Overkilt

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  She took an empty plate away from Lumpkin, who had leapt to the counter while her back was turned and licked it clean. Although there was nothing left but the floral design, he sent her a baleful look and then stomped off, tail swishing. A glance at the top of the refrigerator showed Liss that Glenora was in her usual spot. She’d watched them eat but couldn’t be bothered to jump down and beg for scraps. It was beneath her dignity, Liss supposed.

  Dan collected the cutlery and dropped it into the dishpan in the sink. After they’d eaten their supper, lunch dishes would be washed along with those used for their evening meal. Since it was just the two of them, neither Liss nor Dan had ever felt any need to own a dishwasher.

  “I’ll work on removing that paint this afternoon,” Dan said.

  “Do me a favor and start at Patsy’s.”

  “I was planning to.”

  That settled, Liss went back to the Emporium. As soon as Margaret saw her coming, she let the two Scotties back inside. They’d spent the morning in their fenced-in yard behind the building and looked ready for a nap, but their owner was in no hurry to return to her apartment.

  “You had a few walk-ins while you were out.”

  “Actual customers?” Liss knew she sounded skeptical.

  She got out her feather duster, a soft cloth, and a spray bottle of lemon-scented furniture polish in preparation for resuming the one never-ending task of the shopkeeper. If she hoped to sell her Scottish-themed knickknacks, both they and the shelves they sat on had to gleam.

  “Busybodies,” Margaret admitted, reaching down to ruffle Dandy’s fur. “Well, no. That’s not quite accurate, but they did stop by out of curiosity.”

  “Let me guess.” Liss studied the six-inch-high pewter figurine of a piper to make sure she’d wiped it clean of dust. When it passed muster, she put it back on the shelf. “Dolores Mayfield?”

  “Of course.” The librarian was the biggest gossip in town. She poked her long, thin nose into everybody’s business.

  “Julie Simpson?” As their postmaster, the brassy brunette with her loud, nasal voice and her New York accent was the person in charge of the other main stop on Moosetookalook’s information train.

  Margaret nodded. “She came in on her lunch hour.”

  Moosetookalook’s post office was so tiny—the front half of the first floor of a small clapboard building—that Julie, since she was not only postmaster but also the sole employee at the facility, was authorized to close up shop from noon until one each day.

  “A few other folks walked past and took pictures,” Margaret continued, wandering over to the plate-glass display window to admire the view of the town square. “One of them was ‘our intrepid staff reporter’ from the Daily Scoop.” Margaret meant Jerrilyn Jones, only child and beloved daughter of the editor and owner of their local online news source. “She took a picture.”

  Liss grimaced. “The sooner Dan cleans off that paint, the better.”

  “He appears to be finished with Patsy’s door,” Margaret reported, “and if I’m not mistaken, his path and Sherri’s are about to intersect on our doorstep.”

  Hoping there was news, preferably of Spinner’s arrest, Liss abandoned her cleaning supplies and scurried after her aunt, who had already gone out onto the front porch. Liss closed the door to keep the Scotties inside only a second before Dan exploded into speech.

  “What do you mean you haven’t talked to him yet?” he shouted.

  Sherri glared at him, unimpressed by the display of temper. “Settle down, Dan. He’s next on my list. It’s not as if he’s going anywhere, and I had a few other things to attend to first.” She shifted her attention to Liss. “I thought you ought to know about one of them.”

  “What now?” Realizing that she was holding her breath, Liss let it out in a whoosh of air.

  “A suspicious number of people from away have checked into the Day Lily Inn during the last twenty-four hours.”

  “That dump,” Dan said before the significance hit him. When it did, his expression hardened. “Demonstrators. I guess they didn’t have much choice about where to stay, since they’re boycotting The Spruces.”

  “Be glad of it.” Sherri glanced around, saw that they’d attracted the interest of a couple strolling through the town square and of the docent standing on the porch of the Historical Society Museum. “Let’s take this inside.”

