“I suppose a mystery writer would make a murder out of it, with or without the paranormal elements,” Margaret conceded. “Thank goodness this is real life.”
“Still, Jane’s death has made me curious about Nola.” Liss held up a hand to silence Margaret before her aunt could interrupt with an objection. “And no, I’m not imagining that Nola pushed Jane off that cliff. For one thing, she wouldn’t have the strength to do it. Jane was twice her size.”
“Thank goodness for small favors,” Margaret muttered under her breath.
“But Nola seemed very emotional today. I asked her about her encounter with Jane and she burst into tears. And earlier, she had the most peculiar expression on her face when I was talking to Yvonne Quinlan.”
“Are you worried about Nola? Or just nosy?”
“A little of both,” Liss admitted. And she was not, despite her protests, completely convinced that Jane had fallen to her death without help.
After Margaret left, Liss detoured to the check-in desk. It took a bit of persuading to convince Joe Ruskin to give her Nola’s room number, but in the end he relented when she said she was worried about how the conference organizer was taking Jane Nedlinger’s death.
“Did Dan find you?” Joe asked.
“Not yet,” she told him, and kept going in the direction of the elevator.
On the second floor, she rapped on Nola’s door. The conference schedule called for “meal on your own” this evening, but the charity auction was scheduled to begin at seven. Liss expected to find Nola in her room, either resting or changing her clothes.
When Nola opened the door, she looked as if she’d been crying again.
“Are you okay?” Liss asked, genuinely concerned.
“I’m fine. I’m just ... it’s so upsetting. Last night we were all plotting against her and now she’s dead.”
“She was plotting against us first,” Liss reminded her. “Maybe it would help to talk about it. If you told me—”
Harsh red color flooded into Nola’s face. “If you’re going to badger me with questions, you can just go away. I won’t be harassed.”
Liss backed off at once. “I don’t mean to pry, Nola, but Jane Nedlinger’s death is preying on my mind, too. I just thought—”
“I’ve heard about you, Liss MacCrimmon. You make a habit of sticking your nose into other people’s business. You just stay away from me.” With that, she slammed the door in Liss’s face.
The click of the lock engaging sounded very loud in the quiet corridor.
Time to go home, have some supper, and feed the cats, Liss decided. Maybe Nola wasn’t the only one who needed a little alone time.
A brisk knock at the back door of Sherri’s apartment had her scurrying to answer it. Although it was only a little after six in the evening, Adam had just drifted off to sleep. She didn’t want the noise to wake him. Even so, she was cautious enough to take the time to peek through the window beside the door to make certain she knew who was standing on the other side.
Liss and Dan were faced off on the small landing at the top of the outside staircase. They looked to be having words, if the expression on Liss’s face was any indication. “Uh-oh,” Sherri muttered under her breath. “Trouble in paradise.”
When the door swung open, they turned to face her. She lifted a finger to her lips to shush them. “Adam’s sleeping. You’ll have to keep it down.” Only after they both nodded did she let them in and lead them through to the kitchen.
“How’s the little guy doing?” Dan whispered, stepping over a toy dump truck Sherri had missed picking up off the floor.
“He’s cranky. So is his mom.” She was ready for a nap herself, but she knew she wouldn’t rest until Pete came home at ten. Thank goodness he’d put in for a sick day for tomorrow! “I was going to fix myself something to eat. Do you want coffee? A hot dog?”
“We’ll get something later, thanks.”
“Not so you’d notice,” Dan grumbled, giving Sherri a clue to the problem between them.
“Let me guess. You wanted to take Liss out for a nice meal. She’s planning to nuke something in the microwave.”
“Got it in one. Plus I just had to chase all over the hotel to find her.”
“I did not know you were looking for me,” Liss said in the aggrieved tone of someone who has said the same thing several times already.
Sherri made the time-out sign. “Truce, you guys. Is there a reason you came by?” She popped two hot dogs into the microwave, set the cook time, and punched the start button.
