Ho-Ho-Homicide (A Liss MacCrimmon Mystery Book 8) Read online

  The smell of frying bacon tickled her nose, reminding her that she was on vacation. What the heck! She could miss a few days of exercises, so long as she didn’t skip the stretches that kept her knee from getting stiff. She smiled to herself. It was good to take a break from her routine. Besides, at thirty-four, she was way too young to turn into an old stick-in-the-mud.

  The office boasted a second door. This one opened into a confined space with shelves lining one of the remaining walls and more doors filling the other two. Liss had opened the one to her right the previous night. On the far side, a steep flight of stairs descended into the basement. From the smell of damp earth that had wafted up it, she’d been able to tell that the cellar had a dirt floor, a feature common in this part of rural Maine. Liss had no desire to explore that part of the premises. Dan could do it and report to Gina on the condition of the furnace and water heater. She supposed there was a pump down there, too, to draw water into the house from the well. The Christmas tree farm was too far out in the country to be able to tap into a New Boston water main.

  Liss chose door number two and stepped through into the middle room. She wondered if at one time it had been a dining room.

  Hearing her footsteps, Dan called out that breakfast was almost ready.

  They were still enjoying their leisurely meal when Liss heard the distant roar of a motorcycle. When it grew steadily louder, she glanced at her watch.

  “That must be the caretaker, Andy Dutton. When I talked to Gina last night, she said he’d be over this morning to show us around the property.”

  She couldn’t see all of the parking area from the kitchen door, which opened onto a small porch at the side of the house. Dan was already heading for the living room, where the front windows offered a better view. Liss caught up with him in time to see a motorcycle pop out of the top of the driveway. For a moment, it appeared to be on a collision course with Dan’s truck. The rider brought the noisy machine to an even louder stop mere inches away from disaster.

  “Irresponsible fool!” Seething, Dan started toward the front door.

  “He didn’t hit anything!” Liss called after her husband. “For all you know, he skidded on a patch of black ice and careened out of control.” Liss caught Dan’s sleeve. “Give him the benefit of the doubt, okay?”

  She held on until he nodded. Only then did she release him and open the door.

  Their visitor had dismounted and was striding toward the porch. Clad in a bulky leather jacket and baggy jeans, the short, stocky rider wore a helmet with a face shield that prevented Liss from glimpsing any of the features beneath. Gina, she remembered, had called him “the kid next door.” He had the gait of a young person, too, and given the evidence of his food choices, he was probably somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five. As for the “next door” designation, that was relative. As far as Liss had been able to tell from the map, the nearest house to Simeon Snowe’s Christmas tree farm was at least a half mile distant.

  “Andy Dutton?” she asked when the new arrival reached the porch steps.

  “That’s me.” The voice was gruff. “You Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin?” With an abrupt movement, Andy shoved the visor to the top of the helmet, revealing a pale, plain, square face dominated by a snub nose and dark brown eyes.

  “That’s right.” Liss pasted on her best shopkeeper’s smile. “Please, call us Liss and Dan. Come on in and have a cup of coffee with us.”

  She got only a grunt for an answer.

  Liss puzzled over Simeon Snowe’s neighbor all the way back to the kitchen. There was something decidedly odd about Andy Dutton, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

  “Thanks so much for picking up supplies,” Liss said as she reached into the cupboard for another coffee mug. “Do we owe you anything for the groceries?”

  “Ms. Snowe took care of it.”

  The voice, less muffled now, was still husky. Liss turned, mug and coffeepot in hand, and nearly dropped both. The helmet was off, setting masses of dark brown hair tumbling free. Andy Dutton was not a young man at all. She was, very obviously so when she went on to remove her jacket, of the female persuasion. A sweater patterned with tiny snowmen hugged every curve.

  Well, Liss thought, that’ll teach me to jump to conclusions.

  “So, Andy,” she said when the three of them were settled at the table with full mugs steaming merrily in front of them, “how long have you been looking after the house?”

