Chapter
Eight
Liss sat down with her back against the rail
fence and fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone. Then she just
stared at it. Call the Moosetookalook Police Department? Hit 911?
Or just speed-dial Sherri at her apartment? Given the turmoil of
her thoughts, the latter made more sense.
“She’s dead,” Liss blurted when Sherri
picked up. “Nola Ventress. She’s at the bottom of the
cliff.”
A dead silence that lasted a full
minute greeted this announcement. When Sherri finally spoke, her
voice was tight. “Are you certain?”
“That it’s Nola? Or that she’s dead?” A
bubble of hysterical laughter, totally inappropriate to the
situation, threatened to erupt. Liss quelled it with an effort, but
her voice was still unsteady. “She can’t be alive. Not with all
that blood.”
But the possibility nagged at her.
Could Nola have survived? There was a track that led down the
cliff, but in the lengthening twilight it would be suicide to try
to descend that way.
“Liss, why did you call
me?”
“I ... I don’t know.” Liss’s thoughts
refused to settle. At first Sherri’s question made no sense. Of
course she’d call Sherri. Sherri was the local law. Then she
remembered Adam, and that Sherri wasn’t at the P.D. She was at home
with a small boy who couldn’t be left alone. “Oh, God. Oh, Sherri,
I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
Sherri had to be conflicted for other
reasons, too. She’d been at the scene when it was Jane Nedlinger
lying down there on the cold, gray rocks. And she’d failed to see
that Jane’s death might have been something other than an
accident.
Jane’s death had to have been murder,
Liss thought as she clutched the cell phone more tightly. Jane’s
death and Nola’s death both had to be. Two deaths at the same spot
from the same cause in two days—that simply could not be
coincidence.
“Are you alone there?” asked Sherri’s
voice in her ear.
“Yes. And it’s getting dark.” Why, oh
why hadn’t she thought to bring a flashlight?
“I need you to get off the phone so I
can call the state police.” Sherri’s tension remained evident in
her voice, but she was calmer than Liss was and she knew the
procedure she had to follow. “When I disconnect, call someone at
the hotel to come out there and wait with you. Okay?”
Liss nodded, only realizing that Sherri
couldn’t see her when her friend’s voice rose an
octave.
“Liss? Okay?”
“Yes. Yes, I will.” But as soon as
Sherri broke the connection, the number Liss dialed was Dan’s. He’d
planned to go back home after he dropped her off. She could only
hope he was still there and hadn’t decided to go out for a beer at
the local pub or over to his brother’s to mooch
dessert.
Dan picked up on the first ring. “Hey,
Liss. What’s up? The auction can’t be over already.”
“Dan.” Her voice shook so on that
single word that he knew at once something terrible had
happened.
“What’s wrong?”
“N-n-nola. She’s dead,
too.”
He swore colorfully, then asked, “Where
are you?”
“At Lover’s Leap. Please
come.”
His expletives became considerably more
forceful, but he knew she needed him. There was never any question
but that he’d come. “Hang in there,” he said just before he broke
the connection. “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
The wait seemed endless. Liss hated
feeling weak and frightened, but finding Nola had been a shock.
Nola had to be dead. No one could have survived that fall, or
landing that way. Liss was sure Nola’s neck was broken. But what if
she still had a spark of life left? Liss glanced over her shoulder
toward the edge of the cliff. She’d be risking her own life to try
to climb down there. And what could she do when she got there? She
knew only rudimentary first aid. No, Sherri had said to stay put,
hadn’t she? Besides, if she fell and broke her own neck, or an arm
or a leg, that wouldn’t help anyone.
She gasped at a rustling sound in the
underbrush. A squirrel, she told herself. Or a chipmunk. Or a
rabbit. Or a bird. But it belatedly occurred to her that, if Nola
had indeed been murdered, her killer could still be lurking nearby.
Liss pulled her knees up beneath her chin and wrapped her arms
around them, partly to control her shivering and partly to make
herself as small as possible.
The sun had fully set, leaving only
pink streaks on the horizon, before Liss heard running footsteps on
the path. She staggered to her feet. Her heart leapt into her
throat when a man’s shape emerged from the darker shadows of the
forest. The silhouette was big and solid, but it wasn’t Dan. A
scream welled up inside her. A fraction of a second before it could
escape, the beam of a flashlight hit her full in the face and the
newcomer spoke her name.
