Kilt Dead Page 15

  “I know what happened.” Liss heard the reluctance in her father’s voice. “But it’s Margaret’s place to tell the story, not mine.”

  “Dad, it could be important.” She was relieved when he didn’t ask why. She didn’t know the answer. She just had a feeling it might be.

  After a bit more hesitation and a heavy sigh, he told her what he knew. “My sister was twenty-three. She’d been away to college but she came home after she graduated because our mother was ill. After Mama died, Margaret wanted to have a career of her own before she settled down and got married. Our father said she could take over the Emporium but she wanted to try something else, something away from Moosetookalook. Ernie didn’t want to budge and he didn’t want to wait. They quarreled something fierce over it.”

  “That’s it? That’s all there was to it?”

  “It was a big deal to them. If you want to know anything else, you’ll have to ask your aunt. Are you moving back into her apartment today?”

  “As soon as I hang up.” After a few more minutes of repeated reassurances, she said goodbye and broke the connection, but she continued to stand at the window, staring at the two houses, until Lumpkin appeared, twining himself around her ankles.

  “Do you want to go home?” she asked him.

  He gave her what her mother always referred to as “the hairy eyeball” and said nothing.

  Mrs. Norris’s house belongs to me now. The idea took some getting used to. Liss realized she could move in today if she liked, and take Lumpkin with her. Carried in her arms rather than confined to his carrier, she thought, remembering Dan’s rueful account of Lumpkin’s last journey.

  “I’d better check on things first,” she told the cat. “Who knows what kind of mess the police left behind.”

  She went upstairs to pack the few belongings she’d brought with her on Saturday. She’d be staying elsewhere tonight, so she might as well take her things. That would just leave Lumpkin for the next trip.

  Mrs. Norris’s front door opened easily with the key Mr. Carrier had given her, but she felt like an intruder when she stepped into the foyer. She was a teenager the last time she’d been in this house, lured by the promise of tart apple pie and spicy novels. Not only had Mrs. Norris offered a better selection of mystery novels than the library had in its collection, she’d also shared her favorite romances.

  Walking quietly, beset by the sense she might disturb someone if she made too much noise, Liss stopped first in the living room. The furniture was overstuffed and comfortable, and largely catproofed. Up on high shelves were the breakables—a Royal Doulton figurine of a nineteenth-century lady, a crystal vase containing a silk rose, and a small collection of bisque animals.

  The infamous window alcove contained a Canadian rocker, a knitting bag beside it. Liss didn’t sit down, but she did observe the view. Lenny Peet was walking his dog in the park. Children played on the merry-go-round. Marcia Katz was out on her front porch, talking to Stu Burroughs.

  “Better than television,” Liss murmured, “but it looks G-rated to me.”

  In Mrs. Norris’s library, old friends awaited her. She smiled a little as she recognized familiar titles and authors. This room showed signs of having been searched, but the disorder was not too bad. She could see where the computer had been—Mrs. Norris had always put dusting low on her list of priorities—and noted the absence of the stack of computer printouts Dan had mentioned. Remembering what he had said about the looseleaf notebook, she looked more closely at the bookcase nearest the desk. A blue binder lay on its side on the top shelf, its importance apparently dismissed by the police. Liss took it down and flipped through the neatly typed pages—no more than a couple of dozen in all.

  Just as Dan had said, they contained a series of brief notes. Every entry she stopped to read contained the names of fictional characters from mystery novels. Liss set the binder on the desk and began to skim the shelves. Yes, there were Anne Perry’s books and what looked to be the complete works of Elizabeth Peters right next to them. The novels were arranged alphabetically by author.

  Mrs. Norris’s collection of mysteries and romances had grown considerably in the ten years since Liss had last looked through it. To her surprise and secret amusement, a separate, smaller bookcase was now entirely devoted to something a little different. Liss pulled out a few of the titles and read the blurbs to confirm her first impression. She’d been right. The new section contained nothing but vampire novels. Vampire romances. Vampire mysteries. Vampire chick lit. Mrs. Norris had been a woman of eclectic taste. Liss browsed a bit more, then added Dead Until Dark to the duffle bag holding her clothes and toiletries—might as well expand her horizons! Tucking the looseleaf under her arm, she went next door to the Emporium.

