Celebrity Sudoku (20 page)
Authors: Kaye Morgan
“I’ll look into that when I get home,” Liza promised. “Which should be fairly soon. They’ve decided to put off the whole celebrity thing a few months, and who knows what they’ll do when that time finally rolls around? They may go with an entirely different theme.”
“You mean, considering how tragically it all turned out?” Mrs. H.’s voice took on an eager lilt. “If you’re coming home soon, does that mean you’ve solved the murder?”
If I had and told you, it would be all over Maiden’s Bay before suppertime,
Liza thought.
Liza thought.
Aloud, she said, “Not yet, I’m afraid,” shifting a nervous glance over to Michael.
“Tell her I said hello,” he mouthed.
“Michael says hello,” Liza obediently added. “And I hope Rusty hasn’t been making a nuisance of himself.”
“You’re classing me in with the nuisances now?” Michael burst out.
Liza hushed him, trying to listen to her neighbor.
“Well, he almost took a bite out of my nice widower friend Ed,” Mrs. Halvorsen admitted.
Liza almost dropped the phone in shock.
“What?”
“What?”
“I guess Rusty thought we were wrestling.” Mrs. H. started to giggle. “Haven’t had anything like that happen since my courting days.”
TMI,
Liza thought, literally speechless. An odd ringtone filled the silence.
Liza thought, literally speechless. An odd ringtone filled the silence.
“Speak of the devil,” Mrs. H. said. “He’s texting me.”
She sighed. “I wish he’d just call. Texting him back is such a chore. The keys are so small.”
“I know how that feels.” Liza thought of Michael’s miniature laptop. What was it with men sometimes?
“I learned to type on an old Remington manual,” Mrs. H. said. “The keys were stiff enough to break your fingernails, but at least the keyboard was big enough to accommodate two hands.”
Liza heard her neighbor’s nails click against the little phone—missing the key, apparently. “I’m still not used to working on only nine little buttons,” Mrs. H. complained. “How do I say, ‘Not now’? The
N
is on the sixth button, so I tap that two times ...”
N
is on the sixth button, so I tap that two times ...”
Liza’s eye fell on one of the mystery puzzles Ritz had created. In the first subgrid, the sixth space had a two in it.
“Um, Mrs. H., something just came up,” she said into the phone. “Can I give you a buzz back a little later? . . . Right. Thanks. Give Rusty a hug. Bye.”
She hung up and turned to see Michael give her a reproachful look. “I know it might be trying to listen to the neighborhood gossip at long-distance rates, but that was a pretty ruthless way to cut Mrs. H. short. ‘Something came up,’ huh?”
“Something did.” Liza pointed to the phone she’d just hung up. “What do you see?”
“A telephone.”
“I mean on the face of it.”
“Oh—the keypad?”
Liza picked up one of the puzzle sheets and used it to cover the bottom row of keys—the *, 0, and #. “Now what do you see?”
“Three-quarters of the keypad?” Michael offered blankly.
“How about a nine-space array, just like a sudoku subgrid,” Liza said. “Nine—actually eight keys that, if you tap them one to four times, can encode a text message with all twenty-six letters.”
She tapped the phone’s keys. “A code key that sits in everyone’s home and in a lot of people’s pockets nowadays—and maybe the key to Ritz Tarleton’s puzzle messages.”
15
Leaning over the side of the sofa, Liza placed the telephone front and center on the end table.
“You’d better bring another chair over here,” she told Michael.
“I’m not going to lug any of these armchairs.” Instead, he went into the dining room and returned with a chair from the set there, placing it right in front of the table.
Meanwhile, Liza gathered up the puzzles Ritz had sent to Sam Pang and Lolly Popovic. “When we were trying this before, we wondered if there were clues we should skip. So now I’ll only be looking for ones, twos, threes, and maybe fours. I’ll give the space and the number in it, and you’ll use the keypad to say what letter that’s supposed to be.”
“Okay,” Michael said. “Fire away.”
Liza picked up the puzzle she’d glanced at while talking on the phone. “This is the one that gave me the idea. Mrs. H. was sending a text message from her cell phone and mentioned that she was tapping twice on the sixth key. I noticed that the sixth space in the first subgrid on the puzzle had a two.”
“So the first letter is
N
,” Michael said.
N
,” Michael said.
“Right,” Liza said, writing it down. “The next of our target numbers is right next door, in space four of the second grid. It’s a three.”
“Box four, three, third letter . . . That’s an
I
,” Michael reported.
I
,” Michael reported.
Liza added that and moved on. “Third subgrid, space two, showing another three.”
Michael peered at the keypad. “The third letter there is
C
.”
C
.”
“Uh-huh.” Liza’s pen scratched away at the bottom of the paper. “Now, right beside it, third subgrid again, third space, but this time there’s a two.”
“Second letter? That’s an
E
.”
E
.”
Liza added it. “Well, at least that gives us a word—nice.”
“Don’t get too enthusiastic,” Michael warned her. “We got words before—they just didn’t make any sense together.”
Liza was already looking ahead on the puzzle. “Well, there are only four more clues that we’d be interested in, so let’s see.”
She put her finger down on the side of the puzzle. “Fourth subgrid, third space again.”
“Okay . . .”
“This time it’s a three instead of a two.”
“And this time it’s an
F
instead of an
E
,” Michael said.
F
instead of an
E
,” Michael said.
