“I don’t suppose it’s any use telling you to leave this to the police,” Margaret said, “but at least promise us you’ll be careful.”
“I promise. The only thing I’ve thought of to do so far is to make a list of all the hotels, motels, and B&Bs in the surrounding area.” She paused to glance at the clock and then gave Dan a pointed look. “Isn’t it time for your game?”
When he took the hint, reached for the remote control, and turned on the Red Sox, Liss transferred Lumpkin to his lap, along with the brush, after which she and Margaret retreated to the kitchen. Glenora was in her accustomed spot on top of the refrigerator, making Liss wonder if she’d been there all though the cottage cheese debacle.
She busied herself slicing cheddar cheese and collecting crackers and store-bought cookies while Margaret made lemon and ginger tea. In short order, they were seated at the kitchen table. Margaret had also unearthed one of Liss’s college-ruled legal pads and a rollerball pen with red ink. It took them less than ten minutes to compile a list of all the lodgings in the area.
“Are you going to start calling tonight?” Margaret asked.
“I’d rather stop by in person.” Liss lowered her voice, even though she was sure the sound of the television blaring in the living room would keep Dan from overhearing. “Benny could be using an assumed name. It would be best to show people her picture, don’t you think?”
Margaret pursed her lips. “I wasn’t kidding when I made you promise to be careful. If there’s even the slightest chance that she’s the one who killed Mr. Bailey, then she’s too dangerous for you to confront.”
“Have you seen her? She’s just a little bit of a thing. Besides, I’m not going to do anything foolish.” Liss took a tentative sip of her tea, found it scalding hot, and got up to get a bottle of cold water from the refrigerator. A dollop would cool the beverage down enough to drink.
“From everything you’ve told me, that girl is a loose cannon.”
“In that case, it would be even more foolish not to find her.” Liss opened the refrigerator and stood there, staring into the depths, momentarily at a loss. “What did I come here for?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.” Margaret calmly sipped her tea.
The way her aunt drank beverages that were so hot they were almost boiling had often made Liss wonder if she had asbestos lining her throat. Abruptly, she remembered why she was standing in the open refrigerator door. She grabbed the small bottle of Poland Spring water sitting on the top shelf next to a carton of half-and-half.
“Had myself worried for a minute there.” Liss’s smile was sheepish as she resumed her seat at the table.
Margaret quirked a brow.
“I thought my memory was going.”
Margaret chuckled. “You know what they say—if you stand in front of an open fridge and can’t remember what you’re looking for, that’s okay, but if you stand in front of one and can’t remember what a refrigerator is for, then you should worry. Or words to that effect.” Frowning, she peered more closely into Liss’s face. “Whatever is the matter? You look . . . stricken.”
Liss took a hasty swallow of the cold water before dumping a little of it into her teacup. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Tell me.”
With a sigh, Liss capitulated. “It’s Mom. Bad jokes about Alzheimer’s aside, I’m worried about her. Dad says she forgot to tell him about my phone calls. I must have left a half dozen messages. How could she forget all of them?”
Margaret gave a ladylike snort and settled back in her chair. The frown lines vanished from her forehead. “That’s easy. We are talking about your mother, Liss. She is a law unto herself and always has been. I imagine she simply decided not to tell him you’d called. Why bother when they’ll be seeing you soon enough?”
“I’d have liked to talk to them about their plans to move north before they left Arizona.”
“Exactly why Vi would have preferred to avoid contact.”
“They’re on their way.” Liss stared glumly into her teacup.
“I know. Donald phoned me yesterday.”
“How did he sound?”
“Tired. It’s a long drive.”
“Mom is driving part of the time.” Liss took a sip of tea, grimaced at the taste, and moved the cup and saucer to one side. A mug of hot chocolate would have better suited her state of mind. That, or a stiff drink. “I can’t help but worry about them. Their decision to move back to Maine came out of the blue.”
“Did it?”
“It looks that way to me. Something must have happened to trigger it.”
