Ghost Sudoku (7 page)

They headed straight for the bushes and then took a more leisurely stroll up and down the block. As she let Rusty examine any calling cards his canine colleagues might have left, Liza let her mind go comfortably blank, living in the moment like her dog. She’d gotten pretty aggravated with the sheriff toward the end of their interview. Where did that come from?

Feeling a bit more composed, Liza led Rusty back to the house. They’d almost reached the driveway when she spotted a pair of headlights turning onto Hackleberry Avenue. The quiet residential street didn’t get much traffic after folks came home from work, so Liza was a little surprised as the car coasted up to her. Okay, maybe a bit worried but also surprised.

Then she recognized the car as Ted Everard’s official clunker—and Ted’s long, lean face behind the driver’s wheel.

He opened the car door. “I tried to call but got your machine and then your cell voice mail.”

Rusty edged closer to the car, his nose up and sniffing. Then he burst out in delighted barking as Ted emerged with a bucket of chicken.

“I figured you might not have eaten.” Ted leaned back inside and came out with a six-pack of beer, condensation gleaming on the bottles.

“I knew there was a reason I keep letting you come around,” Liza said, leading the way to the door.

They established themselves in the kitchen with plates of chicken and sides. Rusty happily lay under the table, working on one of the chicken thighs, deboned and denuded of breading.

“Well, this makes a change from spa cuisine.” Liza took a swig of beer from her bottle. “That was good timing on your part—I was just beginning to think about something to eat.”

“I wish I could take credit for that.” Ted grimaced. “But I got the heads-up from Bert Clements—after he asked me about bumping into you at Chad Redbourne’s office this afternoon.”

Liza’s bottle hit the tabletop with a bang. “You mean he actually came after you to check up on my story as if I were a—a—”

“Suspect?” Everard finished for her. Liza noticed that he tried to keep his voice very gentle as he used the word.

It didn’t help much.

“Yeah!” Liza replied, her mellow mood going up in smoke from a flare of annoyance. “You would think he knows me well enough—”

“It’s not about knowing—or trusting,” Ted told her. “Anytime anyone, um, translates to the astral plane . . .” He made a floating gesture with his hand, looking up to heaven—or in this case, the kitchen ceiling. “Without either a fatal illness or a physician in attendance, it has to be treated as a suspicious death.”

“So Clements is suspicious—of me?” Liza demanded.

“No, but he’s covering all the procedural bases.” Ted hesitated for a moment, but finally went on. “When you turned up that dead guy in your bed, we did the same—and quickly found out that at the estimated time of death, you were in the dining room of the Killamook Inn, with several witnesses to vouch for you.”

Liza fixed him with a gimlet eye. “And did Clements do that, or you? I seem to recall that our first meeting didn’t go all that well.”

Ted did his best to look angelic. “I’ll always remember what you were wearing.”

“That’s because all I was wearing was a towel—and not much of one, at that,” Liza snarled. “I want an answer, Ted. Was it Clements checking me out, or you?”

“Maybe you’d better define ‘checking out,’ ” Ted began, but quickly raised his hands in a placating gesture when Liza brought back her fist. “Calm down. I heard how you decked the other witness on the scene.”

He looked at her across the table. “For your information, what annoyed me when I met you was the damned ‘amateur sleuth’ thing. I thought it would complicate the whole investigation.”

“You wouldn’t have solved it without me,” Liza told him.

Ted shrugged, not arguing the point. “You have to admit, it was a pretty weird case. And right at the beginning, I made it a point to verify your alibi. Thought maybe you and the local sheriff were too friendly. But I found that Clements had been on the job before me—thoroughly.”

Before Liza could come up with a reply, the phone rang. “Why do I have to keep reminding you that you work for a newspaper—at least part-time?” an aggravated Ava Barnes demanded without even a “hello.”

“I—uh—” Liza said.

“When you see news, you’re supposed to contact the newspaper,” Ava went on.

“Sorry, I still don’t think ‘newspaper’ when I see dead bodies,” Liza finally replied. “At least this time around, it was a suicide.”