  “Who did Spinner recruit?” Margaret asked the moment they were in private. “Hell’s Angels? Skinheads? Maybe members of the KKK?”

  “Not funny, Margaret.”

  Liss sent her husband a startled look. It wasn’t like him to snap at people. The only explanation was that he was more upset by Spinner’s activities than she’d realized.

  “I don’t know who they are,” Sherri said, “but they’re a scruffy-looking bunch. No shaved heads. No leather jackets.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “Now that I think about it, I have to wonder if Spinner recruited them from a homeless shelter.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” Margaret said.

  “The point is, there are more of them coming. Every room at the Day Lily is booked to the legal max—that’s four to a room. The only logical explanation, just as Dan said, is that they’re here to take part in the demonstration on Saturday. There may be more of them I don’t know about, maybe staying in nearby towns and waiting to show up on that day.”

  “Can’t you do anything?” Liss asked. “Evict them? Send them back where they came from?”

  “On what grounds? They haven’t done anything illegal.” Sherri sounded as frustrated as Liss felt.

  With a resounding thump, the cleaning equipment Dan had carried over from Patsy’s hit the floor. “Maybe you can’t do anything,” he said, heading for the door, “but I can.”

  “Dan, wait!” Liss called. “Where are you going? What are you going to do?” The expression on his face alarmed her. He looked like a man who was spoiling for a fight.

  “Margaret, can you—?”

  “Go!”

  Liss went.

  Dan was already halfway to their house with Sherri right behind him. She’d been forced to run to keep up with his longer strides. By the time Liss caught up with them, Dan was already getting into his truck. She grabbed hold of the handle to prevent him from closing the door.

  “Dan, stop. You shouldn’t drive when you’re this angry.”

  “Get out of the vehicle, Dan.” Sherri used the authoritative voice she usually reserved for occasions when she was about to arrest someone.

  He ignored them both, jerking the door free of Liss’s grip with one hand and starting the engine with the other. Furious at his highhandedness and seriously rattled by the grimly determined expression on his face, Liss pounded on the window so hard that it made her knuckles throb. He ran it down just far enough for her to hear what he had to say.

  “I’m going out to Pilgrim Farm and tell Spinner to call off his dogs.” His head jerked around at the sound of the passenger side door opening.

  Sherri heaved herself inside. “I was headed that way myself. You can give me a lift.” Unspoken was the warning that with her along, he’d better keep his temper in check.

  Liss stepped back, meaning to circle around the front of the truck and join the party, but Dan threw the vehicle into reverse and backed rapidly out of the driveway before she could reach the other side. Staring openmouthed, she watched her husband burn rubber as he drove away.

  Uttering an expletive best deleted from polite conversation, Liss ran for her own car, thankful that it was parked at the curb in front of the house and that she had her keys in the pocket of her jeans. “Going to confront Hadley Spinner, are you, Dan?” she muttered under her breath. “Not without me, you’re not.”

  She didn’t have her driver’s license with her, but she wasn’t about to let that stop her. Sherri wasn’t likely to hassle her about it. Not under these circumstances. As soon as the engine roared to life, she hit the gas and took off, tires squealing.
There was a good reason why it was imperative that she catch up with Dan before he got very far. Without him to lead the way, she didn’t have the slightest idea how to find Pilgrim Farm.

  Chapter Four

  There are no particular boundaries between Moosetookalook and Lower Mooseside. One village runs into the other along a two-lane country road dotted with farmhouses. Liss was especially glad she had someone to lead the way when Dan turned off onto a very narrow, extremely steep gravel road, the kind she avoided like the plague during the winter months. As she followed her husband’s truck, it occurred to her to wonder how he knew where Spinner lived. Until that encounter with him at The Spruces back in September, she’d never even heard mention of the man’s name.

  At the top of the rise, a scattering of buildings came into view. They were well kept, freshly painted a glaring white, and surrounded by extensive, recently harvested fields and a fenced-in area where a dozen black and white cows were grazing. The house itself looked old but in good repair.

