The Crossword Murder (13 page)

16.
Old Peruvian

17.
San ___ Obispo

18.
Striped French cat

19.
M.E.'s course

20.
This monkey's uncle?

23.
Apiece

24.
A couple of Scots? Var.

25.
Wager

28.
Alloy: abbr.

30.
Frighten

35.
Sound of contentment

36.
Radical from acid

38.
Indian calico

39.
Herald's editor in chief

43.
Shellac, e.g.

44.
Tied

45.
Cyan conclusion

46.
Slender as___

47.
Jacob's brother

49.
No vote

50.
Hebrew weight

53.
Not con

55.
Bad actor?

63.
Woodwind

64.
___ Agnew

65.
Spanish painter

66.
Touts

67.
Moon over Greece?

68.
Idea

69.
Ed. leaves?

70.
Not true!

71.
Talk up

Down

1.
French seasonings

2.
It's often under your nose

3.
M___ murder

4.
Grade “Z” maple syrup?

5.
First one on the A train?

6.
Arabian knight?

7.
Result of a Freddie Kruger evening?

8.
The last

9.
Where Whittier is: abbr.

10.
Fibber

11.
I, in “The King and I”

12.
Look over

13.
London gallery

21.
It's often black

22.
End

25.
Iraqi city

26.
Consumer

27.
“___ are the times that try men's souls”

29.
Pain

31.
On the ___

32.
___ Delon

33.
“Help Me ___,” The Beach Boys Today!

34.
Gelt

37.
Plague

40.
Compete

41.
Grace

42.
What a photographer does

48.
Sub ending

51.
Henry's daughter Jane

52.
“Once Upon a Mattress” soundtrack?

54.
Get-up-and-go

55.
Scribbles

56.
Last words?

57.
Wish

58.
Robin's home

59.
Old-time befores

60.
Greasy

61.
Ensnare

62.
Sharpen

To download a PDF of this puzzle, please visit
openroadmedia.com/nero-blanc-crosswords

CHAPTER 17

A
FTER
RECEIVING AN
impatient “Yes, Miss Holland?” Steven Housemann's secretary gingerly opened the inner-office door that led to the editor in chiefs oak-lined haven. There, she motioned for Rosco to step past her, then eased the door shut behind him, leaving the two men standing alone—face-to-face. The secretary's hesitant behavior resembled that of an animal trainer tossing raw meat into an angry leopard's cage.

The walls of Housemann's office were hung with a gloomy collection of nineteenth-century fox-hunting prints and ominous marine oils depicting shipwrecks that had occurred along the North Atlantic coast. A brass floor lamp, a desk lamp, also brass, and two pallid wall sconces completed the seigneurial theme. These fixtures had once been fitted out for gas rather than electricity; their authentic green glass shades retained a murky aura of old money mingled with cigar-chomping, backroom deals. The suggestion of intrigue was reinforced by a suite of dark, leather-covered furniture: a Chesterfield sofa placed against one wall and two overstuffed club chairs facing the stony-faced master of the wide mahogany desk.

“I'll give you five minutes,” Housemann said as he turned from the desk and walked to a window whose wooden venetian-blind slats were angled to look down upon the world rather than up into the sky. “And that's only because I offered you the time yesterday.” As he spoke, Housemann watched Lieutenant Lever's tan sedan emerge from the garage below and nudge its way into Newcastle's morning traffic.

“It's a shame about JaneAlice Miller,” Rosco offered carefully gauging Housemann's body language and expression to determine how much he knew about the incident.

“Polycrates, I don't have time for small talk. I've got a newspaper to run. First, I lose my crossword editor, and now his secretary gets knocked unconscious and the week's remaining puzzles are nowhere to be found. Not only that, but prior to her unfortunate …
accident
, JaneAlice appears to have lost the answers Briephs must have prepared for the cryptics. God only knows what the woman did with them. Don't waste my time.”

