Chapter
Nine
That piece of the puzzle fell into place with a
resounding thunk.
Nola Ventress—no, Nola Preston—had cheated on her husband with Stu Burroughs.
No wonder the tension in the room had gone through the roof when
Doug walked into the MSBA meeting and saw his ex-wife sitting in
Liss’s Canadian rocker. And no wonder Stu had been so determined to
pick a fight with Doug.
“Moosetookalook is starting to sound
way too much like Peyton Place,” Liss muttered.
“They were young,” Margaret said. “We
all were. Twenty-four, Nola would have been. Stu was barely
twenty-two.”
“That’s hardly an excuse.”
“Yes, well, there was a divorce, of
course, and we all expected Nola would marry Stu. Instead, she left
town. It was years before anyone heard from her again. Eventually,
I started to get Christmas cards from her. After that, we kept in
touch with once-a-year letters. Hers were always interesting. She
moved around a lot. New York. Los Angeles. Even Vancouver for a
while.”
“What did she do for a
living?”
“I’ve no idea. She never said. I
assumed she’d taken early retirement when she moved back to Maine a
few years ago. She wouldn’t come here, so we didn’t see each other,
but she sent me pictures of her house in South Portland and we
occasionally talked on the phone.” Margaret’s voice had a catch in
it. “I didn’t see her again in person until I made her an offer she
couldn’t refuse to hold the Cozy Con at The Spruces.”
“Don’t start playing the blame game
again,” Liss warned her. “None of this was your fault. And I very
much doubt that a thirty-year-old love triangle had anything to do
with what happened up at Lover’s Leap. Maybe if Nola had died first
... but she didn’t, did she? And there’s no way that anyone could
have mistaken Jane Nedlinger for Nola. So it’s all just an old
scandal. Nothing to do with the present.” Or so she
hoped.
“It will be raked up again,” Margaret
predicted. “People have long memories. And Dolores Mayfield is a
terrible old gossip. She’ll talk to the press, even if no one else
will.”
“Did Dolores have a grudge against
Nola?” Liss asked. “If they were friends, maybe—”
“Hah! Dolores was a friend of the
fair-weather kind. Moose is the one who was close to Nola when we
were kids. I don’t think he ever asked her out, but everybody knew
he had a major crush on her.” Margaret shrugged. “He only took up
with Dolores after it was clear Nola and Doug were an
item.”
“So Dolores knew she was his second
choice.”
Margaret nodded.
“Well, no matter what comes out, it
will all blow over.” Making her voice as bracing as she could, Liss
urged her aunt to go home, get dressed for work, and head out to
the hotel. “I’ll be there at nine,” she promised, “when the
dealers’ room opens.”
“The show must go on?” Margaret managed
a wry smile as she set Glenora on the kitchen floor.
“Something like that.”
After her aunt left, Liss toasted two
slices of rye bread and refilled her mug with coffee. Then, moving
quietly so as not to wake her sleeping fiancé, she readied herself
for the day.
She saw Margaret’s car pass by from her
bedroom window, which was situated directly over the living room.
Liss had a good view of the town square and could also see
Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium next door. Her aunt’s apartment
was on the second floor. And just beyond the front of the Emporium,
the edge of a sign stuck out. It was held aloft by a life-sized
figure of a skier mounted on the roof of Stu Burroughs’s front
porch.
The curtain Liss had pulled aside fell
from her limp hand. Stu and Nola had been lovers. They’d had an
affair that had broken up Nola’s marriage to Doug. And Nola had
taken off after the divorce. Liss wondered why she hadn’t married
Stu. As far as she knew, he’d never had a wife.
She frowned. Had anyone told Stu that
Nola was dead? Margaret had wanted to last night, but they’d
stopped her. The authorities would have had no reason to notify
him. And since the story probably hadn’t aired yet, and news
reports wouldn’t have released Nola’s name even if it had, then Stu
still might not know.
A glance at the clock told Liss that it
was only half past eight. It would take her less than ten minutes
to drive to the hotel. On impulse, she left the house and walked
the short distance to Stu’s place. Like most of the other buildings
around the square, it was a white clapboard Victorian. It was,
however, the only one with purple shutters on the
windows.
It was too early for the ski shop to be
open, so Liss headed for the outside staircase that led to the
second-floor apartment that was Stu’s home. She rapped lightly on
the door.
“It’s open!” The invitation sounded
halfhearted and the words were muffled.
