Vampires, Bones and Treacle Scones

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  Sherri spread her hands wide. “You’ll have to ask him that.”

  “Then I will.” Before she could think better of it, Liss grabbed the phone and punched in Gordon’s cell number. In the not-so-distant past, she’d had occasion to memorize it. There had been a time when she’d thought Gordon might even ask her to marry him.

  He sounded distracted when he answered, but Liss plowed ahead. “Have you found a panic room yet?”

  Silence answered her.

  She waited. He knew who she was and why she was asking. If he hung up on her, she’d just call him back. He knew that, too.

  “We had a few other things to do that took priority,” Gordon finally said.

  “Ned had to be hiding somewhere.”

  “It’s a big house. Maybe he just stayed ahead of you. Or was up in the attic. And just who is supposed to have built this panic room? That’s a pretty modern concept for an old house.”

  “Blackie O’Hare’s house,” Liss reminded him. She had the feeling he counted to ten before he answered her.

  “Let me do my job, Liss. We’ll be back out there tomorrow. We will look for more secret passages and, yes, for hidden rooms, too. Bad enough that the victim’s wounds made everyone who saw them think of vampires,” he grumbled as an aside.

  Liss felt the color drain from her face. She’d been trying to avoid remembering that particularly gruesome detail. Her hand clenched on the phone and her voice no longer sounded like her own. “What did cause those puncture marks?”

  “Liss, you know I can’t tell you that.”

  “I . . . I think I might sleep a little better at night if I was sure it wasn’t a vampire.” Was that nervous laughter really coming out of her mouth? Liss throttled back and ended up making a sound eerily like a sob. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Gordon. I know it’s none of my business. But you know what an active imagination I have.”

  Trying to make light of it made her feel even more of a fool. She was about to break the connection when Gordon spoke.

  “Two-tined fork.”

  “What?”

  “The murder weapon. It was a two-tined fork taken from the display in the dining room.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “That’s privileged information, Liss. We’re not releasing it to the press. If one hint of what I just told you appears in the newspapers, online, or on TV, I’ll know who leaked it.”

  “I . . . I . . . don’t worry.” She swallowed convulsively. “It’s my fork, Gordon. I supplied all the cutlery for Death by Poison.”

  His voice gentled ever so slightly. “I figured. We already identified your fingerprints on it, since we had them on record. Can you think of anyone else who would have had reason to touch it?”

  For a moment, Liss couldn’t think at all. Then she rattled off the names of everyone who belonged to her Halloween committee. “Gloria Weir is the most likely. She was with me when I set the table. Does that help?”

  “It will allow us to eliminate suspects, so yes. But, Liss?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t help anymore, okay?”

  Liss meant her promise when she gave it, but by the time she returned home, her thoughts had returned to the conviction that there had to be a hiding place somewhere in the mansion. She found Dan in the living room. Now Lumpkin was in his lap and Glenora occupied the back of the recliner. All three of them appeared to be riveted to the football game on TV.

  “What did you do with those blueprints?” she asked.

  He started to speak, then just shook his head. Dislodging Lumpkin, he left the room and returned a few minutes later with the roll of floor plans.

  “Once you found the tunnel, we forgot all about the rest of the house,” Liss said as she separated the pages. She sat cross-legged on the floor and spread the plans out on the carpet in a half circle around her.

  “I looked them over pretty thoroughly. There’s nothing labeled SECRET ROOM on these plans.”

  Liss ignored the sarcasm and continued to pour over the drawings, comparing the rooms represented on paper to the real ones she’d seen. It didn’t take long to spot a discrepancy on the second floor. “This shows four bedrooms.” She tapped the page, which indicated that there was an entrance to a fourth room just at the top of the stairs. “This isn’t a bedroom. It’s a linen closet. And it’s nowhere near as deep as these blueprints say it is.”

  Dan knelt beside her for a closer look, the game forgotten. “Could be they converted it at some point.” He traced a line down the center of the missing bedroom. “If you put a wall here, the bedrooms on either side would gain a good-sized clothes closet.”

