Chapter
Seven
As Dan climbed one set of stairs, Liss and her
aunt descended another. Taking the back way used by hotel
employees, they bypassed the lobby and went directly to the office
Margaret used as events coordinator.
Margaret MacCrimmon Boyd had made the
small room, painted a pretty pale green, even more cheerful and
welcoming with the addition of a love seat upholstered in a bright
floral pattern and a glass-topped coffee table. A set of three
Carrabassett County landscapes, done in pen and ink by local
artists, decorated the wall opposite.
Liss plopped herself down on the love
seat and gave her aunt a direct look. “What’s the story on Nola
Ventress?”
“She organized the
conference.”
Liss made a face. “I know that. I mean
before. You knew her when she lived here, right?”
“Yes, I did.” Margaret turned off the
desk lamp, leaving only the soft glow from the computer monitor and
the indirect light of a late-afternoon sun shining through her
north-facing window to illuminate the room. She collected her purse
and was clearly ready to leave for the day, but Liss stayed put.
With a sigh, Margaret came around to the front of the desk and
rested a hip on the edge. “Nola and I were in the same class in
school. That was a long time ago.”
“But you stayed in touch.”
“On and off. It took some persuading to
get her to come back here, but she couldn’t find a better deal
anywhere else on room rates or food.”
“She told me she didn’t much like rural
living. Or camping,” Liss said.
Margaret’s quick smile spoke of a
memory.
“What?”
But Margaret only shook her head. “If
you want to know anything about Nola Ventress’s past, you’ll have
to ask Nola herself. You know I’m not one to gossip.”
Unlike so many who made that statement,
in Margaret Boyd’s case it was true. Still, Liss persisted. “Are
you close friends? Were you then?”
“Not particularly, no. But you know
small towns. There are few secrets. Still, if she prefers to keep
her youthful indiscretions safely buried, then you and I both
should honor her wishes.”
Liss’s eyebrows shot up at the hint
that Nola had a scandal in her past. She couldn’t help but wonder
if Jane Nedlinger had unearthed the details during her short stay
in Moosetookalook. Had Nola felt threatened on a personal as well
as on a professional level?
Margaret grimaced at her niece’s
expression. “It’s nothing all that bad, Liss. Just something Nola
isn’t likely to want to rehash more than thirty years later. And
no, I won’t say another word. I already feel guilty for pressuring
her to come back here in the first place. I just wanted to bring
business to the hotel. That’s my job, after all. But I let her
down. I promised her she could stay right in the hotel the whole
time she was here and that she wouldn’t have to go into the village
at all.”
“I was the one who took her to the MSBA
meeting.”
“She doesn’t have good memories of
Moosetookalook,” Margaret said, ignoring Liss’s attempt to absolve
her of guilt. “I was hoping she’d leave here with better ones. And
bring the conference back to The Spruces in future
years.”
“There’s no reason she shouldn’t,” Liss
said. “She’s just upset right now over Jane Nedlinger’s
death.”
“That was an accident,” Margaret said
in a firm voice.
“A convenient accident.”
“Don’t go making something out of
nothing, Liss.”
Liss shrugged and tried once again to
shake off the uneasy feeling that had haunted her throughout the
day. “You’re right. I’m letting my imagination run away with me.
I’m sure it’s just the influence of all the talk of murder and
mayhem at this conference.” She forced a smile. “The next thing you
know, I’ll be blaming Jane’s death on vampires.” She told her aunt
about Yvonne Quinlan’s extemporaneous bit of plotting.
“I suppose a mystery writer would make
a murder out of it, with or without the paranormal elements,”
Margaret conceded. “Thank goodness this is real life.”
“Still, Jane’s death has made me
curious about Nola.” Liss held up a hand to silence Margaret before
her aunt could interrupt with an objection. “And no, I’m not
imagining that Nola pushed Jane off that cliff. For one thing, she
wouldn’t have the strength to do it. Jane was twice her
size.”
“Thank goodness for small favors,”
Margaret muttered under her breath.
“But Nola seemed very emotional today.
