The Name of the Game Was Murder (8 page)

I thumbed through the envelopes and, just as I thought, there was one for each of the guests and one for Aunt Thea. Augustus had told them he’d have more clues for them to figure out. Obviously, here was the batch he probably had intended to hand out right after breakfast.

Buck leaned against the bookcase, his face more flushed than ever. “That manuscript is not in this room,” he said. “Are we going to have to search the entire house?”

“We don’t have a choice,” the senator told him.

But I held up the envelopes and said, “Yes, you do. These must be the next set of clues.”

“Clues for what?” Laura asked. “Weren’t they for finding some kind of a treasure?”

I shrugged. “I think the manuscript was supposed to be the treasure.”

They all just stared at me, no one saying anything, so I explained. “He said it would be a significant treasure. Okay, what’s significant about the treasure hunt? Remember, he said that if you could solve the clues you could get your story removed from his manuscript? It makes sense, then, doesn’t it, that the clue solvers would find the manuscript itself?”

“It does make sense,” the senator said slowly, “especially since it seems as though the manuscript has been hidden.”

“So you might find it through the clues,” I said, and again held up the envelopes.

“It’s worth a try,” Julia said. She stepped up and pulled the envelopes from my hand, riffling through them until she found the one with her name on it.

She shoved the other envelopes back in my hand and started out of the room, but I called out, “Wait a minute. It could take forever if you work alone. Why don’t you try to solve the clues together?”

“I don’t think so,” Senator Maggio said, “not if they’re like the first set Augustus gave us.”

Thea said, “I’m going to be blunt about it. If your clues were like mine, then they let you know exactly what it was Augustus planned to include about each of you in his book.”

“You’re right!” Laura said, and groaned. “No one’s going to see my clue.”

“What if no one understood the clue except you?” I asked. “And what if you put all the clues together and came up with where the manuscript is hidden?”

“I don’t know,” Buck said, and rubbed so hard at his chin as he thought about it, I was afraid the skin would come off.

“I don’t like the idea of sharing information,” Julia announced.

“Okay,” I said. “It was just an idea. For that matter, you have all weekend to go through every chest and trunk and cupboard and closet in this whole huge house. You might find the manuscript that way.”

For a moment they were silent, and I knew they were thinking of all the rooms in this house—each one packed with furniture which could hold a manuscript. The hunt could still be on by the time the storm was over and the police arrived.

“I like Samantha’s idea,” Alex said, surprising me. “But I want to put a qualifier in there. I suggest we take a short break and read our clues. If they’re not as personal as our first set of clues, then it does make sense to share them. We can meet in the dining room in about half an hour.”

Laura hesitated. “What should we do about those first clues Augustus gave us?”

“Let’s just see what’s in this second set before we decide anything,” he answered.

Laura glanced at me. “If we’re going to try to figure this out together, could Sam help? She showed us how fast she was at figuring out her own clue.”

I kept quiet. Now was no time for explanations. Besides, I wanted to be in on the hunt.

“I think Samantha would be an asset to us,” Thea answered.

Senator Maggio smoothed down a single strand of hair over his bald head and grimaced. “I suppose we’re all in this together. All right. I have no objections.”

“Then let’s get out of here and get to work,” Julia said.

They quickly filed from the room, but I hesitated, picking up a legal-sized, lined note pad and a pen from one side of the desk.

Thea was the last to leave, and I waited for her until she’d quietly closed the office door. She paused only to glance toward the desk. There was no shock in her expression, just an agonizing mix of pain and hurt and sorrow that lasted only a few seconds.

“I deeply regret that you had to see him like this,” Mrs. Engstrom said. She took Aunt Thea’s arm and ushered her down the hallway and toward the stairs.

I tagged along behind them, walking a lot more slowly than I would have liked. I couldn’t wait to see those clues!

O
ne half hour later we seated ourselves around the highly polished table and waited. Julia cleared her throat a few times, Laura sniffled, and Buck made a kind of humming growl that vibrated around his tonsils. We were like members of an orchestra waiting for a conductor to raise his baton as a signal that we should begin.

