And a Puzzle to Die On Read Online Free PDF Page A

confidentially and winked. “Promise you won’t say anything. The girls think I’m twenty-five.”
    Cora wasn’t sure, but she thought the corrections officer had a narrow escape from a smile. He picked up the phone, pressed the intercom button, and punched in a number. “I have a female visitor for one of the prisoners. Could you send the matron?”
    “Matron?” Cora asked.
    “She’ll be right down.”
    The matron made Cora look like an anorexic fashion model. Weighing in at two hundred fifty pounds of solid muscle, and sporting a flat face and a broken nose, the woman might have gone a few rounds with George Foreman, or perhaps tried to steal his charcoal grill. She studied Cora as if sizing up a side of beef, then crooked a finger in her direction. “Come on, dearie.”
    Cora could think of few things one could say on network television she preferred less to be called than
dearie
, but she wasn’t about to pick a fight. Instead, she managed her most proper “Harrumph!” and followed the woman down a corridor and into a small side room with a chair, a coatrack, and a bank of six metal gym lockers.
    “Okay, dearie. Take off your shoes, jacket, and skirt.”
    Cora raised her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”
    “No one brings anything into the visiting room we don’t want brung. You got something for the prisoner, you give it to me. If they decide he should have it, they’ll see that he gets it.”
    “I don’t have anything for the prisoner.”
    “That makes it easier. Take your things off. You can use those coat hangers on the rack there.”
    “Suppose I don’t want to?”
    The matron shook her head. “That’s a problem. You were a prisoner and gave me lip, I’d take ’em off for you. But you’re just a visitor. You don’t wanna cooperate, that’s your call. I can’t touch you. But then you can’t see the prisoner. See how it works, dearie?”
    “How extensive is this search?”
    “I’m not gonna touch you. I’m gonna run a metal detector over you like they do at the airport. You got any reason why it should buzz, tell me now.”
    The search completed, Cora was led down another corridor, where another bored-looking guard at a desk pushed a button releasing a rather formidable-looking steel door.
    “There you go. Go on in, make yourself comfortable. The prisoner will be right in. You buzz the door when you want to come out.”
    Cora walked in and the door slammed behind her. She shuddered at the clunking of the huge locks and bolts.
    The visiting room was not much larger than your average phone booth. In New York City, Cora thought cynically, it would rent for fifteen hundred a month as a studio apartment.
    A single chair sat facing a plate-glass window. The window might have been a mirror. On the other side was a bare room with a chair and a door.
    A phone hung on the wall next to the window. There was no dial, no buttons, no numbers of any kind. The telephone receiver was connected only to the phone on the other side.
    The wall and window were totally solid. There was no slot, no door, no drawer, no bars, no open space of any kind, through which fingertips could be touched or a cigarette could be passed. What, Cora wondered, was that search all about? It occurred to her the matron was probably so grouchy because she knew she was performing a useless task.
    After what seemed forever, but was probably not more than thirty minutes, the door on the other side of the window opened, and a guard ushered in Darryl Daigue.
    And one mystery was solved.

Darryl Daigue was a tall, thin man with stringy bald hair. Cora realized that wasn’t quite right. He would have been bald, but for a few wisps of hair on top and a fringe around the ears. He had a hawk nose and heavy tortoise-shell glasses. He had chains on his wrists and chains on his feet. He jingled as he shuffled along. At least Cora assumed he jingled. With the thick pane of glass, she couldn’t hear a thing.
    The guard leading Darryl Daigue