A Wee Christmas Homicide

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  Since the drapes had been drawn across the front windows, Liss continued to use the flashlight freely. Another semi passed while she was checking the magazines. Liss had met two others during the short drive from the village. She had no idea what they were hauling, but obviously this was a regular route for truck traffic.

  Liss replaced the periodicals. She hadn’t really been expecting to find Guns and Ammo or Soldier of Fortune. Old copies of Down East, Yankee, and Newsweek seemed innocuous enough, even if they did have someone else’s address label on them. At a guess, one of Moss’s neighbors passed them along once he was done reading them.

  In the basement, the furnace kicked in with a low rumble. Liss glanced at the thermostat. Moss had it set at fifty-five degrees. Did he always leave it that low when he was out, or had he planned to be away and left the heat on only so that the pipes wouldn’t freeze?

  She contemplated the ceiling. If she was going to search the place, she should be thorough. Invading Moss’s privacy this way troubled her conscience and left her feeling a little queasy, as well, but she’d come this far. If he’d killed Gavin Thorne, or even if he was only a smuggler, Eric Moss had forfeited his right to fair treatment.

  Liss went up the stairs.

  The second floor consisted of two small bedrooms and a bath. In common with the downstairs, everything was clean but a trifle shabby, as if money had been tight for some time.

  It didn’t take Liss long to search Moss’s bureau and closet. He was almost painfully neat and didn’t seem to have many clothes. It occurred to Liss that he could have packed some and taken them with him but a check of the bathroom revealed a toothbrush and other personal items still in place, including several tubes of Ben Gay. She found a battered suitcase and a duffel bag stored in the hall closet, further indications that he probably hadn’t left for good.

  Liss moved on to the back bedroom, which contained a desk and a file cabinet but no computer. Moss’s office. She felt a little surge of anticipation. She supposed it would be too much to hope for that she’d locate a ledger itemizing sales to Thorne and Marcia, but there might be something useful.

  Her search of his desk drawers yielded nothing of interest. She was about to open the file cabinet when she noticed the Maine atlas sitting on top of it. It was one that contained detailed road maps of the entire state. A bright yellow sticky note protruded from one side.

  Curious, Liss opened the oversize volume and studied the two-page spread Moss had bookmarked. It encompassed the northern half of Carrabassett County along with a bit of Franklin and Oxford Counties on either side. It also showed part of Canada, Maine’s neighbor on the north.

  Someone had circled one small section of the border in red with a felt-tip pen.

  Liss carried the atlas back to Moss’s desk and spread it out on the flat surface. She wasn’t familiar with the area he’d circled, but she could see that it wasn’t all that far from Moosetookalook. She reached for the desk lamp, needing more light. Her hand froze in midair at the sound of a door creaking open.

  Heart pounding, Liss switched off her flashlight with fingers that were none too steady. There was someone downstairs.

  An eerie silence lengthened as Liss sat in the darkness of a room lit only by the moon, waiting for her eyes to adjust, ears stretched for any further indication that she was no longer alone in the house.

  She tried to tell herself that it was possible she hadn’t completely closed the door she’d unlocked earlier, but there had been no wind blowing when she entered the house. And then, in the stillness, she heard a distinctive click—the sound of a latch catching as someone carefully closed the door.

  Liss swallowed hard. She was close to panic, her heart racing, her breath hitching, her palms sweating. Every instinct she possessed screamed at her to get out of there, but she had nowhere to run without being seen.

  Hide, then. She was tempted to slide out of the chair and squeeze herself into the kneehole of the desk, curling into a ball to avoid discovery.

  TSTL!

  Maybe that would work for some idiot heroine of a gothic novel, but this was real life. She had to think. There had to be a way out of this.

  Who was downstairs?

  No lights came on. Not Eric Moss, then. And not the police, either. An intruder. Like herself.

  Listening intently, Liss heard footsteps cross the hardwood floor below. Whoever it was would be coming upstairs soon. She had to find a place to hide.

  Ducking into a closet was out. So was crawling under the bed.

