by Parnell Hall
Aaron Grant joined his family at the fireworks.
“Ah,” Sherry said. “You managed to tear yourself away from Becky Baldwin.”
Aaron winced. Becky had been his high school sweetheart. There was nothing between them now, though Cora took great delight in implying that there was. The fact that Aaron was a reporter and the attractive young Ms. Baldwin was Bakerhaven’s resident attorney meant they were often thrown together, much to Cora’s amusement.
“I was just asking if she had a case.”
“Does she?”
“No.”
“Well, that couldn’t have taken very long.”
“Actually I was sounding her out on whether she might be able to line up some business from Matt Greystone.”
“I would imagine he has a team of lawyers in his stable.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Depressed, is she? Playing the poor little small-town-lawyer-can’t-get-a-case card.”
“You’re the one who said Matt Greystone wouldn’t hire her. Aside from that, she isn’t interested.”
“I know she isn’t interested in married men.”
“Now you sound like Cora.”
“I do, don’t I?”
“Where is Cora, by the way?”
“She stepped out for a while.”
“Stepped out? We’re at the fireworks.”
“She had something to take care of.”
“Something I can write about?”
“No.”
“That figures. It’s never something I can write about.”
Sherry craned her neck.
“What are you doing?” Aaron said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re looking over my shoulder. What are you looking at?”
“Ah, hell.”
“Are you doing something wrong?”
“Are you going to turn me in? Or, worse, write about me?”
“What’s Cora done now?”
“Why do you always think it’s Cora?”
“Because it always is. Plus, she’s gone, and you won’t tell me why.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t tell you why, I said you couldn’t write it.”
“All right, why?”
“Cora wanted me to warn her if the witch went home.”
“Nice alliteration. Wanna translate that for me?”
“There’s nothing to translate. That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“And how are you supposed to warn her?”
“Oh.”
“Sherry—”
“Aaron, sweetie, would you mind not standing in my sightline of the witch?”
“Relax. She’s not going to leave until the fireworks are over.”
“Oh, hell.”
“What?”
“She’s leaving.”
“Really?”
“You and your big mouth.”
“Hey, it’s not like I made her leave.”
“It’s exactly like you made her leave.” Sherry tugged her cell phone out of her pocket. “Damn it, where’s the number?”
“What number?”
“Shhh!” Sherry tugged the paper out of her pocket. She held it up, punched the number into her cell phone.
Across the lawn, Amanda Hoyt was almost to her car. She stopped, dug in her purse, fished out her cell phone.
Sherry switched off her phone on the second ring.
Amanda looked at her phone, shrugged, and slipped it back in her purse.
Sherry lowered her phone. “Oops.”
Chapter
12
Cora couldn’t get the file cabinet open, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. She’d exhausted the paper clip, moved on to her nail file, even tried an old mailbox key from her apartment in the City. In frustration, she whipped out the screwdriver blade from the Swiss army knife. Ignoring the keyhole, she stuck it right under the lip of the file itself, and pried hard.
With a rending of metal the drawer popped open. The bar from the lock was still extended, but Cora had managed to bend the slot it went into. It did not look good. The witch would know someone had been there.
Well, the deed was done. The drawer was open. She might as well take a look.
The file drawer Cora had pried open was labeled “G–M.” Cora jerked it open.
The name Greystone leapt out at her.
Before Cora had time to take it in, a siren split the air. The witch had her files alarmed!
Cora slammed the drawer, hoping the alarm would stop. It didn’t. If it was sounding there, it was probably sounding in the police station. Cora prayed it wasn’t. Still, she was bound and determined to get the hell out of there. The same neighbors who wouldn’t notice a light going on in the study might be less apt to miss an air-raid siren.
Cora sprinted for the kitchen, wrenched open the door.
Headlights were turning into the driveway.
Cora hopped over the rail at the back of the porch. She landed in a heap, clambered to her feet, and ran around the back of the house.
The damn woman had a fence. It wasn’t that high, but Cora had thought her fence-climbing days were behind her. She had long resolved never again to put herself in the position of jumping out the bedroom window when some man’s wife came home unexpectedly.
On the other hand, a lifetime of having done so stood her in good stead. Cora clawed her way up the fence, balanced on the top for a moment, and rolled over into the next yard.
A car door slammed.
The witch or the police? Cora wasn’t looking forward to seeing either one.
Lights snapped on at the house next door. The witch’s neighbor had floodlights on his garage, but they were aimed toward the street. Surely they wouldn’t illuminate an intruder in the backyard.
A man’s voice yelled over the sound of the alarm, “Amanda, what the hell did you do?”
“What did I do? I just got here. You think I set off the alarm?”
“Well, can you shut the damn thing off?”
