The Puzzler's Mansion (23 page)

Winston didn't get it either. For the dozenth time, he leaned
forward to look at the little keyboard. If there was anything puzzly about it, Winston couldn't imagine what it might be.

“That keyboard has to be it,” Winston said. “That's the clue. Richard practically said so.”

Penrose nodded. “I agree. But how do we use it?”

“All right, excuse me, please.” This was Gerard, shouldering his way out of the room. His wife followed. Amanda joined her parents as they left. “I don't need to stare at this thing all day,” Gerard said.

“Where are you going?” Larry asked.

“Richard said we need something else, something that's not in this room. I'm going to figure out what that is. You can all stand here if you want. I'm through with that.”

After he'd gone, Kimberly said, “I guess you don't get to own a thousand restaurants without being a little competitive.”

Winston scratched his forehead, trying to think. Gerard was right, actually. Richard
had
said they would need something else to solve this puzzle. But this was a big house, and Winston didn't want to comb through every inch of it looking for a clue. He didn't think that was necessary, anyway. He thought Richard was just being his usual tricky self. Everything they needed to solve the puzzle was right here
in this room. And at the same time, they also needed something else. Winston could almost see what it was. A light was trying to turn itself on in his head. Right now it was dim, a flashlight with dying batteries.

They wandered away from the toy piano—staring at it wasn't helping one bit—and soon the boys found themselves at the dining room table.

“Maybe we have to play a particular song on it,” Jake said.

“Why not on the real piano, then?” Winston asked. Jake didn't have an answer for that.

“Notes are letters,” Mal said. “C, D, E, F, you know. Maybe we can take them and spell something.”

“What's the longest word you can spell with just those letters?” Jake asked.

They thought about it. “GABBED?” said Mal.

Winston said, “How about DEFLATED?”

“What?” Jake asked. “There's no L on a keyboard. Or T.”

Winston grinned. “D, E-flat, then E and D. DEFLATED.” His friends groaned.

This wasn't getting them any closer to an answer, and they lapsed into silence. Chase and Zook were sitting on the stairs, studying a piece of paper. It sure seemed like Zook was seriously trying to solve this. Maybe he, too, understood that Richard had saved the best prize for last. Up above on the second floor, Gerard and Candice and Amanda stormed from one bedroom to another, looking for a clue that Winston didn't think they would ever find. They looked like people forced to play hide-and-seek for all eternity.

Kimberly was sitting at the grand piano, noodling out a little tune with one hand. Maybe she was a professional cello player, but she seemed to know the piano pretty well, too. She didn't seem to be
thinking about what she was playing—the thoughtful frown on her face meant she was mulling over this final puzzle just like the rest of them.

Someone started banging on the toy piano. Winston peeked back into the small room and was unsurprised to see that it was Ryan and Ian pounding away, trying to see who could play louder. Their mother was content to let them do this: at least the boys were sitting still. Larry and Derek had been working together in that room, and they both strode away as the racket began.

Kimberly stopped playing the grand piano as soon as the kids started making noise—there was no sense trying to compete. Now she sat there frowning at the piano keys as if they were speaking a language she could not understand.

“What we need are some words,” Mal said.

“What?” Winston said.

“These have all been word puzzles. Maybe this is a word puzzle, too. Except without words.”

“A word puzzle without words,” Jake repeated in a bored voice. “I think Mal's cracked it.”

The answer came at Winston like an express train. He gasped and grabbed Mal by the shoulder. Once again, Mal had accidentally solved the puzzle. He seemed to have a knack for doing that.

“Ow!” Mal said, swatting Winston's hand away. “What's with you?”

“We need words!” Winston said in a fierce whisper. “Well, we
have
words!”

“What do you mean?”

“Something's been bothering me about the puzzle in the library,” he whispered. “Remember? The answer was PURR. Why
PURR
? Why not CAT or PAINTING or something?”

“Because he needed PURR to be the answer,” Jake said.

“And EVENT, too,” said Mal, catching on. “I mean, he gave away a great big key. Why not make the answer KEY?”

“Right,” said Winston. “He needed specific answers to make this last puzzle work.”

“All right,” said Jake. “So what were the answers?” He had taken out his notepad. They'd all gotten used to carrying around paper and pencil this weekend.