“Thank God for that,” Ava sighed, calming down a little. “This election cycle will be messed up enough without a murder mucking up the works. So I’m going to put Murph on. What can you tell him?”

It was bad enough doing a verbal dance with Ava’s ace reporter, but Liza had to do it under the eyes of a cop—a friendly cop, but a cop nonetheless.

She managed to get through it all without ticking off either Murph or Ted. Letting out a long breath, Liza hung up and leaned back against the back of the couch.

Ted handed her a chicken leg. “Y’know, you handled that whole interview thing really well,” he said. “Maybe you should consider it as a regular line of work.”

Liza waved the chicken leg like a miniature mace. “Done that—but I think I like this sudoku gig of mine better.”

They finished their chicken in silence, but it was a friendly silence.

Liza offered Ted another bottle of beer, but he shook his head. “I’ve got a night of work ahead, and then an early morning. Still got to go through all the nonsense papers Redbourne gave me today so I can brace whoever replaces him tomorrow.”

Liza got to her feet as well. “You know, we’ve all been over the how and the when of this whole thing, but nobody wants to talk about the why.”

Her voice wobbled a little on the last word, and Ted stepped forward to take her in his arms. “This has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the way they play politics in this county,” he told her.

“You said he was so scared after he saw me—or us,” Liza said into his chest.

“I think he’s been scared for a long time, and it just showed,” Ted said. “After that chowder we almost had, I stopped by your newspaper to browse through the morgue. I wanted to see how past political scandals went down, maybe find some leverage I could put on Redbourne. I’ll tell you this, Liza, the Killamook machine is very big on the rotten apple theory. As soon as somebody gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, the others close ranks and throw him to the wolves. That’s how Bert Clements got to become sheriff, you know. The former incumbent fell foul of a sting operation, so Pauncecombe and the boys dumped him and had to let an obviously honest man get in.”

“And Chad?” Liza asked.

Ted sighed. “I think your pal Chad pretty much found himself facing an impossible set of choices. He was sure to face prison time over falsified records in his department, and if he tried to do a deal, he’d become an unperson in Killamook. His life here would be over.”

“So he ended it?”

“I think,” Ted replied, “that he decided to hang himself rather than let those other bastards leave him dangling in the wind.”

He rose and gave her a kiss flavored with seven secret herbs and spices. “Be sad for your friend. But be glad you’re out of it, Liza.”

 

 

 

Liza decided to take Ted’s advice. So, after a quick cleanup of chicken buckets and beer bottles, she went to bed.

Her bedroom didn’t boast a pillow-top mattress or some other sort of sleep engineering, but it was familiar—and it was home. She slept well—no hanging body nightmares—and woke refreshed. After a quick shower, she threw on a pair of cutoffs and a sloppy top. Then she went downstairs to the kitchen to feed herself and Rusty.

After breakfast, she took the dog out for his morning constitutional. And then, finally, she sat down in front of her computer. Vacation was now officially over. Time to start working up a new reserve of daily articles for the
Oregon Daily
and the other papers syndicating her column.

Let’s try to warm up the old sudoku muscles with a fairly easy puzzle,
she thought.

But Liza didn’t get very far before the phone rang.

She glanced at the bleating instrument.
Let the answering machine take it.

But then Mrs. Halvorsen’s voice came out of the box. “Liza, dear, are you there? I saw you out walking with Rusty before . . .”

It took a moment for Liza to shift mental gears and rise to get the handset. “Hey, Mrs. H. What’s up?”

“It may upset you, but I think you’d better turn on the radio.”

“Which station?”

“KMUC.”

Liza put the phone aside, went into the kitchen, turned on the radio, and tuned in the local station.

“Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!” a loud voice came out of the speaker.

“And welcome back to Drivetime with the Killamook Krew!” a second more nasal voice announced.

Liza blinked in surprise. The station’s drivetime show specialized in a little music, some traffic, brief newscasts, and a lot of rude, crude “humor.”

Liza picked up the kitchen extension. “You listen to this?” She had to raise her voice over more mouth noises from the radio. “Ah-oooo-gah!”

“It’s the only station that comes in on my kitchen set,” Mrs. H. replied.

Liza made a mental note to get her neighbor a new radio.

