There weren’t many guests at the moment. Perhaps half the seating was occupied, mostly by groups of four, although a stunning redhead sat alone at one table while a couple, obviously newlyweds, billed and cooed at one another.
Was this what The Spruces might become?
Liss turned back to Gordon, a new line of questioning in mind. “Tell me about Waycross Springs.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Do you still live here?”
He nodded. “I have a small house about a mile from here.”
“So you probably come here to the Sinclair House all the time.”
“I wouldn’t say that, but the Tandys and the Sinclairs go back a long way. Why are you so interested in the hotel?”
“My aunt invested in The Spruces. You’ve seen the place. Do you think it has a chance of turning out this well?”
“Not my field of expertise. Is Ruskin—?”
Liss cut him off before he could complete the question. This was not the time to bring her relationship with Dan into the conversation, assuming that was what Gordon had intended to ask about. “I just wonder if this area can support two luxury hotels, even with all the tourists who come for the skiing.”
“Don’t forget leaf-peeper season and summer. The only time we don’t attract tourists is right about now—mud season.”
“You don’t subscribe to the wisdom that says Maine only has two seasons?”
“That would be ‘winter’ and ‘black fly’?”
They both smiled at the old joke.
An average-looking brunette in a bright fuchsia dress approached their table. “Gordon. How are you?”
“Liss, this is Corrie Sinclair. Corrie, Liss MacCrimmon. Corrie and her husband run this place. Lucas’s family has owned the hotel for several generations. Liss was wondering what will happen when The Spruces opens,” he added. “Will having a similar hotel in Moosetookalook cut into Sinclair House business?”
“I doubt it,” Corrie Sinclair said. “There should be plenty to go around, what with both villages being close to good skiing.”
“What do you offer that the condos and motels right at the ski areas don’t?”
“Luxury accommodations and free transportation,” came the prompt answer. “We run vans to Sugarloaf, Saddleback, and Sunday River and also make pickups at both Portland Jetport and Bangor International Airport. And we have our own cross-country trails.”
As Corrie enumerated other attractions of the Sinclair House, Liss found herself wishing Dan were with her tonight. Two or three of the things Corrie said sparked ideas that might help ensure the success of The Spruces, particularly what she told them about conferences.
“Small conventions, conferences, and conclaves all love places like this,” she explained. “Did you by chance attend our Burns Day Supper in January?”
“I’m not really a big fan of haggis.” The annual event, held on the birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns, followed a set format and featured that Scottish delicacy as the main course. Liss treasured her heritage, but not to the extent of eating something made out of the intestines of a sheep.
“It was . . . interesting,” Corrie said with a laugh. “I’d love to host that group every January twenty-fifth but the organizers apparently prefer variety. They won’t come back to the same hotel a second year. As soon as The Spruces opens, I expect they’ll book the event there.”
After a bit more conversation, their meal arrived and Corrie excused herself to join her husband. Liss’s jaw dropped when she got a good look at Lucas Sinclair. He was the personification of tall, dark, and handsome, except for the glasses perched on his long, straight nose. The man even had a dimple in his chiseled jaw.
“So,” Gordon said, “do you know the Ruskins well?”
“Dan bought the house I grew up in.” Liss adjusted her napkin and quickly changed the subject. “What’s your next move?”
“I thought we’d finish eating before I made one.”
His dry humor made her smile. She picked up her fork and sampled the coquilles St. Jacques she’d ordered. “I meant in the investigation.”
He ate a bite of his prime rib and a few mouthfuls of mashed potatoes before he lost the battle to avoid talking about the case. “I have to go to Providence tomorrow to take a look at the apartment Victor Owens kept there.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“Nothing.” That was all he was prepared to tell her, too.
The rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough, in spite of the ongoing battle for control of the conversation. She wanted to know more about the case. He wanted to know more about her. Every once in a while, the two topics overlapped.
“Did you seriously consider taking over as manager of Strathspey?” Gordon asked.
“Yes, but not for long. Have you always wanted to be a cop?”
When Gordon relaxed and unbent far enough to tell her about some of the cases he’d worked on in the past, Liss resolved to stop plaguing him with questions about the current investigation. Besides, it had just occurred to her that if she were to pretend to the members of Strathspey that she was still interested in applying for Victor’s job, she might be able to get a look at some of the company’s records. She set that idea aside to think about later.
Although Gordon insisted that the majority of his work was mind-numbingly routine and boring, his stories held her interest. Time passed quickly and with a sense of surprise, she realized that only the two of them and the wait staff remained in the dining room.
“I should get home. I’ve got to open the Emporium bright and early tomorrow.”
He glanced out at the floodlit landscape. “It’s started to spit snow out there. The roads will be slick.”
For a moment she thought he might suggest she spend the night at his place. Instead he insisted on following her home to make sure she got there safely. He paid no attention to the objection that he’d then have to drive all the way back to Waycross Springs.
“I’m used to being out on these roads in all kinds of weather. You’re not.”
