Kilt Dead

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  If he’d killed Mrs. Norris, she was foolish to have come here. On the other hand, the plate glass window looked out onto the main street in Fallstown. Surely someone would notice if he tried to strangle her or inflict other bodily harm.

  “I have some time this afternoon,” Graye said.

  “I just don’t know.” Liss didn’t have to fake her distress. “It’s so soon after Mrs. Norris’s murder.”

  “A walk through the place. That’s all I need. I can’t set a price until I’ve seen what shape it’s in.”

  Did he expect mold and carpenter ants? He’d already mentioned the possibility of dry rot at their last meeting. Did any of those things actually need to be present for him to claim he’d spotted them?

  “This is all so upsetting. And just think—if I’d loaned you the key to the shop when you asked for it, you might have been there to prevent what happened to Mrs. Norris.”

  “My dear Ms. MacCrimmon, surely that’s unlikely.” Graye looked genuinely taken aback by her observation.

  “When I was here before, you said you’d never met Mrs. Norris. But you made her an offer for her house. A very low offer, as I understand it.”

  Graye hit the intercom button. “Barbara, get in here.”

  When she entered the office, he waved her into the second client’s chair. His own, behind the desk, was higher and arranged so that he was slightly in shadow while full sunlight fell on whomever he faced. He didn’t miss a trick when it came to getting the upper hand.

  “Ms. MacCrimmon was asking me about her poor neighbor. Did I ever meet her?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  Graye tented his fingers on his chest and looked properly solemn. “And the day she was killed—back me up, please, Barbara—we thought it worth a try to stop by Mrs. Boyd’s little shop to see if anyone else might be around to let us in. You were most anxious to get a look at that cloth, weren’t you, my dear?”

  Liss slanted a look at Barbara. The woman nodded warily but seemed a bit anxious about what Graye might say next.

  “Naturally, we found the shop locked, so we went ahead with our plans for the evening. We spent it together, at my place.”

  Only a slight start gave away Barbara’s surprise at this statement.

  “I don’t think that’s quite true,” Liss said.

  They both stared at her, but neither gave any more away.

  “You stopped in at the clothing store. The owner was quite pleased to have made a sale.”

  Barbara flushed a deep red. “I don’t ordinarily buy second-hand clothes. I was just trying to help her out. Small businesses have such a hard time of it these days.”

  “And you asked her if she had a key to the Emporium,” Liss continued, shifting her gaze to Graye.

  His expression bland, he nodded. “I had forgotten that. Yes, you’re right, of course.”

  “You seemed so anxious to get in. I wondered if you might have gone back again later. Perhaps you saw something on your second visit that—”

  “I told you. Barbara and I spent the rest of the day together. The night, too. At my place. We didn’t go out.”

  Again Barbara gave a slight start, but she didn’t contradict him.

  Was she just embarrassed to have her private life discussed with a stranger, or was she trying to hide something? Liss couldn’t decide.

  “Thank you, Barbara. That will be all.” But she’d no sooner left the room than he was on his feet and going after her. “Excuse me a moment, Ms. MacCrimmon. I’ve just remembered an errand I have for Barbara. Not something that can wait, I’m afraid.”

  He closed the door between his office and the reception area, making it impossible for Liss to hear more than the murmur of voices, but he was quick to return. She had no chance to snoop in his file cabinet or among the papers on the desk.

  “Now, then, Ms. MacCrimmon, if you’ve satisfied your curiosity, shall we set a date for me to go through the house? It is essential, I assure you, that this be done as soon as possible.” If he’d been insulted by her implication that he’d had something to do with Mrs. Norris’s death, he wasn’t about to let that keep him from earning a commission.

  “It will have to be in the evening. I’m tied up with my aunt’s store during the day.” And in the evening, she could make sure she was not alone with Graye. Dan or Sherri could watch her back.

  “Wednesday?” Graye was nothing if not persistent.

