With This Puzzle, I Thee Kill

by Parnell Hall

  “Damn it!” Harper heaved himself out of his desk chair, stomped out in the hall, and came back with a coffee cup. “Here’s an ashtray. Burn your damn lungs out, see if I care.”

  “Thanks, Chief.” Cora accepted the cup, fired up her cigarette.

  “Now, would you mind filling me in?”

  Cora took a drag on her cigarette, blew out smoke. “Just one thing, Chief. While you’re in such an agreeable mood, would you mind getting Sherry and Aaron? They should hear this too.”

  Cora would not have thought Chief Harper’s face could have gotten any redder, but it did. “You want our meeting written up in the newspaper?”

  “Not at all, Chief. And of course I’ll make that clear to Aaron. This is personal, and not for publication.”

  “Oh, great,” Harper growled. “You’re only going to humiliate me in front of two other people.”

  Chief Harper trudged gloomily out the door, returned minutes later with Sherry and Aaron.

  “Sit down, kids,” Cora told them. “We’re having a postmortem.” She grimaced. “Bad choice of words. But that happens to be the case. Anyway, there’re some things about this that you ought to know. And they’re not for publication, Aaron.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

  “You’ll get your story. There’re just some things you can’t print.”

  “And you’ll tell me what?” Aaron said irritably.

  “No, I leave it to your discretion. That won’t be hard. But I expect you to make the chief look good. That may be harder.”

  “Hey!”

  “Sorry, Chief. Couldn’t resist.”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine,” Harper grumbled. “We’re all here. You wanna tell me what you meant by your Wicked Witch of the West impression?”

  That took Cora aback. She wasn’t wearing her Wicked Witch of the West dress, but she had a moment of panic where she looked to check. No, of course she wasn’t. She was wearing basic black, out of respect for Raymond.

  Her eyes widened. “Oh. You mean on the bicycle. I’ll get to that. There’re more important things here.” She turned back to Sherry and Aaron. “The most important thing is that you two don’t split up. Because that’s what this was really all about. Aside from the murders, I mean. The murders were incidental.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Chief Harper put in. “They are not incidental to me.”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll get to them. The point is, this is all about Sherry. Dennis just can’t give her up. Understandable, but unfortunate.” Seeing that the chief was about to explode, she added hastily, “So here’s the score:

  “Dennis, still obsessed with his ex-wife and drinking himself to death, takes the kill-or-cure step of quitting his band, sobering up, and falling in love. Unfortunately, it’s not a clean break. If he can’t have Sherry, he fixates on her friend. That friend just happens to come from money, and he plans to marry into the family business.”

  “That’s hardly fair,” Sherry protested.

  “Sure, defend him,” Aaron snorted.

  “Kids, kids, let’s get on with it. Chief Harper is gonna bust a gut. Anyway, that might have been the end of it except for one thing.

  “The band.

  “The band is lost without Dennis. Not that he’s so good, but he can at least carry a tune. The lead guitarist never met a note he couldn’t mangle. He can’t sing and play guitar. Chaos results. The Tune Freaks are on the verge of breaking up.

  “When something happens.

  “Razor, the lead guitarist, spots Sherry in a bridal shop. He assumes she’s getting married. She’s not, she’s just there with me. But Razor misunderstands. He follows Sherry to Bakerhaven, tags around for a couple of days to see who she’s planning to marry.” Cora smiled, gestured to Aaron. “Decides it’s you.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Aaron said.

  “Absolutely not. What does Razor do? He rushes back to New York, hunts up Dennis, says he just ran into his ex-wife and that she’s getting married, too, isn’t that a coincidence, why don’t they have a double wedding? Like it’s a big joke.

  “Only Razor knows Dennis won’t think it’s a big joke. Just as Razor intended, Dennis and Brenda rush up to Bakerhaven to find out if it’s true. Because if Sherry’s really getting married, Dennis plans to stop her. He prepares cryptic messages, intended to drive her suitor off.”

  “Wait a minute,” Chief Harper protested. “Those letters weren’t to her, they were to you.”

