Sinister Sudoku (20 page)

That means she must have been gone before the guys got back, Liza realized. So the bad guy hadn’t just waltzed past their sodden forms. On the other hand, if Michael had actually made it upstairs in a condition to notice things, they’d have known about the abduction hours ago.

She stabbed both index fingers at them. “You two— upstairs—cold showers. I’m going to the kitchen to make some coffee. Lots of coffee.”

Mrs. H. was a tea drinker, but she kept a jar of instant coffee for guests. Liza made two cups, black, and strong enough for the spoon to stand up in the middle of the cup.

Michael came down first, his clothes fresh, his hair still damp, moving as if he feared someone had been tinkering with his body joints and not put them back together properly. He sat in silence as Liza pushed a cup of coffee toward him.

Then she turned to the telephone and called the police. “This is Liza Kelly. I’m at 37 Hackleberry Avenue,” she said, giving Mrs. Halvorsen’s address. “I got a phone call saying my neighbor had been kidnapped, and when I came over, she wasn’t here.”

“We’ll get a patrol car over there right away, and I’m sure the sheriff will be heading over from Killamook,” the duty deputy said.

Liza hesitated, then said, “I suppose you should also get in touch with Detective Everard—”

“He’s here in the back, ma’am. Hold on.”

A second later, Ted Everard’s voice came over the line, crisp and businesslike. “Everard here.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound as if they woke you up. How do you do that?”

“Let’s just say our little competition last night turned out to be a pro-am sport.” He didn’t have to mention who the amateurs were. “I made sure your friends got home safely, made a couple of preparations for myself, and then slept over here.”

In a cell,
she finished for him.

“I had a change of clothes on hand—that’s what happens when you live out of a suitcase. Anyway, I got up at my usual time, and here I am.”

As he spoke, Kevin shuffled his way into the kitchen and sat beside Michael. The two of them looked like half-drowned kittens—the runts of the litter that old-line farmers would have stuck in a bag and tossed in the river. Obviously, the shock to their systems had pushed them from half-drunk to full hangover mode.

“So what’s this I hear about your neighbor?” Everard asked.

Liza told him what had happened, ending with a glance at her watch. “Oh, God, he’ll be calling back in little more than an hour.”

“Okay, then,” Ted said. “I’ll have to roust some telephone people out of bed so we have a shot at tracing that call. See you at your house ASAP.”

“He said—” Liza began, but Everard finished for her.

“Don’t involve the cops, right?”

“No. He just said for you and Sheriff Clements to stay out of the way.”

“We’ll just have to see about that,” Ted replied. “See you soon.”

After the first deputies arrived, Liza, Michael, and Kevin went to her house. Soon enough, Sheriff Clements and Ted Everard joined them as well as several phone company technicians, who hooked up an extra extension and spliced in their tracing equipment.

Liza’s brain had finally unfrozen, leaving her with lots of questions.

“I don’t understand how this guy knew we’d figured out the location of the painting,” she said to the sheriff.

“Yes, especially since
I
didn’t know about it, either,” Clements said, directing a black look toward Ted Everard.

“We didn’t know for sure we had found the picture,” Ted replied to the sheriff. “That’s why we were going to check it out this morning.”

To Liza he said, “As for the kidnapper finding out, it wouldn’t be so hard to do—provided he had Chris Dalen’s cell phone.”

“Dalen had a cell phone?” Clements asked.

“That’s what Liza found out yesterday,” Everard told the sheriff. “It wasn’t found among his effects.”

“Which means that this kidnapper also killed Dalen,” Clements said.

Everard nodded. “And if he had the phone, he probably heard Chris Dalen’s outgoing voice message. The one that congratulated the caller on figuring things out—”

“But it didn’t give a usable clue as to where the Mondrian was hidden,” Liza finished. “Not unless you had all the other clues.”

“However, the killer could keep tracking any incoming messages, knowing that whoever called must have cracked the code,” Everard went on.

“Then all he’d need to do was check into the incoming number to find out who that was,” Clements rumbled. “He could use a reverse telephone directory. Hell, nowadays some phone companies will even do that for you.”

