Killer Sudoku (14 page)

But she didn’t see the housekeeper standing in the doorway. Instead, she saw Mrs. Halvorsen.

“Oh!” Mrs. H. said, flustered. “I didn’t expect to find you here, dear. I thought you’d be downstairs already.”

“I’m leaving in a minute,” Liza replied. “And what about you? I thought you were going out to enjoy the California sunshine.”

“To tell you the truth, that may be a bit too much of a good thing.” Mrs. H. looked a little shaky as she put her book down. “Maybe I’m more used to gardening instead of just sitting in the sun. It seemed kind of glaring, and I felt a headache coming on.”

Liza rose and patted her friend on the shoulder. “Well, then, take it easy. That’s the whole reason you’re here. There’s nothing you have to do.”

“Thanks, dear,” Mrs. H. said gratefully as she headed for her bedroom.

“Unfortunately, the magic hour is approaching for me.” Liza waved good-bye and headed downstairs.

She was surprised to see a new face getting powdered up in the makeup area. Humphrey Dunphy grimaced slightly as the makeup artist removed his bib. “This is something I didn’t miss when I left San Francisco,” he said. “Although it’s a simpler job nowadays.”

“How’s that?” the makeup person asked.

“You didn’t have to do any fancy shading to de-emphasize my jowls,” Dunphy replied as he vacated the chair for Liza.

Once again, Liza found herself in the Hebrides Room. This time, however, Will was established up front with that abomination of a digital clock, and Dunphy had the end seat of the row just ahead of Liza.

Well, he’s definitely arrived,
she thought.
They not only made him up, but they put him in a space where the cameras will have easy access.

She sat quietly as Will went through the revised rules for this round. They weren’t all that different, except for the time limit. In the last round, the cutoff had been forty-five minutes. This time competitors had only forty minutes to complete the puzzle.

As Will finished, he gestured to a pair of volunteers, who quickly distributed the familiar sealed envelopes. Will stood looking at the watch on his left wrist, his right hand on the starting mechanism for the dreadful digital ticker. “Everyone ready? Prepare to start . . . now.”

He hit the switch, and the numbers 40:00 flickered on the big screen. They quickly changed to 39:59, and Liza turned her attention to removing the puzzle sheet. She certainly couldn’t describe it as sudoku for complete incom petents, but its difficulty pretty much matched the upper range of Sunday puzzles—the sort that people could spend a good part of their Sunday afternoon fooling around with.

Liza applied her techniques like a buzz saw, clearing away the forest to try to find the interesting trees. As she did, she veered between Roy Conklin’s terms for the techniques and her own. Any conjugate pairs? Any pointing pairs?

She paused, debating whether to make another scan for the ever-elusive swordfish, and caught a glimpse of the timer. Ten minutes had passed. Liza didn’t know whether she had expected more or less.

When she glanced over at Dunphy, she found him hunched over his puzzle. His attitude seemed a little stiff, and only when she sensed movement at the corner of her eye did Liza suddenly realize why. The camera crew was in the room, and they were filming him.

She quickly bent her eyes back to her paper, not wanting to be caught like a deer in the headlights should the lens suddenly turn her way. As she worked her way back into the puzzle, Liza couldn’t help noticing the subdued noises coming around behind her. Great. Now she was the target.

Throughout the next twenty minutes or so, the camera crew spent most of its time peering over her shoulder or Dunphy’s.

I guess we must be the front-runners in here.
But Liza quickly repressed that thought. The secret to competitive sudoku was to avoid concentrating on the competition and put all your attention on the puzzle. That wasn’t as easy to do with the almost subliminal distraction of the camera people, but Liza did her best.

Her pencil just about flashed along as she reached the point where the simplest techniques served to eliminate the pesky digits obscuring the remaining two-candidate spaces. And there it was—the solution.

Liza throttled back on a wild impulse to raise her hand and claim first place. That was the SINN crew’s fault, making her feel as if she were in a race with Humphrey Dunphy.

Instead, she forced herself to check over the solution and then recheck it.

All right.
Now.

She raised her hand, and a volunteer took the paper, bringing it up to Will. Liza left him to peruse it while she headed for the door.

Glancing back as she put her hand on the knob, she saw Will give her a quick nod. She also saw Dunphy’s hand go up.