  The main room was in disarray, as if a great many very clumsy people had been in and out. Displays had been handled, and some moved around, and the sales counter and window frames looked dingy where fingerprint powder had been applied. Some of it had spilled onto the carpet in front of the door to the stockroom.

  For the moment, Liss ignored the mess and went straight upstairs to the apartment. To her relief, the police appeared to have contented themselves with a simple search of the premises. She unpacked and changed into her oldest pair of jeans and a t-shirt before going back down to the shop.

  A closer look confirmed that fingerprint powder, some gray, some black, coated a number of surfaces but had not been applied to Aunt Margaret’s stock. Liss was grateful for small favors. She doubted she could have successfully removed it from the bag of a bagpipe or a stuffed toy.

  Tentatively, she rubbed at the powder with one fingertip. That seemed to make matters worse. She toyed with the idea of going back up to the apartment and using the computer to Google “fingerprint powder.” Surely the Internet would offer suggestions for cleaning it off. Then she remembered Dolores Mayfield.

  The librarian was delighted to be of assistance. “Vacuum first,” she instructed, “but be careful not to spread the powder around. Keep vacuuming even after you can’t see any dust. Then use a little soapy water on one small section at a time. Very gently. Then wet a clean, white towel with lukewarm water and use that to blot the area before the soapy water can dry. Then use another clean white towel to pat the area dry.”

  “And that will take it out?”

  “It should. Unless it’s on antique furniture, of course.” Her cheerful voice grated on Liss’s nerves. “The varnish on antiques is porous. Absorbs the powder and ruins the piece.”

  Dan noticed the absence of the crime-scene tape on his way home and wasn’t surprised to find Liss’s note on the refrigerator, held in place by the magnet his mother had given him when he bought the house. Shaped like a sampler, it read: “You too can enjoy the great outdoors—just miss a few mortgage payments.”

  “I’m at the shop,” Liss had written, “getting ready to reopen.”

  Lumpkin, standing by his food dish, made a rude remark but for once didn’t attack Dan’s ankles.

  “Yeah. You got that right.” He fed the cat and went upstairs.

  The guest room closet was empty and Liss had changed the linens on the bed. Fifteen minutes later, hair still wet from a quick shower, Dan loped across the town square and into Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium.

  Liss had left the front door unlocked. Dan didn’t feel much sympathy for her when the jangle of the entry bell had her jumping up, eyes wild, to wave a stained white towel at him as if she thought she could somehow use it to defend herself.

  Hastily lowering her arm, she gave a shaky laugh. “Hello. I guess I lost track of time.”

  “And common sense.”

  “That thing about criminals always returning to the scene is nonsense. Anyway, I left it open for you. I figured you’d come over when you got home. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

  “Save it for a bit. Pete came by the work site today. He and Sherri are bringing Chinese, if that’s okay with you. Sherri doesn’t go to work until e
leven. Pete’s on his day off.”

  “Pete and Sherri together? Oh. Well, that’s good, I guess. And so is the idea of eating in.” She looked down at herself and grimaced. Her t-shirt had almost as many dirty streaks as the white towel.

  “So, you’re not going to be staying with me any longer?” Dan tried to sound casual. There was no real reason for him to feel disappointed that she wouldn’t be sleeping in his spare room. He ought to be happy for her. If she’d been allowed back into her aunt’s place, that probably meant the police were moving forward with their investigation.

  “I really appreciate your putting me up, but it doesn’t make sense to stay any longer now that I’ve got other options.” She grinned suddenly. “Boy, do I have options, but I may as well wait until I can tell all three of you at once.”

  “Something good happen? LaVerdiere find another suspect?”