“I wanted to see how Adam was doing and ask if you need anything,” Liss said promptly.
“He’s got a humongous cast on his arm and can’t go out and play. Other than that, he’s fine. His mother, however, feels like a wrung-out dishrag. And this is only day one.”
“As soon as the conference is over I’ll be able to give you a hand,” Liss promised. “If nothing else, I can sit with Adam so you can escape for a bit.”
“I appreciate that, but Pete and I can handle it. Now, tell me what you’ve been up to. Take my mind off mothering for a while.” The microwave dinged and she extracted the hot dogs, slid them into buns, and added mustard.
“Well, there is something I’d like to run past you.”
“Liss,” Dan said, a warning clear in the tone of his voice.
“What? It’ll give her something to think about other than her son.”
“Spill it,” Sherri told her. “Ever since Adam’s accident I’ve been so focused on him that nothing else has made any impression.” She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I had an unattended death this morning, and even that couldn’t distract me for long.”
Liss stared at her. “You already know about Jane Nedlinger?”
Surprised, Sherri stared at her friend. “Is that who the body was? The one out at Lover’s Leap?” At Liss’s nod, she gave a low whistle. “I didn’t know. Jeff relieved me before we had an I.D. for her.”
“But you’d met her,” Dan said. “You called out to the hotel to ask if we had a J. Nedlinger registered.”
“And Joe said you didn’t.” Sherri sent a questioning look Dan’s way.
“He did a little more digging. It turned out that she used her own credit card, but she signed in under the name Jane Smoot.”
“Why?”
“Hard to say. Maybe she was trying to keep a low profile. She showed up at the conference’s opening reception, but she wasn’t wearing any name tag.”
“Maybe not,” Liss cut in, “but she wasn’t shy about introducing herself, or telling people that she was the force behind The Nedlinger Report. By any name, she was a very nasty piece of work. She came to Moosetookalook looking for dirt.”
“Well, yes. I did suspect that.” While she poured herself a glass of diet root beer, Sherri gave them a quick recap of her own encounter with Jane Nedlinger at the P.D. “I have to admit I didn’t take to the woman,” she added when she’d filled them in on the pertinent details.
“She was going to write about the murders in Moosetookalook, and she intended to make it seem like Liss was responsible for them,” Dan said. “What was that phrase she came up with? A lightning rod for murder?”
“Something like that,” Liss agreed with a grimace. “You were at the hospital with Adam, Sherri, or you’d have known that we called an emergency meeting of the MSBA last night. Everyone was pretty upset about what she planned to write. And we weren’t the only ones. There were several people at the conference, including Nola Ventress, the organizer, who also had run-ins with Jane Nedlinger. I’ve no idea what she might have intended to write about any of them, but she wasn’t known for singing anyone’s praises.”
Sherri put two and two together and didn’t like the total. “Are you trying to tell me that you suspect her death was something other than an accident?”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Liss said.
“Too much exposure to murder mysteries can rot the brain,” Dan mutt
ered. “There was nothing at the scene to suggest foul play, was there?”
“Not that I saw,” Sherri said, “and I did take a look around. I didn’t notice anything particularly suspicious.” She cracked a wry smile. “Same old Lover’s Leap—but at least kids today use condoms.”
“That’s all you found?” Liss asked.
“Pretty much.” She thought back while she munched on her hot dog. “Tissues. A couple of gum wrappers. That’s—” At Liss’s sudden increase in interest, she broke off. “What?”
“It’s probably nothing. But one of the people at the conference, the guest of honor’s manager, is a gum chewer. And a litterer. And he’s one of those Jane Nedlinger talked to last night. I wasn’t close enough to overhear what she said to him, but it looked to me as if she was trying to scare him. Succeeding, too.”
