Puzzled to Death (23 page)

“Heaven forbid.”

“So let’s concentrate on the murders. If Billy Pickens didn’t do it, then someone else did. It’s up to us to find out who.”

Cora pulled up in front of Olsens’ Bed-and-Breakfast, a two-story colonial just three blocks from the center of town. She and Sherry got out, went up on the porch, and knocked on the door.

An elderly gentleman in a baggy herringbone sweater answered their knock. He was tall, thin, had gray hair, and carried a pipe. “Yes?” he inquired. His voice, Cora decided, sounded like rust.

“Mr. Olsen?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Cora Felton. This is my niece, Sherry. We’re looking for Paul Thornhill.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Paul Thornhill’s not staying here?”

“Yes, he is. But I believe he’s gone out.”

“With his wife?”

“No, I think he went out alone.”

“So she’s here,” Cora said.

“She might be.”

Cora blinked. This was like pulling teeth. “Why do you say she might be?”

“Well, I didn’t see Mrs. Thornhill go out. But maybe she went out without me seein’.”

Not likely, Cora figured. “We’d like to talk to her. Where might she be?”

“In her room.”

“And where is that?”

“Second floor, to the right.” The man chewed pensively on his pipe stem. “Only you can’t go up there.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be right. A woman alone and all. You really wanna see her, I’ll get my wife.”

“We really wanna see her.”

Mrs. Olsen proved to be a rather plump woman whom Cora recognized from Cushman’s Bake Shop. From the number of mornings Cora had seen her there, it appeared that Olsens’ Bed-and-Breakfast wasn’t serving many breakfasts. Capturing the Thornhills during the crossword-puzzle tournament must have been a small windfall.

“Now, I don’t want a commotion,” Mrs. Olsen declared. “We do have other guests. If the Thornhills want, they can see you in the living room. We don’t rent out rooms to entertain.”

“I think he’s out,” Mr. Olsen put in.

He was. Mrs. Olsen came downstairs minutes later with only Paul Thornhill’s wife.

Since her TV interview, Jessica Thornhill had changed into a soft cashmere sweater and velvet slacks. She was still wearing her jewelry—diamond-studded earrings and gold necklace and bracelet. Close up she had a perky face, vital, alert, interested. And highly competitive. She was, Cora concluded, just the type of woman to have won a game at Fun Night. Even if it took her husband’s help.

“What’s this about?” Jessica demanded.

“I’m awfully sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Thornhill. This is my niece, Sherry Carter. We’d like to ask you about your interview with the reporter from Channel 8.”

“What about it?”

“Could you go in the TV room if you’re gonna talk?” Mrs. Olsen told them. “I don’t want the other guests disturbed.”

“As if they could hear,” Jessica Thornhill scoffed. Having registered her defiance, she conceded, “We might as well sit down. Come in the living room. I think they have a fire.”

There was a fireplace with easy chairs nestled around it. A log crackled in the hearth.

“Paul went out for booze,” Jessica Thornhill explained as they sat down. “They put a decanter of sherry in our bedroom, but I’d rather drink strychnine.” She shuddered, then smiled. “What is it you want to know?”

“About the dead woman, of course,” Cora said. “I understand she was talking to your husband while you were playing the game. The one about the pictures on the wall. As I recall, when you came back to the table that’s when the mechanic followed you. The man who was so upset about you winning.”

“He’s a mechanic? That figures.”

Cora ignored this class prejudice. “And that’s when
Mrs. Roth intervened and pulled him away, is that right?”

“Absolutely. And that is why her murder affects me so deeply. I owed a debt of gratitude to the woman, and before I could express it, she was gone.”

“I understand,” Cora said. “My point is, because of the incident you had particular reason to notice her. So I’m wondering if you happened to notice her talking to anyone else, aside from your husband.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And who would that be?”

“That terrible man. The one you say’s a mechanic.”

“I mean aside from him,” Cora said patiently. “She only spoke to him because he interrupted her when she was talking to your husband. I mean did you see her talking to anyone else at another time?”

