Margaret had to chuckle at that. “The worst a burglar would have to fear if he broke into my place is that they’d lick him to death.”
They followed the flower-lined paths that wound their way around a gazebo-style bandstand, a monument to the Civil War dead, a flagpole, and a playground complete with jungle gym, slide, merry-go-round, and swings big enough for adults. By ignoring the KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs, someone could cross the square in less than two minutes. The meandering route they chose allowed them to keep strolling as long as they liked.
Margaret slowed her steps to allow Dandy and Dondi to examine a tree that had caught their canine fancy. In the branches above, a squirrel chattered, setting off a spate of barking. After a bit, Margaret jerked gently on their leads and they continued walking. Through all the subsequent stops and starts, they discussed the significance of Benny Beamer’s Chadwick heritage.
“I wish I’d known about it earlier,” Liss lamented. “The last time I talked to Benny, she had an explanation for the dirt under her fingernails. I almost believed it.”
“Almost?” Margaret’s eyebrows shot upward.
“There was just something that seemed . . . off about her story.” Liss shrugged. “I couldn’t put my finger on it. I still can’t.”
And then, out of the blue, she could.
“She said she was going to take the lady’s slipper home and plant it in her garden. Margaret, she doesn’t have a garden. She doesn’t have a permanent home. She was lying to me.”
“Surely she washed her hands and cleaned under her fingernails between the time someone dug those holes over the weekend and the time you noticed the dirt.”
“She went back. That’s the only explanation. She’s still searching on the Chadwick property for . . . something.”
“That man from the pharmaceutical company seems a much more likely suspect to me. After all, he’s admitted to spying on us, and to following us in Nova Scotia. He even admitted to poking around in our room in Antigonish. Are you certain he wasn’t the one who broke into it?”
“I don’t entirely believe his story, either.”
They had reached the playground. Three middle-grades youngsters were on the merry-go-round, shrieking with delight as they made it spin faster and faster. Dandy strained at her leash, eager to join the fun, but Margaret firmly pulled her away. Side by side, Liss and Margaret sat on the adult-size swings while the dogs explored a nearby bush.
“I hate to raise the possibility,” Margaret said, “but do you suppose one of them could have murdered Orson Bailey?”
“I can’t think of a good reason why either one would. Besides, as far as we know, Benny wasn’t in Canada at the time.”
“As far as you know?” Margaret queried.
Liss shrugged. “Sherri’s contact, the one who can get information from the border patrol or immigration or whatever branch of government it is that keeps records of that sort of thing, hasn’t gotten back to her yet about Benny.” She glanced toward the municipal building as she gently set her swing in motion. “I should go over there now and bring her up to speed on what you and Dolores discovered.”
With a final pat for each of the dogs, Liss suited action to words.
* * *
It took a bit of persuading, but Sherri eventually agreed that it was worth another trip to the hotel to talk with Benny Beamer. By the time they walked into the lobby it was late afternoon, but Joe Ruskin was still on duty at registration.
“Do you know if Benny Beamer is in her room?” Sherri asked him.
“I know she’s not,” Joe said. “She checked out a couple of hours ago.”
Liss bit back a curse. “That must have been right after she talked to me.”
“Sounds like it,” Sherri said. “What did you say to send her running?”
“Nothing. I’ve already told you about our conversation. When she left, she said she was going to come back here and work on her article.”
Joe had been listening to their exchange with unconcealed interest. “Maybe she found a cheaper place to stay,” he suggested. “Aren’t writers always strapped for cash?”
“Some of them are.” Liss based that belief entirely on interviews with mystery writers she’d read in online blogs. “Unless they’re really, really successful. But Benny isn’t a professional writer. She’s a part-time college instructor who house-sits on the side. Maybe she found a job in the area.”
“Carrabassett County doesn’t exactly run to people who hire house sitters.”
