Thought Number Two was that the biggest question she had to answer was not where Lee Palsgrave had been when her father visited his classroom, but where the murderer had been. How, Liss wondered, had that murderer known that the man he, or she, planned to frame for the crime would conveniently show up at just the right time?
Someone had to have visited Liss’s shop in order to figure out how to take the sword from the display window without being caught.
Someone had to have known that Mac had quarreled with Palsgrave and that he’d made an appointment to see him again.
Someone had to have known that Mac would also go into the classroom wing of Lincoln Hall.
No. Wait. Liss shook her head to clear it. Mac didn’t have to go there. He only needed to be on campus at the right time. She frowned. That Palsgrave had been absent from the classroom at the precise moment Mac went looking for him there—that couldn’t have been arranged. Besides, it would have served the killer’s purpose just as well if Mac and Palsgrave had met, just so long as the murder took place right after Mac left.
Abandoning that conundrum for the moment, Liss added one more requirement to her mental list. The mysterious “someone” would have to have sufficient strength to wield a hand-and-a-half broadsword.
One candidate once again sprang immediately to mind—Gabe Treat. He’d been in the Emporium with his grandfather. His girlfriend had been a work-study student in the history department and could easily have told him about the quarrel and the appointment. By Gabe’s own admission, he’d been hanging around the front entrance to Lincoln Hall on the day of the murder. And he was big and strong—perfectly capable of hefting and swinging the murder weapon.
But how had he hidden the sword, both before or after the crime? Liss’s lips twisted into a wry smile. She doubted he’d used the same trick the fictional Duncan Macleod had in nearly every episode of that old cult classic, Highlander. The screenwriters never had revealed that particular secret. Or if they had, she’d missed it. And now she was clearly clutching at straws! She reset her focus on Gabe. How could he or anyone else have brought the weapon back to Moosetookalook and put it in the trunk of Mac’s car without being noticed?
There was the matter of the blood, too. How had Gabe gotten rid of the inevitable stains on his clothing before Willa saw him? There was simply no way he could have butchered Palsgrave without looking as if he’d just finished a double shift at a slaughterhouse.
Liss’s stomach twisted as the only possible answer occurred to her—Gabe and Willa had conspired to kill Palsgrave and frame Mac. The theory made sense. Willa could have lied about seeing Gabe before she went into the classroom and discovered the body. That would have given him time enough to clean up and change his clothes, then return to the scene of the crime in time to be found comforting Willa when the police arrived.
Willa Somener arrived for work at Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium on the morning of Tuesday, July 21, looking as if she didn’t have a care in the world. When Liss had phoned her the previous evening to ask if she’d work at the shop again, she’d squealed with delight at the prospect of earning additional money.
“So, what wedding stuff do you have to do today?” she asked as she stashed her umbrella in a convenient corner of the stockroom. It was raining again, a soft mist that made the scene outside the window seem slightly unreal.
“Just odds and ends,” Liss said evasively.
Now that Willa was standing right in front of her, she found it nearly impossible to believe the young woman could have willfully conspired in something as obscene as murder. And yet, that theory had made perfect sense to Liss the previous night. She’d worked it all out. Willa and Gabe not only had means and opportunity, they’d also had motive.
After much thought, Liss had come up with what she thought was a perfectly logical reason for Gabe and Willa to have killed Lee Palsgrave. She’d been chagrined to realize that she’d have thought of it much earlier if she hadn’t been trying so hard not to dwell on her mother’s past sexual relationship with the victim.
If Palsgrave had been involved with one student during his career at Anisetab College, Liss had reasoned, then surely there had been others. It seemed likely that he had seduced other young women over the years. If that were so, then he might well have made sexual advances toward Willa, giving Gabe a good reason to strike out at him.
Another reason, she amended as she watched Willa wield a dust rag. Gabe’s primary motive might still have been to act on behalf of his grandfather. Who was to say that crackpot ancestor worship didn’t run in the family?
Liss contrived to broach the subject with Willa by leaving a copy of Palsgrave’s book on the coffee table in the cozy corner. At what seemed an opportune moment, she indicated the author photograph. “He was a handsome man,” she remarked.
“You aren’t the only one who thinks so.” Willa barely glanced up from where she was rearranging Scottish-themed knickknacks.
“A bit of a ladies’ man, was he?”
“That’s the rumor.”
Liss wandered closer to her temporary employee, trying to get a better look at Willa’s facial expression. “Did he ever make a pass at you?”
“I wish,” Willa said with a laugh.
“Really?”
Finally, the young woman looked up. Her cheeks had a hint of pink in them. “Oh, I know he was old and everything, but he still had . . . something.” Her blush deepened to rose.
“Does Gabe know you had a crush on him?” Liss kept her tone light and teasing.
“Of course not! Besides, it wasn’t as if I was ever going to do anything about it.”
“Too late now.”
Willa laughed again. “Well, yeah—unless I wanted to get real literal about the expression ‘jump his bones’!”
The dark humor of Willa’s remark caught Liss off guard, although she supposed it shouldn’t have. The younger woman had already demonstrated a quixotic nature.
