Killer Sudoku (19 page)

“But I’m feeling much better—thanks for asking,” she shot back in some annoyance.

“So what are you doing?”

“A part of my old job that you always especially hated.”

“Ah,” Michael said. “Lackey to the rich and famous. Did Gemma miss her wake-up call?”

“She asked me to stop in.” Liza realized that part of her grumpy mood came from the fact that this was also one of her least favorite parts of her old publicity job.

They got off on the third floor and walked down several hallways to Gemma’s room. Liza knocked but didn’t get an answer.

“Yesterday morning, she was up, if not exactly bushy-tailed,” Liza said.

Michael shrugged. “But she hadn’t spent the previous night making a serious dent in Fergus Fleming’s private whiskey stock. I thought for a while she was going to drink him under the table.”

Liza frowned and rapped more insistently on the door. Then she dug out her cell phone and called the front desk.

“Well, yes, ma’am, we did make a wake-up call for Ms. Vereker,” the young man at the desk replied, “but I’m afraid she didn’t pick up.”

Liza’s frown only got deeper. “They couldn’t get through to her, either,” she told Michael. Then, speaking back into the phone, she asked if they could connect her to Fergus Fleming.

The resort manager sounded a bit morning-after himself, but as Liza spoke with him, he obviously made an effort to rally. “Stay at her door,” he told Liza. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

When he arrived, his big, florid face looked a bit more pouchy than usual. But his eyes were clear and serious as he produced a red passcard. “The master key,” he said, slipping it into Gemma’s lock.

The tiny indicator lights over the handle went green, and he gently twisted it to open the door. A breath of somewhat stuffy air wafted out at them, and the sitting room was dim, the lights off, and the windows still shrouded with heavy drapes.

“Ms. Vereker,” Fleming called gently. “Gemma?”

They stepped inside, Liza glancing around. The place was a little more disheveled than the previous morning. Gemma certainly made full use of the resort’s maid service. The actress’s purse lay casually discarded on the same table, its contents spilling out. Liza again noticed that sudoku puzzle with its near-catalog of rookie mistakes.

Fleming moved farther into the room, toward the bedroom, whose door stood slightly ajar.

“Pardon us for intruding,” the manager announced a bit more loudly, “but you’re going to miss the next round of the tournament if you stay in bed.”

He paused in the doorway and called again, “Gemma?” Then he shook his head. “Sleeping it off, I guess.”

Michael stood beside him to peer in. “Dead to the world.”

Liza didn’t so much look as listen. “Bad choice of words,” she told Michael. “I don’t think she’s breathing.”

Fergus Fleming recoiled from the door, muttering, “Oh, Lord, not again.”

Liza grabbed Michael by the arm. “Come on. We’re going in.”

Michael resisted for a moment, then shrugged and let Liza lead him. “Don’t go touching things,” he warned.

She rushed ahead. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe something had just happened and they could help.

Liza dropped to one knee beside the bed, reaching out to touch Gemma’s shoulder through the bedsheet. She shuddered a little, yanking her hand back when she didn’t feel warmth. The cool girl she’d once watched on TV had grown too, too cool.

“I don’t see anything,” Michael began, only to have a violent sneeze interrupt his words.

He took a step closer to the bed and sneezed again.

“The other people who died were killed by their allergies.” Liza frowned, looking up at Michael. “And you have allergies.”

“To dogs, yes.” Michael unsuccessfully stifled another sneeze. “You know how I’ve been since you adopted that mutt.”

“Rusty is a good dog,” Liza said.

“Yeah, good for antihistamine sales.” Michael sneezed yet again, then sighed. “When I was younger, some plants used to set me off.”

“Well, I don’t hear a dog, and there are no plants here.” Liza looked back at the door and Fergus Fleming. “Gemma thanked Fergus for arranging that.”

“There’s got to be something.” Michael dropped to his knee beside her, nearly falling over from his next sneeze.

“And I think you’re getting closer.” Liza looked around but, aside from the mess, didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She twitched up the bed skirt, and Michael came close to blowing out her eardrum with a “Ker-CHOOOO!” of near-volcanic proportions.

