Sinister Sudoku (11 page)

They had first spotted him while they were parking. Patrick was still setting up for business, struggling to push a decrepit wooden bin full of tattered paperbacks. He chained it to the gate in front of his store. The heavy steel barrier was only pushed far enough to open the door.

By the time Liza, Kevin, and Michael crossed the street, Patrick was back inside the store. He was a tall, skinny type, a little too tall for the sagging jeans he wore. He had some sort of rash that left the exposed skin on his hands and face blotchy, cracked, and red. His quick nervous mannerisms only increased his chicken resemblance. Even his moth-eaten, out-at-the-elbows sweater looked like bedraggled plumage.

“What can I do for you folks?” He stood rubbing some sort of salve into his hands with quick, obsessive gestures, his head jittering and his eyes darting around as he addressed them. Liza wondered if he’d had to deal with so many customers at once lately.

“We understand you picked up messages for Chris Dalen,” Kevin began.

Patrick’s head began bobbing faster, as if he were a chicken working up the nerve to try taking a peck at them. “I dunno why people are digging that up,” he complained. “Some guy was on the phone right when I opened up, tryna put the screws to me, sayin’ how bad things were gonna get if I didn’t tell him everything I knew about that damned Mondrian.”

His voice came out as a whine, and his lower lip hung down to reveal snaggled, stained teeth. “That’s something that’s been over and done with for years. Sometimes people would call or drop a message for Chris—whether it was about jobs or what, I didn’t ask. Then, every week or so, Chris would call in. He’d buy a book or throw me a few bucks. But I ain’t seen him since before his big score. That would have to be nearly fifteen years, now.”

Liza wasn’t sure Patrick was as legitimate as he claimed to be. Standing in this dark, cluttered space, breathing in the smells of decaying wood and crumbling paper—with a whiff of unwashed Phil Patrick on the side—she figured the man needed something more than book sales to pay the rent on this place.

On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine Dalen using this pathetic character as anything but a go-between.

“So you never had anything to do with the Mondrian?” she asked.

“Nothin’—except for hangin’ it up on the wall here.”

“What?!” Kevin and Michael’s hopes of finding the stolen painting on the humble wall of the shop crashed pretty quickly.

Oh, it had the juxtaposed squared-off blocks of color usually associated with the Mondrian style. But it was just as obvious that this Mondrian was a page-sized photo cut from a magazine. Even in the dim light of the bookstore, it had faded against the varnished wood of the wall.

“There it is,” Phil Patrick said,
“Composition in Blue, Red, and Green.”

“
That
,” Kevin burst out, “is worth three million bucks?”

Patrick shrugged. “Mondrians don’t come cheap. And this one was kinda special. That Mondrian guy wasn’t real fond of the color green—he didn’t use it much. So this thing was worth another coupla bagfuls of money from the dot-communist who bought it and was showin’ it off at the museum.”

Like a kid with a rare baseball card,
Liza thought. She suddenly remembered Chris Dalen’s comment on his big haul—how it looked like a schematic for a tiled bathroom floor.

“Course, it’s bigger and probably better lookin’ in real life,” Patrick helpfully added.

I hope so,
Liza thought as she and the guys left the store.

Detective disappointment kept both males in the SUV quiet all the way home to Maiden’s Bay. No sooner did they pull into the driveway than Mrs. Halvorsen came hurrying over.

Well, I guess she could use the company,
Liza thought.

“I don’t even know why I’m here,” Mrs. H. confessed when she came in the door. Kevin had taken Rusty outside, and Michael was upstairs taking the antihistamine that allowed him to be near the dog without sneezing his head off.

“I’m afraid we didn’t learn very much,” Liza said. “The man at the store wasn’t really a friend of your brother’s. He says he wasn’t in touch with him even before Chris was arrested.”

Coming back down the stairs, Michael tried to make a joke. “I’d say that guy wasn’t the type to send cards out to anyone at Christmas, either.” He came over and took Mrs. Halvorsen’s hands. “Hi, Mrs. H. How are you holding up?”