“What did you . . .” Liza broke off as a brief snippet of patriotic fife and drum music came out of the radio.

“Election Update!” the nasal voice intoned.

The goofier, mouth-sound-effects voice came in, trying to sound like one of the pundits from a Sunday morning political show. “September’s primary may be in serious trouble because of the death of the county elections commissioner. Indications are that the results will be disputed and end up in a higher court.”

“Where are you getting that, Neal?” Nasal Voice asked.

Neal went back into his silly voice. “It’s what happened the last time we had Hanging Chad.”

Liza winced. Almost as soon as she’d encountered the tragic scene in the Redbournes’ Grotto folly, the irreverent electoral reference had popped into her mind.

She figured Ava and the
Oregon Daily
would have too much class to stoop that low. But of course, it was right up the Killamook Krew’s alley.

“Y’know, Hanging Chad was found by our own local Miss Marple—Liza Kelly,” the nasal-voiced member of the duo said. “She’s cracked a lot of cases round these parts and down in California, too.”

“I’ve seen her picture in the paper, Jeff,” Loudmouth chimed in, breathing heavily. “She can crack my case anytime she likes. Ah-ooooh-gah!”

“I just hope she can explain why Chad Redbourne cracked up like that,” Nasal Jeff went on.

“I heard them mentioning your name,” Mrs. Halvorsen’s voice came over the telephone, “and I thought you should know. Maybe you could do something about it—call up the radio station, perhaps.”

Right—that’s just what good old Neal and Jeff would love, so I could be the butt of their half-assed wit,
Liza thought.

“They’re invading your privacy,” Mrs. H. pressed on. “Every day it seems I’m hearing people complain about that on the TV.”

“It wouldn’t help,” Liza explained to her older friend. “That moron on the radio mentioned seeing my picture in the newspaper. They’d argue that makes me a public figure—and fair game for their so-called humor.”

“It’s not right,” Mrs. H. muttered angrily.

“But something we just have to live with,” Liza told her. “If it annoys you that much, I suggest you turn off the radio. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Her neighbor sighed. “If you say so, dear.” Then she hung up.

Liza did the same and then followed her own advice, turning off the radio. Not that she was as calm as she’d tried to sound for Mrs. H. What she’d really like to do was throw the damned radio out the window. Or even better,
through
the window . . .

Maybe she was beginning to see the Killamook machine under every bed, but that childish skit seemed to come right out of their political playbook: close ranks and dismiss Chad Redbourne as a bad apple. A
crazy
bad apple. That was easy enough to do, since he wasn’t around to challenge their insinuations.

Just like I wasn’t around when they started running me for mayor,
Liza suddenly thought.

That realization was enough to send her stomping back to the living room. But before she could burn off her feelings in a burst of creative sudoku energy, she had to hang up the phone she’d left off the hook there.

As soon as she got the handset back in the cradle, the damned thing started ringing again.

The idea of letting the machine pick up was really tempting—but look what happened the last time she’d tried that.

Sighing, Liza brought the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“I just wanted to call and see how you’re doing.”

The pleasure Liza felt at hearing her semidivorced husband’s voice fizzled as she listened to his tone—concerned, but trying to hide it with casualness.

“So what did you hear that made you call?” she asked Michael a bit more sharply than she meant to.

“You were on the morning news—they said you’d found another body—”

“God
damn
it!” Liza burst out. “You’d think with all the other things going on in the world, news organizations would have something better to talk about.”

“Like it or not, you’re getting kind of famous,” Michael said.

“Right. And the news isn’t really news unless there’s a celebrity involved. Let Joe Shmoe go out in his fishing boat and overturn it, and it’s a two-day local story at best. Put two pro football players in the same boat, and it’s in the national news cycle for a week.” Liza realized she was gripping the handset so tightly, her finger hurt. “I was in New York a while ago, and I heard a story about a fire at a stable. The hook was all about how hard it was to get the panicked horses out. More recently, I was there when a story about an explosion at a posh kennel aired. Same newspeople, same sort of story, so what was the hook? A lot of show dogs died, but the big news was that Martha Stewart lost a puppy being boarded there.”