I asked her about her encounter with Jane and she burst into tears.
And earlier, she had the most peculiar expression on her face when
I was talking to Yvonne Quinlan.”
“Are you worried about Nola? Or just
nosy?”
“A little of both,” Liss admitted. And
she was not, despite her protests, completely convinced that Jane
had fallen to her death without help.
After Margaret left, Liss detoured to
the check-in desk. It took a bit of persuading to convince Joe
Ruskin to give her Nola’s room number, but in the end he relented
when she said she was worried about how the conference organizer
was taking Jane Nedlinger’s death.
“Did Dan find you?” Joe
asked.
“Not yet,” she told him, and kept going
in the direction of the elevator.
On the second floor, she rapped on
Nola’s door. The conference schedule called for “meal on your own”
this evening, but the charity auction was scheduled to begin at
seven. Liss expected to find Nola in her room, either resting or
changing her clothes.
When Nola opened the door, she looked
as if she’d been crying again.
“Are you okay?” Liss asked, genuinely
concerned.
“I’m fine. I’m just ... it’s so
upsetting. Last night we were all plotting against her and now
she’s dead.”
“She was plotting against us first,”
Liss reminded her. “Maybe it would help to talk about it. If you
told me—”
Harsh red color flooded into Nola’s
face. “If you’re going to badger me with questions, you can just go
away. I won’t be harassed.”
Liss backed off at once. “I don’t mean
to pry, Nola, but Jane Nedlinger’s death is preying on my mind,
too. I just thought—”
“I’ve heard about you, Liss MacCrimmon.
You make a habit of sticking your nose into other people’s
business. You just stay away from me.” With that, she slammed the
door in Liss’s face.
The click of the lock engaging sounded
very loud in the quiet corridor.
Time to go home, have some supper, and
feed the cats, Liss decided. Maybe Nola wasn’t the only one who
needed a little alone time.
A brisk knock at the back door of
Sherri’s apartment had her scurrying to answer it. Although it was
only a little after six in the evening, Adam had just drifted off
to sleep. She didn’t want the noise to wake him. Even so, she was
cautious enough to take the time to peek through the window beside
the door to make certain she knew who was standing on the other
side.
Liss and Dan were faced off on the
small landing at the top of the outside staircase. They looked to
be having words, if the expression on Liss’s face was any
indication. “Uh-oh,” Sherri muttered under her breath. “Trouble in
paradise.”
When the door swung open, they turned
to face her. She lifted a finger to her lips to shush them. “Adam’s
sleeping. You’ll have to keep it down.” Only after they both nodded
did she let them in and lead them through to the
kitchen.
“How’s the little guy doing?” Dan
whispered, stepping over a toy dump truck Sherri had missed picking
up off the floor.
“He’s cranky. So is his mom.” She was
ready for a nap herself, but she knew she wouldn’t rest until Pete
came home at ten. Thank goodness he’d put in for a sick day for
tomorrow! “I was going to fix myself something to eat. Do you want
coffee? A hot dog?”
“We’ll get something later,
thanks.”
“Not so you’d notice,” Dan grumbled,
giving Sherri a clue to the problem between them.
“Let me guess. You wanted to take Liss
out for a nice meal. She’s planning to nuke something in the
microwave.”
“Got it in one. Plus I just had to
chase all over the hotel to find her.”
“I did not know you were looking for
me,” Liss said in the aggrieved tone of someone who has said the
same thing several times already.
Sherri made the time-out sign. “Truce,
you guys. Is there a reason you came by?” She popped two hot dogs
into the microwave, set the cook time, and punched the start
button.
“I wanted to see how Adam was doing and
ask if you need anything,” Liss said promptly.
“He’s got a humongous cast on his arm
and can’t go out and play. Other than that, he’s fine. His mother,
however, feels like a wrung-out dishrag. And this is only day
one.”
“As soon as the conference is over I’ll
be able to give you a hand,” Liss promised. “If nothing else, I can
sit with Adam so you can escape for a bit.”