Or rather, State Police Detective
Gordon Tandy said, “Damn it, Liss! Why can’t you stay out of
trouble?”
Liss flung herself into his arms,
embarrassingly close to tears but filled with relief that she was
no longer alone in the gathering darkness. “I just wanted to talk
to her. Nola Ventress. Someone said she’d headed out this way, so I
followed her, and then I found her. She’s dead. She went over the
cliff.”
“Did you push her?” Gordon’s voice was
cold and official-sounding. His hands tightened on her
shoulders.
Liss jerked back and out of his grasp
just as Dan burst into the clearing. “How can you even think such a
thing?” she demanded. “Of course I didn’t push her!”
Dan came directly to Liss and enveloped
her in a bear hug. After a moment, he eased back far enough to lift
his hands to the sides of her face and stare deep into her eyes. It
was getting too dark for him to see much there, but he seemed
satisfied that she wasn’t hurt or in shock. “God, Liss. You scared
me half to death.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay. I was just so
upset to see her down there. And then the light was going and I
started imagining all kinds of things.” She shook her head to clear
it and realized that Gordon had gone to the rail and was playing
the powerful beam of his flashlight over the scene at the foot of
the cliff.
Clinging to her fiancé, Liss watched
Gordon detach a portable police radio from his belt and call for
assistance. Soon the place would be swarming with forensics people.
When Gordon was through barking orders into the portable, he spared
Liss one quick, assessing glance, then spoke to Dan. “Take her back
to the hotel and keep her there. I’ll talk to her after the team
from the state police crime lab takes over here.”
Liss didn’t argue. She was glad to get
away. But she knew she could not escape from what had happened at
Lover’s Leap. Nola’s image was imprinted on her brain. And
Gordon—Gordon had all but accused her of pushing Nola over the
edge. Did he already know that she’d bene-fitted from Jane
Nedlinger’s death? He probably did. That had to be why he was
suspicious of her. And because she’d been the one to discover
Nola’s body. The mystery novels got that much of real life right.
Gordon would have questions for her, all right. Liss just wished
she had a few answers.
“We can wait in your aunt’s office,”
Dan said when they emerged from the woods and stepped onto the
hotel lawn.
Unlike the dark path behind them, this
area was illuminated by both ornamental lanterns and subtle
floodlights. Dan kept one arm around her, as he had all the way
back from Lover’s Leap. He hadn’t asked any questions, not even why
she’d gone looking for Nola in the first place.
“I need to tell Aunt Margaret what’s
happened,” Liss murmured.
“No, you don’t.”
But Liss shook him off. “I have to. And
she’ll need to tell Nola’s assistant. Phoebe something. Someone has
to decide whether to keep the conference going or send everyone
home.”
Dan frowned. “It has two more days to
run.”
“Exactly my point.” Besides, Liss
needed to do something. If she had to sit in
a chair and wait for Gordon to come and question her, she’d go
crazy.
Although it seemed to her as if hours
had passed since she’d left the hotel, in reality less than one had
elapsed. The auction was still going strong. When Liss and Dan
entered the ballroom, a stocky, hatchet-faced woman had just made
the winning bid on a set of signed first editions by the late
Charlotte MacLeod, a Maine author Liss had loved for
years.
“Jane Nedlinger talked to that woman
last night,” Dan said.
Liss took a hard look at the bidder.
She didn’t know her and wasn’t close enough to read her name badge,
but if the Nedlinger woman had singled her out, that automatically
put her in the running as a suspect. She looked husky enough to
have gone one-on-one with Jane. Tossing Nola over the edge would
have been a piece of cake.
Appalled by the way her mind was
working, Liss nevertheless set a course for her aunt that passed
close enough to the woman in question to read the name so
prominently displayed on her chest—Eleanor Ogilvie. By the color of
her badge, she was a speaker at the conference. Liss didn’t think
she was an author, but she remembered that there was at least one
panel made up of “industry professionals.” Ms. Ogilvie was probably
an editor or an agent. Or maybe another book doctor, like that
woman who’d left her card in the dealers’ room. The program book
would give her the answer to that question.
Aunt Margaret took one look at Liss’s
face and knew at once that something was wrong. The fact that Dan
was hovering protectively behind her niece provided confirmation,
if she’d needed any, that there was bad news in the
offing.
“Did you ... find Nola?” she
asked.
