A Wee Christmas Homicide (14 page)

Dan checked his watch. He could get someone to cover for him here at the hotel for an hour or two.

“What do you say we take a run out to his place? See if he’s home?”

Liss caught his hand and turned his wrist so she could see the time. A horrified expression on her face, she leapt up. “I can’t! I’ve got to get ready for this evening’s ceremony!”

Rising more slowly, Dan grimaced. “Eleven pipers, right?”

But she was already out the door.

“And I’m betting they’re playing
bag
pipes,” he muttered. He wondered if the ear protectors he wore when he used his noisiest saw would be able to drown out the sound.

He did not take the time to go home and get them, but that evening, when he heard the first blat of a bagpipe from the ballroom, he wished he had. The performers were tuning their instruments but it sounded more like they were torturing cats.

Several of the musicians—Dan used the term loosely—were people he knew. He was only slightly surprised that Gordon Tandy was one of them. Dan had known for some time that an interest in all things Scottish was one of the things Liss and Tandy had in common.

Over the course of the next few minutes, every adoring sigh and approving comment Dan heard from women in the audience sent his mood spiraling downward. What was it about females and men in kilts? He just didn’t get it.

Rather than be forced to endure the sight of Liss fawning over Gordon Tandy, Dan headed for his father’s office. There was always paperwork to catch up on and maybe, just maybe, he’d be out of range of the bagpipe serenade.

Annoyed at himself, Dan sat and stared at the screen saver. He made no move to bring up data files. That old devil, jealousy, had raised its ugly head again. He’d really thought he had it under control. He certainly knew by now that it did no good to glower at Gordon Tandy. Diss him and he’d just drive Liss further away…straight into the other man’s arms.

She
liked
the guy.

Even if Liss married me,
Dan thought,
she’d probably still want to be Tandy’s friend.

Whoa! Where had that come from? He and Liss had agreed months ago that they weren’t going to rush things. She wasn’t interested in getting hitched and settling down.

Neither was he. Was he?

Maybe he was. Every time he watched her talk and laugh with Gordon Tandy his chest got tight and his hands automatically curled into fists. He was tired of sharing, but he had no idea how to remedy the situation.

Beating up on Gordon Tandy wasn’t an option, even supposing he’d come out the winner. Too bad duels were out of fashion. As Dan attempted to settle down and work on the hotel accounts, a curiously appealing fantasy played out in his head, a particularly bloody scenario in which he was the swashbuckling hero who rescued Liss from a dastardly villain who just happened to look a lot like Gordon Tandy.

Dan always had liked old Errol Flynn movies.

The ceremony would start a little late.

Liss had been about to introduce her eleven pipers when one of them announced that he needed to change a reed. Left to twiddle her thumbs while he did so, Liss sidled up to Gordon.

“Still mad at me?”

“I should be.”

She smiled at him. “You look wonderful in that kilt.”

“I smell like moth balls. Stop trying to butter me up.”

“Pipes sound a little rough.”

“You know what they say: old pipers never die; their bags just dry up.”

Liss obligingly groaned at the corny T-shirt slogan. “You should give some thought to playing regularly again,” she said as she watched him adjust the drones. “All work and no play and all that.”

“I guess it’s more likely than going back to either of my other old hobbies, though I have to admit I sometimes miss owning a snowmobile.”

Suddenly he stiffened and looked down at his sporran. The leather pouch, suspended around his hips on a chain so that it hung at the front of his kilt, was vibrating.

Liss bit her lip to hold back a laugh.

“If you say one word about me being happy to see you….” Gordon opened the flap and extracted his cell phone. Turning away, he answered the call, listened for a few moments, then said “okay” and broke the connection. “Ms. FitzPatrick has been released on her own recognizance.”

“So that means you believed her when she said she didn’t kill Gavin Thorne.”

“Different guns were used for each crime.”

“Nice of you to share that tidbit.”

