A Clue for the Puzzle Lady (2 page)

The phone bleeped.

Chief Harper reached under his slicker, fished out the cellular phone, flipped it open, said, “Hello?”

“Dale?”

Chief Harper sighed. His wife. “Yes, dear.”

“You ran out on breakfast. Is everything all right?”

“I can’t talk now. I’m out in the rain.”

“Clara’s upset. She doesn’t want to go to school.”

“I can’t deal with that now.”

“What shall I tell her?”

“Tell her to go to school.”

“Dale.”

“Ellen. I’m in the cemetery. A young girl is dead.”

“Oh, my God. Who?”

“It’s no one we know. I can’t talk now. Tell Clara if she doesn’t go to school she’ll miss all the gossip. The phone’s getting wet. I gotta go.”

A car drove through the cemetery gate, stopped behind the police car. An umbrella popped out from the driver’s door, mushroomed open. The trim figure of Barney Nathan emerged. Despite the early hour and the rain, Dr. Nathan was nattily dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, and red bow tie. He would have looked more in place on the dais of a medical convention than at the scene of a homicide.

If this was a homicide.

Dr. Nathan stepped carefully through the streams of water up to the two men. “What do we have here?”

“You tell me,” Chief Harper said.

“You mean you haven’t touched it yet?”

“Just to make sure she’s dead. Aside from that, we’ve all been waiting for you.”

If Dr. Nathan took that as a pointed remark, he didn’t acknowledge it. He went over to the grave, bent down beside the body. Examined it with one hand, while holding the umbrella with the other. After a few moments he straightened up.

“Okay. Let’s get her out of here.”

“So what do you think?”

Dr. Nathan’s smile was superior. “Much too soon to tell. I’ll have to do a postmortem.”

“Any idea when she died?”

“That’s what I’ll be trying to determine. Okay, that’s all I need here. They can take her away.”

“In other words, I can touch the body,” Chief Harper said.

“With all due care. I still have to determine the cause of death.”

“Yes, of course. I’d also like to know who she is.”

Chief Harper rolled the body over.

The girl was wearing a cotton pullover and blue jeans. No shoes or socks. Harper felt in the hip pockets, looking for an ID, but they were empty. The right front pocket had some cash. Eight dollars in bills and some change. He put it back.

The left front pocket appeared empty, but proved to contain a folded piece of paper. Chief Harper slid it out in his cupped hand, and looked up to see Barney Nathan standing there watching him.

Which irritated him. Granted, Chief Harper had never liked the man, but it was more than that. Chief Harper had waited for the doctor, held everyone off, shown him the proper respect for his office. In return, Dr. Nathan had not given him the time of day, and was now looking over his shoulder, poking his nose into police business, as if insinuating he didn’t trust him to do his job.

This particularly grated since Chief Harper wasn’t all that confident about doing his job in the first place.

Which is why, instead of opening the paper, Chief Harper palmed it and casually slid it into his pants pocket as he straightened up.

“Okay, you can take her,” he said.

“You find anything?” Dr. Nathan said.

“She’s got no ID on her.”

“That should make it more difficult.” Dr. Nathan gestured to the two medics in the ambulance to bundle up the body.

“Where they taking her? The hospital?”

“No. My office. I have one of the rooms set up for autopsies.”

“Uh huh,” Chief Harper said. As he watched Barney
Nathan walk off, he couldn’t help wondering how much the good doctor charged the town for the service.

With the umbrella gone, Chief Harper was getting soaked. He gave way for the paramedics, nodded to the caretaker, and plodded through the mud over to his police cruiser. He hopped in the front seat, started the car, turned the heater up. He snuffled, found a tissue, blew his nose. It occurred to him it would be just his luck to catch a cold.

Dr. Nathan had already driven off. Watching him go, Chief Harper reached in his pocket, and pulled out the piece of paper he’d taken from the pocket of the girl.

He knew it was probably nothing. And he was not entirely sure why he had concealed it from the doctor. With low expectations, he unfolded the paper.

It was an ordinary piece of lined notebook paper.

Chief Harper looked at it and blinked.

