by Nero Blanc
“I don’t know …” Rosco answered slowly, “but experience tells me that if a person has a handgun in the house, it’s the weapon of choice when it comes to suicide … Have you placed a time of death?”
“Four-eighteen in the morning.”
“Impressive accuracy.”
“Ahhh, his watch was as smashed as his skull. MEs love it when things work out like that. The jogger didn’t find him until around six, though.”
“Was he wearing his piece? Fully clothed?”
“His gun was on the nightstand. In plain view. And he was dressed. Do you have any idea why he called you?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t? What are you working on?”
“Lieutenant, my current case is an open book. My client is Milt Hoffmeyer, and there’s no major confidentiality involved. What he wants is to find out how the skeletal remains of an unidentified female ended up in his hometown of Taneysville. In fact, he’d love people to know he’s looking for some answers … Crime busting in your backyard; the little guy fighting for a peaceful community—that kind of thing.”
“Tell him he’d have my vote if he was in this district. Things need to be shaken up down in D.C.” Tanner took a stick of gum from his desk drawer, unwrapped it, and shoved it into his mouth. None was offered to Rosco. “What brought you up to Boston today?”
“I was talking to a guy by the name of Gordon—the ‘magnet magnate’ …?” Rosco paused for a beat, but the name seemed to mean nothing to Tanner. “He owns the property in Taneysville where they found the remains … But I’m not seeing any connection between Hoffmeyer and Petri—or Gordon.” Rosco lowered his head and flicked a piece of lint off his trousers. “I’d love to know what Petri had in mind when he phoned me, too. Was there any sign of a struggle in his apartment?”
Tanner shook his head. “The place was a mess. But not from any struggle that I could see. Empty vodka bottles all over—the cheap stuff, too. Dirty laundry, pizza boxes; the junk in the kitchen sink looked like it’d been there for weeks. The bathroom was filthy, trash all over the place. And you know something? Just like you, this guy used to be a cop. It makes you sick, how low some guys can fall.”
“As it were,” Rosco interjected, but the comment seemed to go over Tanner’s head. “So, Petri was a cop here in Boston?”
“Yeah. Before my time, though … I came here from LAPD ten years ago and Petri was already sliding … and fast …
Had a rep for being a sleazeball even then. People warned me about him, first day on the job.”
“How old was he?”
“Sixty-three.”
Rosco shifted in his chair. “I’d sure like to know why he contacted me … Where do you go from here, Lieutenant?”
Tanner raised a hand and then dropped it on his desk. The gesture was one of total indifference. “It’s a suicide with no next of kin, and you obviously can’t provide answers … Where do you think I go from here?”
“Obviously not the Pats game.”
Tanner scowled at Rosco. “Very funny … I will get those tickets back, you can bet your sweet butt on that—even if I have to burn that damn cleaners to the ground.”
“Can I get a look at Petri’s police record? Going back to when he was on the force? And anything he might have been picked up for since? … I assume he had some kind of sheet … because I’ll tell you, I’m not buying suicide … Sorry, but drunks like him are already killing themselves. They’re just not in as much of a rush as some other people.”
Tanner gave Rosco a don’t-waste-my-time stare. “So? The guy got hammered and fell off the terrace. It’s too bad he didn’t get to blab his heart out to you, but he didn’t. And from where I sit, the case has dropped to ‘no priority.’ You want a sheet on the guy? Here’s how it ends: Cause of death: trauma resulting from a fifteen-story fall and a very abrupt stop—which sounds to me like a pretty obvious and natural consequence of a dumb-ass act.”
Rosco resisted the temptation to say, “‘Natural causes’ was your opinion when Belle’s father died, too.” Instead he opted for: “I still want to get a better idea of who Petri was.”
Tanner groaned. “I gotta clear this with the captain. And you know what he’s going to make me do? He’s going to make me go through the whole damn file, piece by piece, before he lets you take a peek at it, just to make sure nobody’s gonna get embarrassed. Or caught with their pants down.”
