Ghost Sudoku (14 page)

“Is a trained individual who understands the local situation,” Smutz went on, then the inhale clip came on again. “Ribbit!”

“And can think on the fly.” The pop-eyed face appeared twice more. “Ribbit! Ribbit!”

Liza’s mouth hung open, and her eyes had probably popped as wide as Oscar’s. Michael, however, joined the studio audience in laughing hysterically. “That is priceless.”

But Liza shook her head. “No, that’s very expensive,” she said. “Or it should be. Unless I miss my guess, this is the work of Michelle Markson.”

 

 

 

Liza jumped to her feet and ran to the kitchen and its phone. She pressed one of the buttons preprogrammed with Michelle’s cell number.

Michelle answered on the third ring. “Yes?”

Liza heard familiar background noise—at least, familiar for Michelle come evening. Somebody was playing piano lounge-style, glassware clinked, slightly boozy voices talked and laughed. Somehow, somewhere, whenever Michelle left the office, she moved on to a party.

“Michelle, Liza Kelly here.”

Before Liza could go on, Michelle interrupted. “So my caller ID tells me. It doesn’t tell me why you’re calling at this hour.”

“Michelle,
liebchen
,” a petulant, somewhat accented voice came from the background. “Why do you go away again? We were going to dance, I thought.”

“Bruno, I have told you once already not to disturb me while I am on the phone.”

Liza allowed herself a smile. This guy had just one strike left.

Grumbling noises moved off—presumably a rebuffed Bruno.

“I want to know how you managed the bit I just saw on late-night TV,” Liza said. “The one starring the loathsome face of Oscar Smutz.”

“That toad who’s been going around suggesting that you committed murder?” Michelle asked.

“The magic of television made him look—and sound—more like a frog.”

“Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michelle said virtuously but with a laugh in her voice.

“If you go after every bozo who passes a remark about a client, you won’t have much time to be going to parties,” Liza said.

“I only do this for friends,” Michelle told her. “I have so few, you see, it takes up hardly any of my time at all.”

Her voice returned to its usual acid tone as she said, “I sincerely hope you’ve accomplished something to make the effort worth my while.”

Liza relayed what Buck had discovered.

“Well, that’s certainly a different sort of motive. And it would seem to narrow down the range of suspects to the aggrieved husband, wouldn’t it?”

“He’s got a temper that hasn’t improved with age,” Liza admitted. “I wonder if he’s spry enough to string up the corpse the way he did.”

She sighed. “Given the way things are with the sheriff, I don’t think I’ll be hearing much about the investigation.”

“But don’t you have another friend with the police?” Michelle asked. “That sergeant person?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to talk to Ted,” Liza said slowly. “I’ll give him a call.”

She glanced back to the living room, where Michael still sat watching the late-night host doing an interview with a starlet in a very abbreviated dress.

Well, he looks distracted
, she thought, punching in the number for Ted Everard’s cell phone.

They had agreed to meet for lunch in downtown Killamook, so the next day Liza drove over to the county seat. She parked a couple of blocks off Broad Street and then strolled along, taking in the ever-changing display of tourists being separated from their surplus cash. It wasn’t tawdry, just aggressively quaint.

Liza saw Ted drive past in his government-issue grinder and waved. With a policeman’s luck, he pulled into a parking spot on the main drag.

After a quick kiss, he said, “As part of my interrogation of the elections staff, I asked for a decent place where real people ate, not sightseers. It’s supposed to be up two blocks and across . . .”

His voice was drowned out by patriotic music as a pickup truck done up in red, white, and blue bunting came down the street, rolling to a stop on the block ahead of them.

Oscar Smutz came out of the cab, carrying a plastic milk carton to give himself a boost onto the bed of the truck. He had a bullhorn in one hand, which he quickly raised to his face as he launched into what sounded like a practiced spiel.

“The name is Smutz, Oscar Smutz, and I’m running for sheriff of Killamook County.” As he spoke, a crowd began gathering on the sidewalk.

Oscar took a deep breath, inflating his face just as he had on TV the night before. “It’s time to bring some decency to the way the law is enforced in this county. The incumbent is actually preparing to launch a purely political investigation into the private life of one of our most upstanding citizens. And why? To confuse the issue over the slipshod way he’s running a major murder case.”

Oscar took another deep breath—and as he did, someone yelled “Ribbit!” from the back of the crowd.

That got a laugh, throwing the candidate off. He vamped for a moment, saying, “Voters of Killamook County!” into his bullhorn as he tried to pick up the thread of his speech. “Don’t you want a sheriff who’ll enforce the law, not act as if he’s above it?”

He took another deep breath, and now three voices yelled, “Ribbit!” from the crowd.

Oscar’s face went brick red as he glared into the crowd. “Under my administration, the Sheriff’s Department will rejoin its proper partnership with the county government.”

“Dividing the spoils,” Ted muttered under his breath.

“Instead of launching senseless vendettas to cover up the failings at the top,” Smutz continued.

Unfortunately, he had to take a breath again, and half the crowed responded with, “Ribbit!”

Smutz glared around in impotent fury.

“I guess it’s kind of hard to convince people about what a take-charge administrator you are when you can’t even control the folks at your own pep rally,” Liza said.

“And just to make it worse . . .” Ted nodded to the other side of the crowd, where Murph stood with a micro-cassette recorder, keeping track of this whole debacle for the
Oregon Daily
.

Some of the color drained from Smutz’s face when he saw that, but it came back to near stroke level when he spotted Liza on the outskirts of the crowd, too.

“Voters!” he blared into the loudspeaker. “It’ll take more than cheap shots to silence honest criticism. It’s bad enough that Clements is using his California connections to try and smear me. What’s worse is that one of his Hollywood pals should be a suspect! She was right there with the body!”

