Dead Man's Puzzle by Parnell Hall Read Free Book Online Page A

if they killed Overmeyer, they could be after me.”
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    “You’re smart. You’re resourceful. You’ll look out for my interests.”
    “You live in Bakerhaven?”
    “Why do you ask?”
    “I’ve never seen you before.”
    “That’s not important.”
    “It is to me. Where can I reach you?”
    “Don’t worry. I’ll reach you.”
    Cora put up her hands. “No, no, no. This is utterly wacky. Your father and the dead man were in a partnership with two guys you won’t name over a pooling agreement you don’t have that leads you to believe whoever killed Overmeyer may be after you?”
    He smiled. “Now you’ve got it.”
    “So why aren’t the other two in danger?”
    “I’m sure they are. I just don’t care.” His nose twitched. “Something burning?”
    “Oh, my God! The noodles!”
    Cora leapt up, raced into the kitchen.
    The water had boiled dry. The noodles were scorching the pan. Wisps of smoke were curling up to the ceiling.
    She grabbed the pot, burned her hand, screamed, cursed, dropped the pot. She shut off the fire, snatched up a pot holder, put the pan in the sink, turned on the water. Jumped back from the mushroom cloud of steam that erupted. As it subsided, she shut off the water, assured herself nothing was on fire.
    Cora composed herself, went back to her visitor.
    He was gone.

Chapter 13
    Chief Harper looked as if he’d just eaten a bucket of nails instead of one of Mrs. Cushman’s blueberry-ginger muffins. “Stock-pooling agreement?”
    “Yeah. Can you trace it for me, Chief?”
    “Someone named Stockholm bought stock?”
    “I admit it’s quite a coincidence.”
    “Yeah. Like Moneymaker winning the poker tournament.”
    “If the guy’s telling the truth, the stock wouldn’t be in his name.”
    “Whose name would it be in?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “That makes it harder to trace.”
    “Yeah.”
    “And now I got my own problems. Thanks to Rick Reed and Becky Baldwin, everyone and their brother knows I got a homicide. Even though I haven’t officially announced it yet.”
    “Why don’t you?”
    “I want to calm down first. So I don’t bite somebody’s head off. Then you come to me with a stock-pooling story that makes no sense.”
    “It makes no sense because we don’t know the details.”
    “No,” Harper said. “It makes no sense because it doesn’t make sense. A ninety-two-year-old man living in squalor and all the time he’s got a fortune in stocks squirreled away?”
    “Would that be the first rich recluse you ever ran into, Chief?”
    “No. But if that’s the case, why do you kill him for it? More to the point, why do you kill him for it if you don’t get it?”
    “We don’t know no one got it.”
    “Yes, we do. We know no one inherited it. The guy doesn’t have a relative within a hundred miles of here. Make that five hundred. The best I can do is a great-nephew from San Antonio who’s flying in to settle the estate.”
    “What estate?”
    “Exactly. The guy’s got a ramshackle hut on a quarter acre of land. It might be worth twenty or thirty thousand to anyone who wanted to tear down the house and start over. It’s hard to imagine this guy from San Antonio doing that. So, unless some other heir pops up, he’s likely to turn it over to the local Realtor and go home.”
    “Twenty or thirty thousand is a nice piece of pocket change.”
    “Can you see some guy from San Antonio sending his uncle poison candy in the hope of picking it up?”
    “Was the poison in candy?”
    “I’m not sure what the poison was in.”
    “From the look on your face, I’d say your coffee. What’s the problem, Chief?”
    “What’s the problem? I’ve got a motiveless crime with no suspects. Now you bring me some cock-and-bull story about some guy with no name and no address.”
    “You’re the police. I imagine you can get his address.”
    “Did he come in a car?”
    “If I had a license plate number, I’d have given it to you,