Anatomy of a Crossword (32 page)

Belle's head jerked upward. “I know you think I'm crazy with my suspicions of international intrigue, Sara, but this crossword is full of foreign allusions … SAYONARA … ALOHA … CIAO … AU REVOIR—”

“The British TA TA at 12-Down—”

“I really don't like this, Sara. I don't like it one bit.” Belle sighed in worried frustration. “Besides, the puzzle has a sort of teasing tone that makes me wonder if the constructor is playing a game of cat and mouse. And again, it's created on the same grid I used for
Anatomy
—just like the previous three.” Belle leaned her troubled face into her hand. “What if someone
is
intent on kidnapping you? Some foreign group? Or … or maybe the senator?”

“I still fail to—”

“But it's possible, isn't it, Sara? Just admit that to me? That it is a possibility? And this puzzle constructor is literally scared to death to come forward.”

“Well—”

“Wait! Let me get the other crosswords from my room. We'll lay them out side by side, and try to find connections. I won't be happy until we track down the constructor. Maybe I missed something in those earlier puzzles.”

“But they appeared to be quite innocent offerings, didn't they, dear? Now, playing devil's advocate for a moment, what if the crosswords are intended as a jest of some type?”

“Well, I'm not laughing. And I don't believe you are, either.
Famous Last Words
doesn't sound remotely like a joke to me.” Belle jumped up, spun toward the suite's main door, then suddenly turned back to the balcony, hurried over, slammed the French doors, and locked them. “Don't make a move till I get back. I'll just be a second. And, don't answer the door.”

“Belle, dear—”

“Or the phone.”

Sara laughed gently. “At the risk of sounding ungrateful … You're not a very large person if it came to alien abductors rappelling down the side of the building—”

“I'm fierce though,” was Belle's swift reply. “And I can talk almost anyone into a comatose state.”

As Belle and Sara huddled over the collection of mystery crosswords, Rosco was en route to Jillian Mawbry's home in Glendale. The attorney had felt the progress report Rosco planned to deliver was better handled at home, rather than in a public office building where their relationship could be compromised or unwanted questions might be asked. And besides, Mawbry had explained, since his property was undergoing a “major hardscaping,” meeting with Rosco on Paula Avenue would afford him a chance to “keep an eye on the worker bees.”

The first thing Rosco noticed as he turned off Fairfield onto Paula was the black-and-gold pickup truck with the sign that read
MARQUIS DE SOD LANDSCAPING—LET ME WHIP YOUR LAWN INTO SHAPE!
He smiled to himself when he spotted Max Chugorro and one of his assistants. They were unloading a pallet of aged and weathered brick.
Not a bad way to earn a living
, Rosco thought.
You were outside all day long, with different homes and different clients. And there was the creative side of it, too. Deciding which plants would thrive under what conditions, building a nurturing environment, working with your hands
—
to say nothing of the hours spent in hardware stores. That fact alone made the job appealing
.

Rosco parked on the opposite side of the street, and crossed to the pickup's tailgate where the two men were dealing with the bricks. Max glanced up, frowned, then returned his concentration to his task.

“Need any help?” Rosco asked. He was already rolling up his shirtsleeves in pleasant anticipation of using his muscles rather than a brain that seemed all-consumed with Chick Darlessen's death.

“Mr. Mawbry's not here.”

“Not here?” Rosco's hands paused mid effort.

“That's what I said.”

“He's expecting me.”

“What can I say?”

“But—”

“Look, mister, I have a load of work to do. You got a cell phone? Give him a shout. Maybe he's on his way.”

Rosco nodded to the air because Max had turned his back on him.

“I'll just try the doorbell—”

“I'm telling you Mawbry's not here.”

But Rosco had already begun walking up the sidewalk toward the house, and as he did, he came abreast of the pickup truck's passenger seat. Sitting there, straight and quiet as a beanpole, was a small woman with pinkish-white hair. She was staring hard through the windshield; and Rosco had the distinct impression that something was wrong.

“Good morning,” he said with a benign and noninvasive smile. “Nice day, isn't it?”