As gently as she could, Liss told her
what she’d discovered out at Lover’s Leap. Margaret closed her eyes
for a moment. When she opened them, unshed tears glinted. “Another
accident?”
Liss and Dan exchanged a
look.
“It’s too early to say,” Dan said.
“Gordon Tandy will be in shortly. I expect he’ll want to talk to
people.”
Margaret pulled herself together with
an effort. “Then we have a lot to do first. I need to locate the
two women who were Nola’s lieutenants. She had a committee. One of
them will have to take over, to make sure everything runs smoothly
for the rest of the weekend.”
“You don’t think they’ll decide to
cancel the rest of the events and send everyone home?” Dan
asked.
“I don’t see how they can. There will
have to be some sort of announcement, though. Jane Nedlinger’s
passing had no particular impact on the other attendees, but
everyone knows ... everyone knew Nola. Her
disappearance will be noticed even if we try to keep the
circumstances quiet.”
“Now that the police are involved, the
press will catch wind of a story,” Liss predicted.
“Oh, Lord, yes. Well, we’ll just have
to make the best of it. I’ll hunt up Phoebe and Susan. You’d better
tell Doug, Liss. And Stu. But wait until after the auction is over
with.”
In the background, they could hear Stu
Burroughs trying to up the bidding on a theme basket provided by
one of the attending authors. He seemed to think the T-shirt alone
was worth fifty dollars.
Margaret took off before Liss could ask
why Doug and Stu, in particular, needed to be told of Nola’s death.
They’d known her, of course, but so had several other people. Joe,
for example. She voiced her question to Dan, but he had no more
idea of the answer than she did.
“In any case,” he said, “it’s up to the
police to decide who’s told what and when. And you need to go to
Margaret’s office and stay there.”
“You’re siding with
Gordon?”
Her attempt to tease him fell flatter
than a soufflé after a buffalo stampede. Dan’s expression remained
grim.
“In this, I am. You’re in enough
trouble with the law already. If Gordon hears you’ve been running
around talking to potential witnesses, telling them about Nola
before he can, he’ll pitch a fit.”
“I only told Margaret!” she
objected.
But Margaret was even now taking Phoebe
aside to break the bad news. Dan was right. Gordon would not be
pleased with her. She wasn’t supposed to do anything but wait
quietly for him to come and interrogate her. And there was that
whole thing about not releasing the name of the victim before next
of kin had been notified, too.
All of a sudden, the events of the
evening hit her with the force of a wrecking ball. Without further
protest, she headed for her aunt’s office. At Dan’s urging, she
curled up on the love seat. He found an afghan in the closet and
draped it over her as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block
the memory of finding Nola’s body.
It did no good. The image continued to
play across the backs of her eyelids.
Liss wished she’d never followed Nola
out to Lover’s Leap. It would have been far more sensible of her to
go back to the auction, tell Margaret where Nola had gone, and wait
patiently for the conference organizer to return.
Except that Nola would not have come
back.
But I wouldn’t have
been the one to find her, Liss thought.
“I need to tell my father what’s going
on,” Dan said. “Will you be okay alone for a little
bit?”
“Go ahead,” Liss said, and flipped the
corner of the afghan up over her face, blocking out the light from
the desk lamp he’d turned on.
She heard the door close softly behind
him and then, remarkably, felt herself slide into an exhausted
sleep.
Liss had no idea how much time passed
before someone awakened her by gripping her shoulder and giving her
a shake. Groggily, she sat up and opened her eyes to find Gordon
Tandy’s gaze boring into her.
Gordon’s eyes were a dark, deep brown.
If it hadn’t been for a scattering of light golden flecks, they
would have looked black. She’d always found them
fascinating.
He stepped back, bringing the rest of
his face into focus. He wore his thick, reddish brown hair
close-cropped. That hadn’t changed since she’d last seen him. But
the set of his jaw had. His lips were pursed in a thin, hard line.
He looked almost angry with her.
Abruptly, the reason Gordon Tandy was
at The Spruces, looming over her and scowling, came back to Liss in
a rush. Once again she saw Nola Ventress at the bottom of the
cliff, blood pooled beneath her head, neck twisted at an impossible
angle. She tasted bile and swallowed convulsively.
“I don’t suppose—” Her words came out
as a hoarse croak and she had to stop and clear her throat before
she could finish the sentence. “I don’t suppose finding Nola was
just a nightmare?”
“Not hardly,” Gordon said.
