Town in a Wild Moose Chase chm-3

by B. B. Haywood

  “That’s what happens when you get involved with out-of-towners,” Candy heard one woman, who stood nearby, whisper to her tight-jawed elderly friend.

  The string quartet had stopped playing at the disruption, but they started up again, launching into Vivaldi, and the hushed room soon filled with murmuring voices.

  “I’d better get over there and see what’s going on,” Ben said, and he rose out of his chair and headed across the room.

  “Maybe we should call the paramedics,” Judy Crockett said from across the table.

  There was no need. A clerk appeared with smelling salts in hand, and she soon brought Liam around, though he stayed in a prone position. A guest who happened to be a nurse performed a cursory examination, feeling for his pulse and checking for injuries.

  Assured the experts were on the job, most of the guests returned to their conversations, recongregating in groups and duos or heading off to the bar or to find their seats.

  Maggie walked into the midst of it, bewildered.

  She stood just inside the French doors, taking in the chaotic scene, her gaze wandering in disbelief from the groggy Liam to the distraught Wanda, around to all their respective attendees, and back again. Finally she looked across the room and caught Candy’s eye.

  Candy waved and pointed to the seat next to her. Maggie nodded and, giving the group gathered around Liam a wide berth, headed across the room.

  “What in heaven’s name happened here?” she asked, aghast, “and how in the heck did I miss it?”

  “I’ve seen some strange things lately,” Candy told her friend, “but this takes the cake.” And quickly she explained what had happened as Maggie sank into the seat next to her.

  Maggie was dressed elegantly yet rather sedately, in a stylish burgundy waist-length jacket with wide faux fur lapels, a white ruffled blouse, ankle-length gray wool skirt, and elegant silver jewelry. As Candy finished, she looked her friend up and down. “You look great, by the way. But where have you been?”

  Maggie glanced around the room, as if looking for someone. “He called and said he was running late. He asked if he could meet me here. We were supposed to rendezvous at seven thirty.”

  Candy checked her watch. “It’s just past that and—”

  “Oh, there he is,” Maggie said, suddenly animated. She stood and waved.

  Candy turned to see Preston Smith approaching them. “Ah, here you are, Mrs. Tremont,” Preston said, all smiles and twinkling eyes as he approached her. He wore a well-tailored black jacket with silk lapels, gray tie and vest, and a white shirt, well starched, giving him a crisp, classic look. His longish gray hair was disheveled, as if he’d failed to comb it that day, and he’d switch out his wire-rimmed glasses for black ones, which gave him a different look—more distinguished, perhaps. His thick gray moustache seemed thicker than usual.

  But he was no less enthusiastic, and as he approached, he bowed dramatically from the waist, lifted Maggie’s hand, and kissed it lightly. “My apologies, my lady, for inconveniencing you this evening. It was regrettable, I assure you, but I’m afraid it couldn’t be helped. There have been a number of developments, as you may well know.”

  “It really wasn’t much of an inconvenience at all,” Maggie said, waving a hand toward the other side of the room, “except I apparently missed the only real action this town has seen in weeks—other than the murder, of course.”

  “Hmm, yes, nasty business that,” Preston said with an air of distaste. “I’ve heard they have a number of suspects in mind, including”—he turned just slightly to glance over his shoulder—“some people in this very room.”

  “No kidding,” Maggie said, and she turned toward Wanda and Liam.

  Candy looked too. They had Liam sitting up and were attempting to move him to another room. Ben was talking to one of the hotel staffers, and Wanda was fanning herself dramatically, milking her role in the evening’s events for all it was worth.

  Candy was struck by a sudden thought, and she scanned the room. She realized several people were still missing. She double-checked herself but knew she was correct. Colin and Oliver were obviously busy behind the scenes, so their absences were explainable. Baxter Bryant had told her yesterday that he and Bernadette wouldn’t be attending, as they were headed home Sunday morning and wanted to get an early start.

  But that left Felicia Gaspar. And Gina Templeton.

  Candy could understand why Gina wasn’t here. Her husband was dead, allegedly murdered. She was obviously distraught. Candy imagined she’d talked to the police, though there’d been no official word on that. If she wasn’t currently talking to the authorities, she was probably holed up in a hotel room somewhere or making funeral arrangements for her husband.

  She must be going through a terrible time, Candy thought. Her husband’s body had been found in a snow bank, and abandoned in the woods earlier.

  What had happened to him? Candy wondered. How had he wound up in a snowdrift at the bottom of a gully?

  That was the key, she realized. If she could figure that out, it might help her solve the mystery of Victor’s death. Had he been murdered in the woods with the hatchet, or had he been killed somewhere else, and then dragged into the woods and dumped?

  Either scenario was possible. But Candy wondered if the stolen toboggan had anything to do with this. It all seemed a little too coincidental—the toboggan, the car, the room. Had he been murdered at the motel and then hauled into the woods on the toboggan?

  That made sense, she thought. But what about the time frame? When would he have been dumped in that gully?

  She considered the question for a few moments. She still didn’t know Victor’s time of death but figured it must have been sometime early Thursday morning.

