Free Killer Sudoku by Kaye Morgan Page B

trying not to make any noise and also avoiding eye contact with the camera. She went to the right-hand side of the pair of double doors, gently twisted the knob, pushed, and stepped through.
    As the panel swung shut behind her, cutting off the camera’s view, Liza released a long-held breath.
    The corridor outside the event rooms stood empty except for a tournament volunteer acting as hall monitor. Of course, with the doors opening to admit camera crews, both Will and Charley wouldn’t want any extraneous noise disturbing the contestants or the camera sound levels.
    Liza heard a subdued murmur of voices coming from one end of the hallway. She followed the sound to the large open area in front of the Skye Room.
    The doors to the ballroom were closed, but a good number of people had congregated in the anteroom—audience members who had stood in the rear for the original first round plus some of the contestants who’d given up. Liza recognized the potbellied guy Roche had interrogated after Ian Quirk collapsed.
    Some people actually clapped as Liza arrived, and her cheering section quickly converged on her. “You’re the first person to come out here,” Kevin told her.
    “Of course,” Michael pointed out, “there’s another way out from those rooms. That much we found out before they chased us away.”
    “A TV camera crew came by and filmed us,” Mrs. Halvorsen said. “But then a young woman marched over and said we had to get out of there. We didn’t want to be a distraction for you.”
    So somebody like Roy Conklin who hates crowds could just sneak off to the elevators and make a getaway with no fuss and no one the wiser, Liza thought. On the other hand, I’d expect Babs Basset to come out here with a brass band to receive an ovation from her subjects.
    And speak of the devil, who swept in at that moment but Babs herself. She looked a little put out seeing Liza already there, but managed a gracious enough response to the smattering of applause she received.
    “It seems they were considerably more organized last year,” she shared with the room in general. “As soon as contestants submitted solutions, they were checked. So much more certain , especially for the—”
    Liza was almost certain the next word would be something like “peasants” or “nobodies.” But Babs came up with “first-time contestants” instead, although her tone made the other meanings crystal clear.
    How nice—Babs worked in a double-barreled disparagement of the participants in the tournament and Will’s running it, Liza thought, but she managed to keep her mouth shut.
    Scottie Terhune appeared. Babs gave him a superior smile, but that curdled when he announced, “So this is where the party is! Guess I must have taken the long way around.”
    True or not, Liza enjoyed watching the uncertainty about Scottie’s finishing time slip past Babs’s armor.
    Some other new faces filtered in, then Gemma Vereker entered to general applause.
    “Really,” Babs sniffed. “It’s not as if she set any records.”
    But Gemma did finish in a respectable time, Liza thought, and more people were glad to see her.
    Michael consulted his watch and leaned close. “It’s seven-fifteen. Time’s up.”
    The anteroom really began to fill as recently released contestants crowded in. Finally, Will Singleton made his way to the center of the growing mob scene. He pulled a sheet of paper from his portfolio.
    “I’m pleased to announce that sixty contestants successfully solved the puzzle in the allotted time.”
    “So few,” Babs murmured. Liza could have spit at this hypocritical concern for the “little people” Babs could care less about. “Doesn’t dear Will realize that odds like that can only discourage the casual viewers?”
    “It doesn’t seem to hurt those poker programs,” Scottie pointed out. “They usually only concentrate on the top ten out of maybe a thousand entrants.”
    “Poker.” Babs made the game sound too déclassé