Chapter One
From Liss MacCrimmon’s Scottish Emporium to Angie
Hogencamp’s new and used bookstore, Angie’s Books, it was only a
short walk across the town square of Moosetookalook, Maine. Liss
could have been there in two minutes flat. Instead, she dawdled,
enjoying the delights of a glorious morning in
mid-May.
This particular spring in the mountains
of central Maine was warm and sweet-scented. The apple blossoms
were in bloom, all pink and white and pretty. One tree stood next
to the merry-go-round and two others flanked the bandstand.
Volunteers had spruced up the flowerbeds that lined the paths
through the square, putting in their own particular favorites. Liss
strolled past an eclectic assortment. She recognized pansies,
bright yellow daffodils, blue forget-me-nots, and the purple of
grape hyacinth but was less certain she was correct in identifying
creeping phlox, candy tuft, and star of Bethlehem. There were
tulips, too, but they were a bit bedraggled, having almost reached
the end of their season. The crocuses had already gone
by.
There would be varieties of iris in
bloom soon, Liss thought, and the ever-present lupines would show
up in a few weeks, followed in July by one of her personal
favorites, orange day lilies. Smiling to herself, Liss began to
sing under her breath as she left the square and crossed Main
Street. “It’s May! It’s May! The darling month of
May.”
Frowning, she broke off, glad no one
else was within hearing distance. Not only couldn’t she carry a
tune in a bucket, but she had a habit of plugging in the wrong
words—“darling” went with “buds of May” and came from some old
poem, not a Broadway musical. The song she’d been trying to sing
talked about the merry month of May. Didn’t
it?
Shaking her head, Liss took the porch
steps at Angie’s Books two at a time. She should not try to sing. Her voice was bad enough all by itself,
but the effort was always a disaster when combined with her
terrible memory for lyrics. She’d always had a tendency to get the
words mixed up. And if she hadn’t realized it before, this failing
had been brought home to her just a few months earlier. She’d
committed a major blooper, and in public, too.
In late December, Moosetookalook had
celebrated “The Twelve Shopping Days of Christmas.” Liss had been
put in charge of the pageant. To go with the lyrics of the yuletide
carol, she’d duly rounded up nine lords a-leaping and ten ladies
dancing, as well as appropriate representations of the gifts named
in the other ten verses of the song. That no one appeared to have
been bothered by her mistake did not make Liss feel any better. She
was certain dozens of people had noticed and just been too polite
to say anything to her. She’d been horrified when the music
director from the local high school had casually mentioned—in
February!—that “The Twelve Days of Christmas” actually featured
nine ladies and ten
lords, not the other way around. It had been some consolation to
realize that he assumed she’d rewritten the lyrics in order to
accommodate a casting problem, but the whole incident embarrassed
her whenever she thought about it.
Angie’s Books, like all the other
storefronts around the square, was a converted residence with a
shop on the first floor and living quarters above. The front porch
was big enough for a couple of chairs and a small table. They’d
been pushed back to make room for a huge, freestanding
signboard.
“Great advertising,” Liss said as she
opened the screen door and stepped into the shop.
“One of Ms. Quinlan’s people brought it
by,” Angie Hogencamp said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who
had ‘people’ before,” Liss said with a laugh.
The featured author for Angie’s
Saturday afternoon reading and book signing was
actress-turned-mystery-writer Yvonne Quinlan. The sign featured a
life-sized photo that showed a willowy beauty with dark brown eyes
and a short cap of blue-black hair highlighted with purple
streaks.
Angie had big brown eyes, too, and
dark, wavy hair, but the resemblance stopped there. The bookstore
owner was a little overweight and a lot flustered. Her face, devoid
of makeup, had turned pink with exertion. Cartons of books
surrounded her, three of them clearly labeled with the title of
Yvonne’s latest novel.
“I may have ordered too many copies,”
Angie said.
“Think positive.” Liss made her voice
bracing as she approached the sales counter.