  That sparked a memory, something that had been bugging her for a while. It was a burr in her brain, a detail she had missed, a clue that seemed to lurk in some out-of-the-way corner of her consciousness. But suddenly it clicked, and she knew what it was.

  She turned abruptly to Preston, who was chatting pleasantly with Maggie. “Excuse me, Preston, may I ask you a question?”

  He stopped in midsentence and turned to her. “Ms. Holliday, I am your obedient servant. Please, ask away.”

  “Well, something’s been bothering me for the past day or two, and I finally realized what it was. It involves you.”

  “Really? I’m intrigued. Please, continue.”

  “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but yesterday morning you and I ran into each other in Town Park, and you handed me a cup of coffee. We talked for a while. Do you remember that encounter?”

  “Every second of it,” Preston answered truthfully.

  “And you said something to me then, if I remember correctly.”

  “Um, yes, and what would that be?”

  “Well, you said you’d heard from Victor. You told me that he’d pulled out of the exhibition.”

  Preston considered her statement for a few moments and finally nodded. “Yes, I believe that’s correct. Was I in error?”

  “You said,” Candy continued, “that you had received a communiqué—I believe that’s the word you used—from Victor the previous evening, which would have been Thursday evening. But according to the timeline I’ve been able to establish, Victor was killed sometime early Thursday morning. The body was cold when Solomon Hatch found it, so it must have been there for a while, so let’s say he died sometime around dawn on Thursday, give or take a few hours. But if that’s true, it would have been impossible for him to contact you on Thursday evening, since he would have been dead about twelve or fourteen hours by then.”

  Maggie gave her a questioning look. “What are you saying?”

  Candy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just pointing out a few facts.”

  “All of which are more than likely easily explainable,” Preston said.

  “Really? How?”

  “Well, it’s quite simple. You see, Victor contacted me via e-mail, which I accessed from my
iPad at a wireless café here in town—although I also have wireless in the hotel, of course. He could have sent the e-mail at an earlier time, several hours, or even several days, before I accessed it. Or he could have written it at an earlier time and delayed the sending of it via an automated setting. Or perhaps someone else sent me a phony message in Victor’s name.”

  Candy considered that. It was possible, she thought, but she wasn’t buying it. “That’s not how you presented it yesterday. You inferred it was inside information—I can assure you it’s accurate, I think you said, or something like that. So if you’re right, how did you know?”

  “I was obviously mistaken,” he said, giving her a disinterested look and turning away. Candy shifted her gaze as well and spotted movement out of the corner of the eye. “Oh, here comes Ben.”

  “Ah!” Preston’s eyebrows rose. “We should give you two some time together,” he said smoothly. He held out a hand to Maggie. “Would you care to dance?”

  Maggie gratefully placed her hand in his. “I would love to.”

  They were gone by the time Ben arrived at the table. “It looks like Liam’s going to be all right,” he said as he settled in next to her. “Nothing busted except his pride. Duncan must have hit him with a pretty good right.”

  Candy nodded and pointed to Maggie and Preston on the dance floor. “That’s Maggie and her date,” she said.

  Ben squinted in their direction. “Who’s that she’s with?”

  “It’s a great question,” Candy said. “Have you noticed that he’s avoiding you?”

  Ben made a face and shrugged. “Not particularly. But why would he avoid me?”

  Candy leveled a finger at him. “That’s a great question. And I think I’m going to go find out. Excuse me.”

  She rose from her chair and started across the room. Maggie and Preston were currently on the opposite side of the dance floor, so she angled toward them, threading her way through the other couples on the floor.

  She was several couples in when she felt a hand brush across her shoulder. She stopped and turned.

  A svelte woman in her mid to late fifties, dancing with her spouse, smiled at her. “I’m sorry,” the woman said, “I don’t mean to disturb you, but I love your dress. Where did you get it?”

  “Oh, this?” Candy looked down absently. “A friend loaned it to me.”

  “Well, it looks lovely on you. You know, I have one exactly like it. I bought it at Neiman Marcus when we were visiting our daughter down in Boston last fall. I would have worn it tonight, but my husband forgot to pick it up at the dry cleaner’s yesterday.”

  Thirty-Five

  Candy was mortified. She could feel her cheeks redden and her face grow hot. Her whole body began to tingle. She felt lightheaded, and for a few moments thought she might collapse if she didn’t sit down instantly.

  But she steadied herself, blinked several times, forced herself to focus, and said in the most natural voice she could muster, “Well, if I had known that I would have worn something else.”

  “Oh, dear, don’t you see?” the woman said with obvious delight. “If Sid had picked up the dry cleaning, we’d both be wearing the same dress! This way is much better. I decided to wear Chanel, which I picked up in New York the last time we were down in the city, and you look so much better in that dress than I do. Everything turned out for the best, you see!”

  Candy mumbled a quiet “thank you” and slinked away as the woman turned back to her husband, Sid, delighted at her good fortune.

  Candy took a moment to get her bearings, and put Maggie clearly in her sights.

  But just then the string quartet plunged into the final notes of the Vivaldi piece and ended with gusto. As the music stopped, the couples around her pulled apart as applause rippled across the dance floor and around the room. The cellist announced that the group would be taking a short break, and a staff member rang a bell, announcing that dinner was imminent and would the guests kindly take their seats so they could get started with the evening’s program.

