Solution to last issue's 5-Minute Mystery, "Murder at Mardi Gras"

When J.J. saw that the single open drawer to Kim Lacombe's chifforobe contained sewing material, he assumed that whoever withdrew the deadly scissors knew just where to look. The coroner said Kim had been battered. She grabbed the scissors in self-defense. The killer took them from her and, in anger, used them on her. But there had been much blood. Which, to J.J., explained why the meticulous Edmund Lacombe's precise closet had two empty hangers. One was for the coat he'd been wearing -- the one spotted with his wife's blood. The other was for the coat he hastily put on after hiding the bloody one. He'd been in such a hurry he'd actually wound up with a brown coat that didn't go very well with his blue pants.

But what drove Edmund to kill his wife and the child she was carrying? J.J. suspected that Kim had not only kept her pregnancy a secret from her mother-in-law but from her husband as well. Otherwise Edmund would surely have told his mother. When Dr. Bodet let the cat out of the bag, it sent Edmund into a fury. Why? Because, as J.J. learned when he was finally able to reach someone by phone willing to dig into hospital records from the U.S. Army's computer banks, after Edmund Lacombe's run-in with the contact mine in Vietnam, fathering a child was something he could never do.

Though it was not crucial to his case, J.J. suspected Paul Crain to be the father of Kim's child. He, too, had met her at the hospital in South Vietnam. J.J. supposed they might have been lovers then. Her marriage to Edmund was a boon to them both. And, since they both knew that Edmund would never be able to consummate the marriage, they felt they could continue to be secret lovers. If only they'd been a bit more careful everyone might have lived happily ever after.

The winner was Ivan Cavero Belaunde.