Scotched

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  Sherri tried to put her finger on why the woman made her uneasy. Ms. Nedlinger was quite stout, but there was nothing soft about her. She was physically fit. There were muscles beneath the sleeves of the plain gray suit, and she wore sturdy walking shoes. She was not someone Sherri would fancy meeting in an alley on a dark night. But, curiously, it was the image of a bulldozer that replaced that of an elephant. No predatory beast—just one of those pushy people determined to get her own way.

  Sherri had no reason to deny the woman’s request. When it came right down to it, she didn’t suppose she had any choice but to comply. What Ms. Nedlinger had asked for was public information, data that Sherri had, literally, at her fingertips. She tapped a few commands into the keyboard in front of her and heard the printer whirr into action.

  One of the routine jobs Chief of Police Jeff Thibodeau had assigned to Sherri when he’d first hired her had been compiling the monthly statistics and feeding them into a computer program specifically designed to keep track of such things and report them to the state of Maine. The task didn’t take much of her time. Moosetookalook had been known to go for weeks at a time without a single complaint that ended up creating paperwork. Arrests were not an everyday occurrence.

  Two sheets of paper spilled out of the printer. Sherri glanced at them, then handed them over. “Here you go. This runs from May two years ago up to this week.”

  The stout woman seized the pages with an eagerness that had Sherri tensing up all over again. She knew there was one statistic that was out of proportion with the rest for a village as tiny as Moosetookalook. Sure enough, Ms. Nedlinger zeroed right in on it.

  “Three murders in two years? Isn’t that a bit excessive?”

  Hidden by the desk, Sherri’s hands clenched into fists. When she felt her fingernails bite into her palms, she forced herself to relax. She made an effort to keep her voice level. “These things happen even in small towns, Ms. Nedlinger. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Were you personally involved in any of the murder investigations, Officer Campbell?”

  Sherri glanced at the card in front of her on the blotter. J. Nedlinger’s P.O. box was in Boston, Massachusetts. Sherri wondered why an out-of-stater would care what crimes were committed in rural Maine.

  “Criminal investigations, Ms. Nedlinger, for the more serious crimes, especially homicide, are handled by the state police. And for almost anything more complicated than a traffic violation, Moosetookalook usually asks for assistance from the county sheriff’s department.”

  “That was a somewhat evasive answer.” Ms. Nedlinger’s pale blue eyes gleamed with amusement.

  Abruptly, Sherri stood. “I’m afraid that’s the only answer I have to give you, ma’am. May I suggest that you contact the Maine State Police? They have an officer specifically assigned to public relations.”

  “I’ll do that.” She tucked the printout into her purse and gave Sherri a tight-lipped smile as she also rose from her chair. “Nice talking to you, Officer Campbell.”

  After she’d gone, Sherri snatched up the business card she’d left behind. What an unpleasant woman! She was tempted to tear the pasteboard rectangle into tiny pieces and toss it in the trash. Instead, she turned back to her keyboard and typed in the URL for The Nedlinger Report.

  A blog came up on the monitor.

  Sherri skimmed a piece criticizing how a police investigation into cyber-harassment was being conducted, then read an item lambasting the parents of a recent victim for not supervising their daughter’s presence on the Internet.

  “Well you just hate everybody, don’t you,” Sherri muttered to herself as she scrolled down the page.

  She stopped when she came to something a little different. Instead of an op-ed piece on some aspect of real-life crime, this blog entry was a review of a recently published mystery novel. J. Nedlinger had nothing positive to say about the book. In fact, she was downright nasty in her comments and, worse, gave away the ending.

  Sherri was about to click away from The Nedlinger Report when the movement of a line of type at the bottom of the screen caught her eye. Next to the words “today’s readership,” going up even as she watched, was a number. Sherri stared at it, then glanced at the clock on the wall. It was barely noon and, if this was legitimate, the most recent blog entry on The Nedlinger Report had already attracted over forty thousand hits.