He didn’t reply.

“Was Thorne shot with his own gun?”

That got Gordon’s attention. “How did you know he had one?”

“Sherri told me. And you needn’t look so grim. She passed along that information before the murder. She saw the gun after Lovey shot the Tiny Teddy. She was worried about Thorne having it in the store. A loaded gun in a toy store didn’t strike her as a real good idea. What if a child had gotten hold of it?”

Grudgingly, Gordon agreed that Sherri had been right to be concerned.

“So, do you
have
a suspect?”

No answer.

“Will you at least consider Eric Moss? If you asked for a search warrant for his house—”

“I am not interested in searching Moss’s house at this time. I’m only going to say this once more, Liss: stay out of police business.” The brusque command put an end to the discussion. With one parting glare, Gordon stalked off toward the stage.

“He looks good in a kilt,” Marcia observed, coming up to stand beside Liss and admire Gordon’s backside.

“Yes, he does.” Liss sighed.

“What’s the delay?”

“I’m still waiting for the signal that everyone’s ready.”

“I heard you had some excitement at your place this afternoon,” Marcia said.

“It was a tempest in a teapot as they say. Lovey FitzPatrick was the one who shot the bear through the window of the Toy Box but she didn’t kill Gavin Thorne. In fact, she’s already out of jail. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her show up at the ceremony this evening.”

“Lovey FitzPatrick,” Marcia marveled. “Who’d have thought?”

“No one, apparently.”

“So who do the police think the killer is?”

“Beats me. I suggested—again—that they look more carefully at Eric Moss. The fact that he hasn’t been seen for days should be enough to get a warrant to search his house.”

Marcia looked thoughtful. “I suppose so.”

“Have you ever been inside his place?”

Marcia shook her head. “He’s not the type to entertain.” Her gaze shifted to the stage at the other side of the ballroom. “Looks like the pipers are ready to begin.”

Excusing herself, Liss mounted the steps to the low platform. Once she’d introduced each of the eleven men and women who were to be the evening’s entertainment, they launched into “Scotland the Brave.”

Liss looked around for Dan, but he was nowhere in sight. She was pleased to see that they had a good crowd, however, and most of them looked as if they were enjoying the bagpipe music.

The sound reverberated through the large room, echoing off the ceiling and penetrating every corner. Conversation was impossible but no one seemed to mind.

The second tune was a strathspey. Liss’s feet itched to dance. That was only to be expected, since she’d spent so many years of her life performing to just such pieces. The wave of regret caught her by surprise.

Turning away from the stage, she made her way toward the exit. A reel was scheduled next. Suddenly she didn’t think she could bear to listen to it.

Liss left word at the front desk for Dan and for Gordon, saying she’d gone home early with a headache. What was really sending her off into the night alone was an overwhelming need to escape the flood of memories. She’d loved being onstage, loved performing.

In the privacy of her car, she rested her head against the steering wheel. She’d thought she was done with these sudden bouts of intense longing for the career she’d once had as a dancer. Apparently not. At least they came less frequently now. Shaking off depressing thoughts, determined not to wallow in self-pity, she started the engine.

It had been a long and eventful day. Curling up with a good book for the rest of the evening sounded like a fine plan. Liss had a towering TBR pile—books she had yet to read—stacked by the chair in her little library. Her biggest problem would be making a choice between mystery, romance, paranormal, and nonfiction.

She slowed down at the fork in the road at the foot of the hill below the hotel. A left turn would take her to the town square and home. As she looked both ways for traffic, Liss remembered what lay in the other direction.

Driven by an irresistible impulse, she turned right.

S
herri Willett sat tailor-fashion in the middle of her bed with the notes she’d made spread out around her. Her son was asleep. Her mother was fully occupied with one of the dumber reality shows. Sherri figured she should be safe from interruptions until it was time to go in to work at midnight.

She picked up the first page. Something here had to be significant. She was certain of it.

