Corpus de Crossword (19 page)

“Someone got to him before you did.” Belle nodded slowly. “… I follow that hypothesis, but I'm still in the dark about
who
your supposed murderer might be.”

“Tree Hoffmeyer hired me to solve the cold case in his hometown, right?”

“Right …”

“And he alluded to the fact that his opponent might use the issue of an unsolved down-home crime against him.”

Again, Belle nodded thoughtfully. “Right …” Then her head jerked upward, sending her fine blond hair jittering in the breeze. “Are you thinking … are you
suggesting
that the incumbent is somehow responsible for the skeletal remains being dumped on Gordon's property? And Petri knew something?”

“I don't know
what
I'm thinking yet. But you know me and my feeling about coincidences—”

“Where there's smoke, there's fire.”

“That about sums it up. Seems to bring it all full circle, too.”

“You mean, about the arson—?”

Rosco looked at Belle. “You tell me … Of course Petri died
before
the Quigley house burned.”

They walked on while Belle began murmuring almost to herself. “SMOKE SCREEN … SMOKE 'EM OUT …”

“Huh?”

She kept plodding forward as she spoke, her gaze fixed on the leaf-strewn grass. “Those were answers to an anonymous puzzle I received the other day.”

“Refresh my memory—did you tell me about this? Because if you did, I must have missed it.” Rosco's tone had taken on a worried, protective air.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” was the nonanswer. “SMOKING—”

“Hey, Belle! Hello? Wake up.”

She lifted her eyes from the ground. “What?”

“You didn't tell me you'd gotten an anonymous puzzle.”

“I told Sara.”

“Oh, great. Fine. She's my secretary now? And what was
her
reaction?” But before Belle could answer, Rosco continued in an equally concerned tone: “Look, you know how weird and spooky things got the last time an anonymous puzzle-guy appeared on the scene—”

“That was Sara's response, too,” was Belle's airy reply.

“Belle!”

She turned to face him, her face suddenly flushing and her shoulders squaring off. “Rosco. I'm not a baby, and I don't need my hand held—” Then she saw the change in his own expression: hurt mingling with something that fleetingly resembled humiliation. “I know I'm being blunt, but—”

“It's time for me to back off.”

“I didn't say that …”

“You didn't need to.”

He smiled then—a little crookedly—while she smiled gently back, and after a second's pause held out her hand. “I'm being cautious, Rosco. I am! I promise.”

“I don't know about
cautious,”
he said as he squeezed her fingers.

“Okay …
sensible
—”

“Still not an adjective I'd use to describe you …
Obstinate
would be more like it—”

“That's what Sara said, too.”

Rosco raised his eyebrows. “It takes one to know one.”

“And
that's
precisely what I told her myself.”

Rosco shook his head and stifled a chuckle. “So, you received a mystery crossword, and decided to hide it—”

“I didn't hide it! Don't be so dramatic! It simply wasn't relevant—”

“And now it is?”

Belle looked at her hand in her husband's, their fingers so effortlessly entwined that she almost couldn't feel where her skin began and Rosco's ended. “
A Burning Question
… that was the puzzle's title—the theme being answers containing the word
smoke:
SMOKE AND MIRRORS … SMOKE SIGNAL … and now we have a case of arson in Taneysville …”

Kit barked and dropped her stick on Rosco's feet, but the puppy, for a moment, was ignored. “And you're guessing that coincidence has nothing to do with it …”

Belle nodded. “To quote someone I'm quite fond of: ‘That about sums it up.'”

The couple resumed their walk while Kit, now bored with these decidedly dull, slow, two-footed creatures, raced on ahead, bounding after rabbits or even leaves that whisked squirrel-like across the rolling landscape.

Finally Rosco spoke again. “Maybe it comes back to the simple fact that Alex Gordon has an enemy … Maybe we need to be looking for possible motives out in Taneysville: a construction worker who wasn't hired—”

“And that person would be angry enough to bury a skeleton on Gordon's property and then set fire to the house …? I don't know, Rosco. That's behavior that not only indicates a high degree of rage, it's premeditated—and pretty sophisticated … Besides, where did this frustrated local find the skeletal remains in the first place?”