Margaret finished her tea and set the cup carefully back into its saucer. “Try not to jump to any unfounded conclusions, Liss.”
“I prefer to call it extrapolating from the facts.”
The smile her aunt sent her in return was tinged with sadness. “Whatever name you give it, be careful. So very often, things are not entirely what they seem.”
And with that enigmatic pronouncement, she went home to her dogs.
* * *
The next morning, Sherri showed up at the front door of Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium shortly after Liss opened for the day. She brought with her a bakery bag from Patsy’s Coffee House and one of Patsy’s go-cups. Since Liss had just topped off her mug, the big white one with BOSS emblazoned on it in red letters, they headed straight for the cozy corner. Even before Liss saw what was in the bag, she smelled the cinnamon. Sherri had brought a half dozen freshly baked, cinnamon-sprinkled doughnuts. Liss had scarfed one down and was reaching for a second before she asked her friend if she’d brought the photo of Benny she had asked for.
Sherri produced it. Enlarged, it wasn’t as clear as Liss had hoped, but it was better than nothing.
“I also have news,” Sherri said. “I spoke to Sergeant Childs on the phone this morning.”
Liss couldn’t respond verbally—her mouth was full of doughnut—but she knew her eyes lit up. Heck, she was probably as bright-eyed as a puppy catching the scent of a squirrel.
“Don’t get too excited,” Sherri warned. “There hasn’t been an arrest, but I did persuade him to tell me a few more details about the case. I think we can rule out Benny Beamer as a suspect.”
Liss swallowed the last of the second doughnut. “Why?”
Sherri dipped into the bakery bag to extract a doughnut of her own. “Did anyone in Nova Scotia tell you how Orson Bailey died?”
“He was murdered.”
“I meant do you know what means was used to kill him?”
Liss stopped with her third doughnut halfway to her mouth, her appetite for the sweet pastry suddenly gone. She returned it to the bakery bag untasted.
Sherri looked as troubled as Liss felt. “I’ll take that as a no.”
“I found the body in a break room. From the door, it was mostly hidden under a round table. The tablecloth reached almost to the floor, so I wouldn’t have noticed him at all if his shoe hadn’t been sticking out.” She swallowed convulsively and her vision was unfocused as she visualized what she had seen that day.
“Did you check for a pulse?” Sherri asked.
“I didn’t have to. When I lifted the tablecloth, I could see his face. Nobody who’s still alive has wide staring eyes like that.” She shuddered. Using both hands, she picked up her mug and took a long swallow of coffee.
“Blood?”
“I didn’t see any. I didn’t look very hard. I backed out of there at warp speed and waited for the police.”
“Okay, here’s the thing—Bailey’s body had been moved. He wasn’t killed in the break room, just hidden there. He died in his office.”
“And that brings us back to how?”
“I’m afraid so. You know those spikes people used to use to hold notes? I’m talking about way before computers. Nineteenth and early twentieth century.”
“Mounted on a base with the pointy end up?”
Sherri nodded.
Liss felt he
r face go cold and imagined the color had shifted from merely pale to dead white. “That’s how he was killed?”
“It was still in his back, plunged in all the way to the base.” Sherri looked a bit green herself as she relayed the information. “The thing is, Liss, it took a blow with some force behind it to kill him that way and then the killer had to be physically capable of moving him to another room and stowing him under that table where he’d be more or less out of sight.”
From what little Liss had seen of Bailey, he hadn’t been obese, but he hadn’t been a lightweight, either. It would have taken considerable upper-body strength to drag or carry him from his office to the break room. “Benny’s just a little bit of a thing. Even shorter than you are.”
“Exactly.”
“Adrenaline?”
“Maybe, but it’s a stretch.”
Liss stood, suddenly too restless to sit still. She didn’t go far, stopping at a nearby display to fiddle with clan crest patches and tartan ribbons. Anything to keep her hands busy. “Killing him didn’t make any sense in the first place, but killing him with something picked up off his desk? Stabbing him in the back?”
