Riddles that Kill: a gripping paranormal mystery

by Lois D. Brown

  The comment, meant to help, was disheartening. Looking around the room, it was easy to picture herself decades down the road, a lonely old woman scratching her dog’s chin while watching game show reruns. But there was no reason to pine over what had happened between her and Rod. She had to move on.

  Ms. Tuttle tapped Maria on the arm. “You know, being single has its perks. I was married once, years ago. Nasty experience. Now I do what I want, when I want. It’s not a bad gig.”

  “But Ms. Tuttle, I’ve never seen you do anything but work.”

  “Exactly.”

  The conversation was not helping. Nor was the fact that Maria felt anxious to get back to the kidnapping case.

  As if she sensed her concern, Ms. Tuttle changed the subject. “Maria, I need to tell you about the progress we’ve made on the Veil riddle.”

  “I’m all ears.” Maria stared again at the words written on the wall and read it to her herself for the thousandth time.

  What you seek is in a bottle of fun with one player missing.

  Open the lid.

  South begins at SA64HQ965DJ52C65.

  East is next.

  North comes third.

  Go West and you will find what you desire.

  Beware. The monster awaits.

  The riddle made as little sense to Maria as it did the first time she’d seen it five days ago.

  “Now,” said Ms. Tuttle, using her getting-down-to-business voice, “I know you don’t have all night, so I’ll try to hit the main points.” Turning to the other women she said, “Ladies, don’t let our conversation distract you. Keep playing Bridge.”

  Her words fell on deaf ears. The group of women, who were shoving slices of greasy pizza into their mouths, attentively listened to everything Ms. Tuttle said.

  Ms. Tuttle ignored them and began her explanation. “The first line of the riddle—what you seek is in a bottle of fun with one player missing—had me confused for several days. I assumed the first line pointed to the general location of the Veil treasure, and then the directions—south, east, north, west—along with the string of letters and numbers pointed to a specific coordinate.”

  Maria wanted to focus on what Ms. Tuttle was saying, but the lack of sleep and sense of urgency made thinking tedious. Her body was in “action” mode, not riddle-solving mode.

  “After figuratively beating my head on the cliffs of insanity for a couple of days, I finally decided to tackle it in a different way. I decided I needed to understand who Steven Veil was. Well, that was a bomb. Nobody knows much about him except for what he wrote in his odd little autobiography that contains the riddle.”

  Ms. Tuttle was talking a million words a minute, and Maria was tempted to zone out. After all, it had turned into a very long day. But what Ms. Tuttle was doing was her own kind of sleuthing, and it was important—especially to this case. Maria channeled her energy into what was being said.

  “It’s then I decided the best way to understand a man is to understand a man’s mother.” Ms. Tuttle stopped to gain her breath.

  “So true!” called out a toothpick of a woman. “If I’d known my mother-in-law better, I would’ve put my tail ’tween my legs and run. Best advice. Meet the in-laws ’for makin’ any weddin’ vows.”

  Maria, sadly, had never met Rod’s parents. Perhaps that was where she’d gone wrong.

  Taking back the stage, Ms. Tuttle explained, “I went to my favorite genealogical site online and found Martha Bardslay Veil, Steven’s mother. There wasn’t much written about her either, but someone had uploaded tons of old pictures. Guess what I found?”

  “I have no idea.” The more Ms. Tuttle talked, the more Maria was drawn into the story.

  “There must have been a dozen pictures or so of Martha playing Bridge. She was an avid card player.”

  “Bless her soul.” One of the ladies in the far corner of the room crossed herself.

  “And that’s when it clicked.” Ms. Tuttle looked incredibly pleased, as if the solution should be crystal clear to Maria by this point.

  However, Maria was just as confused as before. “What clicked?”

  “That’s when I saw the connection between the words in the riddle ‘fun’ and ‘player’ and the directions ‘south, east, north, west.’ The riddle was talking about a game of Contact Bridge.”

  At this point, an entire table of women interrupted Ms. Tuttle with a shout of, “Best freakin’ card game in the world!”

  Across from Maria, Delores scoffed. “Except for Black Jack,” she murmured. Her hands had never stopped shuffling the deck since Maria had sat down.