  “Yes,” Cora said. She flashed a glance at Aaron and Sherry before beginning her prevarication. “Dennis wrote the first message to Sherry, knowing I’d translate it for her. Before he sent it, however, he found out that Aaron wasn’t engaged to Sherry at all, it was Raymond who was engaged to me. Lucky for Dennis, his message didn’t mention Sherry by name, and could apply to me as well. So he just added the salutation ‘Dear Puzzle Lady,’ and left the cryptogram at the police station, figuring you’d bring it to me, Chief. He couldn’t leave it at my house because Brenda was there talking to Sherry. Besides, he didn’t know where I lived.”

  “Why does he send it at all?” Chief Harper said.

  “He’s just agreed to a double wedding, but he doesn’t want it to come off. He’s obsessed with Sherry, and he doesn’t really want to marry Brenda. Anything that interferes with his marriage to Brenda is fine with him.”

  “So Pride sent all the letters?”

  “Sure he did. He became obsessed with Raymond because he was obsessed with me because he was obsessed with Sherry. This was aggravated by the fact Raymond walked in on him while he was manhandling her.”

  “While he was what?!” Aaron exclaimed.

  “That was right before he moved out of his bed-and-breakfast. He hunted up the real-estate agent who had rented Raymond’s house, and sweet-talked her into getting him a room at the B&B across the street.”

  “I got all of that,” Chief Harper said. “So how does that trigger a murder?”

  “It sets the stage.” Cora took a drag, stubbed out her cigarette. “Jack Dirkson’s been looking to do Raymond in. He and his wife are out on the porch when Raymond and I arrange for Dennis to give him a ride to the wedding rehearsal. So they know Dennis is going to pick Raymond up, and they know what time. All they have to do is frame Dennis.

  “Which isn’t hard. Dennis is a refugee from a rock band. He’ll be susceptible to drugs.

  “Just before Dennis is due to pick Raymond up, Jack Dirkson slips next door. Stabs Raymond in the living room, and plants a plastic bag of cocaine on the floor in the foyer. He leaves the front door unlocked, and lets nature take its course.

  “Things couldn’t have worked out better. Dennis comes alone, goes inside, finds the drugs, and can’t resist the opportunity to rip them off. He sneaks out, runs back across the street, and stashes ’em in his suitcase.

  “Then he goes back to get Raymond. This time poor Brenda is right behind him. And I drive up and join the party, just in time to see him pull out the knife.

  “Which is too bad, because Sherry, who is not interested in him in the least, knew, just like I knew, that he never could have done it. And that,” Cora said, looking directly at Aaron, “was her only interest in the matter. Dennis played it for all he was worth in the hope of driving you two apart, but I can’t imagine you being so stupid as to fall for it.”

  “Fine, fine,” Chief Harper interposed. “Not that this story of young love isn’t fascinating, but I got a perp in the back on a murder charge, and I got half the town out there who’d like to know why. I’d sure like to know what to tell ’em.”

  “Tell ’em Jack’s a drug dealer and Raymond was a narc.”

  “What? You’re saying Harstein was a cop?”

  “That surprises you? I should think it was fairly obvious.”

  “Raymond was not a narc. He was a dope peddler with a record.”

  “Whereas a narc would list himself as a narc,” Cora said sarcastically. “Perhaps have an office with a sign NARC on th
e door, so pushers could drop in.”

  “Okay, okay, I get your point. But give me a break. The feds send a narc all the way from San Diego to track down the Dirksons? I mean, maybe they smoked a little dope, but they didn’t exactly look like drug czars.”

  “They weren’t,” Cora said. “They were just low-level dealers, hardly worth notice.”

  “Then why’d the feds send Raymond?”

  “They didn’t. He came on his own.”

  “Why? What was so important about the Dirksons?”

  “They got busted.”

  Chief Harper frowned. “What?”

  “Jack and Daffy got caught selling drugs. But they didn’t go to jail. They made a deal. They rolled over on their friends. By the time they were done, a lot of people went down. And Jack and Daffy walked.”

  “So?”

  “The Dirksons didn’t know Raymond, or they would have turned him in too. But some of the people they ratted out were Raymond’s friends.”