“Nothing worse than a cop with his pants down, that’s what I always say … How long’s that going to take?”
“Don’t call me, Polycrates. I’ll call you.”
CHAPTER 20
“You makin’ up another one of them crossword puzzles?” The anxious eyes glanced up, then blinked, but no other response appeared. After a long, suspicious moment, the eyes looked away while a well-rubbed eraser began daubing at the paper’s edge.
“Look, hon,” the nurse’s aide continued in a conciliatory tone, “I don’t mean to be a wet blanket or nothin’ but I sent those other two you asked me to … and, well, what I mean is: You haven’t heard nothin’ from that crossword gal …”
As the aide spoke, she fussed—a continual blur of pastelhued uniform as she straightened the graying thermal blanket on the bed and its yellowed cotton spread. When she finally reached the armchair in which the room’s resident sat, her beefy and active arms tugged at another blanket that had been draped over the narrow and brittle shoulders.
“I can take care of myself,” was the sullen response to all this care.
“Sure you can … Sure you can …”
“Stop!” the old voice ordered with a coughing wheeze.
The nurse’s aide drew back, her mouth suddenly irritable. “Have it your own way, then! You want to look a sight … sittin’ there in that tatty robe, your shawl slippin’ off … be my guest.”
“There’s no one here to see me …” The statement was quiet; it also contained a sad and unsparing assessment of the situation. “Not like before …”
The aide’s heart immediately softened. “There’s lots of folks who want to see you! Why, if you just let me bring you downstairs, everyone would—”
“No. I like being alone.” The eyes returned to the crossword. The shoulders hunched.
“Ah, hon—”
“Don’t you ‘hon’ me. You know I don’t like it … Besides, I’m busy.”
The aide drew a steadying breath. Dealing with the elderly sometimes required a superhuman amount of patience and forbearance. “But I don’t think that gal at the newspaper is going to publish your—”
“I don’t care. That’s not the point.”
“Hon …”
“I told you, I’m not your honey. Never will be, either—not if I have anything to say about it! And I don’t care about the newspaper … Besides, maybe she hasn’t received the puzzles yet. You know how irregular mail service can be.”
The aide nodded. “Maybe … Still, if I was you I wouldn’t want to waste my time—”
“It’s my time … what there’s left of it.”
The aide wheeled her large body around to face her charge. “Look, you don’t want to sit all alone up here … I know you don’t … You’re just being stubborn is all … A body’s got to have a little pleasure. Any doctor’ll tell you that … Fun … a laugh or two—”
“I—do—this—for—fun.” The words were evenly spaced and almost fiercely emphatic. “F-U-N.”
“Well, glory be!” the aide sang out. “Maybe we’ll get a smile out of you yet.” Then she bent down and studied her patient’s creation. “I’ll tell you what … My shift is nearly up. What if I drop that puzzle of yours off at Belle Graham’s house on my way home. I know right where Captain’s Walk is. That way you’ll be certain it gets there …”
The old face looked up in surprise—to which was added the very faintest element of pleasure. “I already affixed a stamp, though.”
“I’ll get you a replacement stamp.”
She stifled an additional “hon,” then gave her charge a kindly and encouraging pat. “That’ll be my gift to the project.” The aide stuffed the crossword into its envelope and dropped the missive in her pocket. “Nothin’ to it … Now, I’m gonna bring in your lunch … alphabet soup, animal crackers for dessert. Gotta get them choppers workin’.”
