You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled (6 page)

M
IMI COULDN’T BELIEVE
her good fortune. Her husband was taking it like a prince. An absolute prince. Chuck had seemed in a cranky mood when he got home. But when he saw the dent in the car, he couldn’t have been nicer. Mimi knew why. The puzzle softened him up. But not the puzzle itself. The fact that she’d gone to the trouble to get it for him. Gone so far as to ask the Puzzle Lady. A famous person. A professional. It was like asking a doctor for a diagnosis at a party. It simply wasn’t done. But she’d done it. And how it had paid off! Chuck had gone from testy and irritable to virtually calm. He’d read the poem, seen the damage, and that was that. Mimi shuddered to think what his reaction might have been if he hadn’t read the poem.

It was a shame nobody knew. It occurred to Mimi that, like most selfless gifts, it would go unnoticed. She
wished she could do something about that. Let people know what a savior Cora had been. Cora was famous, yes, but not noted for her good deeds. And stars got such bad press. The tabloids Mimi read on line in the supermarket each week—but of course never deigned to buy—owed their existence to the public’s opinion of the foibles of the rich and famous. Celebrities were notorious, always censured, never praised. Any act of generosity went unappreciated. Which was so unfair. If a star visited a children’s hospital, either no one knew, or it was regarded cynically as a photo op.

Mimi picked up the crossword puzzle from the desk. It occurred to her she could take it to the paper, give them a human interest story. They’d surely run it, what with it being about Bakerhaven’s most famous citizen.

Except Chuck had taken the car. He’d been in such a good mood, he’d kissed her and gone out. That didn’t sound right. But he deserved a night out with the boys after her wrecking the car and all that. So she was stuck at home. And Darlene was asleep. Mimi couldn’t go anywhere until the baby woke up. Even if she called a cab.

Wait a minute. Chuck had a fax machine. She never used it, and he hardly ever did, but there was one in his study. She wondered if she could figure out how it worked. Chided herself for the thought. In this day and age, not to know how to send a fax!

Mimi grabbed the puzzle off the coffee table, went into the study. The fax machine was on a stand next to the desk. It had a telephone receiver, and way too many buttons. Well, some of them were the same as on a telephone. Others said
COPY
,
START
, and
STOP
.

One button said
HELP
. Mimi wondered if she should press it.

She sat down at the desk. Chuck’s computer was on. Mimi had used it before, to type lists and letters. She called up WordPerfect, clicked on
FILE
. Clicked on
NEW DOCUMENT
, as she always did to select the custom letterhead Chuck had designed for her. Instead, she scrolled through a series of choices on a series of screens until she found what she wanted. She clicked on it, and a document appeared with the heading:

FAX:

Mimi filled it in, stopping only to look up the number of the paper.

Mimi printed the document, stuck it in the fax machine. She smoothed out the puzzle, stuck it in behind. Using the keypad, she punched in the number of the
Gazette.
As she did, it appeared in a little window
on the machine. But nothing else happened. Mimi frowned. She pushed the button marked
START
, was rewarded by a dial tone, followed by a ring. After two rings there was a scratchy tone, a loud hum, and the two pages were sucked into the machine.

When it was finished, the machine shut off. Mimi was pleased. She’d done it. Except the two papers wound up on the floor. Mimi wondered if there was any way to avoid that, if it was a sign of her inexperience.

Mimi stooped down, picked up the papers, set them on the desk.

There was the corner of a paper poking out from beneath the blotter. She must have moved it using the keypad or the mouse. Mimi lifted the blotter, pulled out the paper.

It was a hundred-dollar bill. Bright, crisp, new. Not a crease in it.

Well, that was lucky. A quick hundred bucks Chuck must have lost. If she hadn’t moved the blotter, she’d never have found it.

Mimi stopped.

There was the corner of something else poking out. Moving the bill must have dislodged it. Could it be another hundred-dollar bill? That certainly seemed unlikely. Even so.

Mimi moved the keypad aside, lifted the edge.

Gasped.

The top of the desk was covered with hundred-dollar bills. New, crisp, clean hundreds. They were not stacked, but spread out thin so as not to make a bulge. It was hard to tell at a glance, but there must have been fifty.

Five thousand dollars?

The phone rang.

That startled her. It was the fax line. Was she getting a fax? If so, how did she do it?

