Killer Sudoku (21 page)
Authors: Kaye Morgan
They had a couple of wrong starts and some wandering along hallways before they finally came to Room 235. The door didn’t look much different from the one to Liza’s suite—or Gemma Vereker’s for that matter.
Taking a deep breath, Liza raised her hand and knocked.
No answer.
Liza forced her racing thoughts into some form of order. The room could be vacant, or the occupant could be out. This didn’t necessarily mean they’d burst in on another dead body.
Still, that idea made her rap more forcefully when she tried knocking for a second time.
“Who’s there?” a rather blurred voice asked, its tone sharp.
Liza stood with her mouth open for a second before answering, “Liza Kelly.” It didn’t quite have as much oomph as saying, “This is the police.”
Still, the door rattled open to reveal Roy Conklin with a full case of bed head. “I started off resting my eyes and must have dropped off,” he apologized, trying to pat his hair back into order. “What’s up?”
She glanced over at Michael. What had seemed like a great inspiration now seemed a little silly. Still, she decided to go on. “Do the numbers three, eight, one, nine, two, and five mean anything to you?” she asked, wincing at how lame her voice sounded even in her own ears.
“They might be in pairs.” Michael tried to help. “Three-eight, one-nine, two-five.”
“Or maybe even thirty-eight, nineteen, and twenty-five?” Liza suggested.
The look on Roy’s face incontrovertibly showed that he had no idea what the numbers might mean. His eyes, however, showed that he was wondering how to get help against a pair of apparent maniacs.
Liza quickly decided that explanations would not make either of those looks go away, so she decided to cut her losses. “Well,” she said, “it was just a chance. Sorry we disturbed you. We’ll get out of your hair now.”
She could have kicked herself for that last line as Roy’s hand went back to his disheveled hair.
They came down the side passage and almost reached the main hallway when Liza saw Charley Ormond rushing past with a camera crew. Catching hold of Michael’s arm, she drew back.
“Three guesses where she’s heading,” Liza whispered.
“So where do we go?” Michael asked.
“If Mrs. H. answers the door, she’ll send them here,” Liza said. “Otherwise, they’ll head for the elevator. Either way she’ll catch up to us.” She gazed down the hallway and then dragged Michael along with her to the fire stairs. Liza pushed the door open, pulled him through to the landing, then left the door slightly ajar.
A second later, she saw Roy Conklin padding into view in his stocking feet, still rumpled and carrying a plastic ice bucket. But he never made it to the ice machine.
Charley Ormond and her crew caught him in the middle of the hall. Roy froze like a deer caught in the camera spotlight as Charley shoved a mike in his face.
“Have you heard that Gemma Vereker has died?” she asked excitedly.
Poor Roy stood there with his lips curved in something like a smile. The last time Liza had seen a “natural” expression like that, it had been on the face of the guest of honor at a funeral—one that should have had a closed casket.
“That—that’s terrible news,” he said, still with that ghastly smile. “Are you sure?”
“We’ve gotten reports.” Charley had her back to the camera, and Liza could see the bafflement on the reporter’s face as she tried to get something she could broadcast. “It’s possible the whole tournament may be canceled.”
“How terrible,” Roy said again. “This tournament represents a very important juncture for sudoku, with the national coverage—”
“Yes, very important.” Charley cut him off. “And it must be a great shock that such a famous star like Gemma, after devoting her time—”
“What?” Roy paused for a second, still with that awful rictus smile. Still worse, Liza saw nervous perspiration—“flop sweat” as actors called it—had begun pouring from his armpits, plastering his thin shirt till it clung like a second skin to his pudgy form. “Yes, very sad for a celebrity to die. Terrible.”
The sweat stain actually met across his chest, making his nipples plainly visible.
“Yes.” When Charley realized she was echoing along with him, she shook her head and quickly moved to end this disaster of an interview. “Thanks very much for your time, Professor Conklin.”
“Yes, well, you’re welcome.” Roy still stood awkwardly, in front of the camera, shifting his ice bucket from hand to hand, still flashing that frozen grin.
Charley just ran her hand across her throat in a cutting gesture and led the crew off in silence. Roy padded back to his room, probably looking for a fresh shirt.