“Maybe he turned away from his killer to reach for the phone and call the police,” Sherri suggested.
“Then it would have made more sense for whoever he was talking with to leave while his back was turned. Homicide is a much more serious charge than robbery.”
“You’re assuming he was robbed.”
“The file he’d promised to make for Margaret didn’t turn up afterward.”
“You said yourself that the police probably took it. I should have asked when I had Sergeant Childs on the line. But whether he has it or not, the fact that Bailey’s office was tossed, as if the person who killed him was looking for something, has them thinking the murderer was looking for drugs or money to buy them.”
“Did you tell Sergeant Childs our suspicions about Benny?”
“Yes, and about Aaron Lucas following you to Canada too. I figured I’d better bring him up to speed, even though there’s nothing solid to connect either of them to Bailey’s murder.” She hesitated. “You do realize that meant I had to explain the whole map-hidden-behind-the-portrait and treasure-hunt thing? You really should have told him about that yourself.”
“At the time, I didn’t think there was a connection.”
“There probably isn’t. Still . . .”
Liss saw the problem. “I’m sorry if you were embarrassed.”
“I’ll get over it. And it did give Childs a good laugh.”
A short silence fell before Liss murmured, “A messy search?”
“What?”
“You said Mr. Bailey’s office was tossed. Someone made a mess of it.”
“Right,” Sherri said. “Childs said it was obvious that it had been searched.”
Liss frowned. She remembered peeking into that room when they were looking for the archivist and finding it unoccupied. She hadn’t noticed anything drastically out of place, but then she hadn’t known what it was supposed to look like. Besides, the lights had been off, leaving the entire room in deep shadows.
“And our motel room in Antigonish was searched,” she said aloud. “And Benny’s room at The Spruces was a mess too. Don’t you see? We may have had things backward. What if Benny’s room was searched because the killer thinks she found what he’s been looking for? Maybe she went into hiding for a good reason.”
“It’s a theory,” Sherri conceded. “Not a very sound one, but I’m trying to keep an open mind.”
Liss came back to the bookcase that formed one side of the cozy corner. Resting her elbows on its top and her chin on her fisted hands, she gave her friend a hard look. “I know you think I was crazy to call what I found a treasure map, but that theory made sense to begin with. What if Benny still thinks it leads to something left behind by the Chadwicks?”
“Why would she? Didn’t you tell her that Lester Widdowson was the one who hid it?”
“She may not have believed me.”
“But she knew Widdowson.” Sherri shook her head. “No, I don’t buy that theory.”
“What if someone else thinks the map is older than it really is?”
Sherri set down her go-cup. “What are you getting at?”
“Maybe there’s another person involved in this, an individual we know nothing about. Someone who searched Benny’s room.”
“X?” Sherri didn’t bother to hide her skepticism.
Liss narrowed her eyes. “Why not? If Benny started out thinking that the map led to a Chadwick treasure, maybe someone else is laboring under the same misconception.” She tried to put together a logical sequence of events. “What if whoever killed Bailey was after the file he made for Margaret? Once he . . . or she . . . had it, that person would still want the map, leading to the burglary in Antigonish. That failed because I had the map with me, in my tote, and later I put it in our safe-deposit box at the bank, out of reach.”
“By then there were plenty of copies around,” Sherri reminded her.
“Yes. I even gave one of them to Benny, so maybe . . .” She broke off, shaking her head. “No, that can’t be right. As Lucas pointed out, they only show one side of the map. X would be after the original.”
Sherri looked confused. No surprise there, Liss thought. She was confusing herself trying to work this out.
“Who else knows there’s something written on the back?” Sherri asked. “Does Benny?”
Liss let her head drop to the top of the bookcase with a thump. Her voice was muffled. “I can’t remember if I told her about the squiggles or not. I don’t think I did. If someone else is treasure hunting, it may not matter.”
