Kilt at the Highland Games

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  Sherri took a look around. Gloria’s stock included embroidery silks and fabrics. She supposed such things did hold onto smells, but surely they could be washed. She wasn’t so sure that the paper materials used for scrapbooking could be salvaged.

  “Did you see anything last night?” she asked the ginger-haired shopkeeper.

  “Oh, gee. Let me think. How about a big honking fire?”

  Sherri ignored the sarcasm. “I mean before the fire. Anything suspicious?”

  “I was asleep.” Gloria’s eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me that fire was set?”

  “It’s too soon to tell, although naturally in a case like this the municipal fire inspector, as directed by the state’s attorney general, notified the office of the state fire marshal. An investigator will be here soon to take a look at the scene and make the call.”

  Gloria’s already pale complexion went even whiter. “That’s all we need—a firebug.”

  Sherri tried to think what she could say to reassure Gloria. She wasn’t used to seeing her like this. Most of the time, she was a self-assured go-getter, full of inventive ideas and active in the Moosetookalook Small Business Association.

  “Chances are it will turn out to have been an accident.”

  “What does Angie say happened?”

  And there it was—the central problem. “We’re not quite sure where she and the children are. When is the last time you saw them?”

  Gloria’s eyes widened. “They weren’t . . . please tell me they—” She was visibly shaken by the possibility that her neighbors had perished in the fire.

  “No bodies have been found.” Sherri refused to add “yet” to that statement. “So? Did you see Angie or Beth or Bradley yesterday?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s been a couple of days at least. I can . . . I could see the side of Angie’s building through my windows. Their garage faced this way, but most of the time they went in and out through the front of the shop.”

  Sherri peered out through the windows Gloria indicated, trying to picture the building as it had been. Only a narrow strip of grass, now blackened by smoke and much trampled, flanked the sidewalk on Elm. Angie’s driveway had extended for barely a car-length before it reached the overhead door of her garage.

  “I wish I could be more help,” Gloria said, “but I didn’t see all that much of Angie. I’m stuck here at the shop most of the time. She was stuck in the bookstore. Mostly I saw her at MSBA meetings. You know how it is with a one-person business. There’s not a lot of time for visiting the neighbors.”

  Sherri did know. After reminding Gloria to give her a call if she remembered anything that might help the investigation, she left Ye Olde Hobbie Shoppe and crossed Main Street, entering the museum by the side entrance. Once upon a time, when the large house had been a funeral parlor, bodies had been taken in and out through this door.

  As she’d expected, no one had been around at three in the morning.

  She left through the front door, noticing as she did so that an investigator from the fire marshal’s office had arrived and was talking to Mike Jennings. She didn’t imagine that they needed her input. If they did, she had her portable radio attached to her belt. Mike could give her a holler.

  Three buildings faced the town square on each side. The one in the middle of the Ash Street block was the jewelry store owned by Fred and Nicole Lounsbury. Some years back, they’d retired after successful careers in the big city corporate world to move to Maine and open a small business. They specialized in jewelry made by local artisans from two Maine gemstones, tourmaline and garnet. More significant from Sherri’s point of view was that they lived above their shop. She was still hoping to find someone who’d seen something in the wee hours.

  Once again, the story was the same. Fred and Nicole had been asleep until the fire alarm went off. Like Kate Permutter, Nicole wore hearing aids. Nothing short of the siren would have awakened her.

  “Do you remember when you last saw Angie or her children?” Sherri asked.

  Nicole thought it was a week earlier. Fred was sure he’d caught sight of young Bradley on Wednesday, racing across the town square with some of his friends.

  “Do you know the friends’ names?” Sherri asked, but there the couple could not help her.

  She moved on to the corner of Ash and Pine and entered the post office, which occupied the front half of the first floor. In the back was Betsy Twining’s Clip and Curl. Sherri herself had once lived in the second-floor apartment, right after she and Pete had first been married and before they’d moved into the apartment Mike now occupied.

