Overkilt

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  They finished dealing with the orders without saying another word to each other, but the silence was not uncomfortable. As she always had as a child, Liss found her father’s presence calming. It had been her mother who made her crazy.

  “Thanks for your help,” she said when the last of the boxes was stacked for the trip to the post office.

  “Anytime. And I mean that. If you need a stock boy, I’m available.”

  They had swiveled around on their stools so that they were face-to-face. “Don’t tell me you need something to keep you busy, too?”

  “Oh, I can always amuse myself. A good book passes the time remarkably well. But have you considered that you might occasionally need to take time for something other than work?”

  Liss reacted to this statement with a puzzled frown. “I have lots of interests that have nothing to do with the Emporium. Or with meddling in police business.”

  Mac broke eye contact to stare off into the middle distance. “I was thinking that one of these days before too much longer you might want to try being a stay-at-home mom.”

  “That’s the last thing I’d want. I don’t want to be a mom at all!”

  When she saw the pained expression on her father’s face, Liss regretted her lack of tact, but what she’d blurted out was nothing but the truth. Touching his arm, she spoke in a gentler voice.

  “Dan and I decided some time ago that we don’t want to have children. I’m sorry if that disappoints you, but—”

  “Sometimes couples change their minds.”

  “We haven’t and we won’t. We know how we feel about this.”

  The sadness in his eyes made her chest tighten. She felt tears well up and surreptitiously wiped them away.

  “I was looking forward to having grandchildren someday,” Mac said. “I’d be a great grandpa.”

  “Yes, you would have been,” Liss said, “but I’d have been a terrible mother.” She reached across the space between them to clasp his hand in hers. “I’m sorry, Daddy, but that’s the way is has to be.”

  Mac gave a curt nod and managed a weak smile. “We raised you to make your own decisions. I can hardly criticize you for doing just that.”

  * * *

  That evening over supper, Liss brought Dan up to speed on the events of the day. She left out her father’s thwarted desire to become a grandparent but repeated what he’d told her concerning Violet’s need for projects to occupy her time.

  “Any ideas?” Dan asked between bites of mashed potato.

  “I could put her to work in the shop.” Liss cut a sliver of meat off her pork chop before looking up in time to catch the gleam of amusement in her husband’s eyes. “What?”

  “She’d rearrange everything and you’d be at each other’s throats within a week,” he predicted.

  “Less than that. You’re right. I need to think of something else, something that will keep her out of my hair and out of trouble.”

  Eating occupied them both for the next few minutes. That and warding off Lumpkin’s unending attempts to cadge some of the pork for himself. He started by tapping Liss’s thigh with one velvet paw, switched to using his claws, and finally escalated to the point where he tried to climb into her lap. She pushed him gently away and told him to stay down, not that giving orders to a cat ever had any effect.

  “Why not send your mother to the library?” Dan suggested when Lumpkin’s attention shifted to him. “Tell her you need to know everyone’s history with Spinner. You were away when he first arrived in the area and your folks had already left, but there should be some references to the Pilgrims in back issues of local newspapers.”

  Liss paused, a glass of water halfway to her mouth. “You were here. What do you remember?”

  “Not much. He didn’t stand out so much back then. Bought a farm. Stayed out there.”

  “Bought it from whom?”

  “No idea, but there should be a record of the sale at the town office.”

  “That’s something else Mom can check on. I like this plan.” Some of the tension that had been building throughout the day finally begin to ease.

  “Well, there you go. There’s plenty to keep Violet busy. And here’s another thought. Maybe she can cozy up to one of the lavender ladies. She could hire one of them to clean her place. Or, if you think they might refuse to work for anyone related to the Ruskins, maybe Vi could pay a visit to one of their current clients on the same day the cleaning lady is due.”

  “Do you know anyone who uses them?”

  “No, but it can’t be too hard to find that out. Ask our know-it-all librarian or the ever-well-informed postmaster. Or Patsy, for that matter.”

  “I guess I could do that.”

  At her hesitant tone of voice, Dan gave her a sharp look. “Now you’re looking down in the mouth again. Why? Didn’t I just solve your biggest problem?”

  “You did. It’s just that while I was listening to your ideas I realized that I don’t want to assign any of those tasks to my mother. I want to handle them myself.”

  “Then you should split the list between you,” said the ever-practical Dan, “and maybe do one or two things together, so that Vi doesn’t figure out that you’re keeping the best jobs for yourself.”

  * * *

  Vi was thrilled by her daughter’s suggestion that the two of them question Stu Burroughs about his alibi for the time of the murder, his history with Hadley Spinner, and whatever else he might know about the New Age Pilgrims. Her face lit up like a little kid on the way to visit a toy store and she was the first one through the door of the ski shop.

  Stu sold much more than ski apparel and equipment. He also stocked snowmobile gear, biking accessories, and snowshoes. As a result, about a third of the space in the store was taken up with shelves piled high with goods that would not have looked out of place in a hardware store. A significant portion of the rest was given over to clothing racks, while what remained offered various pieces of sports equipment.

