The Puzzler's Mansion by Eric Berlin

those words in some way.”
    Kimberly shook her head. “I think I’m going to stick to the cello.”
    They continued to stare at the drawing, Winston enjoying the beautiful musician’s company.
    â€œWhat note is that, anyway?” he asked.
    â€œIt’s an E,” said Kimberly. “Is that important?”
    â€œMight be,” Winston said, staring, and less than a second later, the answer buzzed into his brain. “In fact, yes!” he said, and quickly wrote something down on his pad.
    â€œYou’ve got it?”
    â€œI do.” Winston beamed.
    She crinkled her eyes at him. “You’re not going to tell me the answer, are you?”
    â€œWell,” said Winston. “If you really want to know . . .”
    Kimberly laughed. “I’ll try to work it out,” she said. “If I need help, I know where to find you.”
    They smiled a good-bye at each other, and Winston went off to find more puzzle pieces. When he looked back, Kimberly was still there, hands on hips, staring at the picture of the fishing rod.
    It took Winston a solid twenty minutes to find the rest of thepieces—some of them had been hung in very tricky places. In one case, Richard had placed the frame face-out on the bottommost shelf of a bookcase. Winston must have walked by that one half a dozen times. Another clue was hidden underneath one of the staircases leading to the second floor. He only found that one thanks to the brats yelling, “Here it is, Mommy!” Winston saw Richard wince as his clever hiding spot was revealed for one and all.
    Winston found all eight clues, but was missing a few of the answers. One of the pictures in the clues was very peculiar—it was simply a list of all of their names. What could that mean? He took a seat at one of the tables and studied the notes he had taken.

    (Continue reading to see the answer to this puzzle.)
    *   *   *
    Winston took an aggravated breath as he studied the papers in front of him. He was most of the way to the answer, but couldn’t drag himself across the finish line. What was he missing?
    It was clear that each of these pieces was a rebus—that first puzzle he’d found was a fishing rod, an E note, and then the letter O. ROD + E + O = RODEO, a five-letter word to match the five blanks. The first and fourth letters of the answer were marked with stars, so Winston assumed he only needed the R and E.
    After some staring, he’d figured out all of the other rebuses, and now he had a little chart in front of him:

    The last rebus he solved was the one that showed all of their names—Winston had thought that one would drive him crazy. The first part was a B note, then came the word ON, and then . . . NAMES? BONNAMES? That wasn’t a word. He had stared at it, his mouth opening and closing around a thousand wrong answers, and then at last the lightbulb came on: Who were those people? Why, they were US! So the answer had to be B-ON-US. Bonus!
    Now he had two letters from each answer. But what was he supposed to do with them? Could he rearrange them so that they spelled something? Maybe. But after writing and erasing the letters a million times, Winston had to admit he couldn’t figure it out. He looked around the room and saw a couple of other guests sitting or standing with their own notepads. They too were stuck on this last step. Gerard Deburgh muttered to himself while he scribbled on his pad. He looked like somebody would take away all his restaurants if he didn’t solve this puzzle. Candice Deburgh and Amanda were up on the second floor—they were working together, without Gerard, who perhaps was too intense a teammate.
    Winston got up and started to pace. The answer wasn’t coming to him here. Maybe it would come to him somewhere else.
    He walked and thought, and occasionally stopped to jot down an idea on his notepad. The answer continued its little