  “Ever since they figured out that old man Snowe wasn’t coming back.”

  Andy wrapped both hands around the coffee mug for a moment before taking the first sip. The temperature outside had dropped by some twenty degrees overnight, and it was only now starting to warm up again. She must have had a chilly ride, Liss thought, even if it had been a short one. The valley where the Christmas tree farm was located was one of those “usual cold spots” meteorologists liked to talk about during their weather forecasts.

  “I used to work for him part-time when I was still in school,” Andy volunteered. “He took on seasonal help for planting and again when it was time to ship the trees. We used to cut and net about a thousand of those suckers every year.”

  “Where did he sell them?”

  “New York City mostly. Those folks will pay top dollar for a nice Christmas tree.” She shook her head as if to say, “Damn fools!” and took another swallow of coffee.

  “I suppose there’s no hope of shipping trees this year.”

  “Too late in the season. They have to go out in October.”

  “So early?”

  Until then, Dan had left all the talking to Liss. Now he tipped back in his chair and regarded Andy through half-closed eyes. “Seems to me that places that sell Christmas trees don’t open until after Thanksgiving.”

  “But they have to have their stock ready to go beforehand. Takes time to get it there. Most states have their own regulations about what crosses their borders, too.” Suddenly, Andy grinned, showing very large white teeth. “Got to keep those invasive species out of the ecosystem.”

  What she said made sense. Liss knew full well what a mess milfoil was causing in some of Maine’s lakes. That particular invasive plant had been introduced from the hulls of out-of-state boats. Having learned that lesson, Maine no longer let campers bring in untreated out-of-state firewood. According to the news reports she’d heard, that was how the Asian long-horned beetle, a nasty piece of work if there ever was one, had taken over Ohio.

  Since Andy had been given an opening, she cheerfully supplied, in much more detail than Liss either needed or wanted, a list of bugs that posed potential threats to Maine trees, Christmas and otherwise.

  “I had no idea there were so many,” Liss murmured when Andy finally ran out of pests.

  “Did Snowe ever do any local business?” Dan asked before she could launch into a new lecture.

  “Are you talking about a cut-your-own setup?” Andy had polished off the last drop of her coffee and left the table to rinse out her mug. “He always used to say it wasn’t worth the hassle. Truth is, he didn’t much like dealing with people.”

  Liss collected the rest of the dishes and dumped them in the sink, promising herself that she’d wash them later. “What about this year? Is there any part of the tree farm that could be opened up to folks who want to harvest their own Christmas tree? I remember doing that when I was a little girl. It was great fun.”

  “Have you taken a look at the trees yet?” Andy asked.

  “Just a quick gander,” Dan told her.

  “Most of them are already way too big to sell. A tree gets much over seven feet tall and it won’t fit into your average living room.”

  “Most are too big?” Liss seized on that. “But not all?”

  Andy shrugged. “It takes ten years to grow a proper Christmas tree. Mr. Snowe planted seedlings ten years ago.”

  “Did he plant a crop nine years ago? Eight?” Liss asked.

  “He put in seedlings from the nursery eve
ry year. But he hasn’t been around to prune them. He didn’t do much by way of shaping his trees, but you have to do a little. Otherwise they don’t look the way people expect Christmas trees to look.” Using both hands, she sketched the classic triangular outline in the air.

  “That sounds like a lot of work,” Liss said.

  “Can be, especially when there’s only one person doing it.”

  Liss regarded Andy with undisguised curiosity. Was she imagining it, or was the young woman suddenly avoiding eye contact? “Have you done any pruning since Snowe disappeared?”

  Andy shrugged. “A little. To keep my hand in.”

  “So there could be, say, a few hundred trees available to sell, should the new owner open up a cut-your-own operation?”

  Another shrug was her answer, accompanied by a scowl.

  Dan sent Liss a speaking glance over Andy’s head. Liss was pretty sure they were both wondering the same thing—why had this young woman in the leather jacket, Christmas sweater, and baggy jeans done work she’d had no hope of being paid for?

