Chapter
Fourteen
On Sunday morning, Liss awoke slowly. She was
reluctant to get out of bed. She had so many things to do in the
next few hours that she was tempted not to do any of them. She had
not slept well. She didn’t remember much about her dreams, but
they’d definitely included an enraged Yvonne Quinlan, showing fang
and gleefully snapping necks. Far-fetched? Only the vampire
part.
She forced herself to sit up. The first
order of business was to ask Dan to drive to Fallstown and bring
Stu back to Moosetookalook. He could leave right after Lenny Peet’s
funeral, which was scheduled for nine that morning. It was an odd
time for such a thing—right before Sunday church services—but that
was apparently what Lenny had requested. Liss told herself she
should be grateful. She’d only be an hour late getting to the
dealers’ room.
The smell of coffee drifting up from
the kitchen told her that Dan had been up for a while and explained
why the cats weren’t still in bed with her. She decided she could
get used to having someone make coffee for her in the morning.
Maybe Dan would agree to do it every day after they were married.
On that cheerful thought, she dragged herself out of bed and into
the shower.
Brain and spirits both revived under
the influence of hot water, soap, and shampoo, but that meant Liss
remembered more things she had to do. There was the matter of Lenny
Peet’s dog, for one. Skippy was still incarcerated at the animal
shelter. She had to find him a new home. She wondered if Stu could
be persuaded to adopt a pet.
She needed to talk to Doug, too. Not
about Skippy. And not about Nola, either. There was no point in
dredging up what must be painful memories for him. But she’d
promised herself that she would take the funeral director to task
over his son’s cavalier treatment of Lenny’s remains. She couldn’t
let that go undone much longer. Who knew how many other bodies the
boy, unchecked, might treat with similar disrespect?
Once she got back to the hotel, she
intended to pursue yet another matter. Minutes after coming to her
stunning conclusion about Yvonne Quinlan the previous night, she’d
recognized the need for a reality check. Yvonne’s Caroline Sweet
character, the vampire, might be able to break necks with her bare
hands, but that might be just another example of the fallacies
perpetuated by television and movies—the sort of thing Nola had
regularly poked fun at in the books she’d written under Yvonne’s
name.
Someone at the conference should know.
A specific someone. According to the program, one of the panels had
featured a speaker who was an expert on martial arts. Liss hoped
he’d be able to answer her question. And, with any luck, he’d drop
by the dealers’ room for the group signing after the morning panels
or attend the closing tea so she could ask him.
By the time Liss had downed her second
cup of coffee and eaten two slices of buttered toast, she’d
completed a new list: Things To Do Today.
Dan read silently over her shoulder. He
made no comment, but Liss suspected he planned to stick close to
her until the conference was over. She was surprised to discover
that she didn’t mind a bit. Looking back, she realized that the
change had come about shortly after their confrontation with Gordon
Tandy the previous night. Dan was no longer acting like a
bodyguard. He’d become her partner.
At a few minutes before nine, they left
the house and crossed the square to the funeral home. Liss wore a
simple dark blue pantsuit that was equally appropriate for a
memorial service and a tea. Aunt Margaret showed up in one of her
tartan skirts and a white blouse with a jabot.
“Lenny was always upbeat,” she
explained. “If he’s looking down on us, I think this outfit will
make him smile.”
The service had a good turnout. It was
simple but moving. The preacher spoke a few words and then invited
Lenny’s friends to share their memories. When Liss took her turn,
she ended her remarks with a pitch for adopting Lenny’s dog. “As
most of you know, his name is Skippy,” she told the crowd. “He’s a
two-year-old fox terrier, and it would make Lenny very happy to
know that he had a good home.”
Afterward, when the mourners were still
milling about before leaving, she heard Dan’s brother, Sam, talking
to Pete’s mother. “Dogs are great,” he said. “My daughter would be
lost without Papelbon.”
“What kind of name is that for a dog?”
Mrs. Campbell asked. “Papelbon is a baseball player, the closer for
the Red Sox.”
