A Crossworder's Delight (10 page)

“The poem, of course!” E.T. exclaimed. Then he raised a hand and rapped himself on the head in a gesture of impatience. It was the sort of half-teasing, half-serious reminder an older kid would give a younger one. “You're right! Saying ‘thing' and ‘it.' That's totally dumb. Use
specifics
. The teachers at school are always telling us that … I guess you know
specific
is related to species. I looked it up in the dictionary.
Spy
's another one, and so is
specter
.… You could say, ‘I spy a specific species of speckled specters,' and be using words from the same family. Except for
speckled
, of course.”

Belle chuckled, turning to face him. “Since when do ghosts sport spots?”

“It's hypothetical …” In the corridor's dim light, E.T.'s already serious face grew more so. “Actually, it's a mnemonic—”

“And you're now going to explain that those memory aids are named after the Greek titan, Mnemosyne, who was in charge of such cerebral doings—and who became the mother of the Muses.”

“Yup.” A bright grin lit up E.T.'s face.

“I'd better be careful or you're going to take my job away from me.”

“I can't, ‘cause I'm only twelve,” was the sensible reply. Then E.T. repeated his previous offer. “So do you want me to recite the poem? I know the whole thing!”

The boy's need for approval and human connection was so evident that Belle felt instant empathy. “Your parents must be awfully proud of you,” she told him.

But this accolade only brought a swift glower, followed by an evasive and defensive, “How come a bunch of lions is called a
pride
instead of a
herd
or
a flock
?”

“I don't know the answer to that one,” Belle said as she scrutinized E.T.'s now uncommunicative face. “Maybe the king of the jungle would be insulted if someone insisted he was
sheepish
… or a
silly goose
.”

“If I were a lion and someone called me stupid names, I'd bite them,” E.T. insisted, then his closed and somber expression vanished as noise of a boisterous arrival raced up the stairs. “It's the chocolate village!” he exclaimed with a sudden smile. “I didn't think Mr. Karl and his dad would get here to install it today on account of the snow. The staff—that's me—gets to eat the people and animals and everything at the end of the holidays. The registered guests are given a chocolate house or barn or something.” Then E.T. roared away, a twelve-year-old boy focusing solely on childhood pleasures.

T
HE
chocolate village scene was indeed a wonderful creation. Belle watched as the buildings and their inhabitants were assembled on a swirling blanket of white chocolate: the houses, constructed as fancifully as their gingerbread counterparts, interspersed on the wintry scene; the cookie trees thoughtfully arranged; the horses and buggies; the cows in their stalls; the sheep dotting the fields; and a dusting of confectioner's sugar sprinkled, like snow, over the entire panorama.

It was a sweet-lover's delight. “Didn't I tell you?” E.T. demanded. “Didn't I? Didn't I?” His eyes were focused on the magic scene. “And it really tastes great, too. Mr. Karl says it's because they use only the best ingredients. He told me I can watch them making it one day, and eat whatever I want.… Chocolate comes from cacao seeds, which grow in rain forests like the ones in Latin America. Ancient Mayas and Aztecs made a spicy drink out of it and mixed the seeds with incense offerings to the gods.… I looked up all that stuff in the encyclopedia at school.… Cortez, he was a Spanish explorer; he found storerooms full of cacao seeds instead of gold. That's how valuable the stuff was …”

Belle nodded as E.T. continued to reel off additional facts, and as the inn's guests gathered around the table upon which Legendary's scene was being displayed. Rosco and Mitchell were not among the group, and Belle heard a number of grumbles and downright critiques of her husband's handling of the investigation. She kept her mouth shut, and fortunately E.T. was so intent on his own running commentary that he didn't respond to the accusations either.

“… The Aztecs and Mayas called it
chocolatl
.… You can use that in one of your puzzles, Belle. It's spelled—”

“
Chocolatl
,” old Mr. Liebig echoed as he crossed behind the group, the better to judge the sightlines of the delectable creation. Then he suddenly stopped and stared at Belle.

“Her husband was from the Netherlands,” he stated quite plainly.

Belle didn't need to ask who the
her
was. She knew in a trice that the old man was referring to the mystery crossword cookbook constructor.