The woman didn't reply, although the corners of her eyes crinkled and her lips pursed in a tighter line making Rosco believe that she'd heard him.

He looked back at Max Chugorro, and wondered what the situation was; Max was watching his movements very closely. If it hadn't been for the sun, the warm skies, the presence of the landscaper's two assistants, and a neighborhood packed with comfortable homes, Rosco might have suspected some felonious activity. Maybe even an old woman held against her will. He tried the friendly ploy again.

“Back east, where I come from … Massachusetts, that is, we've got a foot of snow on the ground … which makes this look like a real paradise—”

But Rosco's affable effort was curtailed when Jillian Mawbry's front door flew open, and the attorney himself barreled out. For such a physically frail specimen, he was moving with surprising determination and energy. His face was livid with anger. “You don't let me know you're here, Max? I'm sitting in the house watching C-SPAN for Pete's sake. I'm waiting and waiting, and you don't bother to inform me that you've finally returned with the right bricks, which I sincerely hope, this time around, are genuinely ‘aged.' I told you from the beginning I didn't want new, and I told you I didn't want
facsimile
acid-aged or that tumbled junk, either.” Mawbry merely nodded at Rosco. His concentration was wholly devoted to the landscaper.

“I didn't realize you were at home, Mr. Mawbry.”

“What? You can't knock on the door like a normal person? You can't look in the garage?” Jillian nodded at Rosco. “I'm sitting in there twiddling my thumbs watching a bunch of D.C. hacks with comb-overs—and paying travel time for the Marquis, I might add. Maybe I should just start hanging out on the stoop like they do on the East Coast.”

“Sorry, Mr. Mawbry,” Max said. “I must have gotten my signals mixed. I thought you said you were driving home from the office.”

“Which I was! Didn't we say you'd be here at 11 A.M.? Or was that my imagination? If you hadn't diddled away the morning, you would have been here long before me.”

Max Chugorro's eyes hardened. “The traffic—”

“I don't want to hear about it.” The attorney spun on his heel, barked a quick, “Okay Polycrates, tell me what you've got,” then charged back toward the house.

Rosco glanced at Max and said, “Looks like we have an unhappy camper on our hands.”

The landscaper merely shrugged, so Rosco followed Mawbry into the house, where he found him directing the remote toward the TV. The lawyer tapped the mute button, silencing a balding defense department consultant but leaving on the screen his nervous, round, red face with its glued-in-place hair. He appeared to be testifying in front of a senate investigation panel.

“So much for that guy's pearls of wisdom. Don't you wish it was that easy to shut up these clowns?” Mawbry said with a world-weary sneer.

It took Rosco just over ten minutes to give the attorney his verbal report. He opted to leave out any reference to Belle's strange crosswords, as he felt they would be of no interest to the lawyer. During the presentation, Mawbry interrupted several times in order to toss in impatient comments: “I keep telling you, I don't care who killed Darlessen …”; “I'm only looking for reasonable doubt here …”; “You're not out to collar a murderer, Polycrates; Leave that to the cops …”

When Rosco finished, Mawbry remained silent, nodding to himself twice as if ticking off a private list but in all other ways ignoring Rosco's presence and the information he'd shared.

Then the attorney turned abruptly and accompanied his visitor back to the front stoop. “Max is redoing the walkway to the street, all in old brick,” he said as if the previous conversation had already been stored in an internal file folder. “That's what buyers want nowadays … What you see when you approach a property is what counts. Nobody in L.A. cares what's inside. That's what the realtors tell me, anyway.”

Max Chugorro walked toward them. “Pauley and Salvadore are going to frame out the job, Mr. Mawbry, while I run over to Garden Depot and pick up some extra mortar. I'll be back in twenty minutes.”

Mawbry sighed in frustration. “I'll be gone by then.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Look … Max … try to make it
only
twenty minutes this time, okay? I don't want your assistants making any mistakes, here.”

“You can count on me, sir.” The word
sir
seemed to lack the aura of respect normally attached to it.