  Stu himself was a dedicated snowmobiler, a hobby that required less physical exertion than the others, but he was knowledgeable about everything he carried and had established a reputation for fair dealing that extended far beyond Moosetookalook. People on their way to ski areas farther north often detoured to the sleepy little Carrabassett County village just to see what new items he had in stock.

  There were no customers in the shop when Liss and her mother burst in. They found Stu behind the sales counter, leafing through print supply catalogs. He gave them each a curt nod of greeting, his eyes already narrowing in suspicion.

  “Liss. Vi. How can I help you?”

  Liss had intended to do the questioning herself, but she didn’t interrupt when her mother took the lead.

  “We’re here to help you, Stu.” Vi went right up to the counter and reached across it to grab hold of his hands. “I don’t have to tell you how badly this police investigation is hurting business in Moosetookalook, not to mention what could happen if they fix their sights on you.”

  Stu looked slightly shell-shocked by Vi’s direct approach and rapid fire volley of words. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times without any sound coming out. Then he regained his equilibrium and narrowed his eyes even further. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Why, your grudge against Hadley Spinner, of course.”

  When Stu jerked his hands free, Liss swore she could see his hackles rising.

  “It wasn’t Hadley who got killed.”

  “Well, no, but only because someone mistook his cousin for him. The motives the police are looking into remain the same and you have a doozy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then why did you quarrel with him on Saturday? And don’t tell me it was just because he was demonstrating in the town square.” Vi aimed one finger at him in an accusing manner.

  He stared at it, mesmerized, while Liss pondered the effectiveness of the technique called “teacher’s finger” as a
means of prompting confessions. It could be a powerful weapon, especially when it was combined with a certain look in the eyes and used against someone with a guilty conscience. Even those who were completely innocent quailed before it.

  Stu sputtered in indignation and hot color rushed into his face, but he managed to avoid incriminating himself. Deciding that it was time to bring in the reserves, Liss stepped up to the counter. In this scenario, she was to play the part of the “good cop” and soften Stu up for her mother’s questions.

  “She’s right, Stu. The police have blinders on. They’re convinced someone from town killed Jasper Spinner so they’re digging into everyone’s past. How can we point them in another direction if we don’t know what’s behind their suspicions?”

  Stu slammed his fist down on the countertop with a thump so loud it made both women jump. He uttered a colorful oath.

  Undaunted, Vi leaned in. “What do they have on you, Stu?”

  “Bad enough I have to put up with being interrogated by the cops,” he grumbled. “Nothing says I have to bare my soul to a couple of snoopy broads.”

  “You think so? You wouldn’t be this nervous about it if there wasn’t something in your past to link you to the New Age Pilgrims.”

  Throwing both arms up into the air, he tried turning his back on them, but unless he tossed them out of the store, Liss wasn’t about to give up on him. He was a friend. She wanted to help him, even if that meant exposing him to a little tough love.

  “Stu, please. We’re on your side.”

  He swung around to glare at her. “Are you? Or are you just looking for someone other than your aunt to sic the cops on?”

  Liss and her mother exchanged a glance. Liss would have expected him to mention Joe, too. And Dan. It struck her as odd that he didn’t. By now everyone in town must have heard about the altercation with Hadley Spinner at Pilgrim Farm.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Stu,” Vi said. “We are worried about Margaret. But we don’t want you to be arrested, either.”

  “Somebody killed Jasper,” Stu said. “That means somebody’s going to be thrown in jail, probably sooner rather than later.”

  Liss nodded. “But not you. Let us help you prove it.”

  Stu huffed out an exasperated breath. “You’re not going to quit, are you? You’re just going to keep nagging me until you find out what you want to know.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Vi said.

  Stu’s brows beetled in thought. He scratched his chin. He shifted his not inconsiderable weight from one foot to the other. Finally he hoisted his bulk onto the stool behind the counter and met Liss’s gaze squarely.

  “Okay, here’s the thing. There’s nothing in my past that makes me a suspect. Nothing. Got that? It’s all because of that shouting match I had with Spinner the day his cousin was stabbed. Afterward, I came back here, closed up shop, went up to my apartment, and got stinking drunk. I didn’t hear about the body till the next day.”

  He looked from Liss to her mother, expectant. His face fell when he didn’t find what he was looking for in their expressions.

  “Geez, don’t you get it? I can’t prove I was upstairs, alone, when Spinner was killed. If the cops can’t pin it on Margaret, they’re going to think I worked up enough Dutch courage to sneak out there and stab him.”

  “I’m sure someone would have noticed you crossing the town square,” Vi said in a soothing voice. “You’re . . . uh . . . hard to miss.”

  “I’m a tub of lard in living color.” Stu flung both arms wide to better display that day’s outfit—a hot pink, long-sleeved shirt worn with a purple bow tie.

  When he tangled with Hadley Spinner on Saturday, Liss recalled, he’d been wearing a chartreuse windbreaker. “Good point,” she murmured.

