Liza followed him with her eyes. “After doing that, I feel like a real . . .”
“Detective?” Buck asked.
“I think ‘turd’ is more the word,” she replied tartly. “Will is an old friend, and here I am—”
“Fingering him?” Mrs. H. suggested.
“Treating him like a suspect.” Liza’s words came out as an unhappy sigh. “It’s the same thing with Scottie Terhune. He may be a bit loud, but at bottom I think he’s a good guy. Roy Conklin is maybe a bit too much on the shy and quiet side, but he’s harmless enough. Ian Quirk was probably the one I wouldn’t mind giving the finger—”
“Excuse me?” Michael said.
“I mean he’s—he
was
—the most annoying pseudo sudokologist I ever met,” Liza tried to explain. “If I knew anything bad about him, I wouldn’t have minded ratting him out.”
She looked around in the crowd. “The next worst, at least here, would be Babs Basset, I think. Do you want me to introduce you to her, too?”
“And get the same look she gave Roche?” Buck shuddered. “Heaven forbid. If I ever have to face that particular gem of womanhood, I want to have something solid on her.”
In the end, they circulated until Liza tracked down all the other people who had some sort of motive. She even pointed out Fergus Fleming.
Finally, she looked at her watch. “I don’t know if any of this was helpful. You came all the way down here because Michelle asked you to—”
“I know,” Buck commiserated, “and I still haven’t pointed at anyone and said, ‘That’s the one who done it.’ ”
“To tell the truth, I was wondering why you came,” Michael admitted.
“For one thing, Liza is a friend,” Buck replied. “And I think you’re all off to some sort of start, although I have to admit I’m not really sure yet how to finish it. For another—well, sometimes it’s easier to do what Michelle wants.”
“No fooling,” Liza and Michael both said almost simultaneously.
“So what will you do now?” Mrs. H. asked.
“Now I’ll hit some sources and see what I can find out about these folks that isn’t on the World Wide Web,” Buck replied. “I suspect we’ll be in touch, Liza, if either of us finds out anything else interesting.”
“Right now, that seems like a big ‘if’ for us,” Liza said.
“That’s the way it always looks at the start of a case,” Buck told her. “Now I know you’ll want to do whatever it is you do to get ready for this rematch—”
“You make it sound like the World Wrestling Federation,” Liza tried to joke. “But the fact is, I do need to decompress.”
“And I have just the way to do it,” Kevin jumped in.
“And what, exactly, is that?” was Michael’s bristling response.
“A drive,” Kevin went on as if Michael hadn’t spoken. “I managed to rent this really amazing car, and I thought we could take it out for a little run.”
“I’ve got a car,” Michael objected. “Why can’t I take Liza for a drive?”
“Because I asked first,” Kevin replied.
Liza rolled her eyes.
Here we go again.
“A drive might be nice—as long as you keep off the freeways.” Buck gloomily considered his own trip back to L.A.
Mrs. H. glanced back and forth between Liza’s squabbling suitors. “Well, Kevin did ask first. I’ll tell you what, though, Michael. Liza and I are supposed to go to this big dinner tonight. Why don’t you take Liza.” She turned to Kevin. “And you can take me someplace nice in this wonderful car of yours.”
That managed to restore the peace. Buck headed for home, Liza zipped back to her room to freshen up, and Kevin went for his wonder-car.
Moments later, Liza came out the front entrance of the hotel to see a long, low, streamlined shape roll along the drive, engine thrumming. A tinted window rolled down on the passenger’s side, and Kevin waved out at her. “What do you think?”
“A Porsche?” Liza said. “Very Hollywood.”
“A Porsche Carrera 911.” Kevin proudly expanded on the subject.
“This must have knocked you back a hefty amount, even for a weekend rental.” Liza eased her way into the seat.
“When I saw it was available—well, I always wanted to drive a spy car.”
“And they didn’t tell you anything about how it would help you pick up girls?” Liza asked.
Kevin smoothly pulled away. “There may have been some mention of that.”
Liza looked over her shoulder. “Not much room in the backseat there, though.”
