Death on the Diagonal (27 page)

“They?”

“Yes, I believe the coppers discovered that it was some type of a gang.” He plopped his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “Wouldn’t it be an absolute howl if your
Dawn of the Kidneys
was the same person who’d used her magic tricks down in Florida three years ago?”

Belle thought for a moment. “Well, if that’s what happened here, I’ll bet the puzzle constructor, Jack Curry or not, knew who had assumed the true Dawn’s persona and had conned Mr. Gud—Rosco’s client.”

“Ah, ah, ah, be careful with that tongue of yours. You almost let the cat out of the bag. What I can’t understand, however, is why your ghostly wordsmith didn’t simply come forward and state his or her case? Why play this game with the puzzles?”

“Fear of reprisal?” Belle guessed. “Or perhaps, whoever is making these is playing his or her own weird game.”

“And I gather with good reason. Look what happened to Jack Curry, if he turns out to be your man . . . well, we do have two dandy murders.” Kerr glanced at the puzzles once again. “It’s interesting that the constructor mentions Grace KELLY in this latest puzzle, but in the ‘To Catch a Thief ’ puzzle, when the word
GRACE
appears at 8-Down, the clue is
Meal prayer.
Odd, especially when you consider that Grace Kelly was the star of Hitchcock’s
To Catch a Thief
.” Bartholomew lifted the graph paper and pointed to 31-Across. “And there’s WALT. See what I mean?”

Belle sighed. “I was afraid you’d recognize Mr. Gudgeon’s name.”

A confused look swept Kerr’s face. “Walt’s Wire Wagons? That Gudgeon? What’s he got to do with this?”

“Oh. Oh, nothing at all . . . er, he was just doing some electrical work on our house,” Belle lied, inadequately attempting to cover her gaffe.

But Kerr saw right through her. “Ahh, my dear, that seems thoroughly unlikely, since he retired a dozen years ago. So he’s your old fool. Is that it? Well, not to worry, sweetest, as I said, your secret is safe with me. It’s not the first juicy tidbit I’ve kept under my proverbial hat.”

“Thank you, Bartholomew. You’re an angel.”

“Harumph, not like your killer ANGEL I hope?” he turned back to the puzzle. “No, the WALT I was thinking of is WALT Kelly, the cartoonist. If Kelly were the name he—or she—desired our crucicriminologist, i.e., you, to discover, there were other opportunities—”

But the gossip columnist didn’t have the time to complete the thought, because Belle interrupted, raising her voice in excitement as she pointed to 47-Across. “Look at this! GENE . . . which is another Kelly placed in asymmetrically opposite position from WALT . . . And similarly, opposite GRACE, we have THYME, which is a kelly green herb.”

“
Timely
, perhaps, dearheart, but a bit of a stretch . . . However, I do believe we’re on to something. Because here at 1-Across there’s JIM—which could easily become JIM Kelly the football player rather than
Brown or Thorpe
, which is what the clue currently reads. While opposite that on the bottom at 69-Across we have NED, which instead of being the solution to
Mr. Beatty
could easily be NED Kelly, the notorious Australian outlaw—”

“And right down the center is SNOW TIRES. Who hasn’t heard of Kelly tires? Oh, Bartholomew! Do you think we’ve discovered a secret message?”

“Well, Kelly does seem to be a theme.”

Belle stared and stared at the crossword, while Bartholomew continued to speak.

“Could it be,
Bellisima
, that Orlando’s wife was masquerading as Dawn Davis? And that this newfound friend of Sara’s is innocent of any wrongdoing? Just like the woman in Florida?”

When Belle didn’t answer, he added a teasing, “Well?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking . . .” Belle’s eyes crinkled in concentration. “But if someone suspected that Kelly was pretending to be Dawn, why did they design these puzzles to make it appear as if Angel and Chip were the guilty parties?”

Bartholomew also thought. “Well, perhaps Angel and Chip are culpable—of something. This Kelly situation could refer to another matter.” He picked up the crossword he’d received. “Do you know, if you look at this ‘Social Climber’ puzzle the black squares resemble a set of stairs that one might actually climb, landings and all . . . and since we have the title of the film UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE as a solution to 23- and 47-Across . . . and if you follow the steps up . . .”

Belle looked over his shoulder. “Starting at the bottom at 62-Across and climbing to 12-Down—” Her words ceased. She gasped, then gazed at Bartholomew in wonderment. “Wow! That’s all I can say: simply, wow!”

