Killer Sudoku (6 page)

Liza saw it only too clearly. The two 8s were separated by a good half a block’s distance. But they were still too close for a legal sudoku.

“Pardon.” Liza felt herself elbowed to the side as Charley Ormond shoved her way to the front of the crowd, a cell phone to her ear.

“How many calls is that? And they all say the same thing?” Charley’s Strine accent got much stronger when she got agitated. “Yes, sir, I’m in front of the screen now. They’re complaining that there are two eights, and that’s a mistake. Where? Mmm-hmm.”

She stared for a moment at the screen. “Is it possible that the painting teams might have gotten confused—ah, you have the fax right there. And that’s the source of the error.”

The newswoman stood silent for a moment, her perky features tightening and going red as the executive on the other end of the phone connection vented his displeasure. “No, sir, I don’t have an explanation.” Her voice got a bit grimmer as she went on. “But I intend to get one.”

By now, Will Singleton had made his way to the screen, staring in bafflement at the enormous disaster. “We were working to reschedule the first round when I heard about these telephone calls.”

Charley Ormond rounded on him. “Can you account for that—that—?”

“Oversized mistake?” Babs Basset sweetly suggested. She came over and patted Will on the arm. “How unfortunate for you. But I suppose that’s the drawback when you insist on being a one-man show. There’s no one to catch the little problems before they become big ones.”

Boy, if there was an Oscar for fake sympathy, she’d be a lock
. Liza silently marveled at Babs’s performance. Then again, she realized, there was already enough of that at the awards show anyway.

Will continued to look at the screen. “I can’t claim to remember every detail of every puzzle I’ve created,” he said. “But I seem to recall that the third clue in that row should be a three. That would set up a hidden single in the lower-left-hand box, you see.”

“Well, I’ve been assured it was an eight on the fax that went to Irvine,” Charley said.

The two numbers are pretty similar,” Will suggested. One might be mistaken for the other if the fax wasn’t clear.”

“Let’s see the original—I gave it back to you,” Charley said.

“Certainly.” Will rummaged in his portfolio, brought out a sheet of paper, and stared in dismay. “It—uh—”

Charley looked at the puzzle and shook her head. “It appears to have two eights.”

Will looked so bewildered—and embarrassed—that Liza’s heart just about broke.

“I can’t understand it,” he said in a low voice. “I printed it out of the computer—”

“You’re using computer-generated sudoku for this tournament?” Babs just about proclaimed it at the top of her lungs.

Will’s face reddened behind his salt-and-pepper beard. “I create all of my sudoku by hand,” he almost snarled. “But I check them on the computer. That’s why I can’t understand how it returned a puzzle that manifestly could not work.”

He turned to Charley. “Changing that second eight into a three would solve the problem.”

She looked about ready to bite his head off. “Well, it would solve one problem. Of course the wall-dancing team only has black paint—they didn’t know they’d have to white out part of their work. And there’s that little snag of a nationwide television audience watching us screw up the whole presentation.”

Now Will looked just about crushed.

Before Babs could get another dig in, Oliver Roche appeared with a thick-bodied, gray-haired man who had a gold badge dangling from the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

“I asked Detective Janacek to come down,” Roche said. “But he has an important announcement to make.”

The detective looked around with watery blue eyes. “I called the hospital before I left the station. They told me that Mr. Quirk never responded to treatment. He was declared dead in the emergency room—anaphylactic shock. Among other things, it turns out he was extremely allergic to peanuts.”

The tournament participants stood silent in disbelief.

Liza shook her head, remembering what Ian Quirk had said while he was sitting in the makeup chair. He’d icily bragged about the strength of his concentration, how he could make everything around him recede from whatever task he was doing.

It seemed as though his boast turned out to be fatally true. Quirk must have been concentrating on the puzzle so intensely that he never noticed the telltale, dangerous odor of peanuts until the allergen had already affected him.

“Now Mr. Roche raised some disturbing points,” Janacek went on, “so I thought I should come and take a look.”

Using Roche’s seating list, he gathered the people who had been near Ian Quirk, asking questions of the potbellied guy and the others, including Liza.

