A Wee Christmas Homicide (20 page)

Sherri gave a low whistle. With that much money at stake, it was hard to imagine Gavin Thorne taking the high road. More likely, he’d tried to get Marcia to cut him in on the action. Sherri could almost visualize the scene. Thorne producing a gun, threatening to turn Marcia in if she didn’t agree to split the profits. Then Marcia losing that hair-trigger temper of hers and bang! No more threat of exposure.

“Marcia was supposed to drop me at a rendezvous point. My husband is waiting there.” Donna sighed. “I have a feeling he’s going to have a long wait.”

Sherri fished in her coat pocket for her cell phone and handed it over. “Go ahead. Call him.” She almost laughed at Donna’s look of astonishment. “Traditional, isn’t it? One phone call. Tell him you’ll be at the Emergency Room at Fallstown Community Hospital. The ambulance will take you there.”

“You’re not arresting me?”

“I’m not, no, but I make no guarantees about what the state police or the border patrol will do. You’re going to have to repeat what you told me to them.”

Sherri exited the cruiser, letting Donna out so she’d have privacy for her conversation with her husband. She felt sorry for the woman as she watched her balance on the crutches while she punched in numbers. Even if she were allowed to stay, she’d probably be looking at jail time. Homeland security took this sort of thing seriously, even when there were extenuating circumstances.

“Gordon can’t arrest her,” Liss protested from inside the car.

“He may not have any choice.” Sherri watched Pete approach, suddenly very glad that they’d worked out most of their differences in the course of that afternoon’s long, no-holds-barred conversation. “She did break the law.”

“It’s a stupid law if it keeps families separated.”

“There are lots of stupid laws around. That doesn’t mean people get to pick and choose which ones to obey.”

“I can’t believe this! I can’t believe any of this!” As if pulled by a chain, Liss’s gaze returned back to the stand of trees. Full dark had fallen. There was nothing to see now but the pale glow of a couple of emergency flares Pete had set up.

“Believe it.” One glance at her fiancé’s grim expression convinced Sherri that she was glad to have been spared viewing the body.

“It was Marcia?” she asked him.

“No doubt about it.”

“And Thorne’s gun?”

“Probably. It’s the right caliber. Gordon will have to wait for a ballistics report, but I’m betting it’s a match for the murder weapon.” Pete frowned. “But why would Marcia shoot Thorne?”

“I wonder if we’ll ever know for certain,” Sherri answered. “The only people who might have told us the whole story are dead.”

Dan broke every speed limit driving north toward the Canadian border. He knew Liss was all right. She’d been the one who’d called him and asked him to pick her up.

That didn’t stop him worrying about her.

She’d given him a brief and somewhat garbled account of what had happened over the phone. Smugglers. Murder. Attempted Murder. Death. He didn’t like the sound of any of that.

He wasn’t real happy to hear she’d been in the thick of things in the company of Gordon Tandy, either.

But she was alive. He had to remember that. And when she’d needed someone to pick her up, since she didn’t qualify for an ambulance ride and everyone else was tied up with “police business,” she’d called him. Not Margaret. Not Angie or Patsy. Him.

He slowed to a crawl on the logging road and eased off the gas even more at the sight of flashing lights ahead. It was full dark. The strobes sent eerie shadows into the woods.

A uniformed state trooper showed him where to turn his truck around and pointed him in the right direction to find Liss. He stopped at the first glimpse of her, sitting in Pete’s cruiser with shoulders slumped and head down.

Every harsh word he’d thought on the endless drive to get there flew out of his mind at the sight. She didn’t need recriminations, or lectures. He went straight to her, pulled her out of the car and into his arms.

Ten minutes later they were on the road. He didn’t ask any questions. He had no idea what to say. But when she eased closer, as close as their seat belts would allow, and rested her head on his shoulder, he slid that arm around her and didn’t let go until they were both safely home.

