She didn’t recognize the location, but a lot had changed in the county seat in half a century. The faded sign above the porch identified it as a bar called Jolly Jake’s. Apparently, Jake hadn’t been too fussy about checking IDs, and charges had been filed against him for that oversight.
All in all, the story was sadly commonplace. A group of teenaged boys had been drinking. Well lubricated, they’d decided to go joyriding. The driver, who was the only one killed in the accident, was identified as Kenneth Hooper, age eighteen, of Fallstown. His passengers were listed as Charles MacCrimmon and Roger Mayfield of Moosetookalook and Peter Cramer of Fallstown, all seventeen years old.
So sad, Liss thought. And so stupid.
It was a fact of life that teenagers rarely exhibited good sense. She hadn’t been a good example of rational behavior at that age herself. She had, however, been one of the lucky ones. She’d survived her teens without doing any permanent harm to herself or others.
Scrolling backward for a few more months, Liss found the promised accounts of Charlie’s prowess as a high-school football player. His smiling face appeared in a fair number of photographs, looking enough like his younger brother to make Liss slightly uneasy. She’d found almost nothing about her father and couldn’t understand why that should be so. Hadn’t her mother said that the brothers were close? She’d assumed that meant they participated in many of the same activities, but apparently not.
Abandoning her search into Charlie’s high-school days, Liss scrolled forward to the year after Charlie enlisted. Her father’s name—Donald MacCrimmon—began to show up more frequently, usually touting some academic achievement. He’d won several scholarships and had excelled in college, where he’d majored in economics. Liss supposed he’d used a student deferment to keep from being drafted. It wasn’t until she came across a brief mention of the draft lottery that had replaced wholesale drafting of eighteen-year-olds that she realized Mac must have drawn a high number. He’d never served in the armed forces. Once he’d earned his bachelor’s degree, he’d returned home, gone into the family business, and started playing the stock market. Wise investments had allowed him to stop working at a relatively young age.
Liss gave up her search for more information when she came to the story that reported Charlie MacCrimmon missing in action. She was back where she’d started.
“Where did you go, Charlie?” she whispered as she rewound the microfilm. “And why didn’t you let your family know you were still alive?”
* * *
Since she had orders to fill, Liss returned to the Emporium after the police had gone. She did not, however, unlock the front door until Sherri came knocking.
“I have three bits of information to share with you,” her friend announced once they were settled in the cozy corner with mugs of hot chocolate Liss had nuked in the microwave in the stockroom and a bakery bag full of homemade chocolate-chip cookies, compliments of Sherri and Patsy’s Coffee House.
Liss blew on her drink to cool it and sent Sherri an expectant look.
“First, the state police took away everything Charlie left behind in Margaret’s apartment. Here’s the receipt.” She fished a folded sheet of paper out of her breast pocket and handed it over.
Liss skimmed the items on the list. “This is pretty generic. Cussler just wrote ‘miscellaneous clothes and papers’ for what was in the duffel bag.”
“Be glad she was that specific, and don’t tell me you didn’t already take a good look at what was inside.”
“Just a quick peek. As far as I could tell, there was nothing but his wallet, some clothing, and the confirmation e-mail for his flight back to Florida. You said you had three pieces of news?”
“While Cussler’s team was here, one of my officers found the car your uncle rented at the jetport. It was abandoned in the woods in Upper Mooseside. The steering wheel, door handle, and gear shift had all been wiped clean of fingerprints.”
“Well, at least that proves my father didn’t pick him up and drive him here, the way Cussler insinuated he had.”
Sherri finished eating a cookie before she continued. “There wasn’t much in the way of fingerprints in Margaret’s apartment, either. That’s the third bit of news. They found a bunch of yours, but only a few of Charlie’s.”
Liss considered that information as she took a tentative sip of hot chocolate. “Shouldn’t there have been more? Margaret left the place sparkling clean. She always does when she’s going to be away. Charlie must have stayed there at least one night. He made himself at home in the kitchen and the guest bedroom and the bath. I guess I could understand if he’d wiped the place down before leaving for good, but he was clearly planning to come back.” She felt her eyes widen as a possible explanation occurred to her. “Do they think someone else went in there after Charlie was already dead and tried to erase any fingerprints he might have left?”
Sherri waggled one hand from side to side in a “maybe yes, maybe no” gesture. “It could just be that Charlie was careful, but if his killer followed him into your backyard to murder him, then that person might also have known where he was hiding.”
“You are not making me feel any better. Does this mysterious stalker have an identity?”
“Not even a hypothetical one, but there’s something else that’s strange about what your uncle left behind. Look at the list. No phone and no laptop. That’s pretty unusual in this day and age.”
“What does the good detective make of that?”
“She’s not into sharing. I’m lucky she told me as much as she did. Speaking of her search . . . you might want to get a crew of professionals in to clean up Margaret’s apartment.” She produced the business card of a company that specialized in setting crime scenes to rights.
Liss accepted it gratefully and placed it on the coffee table while she ate another cookie. She knew firsthand how difficult it was to remove fingerprint powder. Bad enough Margaret would be coming home to shocking news about her brother. Liss shuddered to think how she’d react to learning that the police had gone through her personal belongings in her absence.