Then he turned to the crowd at large. “Did any of you folks take a look inside those gift bags?”

Several people made shamefaced confessions that they’d gotten in over their heads with the competition puzzle and had turned instead to check out their goodies.

Most of them, however, found no peanut products, just the VIP luxury items that Oliver Roche had described when he sealed off the Skye Room.

When Janacek asked for names from the people who did find peanuts, Roche checked them against his seating plan—and found they all were near Quirk.

The more the police detective listened, the less happy he looked. Liza had watched Roche make the call to the police. He’d used speed dial for a direct number, and greeted Janacek by his first name. The cop had come over to the Rancho Pacificano as a personal favor. Now it began to look like some sort of case—and worse, a case taking place in front of TV cameras.

Charley Ormond proceeded to turn that thought into the absolute worst-case scenario, reappearing with a camera crew at her heels.

“Is it true that Ian Quirk’s tragic death may not have been an accident?” she asked, all perky interest.

Janacek was too old a fish to be hooked that way. “There seem to be some unexplained circumstances involved with this incident,” he said. Then his voice grew more cautious. “I was invited in an unofficial capacity to come and observe.”

Sure,
Liza thought,
whoever runs Homicide would be just delighted to have one of the squad’s detectives going out to drum up some extra business.

“And have you found . . .” Charley eagerly followed up, but Janacek held up a hand.

“I can’t comment, except to say that we’re about to examine the scene.” He gestured for Roche to open the ballroom door and firmly closed it behind them. Liza heard the click of the lock.

Not one to be deterred by a lack of facts, Charley advanced on Liza. “Ms. Kelly, you have a certain reputation for solving mysteries as well as sudoku puzzles. Can you comment on this strange development?”

“I’m sure I can’t add anything to what Detective Janacek said,” Liza carefully replied.

“Ian Quirk was seated directly behind you, wasn’t he?” Charley pressed.

Liza heard the implied challenge in that question and answered with just the facts. “I heard him rise rather abruptly. When I turned, he had a hand at his throat, apparently in some distress. Then he collapsed. At this point, that’s all I know. And I’m sure if you ask any of the other people who were nearby, that’s pretty much what they’d all have to say.”

Before Charley could frame another question, the doors opened, and Janacek’s voice came from inside. “I’m calling this in. Maybe planting peanuts all around this guy was only supposed to make him sick. But there is such a thing as overkill.”

Charley Ormond immediately repositioned her camera crew to catch Janacek as he came out. Liza took advantage of the distraction to head for the elevator and the safety of her room. Michael, Kevin, and Mrs. Halvorsen caught on immediately, following in silence.

Once inside, they filled the two chairs and the small couch in the suite’s sitting room.

“Before you even ask, I’m not playing detective on this,” Liza told them emphatically. “For one thing, I didn’t even like Ian Quirk.”

“I could name at least one other person you didn’t like—but you still found their killer,” Mrs. H. pointed out.

“Ava Barnes will probably tell you it’s necessary to promote your column,” Kevin chimed in.

“Not to mention what the Dragon Lady will say.” Michael used his only semijoking nickname for Michelle Markson. The room phone rang. “What do you bet that’s her?”

As soon as Liza picked up the receiver, she could hear Michelle’s crisp tones. “I understand that collapse I saw on SINN is now being considered a suspicious death.”

Liza stood silent. How did Michelle find out this stuff? And damn Michael for being right!

“And hello to you, too, Michelle,” she said.

“Do you have that laptop I gave you?” Michelle asked.

“Why, uh, yes.” Liza had brought it along in case peace and quiet got too quiet. She could always compose a new column or two.

“Excellent. I’ll e-mail you all our background files on the tournament’s major players.”

Liza found herself staring at the phone. “You assembled background info on a bunch of sudoku people?” she asked, dumbfounded.

“Keeping files on teammates and major competitors is standard procedure for our sports clients,” Michelle pointed out. “Although you’re not a client per se, I thought it would be a good idea to assemble some information when you agreed to go into this competition. And given this strange talent you’ve displayed, I thought the information might have a practical use.”