“Now I see why he prefers to take the back way,” Liza whispered. “Poor guy.”
“More like ‘poor Charley,’ ” Michael replied. “After an interview like that, I wouldn’t be surprised to catch her shoving a tumbleweed under Roy’s bed tonight.” He stuck his head out. “I think the coast is clear.”
As they retraced the route to Liza’s suite, he began to chuckle. “Maybe I can use that sweat bit in my script, with somebody being interrogated. Otherwise—well, that was entertaining, but not exactly useful.”
“And you were a lot of help.” Looking back on her own stumbling conversation with Roy, Liza felt her face go red. “Why didn’t you stop me before I left our suite?”
Michael shrugged. “It seemed a good idea at the time,” he offered. “And sometimes those sideways jumps of logic you make seem to work.”
“Yeah,” Liza muttered, stomping along the plush carpeting. “Sometimes.”
They came back to Suite 206 and announced their less than complete success. “We wound up at Roy Conklin’s room,” Liza said.
“It’s at the end of a hall, well away from anyone,” Michael added. “You’ve got to give the resort credit. That’s probably exactly the way Roy likes it.”
“He had no idea what those numbers meant, by the way, and was probably kind of annoyed at being woken up to be asked.” Liza finished their report. “That’s one idea gone like a busted balloon. I’m hoping someone else had an inspiration while we were away.”
The discussion had continued in their absence. And like Michael, the four on the phone conference had tried treating the mystery numbers as pairs.
“Let’s see.” Kevin frowned in puzzlement. “Could it be some kind of measurement?”
“Huh,” Buck replied. “Although 38-19-25 sounds kinda top-heavy—”
His musings were interrupted by an audible smack—obviously Michelle decided to apply her editorial comment directly to his shoulder.
“Reminds me of high school,” Mrs. Halvorsen piped up.
Spinning toward Mrs. H., Liza stared at her, open-mouthed. A quick glance around showed Kevin and Michael doing the same.
Liza tried to remember what her neighbor looked like when she was younger. All she could recall was a petite, older lady.
Surely she couldn’t . . .
Liza thought helplessly.
Or could she have had a high school friend that busty?
Surely she couldn’t . . .
Liza thought helplessly.
Or could she have had a high school friend that busty?
Luckily, Liza didn’t speak.
Mrs. H. continued on, cheerfully unaware of the consternation she’d just caused. “The school had just gotten them in when I started as a freshman. But I still remember the combination for my locker: thirty-eight right, seventeen left, and twenty-six right. It’s very close, isn’t it?”
“Uh . . . yeah,” Kevin said, still a little slack-jawed.
“A combination.” Buck’s voice came slowly from the phone speaker. “Could be.”
Michelle’s response was considerably less pleased. “But for what?”
Liza shook her head. “Whatever it is, the number is apparently 235.”
19
“All right,” Buck Foreman said over the phone connection. “So where would we find lockers around this joint?”
“They must have some sort of health club here.” Kevin put the idea forward.
“Right.” Liza went for the writing desk in the sitting room. “Somewhere here we’ve got to have a guide to the amenities.”
She found it, located the number for the Health and Fitness Facility, as it was called, and punched in the number on her cell phone.
The only problem was, the Health and Fitness Facility was a very select operation. They did have lockers, but they didn’t run up as high as 235.
“Damn!” Liza said, breaking the connection. “What the hell else around here would have a lock on it as well as a number that goes up in the two hundreds?”
“It would also have to be something that Gemma would have noticed,” Michelle added.
“So what would she have noticed?” Buck asked. “What were her interests?”
“Acting,” Liza replied. “Sudoku.”
“Drinking,” Michael suggested with a laugh.
“You’re not as funny as you think, Langley,” Michelle rasped. “If the story you’re telling is correct, that’s why Gemma couldn’t rouse herself when she began having distress.”
“Uh—I guess you’re right.” Michael looked at his feet, abashed. “Sorry I spoke.”
“No.” Liza grabbed his arm. “Something you just said—it’s stirring some sort of memory.”
“About drinking?” Michael asked.
“Liza, this is in dubious taste,” Michelle complained.
“Drinking,” Liza repeated, “and animals.”