As much as Sherri longed to dismiss Liss’s information as irrelevant, she had to wonder if she’d missed something at the scene. If she’d known at the time who it was at the bottom of the cliff, she might have done things a little differently. Even without being aware of the MSBA meeting, or that other people had felt threatened by the woman, her own experience alone would have been enough to make her wonder if Jane Nedlinger’s sudden death wasn’t just a bit too fortuitous. The more she recalled of her own initial reaction to Jane, the less difficult it became to think that someone could cheerfully have murdered her.
“Gum wrappers?” Dan made a derisive sound. “Like that would hold up in court.”
“Maybe Jane was blackmailing Bill Stotz—that’s his name. And when he went out there to Lover’s Leap, to pay her, they quarreled and he pushed her off the cliff instead.”
“Jeff is satisfied it was an accident,” Dan said.
“You talked to him?” Temper sparked in Liss’s eyes. “You didn’t tell me that.”
They glared at each other.
Shaking her head, Sherri polished off the second hot dog before she spoke. “You’re giving me a lot of speculation and not a shred of proof.”
“There’s just something off about all of this,” Liss insisted.
“The M.E. doesn’t think so,” Sherri said.
At least she didn’t believe that he did. She hadn’t stuck around once George Henderson had declared the death an accident. Had he changed his assessment on a closer examination of the body? There was only one way to find out. She reached for the phone.
Sherri had gotten to know George fairly well over the last year. She’d first encountered him when she was going through the state’s Criminal Justice Academy. He’d been one of their guest lecturers. They’d talked one day over lunch and discovered that they were actually distantly related on her father’s side of the family, and that George lived less than a mile from the trailer she and Adam had shared with her mother until her marriage to Pete. Of course, George’s residence was considerably more posh.
“Hi, George,” she said when he answered. “It’s Sherri Campbell. I hope I’m not taking you away from your supper, but I’m calling about that accidental death this morning.”
“How’s that boy of yours?” George interrupted.
“He’s doing better. Thanks for asking. Listen, George, this is just me being curious, since Jeff took over for me up at Lover’s Leap, but I was wondering if everything checked out on the victim. It was the fall that killed her, right?”
“Sure did,” he said cheerfully.
“And she was already dead when that jogger found her?”
“Oh, yeah. Been dead a couple of hours by then.”
Sherri’s hand clenched on the phone. “A couple of hours?” she repeated. “Are you sure?”
“Well, you know time of death is never exact, but yeah. My best guess is that she died between midnight and four in the morning.”
“Uh, George—I think you’d better give the attorney general’s office a call.”
“Why? She was out jogging. She stopped to look at the view. She ... oh, crap! It was overcast last night.”
“Yeah. No view.”
A few minutes later, she hung up and turned to face the two civilians who’d been hanging on her every word. “The M.E. says she didn’t die shortly after five o’clock sunrise, as we assumed. He estimates time of death at between midnight and four. He can’t be more exact than that, but it makes it highly unlikely that she was out jogging, tried to get a better look at the view, and fell.”
Dan frowned. “Why on earth would she—”
“Go out there at night?” Liss finished for him. “Not to make out with a boyfriend. That’s for sure. Personally, I like my blackmail theory.” She turned to Sherri. “So, now what?”
“Now the M.E. reports his findings and things get official. I’m out of it. Permanently out of it if they decide I messed up the scene of the crime.”
“It’s hardly your fault that it didn’t look like murder.” Liss rose from the table to give her a hug.
“But if I’d stuck around to find out who was dead, I might have asked more questions at the time.”
“Why didn’t you?” Dan asked.
Sherri managed another small smile. “Jeff told me to go home and take care of my kid.”
“Bingo. You’re off the hook.”
Sherri wasn’t so sure about that, but she appreciated the thought. “Be that as it may, you two mustn’t get any more involved in my mess. You both know who will be sent to investigate.” It would be Gordon Tandy, who had once been Dan’s rival for Liss’s affections.
Dan grimaced.