While the landscaper returned to his pickup and his employer released another irritable sigh, Rosco asked, “I was wondering about the older woman sitting in Max's truck.”

“You mean Harriet Tammalong?” was the attorney's distracted reply. “She's some relative of Chugorro's. I haven't seen her in a blue moon, but whenever she's around, you can write off the Marquis' day because you'll never get a lick of work out of him. She runs Max around like a puppet.” Mawbry looked at the truck where Harriet still sat in frozen silence. “Maybe she's losing her hearing. Old folks get weird when their faculties start failing.”

“That's not the impression I—” Rosco started to respond, but was interrupted by the buzzing of his cell phone. “Sorry,” he said, “but I should take this.”

“Keep me posted, Polycrates … And remember, reasonable doubt is all I need.”

Mawbry hurried back to his house, Max and Harriet drove off, and Rosco answered his phone as he continued to walk toward the Mustang. It was Belle.

“Dan Millray's on his way to the hotel,” she said. Rosco detected a surprising amount of nervousness in her voice.

“What does he want?”

“He wouldn't say.”

“But he asked to see me?”

“You or me. He doesn't care … Rosco, he seemed highly agitated.”

“Okay, I'm on my way. But I want you—and Sara—to go down to the lobby and wait for him there. Don't take him up to our suite or any other private spot. I'll be there in a half an hour.”

“What's this about, Rosco?”

“I don't know, but stay in a public place until I get there.”

CHAPTER 37

Rosco stepped off the wood-paneled elevator that had carried him upstairs from the hotel's subterranean parking garage and immediately spotted Sara and Belle sitting close together on the far side of the marble-floored lobby. They were perched on a long couch upholstered in blue and yellow and facing a matching highbacked chair. Neither of the women seemed to be talking, which was an oddity in itself. As Rosco approached them, he realized that Dan Millray had already arrived and was ensconced in the chair. He stood when he noticed Rosco, but the posture was neither casual nor relaxed.

“Sorry to drag you all the way back from the Valley, but there are a few issues I'd like to clear up … and then I'd like some answers.”

The actor's gaze was more intense than Rosco remembered. Belle had been correct. Millray was agitated, all right.

Rosco nodded while he continued to regard the actor. “Have I missed anything?”

“No,” Belle answered in a noncommittal tone, “Dan wanted to wait for you before he said anything—”

“I don't like having to repeat myself,” the actor interrupted with some asperity, then forged ahead with a stern: “Here's the situation. Andy Hofren told me about the problem with the live ammunition. The issue came up this morning during one of our regular coffee and gab sessions. Andy assumed I knew. I didn't have a clue what he was referring to—”

“I would have imagined Dean Ivald or Lew Groslir would have informed you,” Rosco said as a half question, half statement. “Sit down, why don't you?”

Dan returned to the chair, and let out a cynical chuckle. “Dean? Lew? I've been wrapped. Outta there, history, out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I'm the last person they'd call. Especially with bad news.”

“I assume Andy also told you that the actors and crew confronted Lew and Dean?” Rosco asked as he sat beside his wife.

Dan nodded. “Indeed, he did …
And
the fact that everyone was given a day to ‘cool off.'”

“If it weren't for Don Schruko checking that pistol—” Rosco began.

“Do I look like an idiot?” Dan snapped. “Do I look like an idiot to everyone on the
Anatomy
set? What do you people take me for?”

It was Belle who answered; her brow was furrowed in unhappy confusion. “What do you mean?”

Dan shot an irritable glance at Rosco. “Do you carry a gun, Polycrates?”

“For work sometimes. Not often, though. And not here. I'm not licensed in California.”

The actor's voice became more severe. “I have a gun. It's a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. I keep it in a drawer in the nightstand beside my bed. The drawer is locked at all times, and the key is hidden in a secure spot … The ammunition clip is locked in another drawer on my wife's side of the bed. If someone broke into our house, we'd probably be dead long before I could get the damn weapon loaded and ready to fire, but I've arranged things in that fashion because I don't want my kids getting their hands on it. They don't even know I own a gun.” Millray took a deep breath. “Where do you keep your weapon?”