X Marks the Scot

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  “How’s it going?” Liss asked.

  “You see before you the exciting life of a cop—telephoning, online searches, and paperwork. But I did turn up a few interesting details about your friends from the auction.”

  Liss plunked herself down in the uncomfortable visitor’s chair. “Tell me. I need cheering up.”

  Sherri gave her a questioning look but obliged. “You remember that I was able to find out the name of your dark-haired man?”

  Liss nodded. “Aaron Lucas, right?”

  “Yes. And he listed a home address in Connecticut. With that information to go on, I did some more digging. I wanted to see if any red flags came up in a background check, in particular if he’d ever been arrested. I also sent a query to find out if Lucas crossed the border into Canada at around the same time you did. The results have started trickling in. Lucas is ex-military and currently works for a company called Cornwall Pharmaceuticals.”

  “Never heard of them,” Liss said.

  “Me, neither, but I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I gave them a call. I was on the phone with them just now. I learned a bit more about Aaron Lucas but I’m not at all sure what it means. Cornwall Pharmaceuticals is a small Connecticut-based drug company. Lucas works for them as head of security. I wasn’t able to talk to the man himself because according to what a helpful personnel officer told me, Lucas is on vacation. He’s walking the Appalachian Trail.”

  “And therefore almost impossible to reach,” Liss finished for her.

  “Yup.”

  “Wasn’t there a politician a few years back who claimed he was hiking in the wilderness when he was really meeting his mistress somewhere in South America?”

  “You have an even more suspicious mind than I do,” Sherri said. “My first thought was that even if the information on Lucas is correct, it doesn’t necessarily put him in the clear. The northern end of the Appalachian Trail runs fairly close to Moosetookalook.”

  Liss frowned, wondering if they’d just solved the mystery. “No way is he out there with only a backpack, not if he was buying all those framed pictures at the auction.”

  “What did he want with them in the first place?” Sherri asked.

  “That’s easy. He was looking for something hidden in a frame. He didn’t find it in any of the ones he purchased because it was behind the painting I bought.”

  “That fits.” Sherri allowed herself a small, self-satisfied smile. “I bet it won’t surprise you to hear that someone dropped off a half dozen framed pictures at the Share Shack at the Moosetookalook transfer station the day after the auction. They’re in good condition but the backing has been removed on each and every one of them.”

  “He took them to the dump?”

  “Either that or he abandoned them by the side of the road and someone else picked them up and disposed of them properly.”

  “So he was looking for the map and he may still have been looking for it when my motel room, my shop, and my house were searched.”

  “It’s certainly possible, but all we know for sure is that Aaron Lucas isn’t just an innocent bystander who collects picture frames for a hobby. If I can get confirmation that he followed you to Nova Scotia, then I can issue a BOLO. If I can find him, I can bring him in for questioning.”

  “How long before you have that information?” Liss shifted uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair. “And when are you going to get decent furniture for this place?”

  “Go to the next town meeting. Vote for a bigger budget. As for my query, an answer should come in today or tomorrow. Every time someone crosses the border, their name is collected, along with a lot of other information. It goes into a database other law enforcement officers can access if they’ve been approved and certified. Unfortunately, certification costs money and Moosetookalook is too small to consider the expenditure worthwhile. I had to call in a favor from a friend. He’s checking for me, but it isn’t a high priority for him.”

  Liss got up and began to pace. “If this guy has been following me since the auction, is it possible he got to Chadwick first? Do you think he could be the one who killed Orson Bailey?”

  “Why would he, Liss? You’re the one with the map.”

  “I don’t know, but then I don’t know exactly how Bailey died, either. If Lucas is ex-military, maybe he just snapped. You hear about that sort of thing a lot. In fact, that was what the woman at the historical society thought must have happened when we believed that the man who confessed was guilty.”

  Sherri was shaking her head. “Don’t go off half-cocked. If it was Lucas you saw in Truro, then he could certainly be the one who broke into your motel room, but how could he know you were stopping in Chadwick on your way there? To have killed Bailey, he’d have had to get there ahead of you.”

