A Crossword to Die For (6 page)

She sat up; the day spreading before her seemed suddenly endless, and she wished once again that she hadn't been so pigheaded about performing this task alone. Rosco would not only have been a help, he would have been an enormous comfort. He would have put his arms around her when she needed a hug, interjecting humor and patience—a quality she often lacked. Above all, he would have told her he loved her, and that things were going to be just “peachy.”

But then Belle felt herself bristling at the notion of requiring support. A frown furrowed her brow. She was a person with a major independent streak. “Okie-dokie,” she muttered aloud. “Up and at 'em.”

She showered, dressed, put on water for tea, wondered why there wasn't so much as a cereal box in the cupboards, then drifted into the dining area as she waited for the kettle to boil. There, on the table where she'd left it, was the framed crossword puzzle.

She smiled and picked it up, feeling a small sense of pride at her work: Her father's name in full at 37-Across; his title PROFESSOR at 22-Down; and at 19-Across, the last name of a man better known as a Harvard grad. That John F. Kennedy had been enrolled in the Princeton class of 1939, and had left for health reasons, was a piece of trivia she'd been inordinately pleased to discover.

Belle murmured a couple of the answers she considered among her more arcane and clever—“Mary URE at 13-Across; STU for 63-Across:
R-V man?
”—before returning to the tea kettle. Then she finally raised her eyes and took in the breadth of the apartment's stunning view. An enormous bird with chocolate brown wings swooped past; all at once—and not happily—she remembered Deborah Hurley's insistence that “Ted” had been an inveterate bird-watcher.

Belle grimaced; the expression grew steadily more irritable as she became aware of someone pounding on the door. She banged her cup down on the kitchen counter and strode through the living room. She didn't feel like entertaining her father's “research assistant” again.

“Yes, Debbie. What is it?” Belle uttered the cranky words before the door was fully open.

But instead of Deborah Hurley, Belle found a man in his later middle age. He had graying hair that hadn't seen a barber in some time, a barrely physique suggesting physical strength but also a total disinterest in anything remotely athletic, and skin so deeply tanned it looked cured like leather. He wore a T-shirt dotted with rust and paint stains, shorts that had probably once been blue canvas, and rubber flip-flops whose thongs were the color of grape jelly.

“Who are you?” His terse speech matched his appearance. This was clearly a man who didn't believe in standing on ceremony.

“If you're looking for Debbie, she's not here. I'm Dr. Graham's daughter, Annabella … Belle. And you are?”

Instead of responding to her question, the man regarded her curiously. Belle thought she noted a fleeting twinkle in his eye—almost as if he were happy to see her. But the expression vanished so rapidly, she decided she'd been mistaken.

“Ted around?”

“No … No, he's not.” Belle hesitated; she intuited that this man and her father had been more than passing acquaintances, and she wasn't sure how to break the difficult news. “You're … you're a friend of my father's?”

“You might say that.” The man rocked on his flip-flops; they made a scrunching noise on the concrete passageway: a combination of rubber and small shards of stone or shell.

“And your name is?” Belle put out her hand.

The man shook her hand for the briefest of seconds, then resumed his hesitant silence as if wondering whether or not to relinquish his identity. “Folks call me Woody.”

“Well … Woody … I'm down here because my father … because my father died on his way up North to visit me …”

Woody didn't utter a sound, but the sudden stillness of his body told Belle he found the news very disturbing. She searched his face, and watched an emotion too fleeting to successfully categorize pass over it.
Anger?
she wondered. Or
betrayal?
Then she remembered what Sara had said about grief assuming various guises.

“My … Father was on the train—”

“Anybody with him?” The question was abrupt, suspicious. A scowl matched the tone.

“No … Well, other passengers, of course … But no one he knew, or we would have learned of Father's death the moment it occurred. A conductor discovered—” Belle stopped herself. There was no need to burden this man with the grim details. “Apparently heart attacks can happen like that.”

“Your father was healthy as an ox.”