On it was written in ballpoint pen:

4)
D
–
LINE
(5)
.

Chief Harper shook his head. Just his luck. A dead body in the graveyard wasn’t enough. He had to get an enigmatic clue.

Chief Harper sighed, wondered what it meant.

After the ambulance left, Chief Harper took a crime scene ribbon out of the trunk of his police car and went back and cordoned off the grave. He considered it a futile gesture and felt stupid doing it; still it had to be done.

Chief Harper had no stakes on which to hang the ribbon, so he wrapped it around the gravestones. It encircled nine graves, eight on the perimeter, and one inside, the one where the girl had lain, the one that was just a mud puddle now.

When he was done he got in his car and drove back to town.

Bakerhaven, Connecticut, was one of those small towns you could drive right through and never see a store. Not that they weren’t there, they simply weren’t conspicuous. Discreet, hand-painted signs were all that distinguished the shops from the private homes. Of course, most of the shops
were
private homes, with the proprietors living upstairs.

The stores on Main Street also tended to be of the more genteel variety, such as the pharmacy and the bake shop. Anything as blatantly commercial as the laundromat or the pizza parlor was carefully tucked away down
one of the side streets, and gas stations and supermarkets were banished to the outskirts of town.

The houses looked remarkably similar. On the three blocks of Main Street that were considered
downtown
, most were white with black shutters, though some were white with green shutters, and one was actually pale yellow.

Many of the stores were antique shops, enough so that the sign
Antiquers Crossing
would have adorned a crosswalk, had it not been narrowly voted down by the selectmen.

The police station was white with black shutters, and not only could have passed for an antique shop, it had, in fact, once been one. Jackson Dooley, an elderly antiquer who had outlived his family and died without heirs, had left the building to the town with the provision that it be used by the police. Jackson Dooley felt beholden to the Bakerhaven police for coming to his aid at the time of a burglary. This was somewhat magnanimous on his part, for cracking the case had not been hard. Mr. Dooley, who happened to know the burglar, had been able to tell the police the thief’s address. It had remained for them to drive out to the man’s house and arrest him.

Chief Harper pulled up in front of the police station, which was located just across from the library and down the street from Cushman’s Bake Shop. Judging from the number of cars parked outside, Cushman’s was doing a brisk business in spite of the rain, and in spite of the fact that the proprietor, Mary Cushman, couldn’t bake a lick—it was common knowledge her pastries were trucked in every morning from New York City.

Chief Harper was tempted to stop in for a muffin—after all, he’d missed breakfast. But people would want to know why he was there. That was the trouble with living in a small town. Everyone knew he ate breakfast at home. Not that that was big news, but he was the police chief, and everyone knew what he did. If he showed up at the bake shop, people would want to know why. And he didn’t want to tell them.

Chief Harper killed the motor. He got out of the car,
dashed up the two steps to the police station, and pushed open the door.

Dan Finley was at his desk. The young, eager officer who’d called him away from breakfast sprang up when he came in. “Did you see her? Is it true?”

Chief Harper hung his wet slicker on a hook and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Yeah, it’s true. A young girl’s dead. Barney Nathan’s cutting her up now.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. That’s the first order of business. Grab a camera, get over to the doc’s, get a picture. Then get copies made. We’ll have to circulate ’em. Try to get an ID.”

“She didn’t have one?”

“None at all.”

“Anything give us a hint? Like a letter sweater? Some indication where she went to school?”

“No.”

Chief Harper grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom, dried his hair.

“What does the doc say?”

“Says she’s dead. Acts like he’s doing us a favor just telling us that much.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. She looked to me like she might have been hit over the head, but then I’m not a doctor.”

“Any chance it was accidental?”

“Not much. If it was an accident, what was she doing there? And where were her shoes?”

“Shoes?”

“The girl was barefoot. She was wearing jeans and a shirt, but no shoes or socks. Who’s going to go running around a cemetery at night with no shoes or socks?”

“Any witnesses?”

Chief Harper shook his head. “We’ll have to canvass for them. Not that I expect much. You call Sam?”