  Deflated, Liss sank into the slightly less uncomfortable chair behind the second desk in Sherri’s office. She used one foot to swivel slowly from side to side as she thought that over. “You’re right. If he followed us, he’d be behind us. But he has to be the one who let himself into the shop last week, and into my house, too. And if he trailed Dan and me out to the Chadwick property on Saturday evening and saw us spot that brick wall, then he could easily have returned later that night to dig those holes.”

  Sherri sent her a blank look. “Holes? What holes?”

  “That’s what I came in to tell you.” Liss filled Sherri in on what they’d discovered on Sunday morning. “Do you think he found what he was looking for?”

  “I hope he did, and that he’s long gone.”

  Liss bristled. “You can’t mean to let him get away with it!”

  Sherri sighed and stated the obvious. “As far as anyone can prove, Lucas hasn’t done a darned thing he can be prosecuted for. Even if he followed you to Canada, that isn’t a crime.”

  Liss was still sputtering over the injustice of that situation when Sherri’s phone rang.

  “Go home, Liss,” she said as she reached for it. “It’s too soon for this to be my friend with the information on Lucas. Odds are about equal that I either need to go round up somebody’s runaway cow or that I’m wanted to direct traffic at the scene of a jackknifed pulp truck.”

  Liss was at the door when Sherri called her back.

  “It’s none-of-the-above. Pete’s been looking for you. He says he tried the house and the Emporium and got answering machines and that your cell went straight to voice mail.”

  “I turned it off when I was at Dance Central.” Liss reached for Sherri’s phone but her friend refused to relinquish it.

  “Tell me first,” she instructed her husband.

  Liss thought about trying to punch the speaker button but decided against engaging in an undignified tug-of-war. Instead, she waited, watching Sherri’s frown deepen as she listened a few moments longer and then disconnected.

  “Well?” Arms crossed, stance hostile, Liss glared down at her friend from the other side of the desk.

  “Your map isn’t old enough to have anything to do with Prohibition or rum running.”

  “But—”

  “Prohibition lasted from 1920 through 1933. Pete consulted an expert. He says the paper the map is drawn on was made in the 1940s or later.”

  “It looked a lot older than that.”

  “Maybe it got wet or muddy before it went into the picture frame.” Sherri shrugged. “Who knows? Pete says the expert, who didn’t charge him, by the way, told him it’s easy to identify modern paper because it fluoresces much brighter than older paper. All they had to do was use a blacklight on it. Paper from the 1920s or earlier would have had a darker appearance and look dull in color.”

  Liss took a moment to process this information and to remember that they’d never known exactly what they were looking for. “If the map didn’t have to do with smuggling,” she mused aloud, “could it still have been put there by one of the Chadwicks?”

  “Why not?” Sherri tapped the end of her pencil on the desk, a sure sign she was gro
wing impatient with the subject.

  “But why?” Liss made an inarticulate sound and stamped her foot. “Ooh! I hate not knowing.”

  Sherri chuckled. “Let’s think this through. Maybe you’ve been on the wrong track. Maybe the map has nothing to do with the Chadwicks at all.”

  Liss stared at her. “You may be onto something. There was another owner, right? Someone bought the mansion from the town and then, apparently, did nothing with it but install better locks before selling it to Brad Jardine. I can go check the registry of deeds and find out who else owned the place.”

  Sherri glanced at her watch. “How about I treat you to lunch—egg salad sandwiches at my place?”

  “Thanks, but—”

  “You want answers? The quickest way to get them is to ask my mother-in-law and this is her morning with the grandkids.”

  * * *

  They walked to Sherri’s house, since it was only a few blocks from the municipal building, and found the normally prim and proper Thea Campbell, Moosetookalook’s longest-serving selectman, playing Barbies on the floor with her granddaughters. If she was embarrassed to be caught in such an undignified position, she shrugged it off with a self-deprecating grin.

  “Do you two want to join us?”

  “You’re doing a great job on your own.” Sherri’s lips twitched when she tried to contain a smile. “Why don’t I handle making lunch?”

