Killer Sudoku (23 page)

Kevin stared after Michael’s retreating back with pure jealousy in his eyes. “You never do that with me.”

“I don’t tend to come up with useful ideas for running an inn,” she pointed out. “Maybe that’s because I spent too many years involved with the movies.”

Mrs. Halvorsen’s eyes went from Liza’s to Kevin’s and back again. “I can mention something useful,” she said. “How about lunch?”

Liza put her hand to her stomach. There had been too much excitement for her to notice the empty feeling. But it came on pretty strong when Mrs. H. mentioned a meal.

“You’ve got to keep your strength up,” the older woman went on. “Why don’t the two of you go and get a bite? I couldn’t eat a thing myself after all this. Maybe I’ll take a nap and then catch a snack.”

Now Liza shot her neighbor a sharp look. First and foremost, Elise Halvorsen was a matchmaker. No sooner was Michael out of the picture than Mrs. H. came up with a way to fix Liza up with Kevin.

“I don’t know about you,” Kevin said, “but I’m starving.”

“Let’s see if we can take the back way into the kitchen,” Liza suggested. “I don’t want to end up dealing with crowds.”

Or any of the camera crews that should be arriving by now,
she thought.

They never made it to the kitchen. Oliver Roche intercepted them in the hallway. “Ms. Kelly,” he said, “I guess you’re to be congratulated.”

“Well, thank you,” she replied hesitantly.

“I wonder if you could spare me a couple of minutes.” The security man opened the door to one of the event rooms—one of the ones no longer in use for the competition as the number of contestants dwindled.

The place still remained set up for the tournament, though. As they entered, a figure rose from behind the timer’s desk. Roy Conklin looked a little embarrassed with half a sandwich in his hand and a paper plate in front of him. “I—I didn’t think anyone would be coming in here.” He gestured to his plate. “It’s nice to avoid the mob scene, and I like spending some quiet time in the same sort of place where we’ll be competing in the final round.”

He shifted away from his seat. “I’ll gladly leave if you’d prefer.”

“Not at all,” Roche said with a phony joviality that set Liza’s teeth on edge. He brought Liza and Kevin to the first row of tables, gestured for them to sit down, and then turned to Roy. “You’re just the man I was hoping to find. Maybe you can help us thrash out the answer to all the murders here.”

Roy blinked in confusion. “I thought I heard that the police had made an arrest.”

“Oh, no.” Roche shook his head. “That fellow was only responsible for the last one. We’ve got to zero in on who committed the other three.”

He rested his hip against Roy’s table and stared at Liza. “You were very clever with your little puzzle, using it to tie up that Hollywood jackass. From the looks of it, the police have him dead to rights.”

“And I expect they’ll get him on the others,” Kevin said.

“No they won’t,” Roche told him flatly. “It’s easy to think that the guy committed all those murders to set up the killing that was really important to him. But when you look at it, it’s the other way around. This Kahn clown took advantage of the other murders to slip in an extra—one that would take him off the hook for fraud and whatever.”

“And what leads you to believe that?” Liza had to ask.

“The guy turned out to be a complete basket case. He couldn’t even figure out how to deal with that kid of Janacek’s apparently blackmailing him.” Roche flung out an angry hand. “Trying to belt him with a wine bottle! And what in hell was he going to do with the bottle—not to mention the body—after that?”

He shook his head scornfully. “No, Kahn was just a desperate shlub taking a lucky stab. The real murderer showed cleverness, even wit—and a kind of cold-blooded willingness to kill colleagues.”

Liza jumped up from her seat. “That’s it, Roche. I’ve heard—”

Roche slipped a pistol from under his jacket. “No, you haven’t heard enough. We didn’t even get to the big problem yet—motive. Why would someone go on a sudden killing spree? Although calling it a ‘spree’ makes it sound like too much fun. Because the killer had a very serious reason, an out-of-the-ordinary reason for getting rid of those sudoku people. Because I think the killer is also a bit of a nut.”

Speaking of nuts, this guy is about to wave his gun around and accuse me of murder,
Liza thought, looking into Roche’s blazing eyes.

Kevin sat where he was, staring in disbelief—but following the gun. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned Roche.

