Death by Sudoku (7 page)

Liza shuddered at the idea. Then another notion hit her. Unless somebody visited after her cab left, she and Jenny were probably among the last people to see Derrick alive.

The arrival of a police cruiser derailed that train of thought. A uniformed officer got out. “We got a report—”

He broke off as he followed the cabdriver’s pointing hand, immediately grabbing his car’s radio and speaking in a low voice. When he looked at the two of them again, his eyes were suspicious. “You didn’t touch . . . ?” The officer broke off that question as he glanced again at the body hanging high above them.

It was patently clear that neither the cabdriver nor Liza was dressed to scale the mountain or climb a tree. If they’d tried it, their clothes would have been in disastrous shape. There was no way that either of them had made the attempt.

“You said in the report of this incident,” the cop continued, “that you were going to this gentleman’s house?”

Liza nodded. “I had an appointment with him this morning. We were supposed to have breakfast and then head on to his plane for a trip to John Wayne Airport.”

The officer had another question for her: Was anyone else at the house? Liza admitted she had no idea. She’d been too rattled to call when she saw her host hanging like a bat from a tree on the mountainside.

She offered to call Derrick’s home phone, and the cop took her up on it. When she tried the number, all she got was voice mail.

“Not conclusive,” the cop said. “Anybody up in the house could be refusing to answer. Did you pass any other vehicles on the way up here, going either way on the road?”

The cabdriver shook his head. So did Liza.

The questions kept coming, even as backup started to arrive. Between the cab and the cop car, they were blocking the road; nobody could get by.

In the end, the police had the cabbie pull his car to the shoulder of the road. One officer stayed with them while his partner continued on to Derrick’s house. From the beady eye the cop aimed at them, Liza didn’t have to ask the officer whether she was a suspect. The question in the cop’s eyes seemed to be when, not if, to charge her.

While they stood at the roadside, a whole parade of vehicles passed by them—another police cruiser, an ambulance, and what had to be an unmarked police car.

Homicide detectives, Liza figured. Whatever had happened to Derrick, she was willing to bet natural causes had nothing to do with it.

More minutes passed. Then the officer’s radio set squawked. Liza couldn’t make out what was said, but apparently the cop deciphered it. He turned to the cabdriver. “We’re going up. I’ll follow you.”

Derrick’s SUV still stood in the drive in front of the house, just as it had when Liza left the previous night. But it was surrounded by the cavalcade that had passed them while they waited below. There were so many cars parked on the spacious driveway that some of the new vehicles were drawn up on the lawn.

A man in a suit came out of the door, heading straight for Liza. He was tall and powerfully built, with olive skin, dark hair, and features that would have been handsome except for his sullen expression. To Liza, he looked as if his feet hurt—and the expression only intensified as he came closer to her.

“Liza Kelly,” the man said, consulting a notebook in his hand. “I’m Detective Vasquez, Santa Barbara Police.” He nodded toward the house. “You had a business appointment with Mr. Robbins?”

“More or less. I had worked with Derrick on his last TV series, and he wanted to get my publicity firm to represent his niece.” She gave a quick account of how she’d met Derrick, come back with him, seen the screen test, and had dinner. “I was coming up to drop off the representation agreement for Jenny to sign, and then Derrick was going to fly me down to catch a plane to Oregon.”

Detective Vasquez nodded impassively, his pen scratching away. “So you were only in the house for the early part of the evening.”

“I left at a little around half past nine,” Liza told him, “and arrived at the hotel about twenty minutes later.”

The big man glanced at her over his notebook, his eyes running up and down. “It’s a big enough house. Why didn’t you stay over?”

Liza shrugged, her face growing a little warm at the detective’s insinuation. “I was here on business, so we decided to be businesslike.”

Vasquez went back to his notebook. “And Mr. Robbins’s niece was with the two of you?”

“Jenny arrived while we were watching her screen test, and we had dinner. The last time I saw her was when she told me that my cab had arrived.” Liza paused for a second, steeling herself. “Is she . . . ?”

“She’s not on the premises.” Vasquez frowned. “Of course, we’ll have to search the slope.”

Liza winced at that unpleasant assumption.

Vasquez moved on. “Did Ms. Robbins arrive by car?”