“Fine. I’ll give you the possibility of a Mr. X, and if he even suspects there’s more information to be found on the original map, I agree that he’s going to want to get hold of it.” Exasperation laced Sherri’s voice. “But if he exists, then he’s dangerous. For goodness’ sake, be careful. No more playing Nancy Drew.”
Liss glared at her. “I’m not in any danger. You said yourself that Benny couldn’t have killed Orson Bailey. And forget what I just theorized about X. I can see for myself that’s a pretty unlikely scenario. What can I say? I’m starting to grasp at straws.”
Sherri gathered up the bakery bag, her go-cup, and Liss’s mug and carried them toward the stockroom. “You’ve really got to stop watching crime dramas on television. Even the writers on Castle wouldn’t have pitched that Mr. X plotline.”
“I thought you were keeping an open mind.”
“Oh, I am. And right now, I’m going back to the office to call Sergeant Childs and find out, one way or the other, about that folder Bailey put together for you.”
Liss followed her friend into the back room and took charge of putting away the leftover doughnuts while Sherri tossed the go-cup in the trash and rinsed out Liss’s mug. All the while she wondered if her newest theory was all that far-fetched. There could be an X, and if there was, then chances were good that Benny knew who he was. He almost had to be another Chadwick descendant.
That brought her back to where she’d started—she needed to find Benny, and the sooner the better.
* * *
As soon as Sherri left, Liss called Beth to ask her to work that day at the Emporium. On the short walk from the shop to her house, she rehearsed what she would say to Dan. He wasn’t going to be thrilled about her decision, but she hoped he’d feel better about it when she asked him to go with her. It wasn’t as if she meant to do anything dangerous.
She opened the workshop door and walked into a haze of sawdust and the sound of wood being milled. From anyone but his wife, goggles, ear protectors, and a Red Sox ball cap would have hidden the identity of the man bent over the machine. Dan was so intent on what he was doing—producing legs that would go with the jigsaw-puzzle tables that were his specialty as a custom woodworker—that it was a good five minutes before he noticed he had company.
“Hey there,” he said into the sudden silence that ensued when he flicked a switch. “What brings you home in the middle of the morning?”
“I’ve got a favor to ask you.”
His smile faded a bit. He took a good look at her face, enough to reassure him that nothing serious was wrong. “Coffee break?” he suggested.
Liss was already afloat, but she agreed. While he ate the last of Patsy’s doughnuts and inhaled an additional twelve ounces of caffeine, she filled him in on Sherri’s reasons for eliminating Benny from suspicion in the Canadian homicide. Then she laid out her proposal.
“We’ll take Benny’s photo to the front desk of all the lodgings in the vicinity and ask if the woman shown in it is a current guest. Easy peasy. No mess, no fuss. And no chance of Benny twigging to what we’re up to unless she happens to be right there in the lobby when you and I show up.”
“I don’t know, Liss.”
“She’s not an ax murderer!”
That got a smile out of him. “Probably not.” He polished off the last drop of coffee and stood to take his mug and plate to the sink. When he finished rinsing them off, he turned to her. “Just let me get the sawdust off me and we can get started.”
While Dan cleaned up and changed clothes, Liss plotted their route. Besides The Spruces, Moosetookalook didn’t offer much in the way of accommodations for guests. They could walk to Marcy’s Bed and Breakfast, since it was just around the corner on High Street, right across from Graziano’s Pizza. They’d start there, but they’d drive. They’d need transportation to get to the rest of the places on her list.
Marcy was full up, but Benny was not one of her guests.
“Good thing we brought the truck,” Dan said as they climbed back into the cab.
“You’re awfully cheerful about this.” His attitude made her suspicious. “You don’t think we’re going to find her, do you?”
“Nope. Not if she doesn’t want to be found. And if she is at one of the places we check, that probably means she wasn’t hiding at all. Ergo, she’s innocent.”
“Ergo?”
He sent her a cocky grin and turned the key in the ignition.
X Marks the Scot Page 20