The senator must have decided to take the lead, because he said, “I assume that we have all read our clues. I, for one, have determined that mine is not personal in nature, as the first clue was.”

He removed the sheet of paper inside the envelope in his hand and laid it directly in front of him on the table.

The others—Thea and Laura hesitating more than the rest—finally followed his example.

I had sat next to Laura on purpose, and I brazenly leaned over her shoulder in order to read what was typed on her sheet of paper. Right in the middle of this blank
white space were the words
ONE WILL BE ABOVE ALL
:
THE TEN OF SPADES
’.

Laura turned so that our noses were almost touching. “Okay, tell,” she whispered. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know … yet,” I said, reluctant to give up my super-sleuth reputation. “We need to see the others.”

No one else had spoken. The senator scowled at his paper as though, if he intimidated it enough, it would speak. Buck squinted hard at his clue and rubbed his chin again, while Alex and Julia glanced up from their papers to study the other faces in the room.

“Have any of you figured your clues out yet?” Julia asked. “Mine tells me nothing.”

“What does it say?” Laura asked.

Julia held her paper a little closer to her chest and turned toward the senator. “Have we decided if we’re going to share them?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes,” Laura said. She slapped her paper out flat on the table where anyone could see it and read it aloud. “Mine is nothing but the name of a dumb playing card. Did we all get the same thing?”

“Not exactly,” Alex answered. “Mine begins in the same way:
ONE WILL BE ABOVE ALL
. But I’ve got the king of diamonds.”

“Jack of clubs,” Buck said, and tossed his paper into the center of the table.

“I have the nine of diamonds,” Thea said.

“All right,” Julia added, and laid her sheet of paper in front of her. “Mine is the queen of hearts.”

There was a pause before Senator Maggio intoned, as though he’d just been picked king of the hill, “If this were
a card game, I’d beat you all. Mine is the ace of spades, highest in point value.”

“Not always,” I told him. “In cribbage an ace is at the bottom and only worth one point.”

I realized, by the look on his face, that I wasn’t exactly his favorite person, so I tried to get back to the subject of the clues. “Does each of your clues begin the same way, with the words
ONE WILL BE ABOVE ALL
?”

They nodded, and the senator said, “I was trying to make the point that the ace is above all other cards.”

“Except …” I began, then changed my mind. There was a more important point to make. “Laura’s is possessive.”

“That’s not true,” Laura said. “I am not.”

“Not you,” I said, “your ten of spades. See … there’s an apostrophe after it. Do the rest of them have an apostrophe?”

“They all do,” Julia said. “What does that mean?”

“One more thing for us to figure out,” I answered.

Thea interrupted. “Samantha was right in suggesting we work together. Apparently that’s what Augustus intended us to do.” She sighed and added, “He set us apart with the first clues, then probably intended to see how long it would take us to realize we had to work together on the second.”

Julia shrugged and said, “Okay, Sam, since you know so much about it, what are we supposed to do now with these stupid clues?”

“Well,” I said, a little nervous because everyone was staring at me as though I had the answer written on my forehead, “we should look for other meanings to the clues and try as many angles as we can.”

“Like what?” Laura asked.

“You’ve got a spade,” I said. “What else does a spade mean?”

Her eyes began to glimmer all green and golden as the thought struck her. “Oh!” she said, “a spade! Does that mean we’re supposed to dig for something?” She made a face. “In this rainstorm? How could Augustus do that to us?”

“He didn’t know it was going to rain,” I said, “and we don’t know if that’s what it means.” I looked across the table at Julia. “What about your queen of hearts?”

She tried to look modest and didn’t make it. “Perhaps it refers to me as the reigning queen of romantic novels.”

Laura’s lip curled. “I’d hardly call your stories
romantic
, dear.”

