Death by Sudoku (3 page)

The Irvine Skytrails Hotel was large and fairly utilitarian except for some cast concrete flourishes and a large amount of greenery. It was part of a chain that could be found around airports all over the country—not the top of the line but not the bottom, either.

The heavy plate-glass door swung open, held by a uniformed staff member, and Derrick ushered Liza in. The lobby was surprisingly full. A glance around showed Liza that she was in the middle of Sudoku Nation. There was a woman of retirement age in a “nice” set of sweats by the front door, working on a practice puzzle. Moving past that person, she saw a middle-aged guy in a pair of seersucker slacks—surviving leftovers from an old suit. The man also wore a slightly frayed dress shirt and worn wingtip shoes. Obviously, this was a businessman trying to go casual. Equally obviously, he held to the thirty-year rule when it came to wingtips—ten years for work, ten for casual wear, five years as gardening shoes, and the remainder as a toy for the dog.

T
here was a gaggle of serious college students, complete with backpacks, trendy jeans, and what Liza called a “computer screen tan”—that pale, pale skin that was a product of never getting outside during daylight hours.

Smiling, Liza caught sight of another sudoku archetype actually reading a book on the subject—
The Complete Nincompoop’s Guide to Sudoku
. This was a young guy in a pair of high-water chino pants and a faded T-shirt—a second-generation computer geek. (The first generation wore polyester shirts in colors that never existed in nature.)

She was still smiling as the guy put down his book. Then she stared at his too familiar face. “Hank?”

Hank Lonebaugh was the new computer guy at the
Oregon Daily
—the not-quite-stalker Liza had described to Derrick.

Glancing at her companion, she decided not to go on with the next logical question, which threatened to come out something like, “What the hell are you doing here, geek boy?”

Actually, Hank answered it without even being asked. “I was down visiting an old college bud, and heard about the tournament on the radio. Thought I’d come over and try it out. I am interested in sudoku, after all.” He was trying to sound offhand, but came off nervous, almost defiant.

Oh yes, Hank had indeed developed an interest in sudoku after learning about Liza’s column. But terms like “conjugate cells,” “algorithms,” and “recursion” kept cropping up in his discussions of the subject. Liza understood the mathematical and logical underpinnings for sudoku, but Hank always made it sound as if he were discussing the trajectory for sending a rocket to Mars when he talked about the subject. Liza had an entirely different approach to the puzzles. Shouldn’t sudoku be fun?

Hank took a moment to direct a jealous glare at the man standing beside Liza. It was clear that Hank didn’t like the idea of her with another man—especially one as compelling as Derrick. Then his eyes went wide with recognition. “Wait a minute! You’re Derrick Robbins!”

Of course
, Liza thought.
After his role on
Spycraft
, Derrick’s the patron saint of geekdom.

Caught between jealousy, frustrated love, and hero worship, Hank veered away from Liza like an iron filing attracted by a very strong magnet—Derrick. He stuck out his hand.

Derrick shook it.

“You were the coolest thing on
Spycraft
!” Hank said breathlessly.

With a wry smile and a wink for Liza delivered behind Hank’s back, Derrick led Hank away. They’d actually gotten a dozen feet from Liza before Hank belatedly looked back over his shoulder at her. “We’re both in the third round—I’ll talk with you then!”

Not if I can help it
, Liza thought.

She turned away, very thankful indeed to Derrick for running interference, and saw Will Singleton rushing across the lobby. The little man was making an effort to be calm as he led Liza to a private lounge. “This place makes its money from business travelers, mainly during the Monday through Friday rush. I figured they’d be happy to get some bodies in here over the weekend. But it looks like they’re a little discombobulated.”

Liza saw what he meant when she glanced around at the table featuring neat pyramids of soda, juice, and bottled water . . . but apparently, no ice. Will caught the look and collared one of his minions to get a supply. “I’ve tried calling the kitchen. No response so far. Go upstairs and hit the ice machines in each floor if you have to,” he ordered. The sudoku guru’s decisive tone evaporated as he turned to his guest of honor. “Looks like we’re going to be roughing it a bit. But I’m going to make it work.”

Soon enough, Liza was ensconced in the most comfortable chair available, her eyes closed and a glass of iced water in her hand.
Maybe I should have come down yesterday
, she told herself.
Will did offer me a room.
But that would have meant leaving Rusty in a kennel, or imposing on some friend to dogsit.

Barely a week after returning to Maiden’s Bay, she’d encountered a mutt wandering the neighborhood and ended up rescuing him from the local animal control unit. Judging from the reddish cast of his coat, Rusty had some Irish setter in his background, but he didn’t have that breed’s high-strung temperament. Still, he hated to be left alone, and Liza had suffered surprising regret at leaving him. She’d never been so attached to anyone that a day’s absence worried her like this.

Keep this up, and I’ll be adding a herd of cats and a shawl to the mix
, Liza told herself.
I’ve already got the rocking chair.
She was supposed to be establishing a new life for herself, not becoming an eccentric hermit. Maybe this tournament was just what she needed, an opportunity to get out in the world, see people, and do something she enjoyed.