  Julie Simpson was not much older than Sherri, but she had been Moosetookalook’s postmaster for nearly ten years. A sturdily built brunette with a loud, nasal voice, she had come to Maine from New York on vacation, met Will “Simple” Simpson on a nearby ski slope, and never left. She was delighted to see Sherri walk in.

  “Finally! Someone who knows what’s really going on.”

  “I only wish that were true.” Since she was there, Sherri collected the police department’s mail and her own. Moosetookalook was too small a place to rate door-to-door delivery.

  “Give me a break,” Julie wheedled. “You must know something.”

  “I know I’ve got three missing people and a suspicious fire, but that can’t be news to you.”

  Julie gave a raucous laugh. “Hardly.”

  “I know you weren’t here at that hour, Julie, but is there any chance that a mail truck was making a delivery just before three in the morning?”

  “The mail comes in early, but not that early.”

  A witness at the crucial time had been too much to hope for, Sherri supposed, and the apartment upstairs was currently empty again. No joy there, either.

  She continued south along Ash, past the end of the town square, to canvass a few more houses, but her efforts yielded only more of the same—a frustrating dearth of information. Backtracking brought her to the section of Pine Street that paralleled the south side of the square. All three businesses on Pine had apartments upstairs. Mike Jennings lived above Carrabassett County Wood Crafts, Margaret Boyd above Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium, and Stu Burroughs above his ski shop.

  Mike had been in the office at the back of the municipal building when Margaret called to report the fire. Sherri made a mental note to ask them both when they’d last seen Angie, Beth, and Bradley, but that could wait. She didn’t want to interrupt Mike, and Margaret was at work at The Spruces. That left Stu.

  Her feet took her into Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium instead.

  * * *

  Since she had seen no point in sitting around the house and brooding, Liss had gone to work at the usual time. She’d entered by way of the stockroom, made a fresh pot of coffee, and filled her mug before she ventured out onto the sales floor to open her specialty gift shop to the public. When she’d unlocked the door and turned the CLOSED sign around to OPEN, she’d been careful not to look in the direction of the town square. It had been harder to avoid glancing through the plate-glass window at the front of the store. Even with her eyes averted, she’d caught a glimpse of the bright yellow police tape that cordoned off the ruins of Angie’s Books. All that remained standing was the brick chimney.

  If only to keep both her mind and her gaze fixed elsewhere, she’d decided to start pulling inventory for the Highland Games. She already had a list of the items she wanted to take to stock the booth she’d have there. They just had to be removed from the shelves and boxed for transport. For once they weren’t going very far—just up to the castle.

  Liss smiled for the first time all day as the old nickname for The Spruces popped into her head. The hotel did look a little like a castle when seen from the village below. It had five octagonal towers, four rising to four stories and one to five . . . with a cupola on top. Of course it wasn’t built of stone, like a proper castle, but rather of wood. Its glistening white walls stood out against a backdrop encompassing every shade of gre
en under the sun—the tree-covered mountains of western Maine.

  This pleasant image shattered at the sound of the bell over the door. Liss started, then relaxed when she saw that it was Sherri Campbell who’d entered the shop.

  “Any news?” Liss asked.

  As Sherri headed for the stockroom, she shook her head. Liss could hear her friend filling a mug with coffee and adding sugar and creamer. When she emerged again, she homed in on the Emporium’s “cozy corner,” an area designed with both book browsers and bored spouses in mind. Shelves within easy reach of two comfortable chairs held books about Scotland’s history and scenic beauty, biographies of Scottish people, and a selection of novels set in Scotland. A few large coffee-table books were, appropriately, displayed on the coffee table Liss had placed between the chairs.

  She retrieved her own mug, nearly full and still hot enough to be drinkable, before threading her way through racks of kilts and tartan skirts and shelves loaded with Scottish-themed knickknacks to join her friend. She sank down into the second chair and took a swallow of the coffee before she burst out with the question that had been plaguing her ever since she’d realized that Angie and her children were nowhere to be found.