“I saw a sporty little compact parked behind Derrick’s SUV.” Liza frowned, trying to remember any details. “Sorry. It was dark by then; I didn’t really notice the make. It was sort of a cream color.”

“Obviously, it’s gone now.” More scratching, then Vasquez snapped the notebook shut. “So, Derrick Robbins was in good spirits, had a pleasant dinner with you and his niece, and expected you this morning for a business meeting.”

That pretty much summed things up, but—Liza glanced sharply at Vasquez. Was he suggesting that Derrick had somehow jumped? She took a deep breath, trying to figure out a way to word her question. “Detective? Do you have any theory on how Derrick . . . fell?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Vasquez’s large hand closed on Liza’s upper arm—a surprisingly gentle grasp. “I’d like you to look at some things inside the house.”

“Anything I can do to help,” she said as the detective conducted her to the door. Vasquez had her retrace her steps through the house, to the bathroom, the home theater, the kitchen, and then out onto the terrace. She noticed immediately that one wrought-iron chair—Derrick’s seat during supper—was now overturned, its upholstered padding ripped loose. Nearby, one of the planters atop the low wall lay overturned on the flagstones, several flowering shrubs pulled out by the roots. It looked as if some sort of struggle had taken place.

They’re not trying to figure out how Derrick fell
, she thought.
They suspect he was pushed.
And judging from the way Detective Vasquez was looking at her, she apparently topped his candidate list as the pusher.

Another man in a suit turned away from where technicians were photographing the torn shrubbery. He was short and rotund, with a jolly face, until you looked closely at his eyes—a little too cold and watchful. Cop’s eyes. “Liza Kelly, my partner, Detective Howard.”

Howard gave her a broad smile, as if he were delighted to meet her.

I guess this is the good cop
, Liza thought.

“I don’t suppose you can tell us anything about this?” Howard asked jovially.

Liza shook her head. “It was all in order when we cleaned the dinner dishes away.” She stepped toward the overturned chair. Both Vasquez and Howard moved to block her, so she stopped and pointed. Beside the disarranged padding lay a broken glass, short, squat, and cylindrical.

“That highball glass wasn’t out here. We only drank wine.”

Vasquez’s notebook came out again.

“There were no disagreements at dinner—no arguments?” Howard asked.

Liza shook her head. “I was mainly getting to know Jenny.” She smiled at the memory of dinner. “Derrick always has—
had
—a good line of funny conversation. He could toss off some outrageous statements, but you couldn’t call them arguments.”

She suddenly remembered his claim about the coded sudoku messages. Was that worth mentioning?

The two detectives must have noticed her hesitation but said nothing.

“Did you go anywhere else from here?” Howard asked.

Liza brought them to Derrick’s study. The door stood open, and she stood openmouthed at the entrance to the room. The calm order she had noticed the night before had vanished. Where the built-in shelves had boasted carefully arranged ranks of books, now it looked as if Derrick were running a rummage sale.

“This isn’t right,” she said. “Derrick grouped his books by subject. He was into puzzles and codes.” She pointed. “This whole shelf held books about sudoku. Now it’s all messed up. There are books about acrostics and cryptography mixed in. Some of them are upside down, and look—that one’s stuffed in backward.”

Howard glanced at his partner. “Looks like a job for the fingerprint boys.” He turned back to Liza. “Was there anything valuable in here?”

“I didn’t look at all the titles.” Liza was still in shock, her eyes roving around. “Two things seem to be missing—a newspaper and an old Gideon Bible.” She carefully scanned the bookshelves but didn’t see a trace of the worn leatherette cover.

“That doesn’t—” Howard began, but Liza cut him off.

“He was trying to decode something,” she said slowly, trying to dredge up memories of their uncomfortable conversation in this very room—a conversation where she hadn’t really paid much attention. Haltingly, Liza tried to explain Derrick’s concern over the
Seattle Prospect
’s sudoku puzzles—how they seemed to contain biblical references that turned into unpleasant real-life events. “He mentioned something about people grumbling and being burned—that it wasn’t the Lord’s fire.”