  Liss had learned the hard way that it was a mistake to accept anyone at face value. Far too often, new acquaintances hid their true natures behind smiles and platitudes. Nine times out of ten, there was no harm in that. But the tenth? That was the one that caused all the trouble. By the same token, jumping to conclusions about someone’s guilt was also a bad plan.

  “Let’s get this show on the road,” she said, snagging her coat off the peg by the door. “I’m ready for the grand tour.”

  At the Quonset hut, Andy produced her own key for the padlock. Although the top and sides of the hut were made of metal, both ends were wood and both, as it turned out, contained doors. “The one on the other end is a modified garage door,” Andy explained as she flicked the switch to turn on the overhead lights.

  The interior was dusty with disuse and crammed full of equipment, everything from a John Deere tractor to two odd-looking contraptions with hand cranks that had been mounted on sturdy wooden tables.

  “What the heck are those?” Liss asked. They were made of metal and put her in mind of the rings lions jump through in a circus, even though they were way too wide to qualify as hoops.

  “Netters,” Andy said. “You use them to put netting around a tree so it can be shipped in less space. You’ve probably seen netted Christmas trees on the roofs of cars.” She bestowed a fond pat on the nearest of the contraptions. “We used to have three of these, but the police confiscated the other one.”

  Liss turned to stare at her. “The police,” she echoed. “Why?”

  “Because of the dead guy.” Andy paused in the act of brushing a cobweb off the shelf where several large chain saws were stored. She glanced over her shoulder, taking in the bemused expression on Liss’s face and the consternation on Dan’s. She blinked once, slowly, before turning to face them. “Guess you hadn’t heard about that, huh?”

  “Guess not.” Dan’s tone of voice was deceptively calm. The look he sent Liss warned her that there was going to be another long-distance phone call to Gina the minute they got back to the house.

  “Who is this ‘dead guy’ you’re talking about?” Liss asked. “Not Mr. Snowe?”

  “Of course not. Old man Snowe vanished completely. The dead guy turned up in New York City. The customer went to unload his trees and found the body, netted neat as you please, smack-dab in the middle of a stack of Scotch pine.”

  Chapter Three

  How on earth do you respond to a statement like that?

  Liss didn’t even try.

  The mental image that formed in her mind was macabre enough to strike her as funny when, at the same time, she knew the situation wasn’t amusing at all. It was horrible. She avoided looking at Dan and made a little hand gesture to Andy, sufficient to encourage the young woman to go on with her story.

  “Well, as soon as the dead guy turned up, the police got called in. They wanted to know how he got there. And who killed him. Because he’d been shot, you see. Murdered.”

  “Of course he was,” Dan said in a low, tight voice.

  Liss ignored him. “So the police came here.” It wasn’t a question. They’d have to pay a visit to the farm because the victim had been found among Snowe’s trees. Odds were good that he’d been put through one of Snowe’s netting machines. “What did Mr. Snowe have to say about it?”

  “He couldn’t say anything. The place was deserted by the time anyone came to investigate.”

  Now it was Liss’s turn to blink. “That’s when Snowe disappeared?”

  Andy nodded.

  “And you’re certain it wasn’t Mr. Snowe who went through the netter?” Dan asked.

  “Positive.” When he looked skeptical, Andy gave a derisive snort. “You think folks would have spent weeks searching the woods for him if it had been?”

  “Good point,” he conceded.

  “So who was the dead man?” Liss asked.

  “Nobody’s ever said. Maybe they still don’t know. I guess you’ll have to ask the cops.” Andy’s expression brightened. “While you’re at it, can you ask them if we can have the netter back?”

  We? Liss found the pronoun telling. “If it’s evidence, they’ll want to hang on to it.”

  Not that it mattered. She was not about to talk to the police.