“That's it. That's the ten-dollar question.”

“Sixty-four thousand.”

“Huh?”

“The expression you're looking for is: ‘the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.'”

“Eh, what's a few bucks here and there?” Rosco put his arm around Belle and drew her close. “So, what's your theory, Miss Mathematics?”

She nestled close, but her sigh remained one of frustration. “You got me … My research into Gordon's former wife's disappearance did nothing but point out what a swell guy he was … No charges pressed against the business partner who absconded with the dough, a lot of ‘no comments' as to his wife's motives. In print, he never lashed out at her, or her new fella—just took it on the chin … a good guy done a dirty deed … Reading the microfiche—brief as the articles were—made you admire his sense of decency and fair play. And, although the authorities alluded to an impending inquiry into the missing funds, it clearly didn't become breaking news since Far Yukon isn't a publicly held entity. Apparently, it was up to Gordon to pressure the Boston DA's office if he expected an investigation of his fraudulent partner and wife.”

Rosco let out a frustrated groan. “That's who we need to talk to, Gordon's ex-wife. But she's in California with his daughter. Sounds like she's keeping her distance, too—hasn't seen him in eight years.”

“Eight years? She ran off over fifteen years ago. That's what the articles indicated. Meaning he's had contact with her since she left him … Darn, that scratches my other theory.”

“Is this a theory you'd like to share with me?”

“Well, his wife was a ‘trophy' type. You know, a real babe—and very young; eighteen when they married, and barely twenty when she took off with the partner.”

“What are you getting at?”

“It's nothing. The numbers don't work.”

“Well, let me hear it.”

“Okay. It was kind of far-fetched, but I just thought if his wife was twenty when she disappeared—the body might have been hers. But it doesn't work if Gordon saw her eight years ago. She would have been twenty-seven.”

Rosco pondered this information for a few minutes, then finally said, “Do you feel like doing some entertaining tonight?”

Belle shrugged. “I guess. Who were you thinking of asking over?”

“Abe Jones.”

CHAPTER 25

“No. No, really, Belle, it was really good. Great, in fact. Really great.” Abe Jones gave the statement more enthusiasm than was called for, then covered his rather disingenuous expression by lifting a mug of steaming coffee up to his lips.

It was all too much for Rosco. He exploded with a raucous laugh. “Nice try, Abe, but I've always been of the school that says if someone uses the word
really
three times in one sentence, it lacks a certain amount of sincerity. I thought you had more charm than that, or at least were a better actor.”

“You stay out of this, you jerk,” Abe shot back with a smile. “Besides, it was two sentences, not one.” He then returned to Belle. “No, really … it was great. It's just that my mom's tuna casseroles are … I don't know … more tuna-ey, I guess. Hey, she's always prone to overdo things. Maybe she puts more tuna fish in hers. Who knows? But I thought yours was great, too. Really, I mean that … The spinach was an interesting addition …”

“Thanks, Abe. It did taste a little bland to me, but I followed the recipe exactly. The chopped spinach included. Maybe I should have put more cayenne pepper in it.”

Rosco raised his hands. “Whoa, whoa … Let's not go back to overdoing the cayenne again.”

Having just finished dinner, the three were sitting on stools around the work island in Belle and Rosco's kitchen. And although Abe Jones was well aware of what they wanted to talk about, the subject had yet to come up. Rosco and Abe had been such close friends, for so long, that conversation until this point had focused mainly on handball, Abe's long list of lady friends, when was he ever going to settle down and get married, the Patriots' chances of getting into the Super Bowl again, the dismal finish of the Sox's season, the best places to pick up inexpensive second-hand furniture, et cetera.

Abe set his coffee mug down on the butcher block work island and picked up a large unopened can of tuna fish that sat on the counter next to the refrigerator. “Maybe this is the reason,” he said. “You're using Chicken of the Sea. I think my mom might use a fishier-tasting brand than this.”

