You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled (20 page)

S
HERRY AND
A
ARON
were at the movies. It was Aaron’s idea, to which Sherry had readily agreed. They couldn’t argue in the movies. They couldn’t snipe in the movies. They couldn’t air petty jealousies about ex-husbands and ex-girlfriends. They couldn’t have misunderstandings in the movies. By and large, the movies were a hell of a safe place to be, a place to while away two hours in companionable silence. It occurred to Sherry if she and Aaron would just spend all their time in the movies, they’d get along great.

Someone slipped into the seat next to them. Sherry bristled. It was a big theater, it was only half full, and there were a lot of empty seats a person could have chosen without intruding on a young couple obviously on a date.

Sherry felt a tug on her shoulder. That was the last
straw. It was bad enough to come barging in late, but if the person wanted a plot summary, it was beyond all bounds. She and Aaron would have to move.

Sherry looked over, to find Cora sitting next to her.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Come on,” Cora said, gesturing for Sherry to follow.

“Are you nuts? I’m on a date.”

“What’s going on?” Aaron demanded.

“Shhh!” someone hissed from behind.

“You stay. She’ll be right back.”

Cora grabbed Sherry’s arm, dragged her out the door.

“Where are we going?” Sherry protested.

“To the bathroom.”

“I don’t have to go to the bathroom.”

“Yes, you do.” Cora dragged Sherry down the hall.

“How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy. You know how many screens there are in this damn multiplex? I started with the chick-flicks first.”

“Do I look like a chick-flick person?”

“They’re date movies. The type of movies a guy takes a girl to.”

“Aaron knows better.”

“I’m happy for him. So he takes you to a thriller instead?”

“It got two thumbs up.”

“Get in here.”

Cora dragged Sherry through the swinging door into the ladies’ room. It was empty. Cora glanced under the stall doors, but there were no feet. “Here. Solve it.”

Sherry took the piece of paper Cora slapped into her hands. “What’s this?”

• 1 Numbered items in a user’s
  

• guide
  

• 6 It covers the field
  

• 10 Laughingstock
  

• 14 Poisonous
  

• 15 Sorry sort
  

• 16 “Heads___, tails . . .”
  

• 17 In abeyance
  

• 18 “Bus Stop” dramatist
  

• 19 Hawk
  

• 20 Start of a message
  

• 23 Storable sleeper
  

• 24 BPOE member
  

• 25 Subj. at Juilliard
  

• 26 Worker with flowers
  

• 29 Message part 2
  

• 33 Mazda roadster
  

• 34 Taoism founder
  

• 35 Browning’s “Rabbi Ben ___”
  

• 38 TV show with skits
  

• 40 “And. . . ?”
  

• 41 Propeller base?
  

• 44 Comb the “wrong” way
  

• 47 Message part 3
  

• 50 180° from NNW
  

• 51 ___ Lingus, Irish airline
  

• 52 Dundee denial
  

• 53 Civil War side: Abbr.
  

• 56 End of message
  

• 59 Overfill the bill
  

• 62 Scouting outing
  

• 63 “Rocky” actress Shire
  

• 64 Red ink
  

• 65 ___-Day vitamins
  

• 66 Vote in
  

• 67 Do as you’re told
  

• 68 Just so
  

• 69 Watch again
  

• 1 One who plays hurt
  

• 2 Scout master?
  

• 3 Lives
  

• 4 Type size
  

• 5 Whence “Beware the Ides of
  

• March”
  

• 6 Tchotchkes and knickknacks
  

• 7 Rhody, of song
  

• 8 Ruling body
  

• 9 “The Godfather: Part II” to
  

• “The Godfather”
  

• 10 Jazzman’s jargon
  

• 11 Have debts
  

• 12 All in the family
  

• 13 Conclusion
  

• 21 Edison’s middle name
  

• 22 Annapolis initials
  

• 26 This and that?
  

• 27 Other than that
  

• 28 First lady’s home
  

• 30 Muscat-eer?
  

• 31 Language including Zulu
  

• 32 Clan symbol
  

• 35 Drops in the ocean?
  