  “You mean—”

  “There’s nothing sticks in a narc’s craw so much as a dealer who gets busted, rats everybody out, gets off, and goes right on dealing. Raymond followed the Dirksons here, found out where they were living, managed to rent the house next door. You can verify that with Judy Knauer of Judy Douglas Knauer Realty.”

  “You knew this all along?”

  Cora shook her head. “Raymond never told me. I found out through Aaron’s source. On the San Diego paper.”

  “What!” Aaron exclaimed. “He never told me !”

  “He didn’t know.” Cora smiled. “I said through your source. I had him refer me to the proper authorities. They were willing to cooperate, now that Raymond’s dead.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Chief Harper said.

  Cora took out her cigarettes.

  “Are you gonna light up again?”

  “Sorry, Chief. I’ll go outside.”

  “Sit down, sit down. Smoke the damn thing. How do you know Dirkson killed Raymond?”

  “Actually, what tipped me off was Harvey Beerbaum. Hypothetically, suppose Harvey overheard some things at my engagement party that upset him and he went to call on Raymond? Harvey walked in, found Raymond dead, panicked, and split.”

  “What?!”

  “Hypothetically.”

  “And you’d like me to cover this up?” Chief Harper said incredulously.

  “It doesn’t do you any good, and there’s no reason to embarrass the poor man. The point is, when Harvey went in there, Daffodil Dirkson was on the porch.”

  “So?”

  “Daffy didn’t say anything. The reason why Daffy didn’t say anything was, she and Jack were framing Dennis, and they didn’t want to muddy the waters. But Harvey saw Daffy and Daffy saw Harvey. The fact Jack hasn’t mentioned it is a strike against him.”

  “If I confronted Jack on it, he’d claim Daffodil never told him.”

  “Don’t bother. Nail him on his wife.”

  “How?”

  “After your Wicked Witch of the West crack, you have to ask?”

  “All right, all right, so what’s the bit with the bike?”

  “That’s Jack’s alibi. When his wife was killed, she left the microbus in front of the church. Dan Finley had to pick Jack up at his house, take him to the hospital. I found him there, drove him home. And that’s where Jack Dirkson overplayed his hand. His wife has been dead for hours. He’s sitting alone and forgotten in the waiting room. Why? Because he doesn’t have a ride home? No. Because he’s waiting for someone to notice he doesn’t have a ride home. The same reason he never picks up his microbus. To build up the image of the poor husband stranded at home. Who couldn’t possibly have killed her because he didn’t have a ride to the murder scene. He might have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for the peace sign.”

  “What peace sign?”

  “On the back of the microbus. A great big peace sign’s painted there. I saw it when I drove by the church. I realized I hadn’t seen it before. You know why? Because it was covered up by a bicycle. There was a bicycle on the back of the bus. That’s how he got home from the church. He drove there with his wife, killed her, left the microbus in front of the church for everyone to see, climbed on the bike, and pedaled home. Just in time for Dan Finley to pick him up and take him to the hospital. The bike was his alibi. That’s why he freaked out when he saw it at the wedding.”

  “That was his bike?”

  “Sure it was. I had Jimmy Potter get it for me. Jimmy hid out until Jack left for church, then got on the bike and rode over. It took him a while. It’s a long ride. Jimmy got there just in time.”

  “You’re lucky Dennis’s parents showed up to slow things down.”

  “Lucky, hell. I called ’em.”

  “You called them?” Sherry exclaimed.

  “I needed a diversion. Until Jimmy showed up.”

  “You might have told me.”

  “You had enough on your plate. I figured you didn’t need to know.”

  “But really,” Chief Harper said, “when you talk about giving Jimmy Potter time to get there, you mean in time to stop the wedding.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Were you trying to stop the wedding, or nail a killer?”

  “Both. Brenda’s a good kid. She ought to go into marriage with her eyes open. I thought she should meet the in-laws. And see how Dennis reacted around them. That and the fact he wrote the letters ought to give a girl pause.”

  “Can you prove he wrote them?”

