“I think you’re right,” Dan said. “So, that’s that. Questions asked. Duty’s done.” He took her arm in a firm grip and steered her outside.
Liss had just settled herself in the passenger seat of Dan’s truck when the uniformed police officer they’d last seen doing paperwork emerged from the building. He appeared to be in his late thirties, a good ten years younger than his boss. When he spotted them, a frown creased his brow. After a fractional hesitation, he headed their way. Although Dan didn’t look pleased by the delay, he waited beside the open driver’s side door for the other man to reach him.
Liss stayed put. She’d have had to climb over the gearshift to get close to the two men, an awkward maneuver at best, but if she inclined her body a bit in Dan’s direction, she’d be in earshot of whatever they said to each other.
“I overheard what you asked the chief,” the policeman said.
By squinting, Liss could make out the name on the metal tag on the officer’s jacket—Michael Jennings.
“Is there really a chance the tree farm will reopen?” Jennings asked.
“A chance,” Dan conceded. “Is your interest personal or professional?”
“Both. My brother used to pick up work there sometimes. He . . . well, he had a hard time of it when his National Guard unit was sent to Afghanistan. It would be a godsend to have even a few more seasonal jobs open up in this area.”
Liss leaned farther across the driver’s seat, anxious not to miss a word of the exchange and hoping for a better look at Jennings’s face. “Can you tell us any more than your boss did about this murder?” she asked. “Is it true that no one has been able to identify the victim?”
Jennings bent forward and nodded at her, both in greeting and in answer to her question. “The way I hear it, they’ve tried everything, even face recognition software. Nothing came up a match except the trace of dried blood on Snowe’s netter.”
“And no one local knew who the man was?”
“If they did, they didn’t admit to it. The state troopers had us show his picture around, and it was printed in the local biweekly newspaper.”
“A photograph?”
“That’s what I saw.”
“If it was taken after he was dead, he wouldn’t have been looking his best.”
“I beg your pardon?” Her comment had him backing away from the truck.
“I’m not a ghoul,” she called after him. “Honest. I’m just trying to understand what happened. For the new owner.”
Jennings didn’t look convinced. Neither did Dan. After a moment’s consideration, the officer circled in front of the truck to Liss’s window. Dan got in on his side and started the engine so she could lower it.
“I suppose there’s no harm in your knowing what little I can tell you. No one from local law enforcement ever saw the body, and the investigators from New York didn’t release many details, except to say that he died here.”
“Was Simeon Snowe suspected of killing him?”
“I imagine he was, but as far as I know, there was nothing except that netter to link him to the crime.” Jennings’s eyes were a soft green and fringed by lashes a woman would kill for. Liss could see the sincerity in them when he added, “I don’t know anyone around here who believes Snowe was a cold-blooded murderer.”
“How did you discover he’d gone missing?”
“When we got word of this body being found and the police in New York discovered that the shipment of trees had come from the Snowe farm, I was sent out there to talk to Snowe. No one was around. The house was all closed up and quiet. Not abandoned. More like Snowe had gone into town to run errands. I waited around for a bit. Left and came back. After the fourth try, I started asking around among the neighbors. No one had seen him for at least a week. That’s when I sent out a BOLO for his truck.”
Liss nodded. She’d heard Sherri use the term. It meant “Be on the lookout.” “The thought must have crossed your mind that he might be guilty and had run off.”
“It crossed the minds of the New York police. They got a warrant to search the house, but it didn’t look like he’d taken anything with him. Clothes and such were all there. There had been no withdrawals from his bank account. No new charges on his credit cards. Later we found someone who’d seen him in town as late as the day before I started looking for him, but after that, nothing.”
“Did his truck ever turn up?”
Liss hid a smile when Dan asked the question. In spite of his reservations, he was intrigued by the mystery. Who wouldn’t be?
Jennings grimaced. “Yeah. Right on his own back forty. But Snowe himself? We never found a trace of him.”
“Maybe he was abducted by aliens,” Liss murmured.
She expected her facetious remark would make Jennings smile. Instead, he just shook his head. “You aren’t the first to suggest that.” At her look of astonishment, he tried to backpedal. “It wasn’t a widespread notion! Heck, it wasn’t even the only suggestion our local fortune-teller came up with.”
“You have a psychic working with the New Boston PD?”
Color crept from beneath Jennings’s collar into his face. “Rowena’s not a psychic. She owns the occult shop down on Commercial Street. Rowena Luckenbill. She’s something of a local character. A harmless eccentric, I guess you’d say.”
“I’m surprised to hear there’s an occult shop in a place the size of New Boston.” The retailer in Liss was intrigued by the notion.
“I don’t understand it myself,” Jennings admitted. “The place is filled with peculiar-smelling herbs hanging from the ceiling, and books on spells and the lost city of Atlantis and crop circles and such. But Rowena’s been in business for over a decade, so I guess all that weird stuff must sell to somebody.”
“Crop circles?” Struck by a sudden thought, Liss spoke more to herself than to the police officer. “I wonder if she knows anything about mazes.”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that one,” Jennings said.