TWENTY-FOUR SKIDDOO
Across
1. Appeal
5. Sweet smells
10. School grp.
13. Rock’s partner
14. Shrimps
15. Tennis shot
16. Child’s rhyme, part 1
18. Shaker Lee
19. Emcee prop
20. Its capital is Bhubaneswar
21. Beer option
22. Belt position
23. Aroma
24. Child’s rhyme, part 2
29. Hook’s henchman
30. Church vault
31. Certain serpent
34. Gropes in the dark?
39. Over there
40. “___Souls,” Gogol work
41. Scan
42. Child’s rhyme, part 3
46. Boy Scout site
49. Dental exams?
50. Go along with
51. King or general of 1776
53. Mayday
56. Child’s rhyme, part 4
57. Child’s rhyme, part 5
59. Light bedstead
60. Aft
61. Mr. Lugosi
62. Many, many mins.
63. Heyerdahl, et al.
64. Soon
Down
1. June event
2. Ms. Anderson
3. Power source; abbr.
4. Franklin’s ’36 foe
5. “Pause a while from learning to___” Johnson
6. Soulé or Greeley dreamer
7. Meadows
8. Arizona city
9. JFK arrival
10. Tartan
11. Silverheels role
12. Dogpatch denizen
14. Danger
17. Slack off
21. Building site
22. Work unit
24. “Typee” follow-up
25. Bar light
26. New Deal project
27. Road-race turn
28. Stitch
29. Crafty
31. “Fit to___”
32. Capone had one
33. Doctorate
35. Auto style; abbr.
36. Charge
37. Lout
38. Berlin et al.; familiarly
42. Go for
43. Goofs
44. “Fix one’s____”
45. Corrida cheers
46. Bag
47. Detest
48. Runs into
51. Emote
52. Outer; comb. form
53. Exposed
54. Norwegian capital
55. Ollie’s partner
57. ___and mouse game
58. Celtics’ org.
To download a PDF of this puzzle, please visit openroadmedia.com/nero-blanc-crosswords
CHAPTER 21
Twenty-four Skiddoo. Belle’s eyes glanced from the crossword’s title to the clues as she passed through her living room and into her office. She was speaking to Rosco on the portable phone while she walked—and read. “… Okay, but you’ll be home for supper? … Uh-huh … Uh-huh …” She nodded in assent, then cradled the phone against her shoulder while reexamining the envelope in which the puzzle had been sent. The stamp hadn’t been canceled, meaning that the crossword had been hand-delivered and stuffed in with the letters Artie had left on his rounds—or, more probably, that the machinery in whatever station had sorted and redirected the mail had missed its mark. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“… And that’s all you could find out about this guy Petri? … Okay, okay … I’ll wait till then … Hey, no fair. You tell me what you’ve learned up in Beantown, I’ll share what I found in the Crier morgue … Okay … Uh-huh … See you later …” Just before clicking off, she added a quick and loving, “Drive carefully,” and grinned as he shot back his habitual:
“I’m so glad you reminded me. But, hey, you know me—Mr. Never-miss-an-opportunity-to-run-a-red-light.”
“Smart alec.”
Belle chuckled as she slid the receiver back into its cradle on the desk, then she turned her concentration to the puzzle in her hand. Twenty-four Skiddoo … a turn on the antiquated phrase twenty-three skiddoo. She closed her eyes, thinking: Skiddoo … an early-twentieth-century variation of the late-nineteenth-century skedaddle, meaning to hurry—or to flee … and twenty-three, which had been a slang expression used by telegraph operators to indicate dire news.
Belle opened her eyes, took up her red pen, and began filling in the crossword’s blanks while muttering clues under her breath. “Nursery rhyme, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … Mr. Lugosi … Heyerdahl, et al.… Franklin’s ’36 foe … Soulé or Greeley dreamer … How old is the person who constructed this?”
For a moment, she was tempted to phone Sara and appease her fears by explaining that the fellow posting these anonymous puzzles was most probably a relic from a bygone era. But then Belle realized she’d need to justify her theory—which would mean getting into a potentially dicey conversation as to why choosing the clue Ollie’s partner for 55-Down might be considered antediluvian. Better to leave sleeping dogs lie. Or in Sara’s case, an octogenarian aristocrat giving orders to seditious shrubbery.
Belle cocked an eyebrow, shook her head, and returned to the crossword. Within a matter of minutes she’d polished it off.