  Her gaze returned to the two remaining netters, and her imagination, fueled by a steady diet of crime novels and a few firsthand encounters with murder, took flight in spite of her best intentions. Just how big a man, she wondered, had the victim been? A dead body would be deadweight. How had the killer gotten him onto one of those netter tables and through the hoop, never mind why? It seemed an insane thing to do, and pretty pointless, too, since the body was bound to be discovered eventually.

  Maybe that was the point. Maybe someone had tried to frame Simeon Snowe for murder, assuming he wasn’t the guilty party. He’d run off, hadn’t he?

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Dan said. “A man was murdered and put through one of Simeon Snowe’s netters and shipped to New York with a load of trees?”

  “Right.” Andy rested one haunch against the edge of a netter table, arms folded across her ample breasts.

  “And right before the body was found, Snowe disappeared, never to be seen again?”

  “You got it.” Andy grinned. “And didn’t that cause some excitement around here. The cops went over this place with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “I’ll bet.” The tone of Dan’s muttered response warned Liss that his patience was wearing thin. Given their past experiences, he was not happy to have encountered yet another mysterious death.

  Neither was she, Liss told herself, but she couldn’t seem to hold back another question. “What persuaded the police to take the netter?” There had to have been something—fingerprints, maybe, or bloodstains. Her stomach twisted at the thought.

  “Beats me,” Andy said.

  “I don’t suppose they told you anything,” Liss conceded.

  Andy shrugged and looked a trifle sheepish. “Well, to tell you the truth, they barely talked to me at all. My mom got on her high horse about them badgering a kid. She wouldn’t let me come near this place while the search was going on, either.”

  Liss studied their young guide’s face. “How old were you when all this was happening?”

  “Old enough to have been working for Mr. Snowe every afternoon after school and every weekend.”

  Dan had heard enough. “Time to see the trees.” He held the door open until they went through. From the Quonset hut, they headed down a gentle slope, their boots crunching on a thin crust of snow.

  Dan’s longer strides soon put him in the lead. The day was warming up nicely, but the mixed precipitation overnight had left icy patches. Liss hung back, both to make sure of her footing and to give herself another chance to question Andy.

  “You must have known Mr. Snowe very well. Could he have—”

  “Not a chance! He wasn’t easy to
get along with, but he wasn’t the sort to kill anybody, either!”

  “Why did he run off, then?”

  Andy scowled. “Who said he did?” She stepped over a chuckhole.

  “You’re right. His niece told us he wandered away from home and got lost.” The timing could have been a coincidence, although Liss had her doubts. “Was Snowe getting on in years?”

  This suggestion seemed to bother Andy even more than the possibility that her former employer might have murdered someone. “He wasn’t that old. He still got around pretty good.”

  “His mind was sharp?”

  “Sharp as his tongue.” Andy gave a rueful laugh, as if she was remembering some particular incident. If she was, she didn’t share it.

  They’d caught up with Dan, who’d waited for them at the end of the plantation. Seeing the stormy expression on his face, Liss hesitated, but she had to ask one last question. “Do you think Mr. Snowe might have been murdered, too?”

  Andy opened her mouth and closed it again, shook her head as if to clear her thoughts, then mumbled, “Guess he could have been.”

  Dan glared at his wife. “Gina definitely has some explaining to do.”

  “She may not know anything about this,” Liss argued. “And even if she does, that doesn’t change the fact that I agreed to evaluate this place for her.” But she held both hands up, as if in surrender. “No more talk of murder. I promise. Come on, Andy. Show us the rest of the Christmas tree farm.”

  Although Dan did not look happy, he kept his thoughts to himself as Andy led them in among the trees. From a distance, they hadn’t looked nearly so tall.

  “I wonder if there’s any way to market community trees to towns and cities?” Liss murmured.

  Andy was quick to squelch that notion. “Municipalities don’t pay for trees. They expect people to donate them.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Mr. Snowe used to plant about twelve hundred seedlings every year, half balsam fir and half Scotch pine, with a few blue spruce for variety. The spruces are more expensive, but some people really like the way they’re shaped.”

  “Which variety are these?” Liss reached out to touch the nearest bough.