  “But that would cut this window right in two.” She tapped it lightly. “Don’t you think that would be a little odd? Besides, I don’t remember any big closets in either of those two bedrooms, just little ones at the inside corners.” She indicated their location on the floor plan with her index finger. “Here and here, as shown.”

  “So, you think your cousin got in through the tunnel, then hid out in a secret room behind the linen closet? How did he know about either one?” Dan shoved Lumpkin aside when the big cat tried to walk across the blueprints.

  “As a kid, Ned was fascinated by the mansion. Aunt Margaret said so. Maybe he found them both way back then.”

  “Okay, let’s say he did. Why decide to hide out there now?”

  “How do I know? He wouldn’t allow any contact with anyone in the family after he went to prison. Maybe he’d been plotting revenge the whole time he was locked up.” This time it was Liss’s turn to catch hold of the cat. She pulled him into her lap and stroked his long fur, soothing both of them.

  “Really stupid way to get it,” Dan muttered.

  “Then maybe he was hiding from some lowlife he met while he was incarcerated.”

  “I’d find it easier to believe he was hunting for Blackie O’Hare’s loot.”

  “Maybe he was,” Liss shot back.

  “Then how does taking my hammer and the ladder and your jacket and that big wooden tub and the manikin, and then putting them back again fit in with his plans?” Dan leaned against the sofa, arms folded across his chest.

  “Maybe the pranks were meant to scare us away. Maybe he didn’t know we were planning to use the house for a Halloween attraction.” Liss spotted the flaw in her logic before Dan could point it out to her. “No. He had to know. He would have overheard us talking when we were in the house. And he must have seen the set pieces, too.”

  “At least the disappearance of the lantern and the fact that the generator ran out of gas make sense now. It hasn’t been the coldest October on record, but I bet it got mighty nippy in that old house at night. And dark, too.” Dan heaved himself to his feet and bent to retrieve the blueprints. “I’ll take these to Gordon Tandy tomorrow, and that will be the end of it as far as you and I are concerned. It’s Tandy’s job to figure out what Ned was up to and find whoever killed him. Your job is to be there for your aunt.”

  Liss didn’t argue. Dan was right. They had a funeral to plan. Family would be coming into town—her parents, at the least. There was nothing more she could do for Ned that the police couldn’t do better. Tomorrow she’d tell Margaret that, and mean it, too.

  If the state police had a suspect in Ned Boyd’s murder, they didn’t share that information with his family. Liss’s aunt grieved for her son, but after she buried him, she went on with her life. She took only two days off from work.

  Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s were busy times at The Spruces and Liss suspected that Margaret was relieved to have her duties as events coordinator to distract her. But at the beginning of February came a lull. Most of the hotel’s guests were skiers who saw to their own entertainment. No corporate dinners or anniversary parties or weddings were scheduled for the first thirteen days of the month, not until the flurry of activity that always surrounded Valentine’s Day. That left Margaret MacCrimmon Boyd with way too much time on her hands—time to dwell on what had been
done to her only child.

  Dusting snow off the sleeves of her heavy winter coat, Liss hurried into the lobby of The Spruces. Light, fluffy flakes had been falling all morning, too little to make driving dangerous and just enough to cover the ugly brown patches along the side of the road. Maine at its prettiest, Liss thought.

  She had pulled off her wool mittens and stuffed them into her pockets before she realized that she was not the only one Aunt Margaret had summoned to the hotel for a meeting. Sherri Campbell had been watching the entrance from the comfort of one of several armchairs drawn up beside the huge lobby fireplace with its tile-lined hearth and Victorian mantel and mirror above. Flames crackled invitingly, sending welcome warmth out into the room. The hotel burned apple wood and the scent was both pleasant and soothing.

  Sherri rose as soon as she spotted Liss. They met at the entrance to the wide hallway that led to the hotel dining room.

