CHAPTER 30

THE CONVERSATION AT Belle’s end of the phone was a jangle of interruptions and misinterpretation. “I didn’t tell you about my peculiar phone calls because I didn’t feel they were important,” she said, then added, “So, what did Sara give you?”

But Rosco was too het up about Belle’s late-night harassments to reply to the question.

“I did not say I’d call you.” Belle spoke levelly into the mouthpiece. “You asked me to, but I didn’t respond … So, was Sara able to provide information about Thompson’s bank statements or not?” Interrupted again, Belle’s words became a staccato succession of: “He did?”; “But why is he going to Washington now?”; “She what?” and “How did she get them to you?” following which came a buoyant: “In twenty minutes? Of course, I’ll be here!”

Belle almost threw the receiver into the cradle. All residual anxiety from the previous night’s phone calls vanished. She paced restlessly between her office and kitchen speculating on what new clues the puzzle might contain, and with each pass of the refrigerator, yanked open the door and stared dismally into its vacant interior. I could run down to the store and get some eggs, she thought, then canceled the idea with a quick shake of her head.

On her tenth trek between rooms, she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps on her porch. She raced to the front door and threw it open, only to find the postman stuffing the daily deliveries into her mailbox.

“Thanks, Victor,” she said, then retreated into the house and impatiently leafed through the mail. It contained two catalogues, a copy of Art on the Move, the water bill, and a thick letter-sized envelope adorned with four colorful Egyptian postage stamps. It was from Garet.

Back in the kitchen, Belle dropped the mail on the counter. She was tempted to leave Garet’s letter there, too, but instead sighed, grabbed a knife from the top drawer and slit open the envelope. The letter read:

Dear Annabella,

Egypt continues to enthrall. The country, or more accurately, these ancient burial arenas, if you will, seem to have bewitched my soul. In the evenings, the air becomes redolent with the majestic personae of long-removed royalty. They transport me to a place so far sequestered from the turbulent world we inhabit that I find it difficult to communicate with the mere mortals who labor within this workaday globe.

My news is both stimulating and bittersweet. As the months have passed, I’ve searched the Egyptian sands for words that will communicate the perplexities with which I live my daily life—the passions and confusions that color my veins—

She sighed aloud; Garet’s ponderous prose suddenly seemed stilted and stifling, and she stared at the ensuing pages as if daring any meaningful message to leap out, but the doorbell interrupted her effort. Belle tossed the letter on the counter and darted for the door. When she flung it open, she found Rosco standing before her.

“What took you so long?” she said.

He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes, that’s all.”

She glanced at her own wristwatch. “You’re right … Well, it seemed longer … Where’s the puzzle?”

“In this file case.” He held up the red box. “May I come in?”

“Oh, sure, sorry. Let’s go to my office; we can work in there.”

“I’m not going to say it again, but I wish you’d called me last night.”

“Don’t say it again.”

“You could’ve woken me up. I wouldn’t have minded.”

“I thought you weren’t mentioning the subject again.”

“I’m not.”

“It certainly sounded that way.”

Rosco shook his head slowly. “Okay, not another word, I swear.”

In Belle’s office, he sat in his usual spot, the black-and-white director’s chair. Belle settled in behind her desk.

“You don’t happen to have have any food in the house, do you?” He patted his stomach for effect. “I skipped breakfast and I’m starved.”

Belle glanced up at the ceiling. “I would have had eggs, but they’re gone … ditto the meat loaf … Would you like some licorice?”

“I was thinking of something a trifle more nutritious.” Rosco handed her the envelope containing Briephs’ fourth crossword puzzle. “Here,” he said, “you can figure that thing out while I concentrate on the bank records … On second thought, where’s that licorice?”

“In the jar on the bookshelf. Behind you.” She studied the envelope. “Well, at least this proves it was mailed through the post office. That lets Bartholomew Kerr off the hook, doesn’t it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Why not?”

