Last Puzzle & Testament (11 page)

“She’s in no shape to look at anything,” Phyllis Applegate said.

“Oh, yeah?” Cora said. She thrust out her chin. “That’s what you think. Let me see.” She wheeled around, grabbed the paper out of Arthur Kincaid’s hand. “Well, what do we have here? Ah, yes. Stupid puzzle.” Cora looked at it. Her eyes crossed, then refocused. “
Very
stupid puzzle. No clues.”

Philip Hurley, who’d been about to make an abusive comment, stopped himself. “Hey, that’s right. Where’s the clues? Aren’t there any clues?”

Arthur Kincaid shuffled through the papers. “It would appear there are. Yes, here’s a sheet of clues. And another which appears identical. Here, take a look.”

He held up one of the pages.

Cora snatched it out of his hand.

On it was written:

“It’s the clues, all right,” Cora declared.

Sherry Carter coughed discreetly.

Cora peered at the page again. “At least, they look like the clues. There’s the
across.
The
down
.” She stared at them. Frowned. “There aren’t very many of them, are there?”

“There certainly aren’t,” Sherry said. “Good point, Cora. It would appear that a large number of these clues are missing.”

“What?” Phyllis Applegate said. “What kind of flimflam is this?”

Cora Felton’s eyebrows launched into orbit. “Flimflam?” she waved her arm, nearly lost her balance. “Are you accusing me of a flimflam?”

But Phyllis Applegate ignored her completely. “Where’s the other clues?” she snarled at Emma’s lawyer. “Are they there?”

Arthur Kincaid shuffled through the papers. she re they thx201C;They are not. The rest of the papers are the same as the ones we have here.”

“What about instructions?” Philip Hurley asked.

His sister turned on him. “Instructions? You need instructions? You don’t know how to solve a crossword puzzle?”

“I don’t know how to solve one without all the clues. And I don’t mean instructions for solving the puzzle. I mean instructions on winning the game. If the clues aren’t all here, how do you win?”

“Yeah, how do you win?” Cora Felton muttered, obviously intrigued.

“Well, there you are.” Philip Hurley rolled his eyes at Arthur Kincaid. “Your ‘expert’ is no help, so
you
tell me. How do I win this game?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur Kincaid replied. “But I can make a suggestion. You have one piece of the puzzle here. I suggest you take it, go away, and work on it. Perhaps solving it will tell you what to do next. Perhaps it won’t. But in the meantime, Cora Felton will solve it. So, if you’re not clear what to do, you call her and ask her.”

“As if
she’d
know,” Philip Hurley snorted.

“Philip, don’t be rude,” his wife, Ethel, said.

“Rude, hell,” Philip shot back. “Fifteen million smackeroos at stake, she’s drunk, and nobody knows what to do. And
I’m
rude?”

In a lifetime of hard drinking, there was nothing that sobered Cora Felton up faster than someone calling her drunk.

“I know what to do,” Cora said. “I don’t know about you, but
I’m
solving this puzzle.”

Her declaration might have sounded more convincing if she hadn’t slurred her words; still it was enough to spur the heirs into action.

Philip and Phyllis Hurley looked at each other, and turned to the lawyer.

“Give me one,” Philip said.

“Hey, I was first,” Phyllis said.

“Were
not
,” Philip said.

“Now, now, don’t push. There’s enough for everyone,” Arthur Kincaid said, handing them grids and clues. “And here’s a set for you, Daniel. And one for Annabel.” He handed sets to the bearded youth and the flat-faced woman. “And one for you, Chester.” He held a set out to the old man with bad teeth.

Chester Hurley made no move to take the pages. He stood with his hands folded over the bib of his overalls, and snorted contemptuously. “Stupid game.”

“You don’t have to play if you don’t want to,” Arthur Kincaid srth

“Damn right, I don’t,” Chester Hurley said. “I don’t have to do anything. I’ll take this because Emma wanted me to. Why, I don’t know, but she did, so I will. But that don’t mean I’m gonna play.”

Chester Hurley stomped across the beautiful old bedroom in his work boots, snatched the grid and clues from the lawyer. “Come on, Annabel,” he said to the woman with the flat face. “You want a ride, let’s go. I’m gettin’ out of here.”

But he stopped in the doorway. “Stupid game,” he repeated, and ushered Annabel out the door.

The remaining heirs all looked at each other for a moment, then turned and bolted for the door.

Only Daniel Hurley lagged behind. “I gotta go along with the old man,” he said. He chuckled, shook his head. “Stupid, stupid game.”

“Oh, my head,” Cora groaned, as they drove away from the Hurley mansion.

“Could you look a little less like you’re dying?” Sherry asked. “There’s cars behind us.”

“Who?”

“The banker, for one.”

“Banker? What banker?”

“Aunt Cora, how much of what just happened actually registered?”

“Don’t be disrespectful.” Cora Felton jerked her thumb at herself. “I’m the judge!” She smiled, then frowned and looked puzzled. “What am I judging?”