Sherri’s skepticism reflected what Liss was feeling. If Benny had lied about the lady’s slipper, she’d probably lied about other things, too.
“So where would she go?” Liss asked. “Surely not to the Day Lily Inn.”
Besides The Spruces, accommodations in Moosetookalook consisted of that one small, slightly sleazy motel and an upscale B&B where the rooms were even more expensive than those at the hotel. There was nothing to say that Benny couldn’t have resettled farther afield, except that her interest centered around the Chadwick property. Surely she wouldn’t want to be too far away.
“Is she really writing an article?” Sherri asked. “I know that’s what she told you, but she hasn’t exactly been truthful with either of us.”
Joe answered before Liss could. “I’ve seen her sitting in the lobby and typing on a laptop. Of course, I have no way of telling what she was writing. For all I know, she could have been answering e-mail.”
“One part of her story did check out,” Sherri said.
“Which part?” Liss asked.
“She has worked as adjunct faculty. After you passed on what she said about that, and told me that she mentioned the Glickman Library, I got in touch with the folks at USM. She taught a couple of freshman composition courses there about four years ago, but she hasn’t been employed by them recently and no one there could tell me much about her. And before you ask, I checked with personnel and with the department she taught in. They had difficulty even remembering who she was.”
“Except for her size and those curls and the giggle, she is kind of forgettable.” Liss thought for a moment. “Did they have an address for her?”
“An old one. It appears to have been another house-sitting job. Ditto the more recent one listed on her driver’s license, but the DMV also provided me with her license plate number.”
“This it?” Joe asked.
While they’d been talking, he’d looked up Benny’s registration. The make, model, and license number of her car were listed there, along with a street address in Cape Elizabeth, one of the swankier areas close to Portland.
“The information on her car is right,” Sherri said, “but that’s an address I haven’t seen before. I wonder if this one is current.”
“She moves around a lot,” Liss said in a dry voice. “Joe, is there any chance her room hasn’t been cleaned yet?”
He was already holding out a key card. “No reason you can’t go in, now that she’s checked out.”
The subtle emphasis he put on the last phrase made Liss painfully aware that he must have known about the occasion a few years back when she’d entered a guest’s room uninvited, unauthorized . . . and illegally. Until now, she’d thought Joe was unaware of the incident. Had his son told him, long after the fact? Or had he somehow found out on his own? She decided not to ask. At the time, she’d felt her actions were justified.
Sherri took the key card and led the way to the elevators for their return trip to Benny’s room. This time they went in.
At first glance, the interior looked as if a tornado had touched down. The sheets, pillows, summer-weight blanket, and goose-down comforter had all been tossed on the floor and the mattress was half off the bed. The closet door stood open, revealing fallen hangers and a single overlooked white crew sock, the top folded over and the discolored sole suggesting that Benny wore a pair of socks instead of bedroom slippers. The desk and desk chair, easy chair, hassock, and reading lamp were in better shape, but
they, too, showed signs of a hasty departure. Everywhere Liss looked, items were just slightly askew.
“She left in a hurry.”
“Looks like it,” Sherri agreed. “And she was keeping something under the mattress. Either that or we aren’t the first people to take an interest in this room.”
“It looks a lot like our motel room in Antigonish.” The words were scarcely out of Liss’s mouth before she realized the similarities might be significant. “Could Benny have been the one who broke in and searched it?”
“Why would she steal your laptop?” Sherri retrieved a pair of latex-free vinyl exam gloves from a pocket and slipped them on before pulling out one of the half-open dresser drawers to make certain it was empty.
“Maybe she thought there was information about the Chadwicks on it. Or a copy of the map. That must have been what she was after, right?”
“How did she even know about the map at that point?”
“What if—” She hesitated, then just blurted it out. After all, Margaret had already had the same thought. “What if she murdered Orson Bailey?”
Sherri stopped what she was doing to stare at her. “Why?”
