Graye knew that Thea’s son and daughter-in-law were among Liss’s closest friends. If Pete urged his mother to okay the sale to Graye, she might just do it.
Or not.
Graye drummed his fingers on the blotter, considering Liss’s admittedly vague promise. Was it enough to tip the balance? Would greed prompt him to take a chance?
He made her wait a full two minutes—she watched the second hand on the wall clock go around twice—before he agreed.
Ten minutes later, feeling very pleased at her own cleverness, Liss walked out of Jason Graye’s office with a copy of the Chatsworth inventory tucked into the canvas tote bag she’d brought along in anticipation of success. The contents of the carryall were heavy and of an awkward size. She paused on the front stoop to shift the weight to her shoulder. As she did so, the enormity of the task before her belatedly sank in, dampening her good mood. The “list” she’d been so anxious to obtain was almost two hundred pages long.
Chapter Fourteen
Liss had avoided collecting her mail for a full week. After Boxer moved in with Margaret, she’d let Dan pick it up. The moment she walked into the tiny post office on Monday afternoon, she remembered why she’d stayed away.
“Hey, Liss,” Julie Simpson called out in her brassy New York voice. “What’s this I hear about Ned Boyd having a secret baby?”
Liss winced. Every head in the minuscule lobby turned her way at the postmaster’s question. There were three people present besides herself. Susie Farley had already removed the letters and bills from her box, but she lingered in the vestibule, ears stretched. Moose Mayfield, although he was nowhere near the gossip his wife the librarian was, showed a similar disinclination to leave. Belatedly, Liss recognized the man standing at Julie’s window as the reclusive Homer Crane. He kept his head down as he waited for the postmaster to hand over a parcel wrapped in plain brown paper, but Liss suspected he was listening for her reply just as intently as the others.
“You’ve been reading too many romance novels, Julie,” Liss said in a mild voice. The secret baby was a tried and true plot device in that genre. Ordinarily, Liss had no quarrel with it.
“Nuh-uh. That caseworker from Child Protective Services was as real as could be. She was trying to be subtle, but it was pretty clear she wanted to know if your aunt could give that boy—Margaret’s grandson—a good home. I told her, sure. Margaret Boyd is the finest kind of people. So, you’ve got a new cousin now, huh?”
“Looks that way,” Liss muttered.
Naturally, since she was anxious to escape the curiosity of her neighbors, the key fought turning in the lock of her post office box. When she finally got it to work, she grabbed her mail without looking at it and headed for the door. It was just closing behind her when she heard Moose speak.
“Dolores and me, we were saying just the other night how we remember when Hilary Snipes was sneaking around with Ned Boyd. Dolores was dead certain at the time that no good would come of it.”
The door opened and closed again just as Liss reached the end of the short sidewalk. This time the voice was lower and sounded faintly apologetic.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Homer Crane said.
Liss stopped, turning to face the mystery man who’d moved into the old funeral home. The sun glinted off the rim of his glasses, drawing her gaze to a feature she hadn’t noticed the only other time they’d met. How she’d missed it, even in the dim lighting of Crane’s hallway, eluded her.
He had a long, thin nose that turned up at the end. In profile, it resembled nothing so much as a ski jump. She’d been wrong about something else, too. In the bright light of day, the hairline she’d pegged as receding was closer to nonexistent. A few tufts of wispy blond hair still clung to his scalp, but for all intents and purposes, Homer Crane was bald as an egg.
Trying not to stare, Liss thanked him for his sympathy.
“It’s a terrible thing to lose someone to murder,” Crane said. “A cousin, did I hear her say? Were you close?”
“In some ways.”
His intense interest began to make her uncomfortable. Behind the thick spectacles, his eyes were a pale, watery blue. His steady stare shouldn’t have been so unnerving.
“I, uh, need to get going.”
The door of the post office opened again. It was almost five. Julie shooed her last two customers out and set about taking down the flag. Susie scurried away without delay, although she did send a curious look Liss’s way.
“I’m sorry,” Crane mumbled. “I didn’t mean to delay you.” He turned abruptly and walked rapidly homeward.
Moose Mayfield stared after him. “That the writer?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Liss suggested.
She felt no more than a flash of guilt when Moose trundled off in pursuit of Homer Crane. She doubted he’d catch up with Crane before the other man reached the sanctuary of his house and closed and locked the door behind him. In the meantime, Liss would have time to make her own way home in peace.
Bright and early Tuesday morning, Liss put a sign on the door of Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium to say she would be closed until 1:00 PM. It was the end of March—mud season—and a damp chill lingered in the air. She did not expect to lose any walk-in business in her absence.
At eight, she was standing on the far side of the long, high counter that separated the town clerk from the rest of the population of Moosetookalook. She had a clear view of the row of hooks along a nearby wall. Each held a set of keys. It was a simple matter to spot the ones that unlocked the Chadwick mansion, although the duplicate set was apparently being kept elsewhere.
“What can I do for you, Liss?” Francine asked.
“I need to borrow the keys to the Chadwick house again.” Her hand was already out before she realized that Francine was shaking her head.
“Sorry. No can do. Besides, I thought you wouldn’t be caught dead going back there.”