Cora could imagine the witch’s teeth grinding together in helpless frustration. Not that she was waiting around to hear the end of the argument. The witch was home, the cops were on the way. The intervention of the neighbor was the diversion she needed to get to her car.
Cora scurried through the bushes around the back of the neighbor’s house, slipped into the next neighbor’s backyard, and worked her way around the far side of their house. If they were home, their attention would be focused in the other direction.
Cora reached her car, slipped in, and started the engine. As she drove slowly down the road with her lights out, she could hear the siren of the police car arriving from the other direction.
Chapter
13
Cora got home to find Sherry in the kitchen brewing a cup of coffee.
“You’re home early,” Cora said.
“The fireworks display was unspectacular,” Sherry said. “Even Jennifer got bored.”
“Oh, is that right?”
Sherry smiled. “So how was your day?”
“How was my day? What happened with the heads-up?”
“What happened with the heads-up is you don’t have a cell phone.”
“You were supposed to call me on her phone.”
“Yes, but you don’t have a cell phone, so it never occurs to you other people do. So when you asked for her number, she didn’t give you her home number, she gave you her cell phone. She answered it just before she drove off, but I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to say to her so I hung up. So she came home and surprised you?”
“Actually the alarm on the file cabinet surprised me. She was just the icing on the cake.”
“But you got away?”
“I did, and I need your help.”
“Why? You figure I didn’t actually warn you, so I owe you?”
“No, but I got another kick in the head aside from the file cabinet being alarmed. One of the files happen
s to be labeled ‘Greystone.’”
“Uh oh. What’s in it?”
“I don’t know. The alarm went off and the witch came home. It seemed like a good time to leave.”
“She didn’t see you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“If she had, the police would be here by now.”
“So you’re in the clear. A normal person would thank their lucky stars and butt the hell out.”
“Yeah, but I got something else hanging over my head.”
“What’s that?”
“The crossword puzzle. I don’t know what’s in the Greystone file, but I’ve got a crossword puzzle connected to the Greystones that just might shed some light on the situation.”
“How could it possibly do that?”
“What if the message is ‘Check the hard files’?”
“Yeah, well it won’t be.”
“How do you know?”
Sherry sighed. “All right, I’ll take a look at it. You want a cup of coffee?”
“Coffee doesn’t keep you up?”
“I have a preschooler. Nothing keeps me up.”
“Sure, let’s have coffee.”
“Cream and sugar?”
“Shoot the works.”
Sherry poured two mugs of coffee. She slid a quart of milk and a bowl of sugar across the kitchen table. “You know where the spoons are?”
“It’s my kitchen.”
“Learned to boil water yet?”
Sherry was out the door before Cora could come up with an activity to inquire whether she had learned to do yet. She was back in minutes with the crossword puzzle.
“You stopped to solve it?” Cora said.
“It was upstairs. I looked in on Jennifer.”
“She’s still awake?”
“I think I gave her too much coffee.”
Cora cocked her head. “It occurs to me you always seem to have too much fun when I’m in trouble.”
“Has it ever occurred to you you’re always in trouble?”
“Constantly. You wanna solve that puzzle, or you just gonna stand there sniping at me?”
“It’s a tough decision,” Sherry said. She sat down at the table, took a sip of coffee, picked up a pencil, and attacked the puzzle.
Cora watched in amazement. “I can’t even read the clues that fast,” she said.
Sherry ignored her, continued working on the puzzle.
“Are you just filling in random letters?”
“You’re not helping,” Sherry said without breaking stride.
“You don’t look like you need help.”
“You’re going to need help in a minute. ‘Puzzle Lady impaled by pencil. Discovered with crossword puzzle stuffed in mouth.’”
Sherry set down the pencil.
“I’m impressed,” Cora said. “You never missed a beat. Even while yammering at me.”
“Oh, I was yammering at you?” Sherry said.
“Incessantly. I can forgive you, though, because you were working on a puzzle.”
Sherry’s mouth dropped open.
“What?”
“YOU’LL FIND
A SURPRISE
IN THE FILE
OF THIS GUY.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“Did you just make that up?”
“Of course not.”
“Give me a break. I said something about the files and you’re putting me on.”
Sherry held out the puzzle. “See for yourself.”
Cora pointed to the puzzle.
“I have no doubt you wrote it there. I said you were filling in letters without looking at the clues. That’s what you did. Copied in your stupid little poem just to pay me back for making you solve the damn thing. You’ve had your laugh. Now what does it really say?”
“Now who’s putting who on?” Sherry said. “You solved a copy of this before you gave it to me, didn’t you? So you could predict what it was going to say and blow my mind.”
“You’re too young to say ‘blow my mind.’ It’s a sixties expression.”
“I know it’s a sixties expression. I make up crossword puzzles. You solved it, didn’t you?”
“You know I can’t.”
“So you had Harvey Beerbaum solve it for you. That’s how you knew what it said, and that’s why you were so eager to get into the witch’s files tonight.”
