Dead Man's Puzzle Read online

  DEAD MAN’S

  Also by Parnell Hall

  The Sudoku Puzzle Murders

  You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled

  Stalking the Puzzle Lady

  And a Puzzle to Die On

  With This Puzzle, I Thee Kill

  A Puzzle in a Pear Tree

  Puzzled to Death

  Last Puzzle & Testament

  A Clue for the Puzzle Lady

  DEAD MAN’S

  PUZZLE

  A Puzzle Lady Mystery

  Parnell Hall

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

  DEAD MAN’S PUZZLE. Copyright © 2009 by Parnell Hall. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37399-3

  ISBN-10: 0-312-37399-6

  First Edition: April 2009

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Lynn,

  who knows computers

  Contents

  The Usual Suspects

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  The Usual Suspects

  I would like to thank Will Shortz, New York Times crossword puzzle editor, NPR puzzlemaster, star of the movie Wordplay, and editor and presenter of his own series of enormously popular sudoku books, for creating a sudoku to cheer up Cora. With Sherry off on her honeymoon, Cora was lonely and needed something to boost her spirits. A challenging sudoku was just the ticket.

  I would like to thank Manny Nosowsky, famed constructor and frequent New York Times contributor, for creating crossword puzzles to drive Cora crazy. With Sherry off on her honeymoon, Cora, who couldn’t solve a crossword puzzle to save her life, was embarrassed by them and forced to tap-dance like crazy.

  I would like to thank Ellen Ripstein, national champion of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, for editing the puzzles. It was, as always, a pleasure to pass on the responsibility to her.

  Without these three shining stars, this book would not have been possible. I can’t thank them enough.

  DEAD MAN’S

  Chapter 1

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Cora Felton patted her niece’s hands and smiled brightly, the trademark Puzzle Lady smile that graced her nationally syndicated crossword puzzle column.

  “I know you will,” Sherry said. She looked cute as a button in a fossil-colored safari shirt and matching convertible pants, the legs of which zipped off to make shorts. A floppy sun hat and mesh hiking boots completed the picture. “I just want to make sure you’ve got everything straight.”

  “You told me before.”

  “You were watching a soap opera.”

  “I was multitasking. Good practice. Sharpens the brainpower.”

  “As I was saying. It’s important to get it straight.”

  “Didn’t they call your plane?” Cora said.

  “No, they didn’t call our plane. Or you wouldn’t be here. We haven’t gone through security yet.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Now, pay attention.”

  Cora sighed. “Couldn’t you have told me this on the way?”

  “You were driving.”

  “So?”

  “I didn’t want you to drive off the road.”

  “You think I can’t drive and talk?”

  “I know you can drive and talk. Drive and listen is another matter.”

  “I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to be such a pain I won’t miss you.”

  “When you get back to the house and don’t know what to do, you’ll be glad we had this little talk.”

  Sherry Carter and Aaron Grant were leaving on their honeymoon. After a long and fitful courtship, they had finally tied the knot. Cora always knew they would; still, it had been touch and go, what with Sherry’s abusive ex-husband, Dennis Pride, always poking around and Aaron’s former girlfriend Becky Baldwin on hand. It had happened at last, and the young couple were off to Africa to track the migration of the wildebeest. Cora shuddered at the thought. She wasn’t entirely sure what a wildebeest was, but she doubted there was a man in the world attractive enough to induce her to track one.

  “The Puzzle Lady columns for the next two weeks are ready to go. Each set is paper-clipped together with a Post-it with the date.” Sherry cocked her head like a schoolteacher. “Is that the date the puzzle appears in the paper?”

  “Is it?”

  “No!” Sherry cried in exasperation. “It is the date you are to fax the puzzle. And where is the number you are to fax the puzzle to?”

  “I may have missed one or two things,” Cora admitted.

  “It’s on the cover sheet you’re faxing. Each fax you send out consists of three pages. The cover sheet. The puzzle. And the solution. You put them in the fax machine how?”

  “I take the paper clip off.”

  “But in what direction?”

  “I put them in the top, they come out the bottom.”

  “Cora.”

  “Isn’t that right?”

  “What’s the direction of the pages when you put them in?”

  “Does it matter? If they’re upside down, they can just turn them around.”

  “Not top and bottom. Front and back. The writing side faces away from you. The blank side faces toward you.”

  “Then how do I read the phone number?”