  In desperation, as the footfalls came closer and the person who had entered Eric Moss’s house approached the foot of the stairs, Liss scrambled out of the desk chair and high-tailed it into the tiny upstairs bathroom. Hopping into the tub, she pulled the thick shower curtain closed behind her. The back scrubber she almost stepped on made a poor defensive weapon, but she grabbed it anyway. Clutching it tightly in one hand and holding her flashlight ready in the other, she waited in an agony of suspense to see if she would be discovered.

  The bath was not the first place that the intruder searched on the second floor. Liss heard movement in the other rooms. The screech of a metal drawer opening fixed his location at the old file cabinet. Was that the rustle of papers? If he found what he was looking for, would he leave without ever coming near her hiding place?

  He?

  Not necessarily, Liss realized. She had no particular reason to think the searcher was a man. Would she stand a better chance if she came face to face with another woman? Maybe not. Weren’t females supposed to be deadlier than males?

  Footsteps left the spare room and came closer to Liss’s hiding place. The bathroom door opened and someone stepped inside. Liss didn’t dare breathe.

  A flashlight beam played over the opaque shower curtain and a sudden image of Janet Leigh’s death scene in Psycho flashed into Liss’s mind. That was all she needed! She hastily replaced it with the Mel Brooks send-up in High Anxiety. That helped calm her, but only a little.

  The movement on the other side of the shower curtain abruptly stopped. Had she been spotted? Liss tightened her grip on her pitiful arsenal. She held the flashlight backwards so that the handle could be used as a club, but what use would that be against a knife or a gun? She fully expected the next sound she heard to be the rattle of rings along the rod overhead as the intruder jerked the curtain aside and revealed her hiding place.

  Instead a scraping sound reached her ears—the lid on the toilet tank. A lightbulb went on in Liss’s head. She’d seen that trick in old movies: hide something inside, protected by a watertight pouch. Had Eric Moss resorted to such tactics? If he had, she’d never know. The lid settled back into place with a dull clunk. The footsteps moved rapidly away.

  Liss stayed where she was for what seemed like an eternity but in fact was less than ten minutes. When she could stand the waiting no longer, she gathered her courage and stepped out of the tub. She peered cautiously into the hall. It was empty, and silent until another truck passed by outside.

  Moving rapidly but with as much stealth as she could manage, Liss darted into Moss’s bedroom and looked out the window. No car was parked in the driveway or on the road in front of the house. She ducked into the other upstairs room and peered through the curtains at the backyard. Nothing. The field she’d crossed was empty, too, although from this height she could make out the tracks she’d left earlier.

  Liss listened hard. The only sound she heard was the distant hum of an engine. It grew even fainter as she stood there and finally faded away altogether.

  Satisfied that the danger had passed, Liss risked turning on her flashlight—she’d left the back scrubber behind in the tub. A quick survey of the room showed her that the top drawer of the file cabinet was not quite closed.

  She opened it, confirming the sound of the screech she’d heard while in hiding. A pity she hadn’t gotten around to checking the contents before she was interrupted. There was no way to tell now if anything had been tak
en.

  Swinging the flashlight toward the desk, Liss caught her breath. She’d left the atlas there, open to the page Moss had marked. Now it was gone.

  She shone her light on the floor, into the kneehole, even onto the single bookcase in the room. There was no sign of the oversize map book. The only possible explanation for its disappearance, illogical as it seemed, was that the intruder had taken it.

  Sherri looked up in surprise when Liss burst into the police station. A glance at her watch confirmed the early hour. At this time of morning, her friend was usually still in bed. The sun hadn’t even come up yet.

  Waving Liss into a chair, Sherri headed for the coffeepot. Liss looked as if she needed a shot of caffeine and Sherri was ready for a refill herself.

  By the time she brought the two mugs back to the desk, Liss had covered Sherri’s papers with a two-page spread of DeLorme’s Maine Atlas and Gazetteer. All the cops Sherri knew, and most of the civilians, kept a copy of that same map book in every vehicle they drove. It was too easy to get lost on winding back roads without one.

  “What’s up?” she asked, handing over the coffee.