Shaking her head, Liss decided to quit while she was ahead and be grateful that her mention of the murder hadn’t provoked Willa into another crying jag. Besides, the younger woman’s comment had opened up an entirely new line of thought.
If Palsgrave had a reputation as a womanizer, was it possible that there were more angry boyfriends or husbands around? Men other than Gabe and Mac who might have objected to having their women hit on?
Liss knew just the person to ask. She left Willa in charge of the Emporium and went upstairs to her aunt’s apartment. It was empty, since Margaret had already left for her office at the hotel. Liss had all the privacy she needed for an extremely enlightening phone conversation with Melly Baynard.
Chapter Thirteen
Liss returned to the shop after she talked to Melly, intending to stay only long enough to tell Willa she’d be gone the rest of the day. It was so quiet that at first she thought the young woman had left. Then she realized that Willa was curled up in one of the chairs in the cozy corner, so completely absorbed in Palsgrave’s book that she didn’t even look up at Liss’s approach.
“Willa?”
“Mmmm.”
“Willa, I could be a customer.” More amused than annoyed, Liss waited for that possibility to sink in.
“No, you couldn’t,” Willa said. She used her finger to mark her place and finally met Liss’s eyes. “The bell over the front door didn’t ding.”
Liss conceded the point with a chuckle. “What are you finding so fascinating about Dr. Palsgrave’s book? I’d have thought you’d already know everything there was to know about his version of history.”
“Not really. I was Dr. Halladay’s student, not his. I just got roped into the reenactment because it was going to be part of the conclave and he needed bodies.” A bemused expression came over her face. “I hadn’t realized . . . I think I should have told him about Serena Dunbar, no matter what Professor Halladay advised.”
“Your however-many-greats grandmother?”
Willa nodded. “She w
asn’t a fraud. I know no one believed her, but she really did find the effigy of a fifteenth-century European woman punched into the rock wall of a cave on Keep Island—that’s the family estate. Punched—that’s outlined with a series of holes made by an armorer’s tools, so that you connect the dots with chalk to see the image. Just like the Westford Knight. Only better, because the fact that there was a woman in the party means they intended to colonize, not just explore. I don’t know why I never put two and two together till now. I suppose I was more interested in the curse.”
“Curse?” Liss repeated, bewildered. The rest of what Willa was saying confused her, too. There was a second effigy on a rock? When did that happen?
“The curse was in the inscription under the woman’s effigy,” Willa explained. “It said, ‘Cursed be he who disturbs my bones.’ Silly, I know, but they used to believe in that stuff back in the fourteen hundreds. And there was a coin, too. Family legend says it was dated no later than the year thirteen ninety-nine and it was found near the cave. But someone stole it, so we don’t have it for proof anymore and the marks on the stone are really faint now, just like with the Westford Knight. They could be natural. But they aren’t.”
Liss was having difficulty following Willa’s rambling explanation. She got the part about the Westford Knight—the memorial allegedly left by Henry Sinclair to one of his knights, who was supposedly Alistair Gunn’s ancestor.
“I was going to do a paper on Serena Dunbar,” Willa continued, “but I hadn’t gotten started yet. There was too much else going on.”
“And Professor Halladay’s advice was . . . what?”
“Oh—that I shouldn’t mention Serena to Dr. Palsgrave because—” She broke off, looking embarrassed. “Well, she seemed to think he’d steal the idea and write a paper about it himself. I thought she was trying to protect me.”
Liss had heard of the pressure to “publish or perish” and supposed it could drive a particularly paranoid academic type to extremes to keep his or her original research secret until it was safely in print. Perhaps it was a good thing Palsgrave hadn’t known about Serena Dunbar. Willa and Gabe didn’t need yet another reason to kill him.
“If you ever do write that paper, you’ll have to let me read it,” she told Willa. Maybe then she’d be able to make sense of the story.
In the meantime, she still had her original plans for the day to complete.
Leaving Willa in charge of the Emporium, Liss once again made the hour and a half drive to Three Cities. The time passed quickly. She had a lot to mull over.
According to what Melly had told her on the phone, Professor Palsgrave had engaged in quite a number of inappropriate relationships with students over the years, although he’d always been careful to avoid attracting the attention of college administrators. In every case Melly knew of, however, the affairs had ended amicably, and all of his most recent conquests now lived too far away geographically to be likely suspects.
To Liss’s mind, that didn’t preclude the existence of a jealous boyfriend or husband. Melly had said she’d never heard any gossip to indicate that Palsgrave had been involved with a married woman, but did anyone ever know everything about another person? It wasn’t as if Palsgrave and Melly had been close.
Or had they?
Since she was alone in the car, Liss groaned aloud. Did she really suspect Melly of being one of the professor’s ex-girlfriends? She needed to get a better grip on reality.
All the same, she was glad Melly had an alibi for the time of the murder. Vi, Liss, Sherri, and Zara could vouch for her whereabouts and they had the bridal apparel to prove it.
After due consideration, Liss decided not to rule out the possibility that Palsgrave had a married lover, no matter what Melly had said. After all, her own father had told her that Palsgrave had threatened to go after Vi again. Liss contemplated that revelation. She wasn’t sure she believed Palsgrave meant what he’d said. It seemed just as likely that he’d been lying—trying to get Mac’s goat.