Thorne’s glasses had been broken. Had there been a fight before he was shot? She shook her head. There had been no indication of that in the autopsy report. The glasses had probably been damaged when he fell,
after
the bullet struck him.

Time of death was difficult to pinpoint, but it had probably occurred sometime between eight and midnight. That was really no help at all.

Methodically, and for at least the tenth time, Sherri went over every detail she could remember from the crime scene, adding in the information gathered by other officers. The absence of Tiny Teddies was undoubtedly significant, no matter what Gordon Tandy thought. Sherri had her doubts about Liss’s theory, but she had to admit she didn’t have a better one. She was no closer to finding out who killed Thorne or what had happened to his little bears than she had been on the day the murder was discovered.

The last thing Sherri had written down in her report was that there were no tracks in the snow on the outside steps. The killer probably hadn’t entered Thorne’s apartment. He, or she, had most likely come in the front door and gone out the same way. Well after dark, no one would have noticed either the arrival or the departure.

On a fresh sheet of paper, Sherri sketched a rough floor plan of The Toy Box. She knew there was a rear exit because she’d checked it when she’d been called in to the bear shooting. She had not gotten near that door after Thorne’s murder. When Jeff had hollered at her to come out, she’d opted to check the upstairs before leaving the scene. She’d relinquished the task of searching the rest of the shop to someone else.

Had that someone thought to check for footprints on the other side of the back door? She’d seen no report of it if they had. Then again, she didn’t suppose she’d seen every bit of paperwork connected to the case. She’d have to ask Gordon about it the next time she saw him.

“Damn,” she muttered. If the case files didn’t include that information from another officer’s report, then she was out of luck.

Or was she? It hadn’t snowed again since the storm. The days had been clear and cold with little melting. Might there still be something left to find? First thing in the morning, she promised herself, she’d take a look.

Two miles west of Moosetookalook village, Liss slowed down as she came to Eric Moss’s house, a cape with dormers. There was no car in the dooryard, not his beat-up old pickup or any other vehicle. No lights showed inside the building. Unless he was one of those people who went to bed with the chickens, he was not at home.

Liss turned her car around in Moss’s driveway and headed back toward town but temptation got the better of her before she’d gone a hundred yards. Pulling off onto the dirt side road that was one of Moss’s property lines, she drove a short distance over the rutted surface and stopped on the shoulder. She cut the engine and killed her headlights.

It was a clear night and the moon was almost full. From across a field she could easily make out the south side of Moss’s house. From this vantage point, it appeared deserted, just as it had from the road in front.

If Gordon Tandy didn’t consider Eric Moss a suspect, Liss told herself, then he could scarcely object if she checked out the house for herself. Besides, Gordon would be busy at the hotel for at least another hour. He’d never know she’d been here.

Before she could change her mind, Liss grabbed the big flashlight she kept in the car for emergencies, opened the car door, and got out. She didn’t turn the flashlight on. The moon was bright enough to guide her, at least on the first part of the journey.

Glad she was wearing knee-high boots, Liss clambered over a low stone wall and crunched her way across the field to the back of the house. Her mid-calf-length tartan skirt wasn’t the most practical garb for walking in deep snow. Jeans would have been much better, but Liss wasn’t about to go home and change her clothes. She’d just take a quick look around, she promised herself, then scram.

The driveway had been plowed—Moss probably bartered with someone to do that for him—but the front sidewalk had not been shoveled and the area around the small back stoop looked equally untouched. That it wasn’t a foot deep in snow was due solely to the way the wind had sculpted the landscape during the storm.

Liss hesitated, her hand on the knob. It looked as if no one had been here since the night before Thorne’s murder was discovered. Had Moss killed him and taken off without even bothering to come home first?

No—that didn’t make sense. Marcia had seen him after that. She’d bought her Tiny Teddies from him the morning
after
Margaret found Thorne’s body.

