by Nero Blanc
Karen glanced down at the three coyote pups who were still wrangling over the dish rag. “Otto can handle himself. In the city or the country.”
ON the drive back to Cactus Cal’s, Belle and Rosco discussed gaining access to Dr. Jazz’s hotel suite, deciding that the best approach was for Rosco to jimmy the lock, while Belle stood lookout downstairs in case Lieutenant Hollister opted to return. But as they crossed the hotel lobby, their plan was dealt a blow. Exiting the elevator were two uniformed LVMPD policemen. Between them was Reggie daCoit. He was in handcuffs.
“What’s going on, Officer?” Rosco asked as they passed.
“What’s it look like? We’re making an arrest,” one of the cops groused as they marched the prisoner away. DaCoit kept his head bowed; his greasy red hair and scrawny neck seemed to radiate both guilt and hopelessness.
Belle and Rosco stepped onto the elevator and pushed TEN. When the door opened on the tenth floor, they were greeted by another uniformed officer. “Sorry, folks, this is a crime scene. Please step back onto the elevator.”
“But our room is on this floor,” Belle protested.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“Let ’em pass, Hank.” The order came from Hollister, who was standing at the entrance to Suite 1015. Rosco and Belle walked down to meet him.
“What’s up, Lieutenant?”
Hollister tilted his head toward the doorway, and the three of them stepped into Dr. Jazz’s suite. His baby grand piano had been smashed to pieces. A crowbar lay on the carpet beside it.
“I gather Reggie daCoit did this?” Rosco asked.
“The people in the suite next door called to complain about the noise, so the house detective came up. He found our boy beating the life out of the piano while mumbling, ‘Come to Daddy, Gabby …’ The guy had really lost it. By the time I got here, Reggie confessed to the whole sheebang—strychnine, the works.”
“So, Gabby is … a piano?” Belle wondered aloud.
Hollister only shrugged.
“A piano who ‘left because of his arthritis.’” Belle glanced at the far side of the room. The framed straight flush had been pulled from the wall and smashed across the writing desk. The backing had been ripped off and the five cards were scattered on the carpet.
“Looks like Reggie was searching for something,” Rosco said. “Did he find it?”
Hollister shook his head. “No … But interestingly enough, I ran an IRS check on the good ‘doctor.’ Paid his taxes just like Johnny B. Good. His net worth was estimated at six million.”
Rosco let out a low whistle. “So if his bank accounts are only showing one-point-five mil, you’re saying there’s another four and a half million dollars stashed in this suite somewhere?”
“And it sure as heck ain’t in the piano, is it?” Hollister tossed in.
“But how could he hide it?” Rosco asked. “That kind of cash has to take up a fair amount of space.”
Belle walked over to the smashed picture frame, bent down, and picked up one of the cards. “Why is the piano named Gabby?”
The two men looked at one another, but said nothing as Belle continued, almost to herself:
“It’s an anagram … Gabby—Baby G. Baby grand …”
“And?” Hollister said.
“Can I see that piece of paper Narone left, Lieutenant?”
Hollister pulled the note from his pocket and handed it to Belle, who studied it for several long and silent minutes. “It’s all anagrams … even his name, Dave Narone—Reno Nevada … And Still, Man Wasted Talent—Last will and testament … And his instructions—they indicate that: ‘A puzzle grid must be created by one Anna Graham.’ I don’t know how we missed that clue … If he knew my work—and he obviously did—he must have realized I’m called Belle, not Anna. Second: ‘there is good reason to—fear of it, however cute.’ ‘Fear of it, however cute …’ I thought it was an odd warning, but the sentence is also an anagram, and it tells us exactly the form these mysterious ‘liquid assets’ take. ‘Fear of it, however cute’—Ace, two, three, four, five. ‘Gabby’s’ straight flush. That’s it! It’s in the cards!” Belle was so excited by her discovery that the inadvertent pun didn’t even make her wince.
Rosco glanced at the card in his hand and said, “Diamonds … Of course … You could stick four million dollars’ worth of diamonds in a catsup bottle if you wanted. They’d have to be flawless, and the right cut, to be worth that much, but you could do it.”
