X Marks the Scot

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  She found Joe Ruskin in his office, a small, cluttered space hidden away behind the luxurious public rooms of the hotel. Margaret’s old office was located off the same corridor, but now its occupant was a much younger woman named Tricia Lynd. She’d come to work at The Spruces as an intern at the same time Margaret took the job, back when the hotel was surviving on a wing and a prayer. Since then, Tricia had done just about every job in the place, making her ideally suited to pitch The Spruces as the perfect setting for small conferences, mini-conventions, weddings, and other gatherings.

  “Gimme a minute,” Joe said without looking up from the spreadsheet displayed on his computer monitor.

  Liss plopped herself down in the straight-back wooden chair in front of his desk and waited for him to stop glaring at the screen. She had to smile as she listened to him mutter to himself. He’d always hated the accounting end of running a business, but he was too stubborn to hire someone else to do what he felt he was perfectly capable of accomplishing on his own. It was a stance she could appreciate because it was one she shared.

  Joe loved everything to do with this old hotel he’d brought back to life. He’d bought the property when everyone else thought the building was a white elephant that should be torn down before it collapsed. Through dogged determination, he’d restored the place to its former glory. It had been touch and go the first few years, but by establishing a reputation for excellence, the business had turned a corner. These days it was making a small but steady profit.

  As for Joe himself, he always said that running the hotel kept him young. He’d built up a fine physique as a construction worker in his younger years and showed no sign of letting himself go. There was no paunch visible, no stoop to his shoulders. That boded well for Dan’s future. If someone saw Joe and Liss’s husband from a distance, they’d be hard put to say who was who. Joe, Dan, and Dan’s brother, Sam, were all over six feet tall and they all had lovely thick hair. In Joe’s case, the sandy brown color was gray at the temples. Together with a few lines around the molasses brown eyes his sons also shared, that was all that marked him as a senior citizen.

  Liss listened to him grumble for a good five minutes more before she finally interrupted. “Your face is going to freeze into a permanent scowl if you keep carrying on like that.”

  Joe laughed, pushed back in his desk chair, and gave her his full attention. “How are you doing, Liss? I hear you’ve been treasure hunting.”

  Got to love the Moosetookalook grapevine, Liss thought. It saved time on explanations. She got right to the point. “I need a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “Don’t be too quick to agree. What I’m asking is that you give an unauthorized party permission to examine the hotel guest records.”

  “You?” At her nod, he grinned. “No problem. You’re family and this is a family business.” He swiveled around in his chair to reach the computer keyboard and held one finger on each hand poised above it. “Does this have anything to do with Sherri asking about some guy named Kelsey?”

  “Maybe.” Rising, she came around his desk and stood at his shoulder. “I need you to look up a guest named Beamer.”

  Joe’s brow furrowed, but he obliged. “There you go. Benedicta Beamer? What’s she got to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but when I talked to her earlier, she had dirt under her fingernails. You haven’t started letting guests dig in the flowerbeds, have you?”

  His incredulous look was enough of an answer.

  She studied the record. Benny Beamer had checked in at The Spruces right before the auction and she’d been in residence ever since. If she made a side trip to Nova Scotia, she hadn’t checked out while she was gone, even though it was costing her a fortune to keep her room for such a long time.

  “Credit card okay?” Liss asked.

  “No flag.” Joe sent her a sharp look. “Should I be worried about getting stiffed?”

  “I just find it odd she can afford The Spruces. She claims not to be gainfully employed at present.”

  She reached over Joe’s shoulder to type in another search. There was nothing under Lucas, but she hit pay dirt when she tried Cornwall Pharmaceuticals. The company had booked a room for three days, the middle one being the day of the auction. It had been paid for with a corporate credit card, saving Aaron Lucas the necessity of registering under his own name.

  “Do you still have guests sign in at the old-fashioned register out front?” Liss asked.

  “Of course. Go ahead and look at it. I’ll let the desk know it’s okay.” He was reaching for the phone as Liss left his office.

  Emerging from the corridor, Liss was struck, as she always was, by the feeling of having stepped back into the past. The lobby of The Spruces was a marvel of late Victorian elegance with its white pillars, its polished wooden floors, and its high ceiling carved with animals and flowers. Large plush rugs made seating areas into cozy meeting places, especially those near the enormous fireplace directly opposite the main entrance. She couldn’t help but spare an admiring glance for its ornate mantel and the beveled mirror above. In winter, there was always a fire going. Now that it was high summer, the tile-lined hearth was full of fresh flowers.

  In the leather-bound register kept on the big, nineteenth-century check-in desk, a guest could sign in under any name he liked. Liss was half expecting to find “John Doe” on the date in question, but Aaron Lucas had instead chosen to be “Lucas A. Cornwall.”

  “He probably thinks that’s clever,” she muttered under her breath.

  The desk clerk gave her a funny look. “Anything else I can do for you, Ms. Ruskin?” He was young, probably a summer intern, and eager as a puppy to please.

  “Just a second.” She flipped to the current page, easily finding Maurice Kelsey, the nervous executive who’d just paid a visit to the police department. “What can you tell me about this guy? Is he traveling by himself?”