“To get the articles he collected to give to Margaret. We thought he must have made copies, but they were missing after the murder. The society’s secretary had to make new ones for us.”
“You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions. Assuming Benny was in Nova Scotia, all she’d have had to do to get her own copies of those articles was ask for them. Heck, she had a better right to them than Margaret did, since it turns out that she’s a Chadwick descendant. And even assuming that she might have had a reason to take your laptop, thinking there was more information stored there, why would she burgle those other motel rooms?”
“To confuse the issue, of course.” That seemed simple enough to Liss. “Doesn’t the fact that she’s run away prove she’s guilty of something?”
“Not necessarily, and it certainly doesn’t give me grounds to arrest her.” Sherri continued to search the room.
“How about issuing a BOLO? Can’t you at least haul her in for questioning?”
Ignoring Liss’s question, Sherri picked up the wastepaper basket and stirred the contents. She pulled out a crumpled receipt and squinted at it. After a moment, she gave up. “Can you make out what this says?”
Liss reached for it, but Sherri pulled back her hand. “Don’t touch. Just read.”
“What are you after? Joe has her credit card number and you don’t need to ID her. You already know her name. Heck, we already have all the names in her family tree!” Liss had to hold her head at an awkward angle to read what appeared to be a receipt that had come out of a cash register that badly needed to have its ink changed. Squinting, she made out the date, but the amount of the transaction was illegible. “It’s from early June. The seventh.”
“Is it?” Sherri asked. “Or does it say July sixth?”
Liss only needed a moment to catch on. 6/7 or 7/6? In Canada, both formats were in use. Newspapers preferred month-day-year and that was what was on customs stamps, too, but immigration records used the day-month-year order and so did a lot of businesses. If this receipt came from one of them, it was proof that Benny had been on that side of the border at the same time as Liss and Margaret.
Sherri tucked the receipt into an evidence bag that had come out of the same bulging pocket as the gloves. “We may be reaching,” she warned. “Could be an old receipt from right here in the U.S. of A.”
Liss didn’t reply. She’d had a thought and was stepping over the twisted sheets to get to the window. The room boasted a splendid view of distant mountains, but her interest centered on the wide sill, the most likely place for someone to put a pot with a flower in it. She was not surprised to find no evidence that such a thing had been placed there while Benny was in residence. The story about digging up a lady’s slipper had most likely been a complete fabrication.
She turned to find that Sherri had moved on to search the closet. “Was there anything else in the trash?” Liss asked.
“Only what you’d expect—the wrappers from two of the water glasses, a used basket from the coffeemaker, and a whole bunch of empty creamer and sweetener packets. Since only one mug was used, I’d say our missing friend has a sweet tooth.”
Liss opened the mini-refrigerator hidden in a cabinet. If Benny had stored any leftovers there during her visit, she’d taken them with her. In the bathroom, Sherri inspected the cabinet and even pulled back the shower curtain, leaving it open when she returned to the bedroom.
“That’s it,” she announced, removing the gloves. “There’s nothing else to find. Her behavior is suspicious, especially given her distant connection to the Chadwicks and her sudden departure for parts unknown, but I don’t have compelling evidence that she’s guilty of any crime. I have no reason to go looking for her, let alone to arrest her. It isn’t illegal to keep information from strangers—that would be you, Liss—or to lie to them. And Joe is right. If she plans to stay in the area for some time, whether to do research or for some other reason, it makes sense that she’d move somewhere cheaper. The cost of a room in this place would strain most people’s budgets.”
“Can’t you at least check around? See if she is staying somewhere else in town?”
“Officially? No.” Sherri opened the door to the hallway and held it ajar, waiting for Liss to take the hint.
Reluctantly, she left, but she was not done searching. Sherri couldn’t help. Liss understood why her friend’s hands were tied. But there was nothing to stop Liss from looking for Benny on her own. She’d just have to make the rounds herself . . . unofficially.