  Her face fell. “Not that good.” Her gaze shifted toward the door to the stockroom and just as quickly away.

  Dan wanted to push, to hear her “options,” but her words were a forceful reminder that she still had him filed in the “old friends” category. No sense beating his head against a wall. “Things bad in there?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t dare look.”

  “No time like the present.” He grinned and spoke in a poor imitation of John Wayne. “I’ll protect you, little lady.”

  Liss stepped in front of him to take the lead. When she opened the door, Dan felt his jaw drop. The police had removed half the contents of the room. What remained was liberally coated with splotches of fingerprint powder.

  “Oh, no,” Liss wailed, heading straight for several bolts of fabric carelessly tossed onto the table Margaret used for packing and unpacking merchandise. “That horrible black powder is all along the edges. I’ll never be able to wash it out. These are ruined.”

  The contents of boxes and bins appeared to be undamaged, although they had obviously been gone through, but there was more fingerprint powder on what remained of the shelving. One entire section, the one against which Mrs. Norris had struck her head, had been taken away, along with the tartan cloth that had fallen on top of her body.

  “What a disaster area.” Liss circled the room, careful to avoid stepping in the spill of powder on the wood floor. She shoved a box back into place, righted a wastepaper basket, and had started to straighten the oversized bulletin board her aunt used to keep track of orders due to arrive when she suddenly froze.

  Dan was at her side in an instant. He saw at once what had startled her into stillness. “Well, I’ll be damned. There’s a wall safe behind there.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Over containers of cashew chicken, beef lo mein, and fried rice, sitting on stools around Margaret Boyd’s kitchen island, Liss gave Dan, Sherri, and Pete a quick summary of her day.

  Sherri stopped chewing to gape at her. “Wow. I don’t know which part amazes me more, the news of your inheritance, that LaVerdiere overlooked the looseleaf binder when he searched Mrs. Norris’s house, or your discovery that Margaret was actually engaged to my father.”

  “Margaret Boyd and Ernie Willett.” Pete shook his head. “Still waters run deep.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sherri sent Pete a wary look.

  “Only that I remember my dad talking about Ernie in his younger days. He was quite a hell-raiser. He and Moose Mayfield used to get into all kinds of scrapes. And Margaret—well, she’s always struck me as . . . I dunno . . . sophisticated, I guess.”

  Liss thought of her aunt—dyed red hair, decked out in the traditional Scottish clothing she sold in the shop, a little overweight but comfortable with it. Sophisticated? Hardly.

  On the other hand, Liss had just as much difficulty imagining her with Ernie Willett as Pete did. Only if the old saw about opposites attracting was true could they possibly have made a go of it.

  “Whatever we think about it, that old relationship could be the reason behind Ernie’s actions three years ago. Now? Who knows?”

  Sherri held up one hand. “Okay. Before this goes any further, I think you should know that my father doesn’t have anyone working for him right now. If he left the store long enough to come here, kill Mrs. Norris, and return, someone would have noticed. They’d have seen the CLOSED sign or gone in to pay for gas and realized no one was there to take their money. We’d have heard about it by now. When he did close up on Sunday—when he came to the fairgrounds—at least a dozen people noticed, because all of them made sure my mother heard about it.”

  “Go, small-town gossip,” Liss murmured. “I’d already figured that out for myself,” she reminded Sherri.

  “Say what you will about the local grapevine; it comes in handy sometimes.”

  “What’s the population of Moosetookalook? A thousand people in all? Only that many minus the four of us and Ernie Willett left to exonerate.” Liss cleared the empty containers away, depositing them in the trash, and steered the others into the living room.

  “Sure you want to rule the three of us out?” Dan asked.

  “Better not,” Sherri chimed in. “Better safe than sorry.”

  “Better to let the police handle things.” Pete settled himself next to Sherri on the sofa as they moved into the living room.

  “I can’t.” Liss spoke more sharply than she’d intended, but she was getting a little tired of receiving this particular bit of advice. “As long as the murder goes unsolved, the shadow of suspicion hangs over me and my aunt.”