  “You, too?” Liss slipped out of her coat and tucked her wooly hat into one sleeve so she wouldn’t lose it.

  “Looks that way. I guess Margaret got tired of phoning the PD.” Sherri was out of uniform, dressed much as Liss was in jeans and a sweater.

  “You don’t have to tell her anything, you know. She can’t badger you the way she can a blood relative.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. I worked part-time in the Emporium when Margaret was running it. She gave me a break when not everyone would have, including my own parents. I owe her.”

  At the end of the wide hallway was a vestibule, where a smiling hotel employee waited to show guests to their tables, but Liss and Sherri didn’t need to go that far. They took the first door to their left, the one marked PRIVATE. The area beyond contained several offices, a conference room, a room for the copier, and a bathroom. Margaret’s office was straight ahead of them, but although she’d left the door open for them, Liss didn’t immediately see her aunt. Then she heard the soft clink of china—cups and saucers and a teapot being set out on a serving tray.

  “I know you’re out there,” Margaret called. “Come on in. The tea will be ready in a minute.”

  “Green tea means she wants us alert,” Liss muttered under her breath. “Herbal means she knows we’re not going to like what she’s up to and she wants to lull us into a false sense of security before she drops the bomb.”

  Sherri chuckled as she waved Liss into Margaret’s office ahead of her.

  It was a welcoming room, designed to put clients at ease. The walls were painted a pretty pale green and decorated with Carrabassett County landscapes by local artists. At first glance, Margaret looked no different than she had before Ned’s death. Dressed in office casual—Maine people never went in for too much dressing up—she finished preparing the tea with her usual quiet efficiency and set the tray on the glass-topped coffee table in front of a loveseat upholstered in a bright floral print.

  “Well, come on. Sit. Drink up.”

  They sat, and Margaret took the small lady’s chair facing them, where the light from a nearby floor lamp fell on her face. She’d made a noble attempt to hide the ravages of grief with a careful application of make up, but nothing could completely disguise the dark circles under her eyes and a lifetime of smiling had not created the lines that seamed her face. Sorrow and sleepless nights had done that, and in an appallingly short amount of time. Two weeks earlier, Liss had insisted Margaret see her doctor. He’d prescribed antidepressants and regular exercise. If there had been any improvement since, Liss couldn’t spot it.

  “I want to know what the police are doing to find my son’s murderer,” Margaret said when she’d taken a few sips of her tea.

  It was black and strong. Liss wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “You know already, Margaret.” Sherri managed to keep the pity out of her voice, but Liss saw it in her eyes. “They never close a murder case. They follow up leads. They pursue inquiries. They—”

  “In other words, there has been no progress whatsoever.”

  “If they have any answers, they haven’t shared them with me, either,” Sherri admitted. “But then, they wouldn’t. You’d be more likely to hear something than I would. Honestly, Margaret, they’re doing their best. They just don’t have much to go on.”

  “What about the duffle bag they found? That was Ned’s, wasn’t it?”

  Sherri spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know enough to answer that question, Margaret, but I think we can assume that it was. The state police did discover it in that hidden room.”

  Liss drank her tea and kept her mouth shut. Gordon Tandy had been willing to tell them little more than that he’d located a nearly invisible door at the back of the linen closet. Beyond was a small room. Inside, he’d found a duffle bag, presumably the one that had caused Stu’s fall.

  “How do I get the police to hand over that bag and its contents?” Margaret asked. “I’m Ned’s only living relative. I should have his belongings.”

  “They’re holding whatever they found as evidence,” Sherri reminded her.

  “Can’t they at least give me a list of what was inside the duffle bag?” Margaret turned to Liss, desperation in her eyes. “You’re supposed to be good at finding things out. Why don’t you know what he was up to? Someone must have an idea why he was hiding out in that house instead of coming home to me.”

  Alarmed by the way her aunt’s voice was rising, Liss tried to keep her own as soothing as possible. “Margaret, I’m not a detective.”