  The clerk checked the computer record, just as Joe had, and looked rattled when he couldn’t find Kelsey’s name.

  “Try Cornwall Pharmaceuticals,” Liss suggested. “Today’s check-in, not an old entry.”

  “Oh, here it is! I remember now. Mr. Kelsey had a corporate credit card.”

  “Single room?” That’s what they’d provided for Aaron Lucas.

  “Nope. Two-bedroom suite. One of the really nice ones, too.”

  That could mean he’d brought his wife. Or a girlfriend. But Liss couldn’t see Kelsey as the type to come to Moosetookalook for a romantic rendezvous. Besides, if that were the case, he wouldn’t need two bedrooms. Had he come to town just to talk to Sherri, or was he planning to meet his confederate, Aaron Lucas, during his stay in Moosetookalook? Unfortunately, the only additional information the clerk could provide was the make, model, and license plate of the car Kelsey was driving.

  It came as a considerable shock to turn away from the check-in desk and immediately catch sight of the very man she’d just been asking about. Maurice Kelsey was seated in a quiet corner of the lobby. From the way he kept looking at his watch, it appeared he was waiting for someone. Lucas? There was only one way to find out.

  Liss stationed herself in the lobby, half hidden by a pillar. There she lurked, keeping an eye on the man from Cornwall Pharmaceuticals.

  A half hour passed. Kelsey glanced at his watch with greater frequently but showed no sign of giving up and moving on. Her neck stiff from craning it to peek out at him, the rest of her protesting because she’d stood still for so long, Liss risked sidling from the cover of one pillar to the next. At just that moment, Kelsey looked up.

  He sprang to his feet to confront her. “Are you following me?”

  “Of course not. Why would I be?” Liss backpedaled only far enough to keep him from stepping on her toes.

  “Who the hell are you, anyway?” His face had turned an ugly shade of red and his narrowed eyes and fisted hands suggested he wanted to throttle the answer out of her.

 
“That’s none of your business.”

  Liss held her ground. She was in no danger. They were standing in the hotel lobby in full view of several other guests and the clerk behind the check-in desk. If Kelsey’s temper got the better of him, that young man could be relied upon to call for help.

  She was a trifle disappointed when Kelsey abruptly turned and stalked away from her. She hadn’t deliberately tried to provoke him, but if he had exploded, she’d have been able to file a complaint against him. With an excuse to make an arrest, Sherri might also have been able to search his room. Who knew what, or who, she might have found there?

  A moment later, Liss answered herself—she’d have found nothing. Kelsey had been waiting for someone. Someone who had not kept their appointment. That had to have been Aaron Lucas, which meant that he was not sharing Kelsey’s suite. Not yet, anyway.

  Still pondering the situation, Liss headed for the staff parking where she’d left her car. She locked herself in and turned on the air to cool the interior, but she was in no hurry to make the five-minute drive back to the Emporium. Something was nagging at her, buzzing in her mind like the most annoying of flies. Something about the hotel records she’d just seen. Not Kelsey or Cornwall Pharmaceuticals or Lucas, she thought. And then she had it—Benny Beamer.

  Benedicta Beamer.

  Seizing the tote she’d tossed onto the passenger seat, Liss rummaged through it for the Chadwick family tree Margaret had given her. Wasn’t there something . . . ?

  Yes, there it was, in the Canadian line. Norman Chadwick, father of Albert, the last Canadian Chadwick, had married a woman named Hazel Benedict. Of their three children, Daisy and Albert had stayed in Nova Scotia and neither had produced offspring. The third, Harold, was the one who’d left home as a young man, eager to find his fortune, and had never been heard from again.

  She studied the dates. Harold had been born in 1910. Assuming he married and had a daughter, might he have named her Benedicta after his mother? Benny Beamer was too young to be his child, but if there was one Benedicta in the family, why not another? If Benny was Harold’s granddaughter, the dates could work.

  With great care, Liss folded the family tree and tucked it back into her tote bag before pulling out of the staff parking lot and heading home. Her brainstorm was a long shot, such a long shot, in fact, that she hesitated to mention it to Dan or Sherri. Sherri had already punched holes in her theory that Benny had been the one digging for treasure.

  She winced at her inadvertent play on words, but kept thinking. Just because she’d been wrong on one count didn’t mean all her ideas were worthless. In fact, if it turned out that Benny was a Chadwick descendant, it made sense that Benny had been the culprit on Saturday night. The number and placement of the holes suggested that the digger had not found anything . . . including the hiding place behind the bricks. Had she gone back, perhaps on Monday night? Maybe even on Tuesday morning, if no one was working at the property?

  Liss refused to rule out the possibility.

  * * *

  When Liss and Dan were first married, he and his brother had turned what had been open space in the attic into a combination office and library with plenty of room for all of Liss’s books. After stopping briefly at the Emporium to make sure Beth didn’t need her help, Liss retreated to this haven for a good think. She turned off her cell phone and the ringer on the landline and didn’t even turn on the new iPad she’d bought to replace the one stolen in Nova Scotia. With only the two cats to distract her, she settled in at her desk with an eight by eleven lined tablet in front of her.