Liss had been watching the police search Marcia’s house for hours. What a way to spend the day before Christmas! She’d seen Gordon go in, but he hadn’t so much as looked her way. Sherri had been in and out a couple of times. So had other officers she recognized.

It did no good to brood because she’d been left out of the loop, she told herself. Unfortunately, knowing a thing and accepting it were not the same.

Liss couldn’t settle enough to read or watch television. She hadn’t slept well the night before but she wasn’t able to nap. She’d tried more than once and failed every time. The only thing she’d accomplished all day was to phone the vet and make an appointment to have the kitten, who still remained nameless, examined and vaccinated.

When Sherri showed up at her back door, carrying a box gaily wrapped in Christmas paper and sporting a big red bow, Liss welcomed her with open arms.

“Merry You-Know-What!” Sherri shoved the present into her arms and hurried into the kitchen, brushing snow off her coat. Big puffy flakes had started to fall around noon.

“Your gift is under the tree,” Liss told her.

“I’d kill for a hot chocolate. And while you’re fixing it you can tell me why you’re home and not at the Emporium.”

“I opened up as usual this morning. I had a couple of last minute mail orders to send out by express mail. Then I closed again.” Liss busied herself at the kitchen counter, clamping down on the urge to demand that Sherri tell her what the police had found at Marcia’s.

“No customers? I’d have thought you’d at least get a couple of ghouls.” Divesting herself of hat, gloves, muffler, and coat, Sherri stood next to the heat vent rubbing her hands together to warm them.

“Oh, I did. That’s
why
I locked the door. One of them was that obnoxious newspaper reporter from the Fallstown paper. He wouldn’t stop badgering me even when I told him ‘no comment.’ And then, when he finally accepted that I meant it, he had the nerve to suggest I’d make a bundle if I sold souvenir sweatshirts. He even suggested what they should say.” Liss made quotation marks in the air. “Moosetookalook: Murder Capitol of Maine.”

Sherri groaned.

“I told him he had Moosetookalook confused with Cabot Cove.”

“And we’re nowhere
near
the coast,” Sherri quipped.

Liss sighed and handed Sherri her drink. “How come there are still cops at Marcia’s?”

Sherri met her eyes over the rim of the mug. She sipped, swallowed, and sipped some more. “Probably better you ask Gordon. I really just came over to see how you were doing.”

“I doubt Gordon will tell me anything about the case. He’s pretty ticked off at me. He thinks I lured him to that cabin under false pretenses.”

“Uh, Liss—you did.”

Liss shrugged. She really didn’t want to talk about Gordon or what had happened yesterday. Not right now.

“Well, with Marcia dead, there won’t be a trial, so I suppose there’s no reason I can’t tell you what we found. Nothing. No computer. No ledgers. No Tiny Teddies other than the ones in that backpack.”

Liss frowned. That didn’t seem right. Marcia had known all about online auctions. She must have had a computer.

In a flash, the explanation came to her. She reached across the table and took Sherri’s mug away from her. “Time to go back to work,” she told her friend. “You have a root cellar, aka panic room, to locate.”

A
short time after Sherri left by the back way, Eric Moss showed up at Liss’s front door. He jumped when she opened it, as if he was more surprised to find himself there than she was.

“You’re back!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been?”

He didn’t answer her question, but rather asked one of his own. “Is it true? Is Thorne dead? Marcia, too?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Although he must have expected her response, it seemed to shake his composure. Spry no longer, he slumped. His sun-browned and weathered face took on such a curious pallor that for a moment Liss thought he might be about to keel over.

“She killed him?” The words came out as a hoarse croak.

Liss hesitated. “Maybe you should take your questions to the police.”

A shudder passed through him, racking his lean frame. “Can’t do that. No police. Not yet. Please. I have to know what’s been happening here while I’ve been gone.”

Taking pity on him, Liss stepped back and waved him into the foyer. “You’d better come in out of the cold.”