“How do you know he didn’t mail it himself?”

“Hmm, I see your point.” She pulled the puzzle from the envelope and unfolded it. After glancing through the clues, she said, “This is great, Rosco! Look at this; 37-Across. It’s a quotation from Shakespeare that I don’t know.”

He looked up from Briephs’ bank records. “Don’t you have one of those books that lists every famous quote?”

“You mean a Bartlett’s?”

“Right. I mean you, of all people, should have one.”

“Of course I own one.”

“So, look it up.”

“Are you crazy!? Are you out of your mind?” Belle stared, astonished that he could suggest such a heinous act.

“No. I’m not crazy. Look it up. It’ll save time.”

“Are you absolutely bonkers? I can’t look it up.”

“Why not?”

“That’s cheating … I mean, I could in a dire situation … but I shouldn’t have to … I’ll work on the Down column until I learn the answer.” Belle concentrated on the puzzle, muttering to herself as she worked. “4-Down: Nothing but _____ … Darn, that’s tough … 7-Down … another long one … 21-Down … Oh, who doesn’t know that! … 22-Down: Johnny Yuma: abbr.… What could that possibly refer to … Yuma, Arizona? Yuman language …?”

“Johnny Yuma was The Rebel … Sixties T.V. My mom loved it.”

Rosco smiled at his own brilliance and returned to Briephs’ financial statements. After a few minutes he set aside the bank statement and began paging through a money-market folder. He studied it slowly. He knew what he was looking for, and there was more than ample evidence—it didn’t take a math whiz to find it. Over the past year there had been a number of unusually high cash withdrawals. Far too high for a man who also seemed accustomed to paying for nearly everything with an American Express card. Rosco picked one of Belle’s red pens from a coffee mug and began to mark the withdrawals he deemed suspicious. When he’d finished, he raised his eyes and watched Belle fill in the final few answers on the puzzle. The effort made her face glow. After she’d inked in the last letter, she slammed her red Bic pen onto her desk and shouted, “Hah! Done!”

“And what’s the Shakespeare quote?”

“‘Truth will come to LIGHT; MURDER CAN’T be hid long,’ from The Merchant of Venice.” She smiled. “… And yes, I double-checked with the Bard … It should be cannot instead of CAN’T; that’s why Briephs placed the Var. in here.” She pointed at the clue for 37-Across. “And the reason I didn’t recognize it.”

“Are you saying you have all of Shakespeare at your fingertips?”

Belle flushed scarlet. “Not all … far from all … but when your parents are spouting lines from his plays and sonnets, and you’re a child of five or six or seven, well, let’s just say, I’m not as adept at quoting Dr. Seuss … It’s Shakespeare’s take on Cervantes’ Murder will out, by the way.” Again, she looked supremely embarrassed.

Rosco nonchalantly took a bite from his licorice stick and leaned back in the director’s chair. “If you want to get picky, it’s actually the other way around; Cervantes started Don Quixote in 1605, about eight years after The Merchant of Venice was first performed at the Globe Theatre. So if anybody had a take on anybody else, it was Cervantes, not old Bill.”

This statement left Belle stuttering. “W-w-what? W-w-where did that come from? Are you sure about that? I mean, those dates? How did you discover that?”

“Look it up. I read Don Quixote de la Mancha in college. Maybe one of the only things I did read. But I loved it. What else do you want to know? The sky’s the limit.”

“‘The sky’s the limit’?”

“That’s a paraphrase from the book. ‘No limits but the sky’ is the actual wording.”

“… And fifteen letters, too …” Belle counted them off on her fingers. “I’ll have to put that into one of my puzzles some day. Amazing.” Belle found her eyes glued to Rosco. She suddenly realized there was an entire life she wanted to know more about.

“Well, anyway”—she broke her stare with a slight toss of her head—“it’s obviously a message, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m on your side … Any more names in it?”