“I appreciate that, but Pete and I can
handle it. Now, tell me what you’ve been up to. Take my mind off
mothering for a while.” The microwave dinged and she extracted the
hot dogs, slid them into buns, and added mustard.
“Well, there is something I’d like to
run past you.”
“Liss,” Dan said, a warning clear in
the tone of his voice.
“What? It’ll give her something to
think about other than her son.”
“Spill it,” Sherri told her. “Ever
since Adam’s accident I’ve been so focused on him that nothing else
has made any impression.” She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I had
an unattended death this morning, and even that couldn’t distract
me for long.”
Liss stared at her. “You already know
about Jane Nedlinger?”
Surprised, Sherri stared at her friend.
“Is that who the body was? The one out at Lover’s Leap?” At Liss’s
nod, she gave a low whistle. “I didn’t know. Jeff relieved me
before we had an I.D. for her.”
“But you’d met her,” Dan said. “You
called out to the hotel to ask if we had a J. Nedlinger
registered.”
“And Joe said you didn’t.” Sherri sent
a questioning look Dan’s way.
“He did a little more digging. It
turned out that she used her own credit card, but she signed in
under the name Jane Smoot.”
“Why?”
“Hard to say. Maybe she was trying to
keep a low profile. She showed up at the conference’s opening
reception, but she wasn’t wearing any name tag.”
“Maybe not,” Liss cut in, “but she
wasn’t shy about introducing herself, or telling people that she
was the force behind The Nedlinger Report.
By any name, she was a very nasty piece of work. She came to
Moosetookalook looking for dirt.”
“Well, yes. I did suspect that.” While
she poured herself a glass of diet root beer, Sherri gave them a
quick recap of her own encounter with Jane Nedlinger at the P.D. “I
have to admit I didn’t take to the woman,” she added when she’d
filled them in on the pertinent details.
“She was going to write about the
murders in Moosetookalook, and she intended to make it seem like
Liss was responsible for them,” Dan said. “What was that phrase she
came up with? A lightning rod for murder?”
“Something like that,” Liss agreed with
a grimace. “You were at the hospital with Adam, Sherri, or you’d
have known that we called an emergency meeting of the MSBA last
night. Everyone was pretty upset about what she planned to write.
And we weren’t the only ones. There were several people at the
conference, including Nola Ventress, the organizer, who also had
run-ins with Jane Nedlinger. I’ve no idea what she might have
intended to write about any of them, but she wasn’t known for
singing anyone’s praises.”
Sherri put two and two together and
didn’t like the total. “Are you trying to tell me that you suspect
her death was something other than an accident?”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Liss
said.
“Too much exposure to murder mysteries
can rot the brain,” Dan muttered. “There was nothing at the scene
to suggest foul play, was there?”
“Not that I saw,” Sherri said, “and I
did take a look around. I didn’t notice anything particularly
suspicious.” She cracked a wry smile. “Same old Lover’s Leap—but at
least kids today use condoms.”
“That’s all you found?” Liss
asked.
“Pretty much.” She thought back while
she munched on her hot dog. “Tissues. A couple of gum wrappers.
That’s—” At Liss’s sudden increase in interest, she broke off.
“What?”
“It’s probably nothing. But one of the
people at the conference, the guest of honor’s manager, is a gum
chewer. And a litterer. And he’s one of those Jane Nedlinger talked
to last night. I wasn’t close enough to overhear what she said to
him, but it looked to me as if she was trying to scare him.
Succeeding, too.”
As much as Sherri longed to dismiss
Liss’s information as irrelevant, she had to wonder if she’d missed
something at the scene. If she’d known at the time who it was at
the bottom of the cliff, she might have done things a little
differently. Even without being aware of the MSBA meeting, or that
other people had felt threatened by the woman, her own experience
alone would have been enough to make her wonder if Jane Nedlinger’s
sudden death wasn’t just a bit too fortuitous. The more she
recalled of her own initial reaction to Jane, the less difficult it
became to think that someone could cheerfully have murdered
her.
“Gum wrappers?” Dan made a derisive
sound. “Like that would hold up in court.”
