The Puzzler's Mansion (9 page)

“Wait a minute,” said Winston. He was still thinking of these things as
foods.
But Jake was surely right—the answer would have something to do with the words themselves. Maybe not the number of letters in each one, but
something
along those lines.

And, boom, he saw what it had to be. His finger traced down each short column, and his idea was confirmed as he went along. “I have it,” he whispered excitedly.

“You do? Really?” Jake leaned in.

Winston squinted at his paper. “I have everything but an actual answer,” he said. Then, almost immediately, the rest of the answer slid neatly into place. He stood up breathlessly.

“The answer is LARGE,” he said to Richard, nearly shouting in his excitement.

Richard shook his head. “No.”

“No?” Winston couldn't believe it. He looked down at his paper. The answer had to be an anagram of those letters. “Then the answer is REGAL,” he said.

“Sorry,” said their host.

“Um, Winston . . . ,” said Penrose, patting Winston on the shoulder in an attempt to make him sit down. Winston barely noticed. He was studying his notebook furiously.

“Where are you getting this from?” Larry asked.

“I don't get it either,” said Kimberly.

Incredibly, it was Amanda Deburgh who spoke up next. Winston had dismissed her entirely. She'd been dragged here by her parents—it was clear that she had no interest in Richard Overton's games. But now she announced, “The answer is ELGAR.”

“Exactly so!” Richard clapped his hands together with joy.

“ELGAR?” Winston said. “What sort of word is ELGAR?”

“He's a composer,” said Amanda. “Everybody knows that.”

“Don't be rude, Amanda,” said her mother. “Obviously
not
everybody knows that.”

“Whatever. Do I win?”

“You do indeed!” said Richard. “Well done.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Chase, standing up. “How did we get from a bunch of breakfast foods to Edward Elgar?” He scanned the table for the signs that had eluded him. Next to him, Zook kept on eating.

“Would you like to explain, Amanda?” Richard asked her.

Amanda shrugged. “This kid,” she said, nodding her head at Winston, “thought the answer was LARGE or REGAL. I figured if the answer had those letters in it, it might be a famous composer like ELGAR. So I guessed that.”

Winston turned to Jake, his jaw open in disbelief. She hadn't solved the puzzle at all! She just rode in on Winston's back and snatched the answer away! And she called him a
kid
! She couldn't be more than a year or two older.

“But how did you get those letters in the first place?” Chase asked. He, anyway, was looking at Winston and not Amanda when he asked this question.

“In each group, the three foods have something in common,” Winston said. “It turns out, the three foods all share exactly one letter.”
He pointed to the oatmeal, cheese, and sausage. “All three of those foods have a letter E. The next group shares an L, and then it's G, A, and R.”

“So you solved it,” said Derek, “but you didn't realize those letters spelled something.”

Winston nodded, trying not to seem upset about it. “I thought I had to anagram them into a word. That's why I said LARGE and REGAL.”

“Well!” Gerard beamed around the table, trying to get the attention back over to his daughter. “Good job, Amanda! First puzzle out, and you've already won a prize. How about that?”

“Cool,” Amanda said. “What'd I win?”

Richard paused before answering, and Winston thought maybe he was deciding who should really be the winner of this puzzle. Then he said to Amanda, “You'll see what you've won in just a few minutes.” Turning to Winston, he said, “I'm sorry, Winston. You didn't say the right answer. I applaud you for finding the right path, however. Well done.” He stood up and announced to the group, “Please finish eating, and let's gather in the reading room. Good morning, all of you!” He left the room, followed by Norma.

“Sorry,” Penrose said to Winston. “That was very nice solving. Too bad you got led astray.”

“That's all right, I guess.” He was still a little stunned. This must be how a football quarterback feels when a perfectly thrown pass is intercepted by the other team. “If all the answers this weekend are different composers, I am toast.”

“Me too,” said Jake.

“Nonsense,” said Penrose. “We'll work together, and I'll fill in any gaps in your knowledge. I was trying to do that a minute ago. Like
Amanda, I thought the answer might be ELGAR, but I was trying to whisper it to you so you could claim it for yourself.”

“Oh, rats,” said Winston. “You were?” Belatedly, he remembered Penrose's hand on his shoulder. He'd been trying to tell him something. Winston sighed. “Next time I'll listen.”

Mal ventured into the dining room, looking much more awake. He had showered and dressed. “Hey,” he said to everybody, “did I miss breakfast?”

“I CAN'T BELIEVE
I missed the first puzzle,” Mal said. “Why didn't someone get me?”

“I assumed you were coming right back,” said Jake. “And then we got into the puzzle and just . . .”

“Forgot,” Winston said.

“That's great,” said Mal sourly. “At least they didn't clear away the food after the puzzle was solved. So what was it?”

“What was what?” Winston said.

Mal was exasperated. “What was the
puzzle
? What did I miss?”

“Oh.” They explained it to him, and Winston showed him his notepad. “See? The answer was ELGAR.”

“Elgar?” Mal blinked. “What's that? Some kind of foreign food?”

“He's a composer,” said Jake, shrugging to show this was new information for him, too.

Mal considered this. “Okay. I'm not upset anymore. I never would have come up with that. Elgar? Really? What planet was he from?”

They were in the reading room, their sheets and blankets folded
and packed away for the day. Winston had showered and dressed, and the whole time Amanda's last-second steal of the breakfast puzzle was like a splinter in his brain. The letters had been right there on his notepad—if he'd simply read them out loud, without even knowing what he was saying, he would have won the prize. But no, he had to go scrambling letters that didn't need to be scrambled. He kept reliving the moment and getting annoyed all over again.