“I believe there’s a dingus that lets the front seats go flat,” Kevin said.
“Don’t even think of it,” Liza told him. “This is a rental car. Who knows what’s gone on in here?”
From the look on his face, Kevin obviously hadn’t thought of that.
“Don’t worry,” Liza tried to reassure him, “I think I have some hand sanitizer in my bag.” She settled back in her seat to enjoy the view—and Newport Beach offered a lot to enjoy. Like any upscale Southern California town, the main drag had been landscaped within an inch of its life. Even the medians were manicured as they rolled past a very high-end mall in the obligatory Spanish colonial style.
Kevin drove on, then pulled into a gas station, impressing the resident motorheads as much with his female passenger as with his ride, Liza noticed with a grin. He had a moment of doubt and fear, looking for where the gas went in. The door for the fuel intake was in the right front fender, in front of Liza’s seat. Kevin fumbled for a moment to get the door open. But he quickly unscrewed the gas cap and topped up the tank, and they resumed their progress.
“Thanks for showing me off, but now they’ll know we’re tourists,” she told him.
“Because of the gas tank thing?” he asked.
Liza shook her head. “Because our windows were down. If you want to look like you belong around here, you have to use your air conditioner.”
Kevin shrugged, tapping the button that brought the windows up. “By all means, let’s look like natives.” The AC came on with a blast of cold air that Kevin quickly moderated.
Now they were getting out of the more built-up area, climbing up into the hills, trying a little more speed on the emptier roads. Liza didn’t talk, noting Kevin’s concentration behind the wheel. Well, he was more used to an SUV. A sports car would be a more responsive, finicky beast . . .
The engine rumbled as Kevin accelerated up a long rise, then made a sharp left.
And then suddenly he was wrestling with the wheel as the Porsche went fishtailing along the pavement!
7
“What the—?” Kevin got no further, saving his breath for his battle against the Porsche’s wild shimmy, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel.
Liza clung to the dashboard, glad for her seat belt. The sports car seemed to buck back and forth as if it were trying to free itself of its passengers.
Liza had only encountered something like this once before. During a very cold snap back home in Oregon, she’d driven onto a patch of black ice coming home one night. Once experienced, the terrible feeling that your wheels weren’t quite in contact with the road anymore stuck with you.
Somehow, though, encountering a patch of ice in Southern California in springtime seemed a bit unlikely.
At least the Porsche had chosen an empty stretch of road for its misbehavior. That was lucky, because they hurtled several times across the median line into the lane for oncoming traffic before Kevin got them straightened out and slowed down.
They slumped back in their seats as the car finally lurched to a stop. “Y’know, Kevin, if this was supposed to get me relaxed, I think you overdid it,” Liza joked feebly as she unclamped her fingers.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kevin replied. “I feel perfectly wrung out.”
She laughed, then wrinkled her nose at a sharp odor wafting in with the chilly blast of the air-conditioning. “Is that gasoline?”
But hitting a standing puddle of gas in the road seemed just about as unlikely as black ice.
“I suppose we can wait until the cold sweat dries,” Kevin said, “but if we want to allow you any time before that makeup round, we’d better get going—slowly and carefully.”
He started up the car, and they retraced their steps at a sedate twenty-five miles an hour.
That didn’t make much difference on the less frequented roads out in the boonies. But as they got back into Newport Beach, even the side streets had traffic.
Judging from the rising crescendo of car horns behind them, about half the motorists in California were expressing their frustration. When a guy in an old junker swerved around them with a derisive hoot, Kevin hung his head and kept grimly driving on.
After what seemed like forever, at last they reached the Rancho Pacificano property. The Porsche wasn’t happy at being throttled back like this—they limped all the way down the long driveway.
Kevin pulled up in front of the hotel, and Liza got out. “Thanks, Kevin. Your intentions were good.”
“Yeah,” he said gloomily. “But the machinery wasn’t. And now I suppose it’s too late to go back to the dealership and have somebody look at this piece of—”
He huffed out an angry breath. “Forgive me if I don’t see you before the competition. I think I might not be good luck.”