Mimi snatched up the phone, expecting to hear some terrible tone telling her she’d done something wrong.

“Hello? Did you just send me a fax?”

“What?”

“This is Ned Browning, at the
Bakerhaven Gazette.
Did you just fax us something?”

“Oh, it went through? I wasn’t sure I’d done it right.”

“Good guess.” Ned sounded hearty, amused. “You just sent us two blank pages. I assume that wasn’t what you wanted.”

“Two blank pages?”

“Yes. We’re pleased to get faxes, but this one was less than helpful. Can I assume you were trying to send us something else?”

“I sent you two pages.”

“I’m sure you did. Tell me, did you read them when you sent them?”

“Of course I did.”

“I mean when you put them in the machine.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When you put them in the machine. Could you read what you were sending?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that’s the problem. You put ’em in backwards, and faxed me the blank side.”

“I put ’em in frontwards.”

“Yes, you did. With the writing toward you. Put ’em in with the writing away from you, and we’ll be in business. What’s this about, by the way?”

“Oh, it was nothing.”

“You got that right. Fax it to me again. If it’s not self-explanatory, I’ll give you a call.”

“But—”

The click of the editor hanging up the phone cut her off.

Mimi slammed down the phone in exasperation. Now she didn’t want to send the fax. In fact, thinking it over, it probably had been a bad idea. She had more important things to think about. Five thousand of them, to be exact. But the guy had her number—must have caller ID or star 69, or something—and if the fax didn’t come through he’d call to ask why. It was going to be more trouble to explain why she wasn’t faxing the pages than to just send them.

Mimi put the pages in the right way this time, punched in the number, pressed
START
. She barely paid attention while the pages went through.

What was five thousand dollars doing under the blotter of her husband’s desk?

C
ORA
F
ELTON OPENED
a bleary eye, gazed up to find her niece glaring down at her.

Sherry was in bathrobe and slippers. She hadn’t combed her hair, put on makeup, or even splashed water on her face. She looked like a poster girl for the new horror film,
Zombie Niece from Hell.

“God, I hope I’m dreaming,” Cora muttered.

Sherry shook Cora’s arm again. At least Cora deduced it was again, and that an earlier impression of a great white shark eating her arm was just a nightmare.

“Damn it!” Sherry said.

“Well, when you put it that way.” Cora pushed back the covers, raised her head. “Sherry, what did I do now? I’ve been asleep. All I did last night was play bridge. At a tenth of a cent a point. The worst I’m
guilty of is gambling. I didn’t get busted, and I won twenty bucks.”

Sherry flung the
Bakerhaven Gazette
down on Cora’s chest. “Page six,” Sherry said, and stalked out the door.

Cora grabbed the paper. What now? Had she blurted out that Sherry was getting married? No, she hadn’t. Even when the girls hinted at it during the game. With rumors of a proposal right there in the Country Kitchen. Cora had neither confirmed nor denied. She had pled ignorance. A reasonable plea. She was ignorant then, just as she was ignorant now.

Cora folded the paper open to page six.

And there it was.

There was her picture. And there was the puzzle she gave Mimi. According to the article, it had won Mimi’s husband’s heart.

Cora flung the paper down, stumbled into the bathroom, groped around for her toothbrush.

Minutes later, more or less awake, she found Sherry in the kitchen making coffee. Sherry was slamming the dishware around with more than her usual vehemence.

“I don’t see what’s so bad,” Cora said.

“It was a private puzzle for a particular purpose. It wasn’t for general consumption.”

“You realize how stupid you sound?”

“Damn it, Cora, this is serious.”

“Why? I have puzzles in the paper every day.”

“Yes. Written and paid for.”

“Is that the problem? That you didn’t get paid?”

“Indirectly.”

“I’m going to strangle you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“What’s the problem?”

“It’s not your puzzle.”

“No kidding.”

“It’s not my puzzle either.”

“What?”

Sherry told Cora about adapting the puzzle from the one in the book.

“Well, that was pretty stupid,” Cora said.

Sherry glared at her.

Cora put up her hand. “Not that I blame you. After all, you have a lot on your mind.”

Sherry donated part of what was on her mind to her aunt.

“My, my, such language,” Cora said. “I’d be willing to bet some of those words aren’t in Webster’s.”

