Free Fatal Deduction by Gayle Roper Page A

out.
    “You’ve got to give that puzzle to the police, Lib. Tori’s got to talk to them.”
    I sighed. “I know.” I bent to pick up the booklet and the piece of paper. As I stood, the paper fell open and a puzzle appeared, circles around specific letters but none of the answers filled in. My breath caught. I flipped the paper and there was Tori’s name in all caps, just like the note on the dead man.
    A chill raised bumps on my arms. “I just found another one, Madge.”

ACROSS
DOWN
1 now
2 one who gets even
3 small bush
4 shade or tint
6 one who owes
5 thief
8 solitary
7 extreme
9 a thousand
12 turn from
10 one not too smart
14 finished
11 squealer
15 two card
13 covered, as a wall
16 locked storage units
16 precious metal
17 burglar or pet
18 to deceive or trick
19 noted
20 to take without permission
    “Uh-oh. Is it filled in?”
    “No. I’ve got to go.”
    I heard her yell, “Call me!” as I hit Off. I grabbed my purse and scrabbled around until I found a pencil, then collapsed at the table, the puzzle spread before me. Clue one-across was
now
. Five letters. I wrote
today
. Two-down was
one who gets even
. I didn’t think the answer was
mean person
. I went to six-across, which cut through two-down.
One who owes
. Six letters. I wrote
debtor
.
    My hand stilled. Was Tori a debtor, or was it just a word that supplied an
o
to the embedded message? If she was a debtor, whom did she owe? Certainly not a bank like me with my mortgage-banks didn’t send threatening puzzles or dead bodies.
    Gambling debts? She worked in the gambling industry, but surely she was too smart to play. She knew the house always won. In fact, I didn’t think the SeaSide let its employees gamble there. And she saw what happened to the disordered gamblers, the people who got caught in the addiction. She saw the ruined lives and broken homes of those for whom the bet was all.
    Still, even knowing the pitfalls well, I feared she had tumbled down the abyss of empty promises and vain speculations. The question was: how deep was the water in her pit? The threats buried in the puzzles, to say nothing of the dead man on the front steps, seemed to indicate she was in well over her head. How long could she successfully tread water?
    If she owed money, who did she owe it to? Casinos didn’t send threatening puzzles any more than banks. What kind of a lender would be ruthless enough to send a dead man as a message?
    Oh, Lord, did You bring me here to save Tori?
    I just wondered if I could bear the emotional cost.

8

    W HEN I FINISHED solving the puzzle, I stared in distress at the message. Y OU A RE O VERDUE .
    Library books could be overdue.
    So could taxes and your time of the month.
    Reports at work could be overdue, and trains and planes.
    I doubted any of these things were Tori’s problem.
    Loans could also be overdue.
    My stomach cramped. Had Tori borrowed unwisely? It certainly made sense.
I want it. I need it. I’m buying it
. That was Tori, no matter how expensive the item and how empty her bank account.
    If she borrowed unwisely, it also meant she’d run her legitimate credit avenues to the max. It had to.
    And no one left dead bodies lying around unless big money was involved. The sweet tea sloshed uncomfortably in my teeming stomach.
    Had Tori really been foolish enough to go to a loan shark?
    Even thinking of her with such a connection seemed absurd. I would have thought that she’d have learned from the example of Dad and Pop that wrong choices eventually caught up with you. However, knowing Tori, she no doubt thought she could charm her way out of her payments if she couldn’t make them or if she wanted to use her salary in some other manner, like betting more or buying my daughter a laptop. Since life generally went as Tori scripted, Dad and Pop excepted, she assumed she could write this scenario too. If half of what I saw on TV was accurate, she was being unbelievably naive. Loan sharks weren’t used to taking “no” or