Scone Cold Dead Read online

  She remembered now that he’d been right here at the refreshment table when Liss had identified him. And later, when Liss had been talking to him, he’d had a blond dancer at his side. The blonde was nowhere in sight now.

  “So, sweet thing—what’s your name?”

  Sherri moved another yard or so away from him. She didn’t look his way again, and when there were no heavy footsteps following her she breathed a sigh of relief. Then a burst of song from the other side of the room distracted her. The attempt to render Bobby Burns’s lyrics in a Scots accent ended in peals of laughter, equally loud. An odd coughing sound was almost drowned out by the noise of the revelers.

  Sherri frowned. The overweight Lothario, gearing up for another try? She told herself not to turn around. She shouldn’t even glance over her shoulder at him. Either action would only encourage unwelcome advances. But there was something odd about that cough, and the wheeze that followed it. The hair on the nape of her neck lifted when she heard a strangled, gagging sound.

  Sherri looked back, expecting to find him choking on one of the hors d’oeuvres. She was prepared to administer the Heimlich maneuver.

  Victor’s face was red, his mouth open and gasping, his eyes bulging. He was scrabbling futilely at his jacket pocket.

  Shit, Sherri thought. Heart attack.

  No one else had noticed yet. They were all too busy enjoying themselves. Even as she reached toward him, he collapsed. Sherri knelt at his side, pulling her cell phone from her purse and hitting the button to speed-dial the dispatch center at the jail. At this time of night, the sheriff’s department handled emergency calls for the entire county.

  Sherri almost lost her grip on the phone as Victor thrashed about on the floor. His flailing hand struck her elbow with painful force. “Donna, this is Sherri,” she barked at the deputy who answered. “Send an ambulance to the Student Center ASAP. Possible heart attack.”

  Victor was still gasping and choking when the blonde who’d been with him earlier reappeared. “Oh my God!” she shrieked. “What happened?”

  “Has he got a heart condition?” Sherri asked. In the mere seconds it took to ask the question, Victor stopped breathing.

  Sherri tossed her phone to the blonde, hoping she’d have sense enough to keep the line open, and started CPR. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pete making a beeline for her and sent up a silent prayer of thanks.

  “He’s got food allergies,” the blonde wailed.

  Damn. Realizing that he’d probably been trying to get at an EpiPen, Sherri let Pete take over CPR and shoved her hand into Victor’s nearest pocket. She came up empty. She tried the others in rapid succession, but none yielded an epinephrine injector.

  This is not good, Sherri thought. If he was severely allergic, he needed a shot, fast, to counteract food-induced anaphylaxis.

  Pete continued CPR until the ambulance arrived, but with shocking suddenness Victor moved beyond their ability to save him. When they both stood aside to let the paramedic and the EMT take over, Sherri already knew that whatever Victor had been allergic to had just killed him.

  “If only I’d paid more attention,” she murmured. “If I’d turned around at that first odd little coughing sound—”

  “Guy didn’t have epinephrine on him, Sherri.” Pete’s arm came around her shoulders and he gave her a comforting squeeze. “Not a heck of a lot you or anyone else could have done. Who was he, anyway?”

  “Victor Owens,” Liss said, coming up beside them. She looked ghastly, and it occurred to Sherri that she must have known the victim well.

  “He had a food allergy?”

  “To mushrooms,” Liss said.

  “Mushrooms?” Pete sounded incredulous. “I knew peanuts could be deadly, but mushrooms?”

  “It’s not as common, but . . .” Liss’s voice trailed off and she looked down at the body. Seeing was believing.

  Sherri hadn’t encountered a situation like this before, but she’d read of similar cases. This was the reason peanuts had been banned in so many schools and on most airplanes. They were completely harmless to most people, but absolutely deadly to a select few. Severe allergic reactions were nothing to sneeze at.

  Sherri winced at the unfortunate turn of phrase her subconscious had provided. That one was almost as bad as the atrocious puns that guy, Stewart, had been coming up with all evening.

