“Now hold on just a minute!”
She talked right over his protest. “You can tell Ms. MacCrimmon that I won’t need to ask her any questions after all. I can get all I need for my exposé without her input.”
Leaving Dan still sputtering, Jane sailed away. Within seconds, she’d pounced on a new victim, a woman who, by the color of her name tag, was a speaker at the conference. He’d stopped by the registration table earlier, long enough to observe that fans got white name tags while panelists wore light green. Nola Ventress and her helpers sported bright yellow.
The chatter in the room was loud, one conversation bleeding into the next. As Liss passed various couples and small groups, trailing after her aunt and Nola Ventress, she caught a word here and a sentence there. Everyone sounded upbeat. Some were talking about the next day’s panels and workshops. Others were saying nice things about the hotel. One remarked that she enjoyed the romantic suspense novels written by Maine writer Susan Vaughan more than the quasi paranormals penned by Yvonne Quinlan.
“Apples and oranges,” replied the woman she was speaking to.
The remaining tidbits Liss overheard were all about murder, but to her immense relief, the only crimes anyone seemed interested in discussing were those that took place between the covers of a book.
Nola looked surprised, and not particularly pleased, to discover that both Margaret and Liss were right behind her when she reached Yvonne’s side. Rather perfunctorily, she introduced them to the actress-turned-writer and to the man in the checked blazer. His name was Bill Stotz and he was Yvonne’s manager.
Bill lavished praise on Nola for her organizational skills, then seemed to lose interest when Liss announced that she was one of the vendors from the dealers’ room. He fished a stick of chewing gum out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. He let the wrapper fall to the floor without bothering to look around for a trash receptacle.
“Are you a bookseller?” Yvonne asked.
“I sell gift items with a Scottish theme,” Liss replied.
“I must make it a point to stop by and see what you have to offer,” Yvonne said with a charming smile. “I always find such delightful gifts in dealers’ rooms at small conferences like this one.”
If Yvonne was suffering any residual effects from her encounter with Jane Nedlinger, Liss couldn’t spot them. Then again, Yvonne was a professional actress.
“Was that Nedlinger person bothering you?” Nola’s blunt question surprised Liss and thudded into the conversation as awkwardly someone tripping over a piece of furniture.
Bill Stotz scowled. Even Yvonne’s easy smile faltered, but only for a millisecond.
“Of course not,” she said. “That dreadful woman is just after a story, as always. And she wanted to make sure I knew how much she hated my latest book.”
“She panned it?” Nola could not have looked more stricken if it had been her own creation that Jane had reviled.
“I take it you didn’t see the review.” Yvonne sounded remarkably cheerful. “She loathed everything about it.”
“I’ve been too busy with the conference to read her blog for the last couple of days,” Nola admitted. She seemed extraordinarily shaken by Yvonne’s announcement. “Oh, my. I never thought ... I hoped ...”
When her incoherent words trailed off, Yvonne filled in the blanks. “You sent her a review copy, didn’t you, Nola?”
A study in misery, Nola nodded.
“Don’t give it another thought,” Yvonne advised her. “None of us should allow that awful creature to spoil our day.”
“Doesn’t bad press bother you?” Liss asked, genuinely curious.
“Well, of course it does,” Yvonne said. “No one enjoys a scathing review. But you have to consider the source. I learned a long time ago not to let petty people get under my skin. Not for more than about a minute and a half, anyway.” She gave a light, infectious laugh.
Liss found herself smiling back at the actress-turned-mystery-author. “Good advice. Too bad it’s so hard to follow.”
“It takes years of practice,” Yvonne admitted. “Are you a writer, too?”
“Oh, no. Just a reader.”
“There’s no just about being a reader. We writers wouldn’t have much in the way of careers if no one read what we wrote.”
“Well, I do enjoy your books, Ms. Quinlan.”
“Yvonne, please.”