  “How can three people just vanish into thin air?”

  “I wish I had an answer to give you, but at this point you probably know more than I do.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I wasn’t here during the fire. I didn’t make it to the scene until a couple of hours ago.”

  “Be grateful you didn’t have to watch the bookstore burn to the ground.” To quell the lump in her throat, Liss hastily took another sip of her coffee.

  “I should have been here.”

  “It was ghastly.”

  “I know. That’s probably why I convinced myself that I should stay at home. I didn’t have anyone to stay with the kids, but Adam’s fourteen. I could have left him in charge of Amber and Christina.”

  “Adam is a good kid, as responsible as any young teenager I know, but Christina isn’t even three months old, and Amber is only four. You have no reason to feel guilty about being a good mom.”

  “The siren woke us. Then we could see the flames and smell the smoke from the house. I felt so helpless.” Sherri stared into her coffee, as if the answers she was seeking were hidden in the bottom of the ceramic mug.

  “So did everyone who was here. Be glad you were a few blocks away.”

  “Mike Jennings is the new guy. What if he—?”

  “New here, but not inexperienced,” Liss reminded her.

  She was unaccustomed to seeing Sherri like this—insecure and in need of reassurance. She wondered if it was a form of postpartum depression. If it was, she was doubly glad she and Dan had decided not to have children.

  “Still—”

  “Cut yourself some slack, Sherri.”

  Hearing the sharpness in her voice, Liss instantly regretted snapping at her friend, but maybe firmness was called for.

  “You’re supposed to be on maternity leave,” she continued. “In fact, if I remember right, you weren’t planning to return to work until next week.”

  Liss directed a pointed look at the uniform Sherri wore. It was obvious she’d gone back on the job ahead of schedule.

  A little silence fell between them as Sherri polished off her coffee.

  Liss absently rubbed the side of her calf through her lightweight cotton slacks. Lumpkin’s claws had left a deep, two-inch long scratch. She hadn’t felt it until she returned home to take a shower and dress for the day. Then it had stung like the dickens, and the tape she’d used to cover it with a gauze pad made her skin itch.

  “Thank you,” Sherri said.

  “For what?”

  “Listening. I couldn’t unload on just anyone, you know. I’m supposed to be the boss—in charge and in control.”

  “You were right to stay with your children. They must have been scared, what with the siren wailing and all. They needed their mom nearby to reassure them everything was okay. Pete was working. I saw him on the far side of the town square, directing traffic. That left you.”

  “And Mike handled things at the scene just fine without me.” The side of Sherri’s mouth quirked into a wry half smile. “You might as well say it—I wasn’t needed at the scene at all.”

  Liss rolled her eyes. “Feel sorry for yourself some other time. You’re obviously running the show now. What happens next?”

  “We wait for Angie to turn up.”

  “That’s it?” Liss frowned. “What’s wrong with that picture?”

  “A lot,” Sherri admitted.

  “Angie would never take Beth and Bradley and disappear, no matter how shook up she was by the fire, not without telling someone where she was going. She’d know how worried everyone would be.”

  “And yet it appears that’s just what she did do. Her car is missing.”

  Liss didn’t like the sound of that.

  “I’ve been talking to neighbors this morning, hoping someone noticed them leaving. So far my inquiries have yielded zip. No one saw anything. When was the last time you saw Angie?”

  Liss had to stop and think. “The fire broke out around three-thirty this morning—Friday. Wednesday, maybe? I’m not sure. But I’m certain I’d have noticed if the bookstore was closed on Thursday. Even if I didn’t, someone would have mentioned it to me. That means Angie was open yesterday. She can’t have disappeared into thin air between one day and the next.”

  “Not unless she wanted to.”