Liss went in anyway. She found Stu in
his living room. There were no lamps burning, but the early-morning
sun provided enough light to show her a lumpy shape in an
overstuffed chair. Stu clenched a half-empty bottle of beer in one
hand. It wasn’t his first. A dozen dead soldiers lay scattered
across the floor.
“I guess you heard about Nola,” Liss
said.
“She was a good woman.” He sounded
defensive.
“I liked her.”
“Some surprise, seeing her again after
all this time.”
“Thirty years, huh?” Liss perched on
the edge of Stu’s sofa, facing him. She watched in silence as he
guzzled more beer.
“More than thirty. I was barely legal.
She was the older woman. Experienced.” He dragged out each syllable
of the last word. The expression on his face suggested especially
fond, and possibly lewd and explicit, memories.
Liss did not want to hear details of
Stu’s sex life. Eeew! But she was curious about something else.
“Why did she leave town?”
“Wanted to find
herself.” Stu gave a derisive snort. “That was a bigger deal back
then than it is now. Women had been liberated for a while, but they
were still trying to figure out how to have it all.”
They still are,
Liss thought, but she kept her opinion to herself.
“Had you been friends with her and
Doug? As a couple?”
“Naw. Doug was a stuck-up prick even
back then. I’ve got no idea why Nola married him in the first
place.”
“Still, it was kind of hard on him,
wasn’t it? Finding out his wife was fooling around with one of
their neighbors?”
“Don’t think he cared all that much.
Oh, he was embarrassed, sure. And he didn’t like going through a
divorce. He’d counted on having the little woman around to take
care of the office and smile at the bereaved clients. Doug doesn’t
have what you’d call a real reassuring manner. He looks too much
like a ghoul.”
Liss fought a smile, since she was
inclined to agree, but she didn’t interrupt.
“Nola said he was stiff in bed, too,
and not in a good way.”
Way too much
information, Liss thought. “I guess you weren’t happy to see her
again, then, since she abandoned you?”
Stu shrugged. “It was over thirty years
ago, Liss. Nobody holds a grudge that long.”
“Not even a husband who’s been betrayed
by his wife?”
He started to laugh and then lost
control. Tears streamed down his round red cheeks as he chortled.
Liss handed him a tissue from a conveniently placed
box.
Stu wiped his eyes, then swallowed the
dregs of his beer. “That’s a good one, Liss. What are you thinking?
That Doug shoved Nola off a cliff because she walked out on him?
Have you seen wife number two? Lorelei’s a
real stunner. And she keeps that business running like a Swiss
watch. Plus she popped out a son and heir. Trust me, Doug came out
way ahead of the game and he knows it.”
“And you, Stu? How did you really feel
when Nola left town?”
He heaved himself out of the chair
before he answered, heading for the kitchen to get another beer.
“Damned woman broke my heart ... for about a week.”
Liss scrambled up and followed him.
“And when you saw her again?”
“I was surprised, like I said.” He
foraged in the refrigerator and came up with another bottle of a
local brew. “I never expected she’d come back here. She said she
was leaving to become rich and famous. She was going to be a
best-selling novelist.”
“A novelist?” That was news to Liss.
“Did she ever get anything published?”
“I doubt it. Looked to me like she
turned into fangirl instead.” He laughed again, and not in a nice
way.
“So, if you didn’t care anything about
Nola anymore, why did you and Doug almost come to blows over who
was going to drive her back to the hotel on Thursday night? I’d
have thought neither one of you would want anything to do with
her.”
Stu laughed again, but this time only a
short bark. “Old habits die hard. And old rivalries. I guess we
both wanted to know which one of us she’d pick.” He turned, drank,
and frowned. “Geez, Liss. I don’t know. Maybe we all had a few
regrets. But she didn’t want to reminisce with me, did she? Or
rekindle any old flames. The next day, she acted like she barely
remembered the good times we had.”
“I’m sorry, Stu,” Liss said, and meant
it, but there was nothing she could do for him while he was in this
maudlin frame of mind.
“Yeah, yeah.” He collapsed into the
nearest kitchen chair. His head fell forward to rest on his folded
arms. The beer tilted. Liss rescued it before it could spill out
all over the floor and set the bottle upright just out of Stu’s
reach.
“Very confusing,” Stu mumbled. “All the
memories. Nola ruined Doug’s life. That’s what he thought then. He
blamed me for it, too. For a while. Till he saw sense. Why blame
me? By that time I wasn’t too happy with her either. Not after she
ran off and left us both flat.”