“I’m sure you can invent fancier speech than that, Lady Lexicon.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “You’re a genius. An absolute genius. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

“All the time, honey lamb.” He marched his fingers up the puzzle’s diagonal line and read the message aloud, “GO ON THE DIAGONAL. What do you think that means?”

Belle began skimming the previous crosswords, starting with the first she’d received as she searched for other sentences that might be hidden on the diagonal. When she reached the third grid she exclaimed, “Ah-ha! Here it is. In the ‘Measure for Measure’ submission. Going down the staircase this time . . . read from 12-Down to 72-Across. What does it say?”

Bartholomew took the paper from her. “KELLY’LL DAWN ON YA.”

31

“Well, that’s all well and good, Belle,” Lever said as he “ reached for his pack of Camels. “And I’ve already got the bunko boys going after Kelly Polk. As soon as she gets back from Kentucky, they’ll pick her up; but right now I’ve got two murders to solve.” He lit his cigarette and looked around the room. “Sorry folks, my office, my rules.” Rosco and Abe simply rolled their eyes.

“But isn’t it possible that it was Kelly who killed Jack because he’d discovered she was a con artist and was threatening to expose her?” Belle protested. “You just told me his handwriting was confirmed in the ‘Measure for Measure’ crossword found on his body, as well as in ‘Social Climber’—”

“I’m afraid that theory doesn’t hold water,” Abe Jones interrupted as he fanned cigarette smoke from in front of his face with his hand. “Because we’ve also confirmed that the two previous puzzles you received were constructed by another person. The style is similar, yes, but not the same. Meaning the ‘To Catch a Thief ’ grid that references your KELLYs wasn’t created by Curry. If Ms. Polk intended to kill
anyone
it would’ve been the person who constructed
that
crossword rather than Jack—”

“But KELLY’LL DAWN ON YA is right there in the puzzle you retrieved from the murder scene,” Belle persisted.

“Right,” Rosco said, “but that crossword has only been examined by the people in this room—and Bartholomew Kerr. The same can be said of the ‘Social Climber’ puzzle. Basically, meaning that nobody else has seen a Jack Curry puzzle.”

“That’s just an assumption, Rosco,” Belle stated.

“You’re right. It is. But it seems a fairly safe one. We know Curry’s cottage was searched, so I’m suggesting that a crossword might well have been the object of the hunt. If it had been found, it wouldn’t be in this room right now.”

No one spoke for a moment, but smoke continued to plume through the air.

At last, Belle sighed heavily. “I don’t know, maybe Heather has been the killer all along, and I’m trying to make too much of these word games. Maybe they were simply designed to expose Kelly as a con artist. But then why two different handwriting samples? And who’s the second constructor?”

“And who’s my murderer?” Al said, his voice burdened with the same amount of frustration.

“Unless,” Belle continued, seeming not to have heard Al’s question. “Unless Jack Curry had—”

She was interrupted by a tap on the door. Without waiting for a response from Lever, a man entered. He was in his late fifties, tall and slim with a neatly groomed, graying mustache. His slacks and shirt were perfectly pressed; he also wore a stain-free tie—all of which made him the visual antithesis of Al. A gold detective’s badge clipped to his belt indicated that he was Nick Simpson, head of the Newcastle P.D. Fraud Unit. Belle had met him at at a few PAL fund-raisers, so any introductions would have been superfluous. And Simpson was pure business.

“Sorry to bust in,” he said, “but I’ve picked up a few items of interest that I think you folks should be aware of.” He then coughed and added, “How can you people stand all this damn cigarette smoke?”

Lever grumbled and smashed his Camel into the ashtray. “Just out with it, okay, Nick? We don’t need any lectures on clean living.”

“Maybe the rest of them don’t, but I’m not sure you fall into that category.” Simpson walked over and stood beside a bookcase in the corner of the office so that he could face everyone. “Okay, I just finished up a lengthy conference call with the Louisville Police Department. It seems—”

“Hold it right there, Nick,” Lever said holding up his hand, “we’ve been through this. You’ve got a case of fraud on your hands, fine, but I’ve got to concentrate on these homicides.”

“Hear me out, Al, we’ve got a connection. I’m not sure what to make of it, but it’s there.”

Again Lever groaned, but acquiesced. “All right, shoot.”