  Sherri slanted a look at Pete. “Are you sure you should be here? Technically, you’re on LaVerdiere’s side.”

  “Bite your tongue. And the same goes for you.”

  “I don’t like the way he’s doing things. He’s not even looking at anyone but Liss.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Do you know he is?”

  Pete glowered at her. Sherri glared back.

  Liss fought a smile at the sparks flying between the two of them. She had a feeling Sherri’s qualms about getting involved with another deputy weren’t going to be enough to stop nature from taking its course.

  “There’s no reason I can’t help out an old friend,” Pete said through gritted teeth.

  “We’ll both help.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  “Ah, could we move on to the actually helping part?” Dan asked. “There’s one thing Liss left out of her story. We found something in the stockroom.”

  “Did you know there was a wall safe behind that heavy corkboard?” Liss asked Sherri.

  “Get out of here! Really?”

  “Really. And from your reaction, you don’t have any idea what the combination is, either.” Liss had fiddled with the dial, trying various numbers, but Aunt Margaret’s birthday hadn’t worked, nor had Ned’s, nor had Liss’s father’s. All she’d gotten for her trouble was fingerprint powder all over her hands.

  “I didn’t even know there was a safe there,” Sherri said, “and I’m pretty sure I would have if your aunt used it regularly.”

  “It’s probably completely irrelevant. Speaking of which . . .” She brought out the looseleaf she’d brought from Mrs. Norris’s house.

  “That’s the binder I saw,” Dan said. “The police didn’t take it?”

  “Apparently not.” Liss divided the pages among the four of them. “See what you think. Even though LaVerdiere has ruled out blackmail, we need to keep open minds about this. Ignore the names. See if anything rings a bell. We’re looking for scandal in Moosetookalook.”

  Dan started to protest, then thought better of it. For the next few minutes the only sounds to break the silence were an occasional snort or giggle, the turning of pages, and the steady hum of the air conditioner. Finally Liss looked up. She’d recognized lots of names—all of them fictional characters in mystery novels—but she’d been unable to match the “dirt” with anything she knew about real people.

  “This one reference might be to Moose Ma
yfield,” Pete said, “but there just isn’t enough to go on to be sure. I can’t begin to guess at any of the others.”

  Sherri agreed. “Nothing leaps out at me, and I probably hear most of the local gossip. People repeat it to my mother and she tells me. Half the time it goes in one ear and out the other, but I think I’d remember the really scandalous stuff. She—” Sherri abruptly dropped her gaze. “Well, anyway, she doesn’t miss much.”

  “I take it I’m the subject of gossip these days,” Liss said, trying to pretend it didn’t hurt. “So what’s the betting? Did I do Mrs. Norris in for her money, or was I trying to rob my aunt’s store when she caught me?”

  “That’s not what they’re talking about.” Sherri looked no less ill at ease, but at least she met Liss’s eyes. “The old biddies in town, the ones who’ve forgotten that most of them were young in the sixties and seventies when things were considerably wilder than they are these days, are all stirred up because you moved in with Dan.”

  “Appalling lack of morals that MacCrimmon girl has!” Dan winked at her to take the sting out of his words.

  Liss didn’t like the idea that her personal life was gossip fodder, and liked it even less that the gossip was inaccurate, but if she had to be the subject of gossip, she’d much prefer the focus be on sex rather than murder.

  “Okay, enough about me. Since we can’t connect up anything in the looseleaf, let’s go back to the suspect list. What more do we know about Jason Graye? All we came up with yesterday morning was that he lives within walking distance of the Emporium.”

  Pete perked up, recognizing the name. “He’s had a couple of shady dealings in his real estate business.”

  “What kind?”

  “Not enough to give cause for arrest, or even bad publicity. Houses that weren’t all he’d claimed they were, except that none of it was in writing. It came down to him saying he told the buyer everything and the buyer insisting he left out a few details.”