Liza stumbled to a halt. Like Derrick, she’d lost her audience. Detective Howard looked attentive, but his eyes were hooded. Detective Vasquez, who didn’t have to worry about being the good cop, simply stared at her as if she were out of her mind.

“Do you know if Robbins had any history of mental problems?” Mr. Sensitivity now looked as if she’d stepped on his aching feet.

Howard put it a bit more tactfully. “I seem to remember that Mr. Robbins tended to play troubled or . . . eccentric characters.”

“He was playing roles,” Liza replied. “It’s called acting. Derrick was one of the most dependable people on the set—he wasn’t a nut case. He was a very intelligent man.”

“He was an actor who hadn’t worked in . . . what? The last year? Year and a half?” Howard asked.

Vasquez didn’t even bother to argue. “We’ll get the crime-scene people in here,” he grunted. “And I suppose we should bring you down to the station and get a statement.”

His tone suggested how credible he thought that statement would be.

Liza decided to save her breath rather than argue with the big man. Silently, she sat in the rear of the unmarked car—
Where the prisoners go
, she thought—while Vasquez drove downtown. Detective Howard stayed at the scene of what Liza now firmly believed was a crime.

The police station was a two-story building, in the Spanish colonial architectural style seemingly required for Southern California. Liza barely got an impression of gleaming white walls and reddish orange roof tiles as Detective Vasquez brought her in. Liza took off her sunglasses when she heard a voice call out her name.

She focused on a short, bald man who looked like a living, breathing Elmer Fudd. But that pudgy face was known to everyone who watched Court TV—or even the national news. Alvin Hunzinger might not look very Hollywood, but he’d earned the nickname of “lawyer to the stars” in a series of high-profile cases.

Right now, he cast a bemused glance at Liza—Elmer at his most befuddled. Most of his practice involved movie stars as perpetrators, not victims. “Michelle Markson sent me up here,” he said in a voice as silky as Elmer’s was silly.

Liza shook her head, hiding a smile. Trust Michelle to get in ahead of everyone. Her intelligence sources must rival the CIA’s.

Alvin turned to Detective Vasquez, extending a hand. “I’m—”

“I know who you are,” Vasquez snarled, definitely not amused. In fact, if she’d been judging by the look on his face, Liza would have thought that Alvin had just driven spikes through both of the cop’s long-suffering feet.

PART TWO : Solving

When you come down to it, sudoku is always about the same thing—filling in eighty-one spaces where between twenty-odd to forty-odd spaces have been filled in already. The question becomes, what techniques do you use to fill up the empties?

“Easy” sudoku need only a few techniques. With a simple scan of the rows and columns, you can see the only numbers that will fit in certain spaces. A more detailed search fills more spaces, and the logical interaction of filled spaces in rows, columns, and squares forces solutions. The harder the puzzle, however, the farther you have to stretch this logic, until, at the greatest levels of difficulty, it may be hard to distinguish between a logical technique and inspired guesswork.

 
—Excerpt from
Sudo-cues
by Liza K

Hours later, Liza had to wonder if she’d made the right decision. She’d accepted Alvin Hunzinger’s services, infuriating Detective Vasquez. But she’d also annoyed Alvin by stubbornly staying while Vasquez and several other detectives questioned her over her statement. They spent considerable time pecking away at any inconsistencies while Liza labored to tell them as much about the previous evening as she could remember.

Alvin’s pudgy face took on a pained expression as Liza kept trying to bring up Derrick’s story about secret messages in the Seattle paper. Vasquez and his colleagues kept cutting her off, asking questions about her relationship with Derrick, or Jenny, or with anyone who might bear a grudge against him.

At last, the lawyer rose and said, “Excuse me, Detectives, but I have some business to take care of. I’m advising my client to say nothing in my absence.” He turned a very un-Elmer Fudd stare at Liza. “Understand?”

Liza silently nodded yes.

As soon as Alvin was out of the interrogation room, Vasquez jumped out of his chair. “Okay, so maybe you don’t want to talk, but you’re sure as hell going to listen.” His normally sullen features looked more like a thundercloud about to blast the ground. “Innocent people usually don’t lawyer up when they come down to give a statement.” He thrust his face closer to Liza’s. “And they usually don’t have a hot-dog lawyer waiting for them when they arrive at the station.”