The security man sneered right back at him. “Stupid? The stupid thing is believing your stupid theory—because the last murder had an obvious motive, one guy must have done them all. Bull! We all know who the murderer is—”

As Roche started to rage, Roy Conklin rose from his seat, grabbed the chair beside him, and smashed it down on the man’s bald, red head.

Roche gave a groan and sprawled on his side.

“Roy! Thank God!” Liza said.

Then Roy scooped up Roche’s pistol and trained it on Liza and Kevin. “Shut up and keep your hands where I can see them.”

“Wha—what?” Liza’s jaw didn’t seem to be working right as she stared at the mousy academic holding the ex-cop’s pistol. It was like one of those puzzle pictures—“What Does Not Belong Here?”

“Oh, don’t look so surprised, Liza.” Conklin trembled with anger as he glared at her. “You were in on it, weren’t you? But I moved before your security friend here could turn his gun around and accuse me.”

Roy bumped the table as he went to swing across it, sending Roche’s unconscious form toppling to the floor. Conklin glanced down, almost showing regret. “He was just some worker bee trying to do his job.”

Good thing Roche is past hearing that,
Liza couldn’t help thinking.
He’d have a fit.

“But
you
!” Conklin poked his gun at her, looking really aggrieved. “That’s your thing, isn’t it? She solves sudoku puzzles—she solves mysteries.” His voice dripped scorn—and his lips dribbled a little, too.

Well, Roche was right about one thing,
Liza thought.
We’re definitely dealing with a nut.

“Roy, why . . .” she said aloud, and then stopped. Unbidden, the memory of his horrible, stilted performance in front of the cameras rose up—and also his breakfast conversation with Gemma Vereker. Liza remembered the pain in the professor’s eyes as he talked about trying to promote sudoku. Obviously, he couldn’t do that. And the people who did had to become an eccentric, a huckster, a diva, or a clown.

The clown was poor Scottie,
Liza thought.
Babs was definitely a diva—so was Ian Quirk, although he might also go down as an eccentric. As for huckster, that might be an unkind way of looking at Will Singleton.
She drew a sharp breath.
Or me.

So Roy Conklin had decided to clean out the money changers from the temple of sudoku, doubtless from the purest of motives. Or was there a less noble basis for his actions—like really corrosive jealousy?

“I tried to do some outreach, teaching that class on solving techniques,” Conklin went on. “And out of all the people here for the tournament, nobody cared—until a
celebrity
did.”

“She tried to do you a good turn, publicizing the class,” Liza said.

“Patronizing me is more like it—the way she did when she told me how to become a celebrity.”

“Well, you’re sure to become a celebrity now, after killing three people,” Kevin quipped.

Liza wished he would keep his mouth shut. If pushed, Roy might just decide to cover his trail by killing three more—Roche, Kevin, and Liza.

Instead, Conklin’s mind was on escape. “I’ll feel better once I put an international border between myself and the law.” He nodded at Kevin. “You came here in a fancy sports car. We’re going to use that to go to Mexico.”

“What? But—”

Conklin waved away Kevin’s attempted protests with his gun. “Shut up. We’re going now—and we’ll head out through the kitchen. I want to be well gone before this guy wakes up.”

Reaching into the satchel beside him, he pulled out a Rancho Pacificano staff jacket and donned it single-handed. It was almost a perfect match with the nondescript pants he wore. Well, Artie Kahn had already shown how the resort’s staff people were pretty much invisible. And come to think of it, Kevin had shown how easily those staff outfits were available.

Slowly, she rose from her seat. Kevin had served as a Special Forces type in the Army. She’d seen him use some unarmed combat moves. Maybe he could—

Conklin killed that idea as dead as Quirk, Babs, and Scottie. “You go first,” he told Kevin. “Liza will be right with me. If you try anything funny, she gets it.”

From the look on Kevin’s face, he wasn’t about to try anything.

They moved through the kitchen without anyone commenting on it. Roy came last with the pistol in his jacket pocket poking Liza in the spine. When they exited through a back door, Conklin nodded toward the parking structure in the distance. “I can see your car from here. Go get it. Liza will stay with me. Do I have to repeat myself about doing anything?”

Kevin silently went and drove up in the car a moment later.