She smiled to herself. If that meant dealing with Hank Lovelorn, so be it. And if Derrick Robbins wanted a contest, he’d get one. Bring on the sudoku!

 
Most of the crowd in the lobby boiled through the double doors when they opened. A brass plaque announced the space was the Irvine Room. Old-line hotels would have called it the ballroom. In modern hotelspeak, it was an event room. Liza had used about a million of them in her career as a publicist, as venues for major announcements, project launches, or Q-and-A sessions. This particular space was probably aimed more at business events, sales conferences, or maybe high-end computer fairs.

She ran a professional’s eyes over the room as she stepped inside. Commercial carpet, about five years old from the pattern—due to be replaced soon. Four sets of accordion-style partitions, all of them retracted into the walls. Pillars set against the walls in the Skytrails Hotel chain colors, not for any load-bearing function but to break up what would otherwise be a big, beige box.

Right now the box was filled with an array of long tables, but these weren’t set for dining. The tablecloths in the corporate colors were decorated with widely spaced settings of pads and pencils, and the rows of matching chairs were set in a staggered pattern. It looked like a very up-scale setup for a standardized test. Liza’s lips twisted in a wry smile—SATs 90210.

As she trailed behind the main body of contestants, Hank Lonebaugh kept rushing toward the door, then coming back to her. His back-and-forth moves reminded Liza of Rusty trying to get her to take him for a walk. Since he’d found her again, Hank had indeed talked to her. Mostly, though, the conversation had been along the lines of, “You never said that Derrick Robbins was your friend. He’s a really cool guy—very nice, too. Don’t you think he’s a cool, nice guy?” It made for a pleasant break from what Hank usually talked about.

It seemed Derrick had made quite an impression on poor Hank.

They came through the door, and things worked out exactly as Liza expected. She didn’t need to rush in to find a seat. Will Singleton had reserved spots for his honored guests. Liza snorted when she saw he’d placed her right up front.

Hank had gestured to a seat next to him, but Liza was able to point to the head table and gently detach herself. She left Hank behind in a rear row while she took her seat in the front of the room facing the dais.

As the crowd settled at the various tables, Will stood up. “This is our third elimination round of five,” he began. “Each participant in this round will receive the same sudoku puzzle and have the same time of forty-five minutes to complete it.” He gestured at the large digital display on the front table, already set at 45:00.

Just the thing to make any nervous players completely crazy
, Liza thought.
Did somebody donate that monstrosity? It doesn’t seem like a Will Singleton touch.

“The first five people to turn in a correct solution will advance to the final round,” Will went on. “Is everyone ready?”

As Will’s minions began dropping off sealed manila envelopes containing the puzzle, Liza took a moment to reexamine the points on her pencils and made sure both of her pens wrote correctly. That was the only equipment contestants were allowed to have on their tabletops.

Liza turned at the sounds of a commotion behind her. A young woman, one of the people giving out the puzzles, was taking something out of Hank’s hand. “I’m sorry, sir, but those aren’t allowed.”

It was a handheld sudoku solver. “B-but how am I supposed to figure all the candidates—?”

“Like everybody else—by hand,” Will cut in. From his tone of voice, somebody had done the same thing in the two previous rounds. “Any technological help, be it handheld sudoku solvers, BlackBerries, or even cell phones, has been banned.”

The young woman brought the handheld device up to Will, who stuck it on the table behind him. “You can retrieve this after this round.”

“But—” Hank said in a forlorn voice, reaching out after his technological crutch.

“The rules are quite explicit, and they appeared on the contest form that you signed.” Looking every inch the sudoku guru, Singleton glanced around the room. He projected a surprising amount of dignity for his small stature. The envelopes had all been distributed. Liza took a deep
breath as Will reached over to the display. “All right then. Sudoku!”

Along with every other contestant in the room, she tore open the envelope to reveal an oversized square grid, nine by nine—eighty-one spaces in all. Some of the spaces were filled with numbers, the givens or clues. The rest of the spaces were blank, up to her to fill in.

The rules were simple. Each of the nine rows right to left, each of the columns top to bottom, and each of the nine three-by-three boxes that made up the gridwork must hold the numbers one through nine. Based on the given numbers, Liza had to figure out the one and only solution that fit the pattern. Some people called sudoku a “numbers crossword” or a math puzzle. But there was no number crunching involved. This was an exercise in pure logic.

Liza began to scan the entire puzzle.
Look at the forest,
not the trees
, she told herself, running her eyes over the sets of boxes, both across and down.

It was hard to miss the combination of 7s in the top tier of boxes. These numbers appeared in the first row of the first box and in the third row of the third box. That meant there had to be a 7 in the middle row of the middle box. Only two of the three spaces were available—an 8 occupied the center space. Four spaces down from the left-hand space was a 7, eliminating that open cell as a candidate. So there was only one solution. Liza picked up her pen and entered a 7 to the puzzle.

The second tier of boxes also had two spaces occupied by 7s. From their placement (and the fact that there was a 7 in the first vertical column), that meant a 7 could only appear in the right-hand space on the middle row of the left center box. Checking the bottom tier, Liza cross-checked
the rows and columns and found that the existing 7s ruled out all the spaces in the bottom row except for one. She quickly penned 7 in that remaining box.