Puzzled to Death (16 page)

“Don’t be dumb,” Sherry butted in. “If I were you, I’d bring my crew out here and interview the first ones out the door. That’s who’s gonna win.”

“That’s an
excellent
idea,” Rick Reed enthused. Sherry couldn’t tell if he was just trying to hit on her or if he was really too stupid to have thought of it himself. “Who was out first?”

“He was,” Becky Baldwin said. She stepped in front of Paul Thornhill to introduce him to Rick Reed.

The two men shook hands, but they were both very aware of Becky. Paul Thornhill bristled like a cat. Rick Reed, who had been practically drooling over Sherry, might have forgotten she existed. He seemed torn between whether to treat Paul Thornhill as a rival or a prospective interview.

Becky Baldwin, who had unobtrusively managed to put herself center stage, smiled demurely, as if unaware of any tension she might be causing.

Cora Felton, with many marriages to her credit, recognized the tactic and had to admit it was working. Even Aaron Grant was taking a keen interest in the scene. Sherry clearly wasn’t pleased, but Aaron didn’t seem to notice.

Cora sighed at the stupidity of the world in general and men in particular, and went back inside to check on the tournament.

Zelda Zisk was finished, as Paul Thornhill had predicted. The large woman sat at her table alone, drawing doodles on a piece of scrap paper. Without checking the time written on her puzzle, there was no way of knowing how long she’d been done.

At the table behind her, Mrs. Thornhill was working diligently. From a distance, Cora couldn’t tell how much of her puzzle was finished, but it did not appear to be a lot.

Cora finally spotted Judge Hobbs sitting at a table way off to the side. The white-haired jurist was working diligently, if slowly, and was clearly no threat to win. Judge Hobbs, like many of the other prominent citizens in town, was competing for the purpose of paying the entry fee to donate to charity. In addition to the judge, Cora noted banker Marcus Gelman, county prosecutor Henry Firth, and Dr. Barney Nathan. All were bent over their papers with identical frowns, as if they’d accidentally been handed a puzzle in Japanese.

Marty Haskel, however, was no longer working on his puzzle. That caught Cora by surprise. The cranky service-station attendant sat slumped at his table, drumming his fingers impatiently. If finishing early pleased him, Cora wouldn’t have known it. Mr. Haskel, as usual, looked peeved.

Cora got so caught up in watching him she almost missed the five-minute warning, and it took a cautionary
ahem
from Harvey Beerbaum to snap her out of it. Cora
had
missed the five-minute warning on the first puzzle, and while no contestants had complained, Harvey had acted as if it were the end of the world. Now Cora stepped to the microphone, watched the seconds tick down, said, “Five minutes please,” and stepped back, reminding herself that Harvey Beerbaum was an officious prig.

Nonetheless, she was careful to keep her eye on the clock as it ticked down the last minute. “Time’s up,” she announced. “Please stop working. If you have a puzzle,
raise your hand, and a volunteer will be around to collect it.”

Within minutes the puzzles had been collected, the contestants outside had been herded back in, and the third puzzle had been passed out.

By now Cora was on top of her game, feeling pretty cocky. “All right,” she announced, “puzzle number three is a nineteen-by-nineteen; you’ll have thirty minutes to complete it. Does everyone have a puzzle? If so, then, ready, set, go!”

Cora pushed away from the microphone with a feeling of triumph. She had gotten through the morning. All she had to do was wait a half hour, announce
time’s up
, and everyone could go to lunch.

Cora wove her way through the tables, pushed by Rick Reed and his crew, who had just filmed her announcement, and went out the door onto the steps, where Sherry, Aaron, and Becky were waiting. Cora wasn’t sure whether to be pleased Sherry had seen no need to monitor her performance or annoyed no one had bothered to watch her work. It occurred to her that Sherry hadn’t wanted to leave Aaron and Becky alone. She fired up a cigarette, took a deep drag.

“So
that’s
where you went,” Iris Cooper said, coming out the door. “Do you
have
to smoke on the front steps?”