Once they were in her living room, she helped him off with his coat, an old-style plaid hunting jacket, and told him to sit on the sofa. He looked harmless enough, but she was taking no chances. No more of this TSTL stuff!

Automatically, she punched in Dan Ruskin’s cell phone number. Even as it rang, she wondered why she wasn’t calling Gordon, or at least Sherri. The pathetic figure on her couch was not an innocent bystander. He might well prove dangerous.

Dan answered on the third ring.

“Can you come over for a few minutes?” Liss hoped her voice sounded calm. The last thing she wanted to do was alarm Dan. Or spook her visitor. “Eric Moss is here at the house.”

Alarm flashed in Moss’s eyes. “Who’re you talking to? I told you—no cops!”

“Just Dan Ruskin, Mr. Moss. You don’t mind if he joins us, do you?”

Moss frowned. His eyebrows nearly knit together with the effort. “Guess not. The Ruskins are good folk.”

As soon as Liss hung up, she crossed to the bay window, from which she could both see and be seen, and stood next to the glass. Dan had said he could make the drive from his current work site to town in less than ten minutes. From this vantage point she’d see his truck as soon as he made the turn onto Birch Street.

She also had a clear view of Second Time Around and the police cruisers parked out front. That was reassuring. If she screamed for help, someone would probably come running.

Moss’s eyes bored into her back. His tension was palpable and before Liss could think what to say to him, he broke. “Tell me! She did kill him, didn’t she?”

Liss turned to face him. “It looks that way. But I’m not a cop, Mr. Moss. Why did you come to me for information?”

“This Tiny Teddies thing.” Moss scowled at her. “That was
your
doing.”

A flicker of fear flashed through her at his confrontational tone, but her own irritation quickly trumped it. She’d had enough of feeling guilty. “Now hold on just a darned minute! The
pageant
was my idea. Bringing business to Moosetookalook was my idea. But I didn’t create the Tiny Teddies craze and I certainly didn’t force anybody to break the law.”

Moss’s belligerence evaporated as if she’d popped it with a pin. “Things ain’t been going so well for me lately,” he muttered.

As an apology, it left a lot to be desired, but Liss was inclined to accept it anyway. Remembering her impressions of Moss’s house, she thought she had him pegged. Poor but proud. Cantankerous, but a good man at heart. Law-abiding? About that, she wasn’t so sure.

“How is it that you didn’t already know about Gavin Thorne?” she asked. “He was shot the night of the snowstorm.”

“I left town before that. Been away for over a week.”

“Away where?”

He seemed to shrink into himself. Embarrassment? Shame? Liss couldn’t tell and she had to strain to hear his answer: “Canada.”

Liss felt her eyebrows rise, although she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Their neighbor to the north seemed to be the destination of choice these days. “How did you get there?”

“Drove.”

In spite of her intention to remain visible, Liss could not help but be moved by the utter dejection in his voice. She took a few steps closer to him. He had come back to Moosetookalook. He’d scarcely have done that if he’d committed a crime. He’d be on the run. Wouldn’t he?

“Talk to me, Mr. Moss. Did you know that Marcia was smuggling Tiny Teddies into the U.S.?”

The look of misery on his craggy face was answer enough, but he pulled himself together and confirmed it aloud. “I do now. Should have suspected it from the first, when she paid me to front for her.” He dropped his gaze to his clasped hands. “I needed the money, so I didn’t ask questions.”

“So the Tiny Teddies you offered to me, the ones that finally went to Gavin Thorne after Thorne’s last bear was destroyed, came from Marcia?”

“She gave me two hundred dollars just to offer them to you first, then him.”

“She wanted to keep suspicion away from herself while still making a profit,” Liss murmured. “So, how did you figure out that Marcia had smuggled them in? They might have come from a legitimate source. In fact, you were insisting that they had the last time we talked.”

“That’s where Thorne came in. He wanted the bears, but he was suspicious about where they’d come from. Just like you were, only he insisted on knowing. I wouldn’t have told, ’cept he offered me money, too. More money than Marcia paid me.”