Cora made a few remarks regarding the amount of credence she placed in Sherry’s supposition. Even a casual observer would have deduced she didn’t place much.
“You really didn’t know what the puzzle said until just now?” Sherry said.
“It really says what you say it did?” Cora countered.
“Yeah,” Sherry said. “What do you think it means?”
“I’m in a lot of trouble.”
Chapter
14
Chief Harper didn’t look pleased. Cora hadn’t expected he would. Still, he looked dramatically displeased. “Do you know where I was last night?”
Cora could take a guess. The sirens she had heard driving away from the witch’s house were a fairly good clue. So was the fact Chief Harper had summoned her to the police station first thing next morning. She counted herself lucky she hadn’t been summoned the night before.
“I saw you at the fireworks,” Cora said.
“I saw you there, too. At least I saw you before the fireworks. I can’t say I saw you during the fireworks, because I wasn’t there during the fireworks, a fact my wife is not particularly happy with.”
“You want me to talk to your wife?”
“No, I want you to take another guess as to where I was last night. During the fireworks. Wanna take a whack at that?”
“From your disposition I’d say you were probably investigating a crime.”
“Good guess. Wanna take a guess which crime?”
“Is that a pun, Chief?”
“What?”
“Which crime? The crime involving the witch?”
“Yes, that’s exactly the crime I was talking about. And what a coincidence you got it in one guess.”
“Well, don’t give me too much credit, that’s the only crime you have at the moment.”
“No, it isn’t. I happen to have two crimes at the moment. They both happen to be robberies at the witch’s house, but they happen to be two separate crimes.”
“What did they take this time?”
“I don’t know.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very fruitful investigation, Chief. No wonder you called me in.”
“I called you in because you weren’t at the fireworks last night.”
“How do you know that if you weren’t there yourself?”
“I was there. I got a call that an alarm had gone off at the witch’s house. I figured you’d want to check it out with me, so I looked around and you weren’t there.”
“I promise I won’t tell anyone else that you wasted time looking for me while the thief got away.”
“Cora.”
“Particularly Rick Reed. I won’t tell Rick Reed. He would just twist a statement like that into something awful.”
“Did you rob the witch’s house last night?”
“Of course not. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”
“So if I were to send Dan Finley to take fingerprints none of them would be yours?”
“Lots of them would be mine. I was just there yesterday afternoon. Anyway, I’m dying to hear about this robbery, Chief. What was taken this time? Oh, that’s right. You don’t know.”
“No, I don’t. Can I assume you do?”
“You can assume anything you like. That doesn’t make it true. You said there was an alarm?”
“Yes. Didn’t you hear it?”
“From the parade grounds? How loud was this alarm? And how come an alarm didn’t go off the first time? Or did it?”
“No, it didn’t. Anyway, the burglar broke into her files.”
“On the computer?”
“No, her actual files. The doors weren’t alarmed. The file cabinet was.”
“The file cabinet? I thought you said he didn’t take anything.”
“I didn’t say he didn’t take anything. And I didn’t say it was a he. The drawer of the file cabinet was jimmied open. That set off the alarm.”
“So this time he took an actual file?”
“Not necessarily. The intruder may have just looked at a file.”
“Looked at a file?”
“Yes.”
“Would that be considered burglary? Stealing knowledge?”
“I have no idea, and I’m not getting drawn into the argument. The point is the files may have been broken into just so someone could look through them without actually taking anything.”
“Do you have any evidence to support that theory?”
“Actually, I do.”
That caught Cora up short. “What?”
“I have a file folder from the drawer. Amanda Hoyt gave it to me to process for fingerprints to see if anyone had tampered with it.”
“She gave you a file?”
“Not the file. Just the folder.”
“The file had been stolen?”
“No, the file was there. She removed it from the folder.”
“Ah. That’s where you get the theory the file was looked at rather than stolen.”
“That’s right.”
“Unless the thief was after something in particular.”
“Huh?”
“Well, there could have been a document in the file the burglar wanted. He riffled through the file, found it, and took it. Then you’d have an actual burglary instead of an invasion of privacy.”
“Invasion of privacy? Are you looking toward a potential plea bargain, Cora?”
“No, but I’m sure Becky Baldwin will be, if you ever manage to charge anybody with this crime. Becky will be shooting for a dismissal of charges, or at least an acquittal, but I’m sure she’ll have thought of a plea bargain, too.”
“Anyway, the file’s being processed for prints.” Chief Harper cocked his head. “You didn’t happen to touch it by any chance, did you?”
“Luckily, when I inspected the crime scene, the file cabinet was locked. So, Chief, are you ready for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question? Whose file folder was it?”
“Amanda Hoyt’s.”
“Don’t be a doofus. What was the name on the file?”
