Anatomy of a Crossword Read Online Free PDF

the front door, Belle hadn’t a clue which person before her was male or female—or if, perhaps, the group was of a single sex. But she couldn’t have ventured a guess as to which sex. The hasty introductions didn’t help, either: Miso Lane (the only one to reveal a double name), Omagh, Chris, Randi, and Bret, each of whom proceeded to swarm into and through her house as if she were not the owner and resident but some insignificant being hired to turn a key in the lock of an uninhabited building.
    It was unsettling to hear their comments as they began to either deride or coo condescendingly over the winter-battered wicker settee and table on the front veranda, the living room with her favorite secondhand-store treasures, the kitchen where they burbled about outmoded chrome appliances, mismatched cookware, and a refrigerator to which magnets actually stuck. “Sub-zero outside, but not in here, hee, hee. Oh, so quaint.” But it was in Belle’s office where the critique rose to new heights.
    â€œA fantasy in black and white,” decreed Miso Lane, while placing palms to cheeks and bending backward slightly. By now, Belle had labeled him as male and the leader of the group. He concluded this authoritarian opinion with a loud and world-weary sigh that indicated he found the word-game motif more of a nightmare than a dream. On his orders, the others fanned out across the room, pulling reference books from the shelves, clucking over Belle’s various collections of poetry, her foreign language dictionaries, and her two sets of encyclopedias, then muttering about while rearranging her desk. Ogling and discussing the crossword she was constructing for Chick Darlessen, he was popping so many photos that the air whined with the sound.
    Then the team rushed upstairs, snapping away in the bedroom and bath while Belle trailed behind, worrying if the sink was clean enough, if she’d succeeded in vacuuming all of Kit’s fur from the rug, and, if someone decided to open a closet, how many haphazardly stored items would come tumbling out.
    â€œOh, look!” she heard one of the five squeal (Belle thought it was Randi). “A double bed! Isn’t that the cutest thing?”
    â€œWell, a king would never fit up that weensy stairway, darling.”
    â€œHow do two people sleep in something that tiny?” It was Bret this time, Belle guessed.
    â€œWith a whole lot of cuddling, I’d say.” The comment (maybe it had come from Omagh) produced universal snickering in all but Belle, who stood in her bedroom’s doorway with a sick and unhappy ache growing in the pit of her stomach.
    Then the cameras disappeared into black bags, and the crowd scurried back downstairs. “Who’s got the MapQuest info on Lawson’s?” Miso Lane demanded.
    â€œI thought we could GPS it. Hello OnStar, it’s Batman!”
    â€œI’ll take you there,” Belle offered. “After all, I’m the tech—”
    But her suggestion was cut short by Miso’s brusque “Let’s get moving, then. We’re on the red-eye back to L.A. tonight. And Chick wanted me to be sure to—” The words vanished beneath the stamp of feet and the slamming of the front door.
    â€œI’ll be back soon, Kitty. Be a good girl,” Belle barely had time to whisper before she hurried after them.
    The photographic inspection and cataloging of Lawson’s interior was followed by an equally diligent examination of the Newcastle Police Department’s main facility—Al Lever’s office, the holding cells, forensics, the morgue. In each location, the design team members repeated their performance: snapping away at rooms, doorways, and objects as if they’d never seen a restaurant-size stove or the venting ducts in a forensics lab or a station house basement painted institutional green. The cops on duty, sturdy men and women with jelly doughnut—enhanced