He only got worse as she held up the length of fabric and peered under the bed.

If the room was dim, this was downright dark. It took her a moment to make out the shape down there . . .

“Is that a tumbleweed?” Liza asked in disbelief.

Michael looked and staggered back, sneezing. “Either that, or the biggest dust bunny I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Fergus Fleming had stationed himself at the outside door of the suite, working his cell phone for all it was worth.

A familiar face passed by in the hallway, stopped, and peered inside. “Is everything okay?” Doc Dunphy asked. The moment he poked his nose inside the room, his chiseled face changed, getting pinched. He vented a sneeze as loud as any Michael had produced. And when he asked, “What’s going on?” his voice came out as a wheeze.

Fleming all but pushed him down the hallway. “Mr. Roche should be coming out of the elevator.” The resort manager spoke very loud and very fast. “Have him check you out. If the symptoms persist, he’ll know what to do.”

He slammed the door shut and leaned against it as if he were trying to hold back the world from getting in. Seeing Michael and Liza standing in the other doorway staring at him, he straightened up and gave them a self-conscious smile. “We got some of those EpiPens—a single dose of epinephrine to counteract the anaphylactic shock.”

Then he slumped against the door. “Not that it helped with Babs . . . or here, for that matter.”

“What was that quote?” Michael asked. “The best-laid plans—”

“Of mice and men aft gang agley,” Fleming finished for him.

“Robert Burns.” Liza sighed. “Well, I’m afraid one of my hopes has gang agley.”

Michael stared. “What’s that?”

“Doc Dunphy was one of my prime candidates for this string of killings,” Liza admitted.

“Why in God’s name would he kill four people?” Fleming burst out.

“He had a grudge. Babs Basset turned his life upside down. And she did it by getting people to laugh at him,” Liza responded.

“That would explain going after Babs,” Fleming objected. “But the rest?”

“Cover,” Liza said. “If just Babs died, the cops would be all over him. But the others, dying before and after, confuse the motive.”

“But to kill . . .” Michael broke off, shaking his head.

“He didn’t know them, and from the way I saw him act with Babs, he had a vengeful streak.” Liza stomped into the sitting room. “He would have been a perfect suspect. But you saw him out there. Whatever was making you sneeze hit him even harder—his throat was closing down.”

Fleming shuddered. “We don’t need any more, thank you.”

“So how could he have brought the tumbleweed in here?” Liza asked. “Unless he did it in a hazmat suit—”

Michael laughed grimly. “That’s a great image,” he said. “I think I can use that in the script for
The Surreal Killer
.”

“It would make him a little bit conspicuous here in the resort.” Liza’s voice faltered as the full weight of Gemma’s death finally hit her. Quirk and Babs she hardly knew, and while she was fond of Scottie, she didn’t see all that much of him. But she’d idolized Gemma as a kid and then did a lot of work with her. It was just hard to believe . . .

Fleming’s voice broke in on the sudden, sad silence. “So it’s not Dunphy.” Fleming spoke with a curious mixture of disappointment and relief.

“Well, I’m sure the cops will want to try him out with whatever is coming off that tumbleweed.” Liza glanced back at the bedroom. “So you may need that EpiPen after all.” She sighed again. “But otherwise—”

She looked down and frowned, realizing she stood beside the table with Gemma’s purse on it.

“What’s the matter?” Michael asked.

“Something else that doesn’t fit.” She looked up. “Have you got paper and pen with you?”

“What would you expect from a professional writer?” Michael produced a small notebook from his back pocket and a mechanical pencil. “Will these do?”

Liza took them and made a quick and dirty copy of the botched sudoku, marking blank spaces with an X, circling the clues, and leaving the mistaken entries as plain numbers.

When she saw Michael’s quizzical expression, she shrugged, saying, “You told me not to touch anything. I guess that goes double for actually taking things.”

“But what is it for?” Michael looked down his nose at the puzzle. “It’s all screwed up.”

“And it leads to some questions that need asking,” Liza replied. “Questions that Detective Janacek will be too busy to deal with.”

As if her comment were magic, an authoritative knock sounded on the door. “Police! Open up!” a voice called.

