A Clue for the Puzzle Lady (29 page)

If he was aware of the young girl following him, he gave no sign.

“I couldn’t get him,” Dan Finley said.

“Oh?” Chief Harper said. His head was spinning. He’d just given the news crews a brief statement about finding the murder weapon, then ducked into the police station as the reporters shouted questions. His abrupt departure had not pleased them. Rick Reed of Channel 8 News had nearly attempted to physically restrain him.

“Yes,” Dan said. “I’m sorry. I know how bad you wanted him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Kevin Roth. I couldn’t serve Kevin Roth.”

“The judge wouldn’t give you a warrant?”

“No, he did. I just couldn’t serve it.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t answer the door. I went out to his house, rang the bell, no answer.” Dan Finley shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? This wasn’t a no-knock warrant. It allows me to search, not to break and enter. So if the guy doesn’t answer the bell …”

“Was Roth there?”

“I think so. His car was there. I tried to look in the windows, but I couldn’t see anything. I rang the bell,
called out his name, I got no response. I gave it my best shot, and came up short.”

“You call him on the phone?”

“When?”

“When you couldn’t get in. When no one answered the bell.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Try him now.”

Dan Finley looked up Kevin Roth’s number, punched it in. He listened a minute, covered the mouthpiece, said, “Answering machine.”

“Hang up.”

Dan Finley obeyed. “You don’t want to leave a message, Chief?”

“Like what?
This is the police, would you please answer your door so we can serve a warrant?
Somehow I think not.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. I could put a man on his house, wait for him to come out. I could go back to the judge, try to get a no-knock. At the moment, I’m just not sure.”

“So you couldn’t match the typewriter?”

“Huh?”

“To the Barbara Burnside letter. If you matched the typewriter, you wouldn’t want Kevin Roth. So I guess you didn’t get a match.”

“No, I couldn’t match the Barbara Burnside letter,” Chief Harper replied. “Tell me something, Dan.”

“What’s that?”

“When you got the other samples, did you say Jimmy Potter typed the one in the library for you?”

“Yes, he did. Why?”

“Did you notice he misspelled
lazy
and capitalized
fox
and
dog?”

“I didn’t pay much attention. Why?”

“I just stopped by the library. Jimmy’s not there, and his mother doesn’t know where he went.”

Dan Finley frowned. “What’s Jimmy got to do with anything?”

Chief Harper waved it away. “No reason. This case is just driving me nuts. Everything bothers me.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I got some good news for you too.”

“What’s that?”

“That officer called from Muncie. Crocket. ’Cause I called him, told him to find out about the shoes.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. He spoke to the witness, who says she was wearing Nikes. He says the guy’s pretty sure about it, so at least we know what we’re looking for.”

Chief Harper frowned. “Sneakers.”

“Yeah. I suppose you were hoping for penny loafers, like the other one. But, no, the shoes are different. Same socks, though. White cotton. Oh, and the puzzle was a wash.”

“What?”

“Yeah, the famous puzzle clue.
Four d line five
. Turns out it’s not a puzzle clue after all. It’s an algebra problem. Or at least the answer. It’s part of the girl’s final exam. She was copying corrections from her boyfriend’s paper, gave up and stuck it in her pocket.”

Chief Harper’s eyes were wide. He felt very lightheaded. He put up his hands. “Hold on. Hold on. What are you saying?”

“I’m just telling you what Crocket said. And he’s just reporting what the boyfriend said. But Crocket said it’s pretty definite. The boyfriend showed him his paper. You know, his final exam. In algebra. And it’s all right there. What the girl wrote is straight off the test paper. So it never was a puzzle clue at all.”

“You’re kidding,” Chief Harper said. He went to his desk, got out his notebook, looked up the phone number, and called Officer Crocket.

The Muncie police officer seemed rather pleased with himself. “That’s right,” he said. “It’s right off the final exam. The kid showed me the problem, showed me what she wrote. Of course, the puzzle angle didn’t make the papers out here, so it didn’t mean anything to him. He didn’t know we found it in her pocket. But he described it to a T.”

“So there never was a puzzle?”

“No. The word
line
was the answer to a problem. The graph of some equation was a line.”