Belle took the can from him and gave Rosco an odd look. “Did you buy two cans of tuna?”

Rosco shook his head, fearing the worst. Belle opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out the recycling bin. She began pawing through the empty soup and dog food cans.

“Forget it,” Rosco said. “That's the only can I bought.”

“I can't believe this. I can't believe I forgot to put in the tuna. I can't believe it.”

“Well, it did lack a certain amount of … chewiness,” Abe said—as politely as he could. “The noodle and cream part and the mushrooms were all great, though … if you think about it.”

The three of them erupted in laughter; after they settled down, Abe said, “Great coffee,” and they began laughing again.

“Look at the bright side,” Rosco said, “we still have something for lunch tomorrow.” He took a long swallow of his coffee. “I do want to yak a little bit about this skeleton, before you hit the road, Abe. Have your tests yielded anything more specific?”

“I have definite DNA samples, but that doesn't do me a heck of a lot of good at this point.”

“Why not?” Belle asked.

“Unless I can match my samples to a family member, I can't make an I.D. And I have no idea where to start looking for matches. We're not about to start taking DNA samples from everyone in Taneysville to see if they might be related to our mystery woman. Which, to be honest, I don't see happening.”

“Right. I think consensus—at this point—is that her body was dumped there. The odds of the woman coming from Taneysville seem to be nonexistent,” Rosco muttered.

“I'm having trouble with the ‘dumped there' theory, though.”

Belle cocked her head slightly and said, “Why's that, Abe?”

“Where'd the remains come from in the first place?”

“Grave robber?” Belle said, somewhat unsure of her answer.

“No, that doesn't work for me. I've got major organic decomposition samples from inside the rib cage, skull, and pelvic area—basically, the worms had a field day with her; and clothing samples were next to nothing. Meaning she was never buried in a casket—ever. Ergo, her body wasn't stolen from any cemetery … And it would also mean that someone would have had to remember where this homicide victim's body was hidden, then gone and dug it up and transported it to the Gordon property. Why? If you think about it, there's only one person on earth who knew of the whereabouts of this lady's skeleton—the person, or persons, who murdered her. And by moving the body from
another
location, and then reinterring it on the Quigley site, that person only brings a forgotten murder to the light of day. What criminal's going to risk that? … Unless we're looking at the psychology of the killer who wants to get caught—like an arsonist camping out at the scene of the fire …”

“Whew,” Belle groaned. “I had this theory that it might have been Gordon's first wife. I guess there's no way the body could have belonged to a twenty-seven-year-old?”

“No. This woman was in her late teens … Possibly twenty or twenty-one, but that's it.”

Rosco opened the freezer. “Didn't we used to have some ice cream in here?”

“I put it on my cereal this morning.”

Abe gave Belle a strange look, and she uttered a blithe: “It was vanilla. That's the same as milk and sugar, right?”

“Ooohh-kaaay … I guess that makes sense. Anyway, all I'm saying is that I don't believe the body was put there
recently.”

“And you have no read as to when our young woman might have died?” Rosco asked.

Jones shook his head. “No. The problem I'm having is this: If she was buried a number of years ago, the decomposition rate is completely up in the air, because the plot was used as a garden. Normally, textile samples can be a fairly reliable indicator, but with a vegetable garden, you have to factor in how often the ground was watered—you can't just analyze average rainfalls; and then, what type of fertilizers were used, and with what regularity. All of that information died with the Quigleys. She could have been down there for fifteen, twenty,
forty
years.”

Belle spoke up again. “But the coincidence of these two situations occurring on what is now Gordon's property seems extreme, Abe—despite everything you're telling us about the remains and the risk of reinterring them. After all, somebody torched Gordon's house last night.”

“Most probably, the two situations are unrelated …” Jones mused. “Or at least perpetrated by different people—”

“On the other hand,” Rosco said, “they might be very closely related. What if the house contained some scrap of evidence, something hidden within the walls, so to speak, that would have shed a light on our mystery woman? Maybe even identified her murderer?”