This time his black look was aimed at the phone company employees, who studiously refused to meet his eyes. They settled into a tense silence. But a very disturbing logical equation kept swirling around in Liza’s head.

The killer of Chris Dalen had the dead man’s cell phone.

The person who’d kidnapped Mrs. H. also apparently had that cell phone.

Therefore, Elise Halvorsen was in the hands of a killer, QED. Liza remembered that from logic class—
quod erat demonstrandum
. Translated from the Latin, that meant “what was to be proved.”

Right now, she fervently hoped that QED wouldn’t turn out to mean Quite Extremely Dead.

The ring from the telephone seemed considerably more shrill than usual. Certainly, it seemed to slash right through Michael and Kevin’s heads. They both winced as Liza picked up the handset in unison with the sheriff and Ted Everard. In the background, she could see one of the telephone techs doing something on a laptop.

“Hello?” she said.

Instead of the kidnapper, she heard the annoyed tones of Mrs. H. “Be careful, dear, he’s crazy—”

She abruptly went off the phone, and that whispering voice came on. “Do you have it?”

“No,” Liza replied. “I tried to tell you that before. But we think we know where it is by latitude and longitude.”

“So you need to find it by GPS,” the whisperer growled. “What are the coordinates?”

Liza gave them.

“How far?”

Liza repeated the question, and Kevin looked up. The police had brought some detailed maps, and he’d been examining them. “It looks as if the plot is in the Cape Sinestra State Park up along the coast. Maybe half an hour to forty-five minutes, but it may take longer getting through the park to the spot itself.”

Liza relayed this information. The whisperer on the other side of the line was silent for a couple of seconds.

When he spoke again, his voice was harsher than ever. “You’ve got an hour. One car. Bring a couple of your friends to help dig—if they’re capable. And no cops. You hear that, Sheriff?”

Clements stood stone-faced with the receiver up to his ear. He didn’t break his silence.

“I know you have to be on the line. So you heard that the old broad is all right—at least so far. But if I see one cop car—marked or unmarked—she’s gonna be history.”

No sooner did the kidnapper cut the connection than Sheriff Clements whirled on the telephone people. “Well?”

“It’s a cell phone.” One of the technicians consulted one of his pieces of equipment. “We got the number—it’s 971- 555-4394.”

Liza double-checked the string of “blue numbers” she had written down. “That’s the number of the phone that Chris Dalen had.”

“Waste not, want not,” Ted Everard said. “The kidnapper’s got it, and it comes in handy to hide his identity.”

The sheriff went over to the telephone guy on the laptop. “Most important—did you locate where the call came from?”

The computer operator shrugged. “It was barely a minute. We just got it traced to the nearest cell tower. I can tell you the call was made somewhere in the northern end of town.”

“That doesn’t do much to zero in on the kidnapper,” Clements complained. “I mean,
we’re
in the northern end of town. All you’ve told me is the pretty obvious fact that this clown is in Maiden’s Bay.”

“Well, the conversation also told us that he’s from out of town,” Everard said. “He needed directions to get to the exchange site.”

Liza barely paid attention to this comment. She was staring worriedly at Michael and Kevin. “Are the two of you feeling well enough to go? We’re kind of racing the clock here.”

“Yes!” Michael all but jumped to his feet. Then he paused in embarrassment. “Except for a bad case of caffeine bladder.”

He ran for the bathroom while Liza got her car keys. Sheriff Clements stepped to block the door. “I can’t say I’m enthusiastic about this,” he rumbled.

“If you’ve got an alternative plan that won’t get Mrs. H. killed, I’d be happy to hear it,” Liza said. “Because I’m not jumping for joy myself.”

“Kidnapping is a federal matter,” the sheriff said, his voice so low he was almost talking to himself. “But by the time we get to the FBI, and they get one of their agents over here from Portland, this would be all over.”

He shook his head. “So, if you and your friends are willing to go . . .”

Ted Everard interrupted him, stepping forward. “I’m going, too.”

Clements looked dubious. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, Ted? This guy sounded pretty firm when he said no cops.”

“He said no cop
cars
,” Ted said, splitting hairs. “By the time he’s close enough to identify me, we’ll be at the point of transferring the painting. I’m willing to bet that greed will trump caution.” He looked from Clements to Liza. “What do you think?”