  The possibility that the rude woman who’d invaded her office had that many fans made Sherri even more wary of her interest in crime in Moosetookalook. Whatever she was investigating now, it could not be good for the village.

  Sherri wondered if she should alert the town selectmen to a potential public relations problem. Better to wait, she decided. She’d just as soon avoid unnecessary contact with the three elected officials who had charge of the police department’s budget. One was her newly acquired mother-in-law, another the local mortician, and the third a slippery character who sold real estate. None of them numbered among her favorite people. It didn’t take much effort to talk herself out of taking action. What could any one of the town officials do about J. Nedlinger’s interest in local crime anyhow? Besides, if the blogger were left to her own devices, she might well decide their sleepy little burg wasn’t worth the time to trash.

  Sherri set the phone to forward any calls to her cell, locked the office, and headed for Main Street, pausing only long enough to exchange friendly waves with the town clerk. In addition to the police department and the town office, the municipal building also housed the public library, which took up the entire second floor, and the fire department.

  Just as Sherri stepped out onto the sidewalk, on her way to meet her new husband, Pete, at Patsy’s Coffee House for lunch, she spotted Liss MacCrimmon driving past in Dan Ruskin’s truck. Liss braked and rolled the window down. She was blocking the narrow street, but it hardly mattered. There was no other traffic.

  “I’m heading out to the hotel,” Liss said when they’d exchanged greetings. “I’ve got a load of Angie’s books in the back.”

  “Right. Conference.” It was on Sherri’s radar, as was the Saturday-afternoon book signing. Both were only distant blips, since she did not expect any problems with traffic or crowd control. “Have fun.”

  “I plan to.” With a cheerful wave, Liss drove on.

  Sherri resumed her trek to the coffee shop. She didn’t have far to walk. The small restaurant was right next door to the municipal building. Less than a minute after she’d seen Liss on her way, Sherri pushed open the door and walked in. Pete was waiting in a corner booth, the same one he always chose if it wasn’t already occupied. She slid across the bench seat toward him and lifted her face for a quick kiss.

  “Hello, handsome,” she murmured after he complied.

  Black-haired and brown-eyed, at five-ten Pete Campbell had the tall and dark down pat. As for handsome, he wasn’t a classic Adonis type, but he suited Sherri just fine. He was built like a linebacker, square and solid, and he looked a treat in his brown deputy sheriff’s uniform. He was working the two-to-ten shift this week, patrolling Carrabassett County’s rural roads to keep the community safe.

  “Hiya, gorgeous,” Pete replied with a grin. “How’s your day going?” At her grimace, his smile faded. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not till after lunch. I don’t want to ruin my appetite.”

  Pete had already ordered ham and cheese subs for them, along with chips and the diet root beer Sherri had lately become addicted to. When the last chip was gone, she felt calm enough to repeat her conversation with J. Nedlinger and share the discoveries she’d made on the Internet.

  “Sounds to me like she might be doing a story on small-town police forces,” Pete said, “and since she seems to go in for the negative, I’ll bet she’s planning to argue that they’re useless in this day and age.”

  “Oh, that’s a cheerful thought!”

  Sherri turned her gaze from the dregs of her soda to the view through the plate
glass window of the coffee shop. From that vantage point, she could see two sides of the town square. Directly opposite Patsy’s place was Stu’s Ski Shop and, next door to it, Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. Then came Liss’s house. Sherri’s gaze rounded the corner, lingering only briefly at the post office. The Clip and Curl took up the back half of that building. Upstairs there was an apartment. Their apartment. The place where Sherri now lived with her brand-new husband and her precious son, Adam, a boisterous seven-year-old. And, best of all, they lived there without her mother.

  Cheered by that thought, Sherri was almost smiling when she continued her visual survey. Next to the post office stood what had once been The Toy Box and, before that, Alden’s Appliances. Now it was a jewelry store that featured items made with Maine tourmaline. Beside it, on the corner, sat Preston’s Mortuary.