  Creating lists had always been Liss’s way to make sense of events. She started with her purchase of the portrait of the Grant piper and wrote down everything else that had happened in chronological order. Some of the items would turn out to have nothing at all to do with the things currently puzzling her, but at this stage she had no way of knowing what was important and what wasn’t.

  First on the list was the auction and the fact that Aaron Lucas bid against her for the painting. Not only Aaron Lucas, she reminded herself. There had also been Claire Mortimer. Was Claire as innocent as Sherri believed? Liss hoped so, because the last thing she needed was another suspect.

  She continued with her list. Item two was “met Benny Beamer.” Liss tapped her lips with the eraser end of her pencil. Benny hadn’t shown any interest in the portrait, but that could have been because she expected to find the map in the steamer trunk with the ledgers. Why had she bought it otherwise? That story about writing an article could be just so much hogwash.

  So—she’d met two viable suspects on the same day. Both had an interest in items that came out of the Chadwick house. Lucas had been looking for something Lester Widdowson might have hidden. Benny, if she really was a Chadwick, was probably looking for something connected to her family.

  Remembering the family tree Margaret had drawn, Liss couldn’t quite see what that would be. The Moosetookalook Chadwicks had been in the U.S. for a long time. If Benny was related to them at all, she was a very distant cousin, surely too distant to have any legal claim to an inheritance.

  The digging suggested a belief in buried treasure. She was as deluded as Lester Widdowson if she thought it was a Chadwick who’d left something valuable hidden on the property. According to local legend, the loot had belonged to Blackie O’Hare.

  “Good grief,” Liss said aloud. “You don’t suppose it was Blackie who made that map and hid it behind the portrait?”

  Lumpkin woke up from his nap long enough to send her a contemptuous look.

  Liss laughed. “You’re right. No need to come up with fresh theories. We have far too many already.”

  She went back to her list. A short time later, she read over what she’d written.

  1. won portrait bidding against Aaron Lucas

  2. met Benny Beamer

  3. found map

  4. showed map to Dan and Margaret

  5. Margaret suggested trip to Nova Scotia

  6. Margaret contacted Orson Bailey and set up appointment

  7. discovered Orson Bailey’s body

  Liss paused for a moment to contemplate that item. Everything else was minor compared to murder, but was Bailey’s death connected to the rest? It didn’t have to be.

  8. motel room burgled in Antigonish

  9. given copies of information Bailey was supposed to have ready for us

  10. found door unlocked at Emporium

  11. found intruder in house

  12. Benny reappeared; agreed to look through papers; took copy of map

  13. located X on map

  14. discovered someone had been digging near spot marked by X

  15. saw dirt under Benny’s fingernails

  16. Kelsey admitted Lucas was sent to look for a formula

  Liss tossed the pencil down in disgust. For once, making a list wasn’t helping. Nothing had become clearer. No brilliant new conclusions had leapt out at her.

  She needed more information. It would help if Sherri’s contact found evidence that either Aaron Lucas or Benny Beamer was in Canada at the same time she and Margaret were. That would at least narrow down the number of suspects. Unless the two of them were working together . . .

  She didn’t even want to think about that possibility!

  Chapter Twelve

  A landline served as Liss’s primary phone at the house, cell phone service in rural Maine having been unpredictable for so many years that most people in Moosetookalook refused to risk relying on it. The phone and answering machine combination sat on an end table in the living room with an extension in the kitchen. Having forgotten that she’d turned off the ringer, it was some time before Liss noticed the red message light blinking to signal a missed call.

  She expected to hear political propaganda or a request that she participate in a survey when she hit the play button, since those calls were always more frequent than legitimate messages from friends. A hesitation came first. She could hear someone brea
thing. That happened a lot too.

  Then her father’s voice issued from the speaker. “You know I hate these things. Call us back when you get a minute. Use this number.” He rattled off a series of digits.

  Liss felt like thumping her head on the hard wooden end table. For the first time in ages, she didn’t answer her phone, so of course that was when her father called! What was especially frustrating was that she’d been trying to reach her parents, on and off, ever since her return from Nova Scotia. She’d tried both the landline at the house in Arizona and her mother’s cell. Every single time, she’d been sent straight to voice mail. No one had returned any of those calls.

  As she stared at the unfamiliar numbers she’d written on the notepad by the phone, she wondered if her father had finally broken down and bought his own cell. She took a couple of deep breaths before attempting to return the call and almost dropped the receiver when he picked up on the second ring. She’d been positive she’d be connected to a recorded message and have to talk to a machine after the beep.

  “Daddy? Are you and Mom okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be?” He sounded puzzled by her question.

  “This isn’t your regular phone number.”

  “It’s my new smartphone. Your old dad’s decided to get with the times. I’m even thinking I might learn how to text.”

  “Knock yourself out, but first tell me why you haven’t returned any of my calls.” Liss settled herself on the sofa. She had a feeling this wasn’t going to be a short conversation.

  “What calls?”