Murder by Numbers

Liza's first impression was that some sort of rock had spooked her dog. Kind of big to wash up here, she thought, unless we had a typhoon overnight.

She took a step closer, but Rusty got in her way again, making yipping sounds of distress. Maybe it was some kind of bundle that came in on the tide. She could see a starfish on the thing and some seaweed…

Liza suddenly stopped dead. That wasn't seaweed. What had at first seemed to be plastered-down ribbons of kelp was actually individual strands of something. And they were the wrong color to be seaweed, sort of a damp browny red.

She stepped round Rusty, getting a new angle on the mystery item—and sucked in a gasp. The strands resolved themselves into overlong ginger hair straggling across a bald dome. She recognized it, even though it was pale now instead of pink.

It was a human head…

Part One:
It's a Mystery to Me

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Part Two:
The Usual Suspects

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part Three:
Baffled?

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part Four:
Department of Dirty Secrets

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Sudo-cues

Puzzle Solutions

Liza Kelly got out of her car, glad she'd managed to snag a parking space on Main Street. Not that downtown Maiden's Bay was usually a parking nightmare. But just lately it had risen to the level of a constant challenge.

The town was enjoying an onshore breeze, but Liza couldn't catch any smells of the sea. Whether she was suffering from some sort of allergy or the hotsy-coldsy weather that had afflicted the Oregon coast this autumn, Liza had a touch of something that rasped her throat and made her feel a bit like she'd stuck her head in an aquarium. Sounds echoed strangely, the world felt as if she were separated from it by a sheet of glass, and her sense of smell was long gone.

Worse, it seemed, was to come.

Liza sneezed, rattling display windows all through the town's shopping district. Things had changed since she'd come here as a kid jingling her pocket money. The army-navy store where 90 percent of the male townsfolk bought their clothes was still in place, as was Naomi's Dress Shop, where Liza's mom occasionally used to get an outfit. But Mort's Menswear was long gone—who bought suits anymore?

The old hotel building had lost its top floor to a fire. Though repairs had been made, the resulting two-story structure had a curiously moth-eaten appearance. Nowadays it housed the Marine Bar. The fortresslike home of the local savings and loan had been knocked down years ago and was now replaced with retail space and a glass-and-steel storefront bank branch that looked about as secure as Ma's Café across the street. The bookstore where Liza had spent a lot of time and much of her allowance had transformed itself into a New Age crystal-and-candle emporium for the Californians who'd transplanted themselves into expensive developments on the outskirts of town.

Liza crossed Main Street, heading for the anchor—no,
the
bedrock—of downtown Maiden's Bay. Schilling's Pharmacy was now going into its fourth generation. In his youth, Liza's dad had swept out the store with Matt Schilling, the grandson of the founding pharmacist. Liza remembered old Mr. Schilling, the third-generation pharmacist and an imposing presence behind the counter, very well. He'd medicated her colds and bumps and bruises, occasionally deigning to give her a lollipop when she behaved.

Her reminiscent sigh turned into a disgusting snuffling noise. He would have come in handy now, in fact.

When she'd come home on breaks during college, she'd visited the pharmacy to see not only old Mr. Schilling but also a tall, gangly kid pushing a broom—the fourth-generation Schilling, young Gary.

Schilling's still retained that old-time pharmacy look. The display window dated back to the 1920s, when old Gustav Schilling had opened the place. Mysterious glass flasks—red, green, and blue—dominated the space, contrasting brightly with the displays of modern nostrums and announcements of weekly sales.

The interior of the store was a mixture of old and new. Vintage glass-fronted counters stood round the perimeter while tightly packed shelving units filled what had originally been more open space. The intriguingly naked but sexless plaster dummy that had stood by the door demonstrating an old-fashioned truss had disappeared, now replaced with a display of crutches, canes, and walkers.

Guess anybody in the market for one of those wouldn't be likely to grab one and make a run for it.
The irreverent thought hit Liza as she entered.
Good place to put it—shoplifting prevention at its finest. Come to think of it, truss customers would have the same problem, too. Maybe some things don't change.