  It was clear from the lack of a sidewalk leading up to it that the front door was rarely used. This was a common practice in many homes in rural Maine. Familiar with it, Dan pulled into the driveway and parked in the dooryard at the side of the house. Liss brought her car to a stop alongside his truck.

  There were no other vehicles in sight, and no people, either. Reluctance slowing her movements, Liss got out and stood next to her car. Using the door to shield most of her body from anyone inside the building, she took a closer look at her surroundings.

  Most of the outbuildings were easy to identify. She spotted a chicken coop—that was easy since there were free-range chickens scratching the ground in front of it. There was a sugar shack for boiling sap to make maple syrup. Another small building appeared to be a smokehouse. The only structure that puzzled her was a large building, square and squat, that sat off by itself at the edge of a cornfield.

  In true northern New England fashion, the farmhouse was connected to several other buildings in sequence. It was a practical arrangement that spared the farmer the necessity of going outside on a cold winter morning to feed his livestock and milk his cows. That long section between the house and barn was the ell.

  Liss shifted her gaze to the left, where a breezeway built at a right angle to the barn connected it to what looked like a garage. Before winter came, the Pilgrims would doubtless close in the open spaces with panels that matched the rest of the siding.

  Having exited Dan’s truck, Sherri was making a survey of her own. “We’re being watched,” she said, nodding in the direction of the house. In an upstairs window, a curtain twitched.

  That accounts for one person, Liss thought, but where are the other dozen or so?

  She looked more closely at the barn. The doors in the loft stood open. Hay had likely been hoisted through them in the not-too-distant past. That would make a good vantage point from which to check out uninvited visitors. The shadows within prevented her from seeing if anyone was watching them from up there, but she’d swear she could feel eyes tracking her every movement.

  She almost jumped out of her skin when a door slammed. A solitary figure emerged from the door into the ell: Hadley Spinner. He was bareheaded, revealing wispy, straw-colored hair that was thinning on top. His scraggly beard was slightly darker in color. They framed a leathery, deeply lined, darkly tanned face. Having left off his suit coat, he had rolled the sleeves of his collarless white shirt to his elbows to reveal muscular arms. Working on a farm year-round had kept his body in good physical condition. Many a younger man would have envied him those broad shoulders.

  Spinner stopped at a distance of a few feet to glower at them. His nostrils flared, as if there was an unpleasant smell coming from the intruders in his dooryard.

  Dan took a step forward, his hands curling into fists at his sides. Before he could speak, Sherri caught his arm and hissed a few words of warning. Liss couldn’t hear exactly what she said, but it convinced him to back down.

  Satisfied that Dan would behave, Sherri addressed the man they’d come to see. “Mr. Spinner, I need to talk to your people. All of them.”

  “I answer for them.”

  “Not in this instance.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Liss caught a small movement at the side of the breezeway. She turned her head just slightly, far enough to make out a bit of lavender skirt. When she shifted her gaze to the loft doors, she discovered that the space was no longer empty. Two men stood in the opening, staring down on the scene below. From their dark trousers held up by suspenders to their unkempt beards, they’d copied the look of their leader.

  When they saw her watching them, they backed away. They emerged from the barn at ground level a minute or two later and went to stand behind Hadley Spinner. They made no threatening moves, but Liss couldn’t help but feel uneasy. Her wariness increased as the other New Age Pilgrims drifted outside. In all there were eight men, eight women, and one young child, a girl dressed in a pale purple dress exactly like those the women wore. She sucked her thumb and stared, wide-eyed, at the three visitors. Liss wasn’t good at guessing children’s ages, having none herself, but she thought the girl must be two or three years old.

  Having that many pairs of staring eyes fixed on her made Liss’s palms sweat, but the creepiest thing about the assembled Pilgrims was the fact that they looked so eerily alike. There was some variety of shape and size among the women, but the men were almost identical in height and build and the resemblance was reinforced by their facial hair and clothing. She wondered if they were all related to Hadley Spinner. Maybe brothers or cousins? Her overactive imagination kicked in to suggest that they might be clones, a theory that made as much sense as any other, given the weirdness of this entire situation.