Sherri turned the card around to face her way and studied the embossed message on the front. “I ought to hire these guys myself. I can’t remember the last time I did a thorough dusting at my place, let alone gave the furniture a good polish.”
“I know what you mean. Do you suppose the housecleaning gene skips a generation?”
Sherri chuckled. “I blame it on having two little girls under the age of seven. And Adam may have turned sixteen last month, and may no longer be into finger painting or grubbing in the dirt, but my son is a total slob.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Liss grinned at her. “You know, you love being a mom.”
“I do. I really do.” She shook her head. “Darned if I know why.” She nibbled at her third cookie. “So, what are your plans? I assume you memorized the address on Charlie’s luggage tag. Should I warn Kelly Cussler that you have a tendency to stick your nose into murder investigations?”
“No need. I have every intention of staying out of her way.” Liss spoke in a firm voice, but she could tell from Sherri’s raised eyebrows that her friend wasn’t convinced.
Her next words confirmed it: “Fat chance!”
“What are you now—a mind reader?”
“I can read you pretty well. You’re just itching to find out more, maybe even take a little trip down to Florida to talk with people who knew Charlie there?”
“Even if I wanted to do something like that—which I don’t—the March Madness Sale is only eleven days away. This would be a terrible time for me to play girl detective, let alone contemplate leaving town.”
“And after the sale?”
“It will be April. I really hope Cussler has caught the person who killed Charlie by then.”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the shop’s landline rang.
“Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium,” Liss answered. “How may I help you?”
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br /> The volume on her mother’s voice was turned all the way up to a screech. Liss jerked the receiver away from her ear, then quickly resumed listening. It took her a moment to make sense of what Vi was saying.
“Calm down, Mom. Tell me that last part again.”
“The police came and took your father away with them. They think he murdered his brother.”
Her heart thudding, Liss tried to remain rational. One of them had to. “Did they arrest him, or do they just want to ask him more questions?”
“They could have gone on questioning him here.”
“Meaning they started to? What changed their minds?” This did not sound good.
Vi was so agitated, her explanation so disjointed, that it took Liss several more minutes to sort out the details. When she finally did, she could hardly believe what she’d heard.
“Okay, Mom,” she said into the phone. “You stay there. I’ll find out what’s going on and bring Daddy home. Yes, I will,” she promised when her mother expressed doubt. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Do I want to know?” Sherri followed her friend into the stockroom, where Liss had left her coat, hat, gloves, purse, and car keys.
“You may not want to, but you need to. My normally placid, easygoing father, the most agreeable husband in the world, the doting father and good neighbor, lost his temper with Kelly Cussler when she showed up at my parents’ place and started asking him a whole string of questions he couldn’t answer. After he told her, again, that he didn’t know anything that would help her find his brother’s murderer, she all but called him a liar. Mom says that made him so frustrated and angry that he yelled at her to go badger someone else. Cussler responded by saying he could talk to her in the comfort of his own living room or come with her for a more official interrogation elsewhere. He balked, she insisted, and since she had another state trooper with her—one of the beefy, brawny variety—they took my father with them when they left.”
“Under arrest?”
“I couldn’t tell from what Mom said, but it didn’t sound as if they read him his rights. Can Cussler do that? Force him to go somewhere with her just to answer questions?”
“That depends.” Sherri didn’t specify the conditions. “Did Vi know where they were headed? The state police didn’t set up a mobile command center in Moosetookalook, but Gordon used to make use of the conference room at the jail in Fallstown when he was investigating crimes in this area.”
“She didn’t say.”
Sherri punched numbers into her cell phone. “I’ll find out, but only if you promise me you won’t barge in on them.”
“I’ll be good.” Fallstown was a lot closer than Augusta. Liss dearly hoped Cussler had taken her father to the Carrabassett County Jail.
“This would probably be a good time for you to consult a lawyer,” Sherri said as she waited for someone to answer.
Liss reluctantly accepted that this was good advice. Although it was inconceivable to her that her father could be suspected of killing his own brother, she made a phone call of her own.
* * *
A few hours later, after darkness had already fallen, Liss and Dan once again drove out to the house on Ledge Lake. It hadn’t taken Sherri long to locate Mac MacCrimmon, and the lawyer Liss had called had extricated him from Kelly Cussler’s clutches soon after. Beyond that, the news was not good. He was definitely a suspect in Charlie’s murder, despite the fact that Vi swore he’d been at home with her all that night.
Since her mother was an exceptionally sound sleeper, Liss was afraid her word might not carry much weight. To make matters worse, it was no secret among friends and family that Mac was a bit of an insomniac. He often got up and wandered around the house at odd hours. Sometimes he even went outside for a walk, hoping to tire himself out sufficiently to be able to get another forty winks. It would have been all too easy for him to get into his car and drive to Liss’s house and back. His wife would have been none the wiser.
Liss was shocked when she saw her father. His manner was listless, his face haggard. He barely managed a ghost of a smile when she came through the door.
Vi, in contrast, was bursting with fevered energy. “This is unconscionable!” she ranted. “We have to do something to get that vicious woman off Mac’s back.”