He sucked in another breath, but whatever he was going to say was lost as just about the whole crowd joined in a chant of “Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!”

Smutz got so angry, he threw down the bullhorn, which promptly bounced out of the truck bed and onto the pavement. He had to scramble ingloriously after it, then jumped into the cab of the pickup and screeched off, leaving his milk crate behind.

As the crowd broke up, Liza and Ted found themselves behind a tourist couple.

“That was hilarious,” the male half of the couple said. “They actually got that guy from TV to come here and act like he was running for office.”

“Yeah,” the female tourist agreed. “That’s a lot better than all this old-fashioned stuff they’ve got around here.”

Ted glanced at Liza, trying to keep a straight face. “The people have spoken,” he said in a low voice.

The outside of the restaurant Ted led them to had the same sort of artificial retro look dominating the rest of Broad Street. But it had a rear terrace with tables shaded by umbrellas, and real people—locals, not visitors—enjoying lunch.

The menu looked pretty interesting, too. Liza had a four-cheese panini with tomato and grilled sweet onions while Ted went for the chicken salad platter.

“You’ve got to learn to live a little,” Liza told him, tilting her head to keep a string of cheese from landing on her chin.

“I lived already this week with fried chicken out of the bucket,” he replied, raising a forkful to his mouth. “Nice—and fresh.”

“With hints of earth tones, chocolate, and blueberry?” Liza suggested, mocking the extravagance that usually accompanied wine reviews.

“No, but I think some chopped tarragon and maybe a little lemon went into this.”

He put the fork down. “That was some curve you threw at Bert Clements.”

Liza paused in mid-bite. “It’s not like I wanted to.” She explained about the help that Michelle had sent up from L.A., hearing Kevin’s story, and Buck’s subsequently nailing it down. “What were we supposed to do then?
Not
tell Clements?”

Ted poked at his salad. “Well, it certainly concentrates the spotlight on the old man.”

Liza nodded. It turned John Jacob Pauncecombe into that staple figure of domestic comedy—and tragedy—the cuckolded husband.

“Clements started asking questions almost as soon as I passed along what Buck found,” she said. “Did he have anything else to make him suspect Pauncecombe?”

“And here I thought we were just having a nice, friendly luncheon.” Ted settled back in his seat with a sarcastic look. “Discussing the investigation is a no-no. Especially since, technically speaking, you’re still a suspect.”

“Oh, come on,” Liza burst out. “I didn’t do it, and you know I didn’t.”

Ted shrugged. “I’ll tell you what we think happened—if you know any better, feel free to correct us. There’s no sign of a struggle, so we think the murder took place on that nice open terrace.”

Liza nodded. “Strangle Chad, dump him in the wheelbarrow, and trundle him off to the folly. That suggests a certain familiarity with the house, knowing where to find the wheelbarrow, the folly—and some rope.” She shuddered. “Hoisting him up must have been a problem—dealing with all that deadweight.”

“That was actually handled pretty well,” Ted told her. “Two loops on either end of the rope. One goes around Chad’s neck. The other fits the killer’s foot. Redbourne wasn’t the biggest guy in the world. Even your body weight would have been enough to pull him up.”

Liza gave him a look. “Thanks a lot for the weight comment. And do I have to remind you that I’m trying to get
off
the suspect list, not on?”

He just went on with his description. “The inside of that beehive thing is all rough stone. Snag the other loop on one of those projecting bits of rock, and the job is done.”

Liza chewed that over, along with a bite of her sandwich. “And there was nothing inside the house?”

“No confessions, suicide notes, or incriminating photos.” Ted shrugged. “For a bachelor establishment, it was remarkably orderly.”

“Chad was always a good boy,” Liza said. “He probably had the neatest locker in Killamook High.”

Ted leaned back in his seat, watching her. “Yeah, everything was squared away, until we got to his underwear drawer. Half the whiteys were tidy, the rest were all crumpled in. We found the same thing with his socks and shirts. What does that tell you?”

“He changed cleaning ladies?” Liza suggested.

That earned her an exasperated look from Ted. “Maybe if I add that his suitcase was tossed on top of his shoes, instead of taking its usual place in the back of his bedroom closet . . .”

“Shirts, underwear, socks—he’d packed a bag.”

Ted nodded. “That got hurriedly—and messily—unpacked.”

Liza took another bite of her sandwich for mental fortification. “You said Chad was pretty rattled during your meeting with him. Maybe he saw the handwriting on the wall for the whole ghost voter scam and decided to get out of town.”

“And then changed his mind?” Ted asked.

“Maybe more like a change of plan,” Liza said, “if the killer found the bags afterward.”

She shook her head. “However you look at the motive—political or personal—Chad’s leaving town would have solved the problem.”

“He wouldn’t be sinning anymore,” Ted said. “But an angry husband might have still been ticked off over past transgressions.”

Liza shook her head¸ feeling a little sad. “Whatever the motive, the killer apparently didn’t know that Chad was leaving, found him on the terrace, did the deed—and discovered it wasn’t necessary.”

“In fact, the packed bag screwed up the carefully staged suicide out in the folly,” Ted added.

“So the bag gets hastily unpacked,” Liza said. “But haste makes mess.”

Ted smiled. “At least inside the dresser.”

Liza smiled back. “Weaving the tangled web and all that stuff. I guess that’s what happens when you kill first and ask questions later.”

Ted attacked his salad for a few minutes in silence, his smile slowly fading. “All of that seems to fit the facts. But it leaves one question niggling at me.”

Liza paused in the midst of dabbing her lips with a napkin. “What’s that?”