  Ms. Tuttle shot the women a disproving glance at being so loudly interrupted and continued. “In Contact Bridge, a game people play for fun, there are four players—a north and south partnership and an east and west one.”

  “She is a seriously smart woman,” someone behind Maria said before stuffing another bite of pizza into her mouth. Maria agreed. Ms. Tuttle could run circles around her when it came to research.

  Ms. Tuttle cleared her throat. “However, here is where things got difficult. In the first line of the riddle it says one player is missing, but it still lists each of the four directions, or players. So I figured it must refer to another kind of ‘player’ in Bridge.”

  “Ohhhh.”

  Maria looked at who had made the loud exclamation and saw a woman in the center of the room with an unlit cigarette hanging from her lip.

  “I think this part is so clever of her,” the woman said, the cigarette bobbing up and down as she spoke.

  “It really is,” the woman’s neighbor at the table agreed.

  Ms. Tuttle cleared her throat … again. Maria wondered if the librarian was enjoying all of the attention. “After several strikeouts with other ideas, I began to play with the concept of the missing player being a missing letter—and I assumed that letter would be missing from the main clue—the game of Bridge. So, for example, the location of the Veil treasure was somewhere that had the word ‘bridge’ in it but was missing one letter—like ridge, bidge, brige, or bridg. Anyhow, you get the idea.”

  “Kind of,” said Maria, slowly.

  “Don’t forget to tell her about the word ‘bottle.’ ” The woman who had kept a metal flask next to her like a beloved teddy bear now held it in the air. “It’s all about the bottle.” She then turned to Maria and said, “AA graduate. Two thousand and nine.”

  “Oh yes, thank you, Julia. Of course, I can’t forget the word “bottle.’” Ms. Tuttle nodded in the direction of the recovered alcoholic. “In the very beginning of the riddle, Veil says what we seek is in a ‘bottle of fun.’” Ms. Tuttle stopped talking to let the phrase sink in before continuing.

  “Clearly, the ‘bottle of fun’ represents the name of the place where the treasure is hidden, sort of like the ‘Isle of Britain’ or the ‘Pyramid of Djoser.’” Ms. Tuttle took a few steps closer to a card table. She leaned down and picked up a can of Red Bull. Five or six large, deep gulps later she was ready to speak again.

  “If ‘fun’ represents Bridge—with a letter missing—then I needed to find a place with the word “bottle’ and ridge, or bidge, or brige, or bridg in it.’”

  “Like a compound name?” asked Maria.

  “Exactly. I looked at all the cities in the United States that had the word ‘bottle’ as well as one of the derivatives of the word ‘bridge’ with a letter missing. The most obvious combination of these was ‘bottle’ and ‘ridge.’ Do you know how many places there are called ‘Bottle Ridge?’”

  “No.” Maria waited breathless for the answer.

  “One. Bottle Ridge in Washington state.”

  “Washington!” Maria’s heart sunk. She hadn’t thought the riddle would point to somewhere so far away. Was Justin being held all the way up there?

  “Yes, Washington. Intellectually, I was positive I was on the right trail, yet something didn’t feel right. That last line of the riddle—the one about the monster—seemed out of
place. I couldn’t understand how it connected to Bottle Ridge, Washington. I looked and looked but there was nothing about a monster in Bottle Ridge.”

  “But it’s got to be—” Maria began.

  Ms. Tuttle held up her hand for silence. “At that point, I hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours so I went to bed. That night I dreamed of my old sixth-grade thesaurus. It’s completely in tatters, but I still have it in my office on the bookshelf. When I awoke in the morning I pulled it off the shelf and looked up the word ‘bottle.’ That’s when I saw the synonym ‘jar’ and I knew the answer.”

  Maria’s heart beat quickly. She could hardly wait for the librarian’s next feat of riddle solving.

  “The Veil treasure is in Jarbidge—a tiny town in Nevada with a fascinating history. I had read about it years ago. It’s an old mining town where the last mail stage robbery in the United States occurred. Originally, the Native American Shoshone tribe lived in Jarbidge, or more accurately in the wilderness next to the mining town. They are the ones who named it.”

