Death on the Diagonal - By Nero Blanc Page 0,70

no struggle involved. The way I see it, he was caught totally off guard.”

“And let’s not forget that this puzzle could be a plant,” Al observed. “And that our murderer could be Michael Palamountain . . . who might be purposely trying to stymie the investigation by verbally blaming his wife, whom he knows will be found innocent—and relatively painlessly, too, given daddy’s bucks and a fleet of high-end lawyers. So, Michael plants the puzzle and tosses in Angel’s name, simply to add to the confusion.”

“Also, Palamountain definitely knew that the phone lines at the Dew Drop Inn were still operational. Someone had to fax that puzzle to Belle,” Rosco said in quiet agreement.

“Yeeeshh,” Al groaned. “From where I sit, it looks like a bunch of people have an awful lot to hide—not just Heather.”

Additional silence enveloped the foursome with each escaping into their private thoughts. Belle used the time to retrieve the crosswords she’d previously received, pulling them from a file folder and walking across to Al’s desk to spread them across the surface. “ ‘Submission,’ ” she read, “ ‘To Catch a Thief,’ and now ‘Measure for Measure.’ If I’m missing a hidden message, I don’t know what it is.”

“Unless you’ve got to submit to the thief in order measure your catch,” Lever wisecracked while Abe gave a stagy groan.

“Stick with police work, Big Al. You make a better detective than a linguist. Whatever you just said made absolutely no sense.”

Belle rearranged the puzzles, then studied them again. “Okay . . . my initial take on this situation was that the word games referred to the case of arson—which seems pretty obvious: BLAZING SADDLES, and so on. But now I’m wondering if that wasn’t just a big curveball, or something to pique my interest, which it ultimately did. We’ve got DAWN as the answer to 61-Down in ‘Measure for Measure,’ while WALT, or Mr. Disney, appears at 31-Across in ‘To Catch a Thief.’ So here’s my suggestion: I think it’s possible, in fact likely, that these crosswords refer to the Dawn Davis con job. That they’ve been connected to that situation from the start.” The three men looked at her; they didn’t speak. “And . . . is it possible the fire and Gudgeon’s quarter-of-a-million-dollar swindle are somehow intertwined?”

It was Lever who finally spoke. “Okay, Belle, I’ll bite. What’s the link? And if you can tie together the Curry and Ryan Collins murders, and come up with a guilty party, I’m making you a full-fledged member of the force. I don’t care what your lovin’ hubby says.”

Belle chortled. “Hey, I’m just a cruciverbalist, Al. Like Abe said, you’re the cop. You tell me.”

CHAPTER

28

The upshot of the Lever, Jones, Belle, and Rosco confab at NPD was the conclusion that two murders at the same location and only a week apart had to be connected. And the fact that the anonymous crosswords might have been created by one of the victims, and that they seemed to bear a link to the Gudgeon situation, meant that one scenario remained out in left field waiting to be resolved: the barn fire. It was for this reason that Rosco decided to clean up the mystery of the stable blaze once and for all by making a return visit to the Collins spread, where he intended to have a second face-to-face with the stonewalling Orlando Polk. This time, Rosco wasn’t planning any polite, I’m-your-best-pal-in-the-world approach.

When he braked the Jeep in front of the King Wenstarin Farms main gate, Pete swung it open without delay, simply noting a pragmatic, “You’re becoming quite the regular around here, aren’t you, Polycrates? Next thing you know, you’ll be taking riding lessons.” He forced a jovial laugh, but it quickly turned into a pensive frown. “These folks are going through some real hard times. I sure hope you and your police buddies can get it straightened out for them.”

“We’re working on it, Pete. We’re working on it.” Rosco drove up the long lane and parked his Jeep behind one of the horse barns, out of sight of both stable B and Todd Collins’s residence. He then walked directly to Polk’s apartment and entered without knocking. The barn manager was sitting on his couch watching a midmorning talk show on the TV. When he saw Rosco he reached for the remote, silenced the set, and stood.

Rosco glanced up at the loft area. “Is Kelly here? I need to have a word with you in private.”

“No,” was the tenuous answer. Orlando