“The puzzles aren't in her office? When I spoke to Miss Miller yesterday she mentioned it had been Briephs' custom to be five puzzles ahead.”

Housemann turned from the window to square off with Rosco. “That may be true, but there's no telling where the idiot woman put them. We've been through the offices with a flea comb. But that's my concern, not yours. Just what is it you want here?”

Rosco was beginning to see the side of Steven Housemann Belle had warned him about, but, oddly, it made him more comfortable with the situation. He no longer saw a need for the niceties he'd mustered up during their previous conversation. “Here's the situation, Mr. Housemann: Mrs. Briephs has asked me to look into the possibility that her son might not have died of natural causes, i.e., she believes Thompson was murdered.”

Again Rosco studied the older man, but his expression and posture remained inscrutable. Rosco continued: “At first I pegged her as a distraught mother overly concerned with her son's death. But I said I'd look into it for her—”

“Oh, I'm sure of that,” Housemann interrupted. “I wouldn't expect one of you bloodsuckers to miss out on a chance to hustle a few bucks out of an aging widow.”

Rosco smiled. “Well, we do what we need to do. Sort of like those ads for the porno theatres and massage parlors you run in the sports section each day? We all have to put food on the table, don't we?”

“Call a spade a spade.” Housemann chuckled. “I'll bet you're a tough man on the squash court. You know how to return a good serve.”

“I play a little handball now and then.”

“Of course … Nothing so trendy as squash for the private dick … A brief warning, Polycrates: don't push your luck, I can be an unpleasant adversary.” Housemann pulled a ten-inch cigar from a humidor made of some rare and endangered species of wood, and lit it without offering one to his guest or asking if the smoke might annoy him. “As far as I'm concerned, the world is better off without Thompson Briephs and his blueblood bull—the prep school accent and supercilious laugh and those asinine hats he wore with his hair flying out the back … I won't deny that his puzzles played a large part in keeping our circulation apace with the
Evening Crier
. And for that, he'll be missed. But let's cut to the chase, if he
was
murdered, and you're standing here because you have some misguided notion that I might have had something to do with it … well, it wouldn't be in the
Herald'
s best interest, now, would it?”

Rosco brought his left hand up and scratched lightly at the back of his neck. “That's a good point. But past experience has told me that murderers don't always consider their best interests before they act. Most of the time, it's a case of passion or hatred gaining control of a person's reason.”

“You honestly believe I would kill Thompson Briephs?”

“I have no idea. Anything's possible. Your secretary”—Rosco cocked his thumb toward the door—“mentioned that you were out of your office on the afternoon of Briephs' death.” Rosco opened a small notepad he'd removed from his coat pocket and scanned it. “She said your wife stopped in around eleven that morning, stayed for only ten minutes and then you left shortly afterward. In a hurry. I was only curious where you might have gone.”

Housemann's jaw clenched and the taut muscles turned his face into a mummylike grimace. “Don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong, Polycrates. If you step on my toes I will use the power of the press to run you out of this town—and I'll do it so fast it'll make your head spin. You can take that as a threat. I don't play games.” Housemann returned to his desk, sat with the rigid economy of movement of a man struggling to contain his temper, then reached for the intercom, depressed a red button, and spoke to his secretary, “Miss Holland, Mr. Polycrates is finished here. Show him out.”

Rosco ambled toward the inter-office door, but before Miss Holland appeared he turned back and said, “The police are going to reopen the Briephs' case and treat it as a homicide. You can count on that. You haven't seen the last of Al Lever … or me.”

“Get out!”

“One last thing, Who's going to make up the crossword puzzles for tomorrow's paper and the remainder of the week?”

“Are my choices in staff now under your dubious scrutiny as well?”

“I'm just curious. I know you hired Shannon McArthur to replace Briephs—”

“I have nothing more to say, Polycrates—”

“—Which seems curious, because JaneAlice mentioned some sort of scandal involving McArthur. Wasn't she working at the
Herald
then?”