  “I could make a good case. Dennis isn’t very creative. For part of his first letter, he used some of the band’s song lyrics.”

  “Oh, come on, he couldn’t be that stupid,” Aaron said.

  “Trust me, he’s that stupid,” Sherry assured him.

  “You drop the charges against him yet, Chief?” Cora asked.

  “That’s the prosecutor’s decision, not mine.”

  “Well, you might point out that even though he isn’t a murderer, he did possess a controlled substance. Not to mention stealing it. He’s also violating a restraining order just being here.”

  “Never fear,” Chief Harper said. “I’m not even sure getting the murder charge dropped will be that easy. When you come right down to it, there isn’t much hard evidence against Dirkson.”

  “You’ve got his arrest record.”

  “I do?”

  Cora shook her head. “You gotta make that sound less like a question, Chief. Try ‘Yes, I do.’ You got it from running his fingerprints. You got his fingerprints by having me hand him a metal clipboard with a photo attached in the guise of making an ID. A clever plan, Chief, and it worked, and that’s how you knew Dirkson had been busted for drugs.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Now, on the strength of that, and the fact he fled, you ought to be able to get a search warrant for his house. Start with his computer. I think you’ll find he’s been ordering drugs by e-mail.”

  Chief Harper looked at her suspiciously. “Oh, you think that?”

  Cora shrugged, the very picture of innocence. “Just a guess. But if you come across any coded messages, bring ’em to me. Then check out Raymond’s laptop and see if he doesn’t have the same ones.”

  “Why would he?”

  “Why did he rent a house next to the Dirksons? Why did he have a wireless network adapter on his laptop? Do you suppose Raymond was tapping into their computer?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Cora blew a smoke ring. “Just a hunch.”

  Chief Harper considered the smoke ring and he considered that. “So why did Jack Dirkson kill his wife?”

  “He didn’t like her,” Cora said.

  Harper scowled.

  “Would you prefer ‘How the hell should I know?’ ” Cora shrugged. “I would assume it had something to do with the fact that Jack and Daffy had just committed a murder together—Raymond’s murder—and he was scared out of his mind she was going
to slip up and give the game away.”

  “That’s why he kept trying to shut her up when I questioned him?”

  “No, I think that was part of the plan. If the two of them fingered Dennis, you might get suspicious. So the idea was for Daffy to feed you as much information as possible while Jack pretended he didn’t want her to.

  “Which is how Jack got Daffy to the church. Jack has Daffy call me, say she’s got something important to tell me. As far as Daffy’s concerned, she and Jack are just playing more of the game. She’ll tell me she saw Dennis acting suspicious, but that Jack told her not to mention it.

  “Jack has her call Aaron, too, because he’s ready to frame Aaron for Daffy’s murder. Jack frames Aaron because he thinks Dennis is in jail. Actually, Dennis got out in time to have killed Daffy, but Jack couldn’t know that. Of course, Jack tells Daffy she’s calling Aaron so her story will make the papers and really nail Dennis.

  “Anyway, Jack and Daffy drive to the church in the microbus. He tells her he’s going to hide in the background and listen in to make sure they get their story straight. But he has no intention of letting her say a damn thing. As soon as they get there, he stabs her, knocks out Aaron, hops on the bike, and pedals off.”

  The din outside grew louder.

  Chief Harper ducked out of the office, was back a minute later. “We have to go out there. They’ve got the TV cameras, the reporters, and half the state of Connecticut waiting for a statement.”

  “Better go make one.”

  “You’re coming too.”

  Cora shook her head. “You have enough to sell it, Chief. You can do it better without me. If you play it right, you can make it sound like your idea.”

  “Look here—”

  “I’m not being sarcastic, Chief. It should sound like your idea. The trap you set to catch a killer. Everyone will buy that, especially after the clever way you had Dan and Sam grab him when he was trying to bolt from the church.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And, frankly, I don’t wanna deal with it. It’s enough just telling you.” Cora waved her hand at Sherry and Aaron. “Go on, kids. Keep the chief company. Give him moral support.”

  “Moral support?”

  “Immoral support, if you prefer. Just get the heck out of here.”