Two Across by Jeffrey Bartsch

Author:Jeffrey Bartsch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2015-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

Clever. The clue that stopped everything though was this: “Erle ______ Gardner.” Now that’s odd, he thought. Vera and Stanley were both answers in the same puzzle. And a puzzle themed for the city just across the Charles River, no less. In his mind he took a step back and then everything became clear. Clues were everywhere. A hankering: JONES. Writer Nathaniel: HAWTHORNE. City planned by L’Enfant: WASHINGTON. Small cut: NICK. Word war: SPELLINGBEE. Chills traveled along him as if some virtuoso were thrumming him with the cottony drumsticks of a xylophone. He jumped up from the floor and dashed out of the rooming house and was lucky enough to find a taxi right away. He got in.

In the pandemonium of his thoughts the scenario got flip-flopped and he said to the cabbie, “Where to?”

The driver looked at him as if he suspected he was drunk. Then Stanley realized he had no money in his pocket and no idea where to go once he crossed the river.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and climbed out.

He knocked around Cambridge in a state of shock. Inside his rib cage was a rattling heart and a bottomless sensation as if he were falling forever. She really wrote another puzzle for him? She did: There it was, still in the crook of his arm, touchable and real. He found himself walking Brattle Street, passing her old dorm, staring into space on a bench along the Charles River. So she was in Boston. Suddenly he realized it was night. He was surprised that he had first discovered her secret message many hours ago, around midmorning. It felt like only a matter of moments. He went to the Riffraff Café, her place, and sat down to pore over the puzzle and decode where exactly in Boston she might be expecting him.

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