Liza ignored the hall monitor’s shooing gestures and waited for Dunphy to emerge from the Hebrides Room. When he came through the door a moment later, he halted in surprise at finding Liza there.

He waited until the door shut behind him, and then whispered, “Well done, Ms. Kelly.”

“Call me Liza,” she told him. “And well done yourself.”

“Just call me Doc,” Dunphy replied. “That’s the nickname the people in my gym gave me, and I decided to go with it. I was a lot more formal in San Francisco, for all the good it did me.”

They walked along the hallway quietly, halting as another door opened. Babs Basset emerged and leaned heavily against the panel. From the sound she made, she might have been swallowing her own tongue.

“I hope that didn’t make it onto the sound track,” Dunphy said mildly as Babs almost ran down the corridor in full retreat.

“What’s your relationship with her?” Liza asked.

“In a word, bad,” Dunphy told her. “Babs Basset made me look like a big, fat sad sack. I suppose you heard I was run out of town. Actually, it was more in the way of being snickered out.”

The muscular young man gave Liza a sidelong look. “So if she had been the one to grab her throat and hit the floor, I’d certainly be your prime suspect. Oh, yes,” he said, raising a hand, “your reputation precedes you—in a nicer way than my gut used to precede me.”

“From the looks of you, I’d expect you to break Babs over one knee,” Liza told him.

Dunphy just shook his head. “I really do believe that living well is the best revenge. Although, to tell the truth, I just fell into it. The first job I could find that would get me out of dear old Frisco was in Phoenix, a town where I didn’t know anybody. So, looking for something to do in the lonely evenings—and I guess kind of tired of my appearance—I joined a health club.”

He patted his flat stomach. “And I ended up becoming quite the gym rat.”

“But in the end you didn’t give up on sudoku,” Liza said.

The younger man shrugged. “As I got more into the social swing, I met a bunch of sudoku fans. Then a local reporter interviewed me—interestingly enough, they were doing a piece on his paper picking up your column. Print people began calling whenever they needed background, and even people from the local TV news operations. At first I sort of held back, even when they told me that I made a refreshing change from the average sudoku fan.”

“Stereotypes at work,” Liza said.

Dunphy nodded. “Then I got an invitation letter from Will Singleton, telling me about this tournament—and who would be here.”

Almost reflexively, his right hand clasped into a fist so tight, the veins on the back of his hand stood out like bluish worms. “It would be nice to beat her, head to head, and to launch my new sudoku career.”

Liza laughed. “You know, I’ve got a friend”—explaining Michael’s status would be just a little too much on such short acquaintance—“who has started to talk about a Sudoku Mafia. I guess I should wish you good luck as the new don of Phoenix.”

“Don Dunphy?” He made a face and shook his head again. “I think I’ll stick with Doc.”

They had almost reached the end of the corridor. Around the bend they could hear the muttered noise of the waiting crowd.

Dunphy stopped. “I’ll wish you good luck, too, Liza. It would be nice to reel in the prize money, but I’d have to pull some amazing times in the last two puzzles to beat you.”

His heavy shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “For me, it will be enough to leave Babs baby in the dust.” He grinned. “That would be living well indeed.”

Liza let Dunphy go ahead of her into the room, causing a buzz of comment from the assembled sudoku fans.
The least I could do for Don Doc,
she thought.

As soon as Dunphy appeared in the doorway, Babs Basset all but fled the anteroom.

Her own appearance drew a smattering of applause, and Liza’s little circle of friends quickly joined her.

“Well, you’re definitely one of the big three,” Kevin said.

“Bigger than you know.” Liza explained the actual order of their exits.

“Hey, even better,” Michael burst out exuberantly. “I put in a reservation for lunch at a nice place—I know you don’t want anything too heavy—and now we have something to celebrate.”

Kevin looked a little put out at being outmaneuvered by his rival, especially when Michael asked, “You think you can bend yourself into the backseat of a Honda, pal?”

Liza, however, ignored the Archie and Reggie-style back-and-forth. She concentrated on Mrs. Halvorsen, who still didn’t seem at the top of her game.

Before Liza could ask anything, however, Will Singleton appeared. “The clock is still running down, but we already have five top scorers.”