Liss, too, was a brunette. She was
taller than Angie. At five foot nine, she loomed over most of the
women in town. Like Yvonne, she was on the slender side, but her
eyes were light, not dark. Liss herself called them blue, but she’d
been told more than once that their color changed with the clothing
she wore and was, on occasion, closer to green in hue. Today, Liss
was certain, they were a very ordinary shade. Her outfit consisted
of well-worn jeans and a baby blue sweatshirt that said
MOOSETOOKALOOK, MAINE on the front—right beneath the picture of a
cross-eyed cartoon moose.
“There are around a hundred mystery
fans coming to the conference.” She rested her elbows on the sales
counter. Additional cartons of books were stacked on the floor
behind it. “They all love crime novels. They will buy the latest
titles from you because they want to get them signed by their
favorite authors.” Almost a dozen mystery writers would be
attending the conference and taking part in panel
discussions.
Angie swatted at a lock of hair that
kept falling into her face. “I hope you’re right. At the moment,
I’ll settle for getting these boxes out to the hotel. It’s going to
take forever to set them up on the tables in the dealers’ room.
They’ll have to be alphabetical by author’s last name so people can
find what they’re looking for. Do you think I should put hardcover
books in one place and paperbacks in another or lump them all
together?”
“Better put all the books by one author
next to each other. As for schlepping books, that’s why I’m here. I
can take some of the cartons over to The Spruces now and swing back
for more if you need me to. Take a deep breath, Angie. We have
plenty of time. It’s not even noon yet, and the festivities won’t
get started until six this evening. And we don’t open the dealers’
room to customers until nine tomorrow morning.”
Angie plopped herself down on the stool
behind the counter. “A whole three-day weekend! What was I
thinking? I never do this kind of thing.”
“It’s a new venture for all of us.
Consider it a challenge.”
“The challenge was conning my
sister-in-law into agreeing to babysit and keep this place open for
me while I’m at the conference.” Angie grimaced. “I really hate
owing her a favor.”
Liss sympathized. She’d thought about
asking someone to work at Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium in her
place but opted to close down instead. These days most of her
business came through online orders anyway.
“It’ll be fun, Angie. How can it not
be? Readers. Writers. Books.”
“And what is this conference called
again?” There was a hint of sarcasm in Angie’s voice.
“The First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con,”
Liss admitted, wincing a little at the name. Still, it fit the
occasion. The attendees would all be fans of the traditional
mystery—crime stories with limited violence and no graphic sex that
tended to feature amateur detectives inspired by such classic
sleuths as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Ellis Peters’s Brother
Cadfael.
“Do the people coming to this
conference know there was a homicide at the hotel only a few months
ago?” Angie asked.
Liss gave a snort of laughter. “Are you
kidding? Apparently that’s what sold the organizers on The Spruces.
How many gatherings of fans of fictional murders can say they met
at the scene of a real one?”
The worried furrow in Angie’s brow
deepened. “Beth wants to help out. You don’t think she’s too young,
do you? She’s only ten, and I have no idea what the people who
attend these conferences are like.”
“I’ve never been to one, either,” Liss
said with a grin, “but I don’t think the fans are violent. They may
like to read about murder and mayhem, but they aren’t likely to
commit either.”
Angie looked sheepish. “Of course they
aren’t. Silly of me to worry, I guess. Well, okay then. I’m keeping
three cartons of the new Yvonne Quinlan hardcover here for the book
signing on Saturday, but everything else that’s boxed up goes out
to the hotel. Some woman named Nola Ventress sent me a list of all
the attending authors, and I ordered the three most recent titles
by each one of them. Plus I’m bringing some books by other mystery
authors, just in case people are interested in them. If you’ll
drive around to the side of the building, we can load up from
there.”
A few minutes later, Liss and Angie
began piling cartons of books into the back of the pickup truck
Liss had borrowed from her fiancé, Dan Ruskin. It was already
half-full with stock from Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. On the
second trip out from the bookstore, Angie stopped to stare at the
distinctive, dark-colored vehicle just turning in at another of the
businesses on the town square. Like the bookstore, it also had a
side entrance.
