“Nonsense. Author signings are good for everyone. And essential,” she repeated. “Just like bookmarks. And an online presence. I spent my entire advance on publicity.”
“I do hope it will pay off for you,” Sandy Lynn drawled. “I’ve given up on bookstore signings myself. They just aren’t cost-effective for me, living in a remote, rural area as I do.”
The less experienced author looked profoundly shocked. “But you must do them,” she insisted. “They’re essential. How else can you hope to boost book sales?”
“I’ve always found it helps to write a good book,” Sandy Lynn said, and turned her attention to scooping salad onto her plate.
The line picked up speed. Liss collected utensils and glanced back at Jane Nedlinger. Like Liss, she had been shamelessly eavesdropping on the veteran author and the newbie.
“So, what can I do for you, Ms. Nedlinger?” Liss asked.
“I write a daily blog in which I discuss real murder cases. I also review mystery novels.”
They moved a few steps forward, closer to the spot where Angeline Cloutier, resplendent in a high white chef’s cap and a pristine white apron, was slicing roast beef. Covered metal trays displayed a variety of tempting choices—all the makings of a satisfying supper.
Jane loaded her plate, taking some of everything. Liss made more careful selections. She passed on the scalloped potatoes but couldn’t resist the macaroni and cheese bar. Small soup bowls had been set out so that people could line them with goodies from an assortment of toppings. Or would that be bottomings? Liss chose the finely cubed ham and held up her bowl so that one of the waitstaff could ladle a steaming portion of homemade macaroni and cheese into it.
“I have questions,” Jane continued as she plucked two rolls out of a basket, “about all about the murders you’ve been involved in during the last two years.”
Her words were rife with innuendo. Caught off guard by the unspoken accusation, Liss automatically went on the defensive. “I’ve hardly been involved—”
“Haven’t you?” Jane Nedlinger didn’t bother to hide her sneer. “I’ve read all the newspaper articles. I’ve even seen the police reports. You, Amaryllis Rosalie MacCrimmon, are a lightning rod for sudden violent death.” Her eyes glinted with unconcealed malice. “Do you like that turn of phrase? I’m considering using it as the headline for my blog.”
Chapter Three
“ I pretty much lost my appetite after that,” Liss said when she finished recounting her conversation with Jane Nedlinger to Dan.
“So you just walked out?” He was on the other side of the bar in the lounge, polishing a glass with a towel.
The place was all but deserted. Most of the hotel’s guests were attendees at the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con. They were buying their drinks at the portable bar set up at the reception. Dan’s only patrons were a young couple sitting in one of the booths, a nervous-looking man in his early thirties at a table, and an elderly gentleman occupying the stool at the end of the bar farthest away from where Liss perched, nursing a ginger ale.
She scooped up a handful of complimentary party mix from the nearest bowl. “I couldn’t see the point in sticking around.”
“And she said her name was Nedlinger?”
“Yes. Jane Nedlinger. But she didn’t have a name tag. I’m not sure if she’s attending the conference or not. Why? Do you know her?”
“Sherri called earlier to ask if we had a J. Nedlinger registered here, which we didn’t. She didn’t say why.”
“Ms. Nedlinger must have stopped by at the P.D. She said she’d seen police reports. Would Sherri have shown them to her?”
“I’m not even sure Sherri is the one who’d have them. The state police did the investigating.”
The name Gordon Tandy hung in the air between them, unspoken. He was the state police detective assigned to Carrabassett County and, until recently, he’d been Dan’s rival for Liss’s affections.
Liss doubted that Gordon had talked to Jane Nedlinger himself. The state police had a public relations officer to deal with the public. Or would Jane be considered the press? Liss didn’t suppose it mattered. The woman had gotten information from somewhere. Now she wanted more, and she didn’t strike Liss as the type to give up easily.
“Drat,” Liss muttered. “I was looking forward to this weekend. I don’t want to have to worry about some scandalmonger dogging my steps.”
“You may be making too much of this.”
“You mean I’m overreacting.” She made a face at him. “Maybe.”
