A Clue for the Puzzle Lady

by Parnell Hall

  “I’m not,” Chief Harper said. “How long is it going to take?”

  “A detailed analysis would take some time. I assume you’re only interested in a match.”

  “That’s right,” Chief Harper said. He opened his briefcase, took out two letters encased in plastic. “Here’s two more samples to match up.”

  “Oh?”

  “One’s another puzzle clue. I assume it will match the two you have. The other’s something else.”

  “And what is that?”

  Chief Harper passed it over. The examiner took it, turned it around, read the letter. His eyes widened. When he looked up, it was without his usual supercilious air. “This is a letter from the killer?”

  “It would appear to be.”

  “How do you know it’s not a prank?”

  “I don’t think you want to know that.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There are things I’m not releasing to the media, and things I am. I’m releasing something today. When you hear it, if you put two and two together, I can’t stop you, but it’s probably better you don’t know for sure.”

  Pinkham’s eyes were still wide. “I see.”

  “I gotta run over to the crime lab. I’ll be grateful for anything you can tell me when I get back.”

  Chief Harper drove to the crime lab, created a small sensation by dropping off the hammer. He fended off all questions, and left instructions that it be processed for fingerprints, and that blood and hair samples should be recovered and tested against those of the decedents.

  “This is the murder weapon?” the lab technician said incredulously.

  “You tell me,” Chief Harper said.

  Not really expecting much, Chief Harper drove back to the examiner’s office to find Mortimer Pinkham was actually through.

  “Well, you’re lucky,” Pinkham said.

  “How so?”

  “Your three samples—the puzzle clues, the Barbara Burnside letter, and this new one, the one sending you back to the cemetery—were all typed on typewriters.”

  Chief Harper was confused. “That’s lucky?”

  “It is in this day and age. Everyone’s got computer printers. Three out of three typewriters is a real stroke of luck.”

  “You can’t match computer printouts?”

  Pinkham looked offended. “I didn’t say that. With a laser printer the paper is marked by the belts, pinchers, and rollers. And toner can have unique chemical composition. It can be done. It’s just much easier with a typewriter.”

  “And in this case?” Chief Harper prompted.

  “We’ve got three separate typewriters. I got an electric courier, a non-electric courier, and this new one, a nonelectric elite. Knowing that, I could throw out half these samples right away.”

  “Fine, but did you get a match?” Chief Harper said.

  “I sure did. Unfortunately, I only got one, but I guess that’s better than nothing.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the elite non-electric. I couldn’t match up the puzzle clues, and I couldn’t match up the Burnside letter. But this new one, the one about the cemetery, I matched up just fine.”

  Chief Harper could feel his pulse racing. “Who is it?” he asked. “Which typewriter did you match it up with?”

  “This one here,” Pinkham said.

  He passed over a paper encased in plastic. Chief Harper took it, turned it around.

  It read: The quick brown Fox jumps over the lasy Dog.

  The word lazy was misspelled l-a-s-y. And the F in Fox and the D in Dog were capitalized.

  Chief Harper looked at the tag on the top of the plastic envelope. On it, Dan Finley had neatly written: Library reading room annex.

  49

  Jimmy Potter walked along the road, humming to himself. He felt slightly guilty about leaving work, but there were priorities. Jimmy didn’t actually think the word priorities, but that was what he meant.

  The two killings bothered him. That was an understatement. The killings should have bothered him. But it was more than that. They fascinated him too. The idea of the two girls lying there, stretched out in front of the gravestone. It just didn’t seem real, somehow. It just didn’t seem like it could really be.

  Or that it could be connected to him. That he could have anything to do with it. That made no sense. He would never, never do anything like that. So why should anyone think so?

  Why should anyone suspect?

  How did they get after him?

  Snooping around. Asking him questions. Making him type stupid things on his typewriter. What was that all about?

  Jimmy had to figure it out. And soon. So he could stop the feelings he’d been having. Bad feelings. Feelings that shouldn’t be.

  He’d liked helping that reporter. That had been fun. Finding him microfilm. Looking up facts.

  Pointing him at someone else.

  But it wasn’t his fault. That’s what people had to understand. It wasn’t his fault. There were things he could not help, things over which he had no control.

  Things for which he should not be blamed.

  That man. What’s his name? Kevin Roth. That was the one they should be looking at. That was the one they should suspect. He was the one Aaron Grant suspected, wasn’t he?

  He was the one who got mad.

  But why did he have to get mad at him? Make him so uncomfortable he had to get out of there. Had to go somewhere. Had to find some answers. See how it felt.

  Jimmy Potter walked along the street, lost in thought.

  If he was aware of the young girl following him, he gave no sign.

  50

  “I couldn’t get him,” Dan Finley said.

  “Oh?” Chief Harper said. His head was spinning. He’d just given the news crews a brief statement about finding the murder weapon, then ducked into the police station as the reporters shouted questions. His abrupt departure had not pleased them. Rick Reed of Channel 8 News had nearly attempted to physically restrain him.

  “Yes,” Dan said. “I’m sorry. I know how bad you wanted him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Kevin Roth. I couldn’t serve Kevin Roth.”

