A Crossword to Die For

by Nero Blanc

  Belle gazed at him. “I still don’t know why Father didn’t bother to call. I mean, how difficult is that?”

  “I’m sure he’ll have an explanation.”

  She shook her head. “He was the one who suggested this visit … in order to ‘atone for a lack of attendance at the May nuptials’ … It’s not that I was urging him to travel up North—”

  “Belle … sweetheart … Families, what can I say? You’re always telling me not to get bent out of shape by my loony relatives. Look how often they change plans in midstream.”

  She was silent a moment, then sighed again, although this time it was a sound of release. “Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”

  “A bunch of crossword puzzle submissions were hand-delivered from your office at the Crier. I put the envelope on your desk.”

  Belle’s expression turned rueful. “Sometimes, I wish I’d never started this project. Who knew that compiling a crossword collection could be such an exercise in weirdness? You’ve seen some of those submissions, Rosco … Not that the majority of them aren’t interesting and well constructed—”

  He put his arms around her. “My suggestion is that you take the evening off, leave this newest envelope unopened, and I take you to dinner.”

  Belle looked up at him. “The Athena?”

  “Why not? It’s cheaper than going to Greece.”

  “Which you promise we’re going to do someday—?”

  Rosco put his hand on his heart. “Which I swear, on all my ancestors’ heads, we will do someday … Even if it means I have to get on a boat again.”

  Nestled close, Belle sighed happily again. “I kind of hate to admit this, but I’m glad my father didn’t show up tonight—”

  “You’re only putting off the inevitable, you know.”

  Her mouth puckered into a playful smile. “I know. Call me rash. Call me heedless. It’s been done before.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Al Lever, Newcastle’s chief homicide detective, lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and placed his feet on his desktop. His open jacket slid to the sides of his broad chest, revealing a .38 caliber revolver attached to his belt on the right side and his gold shield equally secured to the left. A paunch that had formed long before the onset of middle age sent rolls of flesh cascading over both official objects while Al leaned back in his chair and then smiled. It was the expression of a man who has at last found peace.

  Lever positively lived for moments like this: the long, lazy afternoons of mid-August, the sky still light at six-thirty—despite the few lingering clouds produced by the recent summer storm. He lived for the quiet of a station house that had no pressing police business other than a minor fender bender involving some tourists from Idaho. He reveled in a world in which the usual cacophony of noises—the “Lieutenant! Call on line three!” or “Jones has those prints you ordered,” or “They just brought that Harper character in for questioning, Al,” or “Meeting in the ward room in ten”—were gloriously absent.

  And this blissful experience of summer calm was why he hadn’t left the station at the end of his shift. In his book, this kind of solitude was as good as it gets, and he’d been savoring it for a full half hour. That and his precious cigarettes—items his wife had banned from their house two months ago. For Al Lever, times like these were like being alone on a mountain-top in Montana (except that he’d never again be physically fit enough to hike a Montana mountain), and he was enjoying it for what it was: the ultimate P and Q.

  He took another pull from his cigarette and watched the smoke turn green as it drifted toward the fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling. Then the smoke became a bluish-brown as it floated out the open window while a horn up on Sixth Street honked. The noise was subdued, almost apologetic.

  The lieutenant let out a second happy sigh, but before he could raise his cigarette to his lips, his serenity was shattered by two loud taps on the glass-paneled door that separated his office from the world beyond. The taps were followed by Hal Davis, a soon-to-be-retired detective assigned to Newcastle’s robbery division. Davis eased the door open.

  “Sorry to bother you, Al, but I figured you’d still be here … There’s a call on line three. A Boston detective by the name of Tanner. I think you ought to take it.”

  “Homicide?”

  “Nah … At least, I don’t think so. Tanner doesn’t think so.”

  Lever tried to smile again. This time the expression looked like a grimace. “Why me, then? I don’t know any Tanner. Besides, I was on my way out of here.” Al stubbed his smoke out in an ashtray overflowing with butts. He made no motion to reach for the phone.