  Whether it was the Red Bull or what she was about to say next, Ms. Tuttle appeared as if she might implode. Maria felt for her phone in case she needed to call 911. “Deep breaths, Ms. Tuttle. Deep breaths.”

  The librarian waved away Maria’s concern. “Jarbidge translates from Shoshone to mean ‘monster that lurks in the canyon.’ According to the Native American legend, Shoshone braves chased a creature into a cave in what is now known as Jarbidge Canyon. They trapped the monster there with rocks and boulders. Now, Maria, please read the last line of the riddle for me out loud.”

  Maria did as she was told. “Beware. The monster awaits.”

  Ms. Tuttle stared intently into space, as if she had given her all and had nothing left in her. Speaking to no one in particular she said, “Jarbidge, Nevada, where the monster awaits.”

  “Wow,” Maria whispered in awe. “Ms. Tuttle, you did it. You should be one of the world’s seven wonders. I’m not kidding.”

  The card players in the room agreed. A few gave each other knuckles.

  In five days Ms. Tuttle had figured out what the FBI and thousands of other treasure hunters over the last eight years had not. Maria’s voice was excited. “So this means I need to go to Jarbidge. That’s where the perp has Justin.”

  “Wait a minute.” Ms. Tuttle let out a sigh. “The Jarbidge wilderness is over one hundred thousand acres. It’s huge. So while we know the general location, we need the rest of the riddle to get more specific directions. That’s where these wonderful women come in.”

  Maria mulled a moment over the depressing news that Jarbidge included that many miles of wilderness.

  “Eugene, my librarian friend in Nevada, was the one who suggested I contact the U.S. Western Regional Bridge champions. Karla here was the one I first spoke to and she said they could help.”

  “Who wouldn’t want to help a poor kidnapped boy?” Karla smiled.

  Delores snorted. “Yes, that and dinner for each of us at Le Cirque with tickets to Chippendales,” she added.

  Sheepishly, Ms. Tuttle dropped her eyes. “Yes, well, I did have to give some bonus incentives. But never mind. This is for Beth and her sweet boy. Who wouldn’t?”

  Maria reached out and grabbed Ms. Tuttle’s hand and squeezed. “Thank you so much for everything you do.”

  Ms. Tuttle nodded in appreciation. “Thank you. I knew I’d have your approval. That’s why I felt it was okay to put the tab for their night out in Vegas on the library’s credit card.”

  Maria swallowed hard to stop from choking. “Oh.” She could only solve one problem at a time. She’d deal with Ms. Tuttle’s questionable use of city funds later.

  “In any case, the more Karla and I talked about the riddle, the more we realized the sequence of letters and numbers in the third line were the cards in the opening hand of the ‘south’ player in Bridge. In the riddle when it says, ‘Open the lid,’ it means to start the game. The south player begins bidding, taking into consideration the cards she was dealt, which consist of….” Ms. Tuttle pointed to the wall where Maria could read along with the letters and numbers in the Veil riddle.

  “SA64HQ965DJ52C654”

  “The ‘S’ stand for spades,” explained Ms. Tuttle. “The south player has the ace, six, and four of spades. ‘H’ is for hearts, of which she has the queen, nine, six, and five. Next is diamonds—”

  “—of which she has the jack, five and two as well as the six, five and four of clubs,” interjected Maria, catching on.

  “Exactly.”

  What had seemed like Greek before was now perfectly clear. “So what cards do the other players have?” Maria asked.

  “The riddle doesn’t tell us that. That is what these ladies are doing. They are playing game after game of Bridge, using different hands for the other three players to see what kind of outcomes they arrive at.”

  “And what are they hoping to find? How will it pinpoint the exact location of Justin in Jarbidge?”

  “Well …” Ms. Tuttle’s shoulder sank, “Sadly, I can’t give you an exact answer. Bridge isn’t really a game of chance. In fact, most people who are really good at it are whizzes at mathematical probabilities, even if they don’t know it. Bridge players have their favorite strategies: the way in which they bid, the risks they take, how they lead tricks, and of course, a partnership never knows exactly how the other will respond. Even if we know the cards the south player has, we don’t know exactly how the rest of game will be played or how it will end. There are thousands of possibilities.”