• 36 Olympian ruler
  

• 37 Award stars to
  

• 39 Unmarbled cut, say
  

• 42 “___ first you don’t . . .”
  

• 43 Optical range
  

• 45 Without delay, initially
  

• 46 Helter-___
  

• 48 “Twelfth Night” duke
  

• 49 Places for professeurs
  

• 54 Salami unit
  

• 55 “It’s ___!” (“I’ll be there!”)
  

• 56 Half a spider’s description
  

• 57 Furniture brand
  

• 58 Lock in the store?
  

• 59 Day-__ paint
  

• 60 Tennis shot
  

• 61 “___ it or lose it”
  

“Someone stuck it on my car. It’s either an ad for Victoria’s Secret, or it’s a clue. I could use a clue, since nothing’s working out.”

“I can’t solve this.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have a pencil.”

Cora slapped one in her hand. “Yes you do. I’ll be right outside. Hurry up, will you? I wouldn’t want you to miss a two-thumbs-up thriller.”

Cora went out and waited in the hall. She hated intruding on Sherry and Aaron just when they’d patched things up, but she had no choice. There was no one else to solve the puzzle for her. Except Harvey Beerbaum, and she couldn’t think what to tell him. Aside from the fact she wasn’t the Puzzle Lady. Which might not be a bad idea, all things considered. Gradually ease herself out of the part, return to a life of. . . what? Questions from people who didn’t like being duped?

Sherry came out the ladies’ room door, handed Cora a folded piece of paper and a pencil.

“Thanks,” Cora said, but Sherry had already stalked off down the hall back to her movie.

Cora unfolded the paper, looked at the puzzle.

The only thing that mattered was the theme answer. So what was the theme answer?
20 Across: Start of a message.

Never mind the clue numbers. It’s the long entries.

Cora read:

W
ILBUR’S
A
NTIQUES WAS
dark. The light upstairs was on. The light in his apartment. The light where he lived. There was a car parked outside. A car that by any rights belonged to him, indicating that he was home. And awake. At any rate, he’d be sure to hear her breaking into his shop.

Good thing she wasn’t going to do that.

Cora had another objective in mind.

Wilbur had been entirely too glib when she’d asked to inspect the crime scene. What’s to inspect? The four chairs were there, now they weren’t. That was certainly true, and yet… It had kept her from inspecting the barn. The barn had been, to all intents and purposes, merely the repository for the ladder with which one reached the window of the antiques shop. One broke into the barn in order to break into the shop.

The barn had never been broken into in its own right. Not since the disappearance of the chairs. The barn had been given short shrift. It deserved better.

Or so Cora thought as she crept through the dark, clutching the hammer and flashlight she’d brought along for the occasion. She kept the flashlight off, relying on the moonlight to guide her through the bushes and shrubs that bordered the back of Wilbur’s property.

Cora tiptoed up to the front of the barn. She inserted the claw of the hammer under the edge of the three-quarter-inch plywood over the broken window in the door, and began prying.

It took a while. When she’d pried the board off before, she’d been working on a huge rush of adrenaline. And she’d had no need to keep quiet. She’d also been rather zealous in pounding it back on, never dreaming she might ever want it off again.

Cora stuck her hand through the broken window, and unlocked the door. She wondered why the man didn’t invest in a simple hasp and padlock, rather than relying on the flimsy doorknob lock that had been breached before. Well, lucky that he hadn’t.

Cora set the hammer down on the plywood board, opened the door, and crept inside.

She had to risk the light. Without it, she couldn’t see a damn thing, was liable to walk into a wall. The flashlight was long and thin, held three D batteries, an inconvenient number, since they were always sold in pairs. She kept one hand over the lens, let the light filter out between her fingers. It was most unwieldy. Cora had to sling her purse over her shoulder, use both hands to aim the light.

The crossword puzzle came to mind, about one
man’s antiques being another man’s junk. That wasn’t quite it, it was something about merely old, but the sentiment applied. The items in Wilbur’s barn made the ones in his shop seem positively priceless.