  Aaron came back from checking the departure board. The young reporter looked happy. Whether it was from not having a deadline for two weeks or from marrying her niece, Cora wasn’t sure. Aaron wore a similar outfit, carried a backpack.

  “Is the plane on time?” Sherry asked.

  “Safari, so good,” Aaron deadpanned.

  “Oh, God, is it too late to get out of marrying this guy?”

  “You already did.”

>   “The plane’s on time,” Aaron said. “We gotta go.”

  “You kids run along now,” Cora said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “What do you do if you have to reach me?” Sherry said.

  “I won’t.”

  “In case of emergency.”

  “In case of emergency, someone would find you.”

  “In an emergency, I don’t want someone spending half a day finding me. I have an international cell phone.”

  “You do?”

  “The number’s on my desk. With the rest of the instructions.”

  “See,” Cora said. “You’re giving me a hard time, and all this is written down.”

  “If you need me, call me. If you don’t get me, leave a message on my voice mail.”

  “Unless we’re out of range,” Aaron said. “These things can be out of range.”

  “In which case you e-mail me,” Sherry said.

  “You have e-mail?”

  “See? You weren’t listening at all. You leave my e-mail closed. You leave your e-mail open. You e-mail me here, I pick it up there.”

  Cora frowned. “You have the same account there?”

  “It’s not that I have an account there. It’s that I can pick it up there.”

  “How?”

  “At Hotmail dot com.”

  “Sounds like a porn site.”

  “You can e-mail me, and when I get it, I can either call you or e-mail you back.”

  “Just have a good time.”

  “We will.”

  Cora smiled. She supposed they would.

  So would she. Despite. It was sweet of Sherry to worry, but Cora was a big girl. She could take care of herself. After all, it was only for two weeks.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter 2

  Cora Felton slammed the red Toyota into a turn. Leaves shot out from under the wheel. The car skidded slightly, gripped pavement, rocketed down the road. Up ahead, sun filtering through the trees glinted off the tan Lexus as it flashed around the curve out of sight. Cora scowled, ascribed the power of the procreative process to the sun, the trees, and the car. She flipped down the visor, stomped on the accelerator, and hunched over the wheel, preparing to negotiate the tricky S-turn, which seemed to lose a new guard post every year as some unsuspecting driver was ambushed by an icy patch from the first early frost. She handled the S-turn by driving straight through, no problem, unless someone happened to be coming in the other lane. Today no one was. Cora shot through, gained a couple of seconds on her quarry.

  Not enough. The Lexus was still a hundred yards away and coming up on Dead Man’s Curve. Not that anyone had died there, that was just Cora’s nickname for it. The turn wasn’t hard to negotiate, but it was right before the light. The traffic light that held her fate in the balance. Would it stop the Lexus? Or would it let the Lexus go and stop her? And if it let the Lexus go, would it still be in sight? Or would it be a coin flip which way it had gone? A three-sided coin, actually—right, left, or straight ahead?

  As Cora swept through the curve, first the road to the left and then the road straight ahead came into her field of vision. No car. The Lexus had gone right.

  The light was red. A New York City girl born and bred, Cora Felton had a New York license, but she seemed to recall the Connecticut right-on-red rule had something to do with coming to a complete stop and making sure there was no traffic before turning. In fact, Dale Harper, the Bakerhaven chief of police, had reminded her of that on at least one occasion.

  Cora made the turn on two wheels, didn’t signal, and cut off a bus. Which wasn’t that easy to do in Connecticut. In New York Cora cut off buses all the time. Here it was quite an accomplishment. You had to go out of your way to find one.

  Up ahead, the Lexus caught the traffic light just as it was changing.

  Cora snorted. Wouldn’t you know it. The guy doesn’t even know he’s being followed and blunders into the perfect escape.

  Cora was pretty sure there was no straight-ahead-on-red rule in Connecticut. On the other hand, there was nothing coming in either direction. No reason to stop except for a useless formality designed to serve a purpose at a time of high traffic. This was not that time. The light was serving no purpose whatsoever but to make her lose her quarry.

  Like hell.

  Cora gunned it through the light, saw no one, offended no one, and hurtled down the road.

  The Lexus, which must have been doing a hundred, or at least seemed that way, was heading for another S-curve. Cora stomped on the gas.

  A car pulled out of a side road. Cora saw it in the rearview mirror. Paid it no mind. Whoever it was, it wasn’t going to keep her from her task. Cora screeched into the S-curve, left it in the dust.

