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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.
Pippa said, “You put that nasty snake around his neck, like he’s a monster. And why do you have him leaning out the window?”
Mrs. Filly shrugged. “I decided to make it my last memory of him. I actually saw him up there and took a photo. I decided to immortalize him. Believe me, the snake fits him. But, to be honest here, he didn’t really have a paunch, I added it because he was such a two-timing bastard. And the Grateful Dead T-shirt? Like I said, a bit of whimsy on my part.”
“And this was when it was still that old hotel, the Alworth?”
“Yes, you can see the sign. The hotel wasn’t ever renovated and no one wanted to stay there. Old Mrs. Alworth sold it, and Mr. Sleeman—he’s our local wealthy robber baron—he turned it into some St. Lumis memorabilia shops. How did you know about the hotel?”
Pippa gave her a big smile. “I grew up in St. Lumis. My family left seven years ago. I decided to come back and visit my old stomping grounds.” She looked back at the puzzle. “When did Major Trumbo die?”
Mrs. Filly stroked her jaw, hummed. “I think it was five years ago, the same year Lill bought the Calders’ place and turned it into a B&B. She said it was very sudden, he simply fell over and croaked while they were on vacation. She said she couldn’t cremate him in life, so she did it when he died. I believe his urn sits on her fireplace mantel. All her guests see it at every meal.”
Pippa smiled. “It was one of the first things I noticed.”
Mrs. Filly snapped to and called out, “Sir, that puzzle’s wooden, indestructible, very good for small children, perhaps not quite as scary as the one he’s clutching to his chest, which I don’t recommend for any child under thirty.” She laughed at her own joke, patted Pippa’s arm, and walked over to ring up a sale, a large puzzle of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in a room filled with snakes, one crawling up his leg, another wrapped around his waist. His mouth was open in a scream. Pippa shuddered. No, thank you. She saw a father and one of his sons arguing. The boy wanted a Frankenstein puzzle that showed purple goo coming out of the monster’s enormous mouth. She hoped the father won that round. It was then she saw a sign posted against the back wall of the shop:
LEARN HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN PUZZLES
If she’d been in a bathtub, she’d have jumped out and shouted, “Eureka!” Pippa snapped a photo with her cell when she was sure Maude Filly was otherwise occupied, walked to a corner of the shop, and shot off another text with the photo to Savich.
She waited, studied Mrs. Filly as she rang up another sale and interacted with her customers. When there was a break again, Pippa walked back up to her. “I see your sign about making your own puzzles. Do you give classes?”
“No, not exactly classes. If someone asks for advice I help them with the design they want or recommend several different designs to them. Help them set it up.”
“I’ll bet people love to turn photos into puzzles, right? Like with Shutterfly? You send them your photo and they make a puzzle out of it?”
Mrs. Filly nodded. “Many people want to give their puzzles a personal touch.”
“You’re so talented. I bet people from all over have heard of you and come in.”
“Aren’t you sweet. Yes, I have a lot of visitors.”
Pippa pointed to Major Trumbo leaning out the window. “That one is fascinating. Did anyone want to make a puzzle like it?”
“Hmm, I don’t think so. That’s not to say that someone couldn’t simply take a photo of it if they wanted to. I’d never know.”
“Have you sold many of Major Trumbo’s puzzles?”
“Not all that many. Mostly only to folks who knew him and get a good laugh. The few others who’ve bought the puzzle only see a nasty old dude with a snake kissing him. Gives lots of people the willies.” Mrs. Filly cocked her head at Pippa in question. “Why all the interest in that particular puzzle? You never knew Major Trumbo, did you?”
“No, I didn’t know him. The puzzle’s unusual, makes me wonder about the nasty old dude.”
Mrs. Filly didn’t smile, but she nodded. “People prefer the monsters and the gore, and maybe the Jack Nicholson. Now, the Jack one makes my skin crawl.”
More customers poured into the store, and Mrs. Filly turned to greet them. Pippa had so many more 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.