Hollister began walking around the room. “Kinda’ like finding a needle in a haystack. Four mil in stones could be anywhere—sewn into his clothes, under the carpet, in the couch cushions …”
“I don’t think so,” was Belle’s immediate response. “This list of words I was given; SHOE is an anagram for HOSE, and FLOG is an anagram for GOLF, RETAILS is an anagram for REALIST, and so forth, meaning I created a puzzle using anagrams rather than the correct solutions.” As Hollister continued to look perplexed, Belle added, “I used the wrong words, Lieutenant … but I’m betting the correct ones will reveal the dead man’s final wishes in a message we can actually decipher.”
“Except you’re not a gambling person,” Rosco observed.
“Wasn’t a gambling person.” Belle smiled and raised her eyebrows while Hollister asked a still unconvinced:
“How long will it take to make a new crossword?”
“An hour or two. The length of the words will remain consistent, so I’ll be able to use my same puzzle grid.”
Hollister picked up the phone, punched in a few numbers, and ordered coffee from room service. “Anything to eat with it?” he asked Belle and Rosco.
Belle chuckled. “How about whatever comes ‘on a roll?’”
Still, Man Wasted Talent
ACROSS
1. Clear tables
4. TV network
7. Ruth & Rose wood?
10. Santa helper
13. St. John’s island
15. Not the up-and-up
16. New; comb. form
17. Message, part 1
19. Cookie pot
20. Links sport
21. Eke out
22. Show girl’s need
23. Blow up; abbr.
24. Bristle
25. Cable; e.g.
26. Message, part 3
29. Old gas sign
31. Cut glass
32. Casino watering hole
33. Phoenix to Flagstaff dir.
34. Casino dance room
36. Pampering; abbr.
37. Japanese crater or park
38. Give the boot
39. Mr. Bishop
40. Message, part 4
44. Mr. Big-bucks
45. N.C. School
46. Moon vehicle
49. Tromped
50. Famous fountain
52. Phone or bucks lead-in
53. Crew member; abbr.
54. Message, part 6
56. Scrap
57. And so on; abbr.
58. Paint by numbers guy?
59. Ship’s letters
60. Owed
61. Draft org.
62. Pig quarters
DOWN
1. Sheriff’s shield
2. On the Blue side?
3. Put off
4. Past
5. Jumper’s prop
6. West Pointers
7. Fink out
8. Breezy
9. 20-Across gadget
10. Fun
11. Rated G
12. Message, part 2
14. World financial org.
18. Many a main drag
22. Holds
24. 25-Across listing
25. Hebrew letter
26. Literary monogram
27. Stock sale: abbr.
28. Sgt. or cpl.
29. Trappers
30. Winter footwear
34. Idiot’s reply
35. Practitioner; suffix
36. Rocky peak
&nb
sp; 37. Message, part 5
38. Betting parlor; abbr.
39. Mr. Bon Jovi
41. Sailing class; abbr.
42. Young eels
43. Orates
46. Some jeans
47. Discharge
48. Mr. Robbins
50. Ballet skirt
51. Wedding chapel prop
52. One of the Blancs
54. Up and coming; abbr.
55. ___Vegas
To download a PDF of this puzzle, please visit openroadmedia.com/nero-blanc-crosswords
The Eraser’s Edge
GARROTE, burke, throttle, asphyxiate … How many letters might you need for a synonym for ‘strangle’ …? Or you could make the puzzle clue ‘strangler’ and widen the field to include other types of murder … a Thug or Thugee—the ancient Hindu sect of assassins … a ‘Jack Ketch,’ which is, of course, British slang for an executioner—who could also be a hangman, topsman, or topping cove … Or perhaps you might consider adjusting the grid slightly …” The remarks came from a large man sitting beside a roaring fire on the second-floor parlor of the handsome old El Tovar Hotel, the famed stone and wood-beamed “lodge” perched on the edge of the Grand Canyon’s south rim. The fact that the man was confined to a wheelchair seemed to have no effect on his broad and magisterial presence; quite the opposite. To Joe Conrad, his mobile chair was a roving throne—a howdah, as he liked to jest with his deep and lordly laugh. “An Americanized howdah for an ex-cattle rancher who hooked up with a bum steer … And how’s that for a fine how-do-you-do …”
The reply to Conrad’s minimonologue came from Jean O’Neal. She was seated at a nearby desk, and bent over a sheet of graph paper, penciling in the initial design for a new crossword puzzle. “I’m not sure, Joe … Maybe I should change the solution to plain old KILL—”
“With the clue being either ‘slay,’ ‘erase,’ ‘veto,’ ‘defeat,’ ‘suppress,’ ‘huggermugger’—”
“‘Huggermugger’?” Jean’s hazel eyes crinkled in a smile as she turned to reply. Like Joe, she was comfortably ensconced in later middle age; her gray hair was tinted an exuberant lilac hue that matched the vibrant blues and mauves and purples she favored in her dress. Also like Joe, she dearly loved to laugh—which she did with happy abandon.