He looked thoroughly ashamed of himself, but Liss couldn’t find it in her heart to condemn him. It wasn’t easy to make ends meet with nothing but a social security check and your own wits.

“What happened when you told him you were selling the bears for Marcia?”

“Thorne got real excited. He reasoned it all out right while I was standing there, listening—what she’d been up to, even the route she must have used to bring Tiny Teddies into this country without getting caught.”

“And you went home and took a look at the atlas and marked the spot.”

Moss goggled at her. “Now how in tarnation did you know that?”

“Never mind. Did you use her route?”

He looked at her like she was crazy. “And mess up my truck?”

“Snowmobile? ATV?”

“Don’t own either. Besides, what would I do for transportation on the other side? I just took off in old reliable. Spent a couple of days hunting up bears. Filled the back of the truck right up to the top of the cap. Thought I had it made.”

“What happened?”

“Got stopped at Coburn Gore crossing. Border cops confiscated all the Tiny Teddies. Destroyed ’em!” He looked appalled at the waste. “And the worst part is that I’ve got to pay me a stiff fine.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t end up in jail.”

“I guess.” He conceded the point with ill grace.

Liss wanted to pat him consolingly on the shoulder, but she didn’t suppose he’d appreciate the gesture.

The squeal of brakes heralded Dan’s arrival. Footsteps pounded up her walk and onto her porch. The door, which she’d deliberately left unlocked, crashed open.

“Liss! Where are you?”

“Here, Dan.”

He burst into the living room.

“Relax. We’re just talking.”

Ignoring the thunderous look on Dan’s face, she kept her focus on Eric Moss. He rose and dipped his head.

“’lo Ruskin. I was just leaving.”

“Excellent plan.” Scooping up Moss’s jacket, Dan handed it to him.

“Wait a minute! Just one last question, Mr. Moss. What did Jason Graye pay you for the night of the last selectmen’s meeting?”

Moss goggled at her. “You know about that, too?”

“Not as much as I’d like to. What did you do for him?”

“Nothing illegal,” Moss insisted, all the while backing toward the foyer. “Just passed on some gossip I heard when I was picking over to West Fallstown.”

“Translation: Graye made a killing in a real estate deal thanks to your insider information.”

Dan winced at her choice of words, but Moss just got prickly. “Man’s got to make a living. Ain’t easy these days.”

“How true.” Liss had continued to keep an eye on Marcia’s shop with periodic glances out her window. Now she saw Gordon Tandy emerge from the building. “Here’s the deal, Mr. Moss. All you have to do to keep me quiet about your dealings with Graye is to tell that state police detective standing in front of Second Time Around everything you know about Marcia, Thorne, and the Tiny Teddies. You’ll have to hurry if you want to catch him before he takes off.”

Moss looked from Liss to Dan, crushing his wool watch cap in both hands. “Guess I gotta, huh?”

“It would be best.” Dan gave the older man an encouraging smile.

Even before the front door clicked shut behind Eric Moss, Dan and Liss had crossed to the bay window. Together they watched Moss intercept Gordon, saw Gordon glance toward Liss’s house and then, very deliberately, turn to face away from her.

Liss’s sigh turned into a grimace. She’d been sighing entirely too much lately. Feeling sorry for herself accomplished nothing. Action—that was the ticket.

“You need me anymore?” Just a hint of irony tinged Dan’s question. He didn’t look angry with her, but he wasn’t pleased, either.

Liss went up on her toes to brush her lips against his mouth. “Thank you. He wouldn’t go to the police till he’d talked to me and I didn’t want to take any chances by being alone with him.”

Only slightly mollified, Dan turned the light kiss into something more. When he’d rendered her breathless, he stepped away. “I have to get back to work.”

“I know. Later?”

“Later,” he promised.

As soon as his footsteps died away on the front walk, Liss grabbed the phone and punched in the number of Sherri’s cell. Trailing the extra-long cord behind her, she returned to the window.

