You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled (16 page)

T
HERE WERE HALF
a dozen news crews camped out at the foot of the driveway. Cora kept a low profile as she plowed through them, flooring the Toyota and sending camera, light, and sound technicians diving for safety. She zoomed up the drive, screeched to a stop, and was in the front door before anyone recovered in time to get a shot.

Sherry sprang up from the couch to meet her. “Cora, are you all right?”

“Fine. Where’s Aaron?”

“On the computer.”

“Oh?”

“Filing his story.” At her aunt’s look, Sherry said, “Well, he has to cover it, Cora. I told him to go, but he won’t leave.”

“True devotion.”

“He’s just afraid Dennis is still around.”

“Is he?”

“How the hell should I know? He left with Brenda, so I assume she’s got him under control.”

“This whole mating ritual used to be easier.” Cora flopped down on the couch, took her cigarettes out of her purse.

“You’re not going to smoke in here.”

Cora shrugged. “I need practice. Cigarettes will be like money in the pen.”

Aaron came down the hallway. “So, you’re out. Did you make bail, or are you on the lam?”

“That has a nice ring to it. I suppose I could try a combo, and skip bail.”

“Pardon me for asking, but what happened?”

“Off the record?”

“Why does it have to be off the record?”

“Well, Aaron, if you want a confession, it’s gotta be off the record. Otherwise, you’re an accessory, and you can go to jail.”

“Confession?”

“She’s just kidding you, Aaron.”

“The hell I am. I didn’t kill Benny Southstreet, but I’m guilty of so many other things, I don’t know where to begin.”

“Give it a shot.”

“Aside from plagiarism, which Sherry did for me, I’m guilty of fraud, false advertising, using the Internet to defraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and false advertising, and all that, in addition to bidding on my own object to drive the price up, which I’m not sure of the name of, but it can’t be good. Then there’s breaking and entering, two counts, criminal trespass, two counts, burglary, larceny, and/or petty theft, depending
on how much Harvey’s chairs are worth. When you add in the murder charge, which is the only thing I
didn’t
actually do, it hasn’t been a really great day.” Cora settled back on the couch and sighed. “You know what I’d like right now?”

“A visit from Harvey Beerbaum?” Sherry said from the window.

“Not even close.” Cora’s eyes widened. “What, you mean he’s here?”

“Coming up the walk.” Sherry went and opened the door.

“Come in, Harvey, join the defense team,” Cora said. “You wanna be a character witness or an alibi witness? To be an alibi witness you have to fib a little. To be a character witness you have to outright lie.”

“It’s not funny,” Harvey said. “You know what the police did?”

“You mean arrested me, Harvey? Yeah, I noticed.”

“They took my chairs. My dining room chairs. How do you like that? First Benny takes my chairs. Then you get them back. Then the police take them.”

“Why did they take the chairs?” Aaron asked.

“They said they’re going to fingerprint them. It’s very unsettling. Suppose they find my fingerprints?”

“So what if they find your fingerprints, Harvey, they’re your chairs,” Cora told him.

“I know, I know.” Harvey slumped down on the end of the sofa. “I’m just upset because I feel bad.”

“You feel bad about what?”

“The puzzle they found with the body. The police wanted me to solve it. Ordinarily, they’d ask you. That’s what they always do. Not that I mind being second choice. Even so, under the circumstances,
knowing they were only coming to me because you were the suspect. . .” Harvey shook his head.

“You’re saying you solved the puzzle for them?”

“I felt bad about it, but if I didn’t, someone else would.”

“So you solved it. Do you remember what it said?”

“I can do better than that. I made a copy.”

“The police let you make a copy?”

“No. I reconstructed it from memory.”

“You can do that?” Cora said.

Sherry coughed warningly.

“Of course I can. I’m sure you could too. Not that I can remember every puzzle I ever solved, but when I needed to, it wasn’t any trouble.” Harvey took a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket, passed it over. “There you go.”

“Let’s see the theme entries.” It was all Cora could do to keep from side-spying up at Sherry to see if her niece was giving her points for remembering the term
theme entries.

“It’s a ditty,” Harvey said.

“A ditty?”

“A rhyme, really. Have a look. See?” Harvey said. He recited:

Cora offered a comment that could hardly be construed as constructive criticism.

“Miss Felton!” Harvey said, astonished.

“It couldn’t just be a simple nursery rhyme. No, there has to be a sinister element.”

“Of course. Otherwise, what would be the point?”

“What’s the point at all?” Cora demanded. “I mean, come on. Some moron’s littering the crime scene with cryptic crosswords hinting at a homicide? Give me a break!”

“It’s not a cryptic,” Harvey corrected. “It’s a simple fifteen by fifteen.”

“I’m going to hurt you, Harvey. You happen to tell the police when I brought you the chairs?”

“Right around four-thirty.”

“Four-thirty?
Harvey, it was
three
-thirty.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’ve reconstructed my whole day.”

“I haven’t, of course, but it seemed like four-thirty.”

“ ‘Seemed like’ isn’t the same as ‘is.’ ”

“Well, I could be mistaken.”

“That’s the stuff, Harvey. How badly might you be mistaken?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I do. You’ve got that clock on the wall. You know the one I mean.”

“It’s a trophy. From a regional tournament.”

“Right. The miniature grandfather. With the hands and the pendulum. It works, doesn’t it? It tells time?”

“Of course.”

“When you thought it was four-thirty, maybe the big hand was on the six. That’s where you got that impression. But the little hand, which is pretty little, who’s to say whether it was between the three and the four or the four and the five. You see what I mean?”

“You think I made a mistake?”