She threaded her way to the rear counter where Nora Schilling presided over the cash register. It had been a bit of a shock when Liza returned home a few months ago to find that old Mr. Schilling had passed away. But she'd been dealing with a lot of shocks right then. Her husband had separated from her, and Liza had been trying to assess whether she wanted to return to the Hollywood rat race where she'd enjoyed considerable success as a publicist, or whether her old hometown was a better fit for her these days. A lot more had happened—she'd encountered her old high school boyfriend, who was now running a nearby upscale inn. And she'd experimented with a new career, doing a newspaper column devoted to sudoku puzzles and about how to solve them.

In the end, she'd been looking for peace, and she'd decided in favor of Maiden's Bay.

I just hope that puzzle-solving streak keeps working
, Liza thought. The peace she'd sought here wasn't materializing. Lately, her life was more like a juggling act, balancing her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Michael, and her old boyfriend, Kevin the innkeeper, her publicity job,
and
the sudoku column. She was happy, but running on empty to keep up with the demands on her time. In the next few hours she had a conference call where her publicist side had to take center stage, without any…

Another thunderous sneeze interrupted her thoughts.

Time to figure out where this place kept the cold meds.

Nora Schilling looked up, her professional smile turning more genuine as she recognized Liza. Mrs. Schilling was a handsome woman who must have been beautiful once, though that had been before Liza's day. All she could remember was a woman who looked like an imposing old-maid schoolteacher, in spite of standing behind the counter with her husband.

At first glance, the years had been kind to Nora. She looked much as Liza remembered her from her college years, in spite of the decade she'd spent caring for an ailing husband, keeping the business going despite the vagaries of small-town life, retail fluctuations, and competing chain stores. After Matt died, she struggled on with hired hands doing the prescription work until her son Gary had graduated from pharmacy school.

On second glance, Liza found herself thinking of beach glass, how millions of sand grains inflicting tiny scratches wore away sharp edges and turned transparent glass milky. Nora's light brown hair hadn't gone silver, but rather gray. Her skin hadn't aged so much as grown paler and strangely translucent. Her blue eyes seemed somehow faded as she listened to Liza's symptoms and then deferred to the young figure she beckoned forward.

Gary Schilling had gotten past the string-bean stage, filling out till he was in danger of having his mother's cooking create a potbelly. His face was still a little too round and youthful, something he clearly tried to counteract with a scraggly mustache. Or maybe that mustache was to make up for the way his hairline was already retreating at the temples.

He might be heading toward geekhood, but he knew his stuff. Gary listened attentively to her symptoms and then recommended an over-the-counter nasal spray and some lozenges.

“No pills?” Liza asked, a little surprised.

“You don't want to overmedicate. The spray will get at the basic problem more directly,” Gary assured her, “and the aromatic lozenges will soothe your throat and help with any postnasal drip. You'll feel better, your symptoms will recede, and you won't be struggling with drowsiness like you would with an antihistamine.”

Nora could undoubtedly have made the same recommendations, but was content to watch as her son went into lecture mode. “Under Oregon law, the most effective antihistamine is no longer available over the counter, but is a Class II restricted substance. You'd need a doctor's prescription to buy it.” He shrugged. “It can really wind up your blood pressure. Besides, I guess the folks in Portland felt they had to do something. People cook up the pills to make crystal meth, you know.”

“Even in Maiden's Bay?” Liza said.

“Not that I know of,” Gary admitted. “But meth labs have turned up in stranger places.”

Liza thanked the young pharmacist and his mother, paid for her purchases, and headed outside.
My head feels like it's underwater
, she thought.
I wonder if it's too gross to take a quick snort of this nasal spray right now…
She stopped between two parked cars to look inside the small paper bag. As she did, a heavy truck rumbled right past her on Main Street.

I almost stepped right in front of that
, Liza thought.
I'm not thinking right. This stuff had
better
clear my head.

She watched as the truck joined several others parked near the town piers. So which was it this time—the boardwalk extension or the film shoot?

