Yuletide Jeopardy

by Sandra Robbins

  “What are you doing?” Todd stood in the doorway to her office. A smirk pulled at his lips, and he let his gaze drift back and forth from her face to the puzzle in her hand. “Don’t you have anything better to do than play with toys? We do have a noon newscast to do, you know.”

  Grace opened her desk drawer, shoved the puzzle inside and stood. “I like to keep my mind sharp, Todd. You might try doing that sometime yourself.”

  He glared at her and took a step forward. “Someday you’re going to go too far with me, Grace.”

  She ignored the remark and crossed her arms. “Do you need something?”

  Todd shook his head. “No, I just thought I’d check and see if you’d had any response to your plea on yesterday’s newscast for information about Landon Mitchell’s death.”

  “I haven’t had anything concrete yet.”

  He cocked one eyebrow. “But you have had something?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing I can talk about.”

  He pursed his lips and frowned. “Okay. Let me know if I can help you with anything.”

  “I will.”

  She waited until he’d left before she sank back in her chair. Nothing would please Todd better than to scoop her on the story of Landon’s death. She would have to be more careful in the future.

  Grace pulled the drawer open and looked down at the puzzle. She should call Alex. She’d promised to let him know if she heard anything from her mysterious caller. She jumped up, hurried to the door and closed it before she returned to her desk and dialed Alex’s cell phone. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hello, Grace.”

  The abrupt tone of his voice startled her, and she winced. “My, my. Don’t you sound grouchy this morning?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s already been a busy morning.” His voice softened. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better today.”

  “Good.”

  “I don’t know if it means anything or not...” Her office door rattled as if someone was about to open it. She paused in speaking. “Hold on a minute.”

  She rose, walked to the door and pulled it open, but there was no one there. She stepped into the hallway and caught a glimpse of Todd just as he disappeared around the corner at the end of the hall. Had he been listening outside her door?

  Frowning, she stepped back into her office and closed the door. “I’m sorry. I thought someone was at the door, but I was wrong. But the reason I called was to let you know I received a message from my caller this morning.”

  “Really?”

  He remained silent as she related the details of her delivery this morning and her inability to solve the puzzle. “He told me this wasn’t going to be easy, and he was right. So, I’m at a standstill. I don’t know where to go until I get the GPS coordinates arranged on one side of the puzzle.”

  “This sounds weird to me, Grace. But then I’ve never done any geocaching. I’ve heard about it, and I know it’s like an internet scavenger hunt. But I really don’t know how it works.”

  She chuckled. “It doesn’t seem like something you’d be interested in, but I love it. Like you said, it’s an international internet scavenger hunt that’s run from a website. A cache is usually a small item that can be placed along with a log book in a box or some other container and hidden aboveground. Then the person who’s hidden the cache logs the coordinates on a geocaching website, and hunters enter the coordinates in a GPS to search for them.”

  “So the searcher gets to keep the treasure when he finds it?”

  “Not necessarily. The geocacher signs the log book that’s been left at the cache site and may take the item inside or leave it. If they choose to take the item, they are required to leave something of equal value for the next hunter to find. When they return home, they log into the website and report the date they found the cache. It’s not about what’s found in the box. It’s all about the hunt. I spend a lot of my weekends looking for caches. It tests your mind, and you get a lot of exercise, too.”

  Alex was silent for a moment. “So whoever sent you this puzzle is familiar with geocaching, and he knows you are, too. He’s left you a clue to Landon’s death, and the only way you can find it is to solve the puzzle and get the coordinates. Then you’ll know where to look.”

  “That’s right. I told you I would call if I found out anything, but I have no idea whether or not I’ll ever be able to get the puzzle faces turned so that all the whites are on one side.”

  “I was never much good at working those things, either. If you solve it, give me a call, and I’ll go with you to the location. I don’t want you going by yourself.”

  Grace sighed. “Okay, I’ll let you know, but don’t hold your breath. This may be a hopeless task.”

  “Thanks for calling, Grace, and keep in touch.”

  “I will.”

  Grace opened her desk drawer, picked up the puzzle, and twisted the surfaces. The longer she worked the more hopeless the task appeared. After about twenty minutes, she tossed the cube on her desk and rose to her feet. She might as well give up.

  She placed her hands on her hips and looked down at the innocent-looking toy on her desk. Hidden on its surfaces were directions to a place that might reveal an answer to how Landon died. She had to get those coordinates lined up.

  An idea hit her, and she smiled. There was more than one way to find what she needed to know. She sat down at her computer and pulled up the internet. Within minutes she had the information she needed.

  She rushed to the hallway and hurried to the small closet near the staff restroom where the custodian kept his tools. She grabbed a screwdriver, took it to her office, and sat down at her desk. Smiling to herself, she picked up the cube and followed the instructions she’d found on the internet. First she rotated the top layer by 45 degrees, and pried one of its edge cubes away from the other two layers. The piece fell to her desk.