He still looked formidable,
six-foot-plus of solid muscle and bone, but there was a little more
warmth in his expression. They’d had a good relationship once.
They’d liked each other. But up there at Lover’s Leap had been the
first time she’d seen him since she’d accepted Dan’s marriage
proposal. She let Gordon’s brother break the news to him while
Gordon had been out of state taking some sort of special
law-enforcement training. Ever since he’d come back to Maine, he’d
avoided her. Now that he had to deal with her on official business,
neither of them knew quite how to handle the
situation.
Liss scrubbed at her face with her
hands, then ran her fingers through her hair, trying to restore
some semblance of order. Aunt Margaret had a small refrigerator
tucked in behind her desk. Liss crossed the room to forage for cold
caffeine. The only soda she found was of the diet and decaffeinated
persuasion. She snagged a bottle of Poland Spring water
instead.
Gordon waited patiently, leaning
against the front of Margaret’s desk. He’d fished a notebook and
pen out of his pocket and flipped to a blank page.
Liss sighed as she reclaimed the love
seat. “Let the interrogation begin.”
“This is no joke, Liss.”
She twisted the cap off her water
bottle with more force than was strictly necessary. “I know that,
Gordon. I was the one who found her. Remember?”
“A fact impossible to forget. Why were
you out there?”
“Margaret asked me to look for Nola.
Fran Pertwee from the gift shop said she’d bought a flower
arrangement. One of the guests saw her heading for the cliff path.
I assumed that the flowers were a memorial for Jane Nedlinger,
although why Nola would bother with a tribute to that woman is
beyond me. She didn’t much like her when she was
alive.”
“So I’m told.”
Something in Gordon’s voice made Liss
think he’d already been filled in on the trouble Jane Nedlinger had
intended to make for the town and on her activities at the opening
reception, as well. She sighed again.
“So,” Gordon said, head bent over his
notes, “you decided that Nola Ventress went out to Lover’s Leap to
make a memorial for Jane Nedlinger?”
As Liss had long since learned was the
norm in a criminal investigation, the police asked the same damned
questions multiple times. “It looked that way to me,” she replied,
“and you must have seen the flowers on the rock for
yourself.”
At the asperity in her voice, Gordon
cocked an eyebrow. “I did. Clearly, she climbed over the fence to
leave them there.”
“You can’t think she fell? Two
identical accidents in less than two days?” There was no way
anyone, let alone a trained detective, would buy that
explanation.
Gordon hesitated. “There are three
choices, Liss. She fell. She was pushed. Or she
jumped.”
Before she could respond, he asked
another question, this one about the MSBA meeting. As the
interrogation continued, she gave him the names of everyone who had
been at her house on Thursday night and also those of the
conference attendees who’d been harassed by Jane Nedlinger,
including Eleanor Ogilvie.
“But Nola Ventress was the one who
seemed most upset by her encounter with Ms. Nedlinger?” Gordon
asked.
“Yes. And by her death, too.” Liss
described Nola’s behavior in the dealers’ room and later, when Liss
had tried to talk to her in her hotel room.
“So you spent time with Nola, both
before and after Jane Nedlinger died?”
“A little. Aunt Margaret was with her
more than I was.”
“Can you think of anyone who’d want to
murder her?”
“No, I can’t. Was she murdered?”
He shrugged. “Pushing someone off a
cliff is an awfully chancy way to kill. In a fall like that, Nola
could have been horribly injured but still able to tell the
authorities who pushed her.”
Although Liss knew this was a
nonanswer, she badly wanted to believe that both Nola and Jane
could have fallen by accident. Unfortunately, that solution
wouldn’t fly. “Coincidences happen,” she said, “but an accidental
fall doesn’t make sense if the medical examiner is right about
Jane’s death taking place before
dawn.”
Gordon’s already somber expression
turned positively grim. The hard glint in his eyes promised
retribution to someone. “And how,” he said in a much-too-soft
voice, “do you know that?”
“I ... uh ... overheard Sherri’s side
of a phone conversation.”
Too late, it dawned on her that the
M.E. had dealt only with Sherri. He didn’t know that a visit from
Liss and Dan had prompted the Moosetookalook police officer’s
request for more information. And Sherri, good friend that she was,
would have soft-pedaled the role they’d played in her decision to
follow up on the circumstances of Jane Nedlinger’s
death.
Gordon snapped his notebook closed.