“I think it would be a good idea to have a professional along,” Liza admitted.
Especially one with a gun,
she added silently.

Sighing, Clements stepped aside. “I won’t stand in your way.”

“Well, come on then.” Liza stepped outside into the dawn’s early light, Kevin and Everard nearly bumping into her as she skidded to a stop. She’d just noticed something she hadn’t seen in the darkness earlier. Kevin’s black SUV stood parked in Mrs. Halvorsen’s driveway.

Liza turned to Kevin, pointing at his vehicle. “If we’re going to hit the trails in some state park, maybe we should take your truck.” She looked at him carefully. “Are you okay for driving?”

He nodded, looking determined.

“Fine. Then you go and start ’er up.” Liza ran next door to the garage, where Mrs. H. stored her gardening implements. Rummaging around, she managed to snag a heavy mattock and a shovel, throwing them into the rear of the SUV.

Then she stopped in surprise, watching Ted Everard climbing in on the driver’s side. “Kevin figured it might be better if he took the navigator’s seat,” the state cop explained. “I brought along a GPS gizmo, but he’s the one with experience in actually using one.” Kevin had already established himself in the shotgun position, an electronic unit about the size of a large hardcover book in his hands.

“This thing even plots a route to the coordinates—at least as far as mapped roads will take us,” he said.

Liza got in the backseat. A moment later, Michael joined them. Ted Everard had already warmed up the engine. They pulled out, threading their way through the collection of police and telephone vehicles parked helter-skelter along Hackleberry Avenue.

Following Kevin’s instructions, they headed off for the 101. Soon they were on the highway headed south. It wasn’t exactly the sort of ride that encouraged conversation. Finally, Liza said, “Shouldn’t we be trying to come up with a plan or something?”

From behind the wheel, Everard sighed. “I think the plan is to play it straight—make the exchange—unless the kidnapper tries to pull something.”

He glanced in the mirror and caught Liza’s eye. “Remember that time in Clements’s office where I said I didn’t want to end up depending on the girl detective and her chums?”

Ted sighed again. “And here I am, depending on the girl detective and her chums.”

Yeah,
Liza thought.
There’s a great mystery series in there—
Detective Girl and the Hangover Boys.
The thing is, we have to bring our best game to this. Mrs. H. is depending on us to get her back safely.

“I don’t know how good my ‘detecting’ has been,” Liza finally admitted. “Can any of our suspects be the kidnapper? Tanino is still in jail, isn’t he?”

Everard nodded. “He was moved over to Killamook, but he’s going to get out on bail when court convenes this morning. The GSR test came back negative.” His voice got a little more sour. “Either he’s innocent, or he’s really got us fooled with that stupid act. Of course, you never know with mob guys. One of the big bosses used to walk around his neighborhood in his bathrobe, drooling, to convince people he was crazy.”

“Yeah, but there’s a big difference between crazy and stupid.” Liza went on down the suspect list. “Carlowe is dead, and Alvin Hunzinger is out of town.” She had a hard time imagining that terrifying whispered voice coming from Alvin. “What about Fritz Tarleton?”

“He’s collecting his darling daughter from Coastal Correctional this morning,” Everard reported. “I think this whole exchange thing would represent a scheduling conflict.”

“How about Tarleton’s security chief?” Liza tried to remember his name. “MacBain, McShane? He’s about the only one left.”

“We could add one name to the list,” Everard said. “I got word this morning that Fat Frankie Basso got out of Coastal yesterday afternoon. Apparently some friends in high places worked to expedite his departure.”

“And here I thought we’d worked things out,” Liza groused.

“I guess the process of elimination works better in sudoku than in murder investigating,” Everard told her with a shrug. Everyone else in the car was too sunk in hangovers to argue the point.

Liza looked out the window. A lot of the Oregon coast was devoted to parkland. Right now the view was of fir trees climbing the lower reaches of the Cascade Range, the whole vista sprinkled with snow. The weather report for the day had been “partly cloudy,” as it was for about 180 days a year. Clouds had been thick earlier, but now errant rays of sunshine had managed to break through, creating occasional dazzling spots on an otherwise shadowy landscape.