“I do if I can’t smoke inside,” Cora Felton informed her blithely, and blew a perfect ring. Having gotten through the morning, she was in too good a mood to let Iris Cooper upset her.

Cora had finished her cigarette, and was just wondering if there was any way she could get a Bloody Mary for lunch, when Chief Harper drove up with the news there’d been another murder.

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
I
CAN’T GO IN THERE
?” C
HIEF
Harper scowled.

Iris Cooper held her ground. “I’m sorry, Chief, but that’s a fact. The third puzzle’s started, it’s being timed. There’d be hell to pay if I stopped it now.”

“There’ll be hell to pay if you don’t,” Chief Harper told her. “I got my medical examiner in there, not to mention the county prosecutor. I could do without Henry Firth, but I need Barney Nathan, and I need him
now.
”

“He’s right, Iris,” Cora said. Her eyes gleamed at the prospect of calling off the tournament. “If there’s a murder, it has to take precedence. It’s a shame, but that’s a fact.”

“Hey, whose side are you on?” Iris exclaimed.

“I don’t have time for an argument about this,” Chief Harper snapped. “The fact is, I need the doc.”

“I’ll get him,” Sherry Carter said. “I’ll slip in quietly and send him out. But there’s no reason to disturb anybody else.”

“No reason except I might want to talk to ’em,” Chief Harper grumbled, but Sherry Carter had already slipped inside.

“You mind telling us who?” Cora Felton asked the chief. “Or do you just enjoy keeping us in the dark? Who got killed?”

“Funny you should ask,” Chief Harper said. “It just happens to be the witness you called on.”

“The witness
I
called on? I called on a lot of witnesses.” At the look on Chief Harper’s face Cora said, “Scratch that, Chief. You’re right. I only called on one witness. Mrs. Roth.”

“Mrs. Roth!” Aaron Grant exclaimed. “You’ve gotta be kidding! I went out there especially at her request, and the woman knew next to nothing. It was all I could do to dredge up a quote.”

“She knew enough to wind up dead,” Chief Harper said dryly. “You mind telling me what it was she told you?”

“Yes, he would.” Becky Baldwin stepped forward. As Chief Harper scowled, she added, “No, I’m not insisting you read Aaron his rights. And he’s not my client. But Joey Vale is. If this new murder’s connected in any way to the murder of his wife, I have a right to know. For starters, you mind telling us
how
Mrs. Roth was killed?”

Chief Harper frowned, considered, then said, “Well, that’s one reason I’m gettin’ Barney Nathan. So nothing’s official yet. And this is not for publication. But it would appear that she was strangled.”

“Like Judy Vale?” Cora was practically quivering with excitement.

“Yes.”

“Interesting,” Becky Baldwin murmured. “Just for the record, I would like to point out that I am here for the
express purpose of getting Judge Hobbs to sign a release order for Joey Vale, who’s been locked up in jail since yesterday afternoon. I don’t suppose I need to point out the significance.”

“Here, again, Barney Nathan should be a help,” Chief Harper said.

As if on cue, Sherry Carter came out the door leading Barney Nathan. The doctor didn’t look pleased.

“She tell you what’s up?” Chief Harper asked him.

“She said it was an emergency. It better be important, because I was doing well.”

“It’s important, Barney. Another homicide. Judy Vale’s neighbor. Dan and Sam are out at the crime scene. If you could take a run out there, I got some questions to ask here.”

Whatever Barney Nathan had been prepared for, it wasn’t that. He went from indignant to efficient at the drop of a hat. “On my way,” he said, and hurried to his car.

Rick Reed came out the front door, followed by his camera crew. “Hey,” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

Aaron Grant flashed Chief Harper a pleading look.

“I’m not ready to make a statement,” Harper said.

“You don’t need it,” Becky Baldwin said. “Judy Vale’s neighbor got killed. The doctor’s on his way out there now.”

“Hot damn!” Rick Reed said. “Come on, guys. Let’s go!”

The crew clomped down the stairs, headed for the van.

Becky Baldwin followed.

Aaron looked after them, said, “Sherry, I gotta go.”