“And your point is? If I remember
right, Lenny called the last dog he owned Tatupu.” When she looked
blank, he added, “Football player, for the Patriots, back when
Lenny was younger. It’s a fine old tradition to name pets after
sports figures.”
As Liss looked around for Doug, she
wondered who Skippy had been named after.
“I was hoping to speak to your
husband,” Liss told Lorelei, who was resplendent in a black silk
dress that clung just a little too tightly to her lush
figure.
“If it’s about adopting that dog, we’re
not interested.”
“It’s not.” Liss debated mentioning
Frank Preston’s disrespectful attitude to his mother but decided it
wouldn’t do any good. Better to wait and talk to Doug. Lorelei
indulged her only child. When he’d gotten in trouble the previous
winter, she’d taken his side against her husband. Instead of being
grounded for a month and losing his cell phone and MP3 player for
that same length of time, as Doug had proposed, Frank had been
deprived of those privileges for only a week.
“I wouldn’t mind taking the dog,” Betsy
Twining said. “Is Skippy in the animal shelter down to
Fallstown?”
While Liss was distracted, Lorelei
disappeared into Doug’s office. She reappeared a few minutes later,
looking disgruntled. Liss didn’t bother talking to her again, but
she stuck her own head into the office on her way out, expecting to
find Doug there. As funeral director, he usually stuck around until
all the mourners had left the building. To her surprise, the room
was empty.
A glance at her watch warned Liss that
she didn’t have time to hunt for him. If he was down in the
embalming room, she wasn’t sure she wanted to find him anyway.
Telling him his son was a lout would have to wait. She needed to
get out to The Spruces.
Dan drove her to the hotel and escorted
her to the dealer’s room, then headed for Fallstown to pick up Stu.
As promised, someone had phoned Liss before she left for the
funeral to let her know that Stu had been able to post bail and was
free to return home.
“It’s been a dismal morning so far,”
Angie lamented when Liss slipped behind the Emporium’s tables. “It
looks to me as if everyone who wanted to buy a book has already
done so. Or else they brought books with them to be autographed.
Books they probably ordered online at a discount I can’t afford to
match.”
“Cheer up,” Liss said. “The group
signing starts at eleven. People will come in then. While they’re
waiting in line, maybe they’ll make a few impulse
buys.”
“Optimist!”
Dan returned while the last panel was
still in session.
“How’s Stu?” Liss asked.
“He’s feeling very, very sorry for
himself. And he’s ticked off that he wrecked his car.”
“He should be grateful he’s out of
jail.”
“Oh, he is, and he seems to have gotten
past the idea that he was responsible for Nola’s
death.”
“Gordon probably told him she’s the murderer,” Liss muttered.
“If so, Stu didn’t share. When I
dropped him off, the only thing he was interested in was crawling
into bed and sleeping for a week. He was still pretty
hungover.”
“Poor Stu.” She shook her head. “And to
think, for about a half hour last night, I actually believed he
might have done it.”
“And that’s why we leave the detecting
to the professionals,” Dan said with a grin.
Liss made a face at him. “Did you find
out who was working at the front desk on Thursday
night?”
“I did. It was Tricia Lynd. I talked to
her on the phone a few minutes ago. She worked Thursday night into
early Friday morning.”
“And?”
“She saw Nola return from the MSBA
meeting.”
“And?”
“Nola met Jane in the
lobby.”
“Nola
did?”
Dan nodded. “Tricia said it looked like
they were arguing over something, but she wasn’t close enough to
overhear what they said.”
“Did they leave the hotel
together?”
“Tricia says not. Nola took the
elevator. Jane stayed in the lobby a bit longer—she’d been sitting
in one of the wing chairs, reading a magazine until Nola got
back—then she left in the direction of the stairs. Tricia assumed
Nola and Jane had gone up to their respective rooms. She didn’t see
either of them again.”
“What was she wearing?” Liss asked.
“Jane. Did Tricia say?”
“Is it important?”
“I don’t know.”
Dan pulled out his cell phone and hit
redial. “Tricia. Sorry to bother you again, but Nancy Drew here has
another question for you.” He handed the phone to
Liss.