“No, but 20-Across is MISTRESS, which could be pointing the finger at Betsey Housemann … Also the clue for 53-Across: Cheat catcher? … And there’s tons of references to death: 14-Across: Hang ’em HIGH; 65-Across: REST in peace; 6-Down: Dead man’s hand; ACES and eights; 11-Down: Death TRAP; 58-down: dead AS A doornail. There are also a bunch of clues and answers concerning truth. And number 7-down: CROSSWORD PUZZLE.”

“Meaning …?”

Belle walked to the licorice jar. “I don’t know, Rosco. But it’s unusual. I’m convinced we’ll find the murderer’s identity revealed somewhere in these puzzles.”

“Maybe not … If it’s a tease, and Briephs’ intention was to make the killer so nervous he’d trip himself up, the clues may be too cryptic for us to recognize … My hunch is that only the murderer might get them.”

“He … Or she.”

“Right … Well, there’s some rather interesting items in these financial records. No large deposits, but there are a number of very large withdrawals. Which means somebody may have been blackmailing Briephs, and not the other way around. There’s also a bunch of two hundred-dollar withdrawals from a cash machine located at 102 Hawthorne Place—the old customs house.”

“The bus station?”

“Yep.”

“Why would someone like Thompson Briephs go to the bus terminal? He wasn’t the type to take public transportation anywhere.”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.” Rosco leaned across Belle’s desk and lifted the envelope that had contained the puzzle. “This was mailed from downtown, according to the zip code on the cancellation stamp. The same zip code as the Herald office. The bus station is one zip code to the east.”

“So …?”

“I’m just thinking out loud; looking for a connection, anything. I mean, who’s mailing these? If it’s not the killer, why doesn’t the person step forward? And again, why would the killer mail them?”

Belle crossed back to her desk. “We need the fifth crossword. That’s all there is to it.”

“What we need is to know why Briephs went to the bus station to withdraw cash when there’s an ATM a block from his office.” Rosco reached for Belle’s phone and punched in a memorized number. “Do you mind?”

“Who are you calling?”

“The police. It’s time to share some facts.”

Belle scooped up the crossword puzzles. “You’re not giving these up, are you?”

Rosco held up his hand. Lever was on the line. “Al, it’s Rosco. Can you spare a few minutes, in say”—he glanced at his watch—“half an hour …? Thanks, I’ll see you then.”

He replaced the receiver and looked at Belle. “No, I’m not giving him the puzzles. It would take me a week to convince Lever there was something concrete in them. I’m having enough trouble explaining that to myself. But I need to find out what he’s discovered. I’ll share our information on the money market account and ATM withdrawals; maybe it will jibe with something he’s got.” Rosco picked up the red file box and stood.

Belle said, “You know, that fifth puzzle could have been mailed to anyone, and there’s no reason on earth they would even think to bring it to you … or to me.”

“I’m hoping it’s been sent to someone with more brains than that. It might’ve even been sent to Lever. I’ll know soon enough.”

“Will you call me?”

“If Al has that puzzle, you’ll be the first to know. Keep your pencil sharpened … sorry … pen.”

Belle smiled, walked Rosco to the door and watched him drive off. After that, she ambled back into her kitchen and retrieved Garet’s letter. Her large gray eyes squinted into a frown as her husband’s verbiage grew clearer.

Finished reading, she marched into her office and stuffed both letter and envelope into her paper shredder; then she turned around and looked through the open office door at the quiet perfection of her home. “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” she said.

The phone rang as she spoke.

“Belle Graham,” she said into the receiver.

“This is St. Josephs Hospital. Mr. Polycrates said he could be reached at this number.”

“Oh … yes … of course. He’s on the other line at the moment. May I take a message?”

“JaneAlice Miller has regained consciousness. Mr. Polycrates asked to be kept informed.”

“Thank you. I’ll see that he gets the message.” Belle dropped the receiver into its cradle and grabbed her car keys.