“Origin unknown. Noun, adjective, verb: transitive and intransitive denoting secrecy, confusion, something jumbled or disorderly … an act conferred in a stealthy manner.”
“KILL is a touch oversimplistic, don’t you think, Jean?” It was Will Mawme who had joined the conversation. Where Joe was solid and hearty—despite his inability to work his legs properly—Will was bony and slight of build, so fragile-looking it seemed as if only his abundant nervous energy kept him in motion, or even alive and breathing. A half-smoked cheroot dangled eternally from his lips, never appearing to grow shorter or longer, as if in a perpetual state of suspended animation. Mawme was also a puzzler without par, and the prime organizer of the group’s annual crossword competition, celebration, and charity fund-raiser for the Phoenix Literacy Programme. It was Will Mawme who had originally decreed the yearly gala be held on New Year’s Eve; it was he who traditionally constructed a “surprise first-night lexical conundrum”; it was he who dictated how the New Year’s Day competition should be judged, and who the event’s guest of honor would be.
Mawme now turned his thin, intense face to that guest of honor—none other than famed crossword editor Belle Graham, who was curled up on a sofa thumbing through one of her favorite books—a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica: this one copyright 1929. The El Tovar Hotel had a library almost as venerable as its many gabled building. “Don’t you agree that KILL is overly simplistic as a solution. Or, I daresay, even as a clue.” Mawme shifted his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other as he spoke.
Arriving with her husband, Rosco, just prior to a luncheon in the hotel’s well-appointed dining room, Belle had had several hours to observe the gathering’s eight attendees. It hadn’t taken long to intuit their relationships. Mawme, she’d discerned, held sway simply because no one would openly challenge his autocratic and often cutting manner—skills he’d honed in Arizona’s courtrooms while serving as one of the state’s most cutthroat prosecutors. But finding fault with Jean O’Neal’s word choice, Belle realized, was bound to bring a swift counterattack from Joe. It was clear he considered Jean more than a friend.
As Belle had surmised, Joe immediately came to Jean’s defense. “What would you employ, Mawme? EXECUTION?”
Will turned a tight, tense face toward the bigger man. “Execution—if it were to fit into the crossword Jean is constructing—would enable her clue to be more ambiguous, and thus more entertaining … anything from ‘capital punishment’ to ‘completion’ to a musical reference … But then we, and our words, are always slaves to the grid we have created.”
“Precisely why I like KILL better,” Joe all but growled. “Killjoy … Killing time, killdeer; the options seem endless—and let us not forget Jean-Claude Killy!”
“Kill the fatted calf,” put in Belle. She’d meant to ease the friction, but then winced remembering how the disabled man had met his fate—a tumble from a quarter-horse while roping a young steer.
“Or the goose that lays the golden egg,” Jean added quickly. She smiled beatifically upon the group, but it was Joe who received the full force of this tender expression.
“The twins,” Ginger and Tommy Wolfe, looked up from a jigsaw puzzle they were assembling on a tabletop at the room’s center. “Fables,” they said almost in unison. Ginger and her brother were travel agents. They owned their own business, and it was they who arranged the crossworders’ yearly excursions. True to her name, Ginger was a redhead, as was Tommy although his once wavy locks were now thinning and his hairline receding. Brother and sister had the pink complexion of ripe peaches, but their bodies were shaped like two matching pears. They had not spent more than a few days apart in their forty-eight years on earth.