  After a small silence, Davis said, “I think you should take this one, Al.”

  “Argh, something tells me this is going to ruin a perfectly good evening.” Lever picked up the receiver, punched line three, and grumbled, “Homicide, Lever here.”

  “This is Sid Tanner, Lieutenant. I’m up in Boston … Back Bay. We had an Amtrak train pull in a little while ago with a stiff on board.”

  “So …?” Al said this in a tone that made it clear he had no desire to get involved. As far as he was concerned, Boston’s business was Boston’s business, and they could keep it right there. Tanner didn’t respond, so Al followed it with, “Was it a homicide?” and immediately wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

  “I don’t think so. Our ME’s on-site prelim. seems to indicate heart attack. At this time, we have no autopsy scheduled … I don’t like cutting stiffs apart unless I smell a rat. And nothing looks out of place. Next of kin would have to order an autopsy at this point.”

  “So why call me? I’m homicide, in case no one informed you. And what’s this got to do with Newcastle PD in the first place?”

  “Look, Lieutenant, I don’t know why your buddy put you on the phone, but I don’t need a runaround here. I’m just trying to find out where this stiff belongs, okay? Because he sure as hell doesn’t belong in Boston.”

  “What makes you think I want him?”

  “You gonna help me with this or not, Lieutenant?”

  Lever coughed a typical smoker’s cough and muttered his all-purpose excuse, which was: “Allergies … allergies … When do you get a break from this damn pollen count?” Then he straightened up and returned to the phone conversation. “What have you got?”

  “We didn’t find any ticket on this guy, so we don’t know for sure where he was supposed to get off, or where he got on, for that matter. But the conductor, a John Markoe, is almost positive the guy was on board when he started his shift in New York City, and held a ticket for Newcastle. So, I’m starting with what I got from the conductor. Markoe seems like the kind of guy who remembers a lot more than he needs to. He sure as hell talks more than he needs to.”

  “No ticket stubs on the body?”

  “No. But Markoe says he probably collected it just before they arrived in Newcastle, or possibly some other passenger took it by mistake when they went off to the café car or something.”

  “You didn’t find any receipt either?”

  “Nah, but people don’t always hold on to them. If it’s not a business trip, they usually toss ’em.”

  “Why Newcastle? Why not Providence? New London? New Haven?”

  “A possibility, but I’m working my way down the coast, Lieutenant, and you’re the first stop south—”

  “Right. You got a name for this clown?”

  “Yeah, Theodore A. Graham.”

  “Huh …? What …?” Lever stuttered. He dropped his feet off the desk, sat straight in his chair, and wrote the name down on a slip of paper. “Graham? You’re certain about that?”

  “Credit cards in the wallet. And the photo on the driver’s license matches up.”

  “An old guy?”

  “Sixty-eight, according to the license.”

  “Don’t tell me … It’s a Florida license.”

  “Yeah …? Where’d you get that?”

  “Unlucky guess.” Lever sa
id this almost to himself.

  “You know the guy?”

  Again, Al stuttered. “Well, yeah … Or no, not know him. I mean I’ve never met him, but I was Best Man at his daughter’s wedding. He never made it up from Florida for the event … That was in May of this year. I’m sure his name was Theodore, though. He’s the father of Annabella Graham—Belle Graham, the crossword puzzle editor at one of our local newspapers, The Evening Crier. She never mentioned to me he was on his way north.”

  “And she’s a friend of yours?”

  “You could say that. She married a guy who used to be with the department here. My partner, in fact. He’s a PI now. Rosco Polycrates.”

  “Hey, look, Lieutenant, I’m sorry about this.” A tone of “fellow-cop” compassion had filtered into Tanner’s voice. All of a sudden the stiff was family. “I mean, I didn’t figure the deceased to be a family friend. I guess that’s why Detective Davis wanted you to get on the line … Look, how do you want to handle this … I mean Graham’s body … You tell me. I have no problem holding it for a day or two.”