  The story that spilled out left Sherri alternately shaking her head in disbelief and gaping at her friend in astonishment. “Are you out of your tiny little mind?” she exclaimed when Liss finally wound down.

  “I didn’t think there would be any danger. Moss wasn’t home.” Clutching the mug in both hands, she took a long swallow of Sherri’s coffee. She grimaced at the bitter taste and reached for another packet of sweetener.

  “You didn’t think. Period. What happened to your common sense?”

  “Hey! I was just trying to help!” After another tentative sip, she added still more sugar.

  “You broke the law. I ought to arrest you for burglary!”

  “I didn’t take anything!”

  “You’d have walked off with the map book if someone hadn’t beaten you to it.”

  “Maybe. Are you going to lock me up?” Liss gave the door to the cell a wary look.

  “Of course not!”

  “Then stop looking so…so…official!”

  Sherri felt like tearing at her hair. “I give up. You’re impossible!” No wonder both Gordon and Dan worried about her.

  “I might have discovered something useful.” Liss spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact voice.

  When she was right, she was right. “Tell me again about Moss’s atlas.”

  “Look here.”

  On her feet, bending over the desk, Liss indicated a section of the border with Canada in what was labeled “unorganized territory.” That meant it wasn’t part of any municipality. It was definitely out of Sherri’s jurisdiction…but not Gordon’s. Or Pete’s, for that matter.

  “That’s the area that was circled?” Sherri asked “Pretty remote,” she remarked when Liss confirmed it. “There aren’t even any roads going into it.”

  “That’s the point. I’ve been thinking. Dan told me that he saw a snowmobile out before dawn on the morning Aunt Margaret found Gavin Thorne’s body.”

  Sherri could guess where Liss was going with this. “Don’t tell me. You think some smuggler came down from Canada on a snowmobile and killed Thorne, then escaped the same way?”

  “No. Yes. Well…maybe. The thing is, I think it was a snowmobile engine I heard at Moss’s house last night.”

  “Some people do ride at night. That’s why the snowmobiles come equipped with headlights.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Sherri held up a hand to stop her. “We know who it was that Dan saw. The snowplow driver saw him, too.” She filled Liss in on young Frank Preston’s thwarted love life.

  Liss plopped back down into the visitor’s chair, discouragement plain in her slumped posture. “Damn. I really thought I was on to something.”

  “Moss had this area marked for some reason,” Sherri said slowly, running one finger along the line that divided Maine from Quebec. There were hundreds of miles of open border with Canada, at least thirty miles of them in Carrabassett County alone. The spot marked on the map would make an ideal crossing.

  “We know he had a source for Tiny Teddies,” Liss said. “Someone could have brought them into this country by snowmobile.”

  Sherri tried to visualize what Liss was suggesting. The bears were small. A lot of them would fit into a pack, even more onto the size sled a snowmobile could pull. There was only one thing wrong with her friend’s reasoning.

  “Until the night of the murder, there was no snow. No snow means no snowmobiles.”

  Liss leaned forward, eyes glittering with triumph as she came up with an answer to Sherri’s objection. “Maybe the smugglers used an ATV. An all-terrain vehicle can go anywhere a snowmobile can, without the need for a foot of ground cover.”

  Abruptly, Sherri stood. The sun had risen while they’d been talking. “It’s light enough now for me to check something out. You coming?”

  Liss was right behind her as Sherri left the municipal building, crossed the town square, and circled The Toy Box to reach the back door.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Tracks. Watch where you step.” Sherri kept her eyes glued to the ground.

  She didn’t really expect to find anything. The idea that someone might have parked a snowmobile behind Thorne’s shop and gotten away on it after the murder was pretty far-fetched. There were no snowmobile trails going through downtown Moosetookalook. Then again, someone who’d commit murder would hardly worry about sticking to marked trails or following proper snowmobiling etiquette.

  She kept an eye peeled for tread marks as well as for footprints.

  “Would there be anything left after so many days?” Liss asked. “And don’t forget that Felicity Thorne and her workers have been in and out this way dozens of times since the murder.”

