Death by Sudoku (11 page)

“I—ah, see,” Lloyd said, massaging his wrist. “Guess I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thanks, Mr. Braeburn.” Calvin set down Liza’s coffee. He looked mild as ever, but she could see the little ripples in the liquid as his hand trembled in reaction.

Liza knocked back her coffee quickly, risking a scorched mouth. Her stomach rumbled again, whether from hunger or protest.
I can always catch something at the airport
, she promised herself.

She paid Cal and headed out of the coffee shop, finding Hank at her elbow as she opened the door. “Does that homicidal maniac come here often to cook?” Hank asked when they were safely outside.

“Cal?” Liza laughed. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Except with his cooking
, she amended silently.

“Yeah. I guess the fly would barely feel it if it were just squashed flat.” Hank put one hand to his stomach and the other to his mouth, stifling a burp.

Liza’s stomach let out a sympathetic gurgle.

She glanced at her watch. Skipping breakfast had gained her a little time, and seeing Hank reminded her of something else to do before she left—besides, the satellite office of the
Oregon Daily
was right on Liza’s route out of town.

Satellite office—that somehow reminded Liza of
The Jetsons
, as if she should be going into orbit when she went to work. Reality was considerably more down to earth. The paper’s local offices occupied the second floor of a strip mall near the entrance to the highway. After parking her car, Liza zipped up the stairs at the side of the sporting-goods shop and entered the reception area—two plastic chairs and a plywood partition. Janey Brezinski was on the phone, frantically scribbling away as Liza passed. She made her way through a crowded work space, desks pushed head-to-head, some empty, some with local reporters typing on computer keyboards or staring at their screens.

Beyond was a fishbowl office, the domain of Ava Barnes, Liza’s childhood friend, managing editor of the
Oregon Daily
—and Liza’s boss.

Knocking on the open door frame, Liza stuck her head into the office. “Oh, Chief,” she said, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

“Don’t call me Chief,” Ava growled, her long, thin face serious as she scanned the sheaf of papers in her hands.

Liza got a little annoyed at being ignored. “I don’t mind oversight, but I think it’s a bit much when you go poking around in my account in the network.”

The papers in Ava’s hand flopped down and her mobile features contracted as she stared up at Liza. “What are you talking about?”

“I logged on last night to do a couple of things—got to be out of town again today—and found the account accessed. Figured the boss was looking over my shoulder.”

Ava shook her head. “Not me. Jodie was running a temperature—that damned flu. I spent the night being a mommy.”

“Then who would have the access?” Liza wanted to know.

“Nobody.” Ava frowned, picking up her phone. “Hank, come in here a moment.”

Liza stepped aside in the doorway. As Hank approached the boss’s office, he looked as if his breakfast was disagreeing even more violently with him. “Problems?” he asked with a slight quaver in his voice.

Liza looked at him with new suspicion. Ava had just denied any cyberspace intruding. But what about the guy who ran the system?

Maybe I’ll log on now and find the screen filled with hearts and flowers signed, “I love you—Hank,”
she thought, wishing now that she’d brought the matter up with her wannabe stalker outside the café.

But he frowned with genuine concern as Liza recounted what happened the previous evening. At least, Liza was reasonably convinced that it was genuine concern. Hank hadn’t been a good enough actor to hide his terror in front of Cal or his trepidation at being called to Ava’s office. It didn’t seem likely he’d be able to hide any computer peccadilloes behind the professional facade he now displayed.

“You didn’t give your password to anybody?” His almost-jowls quivered in a dubious frown at Liza’s assurances, then he went off somewhere to check the hardware. Liza turned to discover she now had Ava’s complete attention. “So, is there a reason why someone would want to hack your files,” she asked, “and does it have anything to do with what happened in Santa Barbara?”

After hearing the untold story—and Liza’s suspicions—Ava was back into managing editor mode. “And how do you intend to investigate this?”

“From the sudoku end, basically,” Liza replied. “Checking the puzzles and trying to see if they actually connect with events—specifically fires—that happened in the real world.”

“Okay—doesn’t sound all that dangerous.” Ava turned to her computer and began working the keyboard, nodding as she looked at the screen. “I’m downloading about three months of sudoku puzzles—surprise, surprise, the
Prospect
is trying to syndicate them. It will take longer to do a search through the archives for stories. How wide do you think we should go?”

“Wide?” Liza echoed. In her world, that usually referred to how many theaters a film would open in.

“Think about it,” Ava said. “Three months of fires on the West Coast . . .”

Or even the Northwest.
Liza imagined the pile of clippings she’d have to go through. “Let’s just start with Washington—in fact, the Greater Seattle area.”

The search was quick, but the download would still take time. Ava obligingly routed the sudoku files to one of the system printers. When Liza went to pick them up, she encountered Hank. He looked a little mystified. “If we got hacked, it was a slick job. No traces, except that you logged into your account . . . and then you logged into your account.” Liza wasn’t sure if he was miffed at having his system penetrated, or if he wished he’d tried this particular trick himself. Considering this was Hank, she decided she didn’t want to know.

He went off, muttering about firewalls and security systems, while she lugged off paper copies of about ninety puzzles and their solutions.

Well, now I’ve got something to read on the plane
, she told herself.