“I’ve had better days,” the older woman admitted. “I’m glad you came up.”

“It was sort of a spur of the moment thing,” Michael said. “I don’t even have a place to stay. I don’t suppose your spare room—?”

He broke off as the tears began to flow.

“Of all the insensitive—” Kevin, who had just reentered with Rusty, immediately started to fume. “Didn’t you realize who was going to be in that room? Why she had you redo it?”

That’s a pretty high horse he’s gotten on, for somebody who didn’t have a clue two days ago,
Liza thought.

“I’m sorry.” Michael looked appalled as he apologized. “I didn’t think—”

“It’s always about you, isn’t it?” Kevin demanded. “Barging in on people, walking out on your wife.” Michael looked about ready to haul off and punch Kevin, which was probably what Kevin was looking for. It would give him the chance to wipe the floor with Liza’s semi-estranged husband.

Liza was almost ready to step in and say that Michael could stay with her. A disastrous move—that would really tick Kevin off. But Mrs. H. stepped between the two men, taking each by the arm.

“After Chris had his first heart attack, I hoped that he finally might get out of that place . . . that he might come home.” Then she turned to Michael. “Of course you can stay.”

As if to underscore the happy moment, the phone rang.

“I swear to God, I’m going to pull that wire out,” Liza growled, picking up the handset.

“Liza, dear.” Michelle’s voice came over the line as a smooth purr. “I just had a brief chat with your friend Ava. She tells me you’re looking into this matter after all. Does that make you a crank or a publicity hound?”

“It makes me the friend of a neighbor who’s having trouble.” Liza glanced around at the other people in the room. “In fact, Mrs. H. is right here with me, along with Kevin and Michael.”

“Excellent!” Michelle said. “Put on the speakerphone. I’ve got Buck Foreman tied in, too, for some professional input.”

Buck Foreman was the investigator of choice for Markson Associates. He’d had a good career as a cop destroyed by bad publicity. Michelle had tried to help him, and that business bond had become personal. Buck’s willingness to help out with Liza’s sometimes fumbling investigations was proof of how strong that relationship was.

“Liza.” Buck’s voice came out as about one tone north of a growl. “Anything that’s not already in the media? We’ve got all that.”

“Did they talk about Vinnie Tanino? A guy who works for Fat Frankie Basso?” Liza asked.

Buck actually laughed. “Vinnie Tanlines is involved in this?”

“So, I think, is Fritz Tarleton, the big man in the tourism business. He was at the Killamook Inn, probably to negotiate for the Mondrian.”

“Kevin?” Buck asked. “You think you could get us a list of the other people staying at your place?”

“Give me a minute.” Kevin pulled out his cell phone. After a brief conversation with John the assistant manager, he began reciting the list. When he got to “R. Carlowe,” Buck interrupted.

“Did you actually meet this guy? Built like a tank, face like a lizard?”

“I didn’t have the pleasure.” Kevin passed the description on, and then nodded. “John says that’s an apt description.”

“You know him?” Michelle rapped out.

“Yeah.” Buck didn’t sound as if the word made him happy. “He’s what people call a Hollywood detective.”

Michael laughed. “You’re kidding!”

“What’s so funny?” Kevin wanted to know.

“I thought that was a made-up thing. They used to have stories about Hollywood detectives in the old pulp magazines of the thirties—the off-color, spicy ones. They still had Hollywood detectives in the sixties, now in cheesy paperbacks. Gat in one hand, blonde in the other, beautiful starlets in negligees falling madly in bed with them.”

“The reality isn’t so interesting,” Foreman said dryly. “Back in the thirties, the Hollywood studios had their own fixers to deal with embarrassing situations. More recently they’ve outsourced, using private investigators to look into wrongdoing or to get the goods on associates or to help make embarrassments go away—also known as witness tampering.”

“You don’t—” Kevin began.