“I’ll want to talk to you again later, after I’ve had a chance to
investigate further.”
“I’m not planning to leave
town.”
Her sarcasm did not go over
well.
“Make no mistake, Liss. I won’t stand
for civilians meddling in police business.” With that warning,
Gordon abruptly left the office.
It was almost, Liss thought, as if he
was afraid he’d lose the tight control he always kept on his temper
if he stayed in her presence a moment longer. She didn’t know
whether to be chagrined or relieved.
Although she had been up late the night
before and did not sleep well, Liss was wide awake at a little
after six on Saturday morning. She left Dan snoring softly to get
up, feed the cats, and start the coffee. A few minutes later, she
heard light footsteps on her back stoop. She was not at all
surprised to look through the glass panel of the door and see
Margaret lifting her hand to knock.
Keeping an eye on Lumpkin, who’d been
known to make a dash for freedom, she opened the door. Glenora was
attracted by what lay beyond the house, too, but she was easier to
recapture. On the rare occasions when she did escape, she headed
straight for a small patch of grass at the corner of the back porch
and settled in to graze.
“Is Dan still here?” Margaret asked in
a whisper. “I saw him bring you home last night but I didn’t see
him leave.”
“He’s sound asleep. An earthquake
wouldn’t wake him, and I could use some company.” She waved
Margaret over to the table and reached for another coffee
mug.
“Must be nice, being able to sleep
soundly.”
Liss chuckled. “There are times I
outright resent his ability to fall asleep so easily. He never
tosses and turns the way I do when I have something preying on my
mind.”
“I didn’t sleep well last night,
either.” Margaret settled into one of Liss’s kitchen chairs and
accepted with equanimity the addition of a small black cat to her
lap. She began to stroke Glenora’s soft fur. Lumpkin, having been
foiled at the door, had returned to his food bowl to console
himself with kibble.
“Every time I talked myself out of
worrying about one thing, another would crop up,” Liss
admitted.
“I wonder if there will be reporters in
town today,” Margaret said. “Even if the press hasn’t yet twigged
to the news value of our two unattended deaths”—she put air quotes
around the last two words—“they may show up for Yvonne Quinlan’s
book signing.”
“She brought her manager with her,”
Liss said slowly, putting the pieces together. “Bill Stotz came
along to make sure she gets as much publicity out of this gig as
possible.”
“That’s my theory,” Margaret said,
accepting the steaming mug Liss handed her. “A few days ago, I was
all for it.”
“Maybe only a reporter or two will show
up. They’ll talk to Yvonne and leave before they hear rumors about
Lover’s Leap.”
“Don’t count on it.” Margaret sipped
and gave a sigh of pleasure before she turned serious once again.
“I took a look at that woman’s blog—The Nedlinger
Report? There’s a place for readers to post their comments.
There are already dozens of queries asking where she is and why she
hasn’t blogged since Thursday morning. The consensus seems to be
that she’s ill, but it won’t take long before some enterprising
soul discovers that she’s dead.”
“And news of the suspicious
circumstances surrounding her death won’t be far behind.” Liss all
but inhaled her first cup of coffee. Her brain slowly began to
defog, but she couldn’t for the life of her think what they could
do to keep things quiet.
“It would be nice if both deaths could
be ruled accidental,” Margaret mused, “but we’ll still have to deal
with the press. And someone will be sure to bring up last January’s
murder, if not the ones before.”
Liss wrapped both hands around her
ceramic mug, needing the warmth and comfort nearly as much as she
did the caffeine. “And if it was murder? Who would want Nola dead?
I can see someone killing Jane, but Nola seemed to be a nice enough
woman.”
“She’d still be alive if I hadn’t
convinced her to hold her conference at The Spruces,” Margaret
whispered. Her face worked, and for a moment Liss thought her aunt
was going to cry. She regained control of herself at the last
second and took another healthy swig of coffee
instead.
Liss sat opposite her at the small
table and reached across to touch Margaret’s hand. “Nothing that
happened was your fault.”
“But none of it would have happened,”
Margaret said with a tremor in her voice, “if Nola had gone
somewhere else. She didn’t want to come here, you know. When she
left Moosetookalook, more than thirty years ago, she swore she’d
never come back.”
Liss frowned. A bit of mental
arithmetic had her wondering if she was missing something. She’d
been thinking that Nola had left town right after high school, but
if Nola and her aunt had been in the same class, that would make it
a little more than forty years back, not thirty. Nola had remained
in Moosetookalook for the best part of another decade.