Liss thought he was being silly, but found his concern kind of sweet. As she drove slowly from Waycross Springs to Moosetookalook along winding, two-lane back roads—the only kind connecting the two places—she had to admit that she’d thoroughly enjoyed the evening.
Back at her house, Liss was set to say good night at curbside. Gordon had other ideas. He insisted on walking her to her front door. There was an awkward moment on the porch while she fumbled for her keys. He took them from her, unlocked the door, and returned them, keeping hold of the hand he placed them in.
The casual “thanks” she’d been about to utter died before it reached her lips. This close, he was a bit overwhelming. Pheromones, she told herself. Stupid chemical reaction. But darned if her skin wasn’t tingling again, even through two layers of gloves.
He stepped back for a moment, and what she could see of his face in the porch light told her he was experiencing the same reaction she was. Approach/ avoidance—wasn’t that what the shrinks called it?
Then he kissed her.
Gordon Tandy was a great kisser.
Liss needed considerable willpower to ease herself out of his embrace and say good night. She imagined she had a sappy smile on her face when she turned to watch him walk back to his car. It faded fast when she caught sight of Dan Ruskin on the sidewalk. From the glower on his face, he’d witnessed Gordon’s fond farewell.
The night air was suddenly jam-packed with testosterone. An image of pit bulls flashed into Liss’s mind. To her surprise, even though Gordon’s body language was every bit as tense and bristly as Dan’s, each of the two men simply growled an acknowledgment of the other’s presence. They passed on her sidewalk without coming to blows. No barking. No biting.
“I just came by to make sure you got home safely,” Dan said as he reached the porch. He didn’t climb the steps—wise of him. “Roads are getting slippery.”
“That’s why Gordon followed me home.”
“Oh?” He packed a lot into the single syllable.
She put just as much of what she was feeling into a look. “It’s late, it’s been a long day, and I’m going to bed.” Turning her back on him, she slipped inside and quietly closed the door behind her. Once again she had to resist the urge to bang her forehead on the wood.
One jealous suitor was annoying. Two verged on the ridiculous.
Dan’s sister, Mary, was the mother of a seven-month-old baby but still managed to have an active life outside the home. She volunteered at the local food bank and as a driver with the Meals-on-Wheels program, taking the baby with her in a car seat. She’d even found time to help Liss out with transportation for the dancers, until that conflicted with a prior commitment. Dan had to plan ahead to catch her at home on Thursday morning.
“What brings you to baby central?” Mary asked when he breezed through her back door.
“What, I can’t stop by and say hi to the little rug rat?” He made faces at the baby, currently sitting in a high chair and creating chaos with unidentifiable bits of food.
“Sure you can. Anytime. But I talked to Sam last night and he filled me in on a few things.” She looked expectant.
Dan silently cursed his older brother, but the fat was in the fire now. He might as well go for broke. “Turns out I’m the jealous type,” he confessed. “Trouble is, that’s a real turn-off for Liss.”
“So stop being jealous.”
“Yeah, right. How?”
“Do you have any reason to be jealous?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. So you’re just insecure. You don’t have enough confidence in your appeal to the opposite sex.”
Dan frowned. Where was the sympathy a brother should expect from a sister? Liss found him plenty appealing. Or she had until Gordon Tandy came into the picture.
“What does Liss want?” Mary took note of his blank look and clarified the question. “What are her future plans? Do you have the sense that you’re a part of them?” Each question was accompanied by the swipe of a cloth across the baby’s food-smeared face. The little guy had been born two months premature, but he was making up for it now. If he kept eating the way he was, his mom would soon have to worry about him turning into a real porker.
“We haven’t talked about the future,” he said. “She decided to stay here. She bought into her aunt’s shop. I figured that gave me time to work up to proposing to her.”
“So, you’ve never mentioned marriage.” Mary sighed and shook her head. “That means she has no idea how serious you are about her.”
“Sure she does. We’ve spent a lot of time together the last few months.”
“Talking?”
“Some.”
“Not enough, obviously. What’s your worst fear?”
“That she’ll go back on the road.” He spoke without thinking but he knew as soon as the words were out that what he’d just said was the truth. It wasn’t any person he worried about. It was that recent events might take Liss away from him for good. If she chose her old life, or at least a variant of it, over what she’d done for the last few months, then he was shit out of luck.
Mary hoisted the baby out of the chair and whisked him off to be changed and dressed in clean clothes. By the time she returned to the kitchen, Dan knew what he had to do. He didn’t have to sell Liss on marrying him. Not yet, anyway. He just had to convince her to stay in Moosetookalook.
“Do me a favor, Mary?”
She sent a suspicious look in his direction, but nodded.
“Give Liss a call and tell her one of the outfits you volunteer for needs a hand.” If she got more involved in the community, she’d have more reason to stick around.
“They always do, but Liss runs a business. She doesn’t have a lot of free time. Heck, I’m sure she’d have preferred to play chauffeur for the dancers herself last weekend, but she couldn’t get away from the Emporium.” She paused for a beat. “Speaking of the dancers, I hear they’re still hanging around.”