“Yvonne, then. I’m curious, though. You have a successful career in television, but you made your fictional detective a bit-part actress.”
At first glance the character, Toni Starling, might have seemed an unlikely amateur sleuth. She lived in Vancouver, where many U.S. action series and movies were filmed, and worked pretty steadily as “woman number two,” “first waitress,” and the like. Many of the crimes she solved had to do with the film industry. What made the series unique, however, was that Toni had assistance on her cases from a mysterious associate who might ... or might not ... be a vampire. That gimmick had attracted hordes of readers to the books because Yvonne herself had played one of the undead for nearly a decade—a character named Caroline Sweet in the hit television show Vamped.
“Toni isn’t me,” Yvonne said with another soft laugh, the kind that invited the listener to share in the joke. “Besides, if you think about it, unsuccessful actors have to be more observant than successful ones—constantly on the alert for opportunities to show off their skills. That’s a good quality in a sleuth, too, don’t you think?”
“True. And Simon? Is he really a vampire?”
This time Yvonne’s laughter was so full-bodied it attracted attention from all corners of the room. “I leave that up to the reader to decide.”
For a moment, Liss considered the question seriously. She’d read all the books, some of them twice. “We never see Simon bite anyone. And there aren’t any bodies drained of blood lying around. On the other hand, he never goes out in the daylight.”
“That you know of.” Yvonne’s smile was secretive and her dark brown eyes glinted with mischief. “Vampires don’t have to kill these days, do they? And sometimes they kill in other ways. It’s very easy for them to break someone’s neck, for example. Just a quick twist and the deed is done.” She mimed the action.
Liss found herself both fascinated and repelled by this conversation. She couldn’t resist asking another question. “Is that possible? I mean, is it really so easy to break someone’s neck?” She’d seen it done countless times on both the big and little screens, but reality and Hollywood—or Vancouver—weren’t always in the same universe. Screenplays certainly got a great many other things wrong, a point Yvonne made over and over again in her mystery novels.
“It is if you know how,” Yvonne assured her. “I did a brief stint as a stuntwoman before I got my first gig as an actress. They taught me what to do. Or rather, what not to do. Fatal accidents on the set are never good for business.”
Two young women had joined the group surrounding Yvonne and had been hanging on every word the actress spoke. Hesitantly, one ventured a comment.
“A real vampire would drain the victim’s blood,” she said. She had long, straight hair and wore the conference uniform of jeans and a T-shirt. The shirt featured a skeleton sitting on a bench at a bus stop. The caption read: “Waiting for a Good Agent.”
“That’s right,” her companion agreed. “Breaking someone’s neck and leaving the body to rot is just wasteful.” Her face was slightly rounder than the first woman’s and her hair was shorter. Her black T-shirt had no artwork on it, only words. It read: “And then Buffy staked Edward. The End.”
“But for a vampire to do that,” her friend said in an authoritative voice, “is a sign of contempt. Remember that episode of Buffy where Angel—”
“Please,” Yvonne interrupted, her smile slipping. “At least choose an example from my show.” Vamped had lasted longer than Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Liss recalled, but it had debuted back when Joss Whedon’s cult cla
ssic was still on the air. Liss supposed it was only natural that there had been some rivalry between the two shows.
“Will you sign my book?” the first fan asked. Then her face fell. “Oh. I left it in my room. I’ll have to go get it.”
Bill Stotz paused in the act of stuffing a second stick of gum into his mouth to object to autographing outside the established signing hours. Maybe it was the third stick of gum, Liss thought, studying him. Bill was starting to look like a chipmunk storing up nuts for the winter in his cheeks, and she could smell the spearmint on his breath from two feet away.
“It’s okay, Bill.” Yvonne made a little shooing motion with one hand. “I’ll tell you what,” she said to her fan. “Why don’t you go fetch your copy of my book right now? I’m not going anywhere. When you get back, we’ll find a quiet spot where the three of us can sit and chat.”