  “What are you saying?” Liss didn’t wait for an answer. Sherri’s suspicions weren’t hard for her to read. “No! You can’t believe Angie set that fire.”

  “I don’t know what to believe, but there is definitely a strong suspicion of arson. The state fire marshal’s office has already sent someone to investigate.”

  Liss racked her brain to come up with another explanation. “Maybe they were kidnapped.”

  A faint smile touched Sherri’s lips. “You know that theory doesn’t make a lick of sense.” Her hand was unsteady as she placed her empty mug on the coffee table. Ceramic and wood collided with an audible thunk.

  “It makes more sense than thinking that Angie set the fire and then ran away. I mean, think about it. If you’re going to torch your own business, it’s usually so you can collect the insurance. That means you have to stick around for the payoff.”

  They sat in glum silence for a few minutes more. Realizing that her coffee had gone cold, Liss abandoned her mug next to Sherri’s. She ought to get up and take them both back to the stockroom to be washed, but these depressing speculations had drained the energy out of her. So much for the reviving power of caffeine!

  “I’ve got to get going,” Sherri said, although she made no move to rise.

  “Wait. You said you’ve been talking to Angie’s neighbors?” That was a sensible thing to do. “Have you questioned everyone around the square?”

  “Not yet. Still working on it.”

  “Who’s left?”

  “Stu Burroughs here on Pine. Then around the corner on Birch Street there are your neighbors on either side, Dance Central and the Farleys.”

  “Stu was the one who told us—Margaret and me—that there was no one in Angie’s apartment.”

  “How did he know that?”

  “I assume one of the firemen told him.”

  “Did Stu say anything else?”

  Liss shook her head. “And I’d be astonished if Sandy or Zara saw anything. They live above the dance studio, but Sandy would have been busy fighting the fire, and I didn’t see Zara at all.”

  That didn’t surprise her, now that she thought about it. Zara’s priority, like Sherri’s, would have been keeping her children calm. With all the smoke in the air, she’d have made sure that her two little carrottops stayed inside the apartment.

  Liss and Dan’s neighbor on the other side was John Farley, an accountant. He used his living room as an office in tax season
, but during the rest of the year it was just part of the family’s home.

  “The Farleys have gone to visit her sister in Boothbay Harbor for a week,” she said aloud, belatedly remembering that she’d seen them load up their station wagon and head out on Thursday morning.

  “One less place to stop,” Sherri said. “Although I suppose I should add the antiques shop on Birch to my list. They must have been able to see Angie’s Books from their place.”

  The antiques shop didn’t face the town square, but it did have a diagonal line of sight that went straight to the corner of Main and Elm. Liss considered for a moment before shaking her head. “The trees would have been in the way.”

  Flowers were more prevalent along the walkways within the town square, but two apple trees flanked the gazebo that doubled as a bandstand. Another grew next to the merry-go-round, while a small stand of birches had been planted by the monument to the Civil War dead. Near the center of the square grew a tall, nicely shaped blue spruce, the tree that the town decorated at Christmas. Until today, Liss had always been glad that none of them blocked her view through the Emporium’s front window.

  “I’d better talk to them anyway.” Heaving herself out of the chair, Sherri adjusted her utility belt, plunked her uniform hat back onto her head, and fixed a determined expression on her face. “Keep your fingers crossed that I get lucky . . . but don’t hold your breath.”

  After she left, Liss had a difficult time keeping a sense of doom and gloom at bay. The steady trickle of customers should have helped, but she soon realized that none of them were particularly interested in buying Scottish knickknacks.

  Locals wanted to know if she’d heard anything from Angie or to speculate about whether or not the fire had been set. Folks from away came inside to gawk at the dismal scene in air-conditioned comfort.

  * * *

  In late morning, a familiar-looking, barrel-shaped man entered the shop. Liss recognized him at once as one of the two strangers she had noticed at the fire. At the time, she’d suspected he was a guest at The Spruces. That he was still around made that seem even more likely.