Curious, Liss glanced that way and
grimaced. “I’m glad I don’t have a view of this from the Emporium,”
she remarked. Nor could she see it from her house, which was
situated on the lot next to her store.
“I could live without it,” Angie
muttered. “Fair warning. Doug’s son is a klutz.”
Frank Preston, age fifteen, emerged
from the passenger seat while one of the men his father regularly
called to make pickups slid out from behind the wheel. Almost
invisible wires ran from Frank’s earphones to his pocket. He was
very obviously listening to music. He jerked and hopped to the beat
of the song on his MP3 player as he made his way around to the back
of the vehicle and started to unload the cargo. It, too, was
unmistakable.
Liss felt neither shock nor surprise
when Frank hauled a body bag out of the back. His father, Doug, was
the local undertaker. It was hardly unusual for the hearse to
arrive with a new “client” for Preston’s Mortuary. But Frank’s
cavalier treatment of the remains bothered Liss. Without waiting
for Doug’s assistant to help, Frank tried to sling the body over
his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He lacked both the physical
strength and the coordination to manage the maneuver. The corpse
slipped out of his grasp. One end hit the pavement with a dull
thump that made Liss wince. The thought that it might not have been
the feet that struck the ground made her a little queasy. Frank
wasn’t just clumsy. He had no respect for the dead.
The assistant mumbled something Liss
couldn’t hear. She hoped it was a rebuke, but she was too far away
to catch the words. She doubted Frank heard them, either, over the
music blaring in his ears. He grabbed one end of the bag while the
assistant took the other and together they carried the deceased the
rest of the way into Preston’s Mortuary.
“That boy could care less about tending
to the family business,” Angie muttered.
“He’s always been a handful,” Liss
agreed. The previous winter, young Frank had gotten into trouble
for joyriding on a snowmobile. “Who died?” she asked, certain Angie
would have heard.
Moosetookalook was a very small town.
The population barely topped a thousand, even after several recent
additions. The local grapevine was quick to spread news of births,
deaths, elopements, and other assorted rites of passage. Anything
even remotely scandalous also spread like wildfire.
“Lenny Peet,” Angie answered. “Well, he
had a good long life, didn’t he? Ninety-five, I
heard.”
Liss hadn’t known Lenny well, but she’d
seen him just about every day. He’d walked his dog in the town
square in the early morning and again in late afternoon, no matter
what the weather or the season. You could set your clock by him.
Incensed that Frank Preston should have treated Lenny’s remains so
carelessly, Liss promised herself that she’d speak to Doug about
his son’s attitude the next time she saw him. Then she had another
thought.
“Who’s taking care of Lenny’s dog?” she
asked.
“It’s at the animal shelter down to
Fallstown,” Angie answered.
Liss added another note to her mental
list—do something about the dog. When Lenny’s ancient hound,
Tatupu, had passed away over a year before, he’d promptly acquired
a cute little fox terrier named Skippy. Liss was sure she could
find someone in the village who needed a new “best
friend.”
Filing away both chores to think about
later, Liss returned to loading the back of the truck with cartons
of books. The weekend ahead would be a busy one, but she fully
expected to enjoy every minute of it. How could she not? She was a
huge fan of traditional mysteries herself. She planned to slip away
from the dealers’ room now and again to attend some of the
sessions. And she’d definitely be putting in an appearance at that
evening’s opening reception.
Sherri Campbell, née Willett, had her
booted feet propped up on the desk in the inner room of the
Moosetookalook Police Department. Leaning back in the creaky wooden
swivel chair that went with it, she held one hand out in front of
her so she could admire the shiny gold band on the ring finger of
her left hand. She was three months married, but just looking at
that wedding band still gave her a thrill.
A loud knock had her all but jumping
out of her skin. Her feet hit the floor with a thump and she sat up
straight.