For the past year, the new mayor in town had done everything imaginable to get enough funding to extend the block-long boardwalk on the waterfront. The idea had been to make Maiden's Bay a little more tourist-friendly. Even now, the project had only gotten to the pile-driving point. Construction work had been spotty, since the piers were an integral part of the filming going on in town.

Liza supported the movie project her friend Derrick Robbins had been putting together for his niece Jenny before he was murdered. And after the dramatic rescue that took place right in this area, it had seemed a brilliant idea to do location shooting for the film in Maiden's Bay. At least, that's the way Liza had seen it at first.

It had certainly made her life easier. She could live up to her commitment to act as publicist for Jenny while still doing her puzzle gig for the
Oregon Daily
.

The townsfolk thought the idea was pretty cool, too, especially the money being offered for using their homes and businesses as locations for the shoot—and themselves as extras.

Liza had never envisioned a career in front of the camera for herself. With her height and hourglass figure, the movie camera lens would make her look like a football halfback—a pretty curvy one, but a halfback nonetheless. Still, when she first came to Hollywood after her postcollege sabbatical in Japan, she'd scored a couple days of work as a film extra to earn some cash.

It had just put a big, red underline to Alfred Hitchcock's famous line about actors being cattle. Hitchcock had tried to defend himself by saying that he merely intended that actors be
treated
like cattle. In those days, he could get away with it, she supposed. Somehow, Liza couldn't imagine Glenn Close putting up with that now. The extras in films, however, definitely still got the livestock treatment. Liza had noted that the film crews even called the production assistants in charge of extras “wranglers.”

A couple of days on set back then had been enough to put Liza off acting forever. But the extra gig was going like gangbusters in Maiden's Bay. For most of the good folks in town, every nice day for the past few weeks had involved time in front of the cameras.

“Excuse me, dear.”

Liza stepped back as the sprightly figure of her next-door neighbor darted across the street to stand beside her.

“What's the occasion, Mrs. H.?” Liza asked. Instead of the old denims and the disreputable relic of a straw sombrero she wore while gardening, Mrs. Halvorsen wore a new creation from Naomi's with a fine broad-brimmed straw confection on her gray curls.

“I just thought I'd go by where the movie people are,” Mrs. H. said airily.

Liza hid a smile. It didn't matter how old a person might be, or where they were—the dream of being Discovered with a capital
D
lived on.

“I've worked quite a few days as an extra,” Mrs. H. went on. “That's why I decided to splurge on a new outfit, even though the check hasn't come yet.”

Mrs. H. was always very animated when she spoke. But this time as she smiled and nodded, the oversized straw brim of her hat fluttered in time, as if it were a flimsy pair of wings laboring to lift the older woman's head up, up, and away.

Liza managed to restrain her giggles until after her neighbor had wished her a nice day and set off down Main Street for the knot of the usual suspects gathered in front of the trailers brought in by the production company. She could have spotted Deke Jannsky's disreputable orange hunting hat from a mile off—and she was a lot closer than that.

She shook her head. That had been a mistake on the part of the extra wranglers. Sure, at first glance he looked perfect, a photogenic example of a grizzled small-town salt-of-the-earth type. But Liza knew all too well that Deke was trouble. The only earth that hung out around him was just plain dirt of the lowest order. Deke hadn't held a real job in years. He'd been living off the taxpayers, the result of some sort of dubious disability claim. Oddly, it interfered horribly with anything Deke didn't want to do, but never troubled him a bit when he was doing something he enjoyed, and that included such strenuous activities as hunting, fishing, and brawling in bars. Taking that man on was just asking for trouble.

A closer look revealed to Liza that trouble had already found the little knot of people.

A truckload of workmen was swinging into action. A tarp on the shed they'd been shooting yesterday went down, revealing large letters spray-painted in glittery pink—PISS OFF.

Well, there's a headache for the continuity people
, Liza thought.
Bet that wasn't there the last time they wrapped filming.

She grinned at the thought that perhaps some of the locals seemed to be coming round to her opinion about location shooting and extra work.