Scotched

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  Brain and spirits both revived under the influence of hot water, soap, and shampoo, but that meant Liss remembered more things she had to do. There was the matter of Lenny Peet’s dog, for one. Skippy was still incarcerated at the animal shelter. She had to find him a new home. She wondered if Stu could be persuaded to adopt a pet.

  She needed to talk to Doug, too. Not about Skippy. And not about Nola, either. There was no point in dredging up what must be painful memories for him. But she’d promised herself that she would take the funeral director to task over his son’s cavalier treatment of Lenny’s remains. She couldn’t let that go undone much longer. Who knew how many other bodies the boy, unchecked, might treat with similar disrespect?

  Once she got back to the hotel, she intended to pursue yet another matter. Minutes after coming to her stunning conclusion about Yvonne Quinlan the previous night, she’d recognized the need for a reality check. Yvonne’s Caroline Sweet character, the vampire, might be able to break necks with her bare hands, but that might be just another example of the fallacies perpetuated by television and movies—the sort of thing Nola had regularly poked fun at in the books she’d written under Yvonne’s name.

  Someone at the conference should know. A specific someone. According to the program, one of the panels had featured a speaker who was an expert on martial arts. Liss hoped he’d be able to answer her question. And, with any luck, he’d drop by the dealers’ room for the group signing after the morning panels or attend the closing tea so she could ask him.

  By the time Liss had downed her second cup of coffee and eaten two slices of buttered toast, she’d completed a new list: Things To Do Today.

  Dan read silently over her shoulder. He made no comment, but Liss suspected he planned to stick close to her until the conference was over. She was surprised to discover that she didn’t mind a bit. Looking back, she realized that the change had come about shortly after their confrontation with Gordon Tandy the previous night. Dan was no longer acting like a bodyguard. He’d become her partner.

  At a few minutes before nine, they left the house and crossed the square to the funeral home. Liss wore a simple dark blue pantsuit that was equally appropriate for a memorial service and a tea. Aunt Margaret showed up in one of her tartan skirts and a white blouse with a jabot.

  “Lenny was always upbeat,” she explained. “If he’s looking down on us, I think this outfit will make him smile.”

  The service had a good turnout. It was simple but moving. The preacher spoke a few words and then invited Lenny’s friends to share their memories. When Liss took her turn, she ended her remarks with a pitch for adopting Lenny’s dog. “As most of you know, his name is Skippy,” she told the crowd. “He’s a two-year-old fox terrier, and it would make Lenny very happy to know that he had a good home.”

  Afterward, when the mourners were still milling about before leaving, she heard Dan’s brother, Sam, talking to Pete’s mother. “Dogs are great,” he said. “My daughter would be lost without Papelbon.”

  “What kind of name is that for a dog?” Mrs. Campbell asked. “Papelbon is a baseball player, the closer for the Red Sox.”

  “And your point is? If I remember right, Lenny called the last dog he owned Tatupu.” When she looked blank, he added, “Football player, for the Patriots, back when Lenny was younger. It’s a fine old tradition to name pets after sports figures.”

  As Liss looked around for Doug, she wondered who Skippy had been named after.

  “I was hoping to speak to your husband,” Liss told Lorelei, who was resplendent in a black silk dress that clung just a little too tightly to her lush figure.

  “If it’s about adopting that dog, we’re not interested.”

  “It’s not.” Liss debated mentioning Frank Preston’s disrespectful attitude to his mother but decided it wouldn’t do any good. Better to wait and talk to Doug. Lorelei indulged her only child. When he’d gotten in trouble the previous winter, she’d taken his side against her husband. Instead of being grounded for a month and losing his cell phone and MP3 player for that same length of time, as Doug had proposed, Frank had been deprived of those privileges for only a week.

  “I wouldn’t mind taking the dog,” Betsy Twining said. “Is Skippy in the animal shelter down to Fallstown?”