Chapter Fifteen
Liss mulled over ways to find Benny Beamer for the rest of the day, but that evening all thoughts of the other woman were wiped from her mind when Lumpkin, in search of something edible, decided to investigate the plates of salad Liss had just placed on the kitchen table. She’d turned her back on him to collect the rest of their meal from the kitchen counter, unwittingly giving him time enough to catch a claw in a placemat and pull both it and one of the salads to the floor. A dinner plate in each hand, she swung around at the sound of ceramic clattering on tile. It was already too late to avert disaster.
Lumpkin, happily chowing down on scattered bits of romaine, was unaware that a healthy dollop of cottage cheese that had, until a moment earlier, been nestled on top of the lettuce, now decorated his back, the curds actively embedding themselves in his long, luxurious fur. Frozen in place, Liss stared the sight in horrified fascination for far longer than she should have. Mind and body simply refused to take in what she was seeing.
She snapped out of her trance when Lumpkin waddled toward a second shred of lettuce and the cottage cheese started to move down the side of his body. Four steps brought her to the table to set down the plates she was still holding. Then she scooped up the big Maine coon cat and carried him straight to the sink. Caught by surprise, he didn’t try to squirm out of her grasp until she turned on the cold water. Keeping a firm grip on Lumpkin, Liss tried to scrub the cottage cheese out of his fur, but all she succeeded in doing was grinding it in more deeply. It wasn’t until he was soaking wet that she made any progress with cleaning him.
Drawn by the promise of supper, if not by the commotion in the kitchen, Dan turned up during Lumpkin’s impromptu bath. When Liss at last turned off the water and lifted the cat out of the sink, he was waiting with a bath towel to help dry the protesting feline. It took both of them to keep hold of him until he was no longer dripping.
Once he’d been set free, Liss grabbed a handful of paper towels and attacked the mess on the floor, grateful that it was tile and not carpet. With Dan to lend a hand, they were able to eat before their meal had gone completely cold. They split the remaining salad between them.
It was not until after they finished supper that Liss thought of Benny again, and only then because Margaret stopped by to see if there was any news. Liss too
k the opportunity to bring both her aunt and her husband up-to-date.
By the time she finished, they were seated in the living room, Liss and Dan on the sofa and Margaret in an easy chair. Lumpkin, having forgotten the indignities he’d suffered less than two hours earlier, hopped into Liss’s lap. When she automatically ran a hand over his back, she found his long hair dry but stiff and there were still a few tiny white bits of cottage cheese caught in the fur. Reaching into the drawer of the end table, she fished with her fingers until she found the cat brush she kept there. The arrangement of its bristles made it function more like a comb and she began, slowly and methodically, to groom her cat.
Margaret’s brows were knit together in consternation. “Seems to me you’ll do nothing more than waste a lot of time by looking for her. By now, she could be anywhere.”
“With any luck,” Dan said, sotto voce, “she’s far, far away and won’t be coming back.”
“I have to try,” Liss said without looking up from her task, “if only for my own peace of mind. It’s way too unsettling not to know where she is.”
“Digging holes isn’t exactly a major crime,” Margaret said. “If she’s even the one responsible for that. You said yourself that you have no proof.”
“She lied about the lady’s slipper. That’s suggestive. Who knows what more she’s capable of?”
Dan put a hand on her arm, arresting the next stroke of the cat brush. “If you really think she murdered that man in Nova Scotia, you shouldn’t go anywhere near her.”
He sounded testy and Liss couldn’t blame him, but it wasn’t as if she planned to put herself in danger. She resumed brushing the cat, a remarkably soothing pastime . . . so long as Lumpkin cooperated. At the moment he was signaling his contentment with a loud purr.
“I’m just going to make a few phone calls. Ask around.” Maybe pay a few visits here and there, Benny’s photograph in hand, she added to herself. She could ask Sherri to make her a copy of that picture taken at the auction, enlarged so that it gave a clearer view of Benny’s face.
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