  Sherri couldn’t see the side of the square she and Pete were on, but she knew what it looked like well enough. The bookstore came first, then the municipal building at the center—the only building of red brick in a sea of white clapboards. Patsy’s Coffee House occupied the corner lot. The remaining side of the square likewise had three structures. First was the house of John Farley, an accountant. Then came Dan Ruskin’s place, which wasn’t a business yet but would be once he converted his first floor into a showroom for the custom woodworking he did in his spare time. And finally, around the corner from the ski shop, was a building that had once been a consignment shop. It had recently been sold to a young couple Liss knew from her days as a professional dancer. They were going to open a dance studio there.

  All in all, Sherri thought, Moosetookalook was a nice quiet little village with a charming, picture-perfect town square. Except for the fact that two of those twelve buildings, within the last two years, had been the scenes of violent crimes. When you added what had happened at the hotel the previous January and the murder of the manager of Liss MacCrimmon’s old dance troupe down to Fallstown....

  Sherri sighed and reached for Pete’s hand. She took instant comfort from his firm grip on her fingers. “Let’s hope J. Nedlinger is going to argue for the elimination of small police forces,” she said, “because if that’s not her plan, then the topic of her next blog is likely to be the high incidence of murder in Moosetookalook.”

  Chapter Two

  By five that afternoon, the lobby at The Spruces, Moosetookalook’s finest hotel, was swarming with people. In fact, The Spruces was the town’s only hotel, but it was a spectacular one. Built more than a century earlier, in the heyday of destination resorts, it boasted 140 luxurious rooms. The management offered every amenity. They had to, to make up for the fact that the hotel was located in the middle of nowhere.

  A woman Liss had never seen before clamped one hand around her forearm and gestured with the other toward a small group waiting for the elevator. “Isn’t that Dorothy Cannell? Oh, I love her books! The Thin Woman is a classic.” Her whisper held barely suppressed excitement and there was an awestruck expression on her homely face.

  Liss obligingly studied the cluster of guests. She’d already collected and studied the program book for the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con. From their photos, she recognized not one but both of the women waiting for transportation up to their rooms. The one nodding in response to something the man next to her had just said was Dorothy Cannell, who lived somewhere on the coast of Maine. The other woman was Yvonne Quinlan, the conference’s guest of honor. The gentleman with Dorothy sported a splendid beard. The other man wore a loud blazer and had scraped his long blond hair back into a stringy ponytail.

  “I think you’re right,” Liss said to the woman who’d accosted her. The clinging fingers let go so abruptly that she had to take a quick step back to keep her balance.

  The woman—obviously the more rabid sort of fan—didn’t notice. With a determined stride, she made a beeline for the elevator, all the while burrowing with one hand into the canvas tote bag she carried. The elevator doors closed a fraction of a second before she reached them. With a little cry of disappointment, she turned away, shoulders slumping as she stuffed a hardcover book wrapped in a brightly colored dust jacket back into her tote.

  “What was that all about?” Dan Ruskin asked, appearing without warning at Liss’s elbow.

  Liss gave an involuntary start of surprise. “Sheesh! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “Sorry. Blame the thick, plush carpets at The Spruces. Guaranteed to muffle sound.” He grinned, justifiably proud of the job his family had done restoring the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century hotel. For the most part, Ruskin Construction built new homes and added garages and the like to existing structures. The renovation had been a labor of love.

  As Liss’s fiancé slid an affectionate arm around her waist, she smiled up at him. She never got tired of looking at him. She wasn’t so shallow as to have chosen her future husband only for his handsome exterior, but it was certainly a bonus that the things she loved about him—his sense of humor, his loyalty to friends and family, even his instinct to protect those he loved, annoying as that could be on occasion—came wrapped in a superb package. He was six foot two with sandy brown hair and molasses-colored eyes and he had the sort of build that came from years of working in the construction field—muscular without being bulgy. Like the handcrafted furniture he built in his spare time, he was darned close to being a work of art.