  The Lexus was turning right, heading for the mall. That was fine by Cora. It would be good following him through the mall. Give her a chance to hone her skills. If he turned into the mall, she had him.

  Cora was gaining ground, but so was the car behind her. That made no sense. Why should anyone be trying to keep up with—

  Uh-oh.

  That wasn’t just any car. It was a police car. A cruiser with a bubble on top. The lights weren’t on. Maybe it didn’t want her.

  It did.

  Despite the fact Cora was doing seventy, the police car was closing the distance. Just as the Lexus was slowing and signaling a turn.

  Cora was caught like a rat in a trap. About to be squished between the cops and her quarry.

  And the cop was Chief Harper.

  Well, that sealed it. She’d never live it down. There was only one thing to do.

  Feign ignorance.

  Cora spun the wheel, fishtailed into the mall parking lot, and screeched to a stop in the parking space that miraculously opened up in front of her.

  Her Toyota was still rocking when Chief Harper pulled up behind her.

  Chapter 3

  Cora got out of the car, faced a rather exasperated-looking Chief Harper. “All right,” she said, “you got me.”

  “Didn’t you see me behind you?”

  “That was you?”

  “Yes, that was me. Why didn’t you stop?”

  “Why didn’t you use your siren?”

  “I don’t use the siren unless I’m making an arrest.”

  “You’re not arresting me?”

  “For what?”

  “For whatever you’re not arresting me for.”

  “I’m not arresting you for anything.”

  “I guess that covers it.”

  Chief Harper frowned, peered at her suspiciously. “You sound like a woman with a guilty conscience.”

  “Do you know how many times I’ve been married? Probably not. I lose track myself. Anyway, it’s a lot. So I’m used to a guilty conscience. It’s practically my default position.”

  Harper put up his hands. “Please. No wordplay. Which was great, by the way. Why weren’t you in that movie?”

  “What movie?”

  “The crossword puzzle movie. Wordplay. With Will Shortz.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Why aren’t you in it?”

  Cora wasn’t in the movie because she’d ducked interviews, failed to return phone calls, and not shown up to film. She was afraid her crossword puzzle expertise, which was nonexistent, would be exposed in such a movie. “Just bad luck, Chief. Well, if there’s nothing else . . .”

  “Nothing else? I stopped you, for goodness’ sakes.”

  “You did, and you didn’t say why. Instead you talked about everything else under the sun. You’re like a gossipy old woman. What do you think that is, Chief? ADD? Early Alzheimer’s?”

  “Okay, let me start over. I was trying to stop you because I need your help.”

  “Please tell me it’s a murder.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Damn.”

  “At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He died of natural causes.”

 
“Or so it seems?” Cora said hopefully.

  “The man was ninety-two.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? He clearly deserved to die. It’s a wonder they didn’t take him out and shoot him.”

  “Mr. Overmeyer had cancer of just about everything.”

  “Was there an autopsy?”

  “Why should there be an autopsy?”

  “To see if he met with foul play.”

  “What makes you think he met with foul play?”

  “The fact you’re asking me about him. You almost ran me off the road to do it.”

  “I thought you didn’t see me back there.”

  “Let’s not quibble. What do you want?”

  Chief Harper took out a paper and unfolded it.

  Cora’s heart sank.

  In spidery handwriting and drawn with shaky pen lines was the most loathsome of all possible things known to mortal man.

  A crossword puzzle.

  An unsolved crossword puzzle.

  A crossword puzzle that needed solving.

  ACROSS

  1 October’s birthstone

  5 Math proof abbr.

  8 Marked with smears

  14 Westminster hopefuls

  15 Press into service

  16 Stannum source

  17 Creole cooking staple

  18 Start of a message

  20 In a seemly way

  22 Open wide in a way

  23 Network: Abbr.

  24 Just say no

  26 El padre’s brothers

  28 Spanish flowers?

  30 A third of an inning to go?

  34 Part 2 of message

  39 Alarming event

  40 Gillette product

  41 Name on a 1945 bomber

  43 Genghis or Kublai

  44 Bite like a bee

  46 Part 3 of message

  48 C.E.O., e.g.

  50 Cash in Cancún

  51 “Our Gang” affirmative

  53 Low bow

  57 Concern of Winchester’s “The Professor and the Madman”

  60 Ladder rung

  62 Navy’s goat, e.g.

  64 Part 4 of message

  67 “Okay, break ___!”

  68 ___ del Fuego

  69 “___ Misérables”