  “Yes. Fine. Wednesday at eight?” Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to get out of there. She felt claustrophobic in the office and the cloying scent of Barbara’s perfume lingered, making her slightly sick to her stomach.

  Graye delayed her for another ten minutes, hunting for and finding various bits of paperwork he wanted her to have. Barbara was just coming back into the building as Liss fled. Graye’s lady friend couldn’t meet Liss’s eyes and her cheeks turned a bright, betraying pink as she rushed past.

  This entire visit had been a wasted effort, Liss decided, except for that tell-tale blush. Barbara was nervous. But what did that mean?

  Liss went directly back to her car, parked in the quiet, tree-shaded parking lot behind the real estate office, momentarily distracted by the realization that she’d forgotten to lock it . . . again. She didn’t suppose it mattered. She’d also left the sunroof open to take advantage of the cooler temperature. If anyone had wanted to steal the CD player badly enough, they could have gotten to it that way. She hadn’t left anything else of value in the car.

  Sliding in behind the wheel, Liss started the engine and headed for home. Her thoughts circled back to Barbara Zathros. She was certain Graye had lied, and the best way to prove it was to talk to his lady friend when he wasn’t around. That would have to wait until evening. She knew where the other woman lived. Hermione Biggs’s house was exactly one block away from the Emporium, on the corner of Ash Street and Maple Avenue.

  Liss had driven less than a mile before she decided against confronting Barbara on her own. Much better to have back-up. She pulled onto the shoulder of the road and punched Sherri’s number into her cell phone.

  “I want to question Barbara Zathros,” she said when her friend answered, “but on the off chance she’s the one who killed Mrs. Norris, it would be pretty stupid of me to confront her by myself.”

  “That’s easily fixed. We’ll do it together. This evening, after she gets home from work?”

  “Come by the apartment. I’ll feed you first.”

  “No scones.”

  “No scones.”

  “Liss? I talked to my father today. I was wrong. One of the ‘shady characters’ he mentioned to you was Jason Graye. The other was Barbara.”

  “Well, well.”

  “Yeah.” Suddenly her voice went up an octave. “Adam! Take your hand out of the toaster! Got to go.” And the line went dead.

  Satisfied that she’d done everything she could for the moment, Liss eased back onto the road. A short time later she turned onto the hilly, twisting byway that was the time-honored shortcut to Moosetookalook and increased her speed. There wasn’t much traffic and she made good time, cresting the first of two long, curving hills five miles south of the town line fifteen minutes after leaving Fallstown. She applied the brakes as she started down the other side, nervous about taking the descent too fast, but when she let up, the PT Cruiser accelerated on its own. She tapped the brakes again, relieved when the car slowed. It had been running perfectly. She couldn’t think what the matter might be. She’d have to get it checked out.

  For another mile, nothing happened. Then, without warning, the throttle stuck again. The first tendrils of alarm made Liss’s hands tighten on the wheel and had her heart doing a step dance. This time when she touched her foot to the brake and let up, the car seemed to leap forward. Reacting out of panic, she slammed both feet down on the brake pedal. It was a mistake. The engine was still accelerating. She’d crested the second hill. Her action sent the car spinning out of control just as it started
to descend a treacherously curving slope.

  Disbelief slowed Liss’s response time. This couldn’t be happening. By the time she jerked at the emergency brake, she was flying down the hill. A horrendous sound, a grinding and squealing, told her the brake was trying to do its job, but the car didn’t slow. And then, to her horror, she saw that an SUV was coming the other way. She jerked the wheel, desperate to stay on her own side of the road, but she overcompensated. The next thing she knew, she was heading straight for the guard rail.

  Impact came a moment later as her car struck with bone-jarring force. Metal screamed as the barrier gave way. Her airbag deployed, smacking her in the face with enough force to make her wonder if her nose had been broken. It brought with it a smell and a cloud of fine powder that had her choking. And while she sputtered and coughed, her car continued on, bumping over a few feet of gravel before it reached the edge. Dimly, Liss realized she was airborne . . . and headed straight for a hard landing in the middle of the Kenebscot River.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “ If you feel yourself start to fall, go limp.”

