Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

“Yeah, I do.” I’d had to admit, just having a father who had the time, and the interest, to do something so essentially unimportant and fun was hard for me to conceive. But she’d had that, Frances had; suddenly I found myself slightly envious of her.

“She made me a game,” I told Jake as I walked to the door. “I found it after she left. I’m kind of going along with it. It doesn’t do any harm.”

“She left you a game?” Jake echoed, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Yeah, I mean, what the heck.”

“Right.” He was frowning now.

“She, well, she used my initials, HS. I’ve got most the clues figured out so far. Do you want to see?” Now I felt stupid, sheepish, like a little kid. “It doesn’t do any harm, Jake.”

“You’ve already said that.”

“Yeah,” I said, turning to leave the room. I just wanted to get away from all those dead animals. “Come on and I’ll show you.”

“1. H _ _ _ _ _ Stone.” Jake held the first clue in his hand. I’d left them on the long shelf of the front room. Written on the old brown stationery paper, it crinkled in his hand.

“Found it rolled up with a string around it on the kitchen table. There was a note next to it, said something like ‘Found this — do you think it’s one of my father’s?’ But I knew her handwriting. Plus why would her father use the initials HS? They’re my initials.”

“And what did it stand for?” he asked patiently.

“Well, it did drive me kind of nuts. I thought of headstone and hard stone and about every kind of stone there is. But nothing fit until I remembered she said all the hunts started in the trophy room. So it was obvious.” I shrugged.

“Obvious?”

“Hearthstone, Jake. I found the second clue on the fireplace hearth in the trophy room.” I picked up the second clue. “This was number two.”

“2. HS, African ruler,” Jake read.

“That one took me a while to figure...”

“Haile Selassie,” Jake said without a pause. “Ruler of Ethiopia from about...”

“Yeah, well of course you’d know that, after thirty years of watching Jeopardy. I didn’t know. I never studied African history, for crying out loud. But I did a little research and figured it out.”

“Which led you where?”

“To the atlas. There’s several shelves of books in the trophy room and I looked up Ethiopia. No dice.”

“Abyssinia.”

“I should have called you, Jake. Yeah, you’re right, Abyssinia, the old name for Ethiopia. Anyhow, there, tucked in the pages, was the third clue.” I handed it to him. “Figure this one out, Mr. Smart Guy.”

“3. H _ S and Uncle Tom,” Jake read, a sly smile creeping over his face. “Too easy, Herbie. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Was there a copy of that book in the room, too?”

“Yeah.” I could feel my face burn. Two clues which took me three days to sort out, and he got them in less than two minutes. “Okay, what about this one. It was tucked in the front page of the book.” I handed him clue number three.

Which is where he stopped, frowned: Mr. Smart Guy was stumped.

Just like I was because on this piece of paper were just my initials, HS.

“That it?” Jake asked, turning the paper over, looking for something else.

“No, there’s also this,” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the small wooden egg, which I put in his hand. “This was with my fourth clue.”

“Sometimes we didn’t finish a hunt, so my father would give in, tell us the final clue so we could have our candy before the mice found it. Sometimes I think there might be forgotten clues all over this house.”

“You really think so?” I took a sip of my Coke. Frances had just taken one from the ancient refrigerator, which despite its age had cranked to life after being plugged in and snorting for a couple of hours. I cleaned the coils; she cleaned two months worth of black mildew from the interior; and now it was stocked with soda and fruit juices.

“I know so. Sophie told me she’d found an old clue tucked in our father’s desk. That was...” Frances looked off thoughtfully, then her eyes twitched to me. I wondered then how much of Frances Carter was simply an outlandish act; she seemed to enjoy teasing me too much. “...last summer, right after she wrote me that she was fixing up this place. But she followed it to the next location and nothing was there. We’d probably solved that game long ago as children. Still, there are those few hunts we never did finish. My father was working on one the summer he died.”

“Really?” I leaned forward on the table.

“Really.” She mimicked my pose on the opposite side and I sank back. Her eyes, laughing, stared straight through me. “So if you find any... odd bits of paper with words that look like clues on them, you must promise to save them for me. Yes? Because if anyone finds anything...” She took a sip from her soda. “...it’s going to be you.”

“Yeah, so that’s where I’m stuck. Clue number four,” I said.

“It’s an egg,” Jake said; he still held the small, inch-long wooden egg.