He proceeded to run down the list. “Roy Conklin.”

He must have vanished again,
Liza thought.
I guess he’s still working through what Gemma told him about dealing with celebrity.

“Liza Kelly.” Kevin let out a cheer as her other friends immediately began patting her on the back.

“Dr. H. Dunphy.” Liza nodded at that.

“Barbara Basset.” Will paused for a moment, looking around in confusion. Obviously, he expected Babs to push forward and take her usual bow.

Reaching the end of his list, Will said, “Craig Lester.” That was a name Liza didn’t know, but he certainly had friends in the crowd. Excited applause broke out as a balding guy pumped a fist in the air, yelling, “Yippee!”

Liza, however, had no interest in whooping and hollering. She took Mrs. H. by the arm. “Are you okay?” she asked. “It looks as if your rest didn’t do you much good.”

Mrs. Halvorsen’s lips quivered. “I was upset, and it didn’t seem fair to tell you why right before you went off to the contest,” she said. “But while I was out sitting in the sun—you remember that Mr. Roche? He came over, saying he wanted to talk with me.”

Liza stared. “What did he want?”

“He had a lot of questions.” Mrs. H. hesitated. “I don’t like to say this about anyone, but I think that man is crazy!”

Mrs. Halvorsen’s forthright comment got a stare from Michael. “Why would you say that?”

“Because I think he suspects Liza,” Mrs. H. replied angrily. “That is definitely crazy in my book.”

“This sounds like something we ought to discuss,” Liza said, glancing around at all the fans. “Preferably outside the property.”

The men worked together, clearing a path to get everyone through the crowd and out of the hotel. Then they packed into Michael’s Honda. He drove a couple of miles to a pleasant but not overpowering little restaurant with a patio of its own. Liza enjoyed a salad featuring half an avocado stuffed with chicken salad. Kevin had a steak and red onion sandwich, Michael chose a pulled pork hoagie, and Mrs. H. selected cold poached salmon on a bed of tri-colored salad.

The older woman picked at her meal until Liza couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why do you think Roche suspects me?”

“From the moment he came up, he kept at me to change my story—as if I were telling some kind of lie,” Mrs. Halvorsen complained. “That man wanted me to say that I’d been awake, that I’d seen you around our suite long before you said you got back.”

She bristled just at the memory. “I don’t know if he thought I was some poor old biddy who didn’t have all her marbles, or if he decided he could scare me into saying whatever he wanted.”

“And what exactly did he say?” Kevin asked.

“He told me, ‘You can’t avoid the truth. Sooner or later, it will come out that Liza Kelly wasn’t away from Rancho Pacificano as long as she said she was. Either someone will have spotted that fancy car she rode off in driving in the wrong place at the wrong time, or we’ll prove she got into the kitchen while she was supposedly off on that drive.’ ”

She shook her head. “Then he had the nerve to say, ‘I’m trying to be nice about this, ma’am. The police won’t be, once they find out.’ ”

Liza didn’t realize how angry she was until she glanced down at her plate and saw how she’d mashed her avocado flat. Instant guacamole oozed out from under her fork as if she’d wounded her chicken salad and it was bleeding green blood.

“Well,
that
looks appetizing,” Michael told her, taking in the mess on her plate.

“Somehow, I’ve lost my appetite,” Liza replied grimly.

She didn’t speak all the way back to Rancho Pacificano. Maybe she should have, because she was boiling by the time she made her way to Fergus Fleming’s office.

He had a bigger room than Kevin used to run the Killamook Inn, and it was decorated very differently. Kevin had a lot of huntin’, fishin’, and hikin’ memorabilia from his days as a guide before he started taking classes in hotel management and then putting them into practical application. He even had a bearskin rug on the floor, shot by his grandfather years ago.

Liza had to admit that she’d had some interesting fantasies about possible activities on that rug and had even teased Kevin about them.

Fergus Fleming’s office, in contrast, had more of an old-world look to it. Paintings hung on the walls, mainly landscapes featuring glens, lochs, and a lot of rocks. The skies, however, reminded Liza of that cleverly done ceiling in the Skye Room. The wall coverings (surprise!) were in plaid, with matching tartan patterns on the rugs and even on the upholstery of all the furniture not made of leather.