  While Liss was distracted, Lorelei disappeared into Doug’s office. She reappeared a few minutes later, looking disgruntled. Liss didn’t bother talking to her again, but she stuck her own head into the office on her way out, expecting to find Doug there. As funeral director, he usually stuck around until all the mourners had left the building. To her surprise, the room was empty.

  A glance at her watch warned Liss that she didn’t have time to hunt for him. If he was down in the embalming room, she wasn’t sure she wanted to find him anyway. Telling him his son was a lout would have to wait. She needed to get out to The Spruces.

  Dan drove her to the hotel and escorted her to the dealer’s room, then headed for Fallstown to pick up Stu. As promised, someone had phoned Liss before she left for the funeral to let her know that Stu had been able to post bail and was free to return home.

  “It’s been a dismal morning so far,” Angie lamented when Liss slipped behind the Emporium’s tables. “It looks to me as if everyone who wanted to buy a book has already done so. Or else they brought books with them to be autographed. Books they probably ordered online at a discount I can’t afford to match.”

  “Cheer up,” Liss said. “The group signing starts at eleven. People will come in then. While they’re waiting in line, maybe they’ll make a few impulse buys.”

  “Optimist!”

  Dan returned while the last panel was still in session.

  “How’s Stu?” Liss asked.

  “He’s feeling very, very sorry for himself. And he’s ticked off that he wrecked his car.”

  “He should be grateful he’s out of jail.”

  “Oh, he is, and he seems to have gotten past the idea that he was responsible for Nola’s death.”

  “Gordon probably told him she’s the murderer,” Liss muttered.

  “If so, Stu didn’t share. When I dropped him off, the only thing he was interested in was crawling into bed and sleeping for a week. He was still pretty hungover.”

  “Poor Stu.” She shook her head. “And to think, for about a half hour last night, I actually believed he might have done it.”

  “And that’s why we leave the detecting to the professionals,” Dan said with a grin.

  Liss made a face at him. “Did you find out who was working at the front desk on Thursday night?”

  “I did. It was Tricia Lynd. I talked to her on the phone a few minutes ago. She worked Thursday night into early Friday morning.”

  “And?”

  “She saw Nola return from the MSBA meeting.”

  “And?”

  “Nola met Jane in the lobby.”

  “Nola did?”

  Dan nodded. “Tricia said it looked like they were arguing over something, but she wasn’t close enough to overhear what they said.”

  “Did they leave the hotel together?”

  “Tricia says not. Nola took the elevator. Jane stayed in the lobby a bit longer—she’d been sitting in one of the wing chairs, reading a magazine until Nola got back—then she left in the direction of the stairs. Tricia assumed Nola and Jane had gone up to their respective rooms. She didn’t see either of them again.”

  “What was she wearing?” Liss asked. “Jane. Did Tricia say?”

  “Is it important?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dan pulled out his cell phone and hit redial. “Tricia. Sorry to bother you again, but Nancy Drew here has another question for you.” He handed the phone to Liss.

  Tricia, who was the hotel’s only intern, a Jill-of-all-trades with an eye for detail, had exactly the information Liss wanted. She was smiling when she hung up. “Jane was wearing jogging clothes when she talked to Nola.”

  “So, she didn’
t change before she went out to the Leap. Maybe she never did go back to her room. But that doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know. In fact, the meeting in the lobby lends credence to Tandy’s theory that Nola and Jane met at the Leap and Nola pushed Jane over.”

  “No. I don’t buy it. There’s still the problem of relative size. Nola never trained as a stuntwoman.”

  An influx of people signaled the end of the last panels and the start of the group signing. Additional tables had been brought in so that all the attending authors could be accommodated. The dealers’ room was packed, but few bought books and no one showed any interest in the items Liss had for sale.

  Liss did manage to spot her martial arts expert and lure him over to her table for a quick question. Unfortunately, he wasn’t much help. Necks could apparently be broken more easily than she’d thought, but what she’d been thinking of as the “vampire snap” was, if not a Hollywood invention, then at least a skill usually reserved for Green Berets or Navy Seals or other muscular military types.