“And her name was … was … was … Swerve.”

“Swerve?” Belle asked. It was no surname—or given name—she'd ever heard of. She tried to imagine what an appropriate synonym might be. “Do you mean Dodge, perhaps, Mr. Liebig?”

“Why would a person be named after a car?” was his perplexed reply. Then his face assumed a bright but mindless smile, indicating that the entire subject was now forgotten.

Twelve

T
HEY
spoke while sitting in total darkness. The pitch-black seemed to contribute to their sense of seclusion and privacy; however, a certain paranoia arose from the fact that she couldn't see his face and eyes, or accurately interpret his expressions. Likewise, he couldn't read hers. No hand gestures, deceitful squints, or raised eyebrows were shared. As a result, distrust and tension infused each of their hushed words.

“And how do you propose we get the blessed thing out of the inn?” she snapped in a tired voice. “How? That's what I want to know. Our snow-shoveling, underage snoop has every vehicle in the lot under the watch of his beady little eyes. You heard the brat bragging to Polycrates. We couldn't go near a single one of those cars without there being a headline about it the
Boston Globe
tomorrow morning.”

“Relax, will you? I'm not going to throw in the towel. There still has to be a way to pull this off. We're almost home.”

“Ha! You had this so well planned, didn't you?
Mr. I've Thought Of Everything
,” was her facetious reply. “This is Massachusetts in November, you dope; you should have factored in the possibility of a snowstorm when you worked out your
brilliant
strategy—for as long as you've lived in New England? For as long as
I've
lived in New England?” She shook her head from side to side for effect, forgetting that he couldn't see it. “Neither one of us thought of snow … which leaves us trapped with the goods sitting in our laps.”

“Okay, okay, I don't need to be lectured about this. So it snowed. So what? We move to plan B. We'll just have to carry the thing out when we leave. Sneak it through the kitchen or something; use the side door, maybe. One of us will stand guard, or create a distraction, that's all.”

“You are so dense. You're worse than a block of firewood. I should have never agreed to go in on this with you. ‘We'll just carry it out'? In what? A suitcase? The frame's almost twice as big as the ones we brought. It wouldn't even fit into one of those garland crates in the storage area; or that giant wreath box.… And everyone in the place is going to be watching the comings and goings like hawks until all the guests check out. Mitch has got this place in severe lockdown mode.… The only way to get it out is in the middle of the night. And with this snow, even that option's gone. We should have taken it straight out to the car last night like I said. But oh, no, you've got to ‘give it the once-over' first. Now look where we are.”

“Keep your voice down, will you? These doors are far from soundproof.” He sucked in a big breath of air and let it out slowly. “Speaking of Mitch; do you think he knows the truth?”

“Maybe, maybe not. He was pretty young when this was all set up, right? It depends on what the old man said—and what Mitchell remembers.”

The man drummed his fingernails on the desktop in front of him, not speaking for a long moment. Eventually he said, “I say we cut our losses and take a chance that no one remembers anything. At this point, it's the only way out.”

“What're you talking about?” she demanded; but she did so cautiously, sensing she wouldn't like what was she was about to hear.

“I'm thinking we should settle for a smaller piece of the pie.” He snickered to himself. “What do you say?”

“You mean bring someone else in on the deal? But there's already—”

“Relax. I didn't say anything about additional people, did I?”

“No, but—”

“It means a smaller payday, but we need to make some adjustments. There's still a lot of money to be made on the back end, remember? And I figure what Mitch doesn't know won't hurt him.” He then explained his new plan to her, finishing by saying, “Get some sleep. We'll make our move at four
A.M.
And don't turn turtle on me; I can't do this without your help.”

Thirteen

A
T
8:29 the following morning, a yelp erupted from the inn's front parlor. The cry was followed by the crash and clatter of a cup and saucer falling to the floor, and the hurried footsteps of Morgan Marz running to the scene. In his hands were a stack of Sunday newspapers, which had arrived later than usual since there was now well over a foot of snow outside.

“It's back!” Mrs. Towbler burbled in her “Ox-Bridge” accent. “Or … well, I assume that's your famous poem hanging there.”