  One by one she pulled the small cubes away from the center axis of the toy and watched them tumble to her desk in a pile of colors. When they were all stripped from the cube, she laid the white stickered sides out as if they were one surface on the cube and studied them. Frowning, she rearranged the pieces until she was satisfied she’d finally gotten the correct latitude and longitude. Then she leaned forward, folded her arms on top of her desk and smiled.

  The coordinates stood out from the white surfaces. All she had to do now was enter them in her GPS and she would be on her way to finding out the truth about Landon Mitchell’s death. Smiling, she picked up her cell phone and punched in Alex’s number. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hi, Grace.”

  “I’ve figured out the coordinates.”

  “Already?”

  She laughed. “Well, to tell the truth I took a short cut. I tore the cube apart and laid the white sides out until I had the numbers in the right order.”

  “That was smart. When do you want to go take a look at the cache site?”

  She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost time for the noon news. What if I pick you up at the police station about one-thirty?”

  “Sounds good. See you then.”

  Grace disconnected the call and sat there a few minutes. Ever since she’d been back in Memphis, she’d tried to avoid seeing or talking with Alex. Then yesterday they’d been reunited by a man who wanted them to bring out the truth about his son’s death. Although she wanted to uncover the facts, she still wasn’t sure working with Alex was a good idea. Once she’d trusted Alex with all her heart, but when she’d needed him to have faith in her, he had failed her.

  Her skin warmed at the thought of what Alex had said when he’d accused her the day before of wanting a story that would get her back to the networks. Although she’d denied it to Todd, in her heart she knew she hadn’t really left that life behind.


  Her primary reason for returning to Memphis had been to help her mother with her invalid father, but he was getting stronger every day. Maybe she could go back sometime in the future. That’s why she couldn’t let herself get sidetracked by old memories about Alex Crowne.

  She glanced up at the clock on the wall and gasped. Thinking about what the future held for her would have to wait. Right now she had the noon broadcast to do. She picked up a pen and wrote the coordinates on a piece of paper, stuck it in an envelope and along with the puzzle pieces dropped it in her desk drawer.

  * * *

  Alex consulted the GPS unit Grace had handed to him when he got into her car and then looked at the traffic in the lane beside them as they drove along East Parkway. “You need to change lanes. We’re going to turn left onto the road that leads down to the Overton Park Pavilion up ahead.”

  Grace nodded and glanced in her mirrors before she eased into the left lane and put on her turn signal. “Thanks.”

  She hadn’t said much since she’d picked him up. He wondered if it was because she was intent on finding the clue her caller said he’d left or if it was because he was with her. He shook the thought from his head and sat silent as she turned onto the road leading into the park and drove toward the parking lot at the pavilion.

  When she pulled to a stop in the deserted parking lot, she glanced around. “Not many people out today.”

  He let his gaze drift over the pavilion and nodded. “It’s almost Christmas, Grace, and the temperature is in the thirties. Not a good day to be having a picnic in the park.”

  Her face flushed, and she smiled. “Yeah, I guess I’m so excited about finding the cache that I wasn’t thinking.” She took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. “I guess there’s no use waiting. Let’s go.”

  They climbed from the car, and Alex waited until she had joined him. He held the GPS unit so that she could see it and pointed toward the line of trees at the back of the pavilion. “It looks like we need to go there. I hope your caller thought it was too cold to get very far away from the pavilion.”

  She smiled and pulled her coat tighter. “You should have been born in the tropics. You never did like the Memphis winters.”

  The memory of the two of them building a snowman in the yard of her home when they were about ten years old crossed his mind, and he smiled. “That’s not true. I like some things about winter. Low temperatures don’t happen to be one of them.”

  “Then let’s get this hike over with as quickly as we can.”

  Together they set off toward the trees in the distance. They didn’t speak as they entered the Old Forest State Natural Area of the park and ducked under some low-hanging bare tree branches. Within minutes they’d walked so far they could no longer see the pavilion. Alex plodded along, his feet growing colder by the moment, and kept his eyes on their coordinates.

  Finally, he held up his hand. “This is it.”

  Grace stopped, propped her hands on her hips and looked around. “It has to be around here somewhere. It could be at the base of one of the trees or partially hidden under a rock. It can’t be underground but somewhere that can be easily found.”

  Alex pointed to the right of where they stood. “I’ll take the area over here, and you take the opposite side.”

  She nodded and turned away from him. For the next few minutes they inched their way around the area as they inspected the trunks and bases of the trees. Alex turned rocks over and inspected each low-hanging branch to see if anything was perched there. He had just finished replacing a large rock he’d picked up when Grace called out. “I have something here.”

  He jumped to his feet and arrived at her side just as she pulled a small box out of a hole that had rotted away at the base of a tree trunk. She stood and held up the small container. “Here it is.”

  “It’s not a very big box.”

  She shrugged. “It’s not always about the size. It’s about what’s inside.”

  Grace loosened the string tied around the box, pulled the top off and found a small sealed envelope lying on top of a folded piece of paper. She slid her finger beneath the flap to unseal it and shook the contents into her hand. Her eyes grew wide, and she gasped at the sterling-silver ring that fell into her palm.