  Sherri’s formidable mother-in-law appeared to have mellowed in the last couple of years. Liss hoped that relaxed attitude would extend to an informal sharing of information. She could find the buyer’s name in the record books, but Sherri had been right—it was much easier to ask Thea. The added benefit was that she’d know any good gossip associated with the sale.

  The sandwiches went together quickly, since Sherri had made the egg salad before leaving for work that morning. Within ten minutes of arriving at the house, everyone was gathered around the kitchen table, even two-year-old Christina.

  The toddler sat on a booster seat in order to reach her plate. Acting very grown up at nearly six, Amber announced that she wanted tea with her sandwich and that she wanted the crusts cut off her bread.

  “I was reading them a story—”

  Sherri held up a hand to stop her mother-in-law’s explanation. “I know the one.” She fixed Amber with a stern look. “Does your ladyship thinks she’s a princess who was kidnapped by gypsies?”

  Widening her eyes to achieve a look of greater innocence, Amber nodded earnestly and held up her plate. Sherri obligingly trimmed off the crusts. Then she ate them herself. “What?” she demanded when she saw Liss shaking her head. “I hate to waste food.”

  Liss was not always comfortable around children and had opted not to have any, but today she got a kick out of Amber’s antics. Once the little girl reached the age of twelve or thirteen, Liss might even feel comfortable talking with her. By the time they were teenagers, kids wanted to be treated like adults. That thought reminded her that Sherri also had a son. “Where’s Adam?”

  “Off with his friends,” Thea said.

  “What friends?” A worry line appeared in Sherri’s forehead.

  Thea sighed. “He has too many of them for me to keep track. Stop fussing, Sherri. The boy is fifteen years old. He doesn’t need a babysitter anymore.”

  Sherri looked as if she wanted to disagree but not if it would irritate Thea. They finished eating in silence.

  Pushing her plate to one side, Liss cleared her throat. “Thea, we were wondering if you could do us a favor?”

  The request earned her a suspicious look before Thea shifted her focus to her daughter-in-law. “I can’t stay later than one. I already told you that.”

  “That’s fine,” Sherri said. “I have an afternoon sitter lined up. I’ll even stay till she gets here if you want to leave early.”

  “This isn’t about the kids,” Liss interrupted. “It’s about the town.”

  Thea’s eyes narrowed even farther. Despite the impression she’d given while playing with her granddaughters, she was tightly wound. “What about the town?”

  “Do you happen to remember who owned the Chadwick mansion before Mr. Jardine bought it?”

  “Is that all you want to know? I thought you were leading up to something difficult. It was a man named Lester Widdowson, an older gentleman. After all the trouble we had with that property, the board of selectmen was anxious to unload it. Maybe too anxious. He bought it for a fraction of what it should have sold for.”

  “Did he ever live there?” Liss asked.

  “Not that I know of. Perhaps it was in worse shape than he’d anticipated, although if he had a contractor take a look at the place, it was no one local. I do know that he never applied for any building permits.”

  When Thea had left and Sherri’s sixteen-year-old babysitter had arrived, Liss and Sherri walked back to the police station.

  “Now what?” Liss asked.

  “Now I do some checking on Lester Widdowson. More of the glamorous life of a law enforcement officer!”

  “Back to the computer?”

  “Back to the computer,” Sherri agreed.

  Liss veered off toward her house when they reached the town square. She was still there, enjoying her day off by sitting on her front porch and reading the newest mystery in the Mistress Jaffrey series, when Sherri emerged from cyberspace and stopped by to share what she’d found.

  “Lester Widdowson died last year,” she reported after she’d accepted a tall glass of lemonade and a comfy seat on the porch swing. Liss perched on the wide railing, her back propped against one of the roof supports. “It was his son, Sean Widdowson, who sold the property to Jardine.”

  “You’re grinning like the cat that swallowed the canary,” Liss observed. “What else did you find out?”

  “Oh, nothing much.” Sherri took a long sip of her drink before she deigned to satisfy her friend’s curiosity. “Only that, by a rather remarkable coincidence, Lester Widdowson once worked for Cornwall Pharmaceuticals, the very same outfit that now employs your mysterious dark-haired man.”

