Death by Sudoku

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

DECIPHERING A KILLER’S CODE

“Here’s the
Prospect
’s sudoku for today,” he said, waving a printout. “At a quick look, it seems pretty difficult for an early-week puzzle. And the top three boxes give a G-E-N. Even I know the book of Genesis.”

Liza stepped over to her desk and all but pounced on the Bible, picking it up and turning pages. “What’s the rest of the citation?”

“Chapter 19, verse 24.”

She read aloud, “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.”

Liza’s eyes snapped round to Michael. “This is even worse than the last one—is there a date in the sixth box?”

She was hoping there wasn’t, that this was just a fluke.

But that hope died when she saw the look on Michael’s face. “There is a date,” he said tightly. “It’s tomorrow . . .”

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,
South Africa

 
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 
DEATH BY SUDOKU

 
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with Tekno Books

 
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / July 2007

 
Copyright © 2007 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

 
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eISBN : 978-0-425-21640-8

 
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design
are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

This book is dedicated with love to Mom, my first reader, who always tells the truth. I love her anyway.

 
And no acknowledgments would be complete without thanks to the person who made it possible. To my editor at Berkley, Samantha Mandor, who not only championed this book, but also had a very large hand in creating this world and its characters.

PART ONE: Naked Pairs

Don’t get excited by the name. In sudoku, naked pairs are hardly X-rated—in fact, they don’t even rate a hard R. The name refers to a situation in a row, column, or box where two spaces have the same two choices (and only the same two choices) as candidates. The naked part is because they’re right out there in the open. It’s an either-or situation. Logically, if the choice is between a 2 or a 4, a 2 in the first space means a 4 in the second. It also means that 2s and 4s can be eliminated from the candidate lists everywhere else in the given row, column, or box. Those numbers have been taken already . . .

 
—Excerpt from
Sudo-cues
by Liza K

Just keep your head down and sit tight
, Liza Kelly told herself for the umpteenth time as she hunched in her seat.
The screaming will have to stop soon.
The two-and-a-half-hour flight had reached the halfway mark. These kids had to be getting tired by now.

Liza was taking the trip from Oregon to Southern California for business—well, she was hoping this sudoku tournament would advance her career. Unfortunately, most (like 99 percent) of the other passengers for sunny Orange County had another destination in mind—Disneyland. And 100 percent of these vacationers had small children in tow.

The 737 had been reasonably quiet at first. Yes, the kids had been excited, but they were also sleepy. Arriving three hours before a 7:15 a.m. flight would do that to most people. For Liza, driving to Portland from beautiful downtown Maiden’s Bay, that had meant leaving an additional hour in advance, getting up and traveling in the kind of wee hours she hadn’t seen since she was in college pulling allnighters. At least now she knew why she didn’t remember them very well. It was hard to hold things in your memory when your vision was too blurry to see them clearly in the first place.

She’d somehow dragged herself to the car, cleared her driveway, and gotten on the road. But Liza quickly realized that she’d never win the race to get to PDX in time for baggage searches and whatever—not without a serious infusion of coffee.

But in the tiny town where she lived, twenty-four-hour convenience stores were in short supply—nonexistent, in fact. Liza’s luck had been in. She’d been able to grab a cup of sludgy coffee (probably yesterday’s brew) at Ma’s Café in beautiful downtown Maiden’s Bay. Ma hadn’t been there, but her son Calvin had just been opening the doors when Liza pulled up. It had taken him a couple of attempts to get the key in. That, combined with the awful hour, suggested to Liza that he’d come searching for some sort of hangover cure. At least, whatever was in his cup had smelled more medicinal than tasty. Halfway through this trip, Liza wished he’d made one of whatever that was up for her, too, packed to go.

Her head had been pounding since the plane hit cruising altitude—and the change in cabin pressure hit the ears of each and every toddler aboard at the same time. They didn’t know what was going on, but they definitely didn’t like it. Their befuddled parents hadn’t known how to make things better, and the cabin crew had apparently gone into hiding.

Liza knew. She’d looked for them. After failing to find them, she had just sat and suffered. And observed the situation.

She figured that the little boy beside her might have a great career ahead of him in opera, based on his volume and ability to hold a note. When he’d finally paused in his vocal output, Liza had glanced over in surprise, wondering what had caused the silence. The little guy had raised his head from his dozing (exhausted) mother’s shoulder to look around. A tear made a trail down his plump cheek, and another shimmered in his incredibly long eyelashes. His lips quivered as he recovered from his prolonged crying jag.

Liza basically liked kids, even faced with an army of screaming ones. She managed a sympathetic smile for the miniature Pavarotti. Her friendly response diverted him from another outburst. Instead, he made a grab and snagged the floppy hat sitting in her lap. Liza had tossed the hat and a pair of large sunglasses into her carry-on as she left her house. She had felt the need for some Hollywood camouflage heading back down to the Greater L.A. area—you never knew when you were going to bump into somebody from The Business.

She smiled to herself. The Business—as if there were only one in Southern California.

The little guy to her right took the smile as encouragement. Peering at her over the brim of her hat, he raised it up and started a game of peekaboo. Liza’s looks of extravagant surprise whenever his eyes came into view delighted her young playmate.

He lowered the hat and grinned at her, showing off four brand-new teeth, and leaned over to pat her hand. The difference in their skin tones fascinated the little guy—his tiny fingers pale and pink against the muted ivory of her untanned palm. Liza smiled at the sudden memory of a college boyfriend’s extravagant description of her as a “golden Oriental princess.” There was maybe 50 percent truth in that. Certainly, she was only 50 percent Oriental—or Asian as the PC crowd was just beginning to say in those days. The rest of her was pure Irish, from the reddish streaks in her hair to her temper.

Her little friend rooted around in the seat beside him to come up with a treasure. He held out the baby book, turning the heavy cardboard pages to an inset plastic mirror. After peering myopically into it, he handed it to her. Liza played the game, looking at a sort of fun-house mirror image of herself, thanks to the slightly warped plastic. Her high cheekbones, a Kelly legacy, ballooned before her, along with the proud nose bequeathed by some Norman ancestor. The rest of her face was pure Watanabe—almond-shaped brown eyes and a mouth that was a little wider than traditional standards of beauty. “Big,” her obnoxious older brother had often told her. As for the rest of the package, well, she’d always considered her figure sturdy, but another college boyfriend had amended that to “curvy.”

Little Pavarotti graciously accepted the book back. Then he reached out again, this time going for her hair. Liza glanced at dozing Mom. The baby’s mom had a short, blond bob. The little guy had apparently never encountered the shoulder-length variety of female hair. He wanted to know more. He poked at it and patted, and then grabbed a handful and yanked. He put a fistful in his mouth and made yummy sounds. Apparently dark brown hair with natural chestnut streaks was especially fascinating to this young man.

He leaned closer, his wide, watery blue eyes locked on her brown ones.

Then the plane made a sudden dip. The movement got a wail out of the little guy that went right through Liza’s nerve endings. But at least he stopped chewing on her hair. Sleepy Mom roused at the noise, swinging the little guy back to her shoulder and patting him. “Sorry,” she muttered, clearly too exhausted to say more.

Me, too
, Liza thought, quietly checking her hair for any new additions or subtractions, courtesy of her young admirer.

The impromptu concert continued until the plane was almost on the ground at John Wayne Airport. By the time she stumbled her way from the Jetway into the airport gate area, Liza suspected she could have passed on the whole disguise thing. The under-three set were not the sort of people that would look at Liza and think
Hollywood!
And after that plane ride and her lack of sleep, she was sure she’d aged enough that no one from her former life would recognize her upon landing.