A semi rumbled past on the two-lane road out front, rattling the glass in the windows. Since the shades had been left up at the back and sides of the house, the truck’s headlights sent eerie shadows bouncing into the interior of Moss’s house.

Stop procrastinating,
Liss told herself.
Either try the door or go back to your car.

She turned the knob and wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. No one was very trusting anymore, not even the old-timers. More out of habit than in expectation of finding anything, she ran her gloved fingers over the top of the lintel. The key she dislodged landed at her feet with an audible smack.

A sign? Maybe even an invitation?’

Liss fished it out of the cold snow and let herself into the house.

The back door led directly into Moss’s kitchen. An ancient refrigerator hummed, but there was no other sound. She sniffed cautiously and was relieved to smell nothing worse than a faint mustiness. She’d harbored a secret fear of discovering another dead body.

Liss risked using her flashlight. There were no neighbors close enough to be alarmed by its bobbing light. On closer examination, the room proved to be filled with old-fashioned appliances. Other than a light layer of dust, it was scrupulously clean.

Passing through a small dining room. Liss entered the adjoining living room. All was quiet there, too. Magazines lay scattered on a table beside a worn recliner, next to the remote for the television. That appliance was probably the newest thing in the house and still needed the digital converter box that sat on the shelf beneath it.

Since the drapes had been drawn across the front windows, Liss continued to use the flashlight freely. Another semi passed while she was checking the magazines. Liss had met two others during the short drive from the village. She had no idea what they were hauling, but obviously this was a regular route for truck traffic.

Liss replaced the periodicals. She hadn’t really been expecting to find
Guns and Ammo
or
Soldier of Fortune
. Old copies of
Down East, Yankee
, and
Newsweek
seemed innocuous enough, even if they did have someone else’s address label on them. At a guess, one of Moss’s neighbors passed them along once he was done reading them.

In the basement, the furnace kicked in with a low rumble. Liss glanced at the thermostat. Moss had it set at fifty-five degrees. Did he always leave it that low when he was out, or had he planned to be away and left the heat on only so that the pipes wouldn’t freeze?

She contemplated the ceiling. If she was going to search the place, she should be thorough. Invading Moss’s privacy this way troubled her conscience and left her feeling a little queasy, as well, but she’d come this far. If he’d killed Gavin Thorne, or even if he was only a smuggler, Eric Moss had forfeited his right to fair treatment.

Liss went up the stairs.

The second floor consisted of two small bedrooms and a bath. In common with the downstairs, everything was clean but a trifle shabby, as if money had been tight for some time.

It didn’t take Liss long to search Moss’s bureau and closet. He was almost painfully neat and didn’t seem to have many clothes. It occurred to Liss that he could have packed some and taken them with him but a check of the bathroom revealed a toothbrush and other personal items still in place, including several tubes of Ben Gay. She found a battered suitcase and a duffel bag stored in the hall closet, further indications that he probably hadn’t left for good.

Liss moved on to the back bedroom, which contained a desk and a file cabinet but no computer. Moss’s office. She felt a little surge of anticipation. She supposed it would be too much to hope for that she’d locate a ledger itemizing sales to Thorne and Marcia, but there might be something useful.

Her search of his desk drawers yielded nothing of interest. She was about to open the file cabinet when she noticed the Maine atlas sitting on top of it. It was one that contained detailed road maps of the entire state. A bright yellow sticky note protruded from one side.

Curious, Liss opened the oversize volume and studied the two-page spread Moss had bookmarked. It encompassed the northern half of Carrabassett County along with a bit of Franklin and Oxford Counties on either side. It also showed part of Canada, Maine’s neighbor on the north.

Someone had circled one small section of the border in red with a felt-tip pen.

Liss carried the atlas back to Moss’s desk and spread it out on the flat surface. She wasn’t familiar with the area he’d circled, but she could see that it wasn’t all that far from Moosetookalook. She reached for the desk lamp, needing more light. Her hand froze in midair at the sound of a door creaking open.