  “I had to see for myself.” Lack of sleep, Sherri decided, was catching up to her. Of course there was nothing left to find. There hadn’t been even a few hours after the murder. It had been snowing hard all that night and into the morning. Blowing, too. Any tracks would have been filled in well before the state police arrived on the scene.

  “Can we go look at Eric Moss’s place?” Liss asked. “There hasn’t been any new snow since last night. If there are tracks, they should still be visible.”

  Sherri considered the idea. What would it prove even if Liss were right? On the other hand, there was something peculiar going on with Eric Moss. Sherri wasn’t convinced that it was tied to Thorne’s murder, but it wasn’t as if she had a lot of other leads to pursue.

  “I guess we could take a little ride.”

  Ten minutes later, they arrived at Moss’s place. It looked as deserted as Liss had described it, but when Sherri circled the building she could clearly make out Liss’s footprints coming in from the dirt road. On the opposite side of the house, approaching from the tree line, she spotted a second set.

  “Did you walk over this way?”

  “No.” Liss’s eyes gleamed with excitement as Sherri stepped onto the front porch and found another key hidden above that door.

  “Looks like your intruder got in the same way you did, only using the other entrance. He or she never knew you were here.” Lucky for Liss!

  Sherri backtracked, following the footprints from the front door through a stand of trees and into a clearing. There the signs were unmistakable. Liss had been right—the getaway vehicle had been a snowmobile.

  “Now we’re making progress,” Liss all but danced with glee.

  “Only a little,” Sherri warned. “Don’t get cocky.”

  “Why would an innocent snowmobiler search Moss’s house?”

  “Why would a smuggler, let alone a killer?” Back in the car with the heat going full blast, Sherri turned on the seat to face her friend. “You shouldn’t read too much into this, Liss. You’re jumping to conclusions based on very little evidence.”

  “So we’ll get evidence. Look, let’s say I’m right. Thorne wa
s killed because he had smuggled Tiny Teddies in his shop. He got them from someone, probably Eric Moss. Can you find out if Moss owns a snowmobile or an ATV?”

  “Liss—”

  “What? How hard could it be? Both types of vehicle have to be registered, right?”

  “Yes, but I can’t just go searching willy-nilly through state databases, not without being called to task for it.” Sherri drove toward town as they debated the issue.

  “Can Gordon?”

  “It would be easier for him to get access to that kind of information than for me to do it, yes.”

  “So tell Gordon.”

  “Tell him what? That you broke into Moss’s house?”

  “You could show him the map. Tell him you have a snitch.”

  “You’ve been watching too many crime dramas on television.”

  “Then tell him you’re following a hunch. Just get him to check on Moss.”

  Sherri spent the rest of the trip back to Moosetookalook in thoughtful silence. Liss was so certain she was right. Sherri supposed it couldn’t hurt to check the records.

  “Let me see what I can find out,” she said when she pulled up in front of the Emporium. “I may be able to locate snowmobile and ATV registrations online. As for finding out who owns that parcel of land, this is Sunday. There won’t be anyone around to answer my questions until tomorrow.”

  “What can I do to help?” Liss asked.

  “That’s easy,” Sherri told her with a grin. “Stay out of trouble.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Patience had never been Liss MacCrimmon’s strong suit. She dealt with a handful of customers during what was left of Sunday morning and made final preparations for the pageant that afternoon, but she was itching to pursue the lead she’d uncovered. When Aunt Margaret volunteered to spell her at noontime, she leapt at the opportunity.

  Instead of going home for lunch, Liss crossed Ash Street and continued on down Pine until she came to the corner of Lowe—Jason Graye’s house.

  Official channels for finding out who owned the land Moss had marked might not be available until Monday, but Jason Graye was a real estate agent. Even though Liss hated to ask him for a favor, she felt a sense of urgency about the matter. If Eric Moss wasn’t the villain after all, then the same person who’d killed Gavin Thorne might be trying to find Moss. That could explain the search of his house. In any case, Liss saw no reason to wait another day when she could get an answer now.