Tricia, who was the hotel’s only
intern, a Jill-of-all-trades with an eye for detail, had exactly
the information Liss wanted. She was smiling when she hung up.
“Jane was wearing jogging clothes when she talked to
Nola.”
“So, she didn’t change before she went
out to the Leap. Maybe she never did go back to her room. But that
doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know. In fact, the
meeting in the lobby lends credence to Tandy’s theory that Nola and
Jane met at the Leap and Nola pushed Jane over.”
“No. I don’t buy it. There’s still the
problem of relative size. Nola never trained
as a stuntwoman.”
An influx of people signaled the end of
the last panels and the start of the group signing. Additional
tables had been brought in so that all the attending authors could
be accommodated. The dealers’ room was packed, but few bought books
and no one showed any interest in the items Liss had for
sale.
Liss did manage to spot her martial
arts expert and lure him over to her table for a quick question.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t much help. Necks could apparently be
broken more easily than she’d thought, but what she’d been thinking
of as the “vampire snap” was, if not a Hollywood invention, then at
least a skill usually reserved for Green Berets or Navy Seals or
other muscular military types.
“But if someone were trained,” Liss persisted. “Is brute strength a
requirement?”
“Well, no,” the expert allowed, “but
you have to know what you’re doing. Why are you so interested in
this, anyway?”
Liss shrugged off the question. “Oh,
you know—you see that sort of thing on television all the time.
Take Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example.
The actress who plays Buffy isn’t all that big or
muscular.”
The expert’s expression brightened. “I
love that show,” he admitted. “But I’m pretty sure all the neck
breaking is done by vampires. Angel. And sometimes The Master.
Buffy pretty much sticks with her trusty wooden
stake.”
Liss was still mulling over this new
information when she spotted Davy Kline and his mother in the line
to have author Lea Wait sign books. She turned to Angie. “You want
stock signed?” she asked.
“I was hoping the authors would stop by
on their way out.”
“Why don’t I take the books to them?”
She was already gathering up copies of Lea’s children’s books, all
of which were set in Maine. When she started to add the volumes in
her Shadows mystery series, about a woman who sold antique prints
and therefore had reason to travel to antiques fairs and other
potential venues for murder, Angie separated out the mass market
paperbacks. “Hardbacks and trade paperbacks only.”
In short order, Liss was standing
behind Davy Kline. When he eased his mother’s wheelchair up to the
signing table and stepped back, she seized her chance. “You’re the
one who found the first accident victim, aren’t you?”
He slanted her a wary look. “Yeah. But
I don’t really want to talk about that anymore.”
“I understand how you feel. I was the
one who found Nola Ventress’s body. And what made it worse was that
I knew her a little. Had you ever met the woman you
found?”
Davy shook his head. “I just saw her
around, y’know? I never talked to her.”
“At the reception, I
suppose?”
“Then, and again later that
night.”
Liss’s interest quickened. She glanced
toward Davy’s mother and was relieved to see that she and Lea Wait
were engrossed in a conversation about the books she’d brought to
be signed. “Was this in the hotel?” she asked.
“Sort of.”
“Meaning what?”
Davy looked uncomfortable. “When I saw
her again, it was around midnight. I couldn’t sleep, so I was
standing at the window, looking out. They keep the floodlights on
all night. Not real bright, but enough to see a little, and my room
looks out across a roof. Over a porch, maybe. Anyway, she came out.
I’m pretty sure it was her. She was kind of big and dumpy, you
know? Easy to recognize. And she was wearing this jogging suit,
which just made her look bigger. Anyway, she walked straight across
the grass and disappeared into the woods. I thought that was kind
of strange, because it was so late and all.”
“Was she alone?”
“Yeah. I didn’t see anyone else out
there, before or after, and I was there at the window for maybe
fifteen minutes altogether. Pretty weird, huh?” He hesitated. “I’ve
been wondering ... well, you don’t think I should have told
someone, do you? I mean, an old lady wandering around at night like
that—should I have worried that she’d have an accident?” He was
looking at his mother as he spoke.