“You make a ridiculous promise. Then you let that woman put the puzzle in the paper.”

“I had no idea she was going to put it in the paper.” Cora smiled at her niece. “Come on, Sherry. What’s the harm? It’s just a dumb old puzzle. Who could possibly care?”

B
ENNY
S
OUTHSTREET OWED
his bookie forty bucks. Which wouldn’t have been a problem. Benny
had
forty bucks. Only he’d wagered it with another bookie on Citrus Cloud in the fourth race at Aqueduct. Citrus Cloud had done pretty well. Out of a field of six, the horse had finished third. Unfortunately, Benny had bet him to win. The resultant hole in Benny’s bank account had not been conducive to the gentleman’s health, as Frankie “the Shirt” (as in “you bet your shirt”) Finklestein tended to frown on those who did not cover their marker within a reasonable period of time, reasonable being determined as whatever Frankie decided it was.

Benny needed a hundred bucks, and fast.

Failing that, he’d be happy to take fifty.

Luckily, Benny had a sideline. The same mental
agility that allowed him to handicap horses, and might have stood him in good stead had it not been accompanied by the general good luck of your average fruit fly, allowed him to construct crossword puzzles, a skill both scorned and envied by his peers, who didn’t understand, but were nonetheless happy to be paid off by the fruits of his labors.

Benny had one such fruit waiting in the computer right now. He printed it out, wondering wistfully as he always did on such occasions just how much he might get for hocking his computer instead of using it to print crosswords. As usual, he stifled the notion, printed the puzzle like a good boy. He crept out the door of his rented room in Hoboken, tiptoed past the door of the landlady he hadn’t paid in two months, went outside, and caught the PATH train to New York.

Wally Embers, of Astroturf Publishing, was glad to see him, largely because Benny didn’t owe Wally any money. Benny sold Wally crossword puzzles that the editor bought outright, cash on the spot, no royalties, no advance. Neither man ever owed the other a cent. In Benny’s case, that made Wally unique.

Wally was working on a layout when Benny hunted him up in the hole-in-the-wall office that served as his publishing house.

“Look what the cat dragged in. You got a puzzle for me?”

“You bet.”

“Eleven by eleven?”

“Fifteen by fifteen.”

“I don’t need a whole page.”

“But I bet it would fit.”

“That’s not the question. The question is, why
would I pay fifty bucks for a fifteen by fifteen, when I can pay twenty bucks for an eleven by eleven?”

“I take it the answer isn’t ‘because you’re a nice guy.’ How about because it’s less work.”

“How is that less work?”

“Because you don’t
have
an eleven-by-eleven puzzle. It’s easier for you to cut half a page out of the story that’s leaving you this eleven-by-eleven space. Plus you save the two cents a word you’re paying the writer.”

“Three cents.”

“Oh, big spender. Okay, so you do the math. See how much buying my puzzle—which is right here, in hand, ready to go—is gonna actually cost you, when you factor in half a page saved at three cents a word.”

“You know, if you put as much effort into legitimate business, you’d be rich.”

“So they tell me.”

Wally looked the puzzle over, cut a check.

“You can’t pay cash?”

“You can’t go to the bank?”

“My creditors are always waiting at the bank.”

Wally chuckled dutifully. That was one of those jokes that was probably true.

Benny took the check, said, “Hey!
Forty
bucks? What the hell is that?”

Wally shrugged. “It’s a compromise. I want a twenty-dollar puzzle. You want to sell me a fifty-dollar puzzle. That’s more work for me, plus I won’t save thirty bucks at three cents a word. I’m more than splitting the difference. I would say it’s damn decent.”

“It’s still a fifteen-by-fifteen puzzle.”

“Which I don’t need.”

“I could always sell it to somebody else.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly.”

Benny folded the check, stuck it in his pocket. “You’re robbing me blind, Wally.” A newspaper on the editor’s desk caught his eye. “What’s that?”

Wally looked. “Oh. You know the Puzzle Lady, does the daily column? She’s got two today.”

“So?”

“So, how the hell’d she do that? I’m always interested in how people get publicity. And it’s always the same thing. Human interest angle. Gets ’em every time. You might want to give it some thought.”

Benny wasn’t listening. He was staring at the puzzle in the paper. “That’s funny.”

“What’s funny?”

“Son of a bitch!”