  “So these ladies are playing games of Bridge over and over again, and each time the south player starts with the same cards—”

  “—while the other players have different hands.” Ms. Tuttle finished Maria’s sentence. “Yes. And, as you might guess, each game has a slightly different outcome—”

  “—and all of this is to find some kind of pattern or meaning related to the location of the treasure?” asked Maria, her mind spinning with the task set before these women.

  “Yes. So far they’ve had some interesting terms come up—but it’s all a bit muddled.”

  “What do you mean by interesting terms?” Maria felt stupid for asking so many questions, but she had to understand.

  “Girl, you really don’t know much about Bridge, do you?” said Delores, shaking her head.

  Ms. Tuttle patted Maria’s shoulder. “Over the years, Bridge players have assigned names to different cards, suits, deals, strategies, all sorts of things. For example, the seven of diamonds is the ‘beer card.’”

  “My favorite!” shouted Julia, still holding her metal flask. “At least it used to be.”

  “Well,” continued Ms. Tuttle, “what if the seven of diamonds was the last card played in the particular Bridge game that Steven Veil had in mind? What would that mean? Maybe the treasure is near a beer distillery in Jarbidge. Or what if the last card is an ace? Its slang name is a bullet. Would that mean the treasure is where the infamous last stage robbery went down?”

  “How many slang terms are there in Bridge?” asked Maria. She wished she knew more about the game but could tell it was not something she could learn in a few minutes time.

  “Hundreds,” answered Karla.

  Ms. Tuttle’s enthusiasm waned. “There are a lot, but at least we have a system in place and we’re looking to see which terms come up, and we’re making note of them.”

  “One of my games ended with the ‘Curse of Scotland’ being the last card,” said one of the more calm looking women in the room.

  “And one of our games began with a ‘Phantom Sacrifice’ bid in the beginning,” said another.

  “Delores,” asked Ms. Tuttle, “didn’t one of your games end with a ‘Devil’s Coup?’”

  “Sure did. That’s one of my favorite ways to go out—with the devil at my side.”

  “But how do we know which one of the games Steven Veil was actually thinking of?” Maria was beginning to suffer from Contact Br
idge overload.

  “I … I don’t know yet.” Ms. Tuttle wrung her hands. “I’m trying to find more information about Mr. Veil. You know, things about who he is and what makes him tick. But he’s quite the recluse, especially the last few years. Regardless, with the skill of these women, I believe we’ll make sense of it all. I just need time.”

  “Time,” Maria said, letting the air out of her lungs slowly, “is the one thing we don’t have.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fenn estimates that 65,000 people have joined the search for riches that are described as ‘265 gold coins, hundreds of gold nuggets, hundreds of rubies, eight emeralds, two Ceylon sapphires, many diamonds, two ancient Chinese jade carvings, pre-Columbian gold bracelets and fetishes, and more.’ Fenn only has his word to show that the treasure is real.

  “On the Hunt, ‘Where Warm Waters Halt,’ for a $2 Million Treasure” by Fernanda Santos, The New York Times, July 5, 2016

  Back in her car with the terms of Bridge spinning around her head, Maria was grateful when her police radio beeped and a voice came through the receiver.

  “Chief Branson? You there?”

  Maria picked up the radio and pushed the talk button. “I’m here, Pete. What’s going on? It’s late. Are you still at the office?”

  “Do you remember Karl Fossum, the man we apprehended at the creek?”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s just been spotted out by the reservoir. The FBI is going there now.”

  “On my way.”

  Maria turned both her siren and lights off before pulling onto the dirt road that led to the reservoir. She didn’t want to spook Fossum. The makeshift construction parking lot had several parked trailers in it. Maria pulled her car up to one of them. Quietly getting out, she looked around, unsure of who and when the tip had been called in. There was no sign of the FBI yet. Either they were hiding or she’d managed to beat them here, which she probably had considering how fast she’d been going.

  Several workers were gathering picket signs that had been left leaning against dirt piles and cement blocks from the week’s earlier protests. They didn’t see Maria get out of her car.