“Oh yeah. Nine of them are staying in Moosetookalook now, three of them at my house.”
“Hope you didn’t get stuck with Fiona Carlson.”
“No, she’s in Margaret Boyd’s apartment. When did you meet Fiona?”
“She’s the one who called me for rides. Saturday and Sunday. And she was in a big hurry to get to town both times and very fussy about where she was dropped off, too. You’d think, if it was that important to her to get back downtown right away, that she’d have stayed at the motel instead of out at the cabins.”
“She wasn’t rude to you, was she?”
“No. Just impatient and preoccupied. And she wasn’t too thrilled to share the car with Jason.” She grinned down at the baby, who was tugging on a lock of her hair.
Since the aroma drifting Dan’s way from Jason’s diaper at that moment was not only unpleasant but pungent, his sympathy was with Fiona.
The cozy corner at Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium was perfect for a private conversation, especially on a slow Thursday. Liss supplied coffee and cookies and curled up in her favorite chair, waving Cal MacBain into the one that sat kitty-corner to it. She’d hear the bell if anyone came in, but she was counting on the usual lack of business to allow her an uninterrupted chat with her former dance partner.
“So, Cal, what am I missing?”
“Your career?”
She made a face at him. “Besides that. Things have changed since I left the company. There wasn’t so much contention before. Was there?”
“Maybe you just weren’t aware of it.”
“We all practically live together on the road. How could I have missed it?”
“Rose-colored glasses? Face it, Liss, you’re an optimist from the word go. You were totally oblivious to Victor’s interest in you until he actually propositioned you.”
“That did take me by surprise.”
“It shouldn’t have.”
“But he wasn’t mean about it when I turned him down. There were no threats. He changed, Cal. The Victor I knew wouldn’t have tried to blackball Sarah or claim he was going to replace Zara with Emily. He was ill, you know. Taking medication.”
“So I heard.”
“That can cause personality changes, right?”
“Right. Damn fool. He could have told us. Victor was never the most popular person in the company, but we’ve always been there for each other. We’d have . . . I don’t know . . . supported him somehow. Nobody wanted him dead, Liss. Nobody.”
“But somebody killed him.” Now who had on rose-colored glasses? “I know about his conflicts with Sandy and Zara, and with Stewart, and with Sarah, and how Ray felt about her. Was there anyone else? Someone who might have hidden his or her resentment a little better?”
“Not that I can think of. There was one thing, though.” He stared into space, as if trying to align the facts. “When did Victor find out he was sick? Do you know?”
“I’m not sure, but I got the impression it was shortly after I left the company. Certainly by the time Sarah did.”
“Okay. That tracks. But then, just a few weeks ago, it was like there was a new layer of mean tacked on top of the surliness we’d been seeing. Like he found out something else he wasn’t happy about.”
“More health problems? Maybe the medicine wasn’t working right.”
“All I know is that he got so he’d stare at people, watching them in case they . . . I don’t know—were going to run off or something. He’d come around to each room, claim he was just making sure there were no problems, but it felt like a bed check.” Cal gave a short bark of laughter. “Our company manager had turned into a chaperone on a senior trip. It was as if he was trying to catch one of us doing something wrong.”
“Illegal, do you mean? Damn it, Cal. You were supposed to help me find answers to questions, not raise more of them!”
“Sorry, chickie. I got nothing. Maybe Emily knows mo
re.”
Liss grimaced. Emily. The one person she had not talked to about Victor’s death. She’d been unable to question her at first because Emily had taken off. Later, Liss had let a mixture of pity and personal dislike get in the way of questioning Victor’s most recent lady friend.
“How do you feel about being a shopkeeper for an hour or so?” she asked Cal. Emily was upstairs in Aunt Margaret’s apartment and Fiona and Winona were not. Winona had a tooth that had been bothering her and Fiona had driven her into Fallstown to visit a dentist.
“Go get her, girl,” Cal said.
Chapter Fourteen
Liss climbed the stairs slowly, her reluctance to talk to Emily growing with every step. Get over it, she told herself. It was childish to resent Emily Townsend because she now danced the part Liss herself had once performed. And it was unfair to the young woman to hold her relationship with Victor against her. After all, as Zara had said, Victor could be charming.
It was, Liss decided, what Serena had said about Emily that stuck in her craw. Had Emily really been intimate with Victor only to advance her career with Strathspey at a faster pace? That sounded so “Hollywood Babylon.” Surely sensible modern women didn’t still try to sleep their way to the top, especially when the “top” wasn’t all that high.
That Emily had been bored with Victor was easier to believe. Perhaps she’d entered into the relationship because she’d genuinely liked him and then had found it difficult to disentangle herself. Would that have provided her with a strong enough motive to kill him?
Give her the benefit of the doubt, Liss told herself as she entered the apartment. She was prepared to bend over backward—a trick she could actually manage, even after all these months away from dancing—to be fair to Emily Townsend. But she wanted answers.
“Emily?” she called.
“In here,” came a faint, lethargic voice from the guest room.
Scone Cold Dead Page 17
