Free The Name of the Game Was Murder by Joan Lowery Nixon Page A

we’re going to share them?”
    “Oh, for goodness’ sakes,” Laura said. She slapped her paper out flat on the table where anyone could see it and read it aloud. “Mine is nothing but the name of a dumb playing card. Did we all get the same thing?”
    “Not exactly,” Alex answered. “Mine begins in the same way: ONE WILL BE ABOVE ALL . But I’ve got the king of diamonds.”
    “Jack of clubs,” Buck said, and tossed his paper into the center of the table.
    “I have the nine of diamonds,” Thea said.
    “All right,” Julia added, and laid her sheet of paper in front of her. “Mine is the queen of hearts.”
    There was a pause before Senator Maggio intoned, as though he’d just been picked king of the hill, “If this werea card game, I’d beat you all. Mine is the ace of spades, highest in point value.”
    “Not always,” I told him. “In cribbage an ace is at the bottom and only worth one point.”
    I realized, by the look on his face, that I wasn’t exactly his favorite person, so I tried to get back to the subject of the clues. “Does each of your clues begin the same way, with the words ONE WILL BE ABOVE ALL ?”
    They nodded, and the senator said, “I was trying to make the point that the ace is above all other cards.”
    “Except …” I began, then changed my mind. There was a more important point to make. “Laura’s is possessive.”
    “That’s not true,” Laura said. “I am not.”
    “Not you,” I said, “your ten of spades. See … there’s an apostrophe after it. Do the rest of them have an apostrophe?”
    “They all do,” Julia said. “What does that mean?”
    “One more thing for us to figure out,” I answered.
    Thea interrupted. “Samantha was right in suggesting we work together. Apparently that’s what Augustus intended us to do.” She sighed and added, “He set us apart with the first clues, then probably intended to see how long it would take us to realize we had to work together on the second.”
    Julia shrugged and said, “Okay, Sam, since you know so much about it, what are we supposed to do now with these stupid clues?”
    “Well,” I said, a little nervous because everyone was staring at me as though I had the answer written on my forehead, “we should look for other meanings to the clues and try as many angles as we can.”
    “Like what?” Laura asked.
    “You’ve got a spade,” I said. “What else does a spade mean?”
    Her eyes began to glimmer all green and golden as the thought struck her. “Oh!” she said, “a spade! Does that mean we’re supposed to dig for something?” She made a face. “In this rainstorm? How could Augustus do that to us?”
    “He didn’t know it was going to rain,” I said, “and we don’t know if that’s what it means.” I looked across the table at Julia. “What about your queen of hearts?”
    She tried to look modest and didn’t make it. “Perhaps it refers to me as the reigning queen of romantic novels.”
    Laura’s lip curled. “I’d hardly call your stories
romantic
, dear.”
    Julia had her mouth open to respond, but Thea suddenly began to chant, “ ‘The Queen of Hearts, she baked some tarts, all on a summer’s day.’ Could the clue lead to the kitchen? The Queen of Hearts’ tarts?”
    “Maybe,” I answered. I was writing everything down as fast as I could.
    “What about a real heart?” Buck asked. “Augustus didn’t have one pickled in a bottle or anything like that, did he?”
    “Of course not,” Thea said, and shuddered.
    “I wish he’d had a
change
of heart,” Alex muttered.
    I ignored them as I looked up at Aunt Thea and said, “You had the nine of diamonds. Does that mean anything special? Like, do you have nine diamonds?”
    “More than nine,” she answered, “but would the clue have to refer to real diamonds? I’ve been thinking about the diamond pattern of the tiles in the hallway.”
    “There’s baseball diamonds,” Buck added.
    “Crystalline carbon,” Senator