“Maybe Jane was blackmailing Bill
Stotz—that’s his name. And when he went out there to Lover’s Leap,
to pay her, they quarreled and he pushed her off the cliff
instead.”
“Jeff is satisfied it was an accident,”
Dan said.
“You talked to him?” Temper sparked in
Liss’s eyes. “You didn’t tell me that.”
They glared at each other.
Shaking her head, Sherri polished off
the second hot dog before she spoke. “You’re giving me a lot of
speculation and not a shred of proof.”
“There’s just something off about all of this,” Liss insisted.
“The M.E. doesn’t think so,” Sherri
said.
At least she didn’t believe that he
did. She hadn’t stuck around once George Henderson had declared the
death an accident. Had he changed his assessment on a closer
examination of the body? There was only one way to find out. She
reached for the phone.
Sherri had gotten to know George fairly
well over the last year. She’d first encountered him when she was
going through the state’s Criminal Justice Academy. He’d been one
of their guest lecturers. They’d talked one day over lunch and
discovered that they were actually distantly related on her
father’s side of the family, and that George lived less than a mile
from the trailer she and Adam had shared with her mother until her
marriage to Pete. Of course, George’s residence was considerably
more posh.
“Hi, George,” she said when he
answered. “It’s Sherri Campbell. I hope I’m not taking you away
from your supper, but I’m calling about that accidental death this
morning.”
“How’s that boy of yours?” George
interrupted.
“He’s doing better. Thanks for asking.
Listen, George, this is just me being curious, since Jeff took over
for me up at Lover’s Leap, but I was wondering if everything
checked out on the victim. It was the fall that killed her,
right?”
“Sure did,” he said
cheerfully.
“And she was
already dead when that jogger found her?”
“Oh, yeah. Been dead a couple of hours
by then.”
Sherri’s hand clenched on the phone. “A
couple of hours?” she repeated. “Are you
sure?”
“Well, you know time of death is never
exact, but yeah. My best guess is that she died between midnight
and four in the morning.”
“Uh, George—I think you’d better give
the attorney general’s office a call.”
“Why? She was out jogging. She stopped
to look at the view. She ... oh, crap! It was overcast last
night.”
“Yeah. No view.”
A few minutes later, she hung up and
turned to face the two civilians who’d been hanging on her every
word. “The M.E. says she didn’t die shortly after five o’clock
sunrise, as we assumed. He estimates time of death at between
midnight and four. He can’t be more exact than that, but it makes
it highly unlikely that she was out jogging, tried to get a better
look at the view, and fell.”
Dan frowned. “Why on earth would
she—”
“Go out there at night?” Liss finished
for him. “Not to make out with a boyfriend. That’s for sure.
Personally, I like my blackmail theory.” She turned to Sherri. “So,
now what?”
“Now the M.E. reports his findings and
things get official. I’m out of it. Permanently out of it if they
decide I messed up the scene of the crime.”
“It’s hardly your fault that it didn’t
look like murder.” Liss rose from the table to give her a
hug.
“But if I’d stuck around to find out
who was dead, I might have asked more questions at the
time.”
“Why didn’t you?” Dan
asked.
Sherri managed another small smile.
“Jeff told me to go home and take care of my kid.”
“Bingo. You’re off the
hook.”
Sherri wasn’t so sure about that, but
she appreciated the thought. “Be that as it may, you two mustn’t
get any more involved in my mess. You both know who will be sent to
investigate.” It would be Gordon Tandy, who had once been Dan’s
rival for Liss’s affections.
Dan grimaced.
Liss sighed. Then she pulled herself
together, glanced at her watch, and gave Sherri another hug. “I’ve
got to get back to the hotel. The charity auction will be starting
at seven, and I promised Aunt Margaret I’d meet her
there.”
“Go,” Sherri told her. “But try to stay
out of trouble.”