“‘Fabulous’ quotations …” Ginger Wolfe enthused, putting aside the unfinished depiction of the Grand Canyon at sunset. “Let’s test our communal knowledge. After all, a crossword is only as good as the quotes and quips within the solutions. In this case, let’s rely on old Aesop—”
Tommy took up his sibling’s challenge. “Okay, here goes … from The Hare and the Tortoise: ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’”
“The Lion and the Mouse,” put in Jean. “‘No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.’”
“‘Familiarity breeds contempt’: The Fox and the Lion,” interjected Mawme with his patronizing smile; while Joe Conrad, still smarting over Jean’s perceived snub, countered with an austere and basso:
“‘Any excuse will serve a tyrant’: The Wolf and the Lamb.”
“If you’re on the subject of wolves,” shot back Will, “don’t forget The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing—”
“The one about appearances being deceiving?” interrupted Ginger. “Our mother loved to quote that when we were little, and were still able to fool the neighbors as to which of us was which … the ‘Twin Wolves’ we were called.”
The remainder of the group: Hunter Evans, D.C. Irving, and Gwen Beckstein entered the room at that moment, stamping the remaining tufts of snow from their hiking boots. Their afternoon walk had taken them to the Bright Angel Trailhead, but with a winter’s early sunset impending, they’d turned back without beginning to descend the switchback trail that led toward the distant Colorado River.
“Are we on lists of animals?” D.C. asked as he rubbed his hands by the fire. He had a deft smile and a wide-open manner acquired from a life spent out of doors. He was an Arizonan born and bred, a man whose eyes reflected the solitude of cactus and scrub, and roads traversing mile upon mile of uninhabited land. Despite his cowboy appearance and laconic manner, D.C. was a successful golf pro, an institution at a high-end Scottsdale resort.
“No, the twins suggested ‘
fabulous quotations’ … so we started on an Aesop binge,” Jean answered with a laugh, before turning to Hunter. “It’s too bad Mary Ann came down with the flu, and had to miss the festivities this year. I always enjoy spending time with her. I love that British accent … I guess in part because it refuses to go away. Even after all these years.”
Hunter shook his head. “My wife’s the one who’s usually healthy as an ox, but she really got hit hard this time … I insisted on staying home with her, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She also claimed she was glad to be ‘spared our verbal badinage’ for once.”
Jean laughed her bright and pleasant laugh once more. “I can just hear her saying that.” Then her expression turned pensive. “I don’t like to think of loved ones being separated at the beginning of another year. John’s not with us, either.” She looked at Gwen. John was Gwen’s husband.
“A workaholic … what can I say? There’s a team of Japanese businessmen flying into Tucson tomorrow. It could result in some major input for our Sandstone Estates project.”
“Still …” Jean persisted, but Gwen shrugged off the effort at sympathy:
“Someone has to pay the bills.”
There was something aggressive in Gwen’s tone, something raw that jangled the nerves. Everyone felt it; for a moment no one—including Mawme—spoke.
It was Belle who broke the awkward silence. “The crossword you’re working on now, Jean, will it be part of tomorrow’s competition?”
“No. It’s just something she started playing around with,” Mawme stated in Jean’s stead.
“She’s doing more than ‘playing around,’” Joe snorted.
Mawme raised his eyebrows. “I presume we’re all ‘playing around’ when it comes to word games, Joe. I certainly don’t consider this work.”
Again, tension descended upon the room, and again, it was Belle who dispelled it. “Well, I consider it work,” she said in a cheery tone. “Not unpleasant work; I certainly enjoy myself, but constructing and editing crossword puzzles is my bread and butter.” She smiled at Gwen, D.C., and Hunter Evans, then at the twins—while carefully avoiding the nettlesome trio of Mawme, Conrad, and Jean O’Neal. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can find that husband of mine. Shake him away from the TV and his football game so we can admire the famous sunset hitting those gorgeous red ‘Temple’ rock formations … We’ll see you all at dinner.”