“Seeing each other again at the meeting
could have given all of you a sense of closure,” Liss murmured. She
edged toward the door. She really had to get a move on if she
didn’t want to be late opening the dealers’ room.
Stu’s head lifted. His bleary eyes met
hers. “Nola got old and lost her looks, just like the rest of us.”
He sounded as if he found this fact extremely
satisfying.
“Nola was nervous about attending the
meeting,” Liss told him. “Maybe she had a guilty conscience.” Then
another thought struck her and she blurted out a question before
she thought it through. “Did either you or Doug threaten her all
those years ago?”
“Oh, yeah. Right. Can you picture Doug
swearing to kill her if she ever came back to
Moosetookalook?”
Put that way, the idea did sound
absurd. Besides, Doug would have to be an idiot to risk everything
he’d built in this community for the sake of revenge on his
ex-wife. And Stu? Liss sent a pitying look his way as she left. She
had a feeling he was grieving as much for his own lost youth as he
was over Nola’s death.
Dan was waiting for her the bottom of
the staircase. “Want to tell me what you were doing at
Stu’s?”
“Jealous?”
“Hardly.” But he stayed put, arms
folded across his chest, until she answered his
question.
“If you must know, I was paying a
condolence call. Stu and Nola used to be lovers.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” He fell
into step beside her, frowning when she headed across the town
square toward the funeral home.
“No joke. And the affair took place
while Nola was married to Doug.”
“No way.”
“That’s what Aunt Margaret told earlier
me this morning, and Stu just confirmed it.”
“Huh,” Dan said. “That must be what
Dolores Mayfield was going on about yesterday. She came out to the
hotel looking for Nola. Dad sent her away with a flea in her ear.
It was like he was protecting Nola or something.”
Liss momentarily broke stride. Just how
many people had been in love with Nola Ventress back in the good
old days in Moosetookalook? No—she wasn’t going to go there. But
she heard herself saying, “They all knew each other. They were in
school together.”
“Yeah, so I gathered. Dolores said she
wanted to talk to Nola about a reunion, but Dad wasn’t buying it.
Anyway, on her way out, Dolores said she’d told Jane Nedlinger
everything.”
“Maybe she was just talking about the
murders here in town.”
“That wasn’t the impression I got. It
sounded more like Dolores told Jane something personal about Nola.
I guess this thing with Doug and Stu would qualify.”
“You wouldn’t think such an old scandal
would still matter to anyone.”
Dan caught her arm as they reached the
funeral home. “You’re going to talk to Doug. Why?” His eyes
narrowed. “Please tell me you don’t think our highly respected town
selectman murdered his ex-wife.”
“The thought barely crossed my mind.
He’s too straitlaced. I just want to tell him about Nola’s death,
in case he doesn’t know yet. Do you want him to find out from some
news report on television?” She started up the steps with Dan right
behind her.
Liss had been inside Preston’s Mortuary
before, more times than she liked to remember. Moosetookalook had
held funerals in these rooms for decades. The main parlor lay dead
ahead, always redolent of lilies and lemon furniture polish. There
were viewing rooms on each side, but only one of them was currently
occupied. She felt a moment’s guilt as she remembered Lenny Peet.
She hadn’t done anything yet about finding a home for his dog. Or
about Frank Preston.
Doug’s office was to their right off
the vestibule, before they reached the parlor, but Doug wasn’t
there. It was Lorelei Preston who sat behind the big oak desk. She
rose when they walked in.
Lorelei was a striking woman, years
younger than Doug but possessed of an austere beauty that would
last until she was as old as he was. She glanced pointedly at her
watch. “If you’re here for the viewing, you’re too early,” she said
in clipped tones.
“I was hoping to talk to Doug for a
moment,” Liss said.
“About a funeral? Well, it’s never to
early for pre-planning.”
“About Nola Ventress.”
Lorelei’s hands clenched involuntarily
on the edge of the desk. “I don’t believe he cares to discuss that
subject.”
“So you know who she was.”
“Was?” Lorelei sat down abruptly. “What
do you mean was? Did something happen to
her?”
“She’s dead,” Liss said bluntly. “She
died ... unexpectedly. . . last night.”
Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. “Find a
different funeral home. My Dugie wanted nothing to do with her
while she was alive and he’ll have nothing to do with her now that
she’s dead. It’s been years since he last heard from her. He
doesn’t need her coming back into his life, not even as a
client.”