A very tall, very stout woman in a gray
pantsuit stood in the doorway. She had a big head to match her big
body—a long oval squared off at the jawline. The shape was
accentuated by the way she wore her hair. Her iron gray locks were
cut very short. The effect put Sherri in mind of an old-fashioned
swimming cap of the sort her grandmother wore in family photos
taken in the 1950s.
“Can I help you with something?”
Sherri’s voice came out a bit higher pitched than she’d intended.
They didn’t get a lot of walk-in customers at the police
department. The abrupt arrival of this one had caught her off
guard. Most people phoned in with their questions and complaints,
and, as a rule, there weren’t very many of those. Most of the time,
Moosetookalook was a quiet, law-abiding place.
“Are you Officer Willett?” the woman
demanded.
“It’s Officer Campbell now,” Sherri
corrected her. “I recently married.”
“Congratulations.” The stranger stepped
into the office, at once making it seem considerably smaller.
Without waiting for an invitation, she settled her bulk into the
bright red plastic chair on the other side of Sherri’s desk. It
groaned ominously under her weight. “Since you’re not busy, I’d
like to ask you a few questions.”
“I’m here to serve the
public.”
Sherri put more warmth into the words
than she was feeling. She told herself that it was ridiculous to
feel intimidated. At five foot two, almost everyone towered over
her. She should be used to it by now. But this woman was nearly
three times Sherri’s size and made her feel like a house cat facing
down an elephant. She upgraded herself to lioness and reminded
herself that she was the one with claws.
“You say you have questions?” Sherri
asked.
The woman had burrowed into a
briefcase-sized black leather purse and come up with a plain white
business card. She handed it over and waited while Sherri read the
lettering. It didn’t tell her much. In the center were the words
THE NEDLINGER REPORT and a Web site
address. In the lower left-hand corner was a name—J. Nedlinger—with
a P.O. box, e-mail address, phone and fax numbers.
“So, Ms. Nedlinger... what kind of
questions are we talking about?”
J. Nedlinger’s carefully shaped
eyebrows shot up. “You’ve never heard of me?”
“Sorry, but no.”
“Oh, well. They say fame is
fleeting.”
Sherri didn’t like the way the other
woman was looking at her. That intense stare seemed to her to
contain a strong undercurrent of mockery. It was as if this
Nedlinger woman knew something Sherri didn’t and relished hugging
that secret knowledge to herself. Sherri tried to tell herself she
was being fanciful, as she had with that lioness and elephant
image, but the impression remained.
“I’m a journalist,” J. Nedlinger said.
“I collect information, in this case statistics. I’d like to know
about the crimes your little town has suffered over the course of
the last two years. Is that going to be a problem?”
Sherri tried to put her finger on why
the woman made her uneasy. Ms. Nedlinger was quite stout, but there
was nothing soft about her. She was physically fit. There were
muscles beneath the sleeves of the plain gray suit, and she wore
sturdy walking shoes. She was not someone Sherri would fancy
meeting in an alley on a dark night. But, curiously, it was the
image of a bulldozer that replaced that of an elephant. No
predatory beast—just one of those pushy people determined to get
her own way.
Sherri had no reason to deny the
woman’s request. When it came right down to it, she didn’t suppose
she had any choice but to comply. What Ms. Nedlinger had asked for
was public information, data that Sherri had, literally, at her
fingertips. She tapped a few commands into the keyboard in front of
her and heard the printer whirr into action.
One of the routine jobs Chief of Police
Jeff Thibodeau had assigned to Sherri when he’d first hired her had
been compiling the monthly statistics and feeding them into a
computer program specifically designed to keep track of such things
and report them to the state of Maine. The task didn’t take much of
her time. Moosetookalook had been known to go for weeks at a time
without a single complaint that ended up creating paperwork.
Arrests were not an everyday occurrence.
Two sheets of paper spilled out of the
printer. Sherri glanced at them, then handed them over. “Here you
go. This runs from May two years ago up to this week.”
The stout woman seized the pages with
an eagerness that had Sherri tensing up all over again. She knew
there was one statistic that was out of proportion with the rest
for a village as tiny as Moosetookalook. Sure enough, Ms. Nedlinger
zeroed right in on it.