They were interrupted by the entrance of a trio of screaming kids in wet swimsuits. “Daddy! Daddy!” yelled a little girl of perhaps six as she ran up to the nervous man at the table. “Mommy says you have to watch us.”
The two boys, one who looked to Liss to be eight or nine and the other a little older, started a game of tag around the furniture. A chair toppled over. The little girl’s shrill voice rose even higher when the older boy poked her in the ribs in passing.
“Daddy! He’s picking on me!”
Dan left the bar and went over to speak quietly to the father. Then he turned to the two boys and told them that if they didn’t settle down they’d have to leave. He was perfectly polite and therefore made no impression at all on any of the children. No sooner had he returned to his post than all three of them were racing in and out of the lounge, shouting at the top of their lungs. Liss felt a little sorry for the father, who had probably been trying to hide from his family long enough to have a quiet beer. Her sympathy quickly evaporated when he proved unwilling, or unable, to control his brood. The second time Dan came out from behind the bar to speak to him, he stood up, threw some money down to pay his tab, and stormed out. The children had already disappeared.
“Kids shouldn’t be allowed in bars,” Dan grumbled.
“Not those kids, at any rate.”
As he refilled her glass, she could almost see him collecting his thoughts. Dan’s face fascinated her. Unless he was making a conscious effort, all his feelings were right there for anyone to read. She liked that about him. He was as honest, as they said around here, as the day was long.
“The Nedlinger woman said she wanted to interview you, right?” Dan asked.
“She said she had questions.”
“And you immediately put up shields.” Liss not only saw the smile on his face, she heard it in his voice.
“I told her that her claim wasn’t true, that I’m not some kind of magnet for murder. And she just laughed and said that magnet for murder was an even better turn of phrase than lightning rod for violent death. Sheesh! Some days you just can’t win!”
“The point is, she’s offered you the chance to talk to her and answer her questions. If you agree, she might end up giving her story a more positive slant.”
Liss glared at him. “Or not. Oh, that may be what she implied, but I didn’t believe her. There was just something. . . smarmy about her. I wouldn’t trust her to take out the trash.” She managed a weak smile and held up one hand with her thumb and forefinger held a quarter of an inch apart. “I came this close to telling her to publish and be damned.”
When Dan’s eyebrows shot up, she chuckled.
“Okay. Dumb impulse. I wish I could remember who said that originally. Somebody famous. If I knew who it was, maybe it wouldn’t sound so hackneyed.”
Then again, maybe it would. Was Dan right? Was she overreacting?
“At least think about talking to her,” he advised, ever the voice of reason.
“I suppose I could. She did give me a grace period. She said that if I changed my mind, I should let her know before the end of the conference.”
“Then why don’t you go back upstairs and enjoy the rest of the reception? Then maybe talk to Sherri—oh, damn! I forgot to tell you about Adam Willett.”
His sudden change in tone alerted her to expect bad news. “What happened?”
Word of Adam’s broken arm banished Jane Nedlinger from Liss
’s thoughts. She tried phoning Sherri, but none of the numbers she tried were answered. Finally, she just left a message on the voice mail for Pete’s cell phone, a sympathetic word and the assurance that if Sherri needed her for anything, she shouldn’t hesitate to call.
“I feel so helpless,” she lamented after she hung up.
“He’ll be okay. Kids heal fast.”
“Broken arm, though—that’s a bummer.” She had plenty of experience with injuries, and with physical therapy, too. Adam would be in pain. And Sherri would suffer right along with him.
“Enough doom and gloom,” Dan said. “There are movies showing later, right? Which one are you going to attend? Maybe I’ll join you. We can make this into a date night.”
She could use cheering up, Liss decided, and she didn’t have to fake her enthusiasm for the conference’s offerings. “They’re all good,” she told him. “You pick. The choices are Rear Window, Dial M for Murder, Murder on the Orient Express, and The Maltese Falcon. The classic versions, of course.” She was pretty sure they’d all been remade in less successful, more violent modern adaptations.
