Puzzled to Death (20 page)

Her mouth fell open.

C
ORA
F
ELTON STARED AT
C
HIEF
H
ARPER IN DISBELIEF
. “Don’t tell me. This was found on the body of Judy Vale?”

“It was on a notepad on the kitchen table. Her body was on the kitchen floor.”

“And this was on the table in plain sight?”

“No, the pad was facedown.”

“Uh-huh. When did you find this?”

“When I processed the crime scene.”

“When you arrested Joey Vale?”

“Shortly thereafter.”

“So when you came to see me—to tell me to butt out of the case—you already knew about this?”

“What’s your point?”

“You told me the case was none of my business. You said I’d helped you in the past when the crimes were crossword-puzzle related, but this one wasn’t.”

The chief was silent.

“That was a lie.”

“A pretty good one too,” Chief Harper said complacently.

“Why did you lie to me?”

“I was trying to get a rise out of you. See if you’d contradict me. See if you knew any different.”

“But how could I?”

“I thought Becky Baldwin tried to hire you.”

“Oh, for goodness sakes.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, just kicking myself in the head. I bought her whole line of patter.
No PIs in town, travel time from Danbury
. She knew about this.” Cora pointed to the paper. “She knew you’d ask me about it. She tried to sew me up so you couldn’t.”

Chief Harper nodded. “That’s the way I see it. Which tells me something. Joey Vale must have known about this paper and told her about it. Because I certainly didn’t.”

“Then Joey knew it was there?”

“Only way it works.”

“So why wouldn’t he get rid of it?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. How do you interpret this? What does this mean?”

Once again Cora felt an instinctive rush of dread at the thought of having to interpret words. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t a crossword puzzle, it was just a clue. Even so, she found herself automatically prevaricating. “But why now, Chief? Why do you bring this to me now?”

He shrugged. “As long as Joey Vale was a suspect, I felt funny about it, what with Becky approaching you. As you so aptly pointed out, even his alibi didn’t clear him. But this does. There’s no way he killed Mrs. Roth. And not to pooh-pooh your two-killers theory, but not to give it any credence either, I would say I can safely cross Joey off my suspect list. So there’s your clue. What do you think it means? And just a small hint—if you say it points to Joey Vale, I am not going to be pleased.”

“Okay,” Cora said, thinking hard. “To begin with, this is not a crossword puzzle, it’s just a group of intersecting words. Doodled on a piece of paper. Doodled. A person doodles when they’re on the phone. Was there a phone near the kitchen table?”

“Absolutely.”

“There’s your theory. Judy Vale scribbled this while talking on the phone.”

“If she did, what does it mean?”

Cora examined the page.

“It’s perfectly obvious,” Cora said. “She’s thinking about her lover. She wrote the word
lover
and doodled a bunch of hearts. Then she’s thinking Joey will be jealous of her lover. Which is what always happens and what she’s afraid of. The
lights out
could mean a couple of things. She has to turn the lights out so Joey won’t see her lover. Or, if Joey sees her lover, he’ll punch his lights out.”

“Oh, come on.”

“What’s wrong with that? The stars she doodles are what her lover sees after Joey hits him.”

“Worse and worse. You got any ideas from the planet earth?”

Cora sniffed indignantly. “You want my opinion or not?”

“I’d like something I can work with.”

“All right. Whatever else this may be, it’s not a note to her lover.”

“How do you figure?”

“If Judy’s killed by a lover and a lover sees this, he’s gonna get rid of it, figuring it points to him.”

“Unless he figures it points to Joey Vale,” Chief Harper argued.

“Yes. But would a person naturally think that?”

“Why not? I did. Not now, I mean when I arrested him. Why wouldn’t I? His name’s there, plus his motivation.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t Judy Vale’s lover,” Cora pointed out. “The lover sees this and all he’s gonna see is the word
lover
screaming to high heaven. Assuming he killed her, I mean. In which case he’d get rid of it pronto.”

“But Joey Vale wouldn’t? Assuming he saw it and then told his lawyer about it?”

“I don’t know, Chief, I gotta think about it. I’ve been trying to come up with ways Joey could have killed his wife. Now you want me to find ways he didn’t.”

“Can you do it?”

“If Joey’s innocent, he comes home from the Rainbow Room absolutely blotto around one in the morning. His wife is dead on the kitchen floor. Joey doesn’t see her. He staggers into the bedroom, pulls off his clothes, and falls into bed without even noticing his wife isn’t there. In the morning he gets up, crashes around the house, and finds the body. He’s thunderstruck. He can’t remember strangling his wife, and while he’s a little hazy on the night before, that sort of thing would be apt to stick in his mind.”

“Don’t be cute.”

“Sorry. Anyway, Joey’s not too out of it to realize he’ll be the number-one suspect. So he takes a crowbar and breaks the lock on the kitchen door. I assume that wasn’t hard?”

“The wood was old and rotten. All he had to do was stick the crowbar between the door and the jamb and pry. The screws popped off the metal covering and the bolt tore through the wood.”

“What’d he do with the crowbar, by the way? Leave it by the door?”

Chief Harper shook his head. “Put it with his tools. Down in the cellar. Actually, not a bad move. It’s his crowbar. He’s gotta figure an intruder would bring his own crowbar, take it away with him.”