But what if he had been serious? That meant, Liss supposed, that she would have to question her mother. She ought to anyway, to find out more about the two times Vi had met with Palsgrave to discuss the Medieval Scottish Conclave. So far, she’d taken the coward’s way out, repeatedly talked herself out of having that conversation on the grounds that Vi had not been alone with Palsgrave on either occasion. Aunt Margaret had gone with her the first time. The second encounter had been the day Palsgrave came to Moosetookalook with Caroline and Willa.
The harder Liss tried to form a clear picture of Dr. A. Leon Palsgrave, the fuzzier it became. He’d been a man full of contradictions, as she supposed most people were. There were only two facts about him that she could be sure of. He had possessed a certain charisma where women were concerned. And he’d been obsessed with the subject of his research, the six-hundred-year-old mystery of exactly what Henry Sinclair had done while in the New World.
She thought about what Willa had told her. If she’d understood that young woman correctly, Serena Dunbar’s discoveries suggested a settlement on an island off the coast of Maine at an earlier date than anyone had previously suggested. Did that mean that Sinclair had returned home to Scotland and sent colonists back?
But if there had been a colony, what had happened to it? Had it vanished, like Roanoke? Liss supposed that was entirely possible. There was a wide ocean between the Old World and the New and a vast continent to get lost in if the settlers wandered far from the coast.
That sort of mystery, Liss realized, was the kind that might never be solved.
Once in Three Cities, Liss drove directly to Three Cities Free Public Library. Her earlier online search had revealed that Louis Amalfi, head of the Columbus First Society and the first name on her current list of suspects, was head librarian there. She found him in the stacks, reshelving books.
Amalfi was a hirsute individual with bushy eyebrows that cast shadows over eyes with deep bags beneath them. She watched him for a few minutes before she approached him. He moved slowly, shuffling along flat-footed from shelf to shelf. In spite of his ruddy complexion, he didn’t strike Liss as being particularly healthy. She put his age upwards of fifty, since his hair was more steel gray than black. He did look strong enough to swing a sword, however, especially if he were in a rage at the time.
Rage did not seem likely, not when it must have taken such careful planning to kill Palsgrave and frame Mac for the crime. Liss doubted Amalfi was the killer, but he was still worth talking to. He might have noticed something useful while he was picketing Lincoln Hall.
Aware that she could hardly expect a stranger to answer her questions when she was neither a police officer nor a private investigator, Liss had worked out a cover story, one she hoped would prevent any of her suspects from growing suspicious of her. If one of them really was Palsgrave’s murderer, the last thing she wanted was to appear to pose a threat.
“I’m here representing The Spruces,” she told the librarian after she’d given him her name. “You’ve probably heard that the Medieval Scottish Conclave is now being held on the hotel grounds.”
He pushed a big red book into place on the shelf in front of him and turned to give her a fulminating stare through beady black eyes. “I was aware of the change of venue.” The words came out clipped and impatient, at odds with his slow, shambling movements.
“Yes, of course. Are you also aware that, due to the unfortunate demise of Professor A. Leon Palsgrave, the reenactment scheduled to be part of the conclave has been cancelled?”
“I assumed it would be. Good of you to confirm it.”
“Yes, well, the hotel’s concern is to make sure those who planned to demonstrate at the event are apprised of the change in plans. Without the interpretation of history the battle represented, I presume you will abandon your plans to protest.” She did not make it a question.
Amalfi returned two more books to their places without answering, giving Liss time enough to begin to worry. “P
robably not,” he said.
“Probably not? What can you possibly have to object to if there is no reenactment?”
“Call it an informational picket.” Shoving the book cart in front of him, he set off down another aisle.
Now in a quandary, Liss trailed after him. Given that preposterous statement, she ought to concentrate on trying to talk him out of demonstrating. She might have lied about being a representative of the hotel, but she would not be happy if her wedding guests had to cross a picket line. On the other hand, she was torn. Amalfi’s stubborn determination to go forward in order to advance the cause of the Columbus First Society might be just the lever she needed to get him to talk about the day Palsgrave was murdered.
First things first, she decided. “Do you like walking a picket line?” she inquired. “I mean, I heard you were on campus the other day, right in the middle of all the excitement over the murder. I’d think that would put you off more demonstrations for a while.”
“The one has nothing to do with the other. And we were not on campus. We were on a public sidewalk.” He kept his back to her as he continued to shelve books. There were only a few left on the cart. Liss had a feeling she’d better talk fast.
“You mean you couldn’t see the entrance to Lincoln Hall? You didn’t see who went in and out?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “What are you getting at?”
She shrugged and tried to look innocent. “Well, it stands to reason that if you were right there, on the spot, you must have seen the murderer.”
“If I did,” he said stiffly, “I was certainly not aware of it. Palsgrave was a fool, but he didn’t deserve death. To be discredited, yes. Ruined in academia. But killed? No, indeed. A long life spent in disgrace would have been a much more appropriate fate for the man.”
Bagpipes, Brides and Homicides (Liss Maccrimmon Scottish Mysteries) Page 16