There was an old-fashioned icebox, with no doors. On closer inspection, with no bottom either. An iron with one foot of electric cord and no plug, the wires neatly scraped clean, just in case one wanted to stick them into a wall outlet and electrocute oneself. A metal drawer full of bolts and washers but no nuts. An archery target with the straw coming out from the arrow holes that had all but demolished it. An oil painting, apparently intact, on stretched canvas but with no frame.

Cora stopped at that. Could it possibly be valuable? It was an abstract blob of color, looked like a kindergartener’s finger painting. Still, one never knew.

Cora worked her way through the barn to the back wall. Discovered a convertible couch without cushions. It had a mattress, however, which presumably could be folded out for a bed. It occurred to Cora she’d need a bed soon, when Sherry got married and she had to move out. Not that Sherry’d said anything about her moving out, but still. She wasn’t living with newly-weds. She wouldn’t be able to stand it.

A little farther on was a rectangular table covered by a tarp. Cora lifted one corner, saw it was a picnic table. The wood was old, faded, eroded, half eaten away. What would possess a man to keep such a thing was beyond her, let alone protect it with a tarp.

Cora couldn’t see what was underneath the table, but it was most likely rotted wooden picnic benches. Nonetheless, she figured she should check. She moved around the table to get a better grip on the tarp.

There came a bright flash, a sound like thunder, and a bullet whizzed by Cora’s head and embedded itself in the wall.

Cora stumbled back and fell. She banged her head against the concrete floor, and went out like a light.

C
HIEF
H
ARPER ARRIVED
at the antiques shop to find Mr. Wilbur serving Cora Felton a cup of hot tea. Cora was wrapped in a blanket, sitting in a plastic lawn chair at the side of the shop. Chief Harper drove over the grass to get there.

“Watch out for the gnomes,” Cora muttered, as he walked up.

“What’s going on?” Harper demanded.

Wilbur jerked his thumb. “The cop’s out back. The big dumb one. I wouldn’t expect much.”

“Someone called the police.”

“Yeah. I did.”

“To report a break-in.”

“That’s right.”

“Your shop was broken into?”

“No. The barn.”

“What’s Miss Felton doing here?”

“She broke in.”

“What?”

“That’s why I’m giving her tea. I always give tea to people who break into my barn.”

“There was a report of shots fired.”

“One shot. I was inside. I ran out to see what the hell was going on.”

“With someone shooting a gun?”

“Sounded like a pistol.” Wilbur jerked his thumb at the double-barreled shotgun leaning up against the side of the house. “I can handle a pistol. I went out, found her lying on the concrete floor.”

“She’d been shot?”

“I’m right here,” Cora said irritably.

“She’d been shot?” Harper repeated.

“No. Fainted from the shock.”

“Hell I did!” Cora protested. “I tripped in the dark and bumped my head.”

“Miss Felton, I’m trying to avoid asking you questions your lawyer wouldn’t want you to answer. You have the right to remain silent. Why don’t you exercise it?”

“There’s a handy thing to tell a woman,” Wilbur said. “Maybe I should have been a cop.”

“Damn it,” Cora said. “Would someone mind telling me what the hell happened here?”

“You don’t know? I guess you really did hit your head.” To Wilbur, Harper said, “Keep her here. I’ll check in with Sam.”

“I called for an ambulance. They’re gonna wanna take her.”

“You called for an ambulance?”

“She’s got a pretty good gash in her head.”

“From falling on the floor?”

“That’s right.”

“Any chance she was coshed?”

“Coshed. There’s a word.”

“Could it have happened?”

“Sure. I don’t know where they could have got to. I grabbed my gun and ran out as soon as I heard the shot. The shooter might have got away, but not if he hung around to hit her on the head.”

Chief Harper looked at Wilbur thoughtfully. “You’re being damn nice to someone who broke into your barn.”

“She’s been working on my robbery. Which is a darn sight more than other people I could mention.”

Chief Harper stomped off to look for Sam Brogan.

“Why
are
you being so nice?” Cora asked.

“Someone tried to shoot you. In my book, if they’re shootin’ at you, you must be doin’ something right.”

“That’s no answer.”

“How about I don’t want you to sue me for gettin’ hurt in my barn.”

“That doesn’t really fly. Particularly with you making the suggestion.”

“I suppose not.” He paused a moment. “You put the chairs on eBay.”