Liss sighed. Then she pulled herself together, glanced at her watch, and gave Sherri another hug. “I’ve got to get back to the hotel. The charity auction will be starting at seven, and I promised Aunt Margaret I’d meet her there.”
“Go,” Sherri told her. “But try to stay out of trouble.”
Dan dropped Liss off at the hotel as a crowd started to gather for the auction. Since he didn’t have to work, he wasn’t sticking around. He was still annoyed with her, she supposed, for putting the kibosh on his plans for a romantic evening. They’d gulped down leftovers reheated in haste and washed the two-day-old pasta dish down with bottled water they’d guzzled on the way back to the hotel. She would definitely have to find a way to make things up to him.
She’d start, she decided, by keeping out of Gordon Tandy’s way when he showed up to investigate Jane Nedlinger’s death. She’d done her bit by voicing her suspicions to Sherri. Truthfully, she’d been hoping she was wrong. The last thing anyone needed was another murder in Moosetookalook.
Determined to focus on fictional crime for the rest of the evening, to be just another fan attending the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con, Liss entered the hotel ballroom. She was pleased to see that the event had drawn so many people. The place was packed, not only with conference attendees, but also with members of the community. Betsy Twining was there with her husband. So were Dolores and Moose Mayfield. Liss spotted Doug, too, and wondered why the funeral director hadn’t brought his wife along. Lorelei Preston was always complaining that there wasn’t enough to do in Moosetookalook in the evenings.
A woman jostled Liss, belatedly making her aware that she was blocking the entrance.
“That guy’s got some nerve,” the woman said to her companion. “He wouldn’t let me give Yvonne a book to sign. He said I should bring it to one of the signings she’s got scheduled and not just go thrusting it at her willy-nilly.”
“Who is he, anyway? Her husband?”
“Nah. He’s her manager. Anyway, then Yvonne herself steps in and she’s just as nice and polite as he was rude. She signed the book with a sweet little personal note. I’ll show it to you later.”
The two women moved out of range of Liss’s hearing, leaving her to wonder why Bill Stotz was so protective of his client. She told herself that, like so many other things, it was none of her business, but she couldn’t help but notice that neither Yvonne nor Bill was in the audience gathered for the auction.
Stu Burrough
s barreled into the room, apparently running late, and headed straight for the podium. Liss was about to pick up a bidding paddle and find a seat when Margaret appeared at her elbow.
“Have you seen Nola anywhere?” she asked.
“She was in her room earlier.”
“I’ve already checked there.” Margaret looked worried. “I even used my passkey to make sure she wasn’t just asleep or something. Do me a favor and take a look around the rest of the hotel? I know she wanted to be here. One of the auction items is a free registration for next year’s Cozy Con, and she planned to make a pitch for people to register for it before they leave this year’s conference. She’s offering an early-bird rate.”
“I’ll see if I can find her,” Liss promised, although she didn’t intend to look very hard. She had her eye on a hand-crocheted throw decorated with cats. It was the sixth item on the list of auction items and she didn’t want to miss her chance to bid on it.
She went back down to the lobby and asked at the check-in desk, peeked into the lounge and the hotel library, and then waylaid Fran Pertwee, who was just closing up the gift shop.
“Working kind of late, aren’t you?” she asked the other woman.
“I had inventory to check.”
“Were you open while you were doing it?”
“Sure. I figured I might as well be, since I was there. Did you need something?”
“Someone. Do you know Nola Ventress?”
“The woman who organized the conference? Sure. She’s been in a couple of times. Including this evening.”
“I’m been trying to locate her. When was it that you saw her?”
Fran checked her watch. “About an hour ago. She came in and bought one of those dried flower arrangements we started carrying a month or so back.”
“She bought flowers?” Liss’s first thought was that Nola intended to put them in the auction, although she couldn’t think of a good reason why she would. “Did you see which way she went when she left?”
“Outside, I think,” Fran said. “She had a sweater with her, and she stopped to put it on before she left the gift shop.”
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