This was a very responsible young man,
Liss decided, and one who did not need to be burdened with guilt.
“You couldn’t have known what would happen. And I can assure you
that despite what happened to her, Jane Nedlinger knew what she was
doing when she took that walk out to Lover’s Leap.”
She was willing to bet that Jane had
arranged to meet someone there. That was still the only conclusion
that made sense. Maybe it had been someone she’d been trying to
blackmail, preposterous as that idea had seemed at first. The
person she’d met might have been Nola, but Liss was more inclined
to put her money on Yvonne Quinlan.
“You’re sure you didn’t see anyone else
out there?” she asked Davy.
“I went back to bed maybe ten minutes
after I saw the fat woman,” Davy said in a low voice. His mother
had started to back her wheelchair away from the signing table. “I
didn’t sleep well. I never do in a strange bed. That’s why I was up
early and decided to go jogging.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Man,
I really wish I’d just stayed in bed.”
Liss stood for a moment looking after
the young man as he and his mother left the dealer’s room. Then she
remembered the stack of books she was carrying. “These are for
Angie’s Books,” she told Lea Wait, dumping the whole pile on the
table.
“You’ll just want my name, then,” Lea
said, and started signing.
Having once started, Liss felt obliged
to continue taking Angie’s hardcover stock to the other authors to
be signed.
“Not Yvonne Quinlan,” Angie said. “She
already autographed all the extras while she was still at the
store.”
That was just as well, Liss decided.
Yvonne’s body language and facial expression, whenever she happened
to look Liss’s way, were decidedly hostile.
Following the group signing there was a
break before the tea—actually a late luncheon. During that hour,
having closed the dealers’ room, Liss and Angie and the T-shirt
dealer packed up all the items they’d offered for sale. Liss had
her stock boxed and ready to load into the back of Dan’s truck in
record time. When she glanced at her watch, she saw that she still
had a half hour to spare before the tea.
She turned to give Angie a hand and
froze when she saw that the bookseller was ripping the front covers
off one paperback after another and tossing the remains into a
nearby trash bin that was already half full of similar
discards.
“What are you doing? Those are
books!”
“These are returns,” Angie corrected her. “Titles I over-ordered.
They didn’t sell. Now they have to go back to the publisher. It’s
cheaper to send just the cover, and that’s all the distributor
requires.”
Horrified, Liss struggled to make sense
of such a system. How could the company that produced the books in
the first place encourage their wanton destruction?
“At least I made money on Yvonne
Quinlan’s signing,” Angie said. “Good thing, too. Hardcover books
can’t be stripped. I’d have had to foot the bill to ship them back
to the warehouse.”
“It was her popularity as an actress
that brought out the fans. I’m surprised some of them can read.” Making the snarky comment made Liss feel
marginally better. Petty of her, she knew, but she’d take comfort
where she could. “Stripped” books—what a loathsome
concept!
“The woman certainly has had an
interesting career,” Angie remarked, “even if she did fake part of
it.”
“Overheard that, did you?”
“It would have been hard not to, since
you were in my shop at the time. I’ve got to say, though, that she
sure sounded sincere when she said she wrote her own
novels.”
“Aunt Margaret thinks she’s convinced
herself she did.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it would be the
first time an actor got lost in a role,” Angie said with a
laugh.
Dan let himself into the dealers’ room
with a hotel passkey and was relieved to find that Liss was still
there. The only way he’d ever come up with to keep her out of
trouble was to stick close to her. True, his attempt to protect her
from herself last January hadn’t worked all that well. Liss had
ended up having to rescue him. But he didn’t have any better ideas,
and this time around, she seemed inclined to accept his presence.
Maybe being engaged to be married helped. In any case, in a few
more hours, when everyone at the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con had
left the hotel and gone home, he’d be able to relax and worry about
something else—like how to talk the MacCrimmons out of formal
Scottish dress as wedding attire.
“Ready to eat?” he asked after they’d
loaded her boxes and most of Angie’s into the back of his
truck.
“Always.”
“Tea, huh?” They walked back inside
together and headed up to the mezzanine.