“No. No, of course not.” Liss sent a bright smile his way. “Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.”
“No problem.” Looking relieved that they had no more questions, he touched the rim of his cap in farewell.
“Does it occur to you,” Dan asked as they watched Jennings pull out of the parking lot, “that Gina might have had an ulterior motive for having us talk to the police?”
“She’s in Chicago. We’re here.”
Dan made no attempt to back out of their parking space. “She’s a lawyer, Liss. There’s no way she didn’t already know all the ins and outs of Snowe’s estate, including the fact that he disappeared right after a murder.”
“So asking us to come to New Boston was a ploy to get us interested enough in the case to investigate her uncle’s disappearance and John Doe’s death?”
“To get you to investigate. Why not?” His hands clenched the steering wheel. “She knows you’ve tracked down killers in the past. And that you have an uncanny ability to spot things the police have missed.”
“I’m not sure Gina is that devious,” Liss said in a mild voice, “but if that was her plan, then it failed. I have no interest in sticking my nose into something that’s none of my business.”
“No inclination to solve a mystery when it falls right into your lap? Are you sure about that? You were asking plenty of questions just now.”
“That was just idle curiosity. The rest of our time here is for you and me.” She grinned at him. “Think of this as our second honeymoon.”
Dan visibly relaxed. He released his death grip on the wheel. “Good. Let’s go find someplace to have lunch.”
Chapter Four
They ended up in a small coffee, soup, and sandwich shop tucked away on a side street near the police station. Madison’s contained only a half dozen two-person tables. At the far end of the restaurant, next to a pair of commercial coffee grinders, a series of large bins held more than a dozen coffee bean selections. The smell of the
place was heavenly.
The menu was limited to “offerings of the day,” scrawled on an old-fashioned chalkboard to the left of the sales counter. The soups available were corn chowder and tomato, and customers could select either a BLT or a hot pastrami sandwich on rye. There were also two salad choices, both guaranteed to be “fresh-made.”
“I haven’t had a Waldorf salad in ages,” Liss declared when she’d read through this short list. “Apples and walnuts. Yum.”
Dan went with the pastrami.
They had to wait to order while a woman paid for a pound of breakfast blend. As they made their way to a table, another customer crossed their path, this one carrying a pound bag of unground coffee beans. Liss could hear the cheerful sound they made bumping against each other inside the brown paper sack.
They had plenty of seating choices. Only one table was already occupied. The coffee section, on the other hand, continued to attract a steady stream of customers.
Once they were settled, their coats and gloves removed in the welcome warmth of the café and Liss’s bulky purse, the one she always took with her on trips, safely stowed on the floor between her feet, Liss felt herself begin to relax. She sat facing the plate-glass window at the front of the café, with a superb view of all the foot traffic that passed by. There was a bench in front of it for the convenience of those who wanted to sit and sip their coffee in the fresh air. On this chilly November afternoon, it was unoccupied.
“We’re on vacation,” Liss announced. “No more Snowe business until Monday, at the earliest.”
Dan grinned. “With one exception.”
Liss cocked her head and waited, unable to guess what he meant.
“I saw your face when Officer Jennings mentioned that the occult shop had books on crop circles, and I definitely heard you ask if this Rowena character might know something about mazes.”
“Sheesh. No pulling the wool over your eyes, is there?”
“If you want to spend a little of our vacation time learning more about mazes, it’s okay with me.”
“I can probably find almost as much information online.”
“I know you better than that, Liss. You’d much rather read a book on the subject.”
“You’re being awfully accommodating.”
“Maybe I’m curious myself.” He chuckled. “I can still remember the first time I heard the word maze. One Halloween when I was a kid, maybe ten or eleven years old, my folks announced they were taking us to visit a corn maze. I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about until we got there, because in my head, I was spelling the word m-a-i-z-e.”
Liss laughed. “The Indian word for corn. How redundant. No wonder you were confused.”
On the other side of the window, a man in a well-cut gray overcoat stopped beside the bench Liss had noticed earlier and tethered his dog to it. She couldn’t hear what he said to the animal, but his body language conveyed the meaning. When he bent forward and used his index finger to point, the golden retriever obediently sat. As soon as the man turned his back, the dog was right back up again. A moment later it was looking through the window at Liss, its nose pressed flat against the pane. Liss stifled a laugh, causing Dan to turn in his chair to see what had tickled her fancy.
“Afternoon, Harlan,” a woman’s voice called out from behind the counter. The cook, Liss presumed, since the young man who’d taken their order was a baritone.
“Afternoon, Miranda,” the new arrival called back. He headed for the coffee bins.
“How are you and Jonas today?”
Jonas, Liss presumed, was that beautiful golden retriever.
“Just fine. Thanks.”
The acoustics in the café were excellent. Both parties spoke in normal tones, but Liss could hear every syllable with crystal clarity. She quickly reviewed what she and Dan had said to each other while they’d been sitting at the table and breathed a sigh of relief once she was sure they hadn’t touched on anything too personal. Nor had they mentioned murder or missing persons.