Since it was barely seven, Liss was not inclined to hide out in the lounge until the film fest started at nine. Besides, she knew she wouldn’t be able to avoid Jane Nedlinger for long, no matter what she did. That being the case, she decided that she might as well go back to the reception.
On her way there, she passed the harried father who’d been in the lounge. A woman, obviously his wife, had him backed up against one of the pillars in the lobby. Her face was a picture of outrage as she demanded, in a voice as shrill as her daughter’s, “What do you mean, you lost the kids?”
Liss kept walking.
Back at the reception, she decided it was a good thing she had not yet regained her appetite. In the short time she’d been gone, the contents of the buffet tables had dwindled down to a few scraps of cheese and a single mini-éclair. Liss snagged it and looked around for Jane Nedlinger.
The woman’s height and Wagnerian proportions stood out even in a crowd that contained a number of plus-sized, middle-aged women. Jane was still holding a plate heaped high with goodies. Or perhaps it had been refilled. But she wasn’t eating. She was talking at Yvonne Quinlan. Her body language was aggressive and her current prey had a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face.
Just how many people did Jane Nedlinger plan to harass that evening?
Liss tried telling herself that what was between the blogger and the actress was none of her business. And that she should be grateful someone else had captured Jane’s attention. But when she spotted Nola Ventress chatting with Margaret Boyd, she headed their way, thinking that perhaps Nola knew something about Jane Nedlinger. Something they could use to rein her in. If Jane wasn’t registered at the conference, maybe they could even kick her out.
“Here’s my lovely niece now,” Margaret said as Liss approached.
Almost two years earlier, when Liss had first moved back to Moosetookalook, Margaret MacCrimmon Boyd had been a plump and comfortable widow in her late fifties who dyed her hair bright red and had little to occupy her time besides a good-for-nothing son and the family business, Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. Since then, she had lost weight, let her hair fade to a natural grayish brown, and begun a new career as events coordinator at The Spruces. Margaret still talked a mile a minute and had a cheerful outlook on life, but now her days were much more well-rounded. She even had a boyfriend, if such a term could be applied to a man who was pushing sixty.
“You must stop in and see the Emporium, Nola,” Margaret continued. “Liss has worked wonders with it since she took over.”
“I’ll do that, if I can find the time.” Nola started to move away.
Liss spoke quickly. “Nola, do you know anything about a woman named Jane Nedlinger?”
Nola went perfectly still except for her eyes. She blinked several times, as if to process the question. “Why do you want to know?” she asked.
“Because she’s here and she’s asking intrusive questions. At least she did of me, and I’ve watched her accost two other people this evening. Neither looked happy about being cornered.”
“I’ve heard she can be ... abrasive in person.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
Nola frowned. “I’ve never met her, but I’m a regular reader of her blog. I do hope everyone’s being polite to her, even if she is offensive. Good publicity for our conference is especially important this first year, so there can be a second Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con.”
“So you invited her here?” Liss asked.
“I sent her a press release and some other ... material. I was hoping to generate publicity.”
“From a blog?”
Liss had designed the Emporium’s Web page and now made most of her profits selling online, but she had no experience with social networking or blogging. She’d never had any urge to share her personal observations with the world. As for reading other people’s opinions, who had the time? When she did squeeze out a spare half hour for herself, she usually spent it curled up with a good book. Or with Dan.
“You’d be surprised how wide an audience The Nedlinger Report reaches,” Nola said. “It has more readers than some newspapers.”
“So she’s here to report on the conference? She’ll give you good press?”
Nola sighed. “Good? Probably not. She tends to find fault with things. But she has a huge following.”
Liss frowned. None of this was encouraging. And if Nola had known in advance that Jane emphasized the negative, she had been naïve to think alerting her to the existence of the Cozy Con was a bright idea.
“Well,” Nola said, visibly stiffening her spine, “I suppose I’d better have a word with her. Which one is she?”
“She was speaking with your guest of honor a few minutes ago.” Liss turned to scan the room. It was easy to locate Jane Nedlinger, but she was no longer with Yvonne Quinlan. Now she was talking to Dan.