“Aunt Cora.”

“No, no, I remember. Some whacko puzzle.” She frowned again. “Why am I judging a puzzle? I thought there was a murder.”

“There may be a murder. It could be accidental.”

“What could be accidental?”

“The drunk died in a drainage ditch.”

“The dr—That’s a tongue twister. You mean it’s not a murder?” Cora sounded disappointed.

“We don’t know. But right now we need to concentrate on the puzzle.”

“Whacko puzzle.”

“You know you’re getting paid for judging this puzzle?”

“I am?”

“Yes, you are vrth" align="j. You mean you missed that part too?”

“It’s a trifle fuzzy. How much am I getting paid?”

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

Cora Felton’s mouth fell open. “Did you say fifty dollars?”

“Fifty
thousand
dollars.”

“Fifty thousand? Sherry, can you solve the puzzle?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have all the clues.”

“You don’t have all the clues?”

“Cora, don’t you remember anything?”

“It’s a little vague. What about the clues you’ve got?”

“I haven’t had time to look at them.”

“Look at them now.”

“I’m driving the car.”

“I’ll drive, you look.”

“Not on your life.”

Sherry drove on, ignoring Cora’s protests.

At the gas station on the edge of town Sherry saw a motorcycle parked by one of the pumps. Daniel Hurley stood next to it talking to Becky Baldwin, who had pulled up alongside.

Sherry frowned. By rights, Daniel should be working on his great-aunt’s puzzle, not talking to a lawyer. And why was Becky talking to him? Wasn’t she leaving town? After all, her client was dead now. Sherry had to tell herself it was none of her business.

Sherry drove home, parked the car in the drive, shook Cora Felton awake, and wrestled her inside.

“Sherry,” Cora said. “Thank goodness it’s you. You gotta help me. Someone’s dead, and there’s a puzzle.”

“There certainly is,” Sherry muttered. She dragged Cora into the office, flopped her in a chair, and sat down at the computer.

“What are you doing?” Cora said. “You’ve gotta work on the puzzle.”

“I am working on the puzzle.”

Sherry moved the mouse and clicked on the Crossword Compiler icon. “This is how I work.”

A blank crossword-puzzle grid filled the screen. A fifteen-by-fifteen grid of all-white squares. Sherry began to re-create the grid from Emma Hurley’s puzzle on her screen. When she was finished, she had a grid exactly like the one on the piece of paper Cora had received from Arthur Kincaid.

She propped {>Shper Cora hthe clues up below it.

ACROSS

• 1. Italian village
  
• 6.____ fall
  
• 13. WWII vessel
  
• 14. Sharpen
  
• 16. Place to woo?
  
• 19. Affirmative
  
• 20. Ages
  
• 23. Useful quality
  

DOWN

• 1. Ricardo
  
• 2. Woodwind
  
• 3. Entre ____ (fr)
  
• 4. Tibetan town
  
• 5. Swear
  
• 6. Call
  
• 7. Deckhand
  
• 8. R.S.V.P.
  
• 9. Youth
  
• 17. Stockings
  

Cora Felton peered over her shoulder. “Can you solve it?”

“I should think so,” Sherry said. “In the first place, it’s a quadrant.”

“A what?”

“It’s a quarter of the puzzle. All of the clues are from the upper-left quadrant. There are no clues from the other three quarters of the grid.”

“Huh?”

“Tell you later,” Sherry said. “Anyway, it’s only a quarter of Emma Hurley’s puzzle. I assume I can solve it. But what good will that do?”

“You got anything yet?”

“Sure. Six across. Blank
fall
has to be
prat
.”

“Great. You’re practically done.” Cora put her arm around Sherry’s shoulders, leaned on her heavily. The odor of stale Bloody Mary was overpowering. “What else have you got?”

“It’s hard to concentrate with you bugging me.”

“Hey. Let’s remember who’s the judge.”

“Okay, Judge. Let’s make a deal. Division of labor. I’ll solve the puzzle. You get sober enough to tell people you solved it.”

“Well, I like that,” Cora said. She hiccuped, clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oops. On second thought, maybe I could make some coffee.” She peered over Sherry’s shoulder at the grid and chuckled.

Sherry looked at her in annoyance. “What’s so funny?”

“I was just wondering.”

“What?”

“How our heirs are doing.”

“Come on, come on, read me the clues,” Phyllis Hurley Applegate snarled as she sped along the narrow country road.

~>Shpegate sn01C;Slow down!” her husband squeaked. “What good will it do to solve the puzzle if you kill us all?”

“I’m not going to kill us all. I just got a little excited and drove in the wrong direction. It could have happened to anyone.”

“Of course it could. Now slow down.”

“And let Philip get ahead? No way. Read me the clues.”

“You have to concentrate on your driving.”

“I can concentrate.”

“Phyllis.”

“Read me the clues or I’ll grab that darn paper and read ’em myself.”

“Okay, okay. Give me a minute.”

“Are there blanks?”