Puzzled to Death (39 page)

APOLOGIES
by Paul Thornhill

“The theme of the puzzle is
sorry
. His long answers are song snippets. One of his quotes comes from the lyric,
I ran all the way home, just to say I’m sorry
. Another comes from,
I’m sorry, so sorry, please accept my apology. Love is blind, and I was too blind to see
. Which only fits if you know the whole damn verse, and the answer doesn’t give you that.

“And Elvis’s apology,
I’m a fool, but I love you, dear, until the day I die
, has nothing in it about being sorry, no matter how long you string out the verse. Worse than that, it’s wrong. The actual quote is,
I’m a fool, but
I’ll
love you, dear, until the day I die
. He didn’t even get that right.”

“Sherry, I don’t know what you just said except the puzzle isn’t good.”

“That’s the gist of it.”

“Then I don’t understand. Zelda Zisk said Paul Thornhill was a whiz.”

“Yeah, well, maybe he figured it’s a freebie for a charity event, why should he bother? At any rate, this thing’s electronic. It’s not gonna help you. Unless you wanna argue someone killed him for writing a lousy puzzle.”

“Damn.”

“I’m sorry.”

Cora looked up at Sherry pleadingly through a haze of cigarette smoke. “You’re sure about this? It’s an electronic puzzle, he didn’t even write it?”

“I’m sure.”

Cora looked like a child who’s just been told there’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny. She inhaled, shuddered, let out a wrenching, smoky sigh.

“Then Harvey wins.”

C
ORA
F
ELTON WAS TRAPPED
. S
HE SAT ON THE STAGE OF
the town hall like a prisoner in a cell. A prisoner with no chance to escape.

On one side of her sat Harvey Beerbaum, a smug and gloating Harvey Beerbaum, who was practically drooling at the prospect of watching her fail. Harvey had spent several minutes with a sound technician, gleefully testing the second microphone with which he planned on demonstrating just how much better a cruciverbalist he was than the much-vaunted Puzzle Lady.

Cora wondered if Harvey had any idea just how completely he would succeed.

On the other side of her stood three giant puzzle grids on upright stands. The three grids on which the finals would be played. The three grids on which she would be called upon to comment. So far, the only comment that came to mind was, “Gee, not many black squares.” Which was certainly true. As Sherry had warned her, this
was a
hard
puzzle, a fifteen-by-fifteen of the type found in the Friday or Saturday
New York Times
.

A
killer
puzzle.

In front of her, the one hundred or so contestants worked feverishly at their tables on the seventh puzzle. Some were finished, but none had left the room. Not this time. They couldn’t have if they wanted to. They couldn’t have got out the door.

In the back of the room, cordoned off by a rope, stood the spectators. Due to Cora’s promise that she would publicly unmask the killer, the crowd today was a solid wall of flesh that spilled out the town-hall doors and down the front steps.

Which was why Cora Felton was sitting miserably next to Harvey Beerbaum, instead of slipping out for a smoke. Even if she could have made it through the crowd, the people out there would all have questions she wouldn’t want to answer. Chief Harper, for instance, would want to know what she intended to say. And she would be hard-pressed to tell him since she didn’t know herself.

Since she didn’t have a clue.

And so Cora Felton sat in the front of the room like a condemned prisoner, watching the giant clock tick down the minutes to her execution.

Cora began to sweat. God, she needed a smoke. Her eyes flicked around the room, looking for a way to escape, but there was none. Directly in front of her was the Thornhills’ table, eerily empty now, its blue cardboard divider dividing no one.

Behind it, at various tables, were contestants Marty Haskel, Ned Doowacker, and Zelda Zisk—all finished, of course—and former contestant Craig Carmichael, also
finished after supposedly taking a dive. Cora wondered vaguely if he had.

In the crowd she saw Sherry and Aaron, and Becky Baldwin and Rick Reed. Judy Vale’s neighbors, Charlotte Drake and the horsey-faced Betty Felson, and their respective husbands, were there too. So were Billy and Sara Pickens, who must have gotten a baby-sitter for the little girls. There was also a couple who looked vaguely familiar; it took a few moments for Cora to place them as Aaron Grant’s parents.