Fleming opened the door, and a pair of young police officers came in to secure the area. Detective Janacek just stood in the doorway. He didn’t look authoritative—more like someone struggling for a long-suffering expression. “Ms. Kelly,” he said. “What a surprise to see you here.”

His voice, usually quiet, came across as almost toneless. Liza could understand why. This case was rapidly turning into the perfect storm for a police career—an upscale locale, possible serial murders, and now a dead Hollywood celebrity.

“We had to race the news vans to get here.” That toneless voice wasn’t so much Janacek giving up—it was Janacek trying to keep his temper.

“Now,” the detective said, “would you mind explaining what you’re doing here?”

Liza told him how she’d been recruited to back up Gemma’s wake-up call, how she, Michael, and Fleming had wound up in the suite—and what they’d found.

Janacek’s expression was back to nonplussed by the time Liza related her final discovery. “A tumbleweed?” he repeated in disbelief.

“Michael has some allergies, and it started him off sneezing,” Liza said. “And Doc Dunphy just looked in the outer door and started to wheeze.”

Shaking his head, Janacek dug out his cell phone and called the coroner, who referred him to an allergist. After a few questions and listening to the answers, he clicked the phone shut with a bemused expression. “People are indeed allergic to tumbleweeds, and sometimes the symptoms can become serious. In an enclosed space—say, a bedroom for example . . . ”

“And in Gemma’s case, it would be an even bet whether she fell asleep at night or just passed out,” Michael added.

“So she wouldn’t be aware of any distress.” Liza bit her lip. “This just gets uglier and uglier.”

While the crime-scene people got busy in the bedroom, Janacek glanced around the rest of the suite.

“What’s your take on Ms. Vereker?” he asked Liza. “Was she usually this . . . messy?”

“I really can’t say,” Liza replied. “The place was neater when I came to get her yesterday morning. But she was up and may have tidied a little.”

Janacek frowned. “Or someone may have tried to toss the place. I’ll have to get the fingerprint people in here.”

Liza said nothing, but she thought,
That doesn’t fit in with what happened with the other people who got killed—does it?

“We may have more questions for you, depending on what else we find here,” the police detective said. “Better leave now before the cameras make it up here.”

Outside in the hallway, Michael started for Liza’s suite. “We’d better tell Mrs. H. and get Kevin on board—” He paused as his companion suddenly stopped at the elevator.

“Could you take care of that?” Liza asked. “I want to give Will a heads-up.” She pushed her thumb against the button with a little more force than necessary. “And maybe get some answers.”

Luck was with her—she caught Will having a breakfast meeting with some of the tournament volunteers. Liza ruthlessly chased away the acolytes and gave him the news straight.

“Gemma Vereker is dead?” Will echoed, his face going as gray as his beard.

“And it wasn’t an accident,” Liza went on in a low voice. “Somebody found out that she had an allergy—”

“This is just too much.” Will stared down at the untouched food on his plate. “Maybe it’s time to cancel the whole tournament.”

Liza knew that decision would have serious consequences not just for Will but for his media partners at SINN. “It’s a tragedy, but maybe you could consider a postponement,” she said.

“This is Sunday, and we only have the resort for the weekend. How far can I push things back?” Will burst out. But a thoughtful look overtook the pained expression on his face. “Maybe if we brought things down to a final round—sudden death—”

He broke off with a grimace.

“Not the best turn of phrase,” Liza diplomatically admitted. “How about calling it ‘Winner Takes All’? That might encourage some of the participants who are trailing in the rankings to bring their best games.”

Will shook his head in admiration. “You always come up with just the right thing,” he said. “How can I thank you?”

“You could answer a question for me.” She reached into her pocket and brought out the sudoku she’d copied.

Will frowned in puzzlement. “Not exactly up to your usual standard,” he quipped.

“The original is in Gemma Vereker’s sitting room. It’s a puzzle from one of those in-flight magazines. For all I know, you came up with it. The interesting thing, though, is that all those mistakes are in Gemma’s handwriting. So here’s my question. If that’s the level of Gemma’s sudoku skills, how the hell did she manage to keep placing in this tournament? Or was she getting a little help because of her publicity value?”