Liza managed a laugh and headed inside. An improvised sign in the lobby gave a list of contestants and the event rooms where they were supposed to go. She looked long enough to find that she was scheduled for the Hebrides Room and then went up to her suite. When she entered, she saw that the door to Mrs. Halvorsen’s bedroom was closed.
She must be taking a rest,
Liza thought, tiptoeing to the bathroom. Taking a washcloth, she soaked it with cold water and held it to her face. Then Liza looked at her watch. She could lie down for half an hour and still have ample time to take a shower and gird her loins for the battle downstairs.
Recovered if not exactly rested, Liza headed back into the tournament madness.
The SINN makeup area was crammed into a side corridor leading to some maintenance and storage spaces. Liza got the same makeup artist, but this time there was no joking around. The young woman took a little more care with her brushes. “The cameras will be closer.”
Liza nodded. This time, the camera crews wouldn’t be inconspicuously shooting from a gallery. They’d be in her face.
She went through the double doors of the Hebrides Room to find the interior rearranged from a party space with a podium to a miniature version of the competition area in the ballroom. Long rows of tables arranged with staggered seating faced a single smaller table in the front of the room. Will Singleton’s digital monstrosity had been replaced by what would normally be a wall clock showing the time as 6:20.
A volunteer conducted Liza into the room and led her to an aisle seat. As Liza looked around, she didn’t see any particularly familiar faces. That was good. She’d feared Charley Ormond might persuade Will to create an all-star room to make her camerawork easier.
Something else registered—a good number of seats stood empty, which didn’t seem likely given that the competition was supposed to start in minutes. Apparently some of the participants, having gotten one stiff taste of Singleton sudoku, had decided not to suffer through another.
Liza took her seat and checked the two pencils and pens waiting for her. She grinned.
I guess they decided there wouldn’t be any goody bags this time around.
One of the tournament volunteers stood in the front of the room and rehashed the rules. Then she distributed the puzzles in their sealed envelopes. By the time she was finished, the clock up front had almost reached the magic moment.
When the second hand indicated half-past six on the dot, the woman called out, “Please begin.”
Liza grabbed a pencil, opened the envelope, removed the puzzle, and immediately began filling in candidates. Given the complexity of the last puzzle, trying out simpler techniques would simply waste time.
As soon as she had all the possibilities listed, Liza began the work of thinning them down. She used the interaction between subgrids to prune some 3s out of one column. Then she spotted a naked pair—two spaces in the same row that had the same two candidates. That meant one space had to hold the 1 and the other the 5, and all other examples of those digits in the row could be eliminated.
That was the easy stuff. Liza kept cycling through her dozen most dependable solving techniques, rising in complexity. She traced two X-wings, logical chains making a rectangular path across the grid work and establishing two pairs of possible answers for four spaces. One allowed her to remove three extraneous 7s. The other didn’t eliminate anything.
Involved in tracing the possible logic of a swordfish chain, Liza suddenly became aware of movement behind her—how she couldn’t say. The room was so quiet, she could hear the ticking from the clock up front.
Liza looked up to see the young volunteer seated behind the front table just like a test proctor for a final exam. She wasn’t the source of the movement. It had to be a camera crew.
I must have really been off in sudoku land if I didn’t hear the door open,
Liza thought. The camera people had to be making great efforts to keep quiet. She resisted the instinctive response of turning to look at them—and the childish urge to hide her work from the glass and metal eye peeking over her shoulder. She just set her jaw and continued working.
Was Will sitting with Charley in another room, looking at the feed from this camera and doing professional commentary?
“See, Charley, she’s wasting time tracing a useless swordfish when she could eliminate a whole slew of sixes with this swordfish over here.”
Gritting her teeth still harder, Liza derailed that train of thought. No second-guessing. She continued on until she again lost herself in the flow of numbers.
She’d not heard the reappearance of the crew as she wrestled through several more swordfish, then reached the tipping point where more and more spaces got filled through simpler techniques. They were definitely behind her as she checked over her solution.