“A substantial tea, with sandwiches and
little cakes. And a good crowd, I hope, since they sold tickets to
the general public.”
In spite of that warning, Dan was
surprised to see so many Moosetookalook people in attendance.
Margaret was there, of course, but so were Dolores and Moose
Mayfield, Doug and Lorelei Preston, and his own brother, Sam, and
his wife.
Dan began to relax as they ate. Liss
filled him in on her conversation with Davy Kline and the
information the martial arts expert had given her. He considered
what she told him and came to the conclusion that Tandy had been
right, after all. He didn’t say so to Liss, but it made sense to
him. Why couldn’t Nola have been the one to meet Jane at Lover’s
Leap? She’d been seen talking to Jane just beforehand. And if Nola
had taken a self-defense course somewhere along the line, who was
to say she might not have been able to counter an attack by a
bigger, stronger opponent by using that opponent’s own weight
against her? He could see that—Nola flipping Jane right off the
cliff. Of course he had no idea why Jane might have rushed at Nola,
prompting her to defend herself, but he wasn’t going to quibble
over details. He liked his interpretation of the facts far too
much.
If Nola had killed Jane and then
committed suicide out of guilt, that meant Liss was safe. If the
killer was already dead, there was no threat to his fiancée. She
could ask all the questions she liked and no harm would come to
her.
But he intended to stick close, just in
case he was wrong about that.
When Margaret stopped by their table
with the news that Tandy was in the hotel, Dan felt relief rather
than irritation. That made a nice change.
“Gordon talked to Yvonne Quinlan this
morning,” Margaret reported, “and to Bill Stotz and Eleanor
Ogilvie. I think he’s finally decided to take Liss’s theory
seriously.”
More likely he was just being thorough,
Dan thought. Once again, he kept his opinion to
himself.
When Margaret had moved on, returning
to the table where she’d been sitting with several other local
residents, Liss turned to Dan. “I need to talk to
Gordon.”
“Do you want to end up in
jail?”
“He didn’t mean that.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Anyway, what
can you tell him that he doesn’t already know?”
Liss smile looked forced. “He doesn’t
know I searched Yvonne’s room.”
“And since he’s not likely to dust it
for fingerprints, he never will. Leave well enough alone,
Liss.”
“I suppose he’s already talked to
Tricia and to Davy Kline.”
“I know he questioned Tricia. She told
me he did.”
“But he came out here and talked to the
people he knows I suspect. That means he’s keeping an open mind. I
wonder why he didn’t arrest one of them?”
“Maybe because he was able to rule them
out? I’m sure he has good reasons for theorizing that Nola killed
Jane and then herself, probably more reasons than he’s shared with
you.”
She leaned toward him across the table,
her expression intent. “I agree, but I still don’t buy that
explanation. I have a viable alternative, one that doesn’t involve
Nola killing herself in the middle of the conference she spent most
of a year planning. The Cozy Con meant too much to her, Dan. I know
it did. No matter what—even if she did somehow manage to kill
Jane—she’d have stuck it out until today. Until this tea and the
closing ceremonies.”
“And exactly how are you going to
convince him you’re right?”
“He doesn’t know Yvonne was once a
stuntwoman. That information might make a difference.” She was
already on her feet. “He’s probably in the hotel
library.”
“If you’re determined to do this, I’ll
come with—”
“No.” She put a hand on his shoulder
and left it there until he resumed his seat. “I need to do this
alone. There’s something else I want to say to Gordon, too.
Something ... personal. I’ve had the feeling, the last couple of
days, that he and I need ... closure.”
Dan had no argument to offer against
the pleading look in her eyes. She’d interpret any further
objections on his part as jealousy. As far as he was concerned, the
rivalry between himself and the state police detective for Liss’s
affections had ended the day she’d accepted his proposal of
marriage, but if she felt she needed to make that clear to Tandy,
so be it. Closure? Yeah, he was all for it if it meant she’d be
finished, once and for all, with that chapter in her
life.
“I’ll be waiting right here when you
get back,” he promised.