“I think that Simon is hot,” the second woman said as they were leaving. “Way hotter than Vampire Bill.”
Liss blinked and glanced at Bill Stotz before she remembered that Vampire Bill was a character in yet another paranormal mystery series, the one written by Charlaine Harris. She had to disagree on the hotness factor, she thought.
Since she’d obviously not been included in the invitation to chat, she looked around for Nola, intending to steer her back to Jane Nedlinger, but Nola had wandered off. Liss didn’t immediately see either her or Jane.
Human, gum-chewing Bill slipped away as soon as Yvonne spotted an empty table where she and her two starry-eyed admirers could settle in. Liss and Margaret continued to chat with the actress/writer until the fans returned with Yvonne’s latest novel in hand and the three of them headed for an empty table.
Margaret stooped to pick up Bill’s discarded gum wrappers before they moved on. “She’s a real powerhouse, isn’t she?”
“And gracious. Talented, too,” Liss agreed. “She must be to have written so many novels while working full-time as an actress.”
“She probably had a lot of free time on the set,” Margaret mused, tossing the litter into the trash can near one of the buffet tables. Angeline’s crew was already hard at work clearing away the empty platters and plates and used utensils. “I can easily imagine her scribbling madly into a notebook while she waited to shoot the next scene.”
More likely she wrote on a laptop, Liss thought, but she said nothing to dispel her aunt’s illusions.
When Margaret veered off to make sure there were no last-minute problems with the rooms where the classic movie night features were to be shown, Liss looked around for Dan. He was Nedlinger-free but on the far side of the room.
She took her time getting to him. It was still early, and the attendees at the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con were an outgoing bunch. She was twice drawn into conversations with complete strangers and once found herself being surveyed for her opinion on how early the first body should turn up in a cozy mystery. Liss found these brief encounters stimulating. She might not have known any of these folks before they arrived at The Spruces, but they all read the same books she did. That was enough to create an instant bond.
Dan’s face was set in a fearsome scowl by the time Liss finally reached his side.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, although she suspected she already knew.
“You were right about that woman,” Dan admitted. “That Jane Nedlinger. She’s out to cause trouble, and we have to do something to stop her.”
Chapter Four
Liss and Dan stepped into a window alcove, out of the flow of traffic. The recess gave the illusion of privacy even in a crowded room. “What did she say to you?” Liss asked.
“She wanted to know if I thought Moosetookalook was the murder capital of Maine.” Dan kept his voice low but it throbbed with irritation.
“And, of course, you corrected her. That honor belongs to Cabot Cove.”
Dan looked blank.
“Cabot Cove, Maine? Home of Jessica Fletcher? Murder, She Wrote?”
“Oh. The old television show? I never watched it. I heard they got a lot of stuff about Maine dead wrong.”
“Well, yes, but ... oh, never mind! What else did she say to you?”
“She told me that this story may be bigger than she first thought. She’s thinking of devoting an entire week to Moosetookalook and all the murders you’ve been involved in.”
“They didn’t all take place in Moosetookalook.”
“That’s not the point.”
“And there haven’t been that many.” Annoyance sharpened Liss’s voice. “A week implies seven. There have only been—”
“Liss! You’re not seeing the big picture here. If she posts these blogs, they will generate very bad publicity for this town in general and this hotel in particular, not to mention for you personally. And she seems determined about it. She doesn’t even want to do an interview with you anymore.”
For just a moment, Liss felt annoyed. When it had been only her reputation on the line, it had been: “Don’t worry, Liss. Go ahead and talk to her.” But now that it was the hotel—She broke off in mid-thought, appalled by her reaction. Of course they should be concerned about The Spruces, and about Moosetookalook. What Jane Nedlinger wrote could harm everyone who lived here.
All the local residents would be affected by the situation. That meant there was no good reason not to solicit help in deciding how to blunt the impact of The Nedlinger Report. She glanced at her watch.