“Three murders in two years? Isn’t that
a bit excessive?”
Hidden by the desk, Sherri’s hands
clenched into fists. When she felt her fingernails bite into her
palms, she forced herself to relax. She made an effort to keep her
voice level. “These things happen even in small towns, Ms.
Nedlinger. Now, is there anything else I can do for
you?”
“Were you personally involved in any of
the murder investigations, Officer Campbell?”
Sherri glanced at the card in front of
her on the blotter. J. Nedlinger’s P.O. box was in Boston,
Massachusetts. Sherri wondered why an out-of-stater would care what
crimes were committed in rural Maine.
“Criminal investigations, Ms.
Nedlinger, for the more serious crimes, especially homicide, are
handled by the state police. And for almost anything more
complicated than a traffic violation, Moosetookalook usually asks
for assistance from the county sheriff’s department.”
“That was a somewhat evasive answer.”
Ms. Nedlinger’s pale blue eyes gleamed with amusement.
Abruptly, Sherri stood. “I’m afraid
that’s the only answer I have to give you, ma’am. May I suggest
that you contact the Maine State Police? They have an officer
specifically assigned to public relations.”
“I’ll do that.” She tucked the printout
into her purse and gave Sherri a tight-lipped smile as she also
rose from her chair. “Nice talking to you, Officer
Campbell.”
After she’d gone, Sherri snatched up
the business card she’d left behind. What an unpleasant woman! She
was tempted to tear the pasteboard rectangle into tiny pieces and
toss it in the trash. Instead, she turned back to her keyboard and
typed in the URL for The Nedlinger
Report.
A blog came up on the
monitor.
Sherri skimmed a piece criticizing how
a police investigation into cyber-harassment was being conducted,
then read an item lambasting the parents of a recent victim for not
supervising their daughter’s presence on the Internet.
“Well you just hate everybody, don’t
you,” Sherri muttered to herself as she scrolled down the
page.
She stopped when she came to something
a little different. Instead of an op-ed piece on some aspect of
real-life crime, this blog entry was a review of a recently
published mystery novel. J. Nedlinger had nothing positive to say
about the book. In fact, she was downright nasty in her comments
and, worse, gave away the ending.
Sherri was about to click away from
The Nedlinger Report when the movement of a
line of type at the bottom of the screen caught her eye. Next to
the words “today’s readership,” going up even as she watched, was a
number. Sherri stared at it, then glanced at the clock on the wall.
It was barely noon and, if this was legitimate, the most recent
blog entry on The Nedlinger Report had
already attracted over forty thousand hits.
The possibility that the rude woman
who’d invaded her office had that many fans made Sherri even more
wary of her interest in crime in Moosetookalook. Whatever she was
investigating now, it could not be good for the
village.
Sherri wondered if she should alert the
town selectmen to a potential public relations problem. Better to
wait, she decided. She’d just as soon avoid unnecessary contact
with the three elected officials who had charge of the police
department’s budget. One was her newly acquired mother-in-law,
another the local mortician, and the third a slippery character who
sold real estate. None of them numbered among her favorite people.
It didn’t take much effort to talk herself out of taking action.
What could any one of the town officials do about J. Nedlinger’s
interest in local crime anyhow? Besides, if the blogger were left
to her own devices, she might well decide their sleepy little burg
wasn’t worth the time to trash.
Sherri set the phone to forward any
calls to her cell, locked the office, and headed for Main Street,
pausing only long enough to exchange friendly waves with the town
clerk. In addition to the police department and the town office,
the municipal building also housed the public library, which took
up the entire second floor, and the fire department.
Just as Sherri stepped out onto the
sidewalk, on her way to meet her new husband, Pete, at Patsy’s
Coffee House for lunch, she spotted Liss MacCrimmon driving past in
Dan Ruskin’s truck. Liss braked and rolled the window down. She was
blocking the narrow street, but it hardly mattered. There was no
other traffic.