  “The judge wouldn’t give you a warrant?”

  “No, he did. I just couldn’t serve it.”

  “Why not?”

  “He didn’t answer the door. I went out to his house, rang the bell, no answer.” Dan Finley shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? This wasn’t a no-knock warrant. It allows me to search, not to break and enter. So if the guy doesn’t answer the bell …”

  “Was Roth there?”

  “I think so. His car was there. I tried to look in the windows, but I couldn’t see anything. I rang the bell, called out his name, I got no response. I gave it my best shot, and came up short.”

  “You call him on the phone?”

  “When?”

  “When you couldn’t get in. When no one answered the bell.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Try him now.”

  Dan Finley looked up Kevin Roth’s number, punched it in. He listened a minute, covered the mouthpiece, said, “Answering machine.”

  “Hang up.”

  Dan Finley obeyed. “You don’t want to leave a message, Chief?”

  “Like what? This is the police, would you please answer your door so we can serve a warrant? Somehow I think not.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. I could put a man on his house, wait for him to come out. I could go back to the judge, try to get a no-knock. At the moment, I’m just not sure.”

  “So you couldn’t match the typewriter?”

  “Huh?”

  “To the Barbara Burnside letter. If you matched the typewriter, you wouldn’t want Kevin Roth. So I guess you didn’t get a match.”

  “No, I couldn’t match the Barbara Burnside letter,” Chief Harper replied. “Tell me something, Dan.”

  “What�
��s that?”

  “When you got the other samples, did you say Jimmy Potter typed the one in the library for you?”

  “Yes, he did. Why?”

  “Did you notice he misspelled lazy and capitalized fox and dog?”

  “I didn’t pay much attention. Why?”

  “I just stopped by the library. Jimmy’s not there, and his mother doesn’t know where he went.”

  Dan Finley frowned. “What’s Jimmy got to do with anything?”

  Chief Harper waved it away. “No reason. This case is just driving me nuts. Everything bothers me.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, I got some good news for you too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That officer called from Muncie. Crocket. ’Cause I called him, told him to find out about the shoes.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. He spoke to the witness, who says she was wearing Nikes. He says the guy’s pretty sure about it, so at least we know what we’re looking for.”

  Chief Harper frowned. “Sneakers.”

  “Yeah. I suppose you were hoping for penny loafers, like the other one. But, no, the shoes are different. Same socks, though. White cotton. Oh, and the puzzle was a wash.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, the famous puzzle clue. Four d line five. Turns out it’s not a puzzle clue after all. It’s an algebra problem. Or at least the answer. It’s part of the girl’s final exam. She was copying corrections from her boyfriend’s paper, gave up and stuck it in her pocket.”

  Chief Harper’s eyes were wide. He felt very lightheaded. He put up his hands. “Hold on. Hold on. What are you saying?”

  “I’m just telling you what Crocket said. And he’s just reporting what the boyfriend said. But Crocket said it’s pretty definite. The boyfriend showed him his paper. You know, his final exam. In algebra. And it’s all right there. What the girl wrote is straight off the test paper. So it never was a puzzle clue at all.”

  “You’re kidding,” Chief Harper said. He went to his desk, got out his notebook, looked up the phone number, and called Officer Crocket.

  The Muncie police officer seemed rather pleased with himself. “That’s right,” he said. “It’s right off the final exam. The kid showed me the problem, showed me what she wrote. Of course, the puzzle angle didn’t make the papers out here, so it didn’t mean anything to him. He didn’t know we found it in her pocket. But he described it to a T.”

  “So there never was a puzzle?”

  “No. The word line was the answer to a problem. The graph of some equation was a line.”

  “I see.”

  Chief Harper hung up the phone with nerveless fingers. Officer Crocket had confirmed Dan Finley’s story. Not that he suspected Dan Finley of lying, but still.

  Dan Finley had been the one to get the typing sample from the library. He claimed Jimmy Potter typed it. But what if Dan typed it himself when Jimmy Potter wasn’t there? And at the same time, he’d typed the note about the murder weapon. Wouldn’t that be a colossal double bluff, typing out the note, and, at the same time, typing a sample so that Chief Harper could identify it. And then, just to play with his head, telling him the puzzle clues weren’t puzzle clues. After all, it was Dan Finley who had said it was a clue in the first place. If Finley were the killer, as Cora Felton had suggested, might he get some perverse pleasure out of suddenly denying his own handiwork?

  But, no, Officer Crocket had confirmed Dan’s story. The first puzzle clue was not a puzzle clue. And all investigations leading from it were meaningless.

  Except they weren’t. The puzzle clues had arrived with the murder weapon, with the second dead girl. The killer was for real, even if the clues weren’t.

  Nothing made any sense.

  Chief Harper flipped back a page in his notebook, picked up the phone again, punched in a number.

  Sherry Carter answered the phone.

  “Hi, it’s Chief Harper. Is your aunt there?”

  “No, she’s not. What’s up, Chief?”

  “I really need to talk to your aunt. Do you know where she is?”

  “No.”

  Her voice was cold. Chief Harper suspected her in some way of covering up for her aunt. “All right, look,” he said. “I want you to find her. There’s been a development that she needs to know.”