“Leave the keys in, come out, and sit on the ground,” Roy ordered. Then he grabbed Liza by the arm, keeping the gun to her head. “I’m getting in the back, and you’re getting behind the wheel.”

Once they were settled in with the pistol behind Liza’s ear, Roy called for Kevin to get in the passenger’s seat.

Then he told Liza, “Start the car and head south.”

Soon enough, they were on a freeway heading for the border.

Liza found herself with more time to think.

He’s micromanaging every step of the way rather than thinking long term,
she realized.
That won’t be good if things stop going his way.

The little details were something Roy could control, just as he’d meticulously laid out his plans to do in the sudoku celebrities. But it didn’t look as if he’d put much thought into an escape plan, something that would certainly involve uprooting his life. What could he expect to do in Mexico? For that matter, how much money was he carrying right now? As if reading her mind, Roy said, “It’s a shame we had to leave. I could have used that prize money.”

Yeah, especially since you killed the odds-on favorite,
Liza thought.

She tried to sneak a glance at her watch. Oliver Roche wasn’t going to stay unconscious forever. Roy hadn’t even attempted to tie him up or hide him. Suppose some staff people came in to clean the room? Once Roche was found, the clock would really start ticking.

At least the traffic was on the light side as they got on the entrance ramp for the freeway. Roy glanced around. “We should be in Mexico within three hours,” he said.

Unless the cops try to stop us well before that.
Liza grimaced to herself.
And what will our geek with a gun do then?

She had an irreverent vision of Roy Conklin standing in for Jimmy Cagney in the old movie, waving his pistol and yelling, “Top of the world, Ma!”

More likely, there’d be some other tragedy—and she and Kevin were under Conklin’s gun.

“Know what I think?” she exclaimed. “I bet we can get there in half that time!”

Matching her words, she pressed down on the gas pedal. The Porsche leapt forward as if someone had goosed the car, roaring down the ramp and swerving wildly into the stream of traffic.

Liza remembered what had happened when she and Kevin had driven off into the hills. And sure enough, as their acceleration increased, the rear of the car began to develop a mind of its own.

The faster they went, the scarier that shimmy became. Liza could feel her body pressing against her seat belt with every lurch. In the rear, Roy struggled to keep from being flung around. His left hand hung on to the top of Liza’s seat with a death grip, while the pistol in his other hand kept poking into Liza’s head with painful force.

“Stop!” Roy yelled. “Stop it now!”

“What are you gonna do?” Liza inquired, clinging to the wheel as best she could while flooring the gas. “Shoot me, and the car probably flies across the median. None of us survive.”

Roy rose up, bracing himself in the cramped backseat. “I don’t have to shoot you.” His voice rose in a maniacal shriek. “I can shoot your boyfriend!”

To do that, though, he had to take the gun away from Liza’s head.

As soon as Roy did that and before he could aim at Kevin, Liza hit the brakes.

Tires shrieked, the nose of the Porsche seemed to dive, and the momentum pitched Liza and Kevin against the shoulder straps of their seat belts with bruising force.

As for Roy, who wasn’t strapped in, the force of the stop launched him into the air. He had a short flight, though. It came to a thumping end against the Porsche’s windshield.

Liza had feared that Roy might actually smash through the reinforced glass. The stuff didn’t even crack, though she couldn’t be sure about his skull. The impact didn’t do a lot for his baby face, either. Roy bounced off, hard, and lay stunned across the console.

Kevin made a lunge for the gun, disarming Conklin. Liza allowed herself to sag over the wheel, ignoring honking horns, various fingers, and even the growing wail of oncoming police sirens.

 

 

In the end, the cops contented themselves with issuing a stern warning to Liza over the unorthodox method she’d used to subdue her kidnapper. Conklin was rushed off to a hospital, where he was found to have no problems—medically, at least. Three counts of premeditated murder would probably leave him with a lot of prison time to spend perfecting his sudoku technique.

Oliver Roche also emerged from the hospital, his head swathed in bandages, trumpeting that his investigation had actually solved the case. He would have sounded a lot more convincing if he hadn’t had to explain the bit about turning his back on the murderer to get his head cracked and his gun stolen. Needless to say, Roche never heard about being reinstated as a cop. Judging from the look on Fergus Fleming’s face while he watched some of the carrying on, Roche was on borrowed time at Rancho Pacificano.