  Liss admitted to herself that she might be a tad biased. After all, she was in love with the guy. She turned in his arms, rested her hands on his broad shoulders, and went up on tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. When she opened her eyes, her gaze fell on her engagement ring. The stone was an exquisite tourmaline, her own choice over the more traditional diamond. She’d coveted this particular ring from the moment she’d first seen it in a display case in the hotel’s upscale gift shop.

  At times it was difficult for Liss to believe that they’d been engaged for almost four months. Soon... very soon . . . they’d be married. Reluctantly, she stepped out of Dan’s embrace, before she was tempted to ravish him right there in the hotel lobby! Not for the first time, she thought wistfully of suggesting they elope, as their friends Pete and Sherri had on Valentine’s Day.

  The date Liss and Dan had chosen for the wedding was in late July—close enough to cause Liss to panic every time she thought about how much she still had left to do. She’d never realized how many details were involved in planning even a simple wedding. And yet, in other respects, another two and a half months seemed way too long to wait. She’d wanted Dan to move in with her, but he’d refused. He was old-fashioned that way. They continued to live in two separate houses on the town square.

  “Did you ask me a question?” she murmured, distracted by an enticing, rose-colored vision of what their married life would be like.

  “That woman who missed the elevator,” Dan prompted her. “She looked as if she just lost her last friend. Problem?”

  “Oh, her.” Liss forced her wandering thoughts back to the present. “That was just a disappointed fan. She missed a chance to get an autograph from her favorite author, but I’m sure she’ll have another opportunity. There are signings after every panel and a group signing on Sunday.”

  “Fan? You mean some kind of groupie?”

  Liss chuckled. “Oh, please! Writers don’t have groupies. They have readers.”

  “But the main attraction at this conference is someone who’s an actress as well as an author, right?”

  Liss gave him a playful poke in the arm. “And how do you know that? You hardly ever watch television.”

  “I see the tabloids in the supermarket checkout line, just like everybody else. Yvonne Quinlan. Star of Vamped.” Dan made quotation marks in the air and recited a grocery-store headline: “Why does she only come out at night? Could she be a real vampire?”

  “Well, I guess that theory’s shot to hell,” Liss said with a laugh. “She was standing in full sunlight just now, over by the elevator.”

  A party of t
hree middle-aged women scurried across the lobby, heading for the lounge at the ground-floor level of the west wing. That they’d already registered for the Cozy Con was evident from the heavy book bags each of them carried. The totes contained freebies. Liss had been relieved to discover that her own goodie bag had not contained any of the books Angie hoped to sell in the dealers’ room. She knew how easily Angie could lose money on this deal. If the attendees were more interested in meeting their favorite authors and going to panels than in buying the books those authors wrote and having them signed, Angie would be in trouble. She couldn’t afford to offer the same discounts online bookstores did. She had to sell her stock at close to full price.

  “Why the deep sigh?” Dan asked.

  Liss felt heat rise into her face. She hadn’t realized she’d made any sound. She tried to laugh it off. “I’m a worrywart, that’s all. Hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Worried about what?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Everything. Let’s just say I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this weekend is a financial success for everyone involved.”

  “I have an idea,” Dan said. “How about you just relax and enjoy the conference? I know you’ve been looking forward to it.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” she agreed.

  “Liss!” someone called. She turned to find the conference’s organizer, Nola Ventress, bearing down on them.

  An energetic little woman of sixty or so, Nola had silver-blond hair she wore short and curly, and vivid green eyes. She was casually dressed in designer jeans and a purple T-shirt with the conference logo on the front, but she carried a businesslike clipboard.

  Next to Nola, Liss felt overdressed. After her last pickup at Angie’s and an afternoon spent setting up in the dealers’ room, she’d made a quick trip home to shower and change her clothes. The tailored slacks and silk blouse she now wore were business casual, but she had a hunch that most of the attendees would opt for a far more casual look. The ones she’d spotted so far certainly had!