“I see.”

Chief Harper hung up the phone with nerveless fingers. Officer Crocket had confirmed Dan Finley’s story. Not that he suspected Dan Finley of lying, but still.

Dan Finley had been the one to get the typing sample from the library. He claimed Jimmy Potter typed it. But what if Dan typed it himself when Jimmy Potter wasn’t there? And at the same time, he’d typed the note about the murder weapon. Wouldn’t that be a colossal double bluff, typing out the note, and, at the same time, typing a sample so that Chief Harper could identify it. And then, just to play with his head, telling him the puzzle clues weren’t puzzle clues. After all, it was Dan Finley who had said it was a clue in the first place. If Finley were the killer, as Cora Felton had suggested, might he get some perverse pleasure out of suddenly denying his own handiwork?

But, no, Officer Crocket had confirmed Dan’s story. The first puzzle clue was
not
a puzzle clue. And all investigations leading from it were meaningless.

Except they weren’t. The puzzle clues had arrived with the murder weapon, with the second dead girl. The killer was for real, even if the clues weren’t.

Nothing made any sense.

Chief Harper flipped back a page in his notebook, picked up the phone again, punched in a number.

Sherry Carter answered the phone.

“Hi, it’s Chief Harper. Is your aunt there?”

“No, she’s not. What’s up, Chief?”

“I really need to talk to your aunt. Do you know where she is?”

“No.”

Her voice was cold. Chief Harper suspected her in some way of covering up for her aunt. “All right, look,” he said. “I want you to find her. There’s been a development that she needs to know.”

“What is that?”

Chief Harper chose his words carefully, well aware that Dan Finley was listening to his end of the conversation. “The puzzle clue,” he said. It took a conscious effort to avoid saying
first
puzzle clue.
“Four d line five
has been identified. We now know exactly what it is. It’s the answer to an algebra question.”

There was a silence.

“The girl wrote it herself,” Chief Harper continued. “It’s the answer to a problem on an algebra test. This has been confirmed by the Muncie police. When it gets out, the media may have some questions for your aunt. I would like to talk to her first.”

“Good lord, Chief. Do you know what this means?”

“I don’t have time to go into all the implications now, Miss Carter. If you can get a message to your aunt, I need to talk to her as soon as possible.”

Chief Harper hung up the phone, rubbed his head.

“I guess I got you into that one,” Dan Finley said. “But, hey, it’s no big deal. It’s not like she ever insisted it was a puzzle. In fact, the interview last night, she said she thought it wasn’t. So she won’t be that upset.”

“Right,” Chief Harper said.

Dan Finley didn’t know the half of it. Unless, of course, Dan Finley set this whole thing up. Unless Dan Finley was the killer.

Chief Harper’s mind was going in circles. He was having trouble collecting his thoughts.

The phone rang.

Chief Harper wasn’t ready to deal with anyone. He let Finley answer it.

“It’s your wife,” Dan said.

Chief Harper picked up the phone, pushed the button. “Hi,” he said.

Her words went through him like a knife.

“Clara didn’t come home from school.”

Clara Harper was thrilled. This was exciting. Doing detective work. Following somebody. Just like on TV.

She’d staked out the library after school, checked casually to make sure Jimmy was still working there and hadn’t knocked off early and gone home, or simply not come in. But, no, from the front porch she’d seen him inside carting books back and forth. She’d retreated down the street to a safe vantage point in front of the pharmacy, purchased a newspaper to hide behind when he went by, like in the movies. She’d thrown it in the trash when he’d finally come out and gone the other way.

Now she was following him at a discreet distance, keeping him in sight, but never getting close enough to be seen. If she had been spotted, it would not have been good, because she was not walking along like a girl on her way home from school, but was darting furtively from doorway to doorway and tree to tree. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice.

The first place Jimmy went was home. Clara’s hopes sank when she saw this. If he just went home and stayed there what was she going to do? Sit on the sidewalk and watch? Boring. But, no, Jimmy was out six minutes later,
slamming the screen door and skipping down from the front porch so quickly Clara was sure she’d been spotted. She ducked behind a maple tree, peered at him from across the street.