“It’s barely eight. If we activate the phone tree, we could convene a meeting of the MSBA at my house in an hour.”
The membership of the Moosetookalook Small Business Association included all the merchants on the town square and most of the other businesspeople in the village, too.
Dan hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll alert Dad. You phone Patsy.” He headed for the lobby.
Liss made her call from the window alcove, where the cell phone reception was better. She was about to leave the meeting room when she caught sight of Nola. One look at the other woman’s face told her that Nola was not a happy camper. Liss changed course to intercept her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Do you really need to ask? That woman is impossible.” Nola’s face was flushed and her small hands had curled into tight fists.
“Jane Nedlinger?” Liss asked.
“Who else?”
“Come with me.” Liss took Nola’s arm and tugged her toward the nearest exit. “We’re going to put our heads together and figure out how to deal with her threats.”
Liss shivered when they stepped outside. Although the sun had only just set, the temperature was already plunging. She glanced up at the overcast sky. It looked, and smelled, as if they would have some rain tonight.
“You, too?” Nola asked. “I’ve always hated the great outdoors, especially after dark.”
Liss wanted to protest that she was just chilled, but Nola was still talking.
“My parents used to insist on going camping every summer. I loathed every minute we spent in the woods. I don’t like having too many trees around even now.” She gave a theatrical shudder. “My friends kid me about my phobia, but I won’t even visit the local Christmas tree farm at the holidays. I have a nice plastic spruce that suits me just fine.”
“How do you feel about apple orchards?” Liss asked.
Nola laughed.
During the short drive into Moosetookalook, Nola supplied details of various posts Jane had written, and Liss began to understand why she was so upset. If Jane chose to pan the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con, its attending authors, and Nola herself, it would be very difficult to organize a second annual gathering. According to what Aunt Margaret had told Liss when Nola first booked the conference into the hotel, this conclave of mystery fans had been Nola’s brainchild. She had almost single-handedly organized and produced the event, spending almost a year on the planning. She’d used her own savings to bankroll the project, which meant that she had a lot riding on its success.
Lis
s and Nola entered Liss’s house through the kitchen. Nola dragged her feet all the way from the car. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” she protested.
“Do you have a better one?” Liss asked. She flicked on the light and waved the other women inside.
Lumpkin, Liss’s big yellow Maine Coon cat, chose that moment to leap from the refrigerator to the nearest kitchen countertop. Nola gave a shriek and threw her arms over her head. Then, cautiously, she peeked out through her fingers.
“Oh,” she said, sounding sheepish. “A cat.”
“Hang on a minute,” Liss said. “Let me feed him and his little buddy and then I’ll lock them in the basement. They’ll only be underfoot at the meeting anyway.”
Lumpkin and the half-grown black cat Liss had named Glenora appreciated the food but protested loudly at being banished.
Members of the MSBA started to arrive a few minutes later, and at nine o’clock sharp, Dan banged his gavel—a wooden spoon—on the coffee table in Liss’s living room. “Meeting will come to order!”
Liss doubted he could be heard above the babble of voices. She quickly suppressed the cowardly thought that it might be better if he wasn’t. They’d called this emergency meeting of the Moosetookalook Small Business Association for a good reason. This was no time for second thoughts. If they had overreacted, they’d just have to take their lumps.
A glance at Nola’s face told Liss that Nola, too, sensed the potential for disaster. It occurred to her that Nola hadn’t told her exactly what Jane Nedlinger had said to her. Whatever it was, it had made the poor woman miserable.
“You okay?” Liss whispered.
“No,” Nola said. “I shouldn’t have come here. You don’t need my input.” She darted nervous glances this way and that, as if she expected something else besides an oversized cat to jump out at her.
“You’re the best person to explain who Jane Nedlinger is and how influential what she writes will be.” Liss used her most soothing tone of voice. “And your presence will emphasize that an annual Maine-ly Cozy Con will bring business to this town. Trust me when I say that money talks.”
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