Liss winced, remembering their last conversation on the subject, but she was more concerned about being refused access to the place. “What’s up? I just have to check something out. I’m not going to steal anything.”
“Not my call. You’ll have to talk to Ms. Selectman Campbell.”
“Thea Campbell doesn’t want me to borrow the keys?”
“She doesn’t want anybody going out there.”
“Meaning Jason Graye,” Liss murmured, belatedly catching on. “Okay. I’ll go talk to Thea.”
Pete’s mother lived several blocks to the west along Main Street, not far enough away to make it worthwhile to get the car out and drive there. Prepared to walk the short distance from the town square, Liss zipped up the replacement jacket she’d bought after giving up on ever finding the light blue one Boxer had purloined. It was bright green, with a yellow stripe and, consequently, much harder to leave behind without noticing.
“You don’t need to go anywhere,” Francine called out before she reached the door.
Liss paused with one hand on the doorknob. “Why not?”
“Because Ms. Campbell is here, in the room where we keep records that aren’t yet stored electronically.”
Liss turned away from the door and headed to the records room. “Morning, Thea,” she said a few minutes later.
Pete’s mother glanced up from a musty old ledger and frowned. She shared her son’s dark hair and chunky build, but there the resemblance stopped. No one would ever call Althea Briscetti Campbell easygoing. Tightly wound was more like it. And with each year into her long widowhood, she’d grown more conservative in her views on just about everything.
“What is it, Liss? I’m quite busy here.”
“Apparently, I need your permission to borrow the keys to the Chadwick mansion.”
“You want to go out there again? Why? Halloween is over.”
Liss waged a brief debate with herself about how much to tell Thea. In the end she opted for full disclosure, although in a carefully edited version. “There’s a possibility that
someone may have stolen a few of the more easily portable antiques from the Chadwick mansion and sold them. It might have been my cousin. It might have been someone else. Either way, I’d like to find out if anything is missing. I have an inventory of the items that should be there. It’s old. From when Alice O’Hare died, I think. But it—”
Thea stopped her with a preemptory gesture. She held out one long-fingered hand and waited. Liss sighed and reached into her tote bag. “You’ll need both hands for this.”
One glance at the inventory had Thea tut-tutting and shaking her head. “I won’t ask where you got this, but you should know that it was actually compiled when the town took possession of the Chadwick property, not earlier. I have a copy of it myself. All the selectmen received one.”
Liss neither confirmed nor denied Thea’s assumption, but she was doubly glad she hadn’t let Jason Graye talk her into taking him with her into the mansion. “It would be helpful to the town to know if anything has gone missing,” she said instead. “So, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to take a look around. All you need to do is authorize Francine to give me the keys.”
“I think not.” Thea placed Graye’s copy of the inventory on the floor beside her, out of Liss’s reach.
“But, Thea. If someone stole—”
“Then a proper investigation should be launched. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will have the police department look into the matter.”
“But—”
“It’s no longer your concern.” Thea meant the words as a dismissal. She resumed her study of the old ledger, pointedly ignoring everything and everyone else.
Liss knew when she was beaten and left quietly.
The Emporium opened on time after all.
A few hours later, Liss phoned Sherri to ask if Thea had followed through with a request to check the inventory against the contents of the Chadwick house.
“Thanks loads,” Sherri grumbled. “Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take to go through all that stuff?”
“I offered to do it.”
Sherri laughed. “I bet you did. Well, I’m stuck with it now. And, no, I can’t ask for help from civilians. I’m hoping I might get some from the state police, but I’m not counting on it. Thea sent a copy of the inventory to Gordon Tandy.”
With that food for thought, Liss went back to work. She had mail and e-mail orders to fill, but her mind kept circling back to all the questions about Ned’s murder that still needed answers. By the time Boxer got home from school, she’d made a new list.
Boxer came straight to the Emporium, rather than going to Aunt Margaret’s apartment, since she wouldn’t be home from work for another hour or two. Margaret had made a point of asking him to check in with Liss as soon as the school bus dropped him off in the town square.
“I’m going out to the trailer.” Boxer removed a backpack full of school books and homework and let it fall to the floor behind the sales counter with a thump.
“Now?”
“You got a problem with that?” His scowl told Liss that he didn’t like having rules to follow. He wasn’t accustomed to having to account for his whereabouts.
“I’ve got a responsibility to make sure the Child Protective Services caseworker can’t find anything to complain about.”
Boxer had already disappeared several times since he’d moved in with Margaret. On his return, he’d evaded her questions about where he’d been. Margaret had convinced herself that he’d been with friends. She didn’t want to make him feel as if he was in jail, too. Liss was less easily mollified. She suspected that Boxer had returned to the Chadwick mansion and wondered if he’d managed to find another way to get inside.
Under her steady gaze, Boxer fell back on his patented nonchalant shrug. “I’m just gonna go get some more of my stuff. You said I could go back if I forgot anything.”
Liss sighed. “Yes. I did. Although what I actually said was that we could go back. If you wait till I close, I’ll drive you.” She wanted to talk to the boy anyway. Some of the questions on her new list were for him.