It must have shown on his face, because when Penrose came into the reading room, he patted Winston compassionately on the shoulder. Kimberly Schmidt, too, smiled and complimented him for solving the puzzle. “So you didn't recognize the answer,” she said, shrugging. “I know who Elgar is, but I never would have come up with it, because I had no idea how to solve that thing.”

The others filed into the reading room and found seats. The brats were acting surprisingly unbratty, pushing toy cars around the floor and making
vroom
noises. Their mother, Betty, took the opportunity to have a few minutes of quiet conversation with Larry Rossdale.

Winston glanced at Amanda and thought she looked pretty smug sitting there next to her mom. At least she looked happy to be here for a change. She was, after all, going to win some kind of prize. What would it be?

They were about to find out. Richard was the last to enter, and everyone quieted down as he said, “I hope you all had a good night's sleep and a fulfilling breakfast. And now I'd like to award the first prize of the day to Miss Amanda Deburgh.”

Amanda's smile widened.

Richard said, “I've always felt a close affinity with Edward Elgar. In fact, I was born in 1934 the very same week that Elgar died. When I was a young man touring England, I played the Royal Albert
Hall. The manager presented me with a gift: a program from an Elgar concert, played exactly fifty years before my own debut there. And signed by the composer himself. It was a wonderful gift, and it became a cherished possession. And who better to pass it on to but another young pianist?”

“Wait a moment,” said Gerard Deburgh. “That's the prize? That's what you're giving Amanda?”

“It is indeed.”

Gerard sputtered out something that might have been a laugh. “Richard! You can't give something like that away. Even to my daughter! A program signed by Elgar and owned by Richard Overton? That's too much!”

“Nonetheless,” said Richard. He looked at Amanda and said, “I hope it provides you with some small measure of inspiration.”

Amanda said thank you with a rather shocked expression on her face. Winston, to his surprise, was now relieved that he hadn't solved this morning's puzzle. What on earth would he have done with a valuable, decades-old English concert program?

Norma stormed into the reading room wearing her severest frown yet. Richard saw her expression, and his pleasant smile faded away. Something was wrong.

She whispered into Richard's ear. “What?” he said.

Norma looked around at the assembled guests. Winston got the feeling she wished everyone would just go home. She said out loud, “The Elgar program is missing. It's not where it's supposed to be.”

“It's in the entertainment room,” Richard said. “I saw it there yesterday.”

“I saw it there yesterday myself,” Norma agreed. “But it is not there now.”

“How very strange. Are you sure?”

Norma glared at her boss. Everyone understood her wordless response:
I am always sure.

“Hmm,” said Richard. “I'm sorry, Amanda, I guess there will be a slight delay in getting you your prize.”

“It's too much, anyway!” said her father. “Richard, listen. You can't give something like that away. It's yours.”

“Let me worry about that,” said Richard.

Norma, unwilling to let the conversation drift too far, said, “But where is it? Who was in that room last night?” She looked around at the assembled guests, trying to find someone to accuse.

“You're not saying somebody stole it?” Larry said with some amazement.

Norma turned to him. “It didn't sprout wings and fly away, now, did it?”

She was being rude to the guests. Richard said, “Norma—”

“Perhaps someone moved it,” Derek Bibb suggested. “Someone picked it up to look at it and put it down somewhere else.”

“Where was it?” Larry asked. “Did someone sleep in that room last night?”

Norma said, “It's kept in the entertainment room downstairs, along with many other awards.”

“Oh,” said Chase Worthington.

He said it softly, but everyone heard it, and all eyes immediately went to him. “Oh, what?” Norma asked.

Chase pursed his lips and paled considerably. He turned to Zook, who had been sitting disinterestedly nearby. “Zook . . . do you have anything you want to tell us?”

Zook looked around, surprised and unhappy to find himself in the spotlight. “Who, me? I didn't take this thing. I've never even heard of Elman or Eljee or whatever his name is.”

“You slept in that room last night . . .,” his father said.

“But I didn't take anything!” Zook shouted, his anger rising up as sudden as an earthquake. “You just don't trust me! That's the problem!” He got to his feet and stomped out of the room.

Chase stood up but did not follow his son. After a moment he sank back into his chair, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'll see he returns it. He doesn't mean any harm. He's just . . .” Chase faded out, as if not sure himself what Zook was.

“Your son took it, then?” Norma asked.

“Probably. Probably.” Chase looked very far from the confident lawyer he played on television. “Zook got picked up for shoplifting a couple of months ago. I don't know. He's angry all the time, and doesn't always think about what he's doing. . . .” He looked around. “I shouldn't be getting into this here.”

“So it would be in his bag,” Norma said.

Chase blinked. “Uh. Yes, that's probably a good guess.”

She said, “Go get it, please.”

People were starting to be embarrassed as Norma ordered this famous actor around like he was a schoolchild. Chase, for his part, accepted the order quietly. He stood up and walked out of the room.

Nobody knew what to say. Penrose asked in a gentle voice, “Was anything else missing, did you notice?”

“No,” said Norma. “And I checked. That's where we keep most of his awards. The Grammys are still there, and so is his Laurel Tree.”

“Laurel Tree?” Jake asked.

“It's an award for classical musicians. Very prestigious,” Norma said. “That hasn't been taken, thank goodness.”

“I'm sure there's a very good explanation for all of this,” Richard said calmly. Norma made a barely audible harrumphing sound.