Also in the crowd were Jessica Thornhill, no longer competing of course, and Joey Vale, who seemed uncharacteristically sober, either due to the solemnity of the occasion or the fact it was too early in the morning to be drunk. Both would be there seeking vengeance for their dead spouses. Both would expect answers.

Answers she did not have.

The craving for nicotine was very strong. Cora remembered a pack of Nicorettes she’d purchased ages ago, in one of her unsuccessful attempts to kick the habit. Could it still be in her bag?

Cora picked up her drawstring purse, rummaged through.

Wow. She’d brought her gun. The thought tickled her. Maybe she could shoot her way out. Yeah. Fat chance. Like Butch and Sundance at the end of the picture.

Where was that Nicorette?

Cora held the purse on her lap, pulled the top open, peered in.

A piece of paper caught her eye. Thornhill’s puzzle. She’d stuck it in her purse and never looked at it. Well, what did that matter now? The computer did it anyway.

Harvey Beerbaum nudged her.

Cora Felton started, saw Harvey pointing and smirking, and looked at the clock. Uh-oh. Cora struggled to her feet, plodded to the microphone, said, “Five minutes,” for the benefit of the ten or twelve people still working.

Five minutes
.

With a feeling of icy doom, Cora marched back to her chair.

Dead woman walking.

Cora sat down again, tried to gather her thoughts. She had a paper in her hand. What was it? Ah, yes. Paul Thornhill’s crossword puzzle.

Like the one the killer had left on his body.

The fact the police had withheld.

The thing nobody knew.

Except the killer, of course.

But no one else.

Cora felt a faint spark of hope. Could that do it? Could she nail the killer with that one simple fact?

What if she revealed the puzzle?

Chief Harper would go ballistic. It would be a major breach of trust. He would never again take her into his confidence.

And it wouldn’t accomplish anything. The puzzle proved nothing. The killer would not be caught. The solution would not be revealed.

She would just look like a fool.

Even before Harvey got his shot at her.

Cora, watching the minutes ticking by, knew there was no possible hope, no possible way to save face. Even producing all three puzzles wouldn’t help her. They didn’t prove anything. What could she possibly say about them?

Cora had the other puzzles in her bag. She jerked them
out, added Craig Carmichael’s
Curious Canines
and Judy Vale’s doodle to Paul Thornhill’s
Apologies
. She flipped through the three puzzles, read the solutions over.

Paul Thornhill’s only depressed her further. The puzzle was, as Sherry’d said, bad. Boring. A hell of an epitaph.

Epitaph.

In defeat, Cora glanced at the big clock, relentlessly ticking down the seconds till her execution.

“T
IME’S UP!
” H
ARVEY
B
EERBAUM ANNOUNCED
. “E
VERYONE
stop working. If you still have a paper, hold it up and our volunteers will be around to collect it.”

Cora sat, clutching Judy Vale’s doodle. She had an impish impulse to hold it up, let a volunteer come around and collect it. She smiled slightly, then stuffed the puzzles back in her purse.

“All right. This is it,” Harvey Beerbaum said gleefully. “This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The judges will tally up the answers, and the three top finishers will meet in a one-puzzle play-off, right before your very eyes on these giant grids. Are all the puzzles collected? Very well. Then would the volunteers please take down the restraining ropes and let the spectators in?”

Harvey Beerbaum had seriously underestimated the will of the people. Before the volunteers could make a move, the crowd had surged forward, ducking under and climbing over the ropes before simply sweeping them
away. Within seconds, everyone from outside had shoved in, filling the town hall to capacity.

Ordinarily, Harvey would have been nettled at having his authority ignored. Today he was merely pleased so many people were on hand to witness his triumph over the Puzzle Lady. Harvey’s introduction of Cora was smug. “And now, before we get to the final event, my colleague, Miss Cora Felton, has an extremely
special
announcement. Miss Felton?”

Cora rose from her chair, stepped up to the mike. “Thank you very much, Harvey,” she said sweetly. She grabbed the mike stand, said crisply with complete confidence, “It is time to unmask a killer. I’ll try to be brief, because I know you’re all eager to see the play-off. But first we have the little matter of these murders to solve.

“We are here today largely thanks to Jessica Thornhill, who made this extra day of the tournament financially possible. I see Jessica in the crowd with Chief Harper. If she could come up here with me … Here, Jessica. Take my seat.”