  Lever sighed again. Any hint of contentment was long gone. “I appreciate the offer. I’m gonna have to drive out to his daughter’s house and break this news personally. I can’t do it over the phone … It could take me a few hours to get back to you. What’s your number up there?”

  Lever scratched Tanner’s name and number down on the slip of paper next to Theodore A. Graham, signed off, and dropped the receiver back into its cradle. Hearing the clank, Detective Davis stepped back into the office.

  “So, it was Belle’s father, I take it?” he asked as he pulled a chair up to Lever’s desk.

  Lever only nodded.

  “Yeah, I figured,” Davis continued. “That’s why I thought you ought to get it from the horse’s mouth rather than from me.” Davis reached across the desk, removed a cigarette from Lever’s pack, and lit it. “Look, Al, why don’t you call Polycrates. Get him down here, brief him, and let him tell Belle. Hell, he never met the old man either, right? How broken up is he gonna be?”

  “Mr. Sensitive.”

  “Who? Polycrates?”

  “No, you, Davis. And I was being facetious, in case it went over that thick head of yours. I’m not going to pull a stunt like that on Rosco. He’s my best friend, for pete’s sake.”

  “Hey, suit yourself, Al. I’m just trying to make it easier on you. I could care less about Polycrates. As far as I’m concerned, it was a banner day when ‘Dud-Lee-Do-Right’ left the department.”

  “Any other comments you’d like to share?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then get out of here.”

  “Jeez … Talk about sensitive.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The funeral arrangements were made hastily. Belle was conscious of a bizarre sense of disconnect; and despite—or perhaps because of—Rosco’s tender concern, she was more deeply aware of her own disturbing dearth of emotion. My father’s dead, she reminded herself over and over again. He died of a heart attack … alone on a train. But the words had a hollow ring that rendered them nearly meaningless. When her mother had died, there had been tears; now there were none.

  Almost, and she loathed to admit this, she felt a sense of relief. Relief that she and her father no longer were forced to play out the complex roles of uncommunicative parent and child. Relief that she no longer need suffer guilt from her lack of filial devotion—or “measure up” to an ideal she’d never attain. Relief to finally shake off the past, to stand on her own feet and face the world guided by principles she herself had devised. However, the sensation of release had a way of hauling her back full circle into guilty confusion.

  In typical Belle fashion, she decided to ignore (and perhaps evade) her jumbled thoughts by instead placing her total concentration on the many large and small activities that surround a burial.

  First off: the involvement—or lack thereof—of Sara Crane Briephs. Newcastle’s dowager empress and self-appointed mentor to both Belle and Rosco had wanted to give a luncheon following the service, had insisted upon giving a luncheon; and Sara, as everyone knew, had rarely lost a battle of wills in her eighty-plus years. But Belle had been firm on the issue of a post-service reception. She loved Sara; she considered her a surrogate mother and grandmother rolled into one. However, Belle also realized that Sara needed parameters on occasion. And this was one of those times.

  “No,” Belle had stated over tea at White Caps, Sara’s ancestral home. “Father wouldn’t have wanted all that hoopla. He didn’t want it when Mother died … He said we should celebrate life, not death.”

  “This isn’t a celebration, Belle dear. Rather, it’s a means of comforting the grieving.”

  Belle had put down her gold-rimmed porcelain cup and regarded the indomitable old lady. “I don’t know where his former Princeton crowd has dispersed to now, Sara. Besides, I never really knew his acquaintances there … Father and Mother didn’t move to New Jersey until after I’d gone to college.”

  “Well, colleagues from his previous positions then?”

  Belle shook her head. “Father had a peripatetic career. The longest amount of time he spent anywhere was in Ohio when I was little … When he and Mother accepted new positions in Iowa, they simply moved on. Friendships were never a focus of their lives … Nor was maintaining contact with distant relatives. My parents were happiest in a little cocoon that included only two people.” Belle paused. “As for me, I don’t require comforting, because I’m not grieving.”

  “You will, dear.”