“You aren’t to blame,” she said aloud,
hoping repetition would eventually convince Margaret to stop
beating herself up over events that had been well beyond her
control.
“I should have expected trouble,”
Margaret insisted, “especially when I went and involved Stu in the
conference. But he’s so good at running auctions. He was a logical
choice.”
“What does Stu have to do with
anything?” Liss asked. “He’s too young to have been in your class
at school.”
“Yes. He’s a few years younger than we
are. Your mother and Dan’s mother were a bit younger, too. And your
father and my late husband and Moose Mayfield, they were all a few
years older.”
That Margaret hadn’t answered her
question disturbed Liss. What was her aunt hiding? Clearly
something was preying on her mind. Something from the
past.
“Who was in your
class?” she asked. Who, she wondered, had Nola wanted to
avoid?
“Joe Ruskin. Dolores Mayfield. Ernie
Willett.”
Ernie was Sherri’s father and
Margaret’s beau, so that news didn’t surprise Liss.
“Doug graduated the year before we
did,” Margaret added. She slumped dispiritedly in the chair, a
shadow of her usual cheerful self.
Liss sipped coffee and studied her
aunt. “Don’t you think it’s about time you spilled the beans?” she
asked. “It’s only a matter of time before the press is involved.
When everything comes out, I’d just as soon not have some reporter
know more about the situation than I do. What’s the connection? Why
did Nola behave so peculiarly around both Stu and Doug at the MSBA
meeting? Why did you want those two, in particular, to be informed
of her death last night?”
“I hardly know where to begin,”
Margaret said. “It was all such a long time ago and yet, I suppose,
it isn’t the kind of thing anyone can forget. Or forgive.” She
stroked Glenora’s sleek black fur and avoided looking directly at
Liss.
“I know you don’t like to gossip, but
it can hardly matter now.” The more Margaret hesitated, the more
importance Liss began to attach to the information she was holding
back. “I tried to talk to Nola yesterday. She literally shut the
door in my face.”
Margaret took another sip of coffee,
still trying to delay the inevitable.
Patience had never been Liss’s strong
suit, but for once, she simply waited. After a long silence,
Margaret began to speak in a low voice. “It was over thirty years
ago when it all happened. It would have been ... 1973. That’s far
too long to hold a grudge, don’t you think?”
“It probably is, but I can’t say until
I’ve heard the details.”
“Nola appeared to be a happily married
woman. She had a lovely house and a handsome husband. He had a
thriving business. My husband and I saw a lot of them socially.
Well, we would, wouldn’t we, given the size of the town and the
fact that we were all around the same age? Your parents knew them,
too. And there were other couples they were friendly with—Moose and
Dolores Mayfield; Ernie and Ida Willett. Ernie and Ida were
newlyweds then.”
Liss tried to imagine Sherri’s parents
newly married and happy together. She failed miserably. “That was
all well before I was born,” she reminded Margaret. “You’ll have to
tell me who Nola was married to.” But she had a suspicion she
already knew.
“Oh. Nola married Doug, of course. They
were sweethearts all through high school. It wasn’t long after
their marriage that he took over the funeral home from his father.
They seemed very happy together.”
“But?”
“Well, it all goes back to Lover’s
Leap. I’m afraid Nola took up with someone else. An extramarital
affair. Doug never suspected a thing until they were caught
together up at the Leap. Apparently her lover dared her to go there
with him.”
“I thought Nola was afraid of the woods
at night.”
“Nola never liked being outdoors after
dark,” Margaret agreed, “but if the incentive is great enough, a
person can overcome fear. She was young—younger than you are
now—and a little wild, and she was crazy about him. And they
figured they’d be alone at the Leap. Unfortunately, the police
chief we had back then decided to crack down on teenagers going up
there to drink and smoke pot. He caught Nola and her lover, buck
naked and going at it like rabbits.”
“Good grief.”
“Yes,” Margaret agreed. “The whole town
was scandalized. Moosetookalook had its fair share of sex and sin.
We even had a commune nearby during the late sixties. But Doug and
Nola had dated all through high school, and there had never been
any hint of trouble in their marriage until Stu moved to town and
opened the ski shop.”
Liss almost swallowed her tongue. “Stu
Burroughs?”
“Yes. Didn’t I say? Stu was Nola’s
lover.”