But as she went through the papers on the flight, they turned out to be pretty blah reading. In Liza’s professional judgment, it looked as if the
Prospect
was doomed to disappointment trying to syndicate these. Competitors could get pretty much the same thing from Internet sites. The puzzles were nothing to write home about. All of them were asymmetrical, which probably meant they were generated by computer. For a human constructing sudoku, an initial design for the starting clues gives a blueprint to work from. In Liza’s opinion, it also helped the sudoku student figure out the puzzle constructor’s logic. Will’s tournament puzzles had been symmetrical, the bottom halves being mirror images of the top halves. She made a note to include that in her article explaining the basic techniques for solving newspaper sudokus.

Liza picked up one of the
Prospect
puzzles and grimaced. It looked as if it had been just ripped out of the computer and flung in without a second look—a graceless collection of clues, and ridiculously easy to boot. Her trained eye offered solutions wherever she looked.

A glance at the dateline deepened her frown.

Why would anybody put this in as a Sunday puzzle?
Liza wondered.
Even if there was a horrible deadline crunch, you’d think someone would come up with something better than this.

Okay, maybe a rank novice would see only the simplicity and miss the sloppiness. Liza picked up another puzzle and quickly found herself slogging away worse than she had at the tournament. If that same novice picked up this puzzle, he or she would have no problem putting it down—probably with great force and far away.

She frowned as she had to force a logic chain to proceed toward a solution. Working from a space that had only two candidates, she chose one value, penciling in more answers to two-candidate spaces—provisional answers, because her initial choice could be wrong. Then she did the same thing, using the other possible number, proceeding in the hope that somewhere, the two chains of logic would intersect, giving her a number somewhere on the puzzle that would be correct either way—a solid start for a valid logic chain.

Not only was that an extremely advanced sudoku technique, it was a time-consuming one, too.
You hardly ever see these in newspaper sudokus. They’re more likely to frustrate than entice a casual solver
, she thought, chewing on the end of her pencil as she glanced at the dateline.
And why would you pull a trick like that in a Monday puzzle?

She’d checked a bunch of solutions but had no real answers by the time her plane landed at LAX. A driver stood holding a sign with her name as she came out of the Jetway, and Liza was whisked to Century City with a minimum of fuss. Even the L.A. traffic cooperated.

The reception area for Markson Associates beat out the
Oregon Daily
’s waiting area by a considerable degree of plushness. But then, the client list was tonier and they often faced longer waits.

A young woman with an unfamiliar face and an air of barely restrained panic manned the reception desk. From the enhanced bustline and collagen lips, this was a Hollywood hanger-on with a name like Bambi who’d hoped for a possible career boost from working at a top publicist’s office. The temp had as little acting ability as poor Hank, judging from the tremulous smile painted over her complete terror.
Well, she’s obviously met the boss
, Liza thought.

Ysabel Fuentes usually held the front lines for the publicity firm, a smart Latina who knew where most of the bodies were buried. Equally as usual, she’d quit for several days after having a run-in with Michelle until enough time had passed for both sides to cool down a little. In between, a succession of temps would take turns sticking their heads in the lioness’s mouth.

“Liza Kelly—I’ve got a two o’clock with Michelle.”

The nervousness quotient rose steeply as the receptionist picked up the phone, spoke briefly, then blinked. “Y-you can go right in.”

Liza smiled, understanding the slack jaw and faint voice. This was where one-hit wonders—actors and directors puffed up by studio execs and the media—got a much needed dose of humility, waiting on Michelle.

“I know the way,” she said, heading into the inner sanctum.

Michelle sat perched on the front of her desk. With her small size and delicate features, it was no wonder that a smart-ass actor had nicknamed her “Titania” when she’d started out in publicity. Liza wondered whether the guy regretted that now as he played the dinner-theater circuit where Michelle had relentlessly worked to exile him. To Liza, Michelle didn’t look like the queen of the fairies—more like a very powerful (possibly malevolent) pixie.

“You made good time,” a voice rumbled off to the side.

Liza turned to see Buck Foreman, Michelle’s personal investigator, sprawled across the office couch. The physical contrast was striking—Michelle’s tiny figure compared to his big, beefy form. Buck looked like the poster boy for police brutality. He’d been a decorated veteran of the LAPD until he had to testify in a high-profile case. A clever defense attorney managed to seize on a taped expletive Foreman had shouted years before in the heat of anger, running it during cross-examination. A neat courtroom ploy, a brief spin on the news cycle—and a little collateral damage: Buck’s ruined career.

A friend of a friend had put Buck in contact with Liza. It was too late for damage control, and Buck was being approached for movie roles—generally of the foulmouthed, racist-cop-from-hell variety. Instead, Michelle had stepped in to help Buck set himself up as a private investigator. Since then, he’d often done work for Markson Associates, which was useful for Michelle. She wouldn’t trust most Hollywood private eyes as far as she could throw them.

Liza had never pressed, but she suspected that the two shared a private relationship as well. On the rare occasions when Michelle went incommunicado (as she put it), Buck turned out not to be available, either.

“Hear you just about gave a stroke to the SBPD lead detective.” Buck’s handsome but heavy features lightened in a grin.

“I think that was more Alvin than me,” Liza replied.

“I’m just glad nobody went with this crazy theory you told them,” Michelle put in. “Damage control has been difficult enough.” She allowed one flash of concern for her friend to pass across her pixie face, gone almost before it registered. Then she went on, business as usual. “There are a lot of media people who are just delighted to see us holding the dirty end of the stick.”

By
us
, she meant Markson Associates, of course.

“For now, those snakes are still being careful, contenting themselves with some blind items. So, the big question—do we treat Jenny Robbins as a client, even without a signed contract, or do we cast her as the main suspect?”

Liza just stared. Michelle was obviously at least six moves ahead of her in this mind game.