  * * *

  “Tell me again why you were in such a rush that we had to drive all the way to the coast to talk to this guy.”

  Dan sounded disgruntled, but that was an improvement over the near silence of the earlier part of their trip from Moosetookalook. After a couple of hours cooped up together in the cab of his truck, bouncing over a variety of winding, two-lane roads, they’d hit U.S. Route 1 for a blessedly short stretch, given summer traffic, and now sat at the Cook’s Corner intersection waiting for the light to change.

  Liss sighed. “We’re here because Lester Widdowson’s son and heir wouldn’t agree to answer questions over the phone.”

  At the time, it had seemed simplest to agree to meet Sean Widdowson at his summer place in Harpswell, but when she’d told Dan where she was going, he’d insisted on dropping everything to accompany her. Now that they were getting close to their destination, Liss was glad of his company, but she could have done without the surly attitude.

  “You didn’t have to come.”

  “Yes, I did. You don’t know anything about this guy.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s not an ax murderer.”

  The light changed and Dan drove straight through the intersection. They didn’t have much farther to go. Liss dug in her tote for the directions Widdowson had given her. He’d called his place a cottage. That could mean anything from a rustic cabin to a palatial mansion like the ones in Bar Harbor.

  She glanced at her watch, surprised to see that it was not yet five in the afternoon. It seemed eons ago that Sherri had stopped by with her news about Lester Widdowson. Things had moved swiftly after that. Armed with the phone number Sherri had unearthed, Liss had made the initial contact with Sean. When he’d stated his conditions for discussing his father and the house in Moosetookalook, she’d seen no reason not to agree. It was her day off, after all.

  Lost in her own thoughts,
she was startled when Dan asked for landmarks. He veered right, following the signs to Harpswell.

  “After a boathouse with a green door, it’s the second driveway on the left.” She consulted her notes. “There should be a sign that says ‘Widdowson’ and the house number.” She gave him the latter and startled looking for the boathouse.

  The driveway was short and sloped steeply upward. The garage was to their right. Trees boxed in the area on the other two sides, but straight ahead she could catch glimpses of glistening blue water. When Dan parked and they got out, Liss could not, at first, see either a house or a path through the mini-forest.

  “Someone likes his privacy,” Dan said. “This way.”

  A gap between two pines brought them to the top of a series of wide brick steps cut into the hillside. These wound back and forth and ever downward. There was no railing. “Not exactly handicapped accessible,” Liss muttered.

  “Not exactly a public building, either.”

  At the bottom stood an ordinary house with blue shutters. Flowering shrubs had been planted in the tiny yard, but Liss had a feeling that the primary appeal this “cottage” held for Sean Widdowson was the view from the back. There, undoubtedly, he’d have a deck that looked out over the cove.

  “Isolated,” Dan said.

  “Not an ax murderer,” Liss repeated under her breath. She raised her hand to knock.

  Widdowson must have been watching for her. The door opened almost before she had time to take a step back. He was short, slender, and twentysomething, wearing khaki shorts, a Red Sox T-shirt, and a neatly trimmed beard.

  “Ms. Ruskin?”

  “Yes. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Mr. Widdowson.”

  He gave a curt nod and shifted his gaze to Dan. “And you are?”

  “Mr. Ruskin.”

  Widdowson gave a short laugh. “I’m flattered that you think she needs a bodyguard.”

  “You wouldn’t be if you knew what’s been going on lately.”

  Widdowson’s finely shaped eyebrows lifted in a question. “I’d like to hear that story. It’s all grist for the mill.”

  With that rather enigmatic statement, he led them along a hallway to the open space at the water side of the cottage. To the right was a living room with an enormous fireplace and even bigger windows. A dining area and kitchen were to their left, the former boasting a spectacular view of the island on the other side of the cove. Widdowson waved them toward the door to the adjoining deck rather than into the chairs around the table. Liss couldn’t help but notice that there was no room on top of the table for food or drink. Except for the space occupied by a laptop, the entire surface was covered with papers and books. The arrangement screamed “writer.”