Read Online A Crossword to Die For by Nero Blanc - Free Book Online Page A

growing weary.
    â€œYou should move down here, pretty lady. I read somewhere that Sarasota County—that’s north of here—is the crossword capital of the country … maybe even the world.”
    â€œIs that so?” Belle considered this reply less than stellar, but it was all she seemed able to muster.
    â€œYou have to be pretty brainy to do those things, don’tcha?”
    â€œWell, it takes a certain—”
    â€œMe? I can’t even remember that rule about ‘i’ and ‘e’ and ‘c.’ But I know P-O-S-H: Port out, starboard home.” He tucked Belle’s card in his wallet. “I’ll be sure to tell ole Woody to give you a jingle … but it may be some time.”
    Strolling back through the marina toward her car, Belle experienced a combination of relief and dissatisfaction. Jim Case’s breezy assumption that her father had purchased Wooden Shoe and then transferred the title to a friend who lacked a retired professor’s stable financial history seemed not only reasonable but a foregone conclusion—which made Horace Llewellen merely another unsolved mystery in the larger unknown that had been her father’s existence.
    Belle considered how little she knew of the Theodore Graham who’d bought boats and formed friendships—and who’d also apparently inspired a good deal of fond admiration. She sighed, and as she sighed, her eyes strayed to the ground, causing her to run almost square into a man hurrying along the marina walk toward her.
    â€œExcuse me, miss.”
    â€œOh!” Belle jumped. What she saw as she glanced up was a dark suit, a starched white shirt, a hat shaped like a fedora held formally in one hand. In the near distance behind the man’s back idled a motor yacht of voluptuous size and sparkle. It looked newly minted, and its crew, busy attaching docking lines, looked freshly equipped, too.
    â€œExcuse me, miss,” this impeccably accoutered specimen repeated. “I have just come from Europe—directly.”
    Belle turned around, imagining he was addressing someone else. No one was nearby, and it dawned on her that he’d mistaken her for someone else. But before she could rectify the situation, he continued. “I have been gone a good while. Can you tell me the name of the bartender in this establishment?”
    Belle stared at the suit, at the hat, at leather shoes so polished their reflection stung the eye. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been here before … But you might inquire at the marina office … or in the restaurant …”
    It was only after she returned to her father’s apartment that she considered how odd the exchange had been. And what an unfamiliar accent the man had had. It wasn’t Western European , she thought. Maybe from the East? A Slavic language perhaps? Or Israeli? Or maybe Russian or Ukrainian with an overlay of British schooling? The only certainty was that it seemed entirely too exotic to encounter in a quintessentially American resort like the Anchorage on Sanibel.
    Belle continued sorting through books and belongings as she pondered this newest curiosity. Gradually she became aware of a voice talking into a phone next door. Angry and insistent words stabbed their way through the open veranda door. Belle walked outside; the voice hissed and growled in the air, but its owner was invisible behind the dividing wall that separated one veranda from another. “Nyet,” she heard, and then a string of loud sounds whose meaning she couldn’t remotely fathom.
    â€œExcuse me?” she called. “Do you mind not shouting so much?”
    The voice fell abruptly silent, so quiescent, in fact, that Belle almost believed she’d imagined the noise.
    â€œThanks!” she sang out, but there was no response. She shrugged her shoulders and returned to the task of packing her father’s possessions. A Russian neighbor, a