“So? Did you find it?” Liss asked when Sherri picked up. She waved when she saw her friend, phone to ear, step out onto the porch at Second Time Around.

“Paydirt. Whoa! Is that Eric Moss talking to Gordon?”

“Yes. Exchange of info?”

“Give me five. I’ll come to your back door.”

Ten minutes later, Liss and Sherri were once more seated at Liss’s kitchen table, this time with hot coffee and a plateful of Patsy’s homemade doughnuts in front of them. Liss had already recapped what she’d learned from Eric Moss.

Liss bit into a cruller. “Your turn to spill.”

“Well, first of all, we found Moss’s atlas at Marcia’s place. Had his name in the front and everything.”

“So she was the one who broke in and searched his house while I was there.”

Liss thought back. She’d mentioned something about Moss when she’d talked to Marcia earlier that evening. It had been right after she’d tried and failed to convince Gordon to get a search warrant. Had she told Marcia he hadn’t cooperated? She rather thought she’d left the other woman with the impression that the police would be checking Moss’s place out very soon. That must have spooked Marcia into going to his house to make sure he hadn’t left any incriminating evidence lying around.

“One mystery solved. Did you find anything else?”

“Everything.” Sherri looked quietly pleased with herself. “And I earned major points thanks to you. The panic room door was well hidden. Looked like a solid wall. But once we knew it was the old root cellar, it wasn’t hard to find the way in.”

“And?” Liss seethed with impatience while Sherri took another bite of a doughnut.

“Marcia had all her records stored there, and her computer. That last batch of Tiny Teddies, the ones she was bringing in yesterday? They’d been presold online. She would have shipped them out by express mail so they’d arrive just in time for Christmas.”

“Her buyers must have been willing to pay through the nose for that service! Did she sell the bears she took from Thorne’s shop online, too?”

“Yes. That’s why no one spotted any of them in her shop. She listed them all, with the date. Each one was labeled ‘liberated from The Toy Box.’”

Liss shook her head, half in sorrow, half in disbelief. Had they known Marcia at all?

Sherri snagged a jelly doughnut. “Also, ballistics matched the gun Marcia fired at you and Gordon with the bullet that killed Thorne. She was the murderer all right. Assuming Donna Conroy’s testimony is accurate, it looks as if Thorne threatened to turn Marcia over to the police and got shot for his trouble.”

“What about Donna? What will happen to her?”

“She’s looking at more red tape and a lot of uncomfortable interviews, but given the publicity attached to this case, I wouldn’t be surprised if she got permission to go home to her husband and kids when it’s over.”

“Maybe Gordon will put in a good word for her.”

Sherri considered the notion. “She did save your lives and help him wrap up the case, but it might not occur to him to give her a hand. Why don’t you mention it to him the next time you see him?”

“You’d better do it. Gordon isn’t too happy with me right now.”

“Let me guess—you told him you broke into Moss’s house?”

“That’s the least of it.” Liss hesitated. She’d been brooding about what had happened, keeping her gloomy thoughts to herself. Maybe it was time to talk things through with someone who would understand and sympathize.

“After the snowmobile crash, Gordon would barely speak to me. He gave me the space blankets and told me to wait with Donna and literally turned his back.” Just as he had a few minutes ago when he was talking with Eric Moss. “I think he blames me for what happened.”

“Nonsense. You ought to get a medal.”

“I blame me, too, Sherri. Oh, not because of my part in promoting Moosetookalook and the Tiny Teddies and the pageant. I’ve worked my way through that guilt trip. But if I hadn’t chased after Marcia, she’d still be alive.”

“You weren’t alone on that sled.”

“I was the one driving,
and
the one getting a rush out of the whole thing.”

The thrill of speeding through the wilds, the challenge of overtaking another driver—what had she thought she was doing, drag racing? Her impulsive behavior had been just about as stupid. It appalled her to remember how energized she’d felt, how invincible.