Morgan only stared at the wall above the desk, while Mitchell entered the room followed immediately by Joy Allman, who was carrying a basket of freshly baked muffins.

“Why didn't you tell us?” Morgan asked her. “You know how concerned we've been.”

“Tell you about what?” Joy serenely placed the hot muffins on a heating tray on the sideboard and then bent to pick up broken pieces of china. “Butterfingers, the lot of them,” she grumbled, but softly enough so that Mrs. Towbler didn't hear.

“That the Longfellow was back!”

Joy straightened up slowly. She wasn't young, but neither was she old enough to have as stiff and sore a body as she now made a show of unbending. “Well, so it is,” she announced when she'd achieved her full height. “What do you know about that!” Despite the enthusiastic words, she sounded more jaded than surprised.

“And decorated for the hols,” Mrs. Towbler continued to babble brightly as she walked across the room to examine the framed poem, which was indeed now hung with tinsel and twinkling lights. “You clever, clever boys! This was a ruse to keep us snowbound folk entertained, wasn't it? Like one of those mystery weekends one reads about: a charming old inn, an unsolved crime, sinister shenanigans, creepy creaks on the staircase, and so forth.… I assume your Mr. Polycrates and that rather oafish policeman were actors hired to help move the plot along. They certainly did provide the necessary probing queries and clandestine, lowering of brows.… Is the little boy an actor, too … the one with the alien name? He should go far, that child … with all the kiddie movies Hollywood produces nowadays. He has a rather nice, if precocious, appeal.”

At that moment, E.T. appeared, the earflaps on his hat flipped upward, lending him the appearance of a curious and determined puppy. He cast a quick, suspicious glance toward Joy Allman, and a more covert but equally leery one at Morgan, then walked purposefully toward the poem, staring at it long and hard.

“Oh, this is too marvelous!” Mrs. Towbler's tinkling voice gushed. “I must fetch my husband—and the others, of course. What fun! A genuine whodunit … but instead of Monsieur Poirot, we have Mr. Polycrates. Oh, my! I should have noticed the similarity yesterday—the P, the O, the R in the name of Christie's clever sleuth being reproduced in the Greek Polycrates.… Oh, you Americans, such an inventive race!” Then she turned to greet another arriving guest. “Ah, Miss Cadburrie. Do look at the fun gift we've been given! The inn's famous treasure has been miraculously reinstalled.”

“What's all the hullabaloo?” the Yorkes asked in unison as they also walked into the parlor.

It was Miss Cadburrie who replied. Her tone was testy. “The Longfellow's back.” She joined E.T., and began studying the poem with gimlet eyes—although not before she'd shot “the Brit” a superlatively nasty glance.

“But I d-d-don't understand,” Mitchell Marz stuttered. “Who would have d-d-done this …?”

“Done what?” It was the Reaseys turn to arrive on the scene, and they also looked at the returned artwork with genuine surprise. “Well, my goodness, Ruthie baby …”

“The Marz twins have played a most entertaining hoax upon us,” Mrs. Towbler told them.

“But I didn't—” Mitchell began as Miss Cadburrie quickly interrupted him.

“How do you know it was a hoax?” she demanded.

Mrs. Towbler gave the ill-tempered woman her sweetest and most condescending smile. “Whatever else could it have been, my dear lady, except a
divertisement
intended to enliven our visit? Something that's stolen doesn't magically reappear, does it? At least, at home that's not how cases of larceny work; a family heirloom is purloined, and that's the last one sees of it. Clearly, we were intended to solve “The Mystery of the Missing Manuscript” over dinner last night, and we all failed the test miserably.” She laughed. “I must fetch my husband … and Mr. Heath, as well. Poor man, he was such a nervous wreck, yesterday—”

“Barry Heath told us he never gets up before ten,” was Miss Cadburrie's chilly response, although Mrs. Towbler had already sailed from the room.

Fourteen

S
O
that's it? The missing poem was nothing but a
prank?”
Belle asked Rosco as she took careful aim, tossing a stick for Kit and Gabby to chase across the snowy grounds of the “dog park”—what had once been the spacious seaside lawns of the long-defunct Dew Drop Inn and that now served as a dog-run, toboggan-slalom, kite-flying arena, and all-around good-time gathering spot.