Ghost Sudoku (11 page)

They got in the car, retraced their route, and then continued up the hill. Soon they arrived at Liza’s favorite picnic spot. A copse of trees provided shade while the elevation offered an amazing view of the town and the bay in the distance.

Liza spread an old blanket right at the edge of sunlight while Michael lugged over the bag of ice. “This thing has frozen into one big mass,” he complained.

“Just drop it a few times.”

While he did that, she went back to the car, returning with the toolbox from the trunk.

“I think it’s in three pieces now,” Michael puffed as he bent to pick up the bag again.

Liza dropped to her knees and opened the box, removing a utility knife and a screwdriver. She slit the plastic, spread it, and then began attacking the frozen masses, using the screwdriver as an improvised ice pick. “Why don’t you bring over the drinks?”

When Michael returned, she set the bottles in the chopped ice and then rose to retrieve the rest of their lunch.

“There, now,” she said, setting the sandwiches and salad down beside Michael, who was already sprawled on the blanket. She poked a toe in his ribs. “Shift over.”

He made room, and she joined him on the blanket, hip to hip. “We’re lucky. If those developers had gotten their way, this would probably be the front lawn of a luxury residence for some family from California.”

“I thought you guys really hated those interlopers from California.”

Liza shrugged. “They’re a fact of life . . . and they help to spread the tax bill a bit farther around. Pauncecombe and his cronies have turned Killamook into Disneyland on the Bay. They want to maintain the status quo, and that’s expensive, as I found when I took over the property taxes for the house in Maiden’s Bay. Not to mention that the Killamook machine keeps siphoning off funds for their own purposes.”

“I guess it’s true,” Michael said. “You
can’t
go home again.” He looked over at Liza. “And it looks as if revisiting your past may not be much fun, either.”

“Some people look back on high school as the most wonderful time of their lives.” Liza shook her head. “I’m not one of them. Too much petty BS—and yes, Brandy D’Alessandro was often the one who was dishing it out. Now I see her with her perfect boobs, showing off her tiny waist with a gold belt, and she’s probably paying for it with money her husband sucked out of my taxes.”

Michael snaked his hand into the bag of ice. “I think there’s only one cure when you get that hot under the collar. And luckily, I think the beer is cool enough now.”

He extracted a bottle, twisted off the cap, and handed it to Liza. “Keep on like this, and you’ll end up with no appetite for your sandwich.”

“I was hoping we could trade halves,” Liza said and then took a sip.

It took some additional negotiation, but Michael finally agreed to swap half his sandwich. They took their time eating, and Liza switched to soda after she finished her first beer.

And for a long while they just lay in companionable silence on the blanket, looking up at the sky through the branches overhead.

“The only thing we lack is music,” Michael said, stretching lazily. “My folks used to pack a transistor radio with our picnic lunches.”

“With my luck, all we’d get is KMUC, and we’re coming up to the Blowhard Hour.”

Michael turned to her. “Blowhard Hour?”

“They’ve got some low-rent political pundit who pontificates and takes phone calls. He might as well be the minister of propaganda for the Killamook machine.”

She decided to demonstrate after they’d cleaned up and gotten back in the car, tuning in the local station.

“Any other callers with comments on the upcoming primaries?” a very self-assured voice inquired from the speakers.

A much more pugnacious voice followed, with that slight fuzziness that seems to accompany phone calls over the airwaves. “Len, this is Oscar Smutz, candidate for sheriff.”

Liza made a disgusted noise. This didn’t seem like a joke or impersonation. It sounded just like Smutz’s speech-making style from the hijacked campaign float.

“I don’t have a question about the election so much as about local crime.”

Liza’s hand headed for the dial to turn this nonsense off as Smutz asked, “Why is Sheriff Clements shielding his friend Liza Kelly in the Redbourne murder investigation?”

 

 

 

Liza jerked back her hand as if a fat blue spark had just jumped from the radio control. “What’s this moron talking about?”

But as she and Michael listened, Oscar Smutz outlined his case.