Warning herself to stick to neutral topics while they ate, she glanced again at the window. A woman and a little girl had stopped to pet the dog. The golden retriever danced with pleasure over the head rub. Once the child and her mother continued on their way, Jonas returned to staring forlornly into the coffee shop. A few minutes later the scene was repeated with a new cast when a young man of college age paused to make much of the dog.
New Boston might be five times bigger than Moosetookalook, Liss thought, but it was still a small town. It wouldn’t surprise her at all to learn that half the population knew that the golden retriever named Jonas belonged to a man named Harlan.
A voice Liss recognized as belonging to the previously invisible Miranda spoke right at her elbow, startling her. “Haven’t seen you folks in here before. You new in town?”
“We’re visiting for a few days,” Dan answered.
“Let me guess. You’re the couple staying out to the Snowe place.” From the tray that held their order, she off-loaded plates and steaming mugs of coffee. Her plain, pleasant face wore a hopeful expression in anticipation of learning something from them that would be worth passing on to other customers.
“That’s pretty good guessing,” Dan said.
“Might have been helped along a bit by the fact that the town manager stopped in for coffee on his way home last night. Did I hear you mention a maze?”
Liss saw no reason to keep their discovery a secret and reasoned that people who had known Simeon Snowe might have some idea why he’d planted such a thing in the first place. She described what she’d seen from the upstairs window of Snowe’s house.
“Well, I’ll be!” Miranda exclaimed. “If that don’t beat all.”
“So, you had no idea it was there?”
“Now, how would I? I’ve never set foot on the Snowe farm in my life.”
“But you must have met Mr. Snowe. I bet you know everybody in town.”
“Most,” Miranda conceded, looking pleased that Liss had noticed. “I guess you heard what happened out to his place some years back.”
Liss glanced at Dan. Having insisted that she wasn’t interested in cold cases, she hesitated to encourage their chatty waitress to talk about the murder or the disappearance, but it wasn’t as if she’d set out to interrogate the woman. “From what we’ve been told, quite a few things happened.”
Miranda’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, honey, it was a circus out there. The police practically lived there for weeks after they found that body in New York.” She leaned in close and lowered her voice to what she probably believed was a whisper. “Never did find out who killed him.”
Liss couldn’t resist. “What do you think happened to Simeon Snowe?”
“No idea. Of course, I make it a practice to mind my own business. Nobody likes a gossip, you know.”
On that note, she left them alone to enjoy their lunch, but she’d no sooner disappeared into the kitchen than the man in the gray overcoat—the dog’s owner—sidled up to their table. He had a bag of freshly ground coffee in one hand and an apologetic expression on his lean, age-lined face.
“I couldn’t help overhearing that you’re staying out at Simeon Snowe’s farm.”
Dan had his mouth full of pastrami, so Liss answered. “That’s right. We’re evaluating the Christmas tree business for the new owner. Did you know the late Mr. Snowe?”
“In fact, I did. We often crossed paths.” His lips curved into a reminiscent smile. “I guess you’d say we shared a common interest.”
From the look of the man—casually but expensively dressed, dignified demeanor, somewhere in his late sixties—he was probably retired from a business or profession. Given the entertainment options in a town of this size, Liss was pretty sure that the “common interest” he’d shared with Simeon Snowe was membership in the Elks Club or maybe in the local Masonic lodge.
“Such a shame to let those fields go wild,” the man continued. “I hope the new owner plans to do
something constructive with the property.”
A sudden suspicion had Liss frowning. “You aren’t in real estate, are you?”
The implied criticism in her tone surprised a laugh out of him. “Once upon a time I was a chiropractor, but I’m retired now. Harlan Woolgar, at your service.”
Following a leisurely lunch that was not interrupted again after Mr. Woolgar and his dog departed, Dan drove two blocks to Commercial Street and found a convenient parking space right across from All Things Mystical. Liss studied the storefront through the windshield of the truck with a vague sense of disappointment.
“What’s wrong?” Dan asked.
“I guess I expected the place to look like the Magic Box. You know, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Instead, at this distance, the storefront might have been that of a boutique or a bookstore. Two large display windows flanked a door that was painted bright red. One held an assortment of jewelry and charms, artfully arranged on tables and stands draped with black velvet and on a manikin dressed in a colorful caftan. The second window was full of books. From Liss’s vantage point, they appeared to be a jumble of old and new titles, although she perked up when she spotted a mortar and pestle on top of one of the stacks. And were those clay pots and jars in various sizes and shapes? Any herbalist worth her salt would use such containers to store potions and hand-rolled pills.
“This section of town has a nice mix of offices and small businesses,” Dan remarked, “though our town square has a better one.”
Liss followed his gaze to a dress-shop window. Winter coats were already on sale. Tasteful lettering on a nearby door announced that the premises belonged to a “painless” dentist. Liss’s survey of her surroundings came to a sudden stop when she caught sight of a sign that read DANCE-EX in large brightly colored letters.
Ho-Ho-Homicide (A Liss MacCrimmon Mystery Book 8) Page 6