Winston and Mal teamed up and remembered all five answers, and gave them to Jake in order. They looked over his shoulder as he wrote.

“Yes,” said Winston. “That's it. I know what to do. We're almost there.”

(Continue reading to see the answer to this puzzle.)

NORMA WAS TRYING
to find all the guests. Simply calling out from the front hall hadn't worked, so she was going from room to room, announcing that the puzzle was over. Richard and Norma had decided to put out all the leftovers for an early lunch, and then the weekend would culminate in the awarding of the final prize. But first everybody had to be rounded up.

Winston, the winner of the prize, sat in the reading room, on the sofa he'd slept on the past couple of nights. Mal and Jake were chattering happily on either side of him. They had worked out the solution and had presented the right answer to Richard, who shook each of their hands warmly. Mal and Jake, knowing that only one of their group could get the prize, were quick to give the credit to Winston. Maybe Mal had said the thing that had gotten them going, but it took Winston to recognize it. Besides, Winston's other prize had been stolen, so it was only fair that he should get this one.

Except Winston wasn't so sure of that.

As soon as they figured out they needed the previous answers, it
was a simple jump to the solution. They sketched out the keyboard and then spelled out the answer words one by one, from left to right across the keys. By placing one letter over each key, they spelled out the following:

When they looked at the black keys, they saw their answer: LAUREL TREE. Jake said that sounded familiar, and Winston had to remind him: the Laurel Tree was the award that Richard had been given by all the other classical musicians.

Penrose looked stunned when he learned about the final prize. He confirmed Winston's worst fear: this was the award Richard had talked about with such respect and reverence during their middle-of-the-night chat. It was the award that meant the most to him, and now Richard was going to give it away, to some kid who couldn't play a musical scale without tying his fingers into knots. The idea of taking that award home put a heavy stone in Winston's stomach.

He didn't know what to do. He couldn't take Richard's award away—that was certain—but nobody else this weekend had been able to talk their way out of accepting prizes. The Elgar program, the painting, the cuff links . . . Richard was like a store with a sign out front:
EVERYTHING MUST GO!

They had a little time while the adults got lunch together, so the boys wandered downstairs. Mal made some kind of joke, and Jake laughed, but Winston walked like he was in a daze. Maybe he could say the Laurel Tree was too fragile to survive in his house. He could say he had five little brothers, each of them as bad as Betty McGinley's brats.

They headed toward the library again. They wouldn't have access to this place much longer and wanted one last look around. A two-story underground collection of a million books wasn't something they expected to ever see again.

“So you'll take the award,” Mal said. “He wants to give it away. What's the big deal?”

Jake said, “Maybe it'll get stolen before Richard has a chance to give it to you.”

That was a joke . . . probably. But if Norma was the thief, Jake might also be right. Would Norma let Richard give away the most prestigious award he'd ever received?

A memory flashed by—Norma waking up Winston with her keys jangling in the front door, arriving before sunrise to get breakfast (and the breakfast puzzle) started. She had worked hard for her boss all weekend to get everything exactly right, settling for nothing less. And she'd been doing that for twenty-five years. She had scheduled his time and tended to a million little details so that he could play concerts for royalty and world leaders, the kind of people who gave him amazing gifts. Without Norma's help, Richard might never have won the Laurel Tree at all. Or anyway, that could be how Norma herself viewed the situation.

“But she can't be the thief,” Winston said out loud, and Mal and Jake turned to look at him.

“Who? Norma?” Jake asked.

“Yeah,” Winston said. “She wasn't here when the cuff links were stolen. She was over in the guesthouse.”

“Maybe she snuck back,” Mal said.

“Right,” said Jake. “Through the thunderstorm.”

Winston shook his head. “Even if it hadn't been raining, she would have woken us up if she'd come through the front door in the middle of the night.”

Jake shrugged. “There are other doors. If she wanted to sneak in, she could take her pick.”

That was true enough. Winston stood in the middle of the library, looking around for the last time. Except he wasn't really looking at anything. He was thinking too hard.

Yesterday, Norma had woken him up first thing in the morning. Today, she hadn't woken him up at all, because Winston and everybody else had been awake for hours by the time she arrived. She had shown up at her usual time, though—just before sunrise.