“I'm sure he looked that way, but he complained that his back was often—”

Woody snorted. “The back? Huh, just didn't like to do what he didn't
want
to do …”

Belle didn't respond. Supposedly, the “bad back” had kept “Ted” Graham from attending her wedding. Finally, she said, “Would you like to come in for a minute? I'm sure my news can't be easy to accept—”

“Ahh, no … No time.” Woody began backing away.

“But I'm sure Father would have wanted you to—”

“Maybe I'll see you around.” Woody glanced at his watch, but the move seemed overly presentational. “Gotta run.”

“Is there somewhere I can reach you …? I mean, perhaps you can tell me other people I should contact. I'm afraid I don't know who Father—”

“I'm late … I'll be in touch.”

“But I—”

Woody was gone before Belle had time to protest further. She walked to the corridor railing and looked down into the condo complex. There was not a trace of the man. Not a sound of footsteps, not a car door opening or engine starting. Belle closed her eyes.
Why did she find the discovery of strangers in her father's life so disturbing? What had she expected? Even if her father had discussed his relationship to Woody and Debbie, even if he'd described them in meticulous detail, why would she imagine those two people could feel the remotest connection to, or concern for her?

Belle had finally succumbed to hunger and gone off for a midmorning feast. Scrambled eggs, and cinnamon toast, and grapefruit juice, and extra-crispy hash brown potatoes, and coffee—not tea—drenched with cream: She did nothing halfway. Cholesterol-hell, Rosco said of her eating habits. And he was right.

Climbing the stairs to her father's apartment, she encountered Debbie Hurley on her way back down. “I put the mail on Ted's desk like always,” she sang out.

Belle stopped. This wasn't a situation she'd anticipated. Nor was it one she appreciated. “You were in my father's apartment?”

Debbie gave her a look that plainly stated:
Duh!
then continued in a chirpy tone. “I mean, it makes him not feel so, like
gone
, you know?”

“Look, Debbie … I think we have to do things differently from now on—”

“Oh, yeah, I know … I mean, there isn't so much work for me anymore …”

Belle drew in a breath. “None, actually.”

Debbie's face fell. She opened her mouth, but didn't speak.

“I'm going to be selling my father's condo. In fact, I've already contacted a realtor. In order for the place to be shown, I need to pack up his books and papers and ship them up North. The rest of the furnishings—”

“But what about his project on the Olmec civilization?” Debbie seemed stricken at the idea of forsaking “Ted's” final opus.

“I'm afraid it will have to be shelved. I'll see that his extant research is delivered to Princeton. That's the last university he worked for. If someone there chooses to continue what Father began or make use of the information—”

Debbie Hurley's lips compressed. She looked as if she was going to begin crying again; and Belle found herself gripping the banister as if it were capable of transmitting emotional as well as physical support.

“I'll also see that you get two weeks' severance—”

“It's not the money—”

Belle's jaw tightened automatically. “No, I didn't think so …”

“I mean, he was your dad! You must know how crazy everyone was about him!”

“Well, no, I didn't,” was Belle's unhappy reply. “I'm sorry, Debbie, but you must realize by now that my father and I weren't close.” Belle paused. There seemed nothing more to say. As an afterthought, she added, “Oh, by the way, Woody stopped by. I had to break the news to him … It seemed to upset him quite a bit although he clearly didn't feel like talking … at least not to me. If there are other friends or acquaintances I should contact, I'd like to have a list of—”

But Debbie Hurley's goggle-eyed stare stopped Belle's speech. “Woody? Ted didn't know anyone named Woody.”

CHAPTER 8

Belle closed the apartment door behind her, leaning heavily against it as she tried to make sense of Debbie's statement and those that had followed. “Ted” hadn't known anyone named Woody—of that Debbie had been adamant. And yet this Woody person had stood on the doorstep, looking for all the world like a man who'd suddenly discovered he'd lost his dearest friend.

But what had he actually said?
Belle tried to reconstruct their brief conversation. As she thought, she unconsciously slid the chain lock in place, then stepped back and regarded this paranoid piece of handiwork.
What was she worried about? Debbie Hurley sneaking in? Or the reappearance of a man who might
—
or might not
—
have been a close friend of her father's?