“In the future, I'd suggest you refer staffing questions to me rather than some fatuous, lovelorn secretary. That appointment has not been confirmed.”

“So, you're not hiring Shannon McArthur?”

Housemann bellowed a louder, “Miss Holland!” at the same moment the woman rushed through the door. She didn't say a word, but Rosco saw her jump to attention.

Dumped unceremoniously in the
Herald'
s suspiciously vacant corridor, Rosco considered Housemann's reaction, then decided there were more ways to skin a cat than by browbeating the
Herald'
s editor in chief. He glanced at his watch and wondered if Belle might still be waiting for him at Lawson's Coffee Shop. The thought of her having left produced a definite sensation of disappointment, but he had a few details to check before he left the building. The missing puzzles had piqued his interest; their whereabouts were bound to be the first question out of Belle's mouth. And, if he'd guessed correctly, it would be impossible for Housemann to let Wednesday's paper go to press without a crossword puzzle.

Rosco moved to the other side of the hallway and tapped on a door marked with the number 404. From within, he heard an irritable male voice call out, “What is it?” It was the kind of tone that reverberated with too many cigarettes, too much coffee and Scotch and too few of the other basic food groups.

Rosco eased the door open. Sitting behind a gray metal desk whose surface had all but disappeared beneath a two-foot-high layer of papers, magazines and rumpled file folders, sat Pat Anderson, the
Herald'
s sportswriter. Rosco had no trouble recognizing him from the picture that accompanied his byline—and his signature handlebar mustache. Beyond his glowering face the office walls were plastered with signed photographs of nearly every man who'd played ball for the Boston Red Sox since World War II.

“What the hell do you want?” An inch of cold cigar hung from the corner of Pat's mouth. As he leaned possessively over his Underwood portable, the dead cigar bobbed up and down like a wine cork lost in a half-full bottle.

Rosco found himself stuttering in the great man's presence. “You're P-Pat Anderson, aren't you?”

“Who the hell are you?”

Rosco could think of nothing he'd like better than to sit in Pat Anderson's office and talk baseball, but he had work to do. “Me? I'm nobody … Actually. I was looking for the personnel office.”

“Second floor. Now, get the hell outta here.”

As Rosco began to withdraw he couldn't resist asking the big question that had been on the minds of most New Englanders all summer long.

“Say, Pat?”

“What?”

“What do you think the Sox are going to do with Billings?”

Pat didn't bother looking up from the Underwood as he muttered, “Trade him. Bad rotator cuff … Besides, they need another southpaw like they need a new wall in left field … Do me a favor.”

“Sure, Pat. Anything you want.”

“Get the hell outta here.”

“Right.”

Rosco closed the door as quietly as possible and returned to the elevator, where he descended to the second floor. At the end of the hall behind an aged and fingerprint-smeared door that might have been emblazoned with the words
All hope abandon, ye who enter here
he found the personnel office. With a quick, deft smile, Rosco entered. There he was confronted by a woman of such impeccable bureaucratic bearing that she might have served as the template for every government agency meting out drivers' licenses, marriage licenses or copies of birth certificates.

“May I help you?”

“Yes. I know this may seem rather crass, so soon after Mr. Briephs' passing, but my mother always told me that if you want something, you can't wait for it to land in your lap. I figured coming in person was the only polite way to handle it.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I work as the crossword editor for a Midwest newspaper … The
Cincinnati Courier
?”

“I don't know it.” This statement was delivered in a manner that would have quashed even a Nobel Laureate.

“It's very small … Actually, we only publish one issue weekly …” Rosco laughed as if this were a private joke, but the woman didn't join him. “Anyway, Mother and I were vacationing near Newcastle when I heard of Mr. Briephs' untimely demise, and I was wondering if the position might now be open? I hope I'm not being too pushy.”

“That position has already been filled.” A censorious line bit at the edges of the woman's mouth.

“I see. Anybody I might know … taking over for Mr. Briephs, that is?

“Shannon McArthur.” The name was accompanied by a grimace of distaste.