  “Mushrooms,” Pete said again. “Who’d have thought it?”

  “I don’t understand,” Liss murmured. “There were no mushrooms in any of the refreshments. I made sure of it.”

  “Did he usually carry epinephrine?” Sherri asked.

  “An EpiPen. He always had one on him. And he wasn’t shy about letting people know he had to watch what he ate, either. He knew what could happen.”

  “He was gobbling up everything in sight,” Sherri reminded her.

  “He trusted me to make sure it was all okay for him to eat.” That seemed to shake Liss’s composure all over again.

  At a loss over how to convince Liss not to blame herself for what had happened, Sherri was glad to see Dan turn up. With him was the punster she’d just been thinking about. Stewart . . . Stewart . . . ? Graham—that was it. Like the cracker. Stewart Graham.

  Dan tugged Liss close against his side. Though normally fiercely independent, she looked for once as if she welcomed having someone to lean on. Her arm went around his waist, but her eyes stayed on the body.

  Sherri had already searched Victor’s pockets. Now she lifted the cloth covering the refreshment table to peer beneath it. It didn’t make sense that someone with such a violent allergy would forget, or lose, the one thing that could keep him alive. He didn’t seem to have dropped it, though. At least not here.

  “What’s that in his hand?” the EMT asked.

  Sherri leaned forward. “That’s a partially eaten cocktail scone.”

  And he’d just consumed a whole one.

  Stewart Graham, beer in hand and staggering a little, took a wobbly step closer to the body and peered down at the bit of food.

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” someone asked. The older woman. Fiona Something.

  “Indeed he is,” Stewart Graham proclaimed in a ringing British accent. “Scone cold dead.”

  Victor Owens’s death brought the reception to a sudden and sobering close. Liss stayed until the medical examiner had made it official, but even after Victor’s body had been taken away, she was still struggling to come to grips with what had happened.

  “One moment he was fine,” she murmured, “and the next—”

  “We all knew Victor had that food allergy,” Sandy reminded her. “He always knew there was a risk he’d have a bad reaction.”

  “I can’t understand how this happened. I took special care that no mushrooms be included in the menu for the reception. I even went so far as to specify that no pan previously used to cook mushrooms should be used in the food preparation. Remember? Victor told us once that he almost died from eating a cheese omelet made in a pan that hadn’t been properly cleaned after making one that contained mushrooms and onions.”

  “If you’re blaming yourself, stop it right now,” Sandy said. “This was nobody’s fault but Victor’s. He was careless. Probably left the EpiPen in his motel room.”

  That did not make her feel any better.

  Dan took her arm and steered her toward the exit. “There’s nothing more you can do here, Liss. We may as well head home.”

  “I’m really anxious to see your place.” Zara’s tone made it clear she was changing the subject. “You’ve been gushing about it in your e-mails for months now.”

  Liss produced a faint smile, but her heart wasn’t in it. She reminded herself that she’d been looking forward to showing Sandy and Zara around her part of the western Maine mountains. Victor’s death wouldn’t change that plan, but it had certainly cast a pall over their reunion.

  “Give us a hug,” Sandy said when Dan went to collect their coats. “You’ll feel better.�
��

  As they embraced, tears sprang into Liss’s eyes. She wiped them away, embarrassed. “He wasn’t such a bad guy. He didn’t deserve to—”

  “Don’t dwell on it, Liss. If you’ll forgive the platitude, maybe it was just his time.”

  “It was so sudden.”

  “Kid, there’s no good time to kick the bucket. At least it was quick and relatively painless.”

  He was right. Especially about not dwelling on what had happened. She couldn’t change anything by wallowing in guilt.

  “I’ve missed you,” she whispered as she finally eased herself out of Sandy’s comforting arms.

  Dan cleared his throat. Liss didn’t even look at him as he helped her into her coat. Sandy held her attention by saying, “On a much brighter note, I’ve got a surprise for you, kid.”

