Read Online The Devil's Puzzle by Clare O'Donohue - Free Book Online Page B

the same time she’d encouraged me to keep pursuing the matter, as Eleanor would have done if the situation were reversed. I would have stayed and pushed Maggie to explain the contradiction, but Maggie, like my grandmother, wasn’t easily pushed.
    Instead I headed toward Someday Quilts. I wasn’t on the schedule to work, but I hoped to pick out some fabrics for my devil’s puzzle quilt and make phone calls to some shop regulars to see if they would have quilts to contribute to the show. But when I passed the movie theater, I changed my mind and made a phone call.
    “Can you meet me at Bryant’s with the red poker chip?” I asked.
    I could hear Jesse laugh on the other end of the phone. “Is that code for something?”
    “No.” I knew what was coming next.
    “But the poker chip is tied to the skeleton we found,” he said, “and since you’re staying out of that investigation, you can’t possibly be asking me about that.”
    “If you want to mock me, you’ll never know what I was going to tell you.”
    “Five minutes.”

    True to his word, Jesse met me in front of the theater just a few minutes later. I told him what Maggie had said about Eleanor.
    Rather than the expected reminder that Eleanor’s love life was none of my business, Jesse asked, “What does that have to do with a poker chip?”
    “Maggie has a habit of casually slipping important information into a conversation. I felt like she told me something important about Eleanor this morning. I just have to figure out what it was.”
    I held up my hand to stop Jesse from asking the question about the poker chip a second time.
    “As I was thinking about it, I remembered how Maggie had mentioned that the theater used to give out poker chips as part of some promotion they had in the seventies. I thought maybe Ed would know something about it.”
    “That’s a great idea.” He smiled. “Nice to have you back on the case.”
    “I’m not on the case. I’m just passing along information.”
    “So you’re not going to stay while I talk to Ed?”
    I considered walking away, heading to the shop and working on my plans for the quilt show, but I just couldn’t do it. “I’ll just wait for you. Maybe we can get some coffee afterward and hang out.”
    He laughed. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep out of this.”
    I didn’t bother to protest, but I did promise myself I would just listen and not ask any questions. It had become a matter of honor. Everyone assumed I would butt into the investigation, that I didn’t have the willpower to leave it alone—and the one quality that usually trumped my curiosity was my stubbornness. If everyone was betting I would jump in, I was determined to stay out. Mostly.
    Ed met us at the front door with apologies. “We’re closed until this evening,” he said. “I had to have the plumber in to work on some leaks in the soda machines. I really should replace them, but I don’t have the funds right now.”
    “We’re not here for a movie, Ed,” Jesse told him. “We’re actually looking into an incident over at Eleanor Cassidy’s house.”
    “The skeleton?”
    Jesse smiled. “I guess you heard about it. We found something with the body that you may recognize.” He held up the poker chip, encased in a sealed plastic evidence bag. “Does this look familiar?”
    “Should it?”
    “I understand your father had a promotion at the theater in the early seventies. Something that involved poker chips?”
    Ed nodded. “Oh, I do know what you’re talking about. I didn’t own the theater then, my dad did. I was still teaching at the high school.”
    “When did you take it over?” I asked.
    “Only about ten years ago, after my father passed away. I couldn’t let the old girl be turned into a fast-food place or some such nonsense, so I took over. I was retiring from the school anyway. I needed something to keep me busy.”
    “The poker chip,” Jesse said, nudging us back to the topic.
    “Right. My dad