“Okay, so that’s what he does. Breaks the lock on his door to make it look like there’d been an intruder.”

“And how does this intruder jibe with the lover mentioned on the pad? She can’t be killed by an intruder
and
a lover. Unless they’re one and the same. I mean, who breaks the lock on the kitchen door? Take it from Joey’s point of view.
I’ll break the lock on the kitchen door to make it look like someone broke in and then killed her. On the other hand, I’ll leave the pad on the table so the police will think her lover did it
. You can’t have it both ways.”

“True.”

“So how does that make sense?”

“Well, one possibility is we’re all wet about the Becky Baldwin angle, and Joey never saw the pad.”

“You buy that?”

“Nah. Becky’s a little schemer, likes to play it real close to the vest. If you’re withholding the clue, she’s gonna withhold the fact she knows about it, until she can use it to her advantage. Plus the fact she tried to hire me, which is out of character.” Cora shook her head. “No. Unless Becky found out some other way, Joey saw that pad.”

“If she found out some other way, there’s gonna be a major shake-up in the police department.”

“Mmm. I say Joey saw the pad. He gets out of bed and he goes into the kitchen. Where’s the kitchen phone?”

“On the wall just inside the door.”

“So the table’s next to that?”

“That’s right.”

“Where’s the body?”

“On the other side of the room. Near the outside door. Which is probably what gave him the idea to break it in.”

“Uh-huh. Is the outer kitchen door in a direct line with the inner kitchen door?”

“No, it’s on the side wall. Why?”

“So Joey walks into the kitchen, doesn’t see his wife, because her body is on the floor off to the side. But he sees this pad on the table. He picks it up, reads the cryptic message. The word
lover
is certainly clear. He slams the pad on the table, facedown. He goes to the refrigerator to get some milk or orange juice or maybe even a beer, and that’s when he finds his wife’s body on the floor. He panics, breaks the lock on the kitchen door, and goes off to work as if nothing happened. He doesn’t take into account the pad of paper on the kitchen table. He doesn’t even think of it until his lawyer cross-examines him on what he did.”

Chief Harper nodded. “Works for me.”

“In which case Becky Baldwin’s never seen the pad, she just has Joey Vale’s recollection of it.”

“That’s right.”

“Crossed and double-crossed. No wonder she’s so hot to hire me. She figures you’ll bring me the clue. And I’ll report it back to her. Maybe even give her a copy.” Cora cocked her head. “Would I have had a copy to give?”

“Keep that one. Work on it in your spare time. See if you can come up with anything slightly more useful than what you just did.”

“Don’t be rude. Is it my fault your clue is an inexplicit jumble that implicates both Judy’s husband
and
her lover?” Cora folded the doodle, stuck it in her purse. “So if Becky hasn’t seen this and she knows you have it, why doesn’t she just demand it?”

Chief Harper shrugged. “I’m sure she would have, if I hadn’t dropped the charges against Joey. I think she sees the doodle as a bargaining chip. She knows I’m withholding it from the media. By not demanding I produce it, she’s letting me know she’ll cooperate as long as I lay off Joey Vale.”

Cora rubbed her head. “Double-think. Don’t you people ever play straight?”

“Don’t blame me,” Chief Harper said. “Joey Vale was in the middle of telling me his story when Becky Baldwin swooped down and made him clam up. He was cleared and released, and she
still
wouldn’t let him talk. So I’m in no particular rush to show her all my evidence.”

“No argument here. Just interested in your point of view.”

“Okay, so tell me this,” Chief Harper said. “Why does Judy Vale write a crossword-puzzle clue? Granted, it’s not a crossword puzzle, it’s a doodle, but why does she doodle in intersecting words? Why does her doodling take the form of a crossword puzzle? Riddle me that.”

“Two reasons,” Cora replied promptly.

Chief Harper groaned. “I should have known. I guess I’m lucky there aren’t three.”

“One, Judy Vale doodled on the phone while talking to her lover. Or talking to her girlfriend and thinking about her lover.”

“And she doodled a crossword because …”

“Because of the tournament. It’s the talk of the town. Has been for weeks. Everyone’s been talking about it. Even people who aren’t involved.” Cora frowned. “She wasn’t one of those picketing nuts, was she?”

“No, she wasn’t. What’s your other theory?”

Cora grimaced. “Well, you might not like it. But the
clue strikes me as way too straightforward. In my humble opinion, it was planted.”

“Planted?”

“Yeah. By the killer. To throw suspicion on someone else.”

“Wait a minute,” Chief Harper protested. “You’re now suggesting the killer strangles Judy, then sits down at her kitchen table with her notepad and scribbles a cryptic message just to lead me off the track? In which case the killer isn’t Joey Vale
or
Judy Vale’s lover but someone
entirely
different, someone who decides that a crossword-puzzle message
alluding
to Joey Vale and Judy Vale’s lover, without actually
implicating
either one of them, is
exactly
what the police need to draw suspicion away from her
real
killer. And instead of leaving this message on the
body
, where it might do the killer some good,
leaves it facedown on the kitchen table where there’s no guarantee the police will even connect it to the crime at all!
” Chief Harper paused for breath. His face was very red. “Is
that
what you’re suggesting?”