“And you bid on ’em.”

“I didn’t know it was you.”

“I didn’t know it was you either.”

“ ’Cause you didn’t tell me you was doin’ it.”

“What would you have done if I had?”

“Told you not to. It was a stupid, dumb-ass, girly thing to do. But it means you were trying to help.”

“Wanna know why I broke into your barn?”

“Don’t give a damn. You’re a murder suspect.

You must be desperate. Can’t count on you to think straight.”

Chief Harper came back from the direction of the barn. He had a funny look on his face. “Miss Felton. You feel up to examining the scene of the crime?”

“No, she doesn’t,” Wilbur said. “She’s waiting for the ambulance.”

“Phooey on that.” Cora lunged to her feet. “He’s not asking me to dance, just to look at something. How can that possibly hurt?”

Nonetheless, her legs were a little wobbly. Chief Harper had to hold her up.

Wilbur took her other arm. “This is not a good idea. The paramedics will be mad.”

“So you stay and explain it to them,” Harper told him.

“Just a damn minute here. That’s my barn.”

“Then you’ve seen it before. Wait here. Don’t make me waste a man detaining you.”

The barn was lit by bare bulbs that hung from the rafters. Adequate lighting did nothing to improve the appearance of the merchandise. If anything, it exposed its flaws.

Sam Brogan was inspecting the side wall. He did not look happy. But then, he never did. He turned as they approached. “Good. You got her. Sure hope you’re telling the truth. I’d hate to search the whole damn place.”

“What are you talking about?” Cora asked.

“That’s just Sam bein’ Sam,” Chief Harper said. “He’s looking for the bullet in the wall. To corroborate your story.”

“I haven’t got a story. I was in the dark. Someone shot at me. That’s all I remember.”

“Do you remember where you were?”

Cora looked around. The picnic table was in the far corner of the barn. The tarp hung down the side. It was a green tarp, old, frayed, with eyeholes where ropes could be tied.

“I was standing right about here,” Cora said, walking over to the table. “The bullet whizzed by my head.”

“Where did it come from?”

“The direction of the door. But it seemed closer.”

“How much closer?”

“I don’t know. Halfway, maybe.”

Chief Harper moved into position somewhere near the middle of the barn. “You got that, Sam?”

“ ’Course I got that,” Sam snorted. “It’s not where she fell,” he added grumpily. “Next time fall where you’re shot.”

“Where did I fall?”

“More to the left,” Harper said.

“My left?” Sam asked.

“Not you. Her.”

“Her left?”

“Sam, I’m talking to Cora. You fell more down here. Any luck yet, Sam?”

“ ’Course not. You got me lookin’ to the left. Wait a minute! Here we go! Lower than you thought. Closer to your heart than your head.”

“Mark the spot and dig it out. Try not to scratch the bullet.”

“Are you done with me?” Cora said. “I need a cigarette.”

“Go ahead and have one.”

“I’d love to. You find my purse?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, could I have it?”

“Not just yet.”

“Come on, Chief. Let me have my smokes.”

“You’ve got a gun in your purse.”

“So?”

“This is not kosher for a murder suspect.”

“Hey. I’m innocent until proven guilty. I have a right to bear arms.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s a smart thing to do.”

“Chief, I just want a cigarette. Can I have my purse back?”

“Not right now. You weren’t aware anyone was watching you until you heard the shot?”

“Or saw it. I’m not sure which came first.”

“But you didn’t know anyone was here?”

“If I did, it was subconscious.”

“But you didn’t shoot anyone? Perhaps wound your attacker?”

“Wound him? I barely had time to
resent
him. I tell you, the shot rang out and I went down.”

“Okay, got the bullet,” Sam Brogan called.

“Run it down to the lab.”

“This time of night? The technician will be asleep.”

“Wake him up, Sam.” Chief Harper turned back to Cora. He didn’t look happy. “Miss Felton. We’re going down to the police station. The prosecutor has a few questions.”

Wilbur came bubbling up. “Ambulance is here!”

“Sorry, Chief,” Cora said. “That’s my ride.”

Harper shook his head. “You can take the ambulance if you want. But we’re going down to the station.”