  “But if someone were trained,” Liss persisted. “Is brute strength a requirement?”

  “Well, no,” the expert allowed, “but you have to know what you’re doing. Why are you so interested in this, anyway?”

  Liss shrugged off the question. “Oh, you know—you see that sort of thing on television all the time. Take Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. The actress who plays Buffy isn’t all that big or muscular.”

  The expert’s expression brightened. “I love that show,” he admitted. “But I’m pretty sure all the neck breaking is done by vampires. Angel. And sometimes The Master. Buffy pretty much sticks with her trusty wooden stake.”

  Liss was still mulling over this new information when she spotted Davy Kline and his mother in the line to have author Lea Wait sign books. She turned to Angie. “You want stock signed?” she asked.

  “I was hoping the authors would stop by on their way out.”

  “Why don’t I take the books to them?” She was already gathering up copies of Lea’s children’s books, all of which were set in Maine. When she started to add the volumes in her Shadows mystery series, about a woman who sold antique prints and therefore had reason to travel to antiques fairs and other potential venues for murder, Angie separated out the mass market paperbacks. “Hardbacks and trade paperbacks only.”

  In short order, Liss was standing behind Davy Kline. When he eased his mother’s wheelchair up to the signing table and stepped back, she seized her chance. “You’re the one who found the first accident victim, aren’t you?”

  He slanted her a wary look. “Yeah. But I don’t really want to talk about that anymore.”

  “I understand how you feel. I was the one who found Nola Ventress’s body. And what made it worse was that I knew her a little. Had you ever met the woman you found?”

  Davy shook his head. “I just saw her around, y’know? I never talked to her.”

  “At the reception, I suppose?”

  “Then, and again later that night.”

  Liss’s interest quickened. She glanced toward Davy’s mother and was relieved to see that she and Lea Wait were engrossed in a conversation about the books she’d brought to be signed. “Was this in the hotel?” she asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Davy looked uncomfortable. “When I saw her again, it was around midnight. I couldn’t sleep, so I was standing at the window, looking out. They keep the floodlights on all night. Not real bright, but enough to see a little, and my room looks out across a roof. Over a porch, maybe. Anyway, she came out. I’m pretty sure it was her. She was kind of big and dumpy, you know? Easy to recognize. And she was wearing this jogging suit, which just made her look bigger. Anyway, she walked straight across the grass and disappeared into the woods. I thought that was kind of strange, because it was so late and all.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t see anyone else out there, before or after, and I was there at the window for maybe fifteen minutes altogether. Pretty weird, huh?” He hesitated. “I’ve been wondering ... well, you don’t think I should have told someone, do you? I mean, an old lady wandering around at night like that—should I have worried that she’d have an accident?” He was looking at his mother as he spoke.

  This was a very responsible young man, Liss decided, and one who did not need to be burdened with guilt. “You couldn’t have known what would happen. And I can assure you that despite what happened to her, Jane Nedlinger knew what she was doing when she took that walk out to Lover’s Leap.”

  She was willing to bet that Jane had arranged to meet someone there. That was still the only conclusion that made sense. Maybe it had been someone she’d been trying to blackmail, preposterous as that idea had seemed at first. The person she’d met might have been Nola, but Liss was more inclined to put her money on Yvonne Quinlan.

  “You’re sure you didn’t see anyone else out there?” she asked Davy.

  “I went back to bed maybe ten minutes after I saw the fat woman,” Davy said in a low voice. His mother had started to back her wheelchair away from the signing table. “I didn’t sleep well. I never do in a strange bed. That’s why I was up early and decided to go jogging.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Man, I really wish I’d just stayed in bed.”

  Liss stood for a moment looking after the young man as he and his mother left the dealer’s room. Then she remembered the stack of books she was carrying. “These are for Angie’s Books,” she told Lea Wait, dumping the whole pile on the table.