  Sherri broke off her low-voiced dialogue with Spinner to count heads. “Is this everyone?” Spinner surveyed his troops, looking none-too-pleased to discover that his followers were standing in full view of strangers. Had he expected them to stay out of sight?

  “Mistress Spinner, come here.” He snapped out the command like a drill sergeant who expected instant obedience from the troops.

  A woman stepped out of the ranks and approached him at a brisk pace. She was sturdily built and wore a pair of old-fashioned round, rimless spectacles perched on a snub nose. Like the other women, she wore a plain lavender gown, but she had pinned a small gold watch to the fabric above her left breast and had a half dozen keys suspended from the leather belt she wore at her waist. They clinked and rattled with every step she took.

  “Mistress Spinner, did any woman under your supervision leave the house last night?”

  “Certainly not, Mr. Spinner. I slept, as I always do, with my mattress blocking the only door.”

  “What about the window?” Sherri asked.

  Mistress Spinner gestured toward the second floor of the house with one hand. “See for yourself.”

  Liss stared at the windows in the upstairs rooms in shock. Every one of them was barred. At night, while they slept, these women were little better off than prisoners in the county jail.

  “I can myself vouch for my brethren in the New Age Pilgrims,” Spinner said. “They spent the night in the barracks, as they always do, until we all rose at dawn to praise the Lord and begin our chores.”

  So that was what the square squat building housed.

  “You have no cause to doubt my word and no right to question my people,” Spinner declared.

  “I have every right, Mr. Spinner. A crime has been committed, and given your recent activities, and those you have planned for the weekend, a member of your merry band is the most likely suspect.”

  “You mock me?” Outrage turned his face a mottled red.

  The set of Sherri’s jaw told Liss she wasn’t about to apologize for that “merry band” crack. She was clearly fed up with Spinner’s obstructionist attitude, as well as with his posturing.

  “I am the duly appointed chief of police of the town of Moosetookal
ook, Mr. Spinner. It is my duty to pursue this matter, with or without your cooperation. I’d prefer to talk to each individual here at the farm but, if necessary, I will call in reinforcements and have everyone taken to the police station to be interviewed.”

  Liss had been watching the Pilgrims as Sherri spoke. At those words, she saw a pleased smile appear on the face of the young woman standing just behind Hadley Spinner. It disappeared when the man standing next to her clamped a hand over her right elbow. His response to the possibility of being questioned by the police was a ferocious scowl.

  Curious, Liss searched the other faces for a reaction. She found only one. A man standing a little apart from the rest regarded their leader with an expression she could only describe as sly. He looked to be about Spinner’s age—as much as a decade older than some of the rest of the group.

  Her gaze came back to Spinner just as he spat on the dry ground, narrowly missing Sherri’s shoes.

  “Send in your troops, if you can raise them. We will defend our right to freedom from oppression.”

  A quick glance at the woman who had smiled, a blonde who wore her hair in two long braids that hung nearly to her waist, showed Liss an expression that was carefully blank.

  “Mr. Spinner, your contempt for the law is making this situation far more complicated than it needs to be,” Sherri said with more patience than Liss could have managed. “Why are you so determined to protect a vandal who defaced private property?”

  Spinner smirked at her. “You have no evidence that one of my people did anything of the kind. We have already told you that no one left Pilgrim Farm last night. You can ask no more of us.”

  “I could ask you to cancel your rally in the town square.”

  “You would ask in vain. Sin must be exposed and eradicated.”

  “Oh, please,” Liss muttered under her breath.

  Either Spinner had extremely good hearing or she’d spoken more loudly than she’d intended. The look he sent her was so filled with venom that for a moment she stopped breathing. This was what it must feel like, she thought, to attract the attention of a boa constrictor. She had not a doubt in the world that Spinner would enjoy squeezing the life out of her.