“It’s bad enough that the county has been involved in three high-profile murder cases and the theft of a multimillion-dollar artwork, but the present sheriff turned out to be incompetent in solving them. The killers would have escaped and the painting never been found if Liza Kelly hadn’t handed Bert Clements the answers on a silver platter. And even then it ended badly—the sheriff muffed an arrest attempt, standing uselessly by as trigger-happy deputies killed a third-generation merchant in Maiden’s Bay.”

Liza made a disgusted noise back in her throat. Smutz’s blathering was true after a fashion, or rather a truth sandwich—a few very thin facts with a lot of dirt and innuendo crammed in between.

If Liza had managed to solve some of the crimes Smutz was yelling about, she wouldn’t have been able to do it without the help of Bert Clements. He had shared information and even pointed her in directions to get information where a cop couldn’t go.

But Smutz kept ranting on. “Now it looks as though Kelly thinks she’s won herself a free pass. Or is Clements just afraid of a celebrity? She was heard threatening a guy who turned up dead a few hours later. And when the cops arrive at the scene of the crime, who’s standing there? Liza Kelly. Now, I’ve spent a few years as a cop, and what I just said would put her down as a suspect in my book. Does Clements bring her downtown? No, he goes to visit her house.”

“Clements came to collect my clothes for forensics. He also sent a deputy to Hagen’s motel for the same reason. He already had our statements and was checking them out.” She ground her words out between gritted teeth.

Michael rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Do you often carry on arguments with your radio?” he asked.

She sighed and turned off the damned thing. “I suppose you’re right—and I also suppose we’d better get back to Buck and Alvin. We’ll be making plans tonight—and if I don’t miss my guess, we’ll be getting a call from Michelle, too.”

They got back to Hackleberry Avenue and went over to Mrs. Halvorsen’s house. Buck was still gone, but Alvin had apparently been listening to the radio. “It looks as though Michelle was right to send me up here.” His round, comical-looking face was set in serious lines. “Don’t be surprised if the sheriff calls you in.”

“What more can he expect to get from me?” Liza demanded.

“He can expect to get this Smutz character off his back,” Alvin replied. “You’re in the publicity end of things, Liza. He’s making some colorful charges that tie into a big murder case.”

Liza nodded, her lips twisting. “Yeah, I expect other news outlets will pick it up.”

She was only too right. By the time Buck finally showed up, Smutz was appearing on the local newscast from Lincoln City. If she’d been watching on her own TV, Liza might have been tempted to put a foot through the screen. But they were watching on Mrs. H.’s old console, so she had to contain herself.

The extra twenty pounds that the camera adds were especially evident on Smutz’s face. With his doughy cheeks and missing neck, he looked like an outraged bullfrog as he continued his attacks against Clements and Liza.

“Oh, Michelle’s not going to be happy with this,” Buck said, watching the performance.

“Right now, I’m more concerned with hearing if you have anything interesting to say,” Liza told him.

“Matrimonial work isn’t really something I get into, so I can’t say I made an exhaustive search,” Foreman replied. “But if our young lovers sought afternoon delight—or any other kind—they either didn’t head north or were extremely circumspect.”

“Well, they can’t have been too careful if Shepard caught on to them,” Michael said.

“Caught on to whom?” Mrs. Halvorsen asked.

Liza cleared her throat a little nervously, trying to keep it clean for the grandmotherly woman. “We think that Chad Redbourne—the fellow who was murdered—might have been having an affair with Brandy Pauncecombe.”

“You mean the D’Alessandro girl?” Mrs. H. nodded, her lips pursed. “I’ve heard some stories along those lines.”

Liza gawked. “You have?” Then she shut her mouth. Of course, if anybody were to hear anything, it would be Elise Halvorsen, one of the champion gossips in Maiden’s Bay.

“Not that it comes as much of a surprise, I suppose,” Mrs. H. went on. “Brandy was always a fairly . . . red-blooded girl, tied to a much older man. To tell the truth, I always felt a little sorry for her. They didn’t exactly marry for love, but now she’s trapped in a social circle where everyone is old enough to be her mother or her father.”

The idea of sympathy for Brandy was more than Liza could stomach. “And that’s enough for her to fall madly in bed with Chad Redbourne?”

“I’ve heard his name mentioned, along with others,” her neighbor replied. “Some of them more shocking than that.”