  “Oh, goodie. I love surprises.” She managed to coax some enthusiasm into her voice. “What is it?”

  “Later. If you’re very, very good.”

  They collected their luggage, which had been left on the company bus, and piled into the five-year-old station wagon that belonged to Liss’s aunt.

  By unspoken agreement, Victor’s name was not mentioned again as they drove north to Moosetookalook through a light snowfall. Sandy told a story about a mix-up in room reservations at a gig in the Midwest two months earlier. Then Zara chimed in with an amusing tale of her own. It wasn’t that they were cold or unfeeling about Victor’s death, Liss knew. They were trying to take her mind off that dismal subject.

  They were halfway home before Liss realized that Dan, who was behind the wheel, hadn’t said a single word since leaving the Student Center.

  Moosetookalook was a small, quiet community—population 1,007—with a picture-perfect town square surrounded, for the most part, by white clapboard houses. A majority of them were no longer one-family homes but rather had businesses on the first floor and apartments above. Liss’s house was one of the exceptions. Situated next door to the building that housed Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium, it had a wide front porch and a bay window that looked out over most of the neighborhood.

  “It’s a Christmas card!” Zara exclaimed in delight.

  It was pretty, Liss acknowledged, now that a fresh white dusting covered the rusty piles of snow that had been such a blight on the landscape earlier in the day.

  Liss unlocked and opened the door and flicked on the lights in her foyer to reveal a flight of stairs off to their right. Lumpkin occupied the second step. All of it. The enormous yellow cat effectively blocked the way up.

  “Wow!” Zara exclaimed. “That’s some welcoming committee.”

  “Meet Lumpkin. He came with the house.”

  “Cute name,” Sandy remarked, “but not very flattering.”

  “My theory is that he was named after a family that appears in some of Charlotte MacLeod’s mysteries. His former owner was a big fan.”

  Liss expected Dan to chime in with a warning about Lumpkin’s tendency to bite unsuspecting victims in the ankle—although there had not been such an incident for months now—but he remained silent. She lifted the cat into her arms to get him out of the way, thankful that he’d slimmed down a bit since she’d had charge of feeding him. He’d originally weighed in at twenty pounds. Now he was closer to fifteen, but still an armful. When he kicked her in the stomach, she let him go, giving him a shove toward the living room.

  “Why don’t you two go on upstairs and settle in?” she suggested. “Zara, you’re in the back bedroom. Sandy, hang a left at the top of the stairs and you end up in my spare room. The love seat folds out into a bed.”

  “No need for that,” Sandy said with a grin. “I don’t mind sharing one of the big beds.”

  Liss distinctly heard Dan’s teeth grind together.

  “Come back down when you’re ready for cocoa,” she called after her two houseguests. “I just want to say good night to Dan.”

  Liss waited until Sandy and Zara reached the second floor before she turned to look at him. She’d never before seen such a surly expression on his face. “What on earth is bugging you?”

  “That spare room connects to yours.”

  “So?”

  “So just where is your good friend Sandy really going to sleep tonight?”

  “With Zara, I presume.” Liss felt her eyes widen as she finally caught on. “You thought he was planning to sleep with me? Get a grip, Dan. Sandy and I are friends. I’ve told you tons of stories about scrapes we got into on the road. How could you possibly—”

  “I thought Sandy was short for Sandra, not Alexander. It’s not that easy to shift gears.” He looked away, then back at her. “I was kind of hoping the guy would turn out to be gay.”

  “Well, he’s not.”

  That seemed to set him off all over again. “You know this from personal experience?”

  “That is none of your business!” How could she possibly explain what she had with Sandy? She could hardly say they’d “dated.” Surely that was a misnomer when two people traveled together with a troupe of dancers for months on end.

  “I thought we were in a relationship, Liss.”

  “That does not give you the right to question me about my friends.” Exasperated, she jerked open the closet door to hang up her coat. “I don’t even know why we’re having this discussion. This is so high school!”