Liss wondered why he wasn’t in the lounge. He’d been scheduled to work behind the bar until nine. Then again, his father owned the hotel. She knew he could get someone to fill in for him when he really wanted to. He’d probably called for a replacement as soon as she returned to the reception and come up here looking for her, thinking that she still needed cheering up.
He was right about that.
“Jane Nedlinger is the big woman in gray,” she told Nola.
“Oh, my,” Nola said, her eyes widening. Then she headed in the opposite direction. “Yvonne looks a bit frazzled,” she called over her shoulder. “I’d better have a word with her first.”
Shaking her head, Liss watched Nola scurry off in the direction of her guest of honor. Wise to run, she thought, trying to picture the petite Nola confronting Jane Nedlinger. It would be like a squirrel facing down an enormous black bear.
Should she follow Nola or rescue Dan? Liss glanced back at her fiancé, torn. She ought not leave the man she loved in the claws of a predator. But Dan was the one who had thought she was making too much of Jane Nedlinger’s interest in Moosetookalook’s past murders. Maybe a few minutes at the blogger’s mercy would convince him that she’d been right to be concerned. Besides, she’d been hoping for a chance to meet Yvonne Quinlan.
Turning her back on Dan, Liss set off after Nola and Margaret.
Dan held his ground with an effort. He had a feeling that if he tried to back away from the formidable woman in front of him, she’d pace him like a lioness stalking her prey.
“Moosetookalook appears to be the murder capital of Maine,” Jane Nedlinger repeated. “Wouldn’t you say that’s correct?” She edged a little farther into his personal space. She seemed to use up more than her fair share of oxygen, too.
“Seems a stretch to me.” Dan slid into the laconic drawl he sometimes adopted for the benefit of tourists. In the popular opinion of the rest of the country, all Mainers were laid back and folksy, fished for lobster in their spare time, and said
“ayuh” a lot, never mind that most of the state was nowhere near the rockbound coast.
“Oh, come now, Mr. Ruskin! May I call you Dan?” She didn’t wait for permission, just assumed it would be forthcoming. “Now, Dan, there’s no sense in hiding the truth. Not from a seasoned newshound like me. I was an investigative reporter once, you know. I worked for one of the big Boston papers. There’s no deflecting me when I’m chasing a hot story.”
And the juicier, the better, Dan assumed. She was all but smacking her lips over this one.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said aloud, “but I don’t have anything to say to you. You’d best talk to the police if you’re interested in the details of a criminal investigation.”
“Investigations. Plural. And the way I hear it, you and your little girlfriend had more to do with solving those cases than the cops did.”
Little girlfriend? Oh, Liss was going to love that one! Since Dan couldn’t think of a single reply that wouldn’t come back to haunt him, he wisely remained silent.
Jane Nedlinger kept talking. She seemed to take a malicious pleasure in enumerating Moosetookalook’s flaws, making Dan realize that he’d been dead wrong in the advice he’d given Liss. When he’d lobbied her to consider giving Jane Nedlinger an interview, he’d assumed that the threat Liss had sensed was all posturing and playacting on Jane’s part. In person, however, the blogger was just as alarming as Liss had claimed. The potential danger she posed could not easily be dismissed.
“Moosetookalook is a quiet little town, Ms. Nedlinger,” he said, interrupting her.
“Jane.”
“We’re peaceable folk here, Jane. Minding our own business. Trying to make a living. There’s no call to make a fuss just because we had a few unfortunate ... incidents. . . over the last couple of years.”
“Is that how you see it? Incidents? I call them vile murders.” Her expression abruptly turned cold and hard. “I hear you’re head of the chamber of commerce or whatever you call it here, but I won’t be put off by the party line. You’re sitting on a hotbed of crime and violence in this dinky little sinkhole you call home. In fact, I think this story is bigger than I first thought. I may just have to devote an entire week to the Moosetookalook murders and Liss MacCrimmon’s part in them.”
Scotched Page 4