  Belle had hunched her shoulders and stared down into her teacup. “My father and I weren’t close, Sara …”

  Her hostess had inclined her proud head, her perfectly sculpted white hair exuding an aura of omnipotence while her blue eyes had gazed at the younger woman. “I’ll do anything you wish, my dear.”

  “No luncheon, then. And no reception. We’ll have a brief funeral service … nothing extraneous … In fact, the fewer in attendance, the better.”

  “People will wish to pay their respects, dear … Rosco’s family … Albert …”

  Belle had stared silently out the window while Sara had continued to regard her.

  “No luncheon. I agree … But Belle, know that experiences of loss may appear in supposedly unrelated forms. Anger can be one. Or a feeling of betrayal. Hollowness, seeming callowness—”

  “I don’t feel anything, Sara …”

  “So you think, Belle dear. So you think.”

  “I don’t.”

  Sara had finally nodded at Belle’s still averted face. “More tea, dear? A cup of hot tea is such a boon when our souls are troubled.”

  Al Lever was the first guest to arrive at the Putnam Funeral Home on upper Winthrop Drive. The day was hot and muggy, and the mortuary reception room and chapel cooled to the point of chilliness, creating a odd division between the worlds of the living and those in the limbo of mourning. Al clothed in a black dress suit was another dichotomy. He’d always been a man whose idea of formal attire was a poplin windbreaker. Belle watched him walk in from the glare of outdoors, and smiled at his obvious care and consideration. A faint whiff of mothballs moved forward with him.

  “Condolences, Belle.” Lever shifted back and forth on heavy feet. “Hiya, Rosco. Sorry about all this.” He gestured loosely and frowned as if hoping to find someone—even himself—to blame.

  “Al.” Rosco shook his former partner’s hand while Belle also extended her fingers. “Thanks for coming.”

  Lever’s brow wrinkled again. “Tough losing your dad like that …”

  Beyond the trio, bouquets of white roses and lilies, all from Sara Briephs’s extensive gardens, created a startlingly festive air, as if the occasion were a social gathering or the awarding of a much-vaunted award for sportsmanship.

  “Place looks nice,” Al added, staring from vase to vase and then off into the quiescent chapel. “Real nice …”

  “You’re a good friend, Al,” Bel
le said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done—”

  “All in the line of duty …” Then after a long pause, “Hey, what are buddies for?”

  “I meant it when I said you didn’t need to put in an appearance here.”

  Lever attempted to laugh off the suggestion. “Mrs. B. would have had my hide if I hadn’t showed; you know that.” Then he added a serious: “At least, your dad went quick. I mean, there wasn’t illness involved … you know … long-term suffering … that kind of thing …” Lever looked at Rosco for a hint on how to proceed, and then back at Belle.

  “That’s true,” was her brief answer.

  “And on his way to visit his daughter … He must have died a happy man.” Al tried to smile. Belle did too. But again, she found she had no appropriate response.

  It was at that moment that the extended Polycrates clan blew in: Rosco’s authoritarian older sisters and their meeker spouses; Danny, his younger brother who would always remain the “kid” of his generation; Helen, the quintessential Greek-American matriarch; and assorted young offspring, all of whom proceeded to push each other, giggle, and release a stream of Did nots! and I’m telling Moms! To say they were a boisterous bunch was an understatement. To say that an only child like Belle sometimes found this energetic brand of intimacy disconcerting was also an understatement.

  “Belle, darling. I’m so, so sorry!” This was Cleo speaking, Helen’s eldest, and already in line to receive her mother’s mantle. Cleo was addicted to high drama both in life and speech. “Nicky! Tell your auntie Belle how sorry you are that her father passed away.” She propelled her eight-year-old son forward, but instead of mouthing the words his mother wished, Nick blurted out an excited: “Can we see him? Your dad, I mean? Like, dead and everything.”

  Both Cleo and her sister Ariadne gasped. Cleo reached a many-jeweled hand to steer her offending child away, but Belle bent down to the little boy.

  “Sorry, Nicky. You can’t see him.”