• 1 Grounds for a suit
  

• 5 “__ Frutti” (Little Richard song)
  

• 10 Erie Canal mule
  

• 13 African lilies
  

• 15 Reaction to, “Pick a cod, any
  

• cod”
  

• 16 “¿___ pasa?”
  

• 17 Start of a message
  

• 19 Beehive State athlete
  

• 20 Polo or Garr
  

• 21 It’s under foot
  

• 22 Feel poorly
  

• 23 Classic Ford model
  

• 26 Threatening sentence-ender
  

• 28 TV broadcast band
  

• 29 Message part 2
  

• 32 Synthesizer inventor
  

• 34 Gets bored with
  

• 35 Bio by Molly Ivins
  

• 37 Have a couple of eggs?
  

• 38 Xerox competitor
  

• 42 “I’m OK with it”
  

• 45 Iditarod race place
  

• 46 Message part 3
  

• 50 Links number
  

• 51 All told
  

• 52 Falls in New York
  

• 54 “___ whillikers!”
  

• 55 Till bills
  

• 58 Hoofbeat sound
  

• 59 Easy mark
  

• 60 End of message
  

• 64 Cobra kin
  

• 65 Bungled play
  

• 66 Streamlined
  

• 67 Fourth of July?
  

• 68 Oceans, in poetry
  

• 69 Connecticut campus
  

• 1 Mai ___
  

• 2 Long in the tooth
  

• 3 Is a fan
  

• 4 Basic belief
  

• 5 ___ Friday’s (restaurant chain)
  

• 6 Big coffee containers
  

• 7 Brouhaha
  

• 8 Makes fit
  

• 9 Lower-ranking
  

• 10 Violent gust of wind
  

• 11 Pediatric mental disorder
  

• 12 Actress Sobieski
  

• 14 Lamb, at large
  

• 18 North Dakota city
  

• 23 ___ the word
  

• 24 “Oops!”
  

• 25 Jury verdict
  

• 27 Small and lively
  

• 30 Garbage
  

• 31 “Yo, dude!”
  

• 33 Enthusiasm
  

• 36 Closed, as a sports jacket
  

• 39 Confess to less
  

• 40 “The Mod Squad” costar Epps
  

• 41 Juno, to Greeks
  

• 43 Mined over matter?
  

• 44 Cager Strickland or Dampier
  

• 46 Puzzle cutter-upper
  

• 47 On edge
  

• 48 Treeless tract
  

• 49 Some surrealistic paintings
  

• 53 “Holy smokes!”
  

• 56 “To be,” to Henri
  

• 57 “Cut it out!”
  

• 61 Surgery sites, briefly
  

• 62 Brooks of “Blazing Saddles”
  

• 63 Barely manage, with “out”
  

“That’s entirely possible, Harvey.” Cora stood up, prompting Harvey to do the same. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Here’s what you should do. You should go home, take a look at the clock. Try to imagine where you were when I brought you the chairs. What angle you might have seen the clock from. Remember, you wouldn’t be paying much attention to the clock, because, after all, you were excited about getting the chairs back.”

“I suppose so.”

“Excellent, Harvey. Go home now, think it over. Because the last thing in the world you want to do is tell the police something you’re going to be cross-examined on in court. And then some snide defense lawyer’s gonna ask you how you know for sure. If that defense attorney’s got blond hair, long legs, and a skintight sweater, she may make you jump through hoops.”

Harvey’s eyes were wide. “But. . . but. . .”

“Go home, take a good look at the clock, and search your memory. Because you don’t want to be that type of witness who’s so sure of himself he trips over his own feet.”

Cora winked, pushed him out the door.

Harvey pointed. “What about them?”

The news vans were still parked at the foot of the drive.

“You didn’t talk to them on your way in, did you, Harvey?”

“No.”

“And you’re not going to talk to ’em now. If they try to stop you, keep on going. It’ll be harder, because they’ll wanna know what we said. Ignore them. Pay no attention. Just keep on driving. Run over a few of them if you can.”

Harvey looked aghast. “But—”

“Attaboy.” Cora clapped him on the shoulder, banged the door shut.

Aaron Grant spread his arms. “Well, there’s my story.”

“You wouldn’t write that,” Sherry said. “Cora, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Harvey’s mistaken. I brought him the chairs at three-thirty.”

“There’s no chance
you’re
mistaken?”

“Sure there is. That’s not the point. I gotta give myself a little wiggle room. The guy was killed between twelve and four. Even stealing the chairs at three-thirty’s cutting it close. Four-thirty fries my fanny.”

“Why?” Sherry said. “You didn’t have to take ’em straight to Harvey. You could have come home first.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t.”

“But they don’t know that.”

“Yes they do. That’s what I told the police.”

“You talked to the police?”

“Just Chief Harper.”

“Does Becky know?”

“It was off the record.”

“You guys do know I’m sitting here?” Aaron said.

“You’re not writing this, Aaron.”

“Of course I’m not writing this. People would think I was a gibbering idiot. Let’s nail down what I’m not writing. Cora, is it my understanding that you’re trying to get Harvey to change his testimony about when you delivered the chairs because if he doesn’t it’s going to make you look guilty?”

“Look
guilty? No. If he doesn’t change his story, I
am
guilty. I have a little problem, Aaron. I told Chief Harper I picked up the chairs and took ’em straight to Harvey. I also told him the body wasn’t there. Well, if the body wasn’t there by four-thirty, I am out-and-out lying, because the guy was dead before four o’clock. And it’s not like he could have been shot somewhere else and been brought to the motel, because the gun
was
there, and hadn’t been fired yet.”