Dan dropped Liss off at the hotel as a
crowd started to gather for the auction. Since he didn’t have to
work, he wasn’t sticking around. He was still annoyed with her, she
supposed, for putting the kibosh on his plans for a romantic
evening. They’d gulped down leftovers reheated in haste and washed
the two-day-old pasta dish down with bottled water they’d guzzled
on the way back to the hotel. She would definitely have to find a
way to make things up to him.
She’d start, she decided, by keeping
out of Gordon Tandy’s way when he showed up to investigate Jane
Nedlinger’s death. She’d done her bit by voicing her suspicions to
Sherri. Truthfully, she’d been hoping she was wrong. The last thing
anyone needed was another murder in Moosetookalook.
Determined to focus on fictional crime
for the rest of the evening, to be just another fan attending the
First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con, Liss entered the hotel ballroom.
She was pleased to see that the event had drawn so many people. The
place was packed, not only with conference attendees, but also with
members of the community. Betsy Twining was there with her husband.
So were Dolores and Moose Mayfield. Liss spotted Doug, too, and
wondered why the funeral director hadn’t brought his wife along.
Lorelei Preston was always complaining that there wasn’t enough to
do in Moosetookalook in the evenings.
A woman jostled Liss, belatedly making
her aware that she was blocking the entrance.
“That guy’s got some nerve,” the woman
said to her companion. “He wouldn’t let me give Yvonne a book to
sign. He said I should bring it to one of the signings she’s got
scheduled and not just go thrusting it at her
willy-nilly.”
“Who is he, anyway? Her
husband?”
“Nah. He’s her manager. Anyway, then
Yvonne herself steps in and she’s just as nice and polite as he was
rude. She signed the book with a sweet little personal note. I’ll
show it to you later.”
The two women moved out of range of
Liss’s hearing, leaving her to wonder why Bill Stotz was so
protective of his client. She told herself that, like so many other
things, it was none of her business, but she couldn’t help but
notice that neither Yvonne nor Bill was in the audience gathered
for the auction.
Stu Burroughs barreled into the room,
apparently running late, and headed straight for the podium. Liss
was about to pick up a bidding paddle and find a seat when Margaret
appeared at her elbow.
“Have you seen Nola anywhere?” she
asked.
“She was in her room
earlier.”
“I’ve already checked there.” Margaret
looked worried. “I even used my passkey to make sure she wasn’t
just asleep or something. Do me a favor and take a look around the
rest of the hotel? I know she wanted to be here. One of the auction
items is a free registration for next year’s Cozy Con, and she
planned to make a pitch for people to register for it before they
leave this year’s conference. She’s offering an early-bird
rate.”
“I’ll see if I can find her,” Liss
promised, although she didn’t intend to look very hard. She had her
eye on a hand-crocheted throw decorated with cats. It was the sixth
item on the list of auction items and she didn’t want to miss her
chance to bid on it.
She went back down to the lobby and
asked at the check-in desk, peeked into the lounge and the hotel
library, and then waylaid Fran Pertwee, who was just closing up the
gift shop.
“Working kind of late, aren’t you?” she
asked the other woman.
“I had inventory to
check.”
“Were you open while you were doing
it?”
“Sure. I figured I might as well be,
since I was there. Did you need something?”
“Someone. Do you know Nola
Ventress?”
“The woman who organized the
conference? Sure. She’s been in a couple of times. Including this
evening.”
“I’m been trying to locate her. When
was it that you saw her?”
Fran checked her watch. “About an hour
ago. She came in and bought one of those dried flower arrangements
we started carrying a month or so back.”
“She bought flowers?” Liss’s first thought was that Nola intended to
put them in the auction, although she couldn’t think of a good
reason why she would. “Did you see which way she went when she
left?”
“Outside, I think,” Fran said. “She had
a sweater with her, and she stopped to put it on before she left
the gift shop.”
After thanking Fran, Liss went back
across the lobby and out of the hotel. Sunset wasn’t until around
eight o’clock at this time of year, and several hotel guests were
still ensconced in the omnipresent Adirondack chairs, enjoying the
evening breeze. Liss had no trouble finding one who remembered
seeing a woman carrying flowers. According to him, Nola had crossed
a swath of green lawn, heading in the direction of the break in the
tree line—the start of the cliff path.