  The long-ago voice of a ski instructor came back to Liss as her car plummeted. The air bag was already deflating. Big help that was going to be! The skiing hadn’t gone well either. She’d taken a total of five lessons before deciding she didn’t like being out in icy cold weather on the top of a mountain.

  Relax! Her mind screamed the message in her own voice this time, and she willed herself not to tense up in the split-second before water geysered up on all sides. Liss’s seat belt jerked tight, knocking the breath out of her. For a moment she felt as if she were still suspended in space. Then her stomach settled, her heart dropped back out of her throat, and she realized that the car had landed right-side up. It was moving sluggishly downriver.

  Fumbling to shove the useless air bag out of the way, still coughing from the dust it had released, Liss needed two tries to unlatch her seat belt. She clawed at the door, trying to open it, but the car was sinking. There was already too much pressure against the outside. It wouldn’t budge.

  Spurred on by the sound of water lapping against the sides of the car, Liss pushed at the button to lower the driver’s side window. Nothing happened. She made a sound of exasperation. The engine had stalled. No power, no power windows.

  Through the cracked windshield she could see the water rising. It was over the hood of the car, inching toward her. All right. She wouldn’t panic. If the car sank, it would fill slowly with water until the pressure equalized enough for her to open the door.

  All she had to do was find a pocket of air and wait it out.

  A drop of water landed on her nose, jerking her attention upward to the open sunroof. Damn! Without power, she couldn’t close it. Another couple of minutes and water was going to come gushing in. So much for waiting it out.

  Liss blinked. Idiot. She was looking at an open sunroof.

  Pushing aside her seat belt and the remains of the air bag, her heart thudding like a jackhammer, she eased herself out from behind the steering wheel and up onto the seat. As she got her legs beneath her, her bad knee gave a warning twinge. She ignored it, distracted by the way the car tilted with the shift of weight.

  Don’t rock the boat!

  She was trembling and couldn’t seem to stop as she clambered awkwardly upright, standing on the seat to thrust the upper half of her body through the opening. With every movement, the sinking vehicle swayed. If it tipped over and sank, she’d probably be trapped beneath it. Bracing her hands against the sides of the sunroof, Liss levered herself upward until she was sitting on the roof of the car.

  The water had reached the top of the windows. With no time to lose, Liss pulled the rest of the way out of the opening and launched herself into the water. It wasn’t the most graceful of dives, but it took her far enough away from the sinking vehicle to keep her from being caught in the whirlpool as it disappeared beneath the surface.

  She didn’t look back. The river was deep but not wide. Ignoring a growing number of aches and pains, she struck out for shore. Cars had stopped along the road, including the SUV she’d swerved to avoid. Someone was scrambling down the bank toward her.

  Strangers helped her out of the river and bundled her into blankets. One of them used his cell phone to call the police and it wasn’t long before a deputy sheriff showed up.

  “I can’t show you my driver’s license,” Liss told him when he asked for her name. “I left my purse in the car.”

  Paramedics arrived next, wanting to take her to the hospital to be checked over. “You’re in shock,” one of them said.

  “I’ll get over it. I want to go home.”

  “You wouldn’t if you could get a good look at yourself.”

  She had no real concept of time passing while she sat in the back of the deputy’s cruiser, but more and more people kept showing up. The sheriff herself. Then Sherri. Then LaVerdiere.

  “The throttle stuck?” LaVerdiere sounded skeptical.

  “I don’t understand it,” Liss murmured. “The car isn’t that old. I suppose it’s a total loss.” Her mind was starting to function again, now that she’d stopped shaking, but slowly. The car, her purse with her identification and credit cards, and her cell phone—everything was at the bottom of the river.

  Sherri touched her arm and waited until Liss met her worried gaze. “Liss, where did you park in Fallstown? Could someone have tampered with the car?”