Julia had her mouth open to respond, but Thea suddenly began to chant, “ ‘The Queen of Hearts, she baked some tarts, all on a summer’s day.’ Could the clue lead to the kitchen? The Queen of Hearts’ tarts?”

“Maybe,” I answered. I was writing everything down as fast as I could.

“What about a real heart?” Buck asked. “Augustus didn’t have one pickled in a bottle or anything like that, did he?”

“Of course not,” Thea said, and shuddered.

“I wish he’d had a
change
of heart,” Alex muttered.

I ignored them as I looked up at Aunt Thea and said, “You had the nine of diamonds. Does that mean anything special? Like, do you have nine diamonds?”

“More than nine,” she answered, “but would the clue have to refer to real diamonds? I’ve been thinking about the diamond pattern of the tiles in the hallway.”

“There’s baseball diamonds,” Buck added.

“Crystalline carbon,” Senator Maggio said.

“What?”

“The chemical composition of a diamond.”

I doubted that Augustus had thought in that direction, but I wrote down what the senator had to say, as well.

“Anyone else with a diamond?” I asked.

“I have the king of diamonds,” Alex answered.

“King,” I said, “monarch, pharaoh, ruler …”

“Aha!” said the senator. “Ruler … a tool with which we measure. I think we may be on to something here.”

Buck shook his head. “I’ve got the jack of clubs. So what do you make of that? A club is a weapon.”

“It may also be something social,” the senator answered.

“Oh, yeah,” Buck said. “Like a softball club, or the Lions Club, or the Rotary Club.” A pleased kind of grin warmed his face. “I just got an award from the Rotary Club in Wickasee, Ohio, for being an outstanding role model to kids.”

“That’s lovely, Buck,” Thea said.

But Julia snapped, “Come on, come on. It’s no big deal. We all get awards. What we’ve got to work on now are these clues.”

Laura poked me in the ribs and whispered, “Well? Well?”

“Give me time,” I mumbled, and said to the group, “I think we have to keep in mind the words that begin all the clues:
ONE WILL BE ABOVE ALL
. From what we’ve learned so far, what do you think this means?”

“If we’re talking about the cards themselves,” Alex said, “spades are the top suit.”

“Suit, maybe,” Senator Maggio said, looking firmly at me, “but in card value we’re back to the ace.”

“Or it could be the king,” I insisted.

Alex spoke up. “Has anyone noticed there’s a run of ace, king, queen, jack, ten, and nine? Could that mean anything?”

No one answered. In case it did, I quickly wrote down the clues in order along with the initials of the people who held the card clues, hoping this might spell out something. The first part was zilch, and the last three initials spelt out
BLT
, which made me realize I was awfully hungry and would give anything right now for a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on white toast. It seemed kind of disrespectful to think of lunch when we were trying to find a missing manuscript and I was trying to discover the identity of a murderer, but I couldn’t help it.

Once again I looked at what I had copied under the heading
Game Clues
#2:

Finally, Julia said, “Let’s think in a different direction. If Augustus meant
things
, not
cards
, then in value you can’t beat diamonds.”

“Good point,” I said. I made some more notes.

Mrs. Engstrom appeared at the door. “Are you finished, Mrs. Trevor?” she asked, and her next words warmed my heart. “Lucy would like to set the table for lunch.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Engstrom. We haven’t finished, but we can take our work to the sun-room,” Thea answered.

The senator pushed back his chair. “I don’t think we’re going to finish, unless we have more to go on than this.”

“We could share the first clues,” I suggested.

I was surprised when Thea said, “No! I don’t think we need to do that. At least not yet.”

Buck got up. “What about your clue, Sam? That special clue Augustus gave you. Didn’t he say something about it making more sense than the rest of them?”

“He was kidding, because it didn’t,” I mumbled.

“Didn’t it?”

They all stared at me again, but I didn’t feel like telling them the rude message Augustus had given me, so I quickly asked them all, “May I keep these clues for a little while? I’d like to study them and see if there isn’t something—maybe even in the typing of them—that we’re missing.”