  With that announcement, everyone in the room, suddenly animated, shifted en masse, and Candy was caught amid a swarm of moving bodies. She held her place, waiting for the crowd to dissipate, and when a clear line of sight finally opened up again to the far side of the dance floor, Maggie and Preston were gone.

  Candy looked in both directions, searching for them. She thought she caught a glimpse of them headed out through the French doors, into the hallway beyond.

  Curious, she followed. Preston’s behavior had become increasingly odd over the past day or two. It was time to find out what was behind it all.

  Waiters with the first course arrived through a side door to her left, so she hurried through the French doors into the hallway beyond to avoid any more traffic jams. Only a few guests lingered here, glasses in hand, chatting away obliviously. A staff member was just coming through the hall, encouraging the guests to take their seats. Candy waved her down.

  “Did you just see a middle-aged couple go through here?” She briefly described Maggie and Preston, and the staff member pointed toward the front lobby area.

  “I believe I saw them headed that way.”

  Candy started off again, moving at a quicker pace.

  Why are they headed to the lobby? she wondered. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps Preston simply wanted to check on a reservation, or maybe they were looking for a quiet place to talk.

  But maybe it was something else. Preston’s brief appearance at the ball had been too suspicious. Candy suspected he was up to something. But what was it? Where was he taking Maggie?

  Her mind jumped too quickly to several conclusions, which she forced down as she approached the lobby.

  She scanned the place in a matter of milliseconds but saw no sign of her friend. Shifting direction, she was just about to ask the two women behind the front desk if they’d seen any sign of Maggie and Preston when she glanced out the inn’s twin front glass doors and spotted Maggie outside under an awning, without her coat, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she stared into the darkness toward En-glish Point Lighthouse and the coastline.

  Candy ran out to her. “Mags, are you all right?” She couldn’t keep the worry from her voice.

  Maggie looked at her, slightly bewildered. “I’m not sure.”

  Candy took her by the shoulder. “What happened? Where’s Preston?”

  “He left.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know, he… he said he wanted to show me something outside. Then he suggested we go back to his place. I told him I didn’t think that would be a very good idea. And then he got very… strange. It’s like something clicked inside him. He pulled me out here and gave me this really cold look.” She turned to Candy. “To be honest, he was a little scary.”

  “Did he do anything to you?” Candy asked, worried for her friend.

  But Maggie shook her head. “No, he… he told me to tell you something.”

  Candy felt a little chill go through her, and it had nothing to do with the fact that they were standing outside without their coats in twenty-degree weather. “What is it?”

  “He said just two words, and then he—”

  But Ben walked out of the door behind them just then, with an expression of concern on his face. “Candy, there you are. Is everything okay? I saw you running out of the room and I—”

  He stopped as a police car turned into the driveway in front of the inn, lights flashing, and slid to a stop just a few feet from them, its rear end fishtailing a little on the ice. The door popped open and Officer Jody McCroy leapt out. He came around the car in a rush as a second police car pulled up behind him, its roof lights flashing also.

  Ben instinctively put his hands on the shoulders of both Candy and Maggie, gently pulling them out of the way. As a trio, the three of them took several steps back, giving the officers plenty of room.

  “Jim, what’s going on?” Ben asked one of the officers as he rushed past. The offi
cer glanced at him but continued on as a third police car, and then a fourth, pulled into the driveway.

  Chief Darryl Durr stepped out of the passenger seat of the last car and watched as his men converged on the building.

  He saw Candy, Ben, and Maggie, nodded casually, and started past them toward the inn’s front doors. But a question from Candy made him pause.

  “Are you here to arrest Duncan Leggmeyer?” she asked.

  Chief Durr turned and regarded the group for a moment before he said, “No. We’re here to arrest Liam Yates.”

  Thirty-Six

  The operation was performed efficiently and with minimal disruption. Most of the guests inside at the ball never knew what was happening; since the ballroom’s windows faced out the back of the building, the occupants didn’t see the flashing lights of the police cars out front. However, a few regular hotel guests were on hand to witness the procession as Liam Yates was escorted through the lobby about five minutes later, handcuffed, dazed by this latest development, head bowed in embarrassment, saying not a word.

  Boy, he’s having a bad night, Candy thought as she stood near the front desk with Maggie and Ben, watching as two uniformed officers led Liam out through the front doors to one of the waiting police cars.

  A few moments later, Duncan Leggmeyer emerged from a nearby room, also with a police escort, though without the handcuffs. On his face was an expression of despair mixed with anger.

  Candy’s reporter instincts threatened to get the better of her, and she was tempted to start calling out questions to the officers as they passed by her. She knew Ben felt the same way, but they both held back their inquiries, at least for the moment.

  Still, Ben couldn’t keep still for long. “I have to find out what’s going on,” he told her as they watched Chief Durr nod to the inn’s proprietor, Oliver LaForce, who stood with hands clasped in front of him beside the assistant innkeeper, Alby Alcott. They both appeared grim yet determined to get back to business as quickly as possible.