooped above her like a marionette with all but one string cut. But that string—or rather, rope—had looped around his neck, leaving his face congested and contorted. From the looks of it, Chad’s last moments hadn’t been pleasant. His too-wide mouth stood open and twisted, as if he’d either been struggling to draw in breath—or had pushed it all out in a final, now-silent scream.

While Liza tried to shake that away, her playmate from ring-around-the-wheelbarrow stepped forward. “Sheriff, I want that woman arrested. I came in here to find her standing in front of a dead body, and then she attacked me.”

Clements looked at him. “And you are?”

The stranger fished a card out of his wallet and handed it over.

“Clark Hagen, political consultant,” Clements read aloud. “Well, Clark, what were you doing here?”

“Mr. Redbourne called me this afternoon, asking me to stop by this evening. When I arrived, I couldn’t get an answer at the door. So I followed the music to the back. I caught a glimpse of color in the trees”—he gestured to Liza’s T-shirt—“and I found poor Chad hanging there and this woman stepping back. I put a hand on her shoulder—”

“If you did that after she just found a body, knocking you ass over teakettle might not exactly be an overreaction,” Clements interrupted. He turned to Liza. “What do you have to say?”

“I didn’t know who was behind me,” Liza replied. “For all I knew, it could have been the person who’d just strung up poor Chad.

“Of course, if I’d only known it was Clark here . . .” She shot him a dirty look. “I’d have swung harder.”

Turning from a dumbfounded Clements, Liza stuck out a hand to Hagen. Automatically, he began shaking with her. “We didn’t get a chance to meet earlier today. I think you left after you heard my name being shouted. I’m Liza Kelly.”

The political consultant released her hand as if it had gone red-hot.

Liza turned back to the sheriff. “This is the political genius who left the float blocking the traffic circle in the middle of town.”

“The one I had to move?” Clements asked in a deceptively mild voice.

“Yep. Clark went to all that effort, just to get me elected mayor—or so Mrs. Halvorsen tells me.”

“Is that so?” Clements showed even more interest. “I find it kind of funny that you couldn’t recognize your own client.”

Hagen hunched his shoulders a little and fiddled with the knot of his tie. “I was approached to jump-start a grass-roots petition campaign in a very restricted time frame,” he admitted.

“Didn’t you think it kind of strange that the candidate—which is to say, me—wasn’t around to campaign?”

Hagen gave a stiff shrug. “I’ve seen these things arranged to convince a dubious candidate that a run would be feasible.”

“But it could also be arranged as a political dirty trick—creating a straw man or woman to distract the opposition,” Liza pointed out. “I wonder, given your obvious range of experience, which happens more often—a campaign as clincher or a campaign as a sham?”

Hagen had no answer for that.

“I’m even more interested in finding out who wanted me to become mayor—even though I didn’t want to be,” Liza went on. “Who hired you, Clark? Who was your local contact?”

Hagen tugged so vigorously on his tie knot that Liza feared he’d end up like Chad. “I’m not altogether sure,” the political operative said. “I was contacted via e-mail, but there was no name on the account. When I arrived in town, there was an envelope waiting for me at the motel desk, containing expense money.”

“Must have been a pretty thick envelope, if you were able to pull that float together.” Clements shook his head. “And all for someone you didn’t know—for a client you didn’t know, either. Why would you do that?”

Clark Hagen shrugged his shoulders. “As you said, Sheriff, it was a pretty thick envelope.”

That was that. Liza didn’t get any of her questions answered. But Sheriff Clements made sure he got in-depth answers for all of his. He had a police cruiser accompany Liza while she returned the Oldsmobile to Mrs. H. and then give her a lift to the police station in downtown Maiden’s Bay.

“I thought this would be a little more convenient for you,” Clements said. “Hagen went to headquarters in Killamook to talk with Brenna Ross.”

Separate the witnesses,
Liza thought.
I guess that’s standard operating procedure even for a suicide.

Clements didn’t bring out the rubber hose, but he was certainly thorough. Even after Liza gave a nearly step-by-step recital of her visit to Chad’s house, her grisly discovery, and her tussle with Clark Hagen, the sheriff wasn’t satisfied. He went over her whole afternoon from the moment she’d parted company with him downtown to his arrival in response to her 911 call.

He’s just doing his job,
Liza told herself as she tried her best to be a good citizen and answer fully.

Then, looking over his notes, Clements said, “So, you knew the deceased before you visited him at the county center?”

That was sufficiently out of left field that Liza hesitated for a moment. Clements looked up from his scribbling like the cartoon image of a good old bear, saying nothing.

Liza had seen Michelle Markson use the technique—hell, she’d done it herself. Let the silence stretch out until the other person in the room—client, interviewee, interrogation subject—would say almost anything to fill the void.

“I knew him way previously,” Liza finally said. “We went to high school together. It had to be about twenty years since I’d seen him.”

“But you’d been to his house back then?” Clements asked.

“A few times,” she admitted. “Chad wasn’t exactly the most popular guy in school. I think more people went over there uninvited . . .”

She broke off as a memory crept up from the back of her brain.

“Uninvited?” the sheriff prompted.

“For practical jokes,” Liza finished. “Chad was always the guy who’d find his notebook marinated in Coke—or worse, who’d have the spark plugs or even the tires disappear off his car, who’d answer the front door and find the flaming bag of dog crap . . .”

“Something else made you stop,” Clements said.

Liza nodded. “One Halloween, somebody strung up a dummy in the Grotto—that’s what they called that old beehive thing. Mrs. Redbourne—Chad’s mother—nearly had a stroke when she stumbled across it.”

She looked down at the scarred tabletop. “I wonder if that’s what gave Chad the idea.”

Clements shifted in his seat. “You seem to be taking this very personally.”

Liza looked him in the eye. “You mean, with all the stiffs I keep stumbling over, I should be getting more blasé about it?”

She took a deep breath. “I hollered at him, and I went over there because I hoped I could shake some information out of him—find out who was behind this BS ‘Kelly for Mayor’ thing. And I’m the one who found him hanging up there. When it comes to why, though, I think you’re more plugged into the politics of this county than I am. You’d have a better idea as to why Chad might have been in trouble than I would.”

That pretty much ended the discussion. Liza declined the offer of a lift home from another police car.

She stepped out of the town hall to find that full darkness had fallen. Ordinarily, a stroll up to Hackleberry Avenue on a summer evening should have been fairly pleasant. But by the time she’d left the business district behind, Liza realized she’d made a tactical error accepting a cup of the sheriff’s awful coffee.

Still worse was the realization that Rusty was probably also suffering from the same symptoms of bursting bladder.

Liza picked up the pace, virtually sprinting for the kitchen door and then the solace of the bathroom. She emerged to find Rusty waiting for her, his leash in his mouth.

“I know exactly how you feel,” she told him, clipping the lead to his collar.