“He saw Nola Thursday night at the MSBA
meeting,” Dan said. “He drove her back to the hotel
afterward.”
“That’s impossible!” Lorelei looked
stricken. “He’d have told me.”
Apparently not, Liss thought. “Look, we
didn’t come here to cause trouble, but I think Doug would want to
know about Nola’s death. No matter how badly their marriage ended,
he shouldn’t have to hear that kind of news on the Six O’Clock Report.”
“I ... I’ll tell him.” Again Lorelei
stood and this time remained on her feet, clearly expecting them to
leave.
Liss saw no point in sticking around.
Besides, it was already nine. She was officially running late. Once
outside, she headed straight for her car, then stopped short. It
was in her driveway and, now that she thought about it, she
realized that it shouldn’t have been. After her uncomfortable
interview with Gordon Tandy, Dan had driven her home.
“My brother Sam ran it into town for
you,” Dan said, catching up with her. He took her elbow again and
steered her toward his house instead of hers. “There’s no point in
taking two vehicles when we’re both going to the hotel. I’ll
drive.”
She might have argued, but she didn’t
want to take the time.
An hour after the dealers’ room opened,
the hairs on the back of Liss’s neck prickled. Someone was watching
her. Slowly, she shifted her gaze toward the entrance. The man
standing in the doorway, staring at her with chilling intensity,
was State Police Detective Gordon Tandy.
He sauntered over to her display
tables. On the surface, he was just another conference-goer. He did
not wear a uniform and neither his badge nor his gun was obviously
displayed. But he did have that distinctive quasi-military bearing
and an air of authority. Somehow, even in civvies, he was easy to
spot as a cop.
“Liss,” he said in the deceptively
pleasant voice she knew so well.
She forced herself to smile.
“Gordon.”
“A word with you? Somewhere private
would be good.”
“Of course. Beth, can you mind the
store?”
Angie’s ten-year-old daughter was
thrilled to be asked. Helping in the bookstore was a frequent
occurrence, but being responsible for the many and varied gift
items sold at Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium was a treat for
her.
“Isn’t that kid a little young to hold
a job?” Gordon asked as they left the dealers’ room. Liss could
hear laughter coming out of one of the larger meeting rooms where a
session was in progress. The sign outside the door said it was a
panel of Maine writers—Dorothy Cannell, Julia Spencer-Fleming,
Susan Vaughan, and Lea Wait.
“Didn’t you ever help out in your
father’s store when you were a kid?” Like the Emporium, Tandy’s
Gifts and Music was a family business, handed down to Gordon’s
brother, Russ, by their father.
“There’s a fine line between that and
child labor.”
“Trust me, there won’t be much labor
involved. Scottish-themed items do not appear to be big sellers at
this conference, except for the few that also feature cats. I sold
out of T-shirts picturing bagpipe-playing felines.”
“No market for kilt pins? What’s the
world coming to?” They entered the elevator to go down to the lobby
level.
Liss stared at him. Was he actually
trying to joke with her? She doubted it. He was probably just
trying to soften her up before he hit her with the tough questions
and gave her another lecture on the dangers of meddling in a murder
investigation. To get a little of her own back, she made her voice
as casual as possible and said, “My other big sellers are skean
dhus.”
Gordon looked puzzled. He knew what
they were, of course, being a piper himself. They were the little
knives kilt-wearing Scots wore tucked into the top of their hose.
But he appeared to be unaware that a skean dhu had been the murder
weapon the last time there was a murder in Moosetookalook. Although
he’d been away then, Liss was surprised he hadn’t been filled in on
all the details as soon as he got back to Maine. After all, his
brother had been one of those present at the hotel that
weekend.
That had been the same weekend Dan
proposed to her.
“They make good souvenirs,” she
blurted, then winced at her own inane comment.
Just shut up,
Liss, she ordered herself.
Gordon opened the door to the hotel
library and waved her in ahead of him. The room was furnished with
shelves full of books that hotel guests were welcome to borrow and
also housed jigsaw puzzles and board games for their amusement. An
audio recorder, notebook, and several pens had been set out on a
small table. A uniformed officer sat behind it, apparently waiting
to take notes.
“So, what’s on the agenda?” Liss asked,
knowing she sounded much too cheerful. “More questions about
Nola?”
“First I have a few questions about
Jane Nedlinger,” Gordon said, and indicated that she should take a
chair.
Liss perched on the edge of her seat,
hands folded primly in her lap. “What about her?”
