questions, about her records, about how her puzzles were made, but she didn’t want to make Mrs. Filly suspicious. The way the woman had looked at her when she’d asked how many Major Trumbo puzzles she’d sold—maybe she already was. It was time to move on. She’d swing back around later.
Pippa left Maude’s Creepy Puzzles, snapped another photo of the storefront, and sent it to Dillon. Then she headed to Columbo Square, another two blocks inland.
The air was fresh with a slight breeze, and the sun was bright overhead, a perfect fall day for the tourists strolling around town. After a block, Pippa pulled off her leather jacket as she walked toward the square. She felt euphoric, amazed at how quickly the puzzle mystery seemed to be coming together. But she realized, even with her meager experience, that something seemed off. The puzzle had almost been served up on a platter for her where she couldn’t miss it. Was someone trying to lure the FBI to St. Lumis? She’d asked only a few questions before Mrs. Filly had looked at her oddly. Why? Had she given herself away by showing all that interest? When she went back, she’d have to be more careful.
It was time to talk to more of the locals. Pippa turned right off Columbo Square, with its giant bronze statue of General Columbo in the center astride his rearing horse, its hooves flying high. The square looked wilted from the hot summer, and the grass was brown. She started to sit on one of the benches, thinking perhaps someone she recognized would come by, but she decided to keep walking toward her former family home and see how it was faring. Maybe the owners would come out and talk. She walked two blocks down Pilchard Street and turned onto Blue Lagoon Lane. Her former home was on the left, three houses down. She stopped and stared. She couldn’t believe her once-tidy clapboard house and immaculate yard with flowers blooming everywhere, thanks to her mother, was now painted a virulent pink, a car on blocks in the driveway. The yard looked like it hadn’t been tended or a flower planted since her parents left. She wanted to scream, or cry. She remembered her parents saying they’d sold the house for a great price to a lovely couple from Norway. Apparently the folks from Norway had decided to go back to Oslo and sold it to some yahoos. She wanted to burst through the pink door and yell at whoever lived there. Calm yourself. It’s only a house. It has nothing to do with you now. Still, she snapped photos with her phone. Should she send them to her parents? No way. She deleted them instead. As she stood staring at the house, the front door opened, and a young man stepped out, yawning, wearing only a pair of tatty jeans, looking buff and scruffy. He made a sprint to the driveway to pick up the St. Lumis Herald and stopped in his tracks when he saw her.
18
“Hey, who are you? Why are you standing there?”
Pippa shook herself. What the house looked like didn’t matter. The derelict yard that would make her mother weep, it didn’t matter, either, not for seven years. She called out, all bonhomie, “I stopped to admire the lovely pink paint.”
The man guffawed and gave her a white-toothed smile. “Yeah, right, funny girl. It’s a bloody nightmare, but that’s Ma for you, loves her pink. The pinker the better. I’m only visiting. I couldn’t live here. It’d make me nuts, send me screaming into the night. My name’s Hunt. You want to come in for a cup of coffee? Ma’s at church. Hey, once you’re inside, there’s no more pink, I promise.”
Too bad Hunt didn’t live here. The chances of his being of any help were close to nil. She gave him a big smile. “Not today, but thank you.”
He waved and turned back to the house, whistling.
Pippa walked another block inland, past an older square brick apartment building, circa 1970, surrounded by denuded maple trees and small older houses with smaller front yards built nearly to the worn sidewalk. There was a new sign for a hair salon in one window. Otherwise everything seemed the same. There were children playing football in a side yard, young girls going wildly high on swings hanging from low oak branches. She heard parents’ voices from inside the houses and the sound of TV cartoons, but mainly football