She’d taken the flower arrangement up
to Lover’s Leap.
The idea struck Liss as a very odd
thing for Nola to do, especially when she recalled Nola’s remarks
about her dislike of wooded areas. It wasn’t as if she and Jane had
been friends. Then again, people had been known to set up impromptu
memorials at accident sites. It was common in rural Maine to see a
cross or a mound of flowers at the side of a road, marking the spot
where a car had crashed, killing those inside.
At least Liss now knew where she’d find
Nola. She considered going back inside. Surely it wouldn’t take
Nola long to complete her mission. She’d certainly return before
sunset, since she’d claimed to have such a phobia about “the great
outdoors” after dark. On the other hand, if what Sherri had heard
from the medical examiner was right, Lover’s Leap was now a crime
scene. Liss was a little surprised that the state police hadn’t yet
shown up to cordon off the area.
That meant Nola might inadvertently
disturb evidence.
Liss set off across the lawn, thinking
that perhaps she could catch up with Nola before the other woman
reached the clearing by the cliff. If she wasn’t in time to warn
her off, then she could at least get Nola away from the scene
before she got herself into trouble with the
authorities.
Liss suspected that there was a flaw in
her logic, but she did not stop to examine it.
The path was easy to find. It had been
groomed to remove hazards to walkers, runners, and joggers. At
first she was able to move along it at a good clip, but she slowed
her pace when the trail abruptly narrowed and began to wind and
twist through thick woods. With twilight coming on, the shadows of
the trees gave her the creeps, especially once she passed off hotel
property and into the public park owned by the town. What on earth
had Nola been thinking to come out this way so close to
dusk?
A small wooden sign told Liss when she
was halfway to her goal: SCENIC VIEW 1/4 MILE
AHEAD. Once again, she considered turning back. Then she
shrugged and continued. Since she’d come this far, she might as
well go all the way.
While Liss appreciated the area’s
natural beauty, a walk in the woods wasn’t really her thing. In
fact, she always felt a little edgy when she completely lost sight
of civilization. In the intense quiet of the forest, she could no
longer hear voices, or cars passing on the road. The only sounds
were the soft thumps of her own footfalls as she strode along the
path.
Although it hadn’t bothered her as a
teenager, when she’d come up here with a boyfriend and two other
couples, she couldn’t imagine making such a trek alone in the
middle of the night. What on earth had possessed Jane Nedlinger to
do so? Then again, maybe she hadn’t been alone.
If she hadn’t fallen, then someone had
pushed her. That meant two people had been at Lover’s Leap in the
dark of night. The mind boggled. Had Jane agreed to meet someone in
the clearing? Or taken this walk with someone? Who? More to the
point, why? Liss knew high school kids did it all the time on a
dare or because they were desperate for privacy. But it made no
sense for a grown woman with her own hotel room to come out here,
not even if—and that was a big, fanciful if—she had been hitting
someone up for blackmail money.
Liss breathed a sigh of relief when she
finally came out into the clearing. It looked much as it had when
she’d been sixteen. The fence that stood between the path and the
drop-off had been rebuilt since she’d last seen it. It appeared to
be even sturdier than the old one.
Liss spotted the flowers at once.
Nola’s tribute to Jane had been placed on the far side of the fence
atop a small boulder. But where was Nola? The trail continued on.
After leaving her offering, Nola could have gone off in that
direction, instead of returning the way she’d come. Perhaps she’d
thought it would be shorter.
Liss didn’t want to consider the only
other possibility, but she couldn’t ignore it, either. Hesitantly,
telling herself with every step that it was only her too-vivid and
somewhat ghoulish imagination that was driving her, she approached
the fence. When she reached it, she took a deep, strengthening
breath. Then she looked down.
The body lay roughly fifty feet below.
In the light of the setting sun, Liss could see the blood pooled
beneath the head and the unnatural angle of the neck. And she could
see the features of the ravaged face well enough to make an
identification.
She’d found Nola Ventress.