I've got to get Debbie's set of keys
, Belle told herself, but made no move to seek out her father's assistant. Instead, she walked slowly into the office as she tried to recall her conversation with the man in the tattered blue shorts.

Maybe Debbie's wrong
, she reasoned.
After all, she isn't necessarily an authority on Father's life; she's only known him for a few brief months
. Then Belle remembered that she herself had supplied the term “friend”—not Woody; and that although he'd definitely hinted at a long-standing association with her father, his primary concern had seemed to be whether “Ted” had been accompanied by someone when he'd died. In fact, reflecting on the scene, what Belle most recalled was the man's sense of prickly anger—almost as if he'd expected to hear the news.

While Belle thought, she began opening file cabinet drawers in preparation for packing her father's effects, but the volume of paperwork all at once seemed more than she wanted to tackle. Instead, she decided to begin with the photos. She knew she'd feel a good deal more comfortable with the gazes of those unknown faces stashed safely out of sight.

She found a box and started pulling pictures off the wall. The snapshots and portraits of her parents she would save, and the ones whose backdrops were obviously academic. But when she came to the photo of her father as a fisherman, and the one taken in the mystery restaurant, she paused.
What's the point in keeping those?
She laid the restaurant snapshot on the desk, then reached for the picture of the boat. Something was taped to its back. Belle turned over the frame, found an envelope, cut it free, and turned it face up. In her father's old-fashioned script the word “Woody” appeared as plain as day.

A cry of triumph rang through her brain:
Miss know-it-all's not as smart as she thinks she is!
Then the obvious secrecy of her father's behavior turned puzzling. Belle slit open the envelope. Inside was a purchase paper—a receipt for a 42-foot Hatteras fishing boat. The paper was dated four years earlier, and Theodore A. Graham was listed as the boat's new owner. The yacht broker was Sunny Day Boats of Sanibel.

“Lemme think now … It was three … no, four years ago … Yeah, that's right … four and change … 'cause it must have been March. The weather was gorgeous. Real nice. Mellow, you know … before the heat starts to build …” The owner of Sunny Day Boats graced Belle with a broad, untroubled smile, then leaned back in a well-padded swivel chair while she almost simultaneously leaned forward. She yearned to interrupt him and hurry along the process, but forced herself to bide her time. “Jimbo” Case was clearly a man accustomed to a slower rhythm in conversation as well as in life. “I tell ya … The Gulf in March is darned near perfection itself … I take that back. It
is
perfection.”

“So my father paid you in cash?”

Case nodded slowly. “I mean, how's that for a salesman's dream? Dr. Graham and Woody were the easiest customers I ever did see.”

A puzzled frown creased Belle's forehead as she pushed the official papers across the yacht broker's desk top. “My father is the only name listed, Mr. Case.”

“Jimbo, please! Call me Jimbo, or Big Jim, if you'd prefer. Some folks have a fondness for one way of speaking; some another … I've been Jimbo near as long as I've been on this earth, and Big Jim, well … you can imagine how long that nickname's tagged around after me …” He held up two large hands and allowed himself a low, good-natured chuckle that rolled across his ample belly. “I never was no puny kid … So … Now, none of that Mr. Case business. I know you people up North go in for the formality bit, but it makes folks down here downright uncomfortable—”

“Jimbo … My father's name—”

“Good girl!” Case grinned again and peered at the form. “You're right as rain, little lady. Theodore Graham appears to be the sole owner. However, I distinctly recall Woody's part of the transaction. Heck, he was the guy who tooled around in that pretty little Hatteras. Not your dad. I don't recall ever seeing Dr. Graham at the helm …” Case's previously serene brow also creased. “Come to think on it, I don't believe he spent a whole heap of time aboard, either … So, you know what I'm thinking, little lady? I'm thinking your daddy bought the boat … I mean he was a professor, an upstanding member of society, and all that …”