  “You’ll just want my name, then,” Lea said, and started signing.

  Having once started, Liss felt obliged to continue taking Angie’s hardcover stock to the other authors to be signed.

  “Not Yvonne Quinlan,” Angie said. “She already autographed all the extras while she was still at the store.”

  That was just as well, Liss decided. Yvonne’s body language and facial expression, whenever she happened to look Liss’s way, were decidedly hostile.

  Following the group signing there was a break before the tea—actually a late luncheon. During that hour, having closed the dealers’ room, Liss and Angie and the T-shirt dealer packed up all the items they’d offered for sale. Liss had her stock boxed and ready to load into the back of Dan’s truck in record time. When she glanced at her watch, she saw that she still had a half hour to spare before the tea.

  She turned to give Angie a hand and froze when she saw that the bookseller was ripping the front covers off one paperback after another and tossing the remains into a nearby trash bin that was already half full of similar discards.

  “What are you doing? Those are books!”

  “These are returns,” Angie corrected her. “Titles I over-ordered. They didn’t sell. Now they have to go back to the publisher. It’s cheaper to send just the cover, and that’s all the distributor requires.”

  Horrified, Liss struggled to make sense of such a system. How could the company that produced the books in the first place encourage their wanton destruction?

  “At least I made money on Yvonne Quinlan’s signing,” Angie said. “Good thing, too. Hardcover books can’t be stripped. I’d have had to foot the bill to ship them back to the warehouse.”

  “It was her popularity as an actress that brought out the fans. I’m surprised some of them can read.” Making the snarky comment made Liss feel marginally better. Petty of her, she knew, but she’d take comfort where she could. “Stripped” books—what a loathsome concept!

  “The woman certainly has had an interesting career,” Angie remarked, “even if she did fake part of it.”

  “Overheard that, did you?”

  “It would have been hard not to, since you were in my shop at the time. I’ve got to say, though, that she sure sounded sincere when she said she wrote her own novels.”

  “Aunt Margaret thinks she’s convinced herself she did.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose it would be the
first time an actor got lost in a role,” Angie said with a laugh.

  Dan let himself into the dealers’ room with a hotel passkey and was relieved to find that Liss was still there. The only way he’d ever come up with to keep her out of trouble was to stick close to her. True, his attempt to protect her from herself last January hadn’t worked all that well. Liss had ended up having to rescue him. But he didn’t have any better ideas, and this time around, she seemed inclined to accept his presence. Maybe being engaged to be married helped. In any case, in a few more hours, when everyone at the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con had left the hotel and gone home, he’d be able to relax and worry about something else—like how to talk the MacCrimmons out of formal Scottish dress as wedding attire.

  “Ready to eat?” he asked after they’d loaded her boxes and most of Angie’s into the back of his truck.

  “Always.”

  “Tea, huh?” They walked back inside together and headed up to the mezzanine.

  “A substantial tea, with sandwiches and little cakes. And a good crowd, I hope, since they sold tickets to the general public.”

  In spite of that warning, Dan was surprised to see so many Moosetookalook people in attendance. Margaret was there, of course, but so were Dolores and Moose Mayfield, Doug and Lorelei Preston, and his own brother, Sam, and his wife.

  Dan began to relax as they ate. Liss filled him in on her conversation with Davy Kline and the information the martial arts expert had given her. He considered what she told him and came to the conclusion that Tandy had been right, after all. He didn’t say so to Liss, but it made sense to him. Why couldn’t Nola have been the one to meet Jane at Lover’s Leap? She’d been seen talking to Jane just beforehand. And if Nola had taken a self-defense course somewhere along the line, who was to say she might not have been able to counter an attack by a bigger, stronger opponent by using that opponent’s own weight against her? He could see that—Nola flipping Jane right off the cliff. Of course he had no idea why Jane might have rushed at Nola, prompting her to defend herself, but he wasn’t going to quibble over details. He liked his interpretation of the facts far too much.