Liss poked her head into the library
and found it empty. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath. She’d
wanted to get this over with, finish it for Nola and for herself.
Here she was, all psyched up to set the
record straight with Gordon, and he wasn’t where he was supposed to
be. She considered going straight back to the tea. The closing
ceremonies were probably getting started about now. But maybe
Gordon hadn’t gone far. She tried to think where else he would be.
Somewhere in the hotel seemed likely, maybe Nola’s room, or Jane’s.
Or he could be re-interviewing staff members. The gift shop was on
her way back to the lobby, so she stopped in to ask Fran Pertwee if
she’d seen Gordon.
“Not a single living soul has come in
here since well before noon,” Fran told her. “I’m thinking of
closing up and going home. There’s not much sense in Joe paying me
overtime to stand around and twiddle my thumbs.”
Liss’s next stop was the check-in desk.
Joe Ruskin hadn’t seen Gordon for at least an hour, but he did
offer the information that the mobile crime-scene lab was still in
the parking lot. “You could ask whoever’s in there where Gordon’s
got to,” he suggested.
The state trooper who’d been taking
notes when Gordon had interviewed her was alone in the police
trailer, but he knew where Gordon had gone. “He was headed out to
the crime scene,” the trooper said, “to take down the yellow
tape.”
“I wouldn’t think that was Gordon’s
job,” Liss said, surprised.
“Somebody’s got to do it, and he wanted
one last walk through the site.”
Liss glanced at her watch. It would
take at least ten minutes to hike out to Lover’s Leap, but she’d
certainly be able to talk to Gordon in private out there. He’d have
to listen to her long enough for her to tell him that Yvonne
Quinlan knew how to snap someone’s neck with her bare hands. And,
once she’d given him that information, she’d offer a long-overdue
apology.
She’d taken the coward’s way out and
had Gordon’s brother break the news of her engagement to him. She
owed it to him to tell him straight out that she’d chosen Dan over
him not only because she loved Dan, although that was the biggest
part of it, but also because of the way she acted when she was
around Gordon. He, or his profession, turned her into a daredevil.
She took risks she shouldn’t. It was as if he brought out her
competitive nature, and in the worst possible way. She’d almost
gotten both of them killed the previous winter, and the killer
they’d been chasing had ended up
dead.
No more Nancy Drew, she vowed as she
started across the grass toward the woods. Or Jessica Fletcher. Or
Buffy. She’d turn in her deerstalker cap and her magnifying glass,
set the record straight between herself and Gordon, marry Dan, and
stop meddling.
Closer to fifteen minutes elapsed
before she came out of the woods at Lover’s Leap. Gordon was
nowhere to be seen. That the crime scene tape was gone told her
he’d been there. She realized that she’d probably just missed him.
Hands on her hips, a little out of breath from her trek through the
trees, Liss fumed with frustration and disappointment as she
crossed the clearing to the fence. She hadn’t bumped into Gordon on
the trail on her way in, so he’d no doubt left by way of the path
that came out on Spruce Avenue. In all likelihood, he was already
back at the hotel. And Dan, concerned that she’d been gone so long,
would be worrying and wondering what had happened to her. Oh, this
day just got better and better!
She turned when she heard footsteps on
the path behind her. Her first thought was that it was Gordon. He’d
talked to his officer, heard she was looking for him out here, and
come after her.
But it wasn’t Gordon who emerged from
the trees.
It was Yvonne Quinlan. She strode into
the clearing, her fists clenched at her sides and her face an ugly,
mottled red. “You’ve been spreading your terrible lies about me,”
she screeched. “I was questioned by the police this
morning!”
Hands held out in front of her, palms
out, Liss started to back away. After only a few steps, she came up
against the fence. A quick glance over and down reminded her just
how close to the edge she was.
“You’ll be sorry you lied about me!”
Yvonne hissed.
There was something feral in the
actress’s eyes as she came ever closer, stalking Liss like a
leopard advancing on its prey.
“Nobody gets away with saying I didn’t
write my own books,” Yvonne said with a snarl. “Not Jane Nedlinger.
Not Nola Ventress. And not you!”