“He’s on his way. Or at least he will be. I woke him up.”

“Good. We’re gonna need him.”

“We got anything to go on? Anything at all?”

Chief Harper frowned. “Actually, yes. But it doesn’t help.”

“What’s that?”

“Glad you reminded me.” Chief Harper reached in his pants pocket and pulled out the folded paper. Luckily, it was still relatively dry.

“What’s that?” Dan Finley said.

“This was in her pocket. Aside from a little cash, it was the only thing on her. I was hoping for a lead. Instead I get this.”

Dan Finley unfolded the paper. Read,
“Four d line five?”

“Yeah. Great, huh?”

“What do you think it means?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dan Finley said. “Well, you know what it looks like to me?”

“What’s that?”

Dan Finley’s eyes were shining. He had freckles and sandy hair, and when his eyes lit up, it enhanced his boyish quality. “It looks like a crossword puzzle clue.”

Chief Harper frowned. “How do you get that?”

“Easy. Four d stands for four down. That’s the number of the clue.”

“The number of the clue?”

“Don’t you do crossword puzzles? That’s how clues are numbered. Four down. Twelve across. Twenty-eight down. The number and the direction.”

“So what’s line five?”

“I don’t know. Either four down intersects with line five, or the clue
is
line five.”

“How could the clue be line five?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the woman on TV?”

“What?”

“You know. The woman in the ad. ‘A good breakfast cereal is no puzzle. Take it from the Puzzle Lady.’ You must have seen the ad.”

“I’ve seen it. So?”

“She’s here in town. Didn’t you know that?”

“Oh, I suppose,” Chief Harper said. He vaguely recalled his wife or daughter saying something to that effect.

“Yeah, well that’s what I heard. Mickey Hempsted’s wife, Sarah, saw her at the Country Kitchen playing bridge. You can’t miss that face. Anyway, she’d be the one to ask.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know, but it will be in the paper.”

“Huh?”

“She’s got a column in the morning paper. Crossword puzzle column. Every day.” Dan gestured to the newspaper on his desk. “Want me to look it up?”

“No, I want you to get over to the doc’s, get to work on that ID. We’re not going to get anywhere till we know who she was.”

“Right. Now where did I see that camera …”

Dan rummaged through the drawers of his desk, came up with a Polaroid camera.

“I better check the battery and the film. Smile, Chief.”

Before Chief Harper could protest, Dan raised the camera and the flash went off in his face.

“Seems to be working,” Dan said. He pulled the picture from the camera, tossed it on his desk. “In about a minute you’ll have yourself a nice picture. I’ll go shoot the girl.”

“Don’t get the camera wet,” Chief Harper said, but Dan had grabbed his slicker and was already out the door.

Chief Harper finished drying himself, and returned the towel to the bathroom. Hanging it on the rack, he happened to glance in the mirror. He frowned. The man looking back at him wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old either. The curly brown hair was not that gray, not that thin. Of course it always looked darker when it was wet. And, it occurred to him, he was old enough to notice that it was darker.

He looked at himself and sighed. Was this the face of a man about to embark on his first murder case? Yes, he
told himself. It was a broad, solid, rugged face. At least he looked competent.

Chief Harper came out of the bathroom. The Polaroid picture Dan Finley had taken was lying on his desk. Harper sat at Dan’s desk, picked up the picture and pulled off the negative.

So much for competent. His eyes were wide, his mouth was open, his head was tilted to one side, and his hand was up as if to ward off a blow.

He looked like a buffoon.

Yeah, that was more like it.

Chief Harper tossed the photo down on the desk, leaned back in the chair, and rubbed his head.

The phone rang. He scooped it up. “Bakerhaven police. Harper here.”

“Dale. What’s this about a murder?”

Chief Harper groaned. Henry Firth had heard about it already. The county prosecutor had opposed his hiring, had even gone before the selectmen to lobby against him.

Henry Firth would be eager to see him fail.

“A girl was found dead in the cemetery. So far that’s all we know.”

“What are you doing about it?”

“We ’re investigating it.”

“I’m aware of that.
How
are you investigating it?”