“I don’t see why I can’t just stay out there,” Boxer grumbled. “It shouldn’t sit empty like that. Somebody might break in and rob us.”
“We’ve already moved the TV to a safe location,” Liss reminded him.
“I should get Mom’s jewelry box.”
Liss doubted that Hilary owned a fortune in gems, but Boxer’s determination wore her down. “How about I close up now?” she suggested. “I’ll drive you out to Owl Road and help you pack up anything you think may be at risk.” A glance at him had her fighting a smile. “Oh, put away the suspicious face, will you! I’m not trying to invade your privacy or keep you on a leash. Don’t you get it? You’re family now. Your grandmother and I just want to help you.”
“I don’t need—”
“And we care about you.”
“Funny, you never did before you found out who my father was.”
“I liked you before that.”
“Did not.”
“Did too. You told me so yourself.”
It didn’t take long to shut down the shop, but by the time she flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED and looked around for Boxer, he had disappeared.
Grumbling under her breath, Liss checked the stockroom. Then she dashed upstairs to Margaret’s apartment. The boy was well and truly gone.
She drove slowly all the way to Owl Road, keeping her eyes peeled for Boxer, hoping to overtake him. She was relieved to find him already inside the trailer when she arrived. “What did you do?” she asked. “Cut through back yards and woods?”
His grin was quick and genuine. “I’m just faster than you. Faster than a speeding pullet.”
Liss groaned at the malapropism. “Think you’re clever, don’t you?”
“Hey, I know I’m clever.”
“You’re right. You’re a smart kid—which is why you’re going to answer a few questions for me while we pack your stuff.”
“Like what?”
They entered Hilary’s room, which still smelled faintly of her perfume, so that Boxer could collect her jewelry box. It was a pretty little thing, wood decorated with flower decals—something a boy might give his mother for her birthday or Christmas.
“Like did Ned talk you into helping him remove antiques from the Chadwick mansion?”
She’d managed to take Boxer by surprise. “Fat chance! He never even knew that I knew he was there.”
“Are you sure about that? Once you started playing pranks he must have guessed someone else was in the house on the QT.”
Boxer’s brow creased into a frown. “Pretty sure. I never saw him.”
“But you’re certain he was there?”
“Yeah. Somewhere.” Boxer moved into his own room, picking up CDs, books, and a small box he kept at the back of his sock drawer.
“So, you were aware of the hidden tunnel, but you didn’t know there was a secret room?”
“I figured there was one. I just didn’t know how to find it.”
“You told us you wanted Ned to get caught. That’s why you took the apple dookin tub and the manikin. I’m guessing you didn’t like your father much.”
“Why should I? He didn’t give a tinker’s dam about me.”
Liss could sympathize. Ned had been thrust upon Boxer out of the blue. And given the boy’s protective attitude toward his mother—
She cut off that train of thought before it could go any farther. Boxer had not killed Ned.
“Did you ever take anything from the mansion on your own? Other than the apple dookin tub, the manikin, and my jacket, I mean.”
“I’m not a thief.” He stooped to fish a pair of beat-up running shoes out from under the bed.
“Maybe no one is,” Liss conceded. “Or maybe that’s what got Ned killed.”
Watching Boxer, she realized she should have talked to him one-on-one a long time ago. Sure, he was only a kid, but he’d already weathered more traumatic eve
nts than most adults had to face. And he was smart. Besides that, he was probably more familiar with the Chadwick mansion than any of them. Kids and treasure hunting? They went together like peanut butter and jelly.
Sitting down on the end of Boxer’s bed, she filled him in on everything she’d been trying to discover about his father’s activities from the time Ned got out of jail until his murder. “Ned got cash from somewhere,” she concluded. “The only three sources I can think of are fencing antiques, blackmail, and Blackie’s loot.”
But Boxer was stuck on another aspect of the situation. “The police think my mother killed him because they argued over money?”
“I’m afraid so. I assume that they found her fingerprints in the parlor at the mansion and that placed her at the scene of the crime.”
Boxer gave a vigorous negative shake of the head. “Never happened.”
“Did you ever run into anyone else when you visited the mansion?”
He became very busy packing the remaining articles he wanted to take back to the apartment with him into a cardboard box. “I wasn’t there all that much.”
“No?” Rising, she picked up the nearest pile of CDs and headed for the living room. “Let’s talk about those holes in the cellar of the Chadwick mansion, shall we?”
“Oh. Those.” He avoided meeting her eyes.
“Yes. Those. Ned was dead by the time they were dug. You didn’t need to sneak into the mansion to play tricks anymore, but I’m guessing you did anyway. Treasure hunting? Looking for the lost loot? The legendary cache of cash?”
He shrugged.
“Come on, Boxer. Give me a break here. I’m trying to help your mother. I can’t put all the pieces together if some of them are missing.”
He followed her out, carrying the carton and an armload of books. “Yeah. I dug the holes you found when you went back to the mansion. And let me tell you, that was hard work. That ground is petrified!”
“How did you get in? The tunnel had been blocked off.”
Vampires, Bones and Treacle Scones (A Liss MacCrimmon Mystery) Page 19