“We know Kelly Polk decamped to Louisville, so I figured why not have the folks down there pick her up, just in case she’s feeling the heat and opts not to return to Newcastle. Louisville offered to put an APB out on her and send a team to the airport. I passed along a description of both her real appearance, and what she might look like in a red wig that falls halfway down her back. And that’s when they took some serious notice.”

“What do you mean?” Belle asked.

“Suddenly, they were genuinely interested in the details of our case. After I broke it down for them, they said they had a duplicate situation brewing out there. An old guy, a horse breeder, hooked up with a young woman needing a kidney transplant. Same dollar figure—$250,000—the works. The description matches Kelly Polk—this time with a short brunette wig. Only the name in Kentucky is Sue Reynolds, which happens to be the same name as a local woman who recently had minor surgery. I’ll add that this Sue Reynolds is also a brunette—as if anyone couldn’t have surmised as much.”

“So, were still talking con job,” Al tossed in. “Where’s the connection?”

“You’ll never guess who this guy’s barn manager was a while back.”

“Orlando Polk?” Lever said, making no attempt to hide the fact that he considered this entire line a complete waste of time.

Simpson shook his head and smiled. “Guess again. It was Jack Curry . . . your dead man.”

“I wonder . . .” Belle mused.

“What?” Rosco and Abe said together.

“Bartholomew Kerr told me about a similar case in Florida several years ago. I wonder if it’s related? That man was also part of the horse-show world.”

“This is Bartholomew Kerr over at the
Crier
?” Simpson asked. “I’ll give him a call. I’d like to follow up on that.”

“It was three years ago in Palm Beach, and the mark was Stuart Stewart. The police in Florida believed it might have been of gang of con artists—one that possibly moved around the country.”

“I’ll see what I can find out,” Simpson said before leaving.

Al watched the door close. “I’m guessing, and let me know how this sounds . . . because I’d still like to find my murderer . . . Okay, here goes: Curry worked at the farm in Kentucky. Quite possibly he remained in touch with the owner . . . who, maybe, told him about this pretty little gal and her medical woes. Jack then began to suspect that Kelly’s trips out there weren’t to visit an ailing father . . . About the same time, he noticed the same situation developing with Gudgeon, which led him to create the incriminating puzzles, and Kelly stabbed him when she found out.”

Rosco chuckled. “Who wants to be the first to shoot Al’s theory full of holes?” He then counted off his objections on his fingers. “One: Why wouldn’t Curry have simply confronted Kelly with his suspicions? That would have been more his style. Two: There’s no indication he knew Gudgeon. They weren’t part of the same circle. And three: Who made the first two puzzles?”

Lever threw up his hands. “Well, would someone please give me a solid motive that Heather might have for killing Jack? Because I don’t have one.”

“Let’s go back to something Belle said,” Abe tossed in. “Bartholomew mentioned a movable gang in Florida. What if it’s the same people? Florida, Kentucky, and now Massachusetts? And if that’s the case, who are they? Certainly not any of the Collins clan.”

“Kelly, we know is up to no good,” Belle said.

“Right, so if she’s part of a ring, who are the others?”

“Orlando?” Al suggested.

“No. He’s been working for Collins for six years,” Rosco said. “He only married Kelly a short while ago. That’s not to say he didn’t kill Jack, but I’d guess he knew nothing about his wife’s con of Gudgeon, or her previous history—if she is a con person.”

“There’s Michael Palamountain,” Belle offered, “but again, he’s been at King Wenstarin Farms forever; and he’s hardly in need of cash. Which would clear him of being involved in any scam, although not the murder of Curry . . . or Ryan, for that matter.” She grumbled aloud and then said, “What about Angel, Al? Do you know anything about her?”

“She’s lived in Newcastle all her life. She’s not off my list of murder suspects yet, but I’m willing to bet she’s never been to Palm Beach
or
Louisville. She doesn’t inhabit that kind of universe. At least, she didn’t until she hooked up with Chip.” He reached for another cigarette, but was greeted by a chorus of groans, so he removed his hand.

“Which means that whoever created the puzzles was trying to frame Angel as the woman who conned Gudgeon,” Belle said. “But the Angel/Chip smokescreen is in Jack’s ‘Measure for Measure’ grid as well as our mystery constructor’s ‘To Catch a Thief ’ grid.” She shook her head. “Arrgh, I’m going through severe mental meltdown here!”