Gordon grabbed a straight chair, turned
it around, and straddled it. He gave her a hard stare. “You tell
me. You said that you met her for the first time on Thursday
evening.”
“That’s right. At the opening
reception. With about a hundred other people around.”
“And then you rushed right out to call
an emergency meeting with all the other businesspeople in
town.”
“Not all of
them.”
“Jane Nedlinger left behind notes she’d
made for a blog post she was writing.”
Liss waited.
“Those were the only notes I found when
I searched her room. It looks to me as if you were the only person
at this entire conference who interested her.”
Liss frowned. That couldn’t be
right.
“Liss?”
“She asked to interview me, but later
she told Dan that she was going to write the story without my
input.”
In painstaking detail, Gordon took her
through the events of Thursday evening. Liss tried to confine her
answers to a simple recitation of the facts. After all, she hadn’t
known Nola’s history at the time of the meeting. There was no point
in dwelling on the antagonism between Stu and Doug. She was certain
that it hadn’t had any bearing on Jane’s
death, and she doubted there was a connection to Nola’s, either.
Besides, as Gordon kept telling her, it wasn’t her place to teach
the police their business.
“What did you do after the MSBA meeting
broke up?” he asked.
“I had a glass of wine to relax me and
went to bed. Trust me, I did not come out here to the hotel, lure
Jane Nedlinger out to Lover’s Leap, and push her off the
cliff.”
Her denial didn’t get the reaction
she’d expected. Gordon should have found her sarcasm mildly
amusing. Instead, he kept his cop face on.
The silence stretched until she almost
burst into random speech just to fill it. Just as she was about to
give in to the urge, he asked another question.
“Can Ruskin give you an
alibi?”
Liss wished she could attribute the
coldness in his voice to resentment over the fact that she’d chosen
Dan instead of him. But this conversation wasn’t personal. He was
all business, and his business was murder.
“No, he can’t,” Liss said. She realized
she was twisting her engagement ring around and around on her
finger and forced herself to stop.
It was Gordon’s job to suspect
everyone, she reminded herself. But surely he couldn’t believe she
was capable of murder! He knew her better than that.
Gordon hesitated, then rephrased his
question. “He didn’t spend the night?” His tone of voice had
changed, ever so slightly.
She blinked, then narrowed her eyes to
stare at him. Was she wrong about his ability to separate the
personal from the professional? She didn’t suppose it mattered.
Neither the man nor the cop would like her answer.
“Dan and I are engaged to be married,”
she said in a voice as bland and matter-of-fact as she could make
it. “Sometimes he stays over, but we’re not living together. The
only ones who slept with me on Thursday night were Lumpkin and
Glenora.”
“Glenora?”
“The black kitten who adopted me last
Christmas.”
He nodded, remembering, and almost
smiled.
“I was planning on talking to Jane
Nedlinger yesterday, Gordon, but the only time I actually saw her
or spoke to her before she died was at that reception. I didn’t
care much for what she had to say, but I certainly didn’t kill her
to stop her from writing about me.”
“And yet you admit she threatened you.
That makes you a logical suspect in her death.”
“Yeah, I had that figured
out.”
“A pity cats can’t testify in
court.”
“Was that an attempt at
humor?”
“Only if you found it
funny.”
Liss rolled her eyes. “At least tell me
that you don’t believe I killed
anyone.”
Gordon stood up, swinging the chair
around to return it to the exact place he’d taken it from. His
expression was as unreadable as ever. “I don’t think you’re a
killer, but I can’t play favorites. I’ll go where the investigation
takes me. Right now it’s forcing me to take a very close look at
you.”
“Okay.” She didn’t like what he was
saying, but she understood where he was coming from.
“I’ll have more questions for you
later, about Nola Ventress’s death, but that’s it for
now.”
He signaled to his associate to turn
off the recorder and stop taking notes. Liss had all but forgotten
the other officer was there, he’d effaced himself so completely
from the interview. She felt her cheeks heat. She hadn’t been all
that comfortable talking to Gordon about Dan. The knowledge that a
complete stranger had heard what she’d said—and recorded every
word, too—left her feeling even more flustered.
“You can do yourself a big favor,”
Gordon said, “by going back to the dealers’ room and staying there.
Let me do my job and clear you of suspicion. Do not try to
help.”
“Fine. I get the message.” Fuming, both
embarrassed and annoyed, Liss headed for the door. “The last thing
I want,” she flung over her shoulder, “is to become involved in
another murder investigation!”