  “You called him your ‘best pal.’ Exactly what does that mean?”

  “You’re out of line, Dan.” Besides, he didn’t deserve an answer if he thought so poorly of her that he’d assume she’d sleep with someone else at the same time she was involved with him.

  “I just want—”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake! Dan, go home. Come back when you decide to have a little faith in me.” Put out at his attitude, angry with herself for arguing with him about it, and suddenly completely exhausted from a long, harrowing evening, she opened the front door, shoved him through it, and slammed it shut behind him. She could still see him through a side panel. He didn’t move until he heard her lock the dead bolt with a resounding click. She flicked off the outside light, plunging the porch into shadow, just as he started to turn her way.

  Liss leaned her forehead on the door, resisting the temptation to bang her head against the wood. Dan was the one who needed some sense knocked into him.

  “Trouble in paradise?” Zara asked from the stairs.

  “Nothing that won’t blow over when he’s had a chance to come to his senses.” She hoped.

  As far as Liss was concerned, her relationship with Dan Ruskin was still at the fun, getting-to-know-you-better stage. She was a long way from being ready to plan a future together and she had no idea where this ridiculous jealousy had come from. What really hurt, though, was that he didn’t automatically trust her.

  She led Zara past the open living room to their left and the closed doors of closets and a bath on the right, down a narrow hall, and into the kitchen. It took up the entire back end of the house and included a dining area. This was the room in which Liss had made the greatest number of changes since moving in. New appliances had been a must—the ones already there had been at least forty years old—and she’d splurged on a small wooden drop-leaf table and four chairs because Dan had assured her the workmanship was excellent. The walls, those not taken up by cabinets, were decorated with framed prints of various cooking herbs set off by the pale green wallpaper she’d hung herself.

  “There used to be a formal dining room,” Liss remarked as she ran water into a large glass measuring cup, “but the last owner decided she’d rather have a combination library and office. She closed off the doors that opened into the kitchen and the hall, and now the only entrance is through the living room.”

  “It’s a great house.” Zara gravitated toward the back door, which looked out across a narrow strip of land at Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. “Does your aunt live above the store?”

  “She has an apartment there, yes, but at the moment she’s visiting my
parents in Arizona.”

  Liss put the water in the microwave to heat and collected packets of hot chocolate and mugs, taking them to the table. Some of the troupe preferred a nightcap after a performance, but she and Sandy and Zara had usually opted for a soothing drink of the nonalcoholic type. So much for the sophisticated image!

  Lumpkin wandered into the kitchen just as the timer on the microwave dinged. He jumped a good foot and came down wild eyed, claws extended, and the fur on his tail puffed up to twice the size it had been.

  “Settle down, Lumpkin,” Liss told him.

  “Nervous for such a big lug.”

  “He has his little quirks. Try to avoid sneezing if he’s in the room. That startles him, too.” She finished pouring the water into the mugs and got out a cat treat. Panic attacks never seemed to dull Lumpkin’s appetite.

  Sandy appeared just as Liss joined Zara at the table. He’d changed from the kilt into a comfortable fleece sweat suit that was the twin of Zara’s.

  Liss lifted a brow as she looked back and forth between them. “Cute.”

  He grinned and took a moment to absorb his surroundings before he turned one of the remaining chairs backward and straddled it. “You’ve done all right for yourself, Liss MacCrimmon,” he said as he reached for the steaming mug on the place mat. “I knew you’d bounce back.”

  “Even when I hit the floor of the stage with a splat?”

  “Even then.”

  “So, what’s this surprise you promised me?”

  Sandy reached across the table to take Zara’s hand. She always wore rings, when she wasn’t onstage, but the gesture called Liss’s attention to a new one.

  “We’re getting married,” Sandy announced, fingering the square-cut emerald. “In two months. And we want you to be in the wedding party.”

  “We had to flip a coin,” Zara said over Liss’s delighted congratulations, “to decide which one of us you’d stand up with. I won. You’ll be wearing a dress instead of a kilt.”