  Alex leaned closer and frowned. “What is it?”

  Grace swallowed and struggled to speak. She held it up for him to see. “It’s a friendship ring.”

  “Does this have some special meaning for you?”

  She nodded. “Yes, Landon gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday.” She pointed to the top of the ring. “He picked it out because it was designed with the infinity symbol across the top with our two birthstones set in it. He said it would always make me think of him.”

  Alex looked at the ring again, then back to her. “Then what’s it doing here?”

  “I don’t know. When Landon and I quit dating, I gave him the ring back. He had changed so much I didn’t want anything to remind me of him. He told me someday I would want to come back to him, and until then he was going to wear the ring on his pinkie finger. Every time I saw him in the hall at school he would have it on and would hold up his hand for me to see.”

  Alex frowned. “Do you think he might have been wearing it when he died?”

  “After his body washed ashore, I asked his father if he was wearing the ring. I wanted to keep it to remember him by, but his father said it wasn’t on his body. Do you think the killer could have taken the ring off his finger and kept it all these years?”

  Alex shrugged. “It’s possible. Some killers like to keep some item from their victims. But why would he want you to know he had this ring?” He glanced at the box she still held. “What is that in the bottom of the box?”

  She pulled the paper out and unfolded it. “It’s a note.”

  Alex eased closer. “What does it say?”

  “‘Good afternoon, Miss Kincaid. Congratulations on solving the puzzle and finding the first clue in your quest to discover how Landon really died. I thought you might like to have the ring I’ve kept all these years. As you know, it meant a lot to Landon. Now you must decide if you want to find out how I got it. If you want to know, then you must solve the next clue in hopes it will bring you the answers you desire. Does your search end here, or are you tempted to continue? The next move is yours, but be prepared for whatever may come.’”

  Alex pulled the note from her hand and scanned it before he looked at her. “Is there nothing else inside?”

  She glanced back in the box and pulled out another folded sheet of paper. “Here’s something.” She opened it and rolled her eyes in disgust. “It’s a Sudoku puzzle.”

  “What? Let me see that.” He glanced over the printed grid. “I see he’s left the instructions for you at the bottom. Once you’ve solved the puzzle, you’ll find the coordinates to the next clue in the sixth line across.” He scanned the page for a moment before he looked back at Grace. “He’s giving you clues instead of telling you what you want to know. I don’t like this. He’s taunting you, Grace. You need to stop this right now.”

  She shook her head. “But we have to keep looking into this, Alex. This guy knows something, or he wouldn’t have this ring. He has to be the killer.”

  Alex shook his head. “Not we, Grace. This is getting out of hand. First he gives you an anonymous call, then he sends you a puzzle to find his hidden message, and when you do, there’s another clue that threatens you. This guy is setting you up for something bad, and I don’t like it. This is a matter for the police.”

  She glared at him. “No, I’m not giving up. I’ve been trained to follow a story wherever it goes. I’ll keep working on this whether you help me or not.”

  “Grace, you’re not listening to me. This is for your own good. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

 
She snatched the note out of his hand and whirled. “I’m not going to get hurt. And I’m not giving up.” She glanced over her shoulder as she stormed back through the forest.

  He watched her go and shook his head in dismay. Yesterday Grace had accused him of being stubborn, but when she set her mind to something, she wouldn’t give up. He kicked at a clump of dirt on the ground and took a deep breath.

  She was determined to follow through on this, and he knew he’d do what he’d done ever since they were children. He’d be right there with her looking out for her. How could she still have a hold on him after all these years and after all they’d gone through? But she did, and he couldn’t deny it. Maybe if he helped her with this case he could finally close the chapter on Grace Kincaid and put her out of his life permanently.

  He jogged back through the forest to tell her he’d help her. When he emerged from the forest, he caught sight of her already in the parking lot. She stood next to her car, her cell phone to her ear. His skin prickled. Something wasn’t right. As he got closer, he realized what it was. All four tires of her car had been slashed.

  “Yes, the pavilion in Overton Park. I’m standing beside the car.” She disconnected the call and turned as he came to a stop next to her. “I called the garage that I use. They’ll take care of this and check to make sure no other damage was done before they deliver the car to my home later today.”

  “Good.” He glanced around at the deserted parking lot. “I didn’t see anybody when I came out of the forest. Did you?”

  She nodded. “Just as I stepped out of the tree line, a car pulled out of the parking lot. At that distance I couldn’t tell who was driving.”

  A gust of wind blew across the parking lot, and Alex shivered. “It’s getting colder. I’ll call Brad to come pick us up. Why don’t we get in the car and wait for him there?”

  She nodded. “That sounds good to me.”

  He walked over and opened the driver’s door for her to step inside. Before she could move, the sharp crack of a gun split the quiet air, and a bullet slammed into the open car door. Alex lunged for Grace and knocked her to the ground as the second shot screamed over their heads.