  Liss took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “You think someone tried to kill me? Like they cut the brakes or something?” Unable to absorb the enormity of that possibility, she tried to make a joke of it. “Oh, goody. That must mean I’ve been promoted from prime suspect to second victim.”

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions here,” LaVerdiere warned. “We’ll pull your car out of the river and take a look at it, but at the moment this is just another traffic accident. Unless the guilt’s getting to you. Maybe what we have here is a case of attempted suicide.”

  “He is joking, right?” Liss asked of no one in particular.

  “Why would anyone try to kill you, Ms. MacCrimmon?” Sheriff Lassiter asked. “Do you know something about Amanda Norris’s murder that you haven’t shared with the police?”

  “She’s been asking questions, okay?” Sherri ignored LaVerdiere and spoke to her boss. “So have I. Maybe someone’s getting nervous.”

  “Who do you suspect?” Unwilling to let another officer interfere in his case, LaVerdiere reluctantly pulled out his notebook and prepared to write down names.

  Liss, with interjections from Sherri, told him everything. Unfortunately, it didn’t amount to much. He showed minimal interest in the blue looseleaf and dismissed her suspicions of Jason Graye and Barbara Zathros as the result of too much imagination.

  It was getting dark by the time Sherri drove Liss home. “I still want to talk to Barbara,” Liss told her as they turned onto Pine Street. “It’s a cinch LaVerdiere won’t.”

  “No way. Not tonight. You’re going straight to bed. If you don’t hurt all over now, you will by morning. I hate to tell you this, but you have a fat lip and burns on your hands and I’m betting you’ve got some spectacular bruises all across your torso from the seat belt. Besides—Well, damn.”

  Ned was parked in front of the Emporium. He jumped out of his car as soon as he saw Sherri’s truck. His face blanched when Liss eased herself out of the passenger side.

  “What—? You look like . . . what happened to you?”

  “Little accident. I’m fine.”

  Ned took a moment to process that, then reverted to form. “Where have you been all day? I’ve been sitting in the car for hours. You never did give me a key after you changed the locks.”

  “Sorry, Ned. What did you want?” She was limping as she started up the walk to the porch.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day. About snooping around on your own. If you’re still determined to do that, there’s someone
you should take a hard look at. Guy named Jason Graye. He has a real estate office in Fallstown.”

  Liss exchanged a look with Sherri. “I know who he is.”

  “Yeah? Well, watch out for him. He’s shifty.”

  “And how is it that you know that, Ned?”

  “He tried to con me. Wanted me to give him information about the Emporium, or better yet, let him inside to look around.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the way he operates. So I hear. Snoops around properties he wants to buy, looking for structural problems and the like. Figures if he can point out that the place needs expensive repairs, the owner will be quicker to sell and for less.”

  Struck by a thought, Liss turned slowly to face her cousin. “Ned, did you tell Jason Graye about the key over the back door?”

  “No! Of course not.” His innocent look faded into a frown. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re the one who just suggested he might be the killer,” she reminded him. “That could explain how he got in.”

  “Yeah, but that would mean it was partly my fault.”

  She could see he didn’t like that idea. Typical Ned—self-centered and inconsiderate, but probably sincere in his concern for his mother’s future, at least insofar as he expected to one day inherit whatever she had left. Now that Liss knew how precarious Aunt Margaret’s finances were, she had some sympathy for her cousin . . . but more for her aunt.

  Sherri stayed after Ned had gone, accepting Liss’s offer of a cup of tea. “If your car was somehow tampered with, you should let the police handle things from now on.”

  “I might, if I thought LaVerdiere knew what he was doing. Ned’s claims make me even more certain someone needs to follow up with Barbara. You said your father thinks Graye is a suspicious character, too?”

  Sherri gave Liss a brief account of her visit to Ernie Willett. “When he came back in from pumping gas,” she added, “he told me he wanted a chance to get to know Adam, be a real grandfather to him. I was floored. All this time, he’s never shown any interest. I thought he didn’t care. I guess that just proves you can never predict what other people will do.”