“Oh, really?” Foreman said. “I’ll have to go over some of that with you—”

He didn’t get to finish because Liza’s cell phone began to ring.

“Now you see why I decided to stay away from handling politicians,” Michelle Markson said in Liza’s ear. “Too many publicity variables to deal with. Although I thought that the help I sent you should have headed off any problems.”

The very mildness of her voice was enough to raise a “Run for your life!” red flag for any veteran of the Markson wars.

“Now I understand that two of the larger Portland network affiliates are arranging interviews to allow this Schmuck person to bad-mouth you.” There were those incredibly sensitive media antennas Michelle was famous for. Liza listened as her partner’s voice grew even more deceptively mild. “I’d hoped that Alvin would have dispensed with any problems from your friend the sheriff.”

Liza foresaw Michelle making pure hell out of Alvin’s life if she didn’t speak up. “We—
I
—thought the problems had already been dealt with.”

Michelle responded with an impatient sigh. “Really, Liza. You may not have dealt with politics at the agency, but I assumed your defensive game would be better than this.”

Liza braced herself for the blast to begin, but instead Michelle just said, “It looks as if I’ll have to deal with these politicians myself. Luckily, I had the staff here doing research since we first heard about your latest escapade.”

Only Michelle would consider stumbling across a dead body as an “escapade.”

“Does that mean you’re coming up here?” Liza asked apprehensively. Sheriff Clements had already dealt with Alvin in the past and wouldn’t be very happy to see him again. The sheriff had also met Michelle, and Liza suspected he wasn’t exactly eager to renew that acquaintance, either.

“No, I think I can be more effective right here in the office,” Michelle told her.

“And what are you going to do?” Liza found even more apprehension coming on.

“It might be best if you don’t know the specifics.” Michelle’s voice went to a malicious purr. “Just remember, the best defense is a strong offense.”

Michelle cut the connection, and Liza gloomily clicked her phone shut to find all eyes on her.

“I take it Herself was not pleased,” Michael said.

“She felt our brain trust should have anticipated this particular can of worms,” Liza admitted.

“Oh, God.” Alvin seemed to shrink in upon himself, lines of anxiety appearing all over his round face. Liza had seen similar expressions on most of the people who regularly worked with Michelle and her take-no-prisoners business style. Despite the fat retainers that he’d pocketed through the Markson Agency, Alvin Hunzinger’s personal relationship with Michelle seemed based more on terror than greed.

“Looks as though it’s going to be you and me this evening, Alvin,” Liza told the attorney. “Even if Clements doesn’t bring me in, I’ll have to go see him—see if we can kick this thing out of the news cycle as quickly as possible. The problem is, I’ll have to go in there alone.”

Alvin stiffened, immediately opening his mouth to object. Of course, if Liza’s plan went wrong, Michelle would want his head for a lawn ornament.

Liza brought her hand up in a “stop” gesture. “If I go in lawyered up, this will turn into an adversarial thing with Clements and the cops. Also, you have a certain celebrity quality of your own, Alvin—you’ve got a rep for helping guilty people walk on all sorts of charges. We don’t want the media or the political types making that sort of connection.”

“I—understand.” But Alvin didn’t look happy.

“If there’s trouble, though, you’ll be the lawyer I’ll call,” Liza promised with a smile.

Her good mood faded as she punched in the number for police headquarters in Killamook. Clements was still in his office, and his voice sounded a little relieved as he came on the line. “I was going to wait until morning.”

“Well, let’s set the time and get this over with,” Liza said. “I hope you’ll at least have a clean rubber hose on hand.”

“Right.” Clements didn’t sound ready to join in the joke. “Shall we say eleven o’clock?”

“Eleven o’clock it will be,” Liza told him. She said good-bye and closed her phone.

Then she took a deep breath, her eyes going to Buck Foreman. “I guess you’ll be involved in this, too. We’ll have to make it as tough a grilling as possible on my statement.” Liza shrugged. “At least I have the advantage of being innocent.”

Hours later, that didn’t seem like much of an advantage anymore. Buck Foreman didn’t just lead her through the events of the fatal afternoon, he raked Liza over the coals.