Liza added the new letter to the bottom of the page. “Fifth subgrid, second space, and we’ve got a one.”
“Makes sense. That’s the first letter of the alphabet—
A
,” Michael told her.
A
,” Michael told her.
Her pen scratched that letter in. “Subgrid seven, second space again, this time a three,” Liza read off. “Did we do this before?”
“Yes,” Michael told her. “It was a
C
.”
C
.”
She added that, then read, “Eighth subgrid, third space, number two—we’ve done that one, too.”
Michael nodded. “It’s an
E
again.”
E
again.”
She handed him the paper, and he read the two words at the bottom. “Nice face.”
“Considering what Ritz did to Samantha, I’d say that makes a definite connection,” Liza said. “I was there to catch her reaction when she saw her face in the mirror. She was pretty much creeped out just getting sudoku from Ritz. Imagine how she’d feel discovering a message like this in the puzzle.”
“Imagination may be all we have here,” Michael told her with a dubious frown. “Apply this ‘code key’ to any hundred sudoku, and I bet at least one of them will yield some kind of message that would seem relevant.”
“Well, ‘nice face’ seems a hell of a lot more relevant than ‘love her globes,’ ” Liza retorted. “Let’s be scientific about this and try to decode the other puzzle that went to Sam.”
“The one with the errors in it,” Michael said.
Liza nodded. “The one that Uncle Jim thought more likely to have a message embedded.”
“When you told me about your IM chat, your uncle wasn’t so positive,” Michael argued. “He said something like the errors made it possible that there was a message.”
Liza picked up the sheet with the second puzzle on it. “Let’s stop talking and see what’s likely or possible.”
She started reading off the relevant clues. “First subgrid, a one in the sixth space.”
“That’s an
M
.”
M
.”
“Same subgrid, a three in the ninth space.”
“That’s a
Y
.”
Y
.”
“So we have an M-Y already,” she told Michael triumphantly.
He gave her a dubious frown. “And if we do three more, we might end up with something like M-Y-Z-R-Q.”
“Okay, we’ll keep going and see. Moving on to the second subgrid, we have a three in the third space. We’ve seen that already.” She screwed up her face, trying to remember. “Is that an
E
?”
E
?”
“No, it’s an
F
.”
F
.”
She wrote that down and moved on. “Third subgrid, sixth space—a three.”
“That’s an
O
.”
O
.”
Noting that, Liza scanned farther along in the puzzle.
“Fifth subgrid, sixth space, we have a two—that’s an
N
, right?”
N
, right?”
Michael nodded. “Which so far gives us M-Y-F-O-N—and more a jumbled collection of letters than a message.”
Liza felt her own niggle of doubt but doggedly went on. “Sixth subgrid, third space, two. Wait a minute, I remember this one—
E
.”
E
.”
“That’s right.” Michael sounded a bit smug. “Doesn’t seem to be getting any clearer, does it?”
Liza’s only response was to move on in the puzzle. “Seventh subgrid—the lower left-hand corner. There’s a three in the fifth space.”
“The middle square.” Michael looked at the keypad. “That’s an
L
.”
L
.”
“Eighth subgrid, another three in the sixth space.”
“Which gets us an
O
,” Michael said.
O
,” Michael said.
“And finally, another three in the middle space in the last subgrid, which is an
L
,” Liza finished.
L
,” Liza finished.
Michael snatched the paper. “Which gives us—M-Y-F-O-N-E-L-O-L. Looks pretty much random to me.”
Liza frowned, took the paper back, and said, “Not necessarily.” After making two slashes with her pen, she handed the puzzle to Michael again.
“MY/FONE/LOL,” he read. “So you’re saying Ritz couldn’t spell?”
“I’m saying that people who text simplify their messages—otherwise their thumbs would fall off. ‘L-O-L’ is texting shorthand for ‘laugh out loud.’ And ‘F-O-N-E’ is quicker to type than ‘P-H-O-N-E.’ Ritz did have a picture of Sam Pang’s ‘nice face’ on her phone. The fact that the ‘LOL’ she added at the end invalidates the puzzle just sort of rubs it in.”
“A brilliant theory, ably argued,” Michael told her. “But I’m still not convinced.”
“On to Lolly’s messages.” Liza got that sheet and began. “First subgrid, eighth space, there’s a two.”
“Which turns out to be a
U
.”
U
.”
“We move to the subgrid next door, seventh space, a three.”
“That’s an
R
.”
R
.”
“And up and over in the same grid is a two in the sixth space—that’s an
N
.” Liza marked it down.
N
.” Liza marked it down.
“Giving us U-R-N. So either it’s a big pot, or Lolly has to earn, as in make money, to pay blackmail.” Michael tried to keep his voice light, but Liza could see he was beginning to get tired of this. She hurried on. “Third subgrid, second space with a one—that’s an
A
, right?”
A
, right?”
“Yup,” Michael said.
“And then right below it is a three in the fifth space.”
“Which is an
L
.” He craned his neck to check the letters that Liza had written down. “Aha! Maybe Ritz misspelled ‘urinal.’ ”
L
.” He craned his neck to check the letters that Liza had written down. “Aha! Maybe Ritz misspelled ‘urinal.’ ”
Liza didn’t rise to the bait, choosing to go on. “We skip the next two subgrids, apparently because it would put conflicting clues on the same line. The sixth grid has a three in the fourth space.”
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