To her surprise, Jimmy went neither right nor left, but turned the corner and went around the back of his house.

Clara crept from behind the tree and darted across the street. Jimmy was out of sight, so Clara had to either wait for him to come back, or creep around the side of the house.

Creeping was scary, but waiting was dull.

Clara crept.

She reached the far corner of the house, peered around, just in time to see Jimmy go into his clubhouse, a little wooden shack next to the tidy flower garden in his mom’s backyard. The shack could have been a toolshed, but Clara recognized it as a clubhouse from the sign on the door. The sign said
NO GIRLS ALLOWED!!!!!
Really, Clara thought. Jimmy was what, nineteen, maybe twenty years old? And he still had a clubhouse with no girls allowed? Her father should hear about
this
.

Clara was once again faced with the prospect of waiting, but once again Jimmy rescued her, emerging from the clubhouse four minutes later. He headed right at her, and Clara fell all over herself ducking behind the building and rushing back to the street. She got there just in time to hide behind a neighbor’s bush as Jimmy came out the driveway, turned right, and headed out of town.

As he walked, he fished something out of his pants pocket. Clara, tagging along behind, craned her neck to see what it was. She wasn’t sure until he flipped the blade open.

A knife!

Jimmy Potter had a knife!

Clara could hardly contain herself. As she watched, Jimmy Potter flipped the knife carelessly from hand to hand, then lazily snapped it closed, slipped it into his pocket, and continued down the road.

Clara, ever vigilant, was right on his tail.

Clara was doing this for her father. At least, that’s
what she told herself. She was doing this for him, because her father, like most fathers, was pigheaded and wouldn’t listen to reason.

It stood to reason that Jimmy Potter had committed these crimes. If her father refused to accept that, he was never going to solve them.

And he needed to solve them. The family honor was at stake. If her father knew what the kids were saying at school, maybe he wouldn’t be so obstinate. Maybe it would provide a little motivation, make him solve these murders.

But her father wouldn’t do anything without proof, so it was up to her to get it. She was convinced Jimmy Potter was guilty. And Jimmy wasn’t the brightest boy in the world, so he was sure to give himself away. All she had to do was follow him long enough. He was bound to do something stupid. Clara was sure of it. And when he did, she would be there, on the spot, to bail out her father and save the family name.

Not to mention stopping any more young girls from being killed.

Clara’s mission was commendable, earnest, righteous, full of high moral purpose.

It was also fun.

Sherry Carter’s head was reeling. The puzzle made no sense. This to Sherry made no sense. How could it be? Two young women were dead, the murder weapon had been dropped in her lap, the police chief had been told to quit, and yet all of that meant nothing.

Sherry Carter was not used to puzzles that made no sense. Having a logical mind, Sherry was used to puzzles that could be figured out, puzzles that had one and only one solution. Not only that, the puzzles that Sherry dealt with followed a strict set of rules. Any puzzle that violated those rules was considered unfair.

Here was a puzzle that followed no rules, wasn’t fair, was too hard on the one hand, too easy on the other, and then turned out to be based on a premise that wasn’t even a clue. To a logical person like Sherry, this simply didn’t compute.

It occurred to her that it would take an illogical person like Aunt Cora to understand this. Sherry needed her now, needed to bounce the information off her. To get her perspective on it.

Because the last paranoid building block had finally fallen into place.

The puzzle wasn’t a puzzle
.

Dennis couldn’t be the killer because he couldn’t think up the puzzle.

But there was no puzzle
.

So Dennis could be the killer after all.

Yes, Sherry knew that made no sense. Yes, Sherry knew intellectually the odds of Dennis actually being a serial killer had to be somewhat less than her chance of winning the lottery. But that made no difference. Her mind wasn’t functioning on an intellectual basis now. The fact that it was possible was enough. The fact that the one obstacle to her logical rejection of Dennis as the killer had now been removed, allowed her to think the thought. Released the adrenaline rush. Brought on the fear.

Sherry’s intellect rallied, fought back. So what if the puzzle wasn’t a puzzle? Based on an algebra problem or not, the letters still spelled
quit
. And Dennis wouldn’t have spelled it. It would never have crossed his mind.