Heart pounding, Liss switched off her flashlight with fingers that were none too steady. There was someone downstairs.

An eerie silence lengthened as Liss sat in the darkness of a room lit only by the moon, waiting for her eyes to adjust, ears stretched for any further indication that she was no longer alone in the house.

She tried to tell herself that it was possible she hadn’t completely closed the door she’d unlocked earlier, but there had been no wind blowing when she entered the house. And then, in the stillness, she heard a distinctive click—the sound of a latch catching as someone carefully closed the door.

Liss swallowed hard. She was close to panic, her heart racing, her breath hitching, her palms sweating. Every instinct she possessed screamed at her to get out of there, but she had nowhere to run without being seen.

Hide, then. She was tempted to slide out of the chair and squeeze herself into the kneehole of the desk, curling into a ball to avoid discovery.

TSTL!

Maybe that would work for some idiot heroine of a gothic novel, but this was real life. She had to think. There had to be a way out of this.

Who was downstairs?

No lights came on. Not Eric Moss, then. And not the police, either. An intruder. Like herself.

Listening intently, Liss heard footsteps cross the hardwood floor below. Whoever it was would be coming upstairs soon. She had to find a place to hide.

Ducking into a closet was out. So was crawling under the bed.

In desperation, as the footfalls came closer and the person who had entered Eric Moss’s house approached the foot of the stairs, Liss scrambled out of the desk chair and high-tailed it into the tiny upstairs bathroom. Hopping into the tub, she pulled the thick shower curtain closed behind her. The back scrubber she almost stepped on made a poor defensive weapon, but she grabbed it anyway. Clutching it tightly in one hand and holding her flashlight ready in the other, she waited in an agony of suspense to see if she would be discovered.

The bath was not the first place that the intruder searched on the second floor. Liss heard movement in the other rooms. The screech of a metal drawer opening fixed his location at the old file cabinet. Was that the rustle of papers? If he found what he was looking for, would he leave without ever coming near her hiding place?

He?

Not necessarily, Liss realized. She had no particular reason to think the searcher was a man. Would she stand a better chance if she came face to face with another woman? Maybe not. Weren’t females supposed to be deadlier than males?

Footsteps left the spare room and came closer to Liss’s hiding place. The bathroom door opened and someone stepped inside. Liss didn’t dare breathe.

A flashlight beam played over the opaque shower curtain and a sudden image of Janet Leigh’s death scene in
Psycho
flashed into Liss’s mind. That was all she needed! She hastily replaced it with the Mel Brooks send-up in
High Anxiety.
That helped calm her, but only a little.

The movement on the other side of the shower curtain abruptly stopped. Had she been spotted? Liss tightened her grip on her pitiful arsenal. She held the flashlight backwards so that the handle could be used as a club, but what use would that be against a knife or a gun? She fully expected the next sound she heard to be the rattle of rings along the rod overhead as the intruder jerked the curtain aside and revealed her hiding place.

Instead a scraping sound reached her ears—the lid on the toilet tank. A lightbulb went on in Liss’s head. She’d seen that trick in old movies: hide something inside, protected by a watertight pouch. Had Eric Moss resorted to such tactics? If he had, she’d never know. The lid settled back into place with a dull clunk. The footsteps moved rapidly away.

Liss stayed where she was for what seemed like an eternity but in fact was less than ten minutes. When she could stand the waiting no longer, she gathered her courage and stepped out of the tub. She peered cautiously into the hall. It was empty, and silent until another truck passed by outside.

Moving rapidly but with as much stealth as she could manage, Liss darted into Moss’s bedroom and looked out the window. No car was parked in the driveway or on the road in front of the house. She ducked into the other upstairs room and peered through the curtains at the backyard. Nothing. The field she’d crossed was empty, too, although from this height she could make out the tracks she’d left earlier.