“No, I don’t,” Buck finished for him. “But Rod Carlowe would. We used to be colleagues, once upon a time in L.A.”

“He was a cop?” Michael said.

“A dirty one,” Buck’s voice was flat. “But he’s done well in his niche, even become something of a celebrity. Knowing Rod, he’s probably angling for a reality show. If he’s involved . . .”

Buck’s voice died away for a second. Then he abruptly asked, “Anything out of the ordinary happen around your neighborhood?”

“I had a vandal,” Mrs. H. announced. “Part of my house is under construction and wrapped in plastic, and somebody made a cut in it.”

“Did they?” Buck sounded extremely suspicious. “Liza,” he said, “you can expect me tomorrow. I’ll rent a car wherever I land and call you with an ETA.”

“We don’t seem to be getting very far,” Michelle finally broke in. “But then I expect the Great Wall of China just started with a few rocks. I’ll expect better results the next time we speak, Liza.”

Liza didn’t even get a chance to respond. The connection was cut.

A second later, Michael and Kevin were back in bickering mode, Kevin talking about Michael imposing himself, Michael casting himself as the protector of Casa Halvorsen. Liza found herself rubbing her temples.

“If you’re going to move in, Michael, maybe you’d better get your duffel and move along with Mrs. H.,” she finally said. “And Kevin, I don’t remember your recitation of guests, but is Mr. Tarleton still at the inn?”

That got Kevin moving to his SUV, bringing Michael and Mrs. H. along. Liza cheerfully waved good-bye, moving to block the door so that Rusty couldn’t get out.

She plopped herself in front of the computer, intending to get some work done. But she found she couldn’t concentrate and only managed to work out one puzzle after messing up a couple of puzzles with rookie errors.

Finally she got up and went to the attaché case she’d taken to her class, retrieving the puzzle Chris Dalen had given her. Liza input it to her Solv-a-Doku program and then looked at the result on the screen.

When she’d solved the murder of her friend Derrick Robbins, Liza had wound up with a rather strange legacy— Derrick’s very specialized library on sudoku and cryptography. That case had shown Liza how a message could be encoded into a sudoku puzzle. And reading some of the volumes on ciphers had only suggested more methods for illicit communication.

She suddenly remembered how furious Howard Frost had been at the idea that anything Chris Dalen had written might leave the prison. Could there be some meaning buried in this seventeen-clue wonder? Liza bit her lip, going over the clues and then the finished puzzle. Could the grid hide a substitution code where numbers replace letters? Well if it did, it wasn’t just a straight 123 for ABC swap.

Hmph. Chris Dalen’s name didn’t repeat any letters. That could serve as the key for another type of cipher, with the letters from the name first in line and the remaining letters lined up alphabetically behind it. Thus, C=1, H=2, R=3, I=5, S=6, D=7, and so on.

Unfortunately, that system didn’t yield a message, either. Oh, there were other number codes. Numbers could be used to find a page in a book, a line on the page, and a word in the line. Should Liza ask Mrs. H. if her brother had some favorite reading matter?

I think I’d be better off asking some questions of Uncle Jim,
Liza thought. Jim Watanabe came from the Japanese side of Liza’s Hibernasian family tree. He worked for the Foreign Service in Tokyo—and seemed to know a lot about codes and secret messages for a State Department paper-pusher. Though her uncle never spoke about it, Liza suspected he was some sort of spy. Throughout the Cold War and after, Japan was a major listening post for Soviet and Russian communications.

Going online, Liza clicked on the Instant Message icon. Japan was eight time zones behind Pacific Standard Time, but she noticed that Uncle Jim apparently kept an eccentric schedule.

Hey, Uncle Jim,
she typed and then stared at the unchanging screen as seconds turned to minutes. Finally, Liza ripped off a nasty word and closed the window on her computer. Obviously, Uncle Jim wasn’t available to chat. Liza began composing an e-mail.

Uncle Jim,
she began,
Here I am asking for your help again.
She explained the background and the methods she’d used, then attached the puzzle and its solution.