“Absolutely,” Jessica Thornhill said, nodding emphatically.

“And who was that?”

Jessica spread her arms wide with the exasperation of someone who is being willfully misunderstood. “I told you. The mechanic. That horrid man.”

Cora Felton frowned, feeling the beginning of a headache.

Sherry Carter leaned in. “You mean you saw her talking to him some other time?”

“Yes, of course.”

Cora Felton could hardly hide her disappointment. “So you saw her talking to Mr. Haskel again. And when was that?”

“During the picture game.”

Cora frowned. “The picture game?”

“Yes. He complained when I won the first game. Then
he made a fuss when we started the second, the one with the pictures. That’s why Paul wasn’t playing with me. So I knew who he was, and I was giving him a wide berth. Then during the game I saw him talking to a woman near one of the drawings, so I skipped it and came back to it later. And the woman he was talking to turned out to be her.”

“Wait a minute,” Cora Felton said. “I don’t understand. Are you telling me you saw Mrs. Roth talking to Marty Haskel
before
she spoke to your husband?”

Jessica Thornhill looked at Cora as if she were an idiot. “Yes, of course.”

“N
OW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE,
” C
ORA SAID, AS THEY
pulled the Toyota away from the Olsens’.

Sherry groaned. “Getting somewhere? All you got is another lead to the mechanic, who we happen to know is a dead end.”

“How do we know that?”

“How do we know anything? Aunt Cora, the town mechanic is
not
a serial killer.”

“I never said he was.”

“So what’s your big lead?”

“He must know
something
. If he was talking to Mrs. Roth, he’s a valuable witness. He knows what she said. So far we’ve had only Billy Pickens’s version. Which is constantly changing and may or may not be the truth. And Paul Thornhill’s version, which has also changed once. Granted only slightly, and perhaps just a sin of omission. But still, his accuracy is very much in question. Plus, everything he says appears to be totally egotistical. We’ve been looking for someone else to give us another angle on
Mrs. Roth. Now we finally have it. Which is great. Give me an impartial witness with no ax to grind, and maybe we’ll get a straight story.”

“You’d describe Marty Haskel as having no ax to grind?”

“All right, rotten choice of words. But you know what I mean. The guy’s not involved in Judy Vale’s death. Not unless the whole world is topsy-turvy and nothing makes sense. So, from that point of view, he’s an impartial witness.”

As she said this, Cora pulled into the service station at the edge of town. A boy with sandy hair and a dirty ski jacket was manning the pumps. “Fill ’er up?”

“Yes, please,” Cora told him. She pointed to the garage, which was dark. “Service and repair closed?”

“Yes, ma’am. You got a problem?”

“No. Just asking. Is there a phone book?”

“Pay phone on the corner had one last I looked.”

Sherry followed Cora to the phone booth on the corner. Cora flipped the pages, looked up Marty Haskel’s address. “Here we go—232 Arbor Drive.”

“Where is that?”

“I have no idea. But the kid will.”

They paid the young man for the gas and asked him if he knew where Arbor Drive was.

“Arbor Drive? Course I do. Marty Haskel lives there.” He gave Cora the directions.

Marty Haskel’s house was a modest affair about two miles outside of town. It was yellow with green shutters and had a breezeway and a garage. The garage door was open and the car was gone. The lights were out in the house.

“Looks like he’s not home,” Sherry said.

“That’s a pretty safe deduction, but let’s verify it.”

Cora Felton hopped out of the car, went up on the porch, and pressed the doorbell. After several seconds she rang again.

Sherry watched impatiently from the car. The man was clearly gone and—

Cora tried the doorknob!

What was that woman doing?

In a flash Sherry was out of the car and on the porch. “Aunt Cora. You’re not going in.”

“No, I’m not,” Cora assured her.

“Promise?”

“Absolutely. The door is locked, and the lock looks tough. I may have to try a window.”

