Deadlock (FBI Thriller #24)(29)
Pippa accepted this advice with a smile, but she wasn’t paying attention. Creepy puzzles. No, couldn’t be that easy, that obvious. She was already wearing a white shirt under a dark blue V-neck sweater, jeans, sneakers, and a leather jacket over her arm, ready to rock ’n’ roll. Her first stop would be Maude’s Creepy Puzzles, on South Looney Street, only a two-block walk from Major Trumbo’s B&B.
Five minutes later, she was already there, facing a deep, narrow storefront set between Sharpest Tools and Buzzy’s Burgers. Maude’s Creepy Puzzles was written in bold Gothic script above the door. One large front window showcased puzzles from ancient horror movies, like Creature from the Black Lagoon, the original Godzilla, and Jack Nicholson in The Shining, grinning manically, his eyes quite mad, a thick green snake wrapped around his waist, mouth open wide, fangs dripping venom. The snake looked nearly as terrifying as Nicholson. And there was a kraken, a giant bulbous beast rising above a ship, crushing it and eating the sailors, the kraken’s long, fat teeth dripping blood. Talk about giving kids nightmares.
Even the Closed sign was in fancy Gothic script. The door opened as Pippa studied a puzzle of a serpent winding its way up what looked like the Tree of Life. The Garden of Eden? If that serpent spoke to her, Pippa knew she’d have run away, not hung around and munched on an apple.
An older woman wearing an orange turban that rose a good five inches above her head and a flowing black caftan with yellow stars looked over at Pippa and gave her a big smile. She was about seventy, comfortably large, her eyes slightly almond shaped and nearly as dark as Dillon Savich’s. So this was the first Mrs. Trumbo.
“What a blessed Sunday morning. It’s good to see someone out of bed, looking alert, after those wicked revelries at Leveler’s Inn last night.” She touched her fingers to her orange turban. “Yes, yes, I’m still celebrating Halloween. Come in and look around. I think there’s a couple of Snickers bars in the basket on the counter if you still have a sweet tooth left. Just let me hang the Open sign. There.”
I’ve found the mother lode.
17
Pippa was so excited, for a moment she couldn’t think of a thing to say. She beamed at Mrs. Filly and out tumbled, “I can’t wait to talk about your puzzles, Mrs. Filly. They’ve always fascinated me. Mrs. Trumbo said you designed and made most of the puzzles in your store. I am so pleased to meet you.”
Mrs. Filly patted her arm and drew her into the shop. Unfortunately, a moment later Pippa heard a jangling bell, and two families poured in, the children shouting and pointing. “Yes, dear, we can talk all about puzzles, but as you can see it will have to wait a bit.”
Pippa watched Maude Filly speak to the parents, answer their questions, and point the kids to some puzzles Pippa supposed were appropriate for their ages. She walked through the store herself as she waited, astounded at the variety of puzzles, most with a twist of some kind, and as advertised, very creepy. Then, on a corner shelf—she couldn’t believe it. Her heart skipped a beat; her brain went on full alert. She stared at a puzzle of St. Lumis from the water looking toward town. It was the same long pier, the same narrow waterfront sidewalk, and the bottoms of the buildings—identical. She was looking at the bottom two-thirds of the puzzle sent to Dillon—well, without the bones and dead birds. She stepped closer. Near the top of the puzzle, leaning out from an upper window was an older man, shown from the waist up, wearing a purple Grateful Dead T-shirt that didn’t cover his paunch. He was bald, with saggy jowls and a snarl on his mouth, and his eyes promised mayhem, mean and dark as night. A long, thin yellow snake wound around his neck like a multi-stranded choker necklace, touching his cheek, almost a kiss. It was creepy and ridiculous.
She looked more closely and realized she recognized the building. It was the Alworth Hotel, a once-thriving waterside hotel that had closed when she still lived in town. The big ALWORTH HOTEL sign was long gone now.
Would the old man with the snake be in the next section of the puzzle sent to Dillon? She took a photo of the puzzle, sent it to him, and texted about finding it in Maude’s Creepy Puzzles. She saw she’d used three exclamation points. She hoped he’d be as excited as she was.
She studied the puzzle, obviously professionally made. In comparison, the St. Lumis puzzle pieces sent to Agent Savich definitely looked amateurish, more homemade. Someone must have copied this puzzle, added the dead gulls on the pier and the scattered human bones on the sidewalk digitally, and sent it to Agent Savich. Which meant it had to be someone who lived in St. Lumis or at least had visited, maybe often, someone Maude Filly might remember.
Pippa jumped when Maude Filly’s voice said near her ear, “I see you’re fascinated by that puzzle.” She pointed a long blood-red fingernail to the top of it. “In the window there, trying to look malevolent, that’s Major Trumbo, my ex. Lillian, his second wife, that’s the Mrs. Trumbo who owns the B&B, she told me it’s the best picture she’s ever seen of him and that snake kissing him had to be one of his relatives. Ah, Lill, she loves to tell visitors how the B&B was Major Trumbo’s dream, how he wanted more than anything to have his own place right here in St. Lumis.” Maude leaned close. “What a whopper—don’t believe a word of it. It was always Lill’s dream, not his. It didn’t take long before she hated the old codger, but not as much as I did. I kicked him out when he cheated on me with her.” She glanced at the puzzle, lightly touched her fingers to the man’s face, then snorted. “To this day, Lill claims she didn’t know the major still had a wife until after he’d asked her to marry him, admitted it might take a little time since he had to get a divorce. When we’ve both croaked, I’ll ask her again in the afterlife, that is if we both end up in the same place. The major didn’t look like this when he was married to me or when he first married Lill. He could look mean, if he wanted to, but it was a sexy sort of ‘I’m dangerous and don’t fool with me’ mean. But the last couple years of his life? He was that man in the window, well, with a bit of whimsy on my part. At least by then he was her problem, not mine.” She shuddered.