“I’m heading out to the hotel,” Liss
said when they’d exchanged greetings. “I’ve got a load of Angie’s
books in the back.”
“Right. Conference.” It was on Sherri’s
radar, as was the Saturday-afternoon book signing. Both were only
distant blips, since she did not expect any problems with traffic
or crowd control. “Have fun.”
“I plan to.” With a cheerful wave, Liss
drove on.
Sherri resumed her trek to the coffee
shop. She didn’t have far to walk. The small restaurant was right
next door to the municipal building. Less than a minute after she’d
seen Liss on her way, Sherri pushed open the door and walked in.
Pete was waiting in a corner booth, the same one he always chose if
it wasn’t already occupied. She slid across the bench seat toward
him and lifted her face for a quick kiss.
“Hello, handsome,” she murmured after
he complied.
Black-haired and brown-eyed, at
five-ten Pete Campbell had the tall and dark down pat. As for
handsome, he wasn’t a classic Adonis type, but he suited Sherri
just fine. He was built like a linebacker, square and solid, and he
looked a treat in his brown deputy sheriff’s uniform. He was
working the two-to-ten shift this week, patrolling Carrabassett
County’s rural roads to keep the community safe.
“Hiya, gorgeous,” Pete replied with a
grin. “How’s your day going?” At her grimace, his smile faded. “You
want to talk about it?”
“Not till after lunch. I don’t want to
ruin my appetite.”
Pete had already ordered ham and cheese
subs for them, along with chips and the diet root beer Sherri had
lately become addicted to. When the last chip was gone, she felt
calm enough to repeat her conversation with J. Nedlinger and share
the discoveries she’d made on the Internet.
“Sounds to me like she might be doing a
story on small-town police forces,” Pete said, “and since she seems
to go in for the negative, I’ll bet she’s planning to argue that
they’re useless in this day and age.”
“Oh, that’s a cheerful
thought!”
Sherri turned her gaze from the dregs
of her soda to the view through the plate glass window of the
coffee shop. From that vantage point, she could see two sides of
the town square. Directly opposite Patsy’s place was Stu’s Ski Shop
and, next door to it, Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. Then came
Liss’s house. Sherri’s gaze rounded the corner, lingering only
briefly at the post office. The Clip and Curl took up the back half
of that building. Upstairs there was an apartment. Their apartment.
The place where Sherri now lived with her brand-new husband and her
precious son, Adam, a boisterous seven-year-old. And, best of all,
they lived there without her mother.
Cheered by that thought, Sherri was
almost smiling when she continued her visual survey. Next to the
post office stood what had once been The Toy Box and, before that,
Alden’s Appliances. Now it was a jewelry store that featured items
made with Maine tourmaline. Beside it, on the corner, sat Preston’s
Mortuary.
Sherri couldn’t see the side of the
square she and Pete were on, but she knew what it looked like well
enough. The bookstore came first, then the municipal building at
the center—the only building of red brick in a sea of white
clapboards. Patsy’s Coffee House occupied the corner lot. The
remaining side of the square likewise had three structures. First
was the house of John Farley, an accountant. Then came Dan Ruskin’s
place, which wasn’t a business yet but would be once he converted
his first floor into a showroom for the custom woodworking he did
in his spare time. And finally, around the corner from the ski
shop, was a building that had once been a consignment shop. It had
recently been sold to a young couple Liss knew from her days as a
professional dancer. They were going to open a dance studio
there.
All in all, Sherri thought,
Moosetookalook was a nice quiet little village with a charming,
picture-perfect town square. Except for the fact that two of those
twelve buildings, within the last two years, had been the scenes of
violent crimes. When you added what had happened at the hotel the
previous January and the murder of the manager of Liss MacCrimmon’s
old dance troupe down to Fallstown....
Sherri sighed and reached for Pete’s
hand. She took instant comfort from his firm grip on her fingers.
“Let’s hope J. Nedlinger is going to argue
for the elimination of small police forces,” she said, “because if
that’s not her plan, then the topic of her next blog is likely to
be the high incidence of murder in Moosetookalook.”