“Aunt Cora—”

“Get back in the car. If someone drives up, honk the horn. If it’s
him
, honk twice.”

“Cora. Be reasonable,” Sherry pleaded. “This is insane. Even if you got in there, what would you be looking for?”

“A reason for Marty Haskel to murder those two women,” Cora said promptly. “That or his dead body.”

“Oh, for goodness sakes!”

“
We
think he’s a witness,” Cora pointed out. “Suppose the killer does too?”

“Aunt Cora,” Sherry protested, but her aunt was already on her way around the house.

The side door was also locked, but the row of flowerpots next to it looked inviting. The key was in the third one. Cora fished it out, tried it in the door. The lock clicked open. Cora returned the key to the flowerpot, slipped inside, closing the door gently behind her.

Cora dug in her purse for her flashlight. She flicked it on. The batteries were almost dead. She shone the dim light, looked around.

She was in the kitchen. There were no bodies on the
floor. That almost disappointed her. Judy Vale had been found in the kitchen.

On the other hand, Mrs. Roth had been found in the living room. Cora passed through the foyer, where a narrow staircase led to the second floor, and entered what clearly was a man’s den. A TV, a couch, and a writing desk. And no doors off it. A small house with few rooms. This was the living room, no one was dead here, what else did she need to know?

Outside, a car horn honked. Cora Felton frowned, wondered if her niece would stoop to trickery to get her out of the house. She went to the window, pulled aside the blind.

A car had indeed driven up, but it was turning into the driveway across the street. Cora decided she’d give Sherry that one. The honk was unnecessary but arguably justified.

Cora let the blind fall back and continued her search.

Upstairs were a bathroom and two small bedrooms. One was storage, the other where the man slept. Marty Haskel was not dead in either of them.

Some papers on the bedside table looked familiar. Cora shone the light, saw that they were crossword puzzles. After an involuntary shudder of revulsion, she picked them up. They were the puzzles from Fun Night. Craig Carmichael’s CURIOUS CANINES and Paul Thornhill’s APOLOGIES. So these were the bones of contention—Marty Haskel’s losing entries.

The Craig Carmichael puzzle, Cora noted, was nearly finished, while the Paul Thornhill one was completely blank.

Cora put the puzzles back and finished searching the bedroom. The most she learned was that Marty Haskel subscribed to
Playboy
.

Making sure she’d disturbed nothing, Cora went back downstairs and let herself out the side door. As expected, it locked behind her, and she didn’t have to fish the key out of the flowerpot to secure it. Then she hurried down the driveway to where Sherry waited impatiently in the car.

“Crack the case?” Sherry asked as Cora climbed in.

“No.”

“Where to now?”

“Check out the Olsens’ B-and-B. See if Paul Thornhill’s back.”

He wasn’t. There were no cars outside the house except those they’d seen before.

“Let’s check out the Country Kitchen,” Cora suggested.

“Why?”

“See if Marty Haskel’s there.”

“You ever see him in the Country Kitchen?”

“I never looked for him in the Country Kitchen. I never had reason to notice him in the Country Kitchen.”

“Can you imagine him in the Country Kitchen?”

“Why, Sherry Carter. Was that really you making that class-prejudice remark?”

Cora Felton drove a little too fast for safety to the homey country restaurant where she often played bridge, swerved into the parking lot.

“Now, if he’s not here we’re not staying,” Sherry Carter warned.

“Of course not,” Cora agreed, getting out of the car. “You check out the dining room, I’ll check out the bar.”

“Aunt Cora.”

“I can’t smoke in the dining room.”

“You could have smoked in the car.”

“You hate it when I smoke in the car.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

“Are you telling me you
want
me to smoke in the car?”

Still squabbling, Sherry and Cora went inside. A young woman with menus hovered near the entrance to the dining room. “Two for dinner?”

“No,” Cora said, and made a beeline for the bar.

Sherry sighed, debated whether to make a scene. “We’re just looking for someone,” she explained to the young woman, and slipped past her into the restaurant.