“Of course you do,” Sherry said. “Cora, you don’t need me anymore. I’m going with Aaron.”

Cora Felton looked betrayed. “Hey, wait a minute. If anybody’s going out there, it ought to be me.”

“You got a tournament to run,” Iris Cooper reminded her.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Chief Harper said. “My gut feeling is to close this game down and start grilling everyone.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding!” Iris Cooper was shocked.

“He’s not,” Cora Felton told her. “It’s a murder, Iris. A double homicide. We’ve gotta cooperate. It’s our civic responsibility.” Cora was really enjoying this.

“She’s right, Iris. I’m sorry, but this is murder.”

“I know it is,” Iris Cooper said. “You happen to have ten grand on you, Chief?”

Chief Harper blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“This trivial little game has sold over a hundred tickets at a hundred bucks apiece. That’s ten grand we’d have to refund if you close us down now. Ten grand we don’t happen to have.” Iris jerked her thumb at Cora. “Due to the controversy over the charity Cora picked, in order to show support and make it a moot point, the selectmen went ahead and sent the National Children’s Placement Fund a check. Which means the refund money would have to be raised. And that’s just the entry fees. Wait’ll the out-of-towners start complaining about the money they spent on bed-and-breakfasts if the tournament doesn’t happen.”

“I got a homicide here,” Chief Harper said unhappily.

“No, you got a homicide
there,
” Iris Cooper reminded him tartly. “Shouldn’t you be out at the crime scene?”

“My boys can handle it. Right now it’s my understanding Mrs. Roth was here for your so-called Fun Night.”

“Where did you hear that, Chief?” Cora Felton asked it innocently.

Chief Harper grimaced. “Every now and then would you mind if
I
asked the questions? One of the neighbors saw her there. Was surprised to see her there, really, her being so reclusive and all. Now, if
I
might ask a question, did
you
happen to see Mrs. Roth at Fun Night?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“Did you happen to notice who she was talking to?”

“Yes, I did. First time I saw her she was talking to Paul Thornhill. You know. The boy-toy celebrity contestant. He’d be knee-deep in chicks if he hadn’t shown up with his wife.”

“Mrs. Roth was talking to him?”

“Yes, she was. And you’ll get a chance to ask him about it, because he’ll be out that door any minute.” Cora Felton explained about Paul Thornhill’s habit of finishing first.

“That’ll be handy,” Chief Harper said. “Did you see Mrs. Roth talking to anyone else?”

“Two people, actually. Though one of them isn’t what you want.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Why isn’t it what I want?”

“You know the mechanic, Marty Haskel?”

“Of course I do. He services the cruisers.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I hope he’s happy about that. All he’s done since the tournament’s begun is bitch, bitch, bitch.”

“Marty was talking to Mrs. Roth?”

“In a manner of speaking. He was actually talking to Paul Thornhill. He came over to gripe about Thornhill’s wife winning one of the games. Mrs. Thornhill won the first game because her husband helped her. Marty Haskel figured that was cheating.”

“What’s this got to do with Mrs. Roth?” The chief was no longer sounding quite so patient.

“She was talking to Thornhill when Marty Haskel came over. Haskel became abusive, Mrs. Roth intercepted him. She led him away.”

“Abusive?”

“Verbally abusive. Anyway, that’s when she talked to Marty Haskel, but it isn’t what you want.”

“And what is?” Chief Harper said through clenched teeth.

The door banged open and Paul Thornhill emerged. He frowned at the sight of the policeman, as if Chief Harper were a contestant who had somehow beaten him out the door.

“The police,” Paul Thornhill said, taking in the chief’s uniform. “Are you raiding the place?”

“Hardly,” Chief Harper said. “And you would be …”

Paul Thornhill’s sea-green eyes widened. He chuckled and shook his head, as if amused at not being recognized. “I’m Paul Thornhill. I’m one of the contestants.” The phrase
one of the contestants
was also tossed off with a half chuckle, clearly quite a joke to those in the know.

“Yeah, well, you happen to be the one I want.” Chief Harper sounded unimpressed. “I understand last night you were talking to Mrs. Roth.”