“Could this have been about the bugs?” Mrs. H. piped up.
“I think—it was real animals,” Liza said.
“After we found the bugs, Michael asked Kevin about the stables, because his room—”
“Right, right.” Liza wrinkled her nose at the memory of the barnyard smell. “We were at the stables, wondering if the horses belonged to the resort or if guests boarded their own animals.”
She suddenly whipped around to Kevin. “And then Kevin mentioned that people could board their own wine for use in the restaurant—”
The lightbulb went off over Kevin’s head, and he joined his voice with Liza’s. “In wine lockers!”
When they tried to place a call to Angus the chef, they merely got reception for Angus the restaurant. And if they weren’t making reservations, the flunky there didn’t want to talk to them, much less put them through to the boss.
In the end, Liza and Kevin went down to beard the chef in his kitchen, leaving Michael to keep talking with Buck and Michelle. Liza didn’t quite like the idea of leaving Mrs. Halvorsen alone on the line with her sometime partner. Who knows what innocent comment might be elicited and stored up for ammunition?
Coming out of the elevator, Liza and Kevin nipped across the lobby and took the back route to the event rooms. They picked an empty one, entered, and then Kevin led the way to the inconspicuous door that led to the kitchen.
Angus the chef wasn’t the same gleaming figure in white from the haggis ceremony. He wore a more workaday chef’s outfit, and it was getting a little sweaty as he and his staff created the next round of meals.
The short, stocky chef obviously remembered Kevin from his foray to get ice and meat tenderizer for Liza’s black eye. That didn’t necessarily mean he was happy to see him again.
“Can’t ye’s see I’m a wee bit busy right now?” he demanded as he mixed some sort of sauce over a high heat. The smell was delicious, although the look he gave the intruders in his domain verged on poisonous.
“Ye’ll have to see the maitre d’ to arrange for that, and he’ll not be in for a while yet.” The chef now directed more of his attention to his saucepan than his guests.
“We don’t want to get a wine locker,” Liza said. “We just want to find out if one of the other guests has one.”
“Well, can’t ye ask them?” Angus went pale and fumbled a little with his pot as the obvious thought hit him. “Or do ye mean one of . . .
those
guests?”
those
guests?”
Liza nodded. “Maybe
had
would have been the better word.”
had
would have been the better word.”
Angus turned his sauce over to one of his assistants and led Liza and Kevin through the empty restaurant. The flunky at the reservations desk lost a lot of his hot and cold running attitude when the boss showed up. And although the maitre d’ was the one who entered new applicants for the wine lockers, Mr. Flunky knew where the book was kept.
“Besides our regular guests, we have a number of local residents who’ll leave a few special vintages with us for a good dinner,” the young man babbled as he opened a large, leather-bound ledger.
“As many as two hundred and thirty?” Kevin asked in his best managerial voice.
Mr. Flunky flipped to the end of the book. “At this point, we have two hundred and thirty-seven.”
“Who is Number 235?” Liza leaned forward, trying to read upside down as the young man ran his finger down a column.
“A Ms. G. Vereker of New York and Malibu . . .” The flunky’s thin veneer of sophistication broke. “Gemma Vereker the actress—the woman who—”
“Yes, yes,” Liza interrupted, patting the young man on the arm. “You might want to keep that under your hat for the time being.” She sighed. “At least until the police start asking you questions.”
“The police?” Kevin asked when they were safely alone in the elevator again. “Why do you—”
“For one thing, I’m not sure whether Angus—or Fergus Fleming, for that matter—would let us anywhere near that locker,” Liza said. “Detective Janacek is the guy with the weight to leverage them. For another thing, I don’t want anyone able to suggest that we could have monkeyed around with whatever might be in there.”
“Well, if it’s just a nice Riesling, I guess Angus could come up with something good to go with it,” Kevin groused, “and to go with the egg on our faces.”
But when Liza got back up to her suite, everyone else agreed with her. She got out her cell phone and contacted Pete Janacek.
The detective sounded frankly dubious when he heard about the sudoku clue. But he got quiet and listened when he heard about wine locker 235 being leased out to Gemma Vereker.
Janacek arrived armed with a search warrant and trailed by a very frustrated Oliver Roche.
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