  “But you’ve been so clever in the past. Surely you can uncover something.”

  “I can’t interfere in a police investigation. If whoever did this terrible thing is to be caught and punished, I have to stay out of it. I could compromise their entire case if I blunder in looking for clues.”

  Liss understood Margaret’s frustration. She felt the same way. But aside from the fact that both Dan and Gordon had strong objections to her meddling, Liss had no idea what she could do to help, or where to begin.

  “Liss, I’m begging you. The police aren’t doing anything. You’re my only hope.”

  As much as she wanted to resist, Liss heard herself agree, once again, to look into Ned’s activities between the time he got out of prison and the day she’d found him in the old Chadwick mansion. Surely, she couldn’t do any harm by investigating that angle. Besides, although she knew and accepted all the arguments against getting involved, there was one important one in favor of taking action. It was Aunt Margaret who was asking her to.

  Sherri kept her opinion to herself until they were back in the lobby. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said then.

  “It will make her feel better to think I’m taking an active role. That’s the least I can do for her.”

  “Does that mean you’re not really going to poke your nose in where it doesn’t belong?”

  Liss shrugged back into her coat and avoided meeting Sherri’s eyes. “Pretty much,” she mumbled.

  Sherri huffed out a frustrated sigh as she pulled on her own outerwear. “What are you going to do?”

  Liss stared off into space for a moment before she answered. “I’d like to take another look at the house. I want to see that secret room for myself. The mansion is no longer off limits as a crime scene, right?”

  The Moosetookalook grapevine had been prompt to report it when the state police had finally taken down the yellow tape and returned the house keys to the town office. From that source, more specifically from Dolores Mayfield, Angie Hogencamp, and Julie Simpson, as verified by Patsy of Patsy’s Coffee House, Dan’s sister Mary, and Stu Burroughs. Liss had also heard that Jason Graye’s efforts to buy the place had been put on hold. She wasn’t sure why. She’d been offered a variety of reasons, everything from the fact that he thought the place was haunted to a more likely rumor that the current town selectmen were refusing to sell for the pittance Graye had offered.

  “Do you want company?” Sherri asked. “I still have an hour or two free before Adam gets home from
school.”

  “You mean to go out there now?” After the grisly discovery she’d made the last time she’d entered the Chadwick mansion, Liss was not all that eager to revisit the place.

  “Why not? Let’s get it over with. We’ll find nothing. You’ll tell Margaret you tried. Bingo! We’re both off the hook.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  Chapter Nine

  A short time later, Liss pushed the starter button on the generator. Nothing happened on the first try, but on the second she was rewarded with a steady hum.

  “How come this generator is still here?” Sherri asked.

  “The guy we borrowed it from is in Florida until April. He said to leave it where it was until he gets back and he’d pick it up then.”

  The moment Liss unlocked the back door and stepped inside, she reached for the light switch. She wished she could turn on the heat, too, but the aged furnace hadn’t passed inspection. She didn’t even know if there was fuel left in the oil tank. It didn’t matter, she told herself. They weren’t staying long.

  From the kitchen, she went straight down the hallway to the stairs, flipping every light switch she came to. She avoided looking toward the dining room or the parlor. The police had long since released the manikins and the skeleton so that she could return them to their owners. Except for the two-tined fork, her cutlery and china had also been restored to her. She imagined that the forensics team had kept other items, as well—like the sofa Ned had been lying on—but she felt no urge to verify that hunch.

  The linen closet door at the top of the staircase stood open, exposing empty shelves that ran from floor to ceiling. It looked exactly as it had on Liss’s first visit to the house. Although the overhead light in the hall was fairly bright, it failed to reveal any sign of an entrance to the room behind the closet.

  “Do you know how to get in?” Liss asked.

  “No, but how hard can it be?” Sherri peered into the cramped space. “We know there’s a door here. That’s half the battle. I wonder if we need to remove this shelving first.”