“She’s just doing her job, Mom.”
“She’s trying to railroad an innocent man.” If pale blue eyes half hidden by stylish glasses could be said to blaze, Vi’s did. “Unless you agree with her that your own father is capable of murder?”
“Of course I don’t. And I can’t believe anyone else thinks that, either, not even the police. Why would they? What on earth would his motive be?”
Mac roused himself enough to answer Liss. “Money.”
Everyone turned to stare at him.
“What money?” Dan asked.
Liss’s father heaved a sigh. “You’d better sit down. All of you.”
He waited until they complied, making a small circle around his recliner. It was a sign of how dispirited he was that he kept it in its upright position. Liss and Dan shared the sofa, while Vi perched on the edge of a straight-back chair like a bird about to take flight.
“I tried my best to answer her questions”—Mac’s voice sounded rueful—“ but I honestly didn’t know the answers. Some of them didn’t even make sense . . . at first.”
“And now?” Liss prompted.
“From what I can gather, from what she said to me, and later from what the lawyer found out, she’s been in contact with the police in Florida. You know Charlie was a private investigator?” At Liss’s nod he continued. “Seems like he was well known to the cops down there. Well liked, too. And they knew who his lawyer was, so Cussler was able to get hold of him. That’s how she found out that Charlie’s will names me as his sole heir.”
Liss held back a groan. Well, there it was, the motive for murder, except for the fact that Mac hadn’t known his brother was alive until he was dead again, let alone that he stood to come into an inheritance from Charlie.
“It’s apparently a substantial estate. He owned property, which can be sold for a profit, and had a nice little nest egg in the bank.”
“Didn’t he have a wife or children?” Dan asked.
“Not that anybody’s mentioned.” Mac frowned. “Strange to think of anyone living for some seventy years without forming a single serious relationship. There’s got to be more to the story. I told my lawyer that. And I told him I wanted to go to Garden Park and talk to the people who knew my brother.”
“That does seem to be the best way to find out what he was up to.” Liss was curious herself, but mindful of her commitments in Moosetookalook. She could not, would not, offer to go with him.
“There’s just one problem,” Mac said. “I’ve been asked not to leave the area while the investigation is ongoing.”
“That’s not a legally binding prohibition.” Liss had learned that convenient fact years ago. “You can go anywhere you like, although it would be prudent to let Detective Cussler know your plans ahead of time.”
“So she can arrest him?” Vi was still fuming.
“She’s not going to arrest him. She may be suspicious of him, but she doesn’t have any evidence, and she won’t get any because it doesn’t exist. Besides, if her argument is that he knew he was in line to inherit, then it follows that he also knew his brother had cancer. Why kill him if he was dying anyway?”
“She figures I didn’t know that part of it.” Mac’s voice was glum.
Liss felt her frustration increase. Miscarriages of justice were not unknown. If Cussler was determined to pin this crime on the victim’s brother, she could probably put together enough circumstantial evidence to bring him to trial.
“This is absurd. There must be someone who knows why Charlie came back to Moosetookalook and why he hid out at Margaret’s.”
“Who did you have in mind?” Vi didn’t bother to hide her skepticism.
Liss gave
a helpless shrug. “I don’t know, Mom. I wish I did. Maybe he was waiting for Margaret to come home.”
“They were never that close,” Mac objected. “No, the answers must be in Florida, and if I’m Charlie’s heir, then I have a good excuse to fly down there and—”
“No.” Vi used her no-nonsense teacher voice. “You mustn’t do anything to make yourself look more suspicious to the police. Besides, your daughter is the logical one to make the trip. She has a knack for getting people to talk to her. She can contact Charlie’s lawyer and search Charlie’s home and office and ask the right questions of his friends and neighbors.”
“Wait a min—”
“You’re good at finding things out,” Vi interrupted. “You know you are.”
“Mom, I don’t—”
Liss’s father talked right over her objections, showing some animation for the first time since he’d returned from his interrogation. “She’s right, Liss. You’ve always been good at figuring things out. I’d just make a hash of it. I wouldn’t know what questions to ask. Even if I could get people to talk to me, I’d be no good at making sense of what I found out. Besides, the cops down there are just as likely as the ones up here to decide I’m the one who must have killed Charlie.”
“Don’t be ridicu—”
“Good,” Vi said. “Then that’s settled. We’ll make the plane reservations and pay all the expenses, of course.”
“Mom, I haven’t said I’d go. This is a really bad time for me to leave Moosetookalook.”
“If you’re thinking of the March Madness Mud Season Sale, I’m sure there are people who can take up the slack for a few days. You shouldn’t need to stay in Florida all that long.” Vi had moved to stand next to Mac’s recliner. They exchanged a look that reeked of satisfaction.
“The sale is less than two weeks away. Besides, Margaret will be coming home a week from today. How can I possibly—”
“All the more reason for you to deal with this unpleasant business as soon as possible. Before she gets back.”
Belatedly Liss realized her mother had picked up one of the two iPads on the end table and had gone online. From where she was sitting, she couldn’t see what sites Vi was searching, but she could make a pretty good guess.
A View to a Kilt Page 9