ONE FLEW EAST, she’d penned for the answer to 16-Across: Nursery rhyme, part 1. Nursery rhyme, part 2 at 24-Across was ONE FLEW WEST while the remainder of the rhyming clues at 42-, 56-, and 57-Across revealed the rest of the Mother Goose poem: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. Belle talked to herself as she reread the answers: “6-Down running the length of the puzzle: A WESTWARD LOOKER … 34-Across running the puzzle’s width: LOOKS FOR A SWITCH … LOOK repeated … I wonder why …”
She glanced at the title again. Twenty-four Skiddoo. Twenty-four, not twenty-three … and skiddoo denoting trouble—even catastrophe. Then her thought process focused on the subject of the nursery rhyme. A cuckoo, she remembered, was a parasitic creature that slyly inserted its own eggs in other birds’ nests while removing and then devouring several of the hosts’ unborn offspring … Then, when the young cuckoo was hatched—usually in advance of its foster siblings—it repeated the same murderous pattern by burrowing under un-hatched eggs, thrusting them from the nest, and then demanding so much food and care that the unsuspecting adoptive parents starved their natural babies in order to appease the hungry interloper.
Belle grimaced, cupped her chin in her hand. Cuckoo clock … crazy as a … She stood and walked to the window, where she idly watched what appeared to be a swarm of sparrows hopping and fluttering across her garden grass or swooping up into the trees. Something felt unsettling about this crossword. It wasn’t the constructor’s anonymity—the previous two had also failed to indicate the creator’s name—no, it was the tenor of the puzzle. “Twenty-three,” she muttered; “Danger … danger … danger—”
She gasped, then stared at the title again. Could the number indicate that she was supposed to pay attention to the answer to 24-Down? OMOO? Melville’s classic novel, sure, but also the Polynesian word for a rover. And then, 24-Across? WEST … Go WEST, she thought, rove, hurry, skedaddle, SKIDDOO WESTWARD. And what’s west of Newcastle? … Taneysville.
Belle yanked open a desk drawer and retrieved the two prior anonymous crosswords. Swap Meet, she read silently; A Burning Question. She glanced over the answers: SMOKE AND MIRRORS … SMOKE SCREEN … SMOKE ’EM OUT.
She looked at her watch. It was nearly three P.M. She’d have time to drive out to Taneysville, do some private sleuthing around, and be back by eight. Kit’s evening walk and supper would be a little later than usual—but not by much.
Belle grabbed a pad of paper, wrote a quick note to Rosco, snatched up her purse, threw on a winter jacket, and bolted for the door.
It was the smell she noticed first; it invaded the car’s interior even with the windows rolled up and the heater on. A smell of fire—of a large fire. Belle glanced at the woods to her right and left, but could see no smoke or distant flame. The road descending the hill was likewise clear, but as the pavement turned sharply to the right and began climbing another hill, she realized the acrid scent was increasing. Something big was burning, and it was in the vicinity of Taneysville.
Belle pushed ahead, but at a slower speed. Then, sure enough, there was the sudden wail of a fire engine, horn blaring, siren screaming. The sound grew closer to her; she expected the vehicle to race into view at any moment. Then, eerily, the noise ceased, leaving the landscape quieter than it had been before. She guessed the truck had reached its destination.
Belle’s car climbed another hill—the official entry into the hamlet of Taneysville—and on the left was the cause for alarm. At the end of a tree-lined lane, a house was being engulfed in flames. Volunteer firemen darted to and fro; neighbors gawked at a safer distance. The hiss of the water hoses, the shouts rising from those trying to save the building, the growling roar of the fire itself, was nearly deafening.
Belle pulled off the road and parked, then stepped from her car, transfixed by the primordial power of the evergrowing flame. Hot cinders sparked through air which seemed scalded. Orders, questions, barked-out answers competed with the crackle and crash erupting from the burning building.
An ambulance tore up the road, and jerked to a halt as a tall woman leapt out. “Amanda!” Belle heard someone shout, “Get back! You won’t be doin’ us no good if you get yourself burned!”