  “What is that?”

  Chief Harper chose his words carefully, well aware that Dan Finley was listening to his end of the conversation. “The puzzle clue,” he said. It took a conscious effort to avoid saying first puzzle clue. “Four d line five has been identified. We now know exactly what it is. It’s the answer to an algebra question.”

  There was a silence.

  “The girl wrote it herself,” Chief Harper continued. “It’s the answer to a problem on an algebra test. This has been confirmed by the Muncie police. When it gets out, the media may have some questions for your aunt. I would like to talk to her first.”

  “Good lord, Chief. Do you know what this means?”

  “I don’t have time to go into all the implications now, Miss Carter. If you can get a message to your aunt, I need to talk to her as soon as possible.”

  Chief Harper hung up the phone, rubbed his head.

  “I guess I got you into that one,” Dan Finley said. “But, hey, it’s no big deal. It’s not like she ever insisted it was a puzzle. In fact, the interview last night, she said she thought it wasn’t. So she won’t be that upset.”

  “Right,” Chief Harper said.

  Dan Finley didn’t know the half of it. Unless, of course, Dan Finley set this whole thing up. Unless Dan Finley was the killer.

  Chief Harper’s mind was going in circles. He was having trouble collecting his thoughts.

  The phone rang.

  Chief Harper wasn’t ready to deal with anyone. He let Finley answer it.

  “It’s your wife,” Dan said.

  Chief Harper picked up the phone, pushed the button. “Hi,” he said.

  Her words went through him like a knife.

  “Clara didn’t come home from school.”

  51

  Clara Harper was thrilled. This was exciting. Doing detective work. Following somebody. Just like on TV.

  She’d staked out the library after school, checked casually to make sure Jimmy was still working there and hadn’t knocked off early and gone home, or simply not come in. But, no, from the front porch she’d seen him inside carting books back and forth. She’d retreated down the street to a safe vantage point in front of the pharmacy, purchased a newspaper to hide behind when he went by, like in the movies. She’d thrown it in the trash when he’d finally come out and gone the other way.

  Now she was following him at a discreet distance, keeping him in sight, but never getting close enough to be seen. If she had been spotted, it would not have been good, because she was not walking along like a girl on her way home from school, but was darting furtively from doorway to doorway and tree to tree. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice.

  The first place Jimmy went was home. Clara’s hopes sank when she saw this. If he just went home and stayed there what was she going to do? Sit on the sidewalk and watch? Boring. But, no, Jimmy was out six minutes later, slamming the screen door and skipping down from the front porch so quickly Clara was sure she’d been spotted. She ducked behind a maple tree, peered at him from across the street.

  To her surprise, Jimmy went neither right nor left, but turned the corner and went around the back of his house.

  Clara crept from behind the tree and darted across the street. Jimmy was out of sight, so Clara had to either wait for him to come back, or creep around the side of the house.

  Creeping was scary, but waiting was dull.

  Clara crept.

  She reached the far corner of the house, peered around, just in time to see Jimmy go into his clubhouse, a little wooden shack next to the tidy flower garden in his mom’s backyard. The shack could have been a toolshed, but Clara recognized it as a clubhouse from the s
ign on the door. The sign said NO GIRLS ALLOWED!!!!! Really, Clara thought. Jimmy was what, nineteen, maybe twenty years old? And he still had a clubhouse with no girls allowed? Her father should hear about this.

  Clara was once again faced with the prospect of waiting, but once again Jimmy rescued her, emerging from the clubhouse four minutes later. He headed right at her, and Clara fell all over herself ducking behind the building and rushing back to the street. She got there just in time to hide behind a neighbor’s bush as Jimmy came out the driveway, turned right, and headed out of town.

  As he walked, he fished something out of his pants pocket. Clara, tagging along behind, craned her neck to see what it was. She wasn’t sure until he flipped the blade open.

  A knife!

  Jimmy Potter had a knife!

  Clara could hardly contain herself. As she watched, Jimmy Potter flipped the knife carelessly from hand to hand, then lazily snapped it closed, slipped it into his pocket, and continued down the road.

  Clara, ever vigilant, was right on his tail.

  Clara was doing this for her father. At least, that’s what she told herself. She was doing this for him, because her father, like most fathers, was pigheaded and wouldn’t listen to reason.

  It stood to reason that Jimmy Potter had committed these crimes. If her father refused to accept that, he was never going to solve them.

  And he needed to solve them. The family honor was at stake. If her father knew what the kids were saying at school, maybe he wouldn’t be so obstinate. Maybe it would provide a little motivation, make him solve these murders.

  But her father wouldn’t do anything without proof, so it was up to her to get it. She was convinced Jimmy Potter was guilty. And Jimmy wasn’t the brightest boy in the world, so he was sure to give himself away. All she had to do was follow him long enough. He was bound to do something stupid. Clara was sure of it. And when he did, she would be there, on the spot, to bail out her father and save the family name.

  Not to mention stopping any more young girls from being killed.

  Clara’s mission was commendable, earnest, righteous, full of high moral purpose.