Liza knew the “strange talent” Michelle just mentioned had nothing to do with sudoku.

“Michelle,” she said, “I have no intention—”

Michelle cut her off. “Dear, I’ve seen this often enough now to know what will happen. Your lips will tell me ‘No, no, no,’ and then you’ll end up digging into the matter.”

“Someday I’ll surprise you,” Liza replied.

“My dear Liza,” her partner replied. “You and I both know that in this business, surprises are the last things we want. Ysabel has uploaded the files, in case you decide you need them.”

Translation:
when
you decide you need them.

Michelle suddenly shifted mental gears. “Please recall that you have a client down there. You wouldn’t want this situation to harm Gemma professionally—or personally.”

“Gemma’s fine,” Liza told her partner. “She even helped to lead everyone away from the—” She paused. No, there was no other way to put it. “From the crime scene.”

“I’m glad to hear it. And, oh, yes.” Now Michelle’s voice took on a studied offhand manner. “Buck Foreman should be there within the hour, traffic allowing.”

Further translation: Liza had about sixty minutes to stop dithering and get to work. Buck Foreman wasn’t just a private investigator, he was also a physically impressive guy. He wouldn’t exactly appreciate Liza wasting his time.

Sighing with defeat, Liza said, “Well, I guess I’ll see Buck then.”

Michelle cut the connection, and Liza got up to plug her laptop into the wall. “You’re not going to believe what Michelle is sending.”

Michael got in front of the computer while Mrs. Halvorsen smiled. “I’ll enjoy seeing that nice Mr. Foreman again.”

“In the meantime, I guess we’d better try to make some sense of what’s going on here,” Liza said.

“I never realized there were so many local sudoku experts.” Kevin squinted over Michael’s shoulder at the computer screen. “Each of these people seems to be the top dog in a different town.”

“ ‘There can be only one.’ ” Michael quoted one of his favorite movies in his most oracular tones. “Or maybe it’s more like the Mafia,” he went on in a normal voice, glancing over at Liza. “Would that make you the don of Portland?”

Michael might have been kidding, but Kevin frowned in thought. “You know, Quirk came from Las Vegas, which is kind of a Mob town. He was involved in the gambling business. Suppose he ran afoul of some organized crime type?”

“If he was going to get whacked, you’d expect the cause of death to be a bullet in the head, probably in a parking garage, not peanut fumes in a sudoku tournament,” Michael objected. “I think we’ll have to go through the whole MOM thing once again.”

“That’s Motive, Opportunity, and Means,” Liza explained, catching a puzzled look from Mrs. Halvorsen.

“Specifically,” Liza went on, “I want to concentrate on opportunity. Why here? Why now?”

“The policeman said the trick with the peanuts might have been aimed at making that poor man sick,” Mrs. H. suggested. “Maybe the idea was just to get him out of the contest.”

“Quirk was favored to take first prize,” Liza said.

“And there’s the motive.” Mrs. Halvorsen’s nod was emphatic, even without her silly hat to point it up. “Someone else wants that prize money.”

“Or needs it,” Michael said, flicking back and forth between file windows on the computer screen. “That would let you out, Liza. Between your partnership in Michelle’s agency and your column, you’ve got to be sitting pretty.”

“Doing well enough to pass along the reward connected to your last case.” Kevin nodded at Liza, bringing a shade of pink to Mrs. Halvorsen’s face as the beneficiary of her neighbor’s generosity.

“What about the others?” Liza asked, a little embarrassed herself.

Michael skimmed the screen. “Well, Barbara Basset navigated her way through three marriages, picking up enough along the way to at least aspire to a high-class lifestyle.”

“Well, of course. She’s one of the Sonoma Beach Bassets.” Liza mimicked that haughty voice.

“You know,” Kevin said, “if you sort of slur those words together, you get a pretty good description of her, too.”

“Sonomabeachbasset,” Liza murmured, then laughed.

“Roy Conklin teaches at the university level,” Michael went on. “He’s a tenured professor with a fairly modest salary, but no family—and he lives within his means. Then we have Sylvester Terhune.”