  “Nobody’s come forward to say that they saw me. Nobody’s going to, because I didn’t set foot outside the rest of that day. But the absence of a witness doesn’t prove I’m innocent. Worse, as far as I can tell, nobody saw anyone else acting suspiciously right before or right after the murder, either.”

  That was the crux of the matter, Liss supposed. The reason the police suspected everyone who’d been in town that day was because they had no eyewitness and no evidence that allowed them to single out one suspect among the many.

  “It’s too bad you didn’t look out your windows,” Vi said. “You must have a great view of the entire town square from upstairs.”

  “Why would I want to do that? I was trying to ignore the whole ugly scene.”

  That sounds familiar, Liss thought. Then the proverbial light bulb went off above her head. How could she have been so dense? She and Dan and Stu might have had good reasons to avoid watching what the demonstrators were doing, but surely other people had been curious.

  “Are you sure there was no history between you?” Vi asked, oblivious to her daughter’s epiphany. “I hear you were mighty ticked off at Spinner.”

  Stu’s lips flattened into a thin, stubborn line. His relief was palpable when the door opened and a customer came in. “We’re done here. Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.”

  Not wishing to cost Stu a sale, they returned to the Emporium, where Mac was minding the store. Liss was pleasantly surprised to see that she, too, had several customers. . . until it dawned on her that they hadn’t come in to look for Scottish-themed gifts. They were gawkers, drawn to Moosetookalook by the news that there had been a grisly murder in the center of town.

  Catching her mother’s sleeve, Liss steered Vi into the stockroom and closed the door. “The windows,” she said. “I forgot all about the windows until you mentioned them to Stu.”

  “What about them?” Vi spoke absently, already busily poking around in Liss’s supplies, rearranging and straightening as she went.

  Liss suppressed the urge to tell her mother to cut it out and tried to stick to the point. “At this time of year, with no leaves on the trees, the upper floors of every building around the town square have an excellent view of everything that goes on there. If someone looked out at the right time, he or she could have seen the killer moving toward the playground or running away from it.”

  “Wouldn’t they already have reported what they saw to the police?” Vi, her interest piqued, stopped fussing with the rolls of package tape stored on an upper shelf.

  “Not if they don’t realize its significance. I’m not at all convinced that the police did a thorough job of canvassing the neighborhood. Gordon never really followed up with questions about what I might have seen. He was too interested in interrogating Dan.”

  “But you didn’t see anything.”

  “What if I had and it slipped my mind? All Gordon did was verify that I was at work on the day of the murder and that I didn’t see anything suspicious around that time. I told him the same story I told Sherri, but you’d think he’d want to ask follow-up questions in the hope of jogging my memory. If the interviews the police conducted with other people who aren’t suspects were as routine, it’s entirely possible that they didn’t get every detail. Even if they were told something significant, they might not have realized its importance. The state police don’t know what’s normal and what isn’t in this town. It would be easy for them to miss the relevance of a casual reference.”

  “You’re right,” her mother agreed. “People often notice trivial things, but if those things don’t appear to be connected, and if no one presses them to remember what they were, it might never occur to them to tell the police or anyone else.”

  “Exactly.”

  Now that she thought about it, Liss realized she was herself a perfect example of that tendency. She’d heard someone banging on the front door of the Emporium when she was in the stockroom. It had never occurred to her to mention that to anyone. It probably wasn’t important, but what if it was?

  “We need to talk to everyone who lives or works in any of the buildings facing the town square.” She reached for a notepad and sketched a rough map. Wh
en it was finished, she handed it to her mother. “We’ll ask them about everyone they remember seeing and when.”

  Vi’s eyes were bright with the fervor of someone newly introduced to an exciting sport. For the next hour, she and Liss dedicated themselves to making a list of questions. Near the top was, “Did you see someone on the porch of the Emporium, trying and failing to get inside?”

  “Dividing up the neighborhood will allow us to canvass it in the most effective manner,” Vi pointed out.

  “Okay,” Liss agreed. “You turn right out the door and I’ll go left.”

  She’d start by talking to Maud, and to the couple who rented the apartment above Carrabassett County Wood Crafts. The post office was only open until noon on Saturdays, but there was an upstairs unit in that building, too. Liss doubted that the museum had enjoyed much business, thanks to the rally, but that just meant that the docent was more likely to have been rubbernecking from inside the building. And if Angie or her son had taken a break from working in Angie’s Books to go upstairs to their living quarters, who knew what one of them might have seen?

  “Why don’t we meet at the municipal building?” she suggested. “I’ll question Dolores Mayfield at the library while you speak to Francine Noyes.”

  Officially, the town office wasn’t open on Saturdays, but it was a good bet that someone had been on hand to keep an eye on the demonstration. If that person had not been Francine, the town clerk, she would know which member of the town select board had been there.

  The sound of raised voices from the shop interrupted the planning session. Liss exchanged a worried look with her mother before she hurried out of the stockroom.

  Gordon Tandy and Mac MacCrimmon stood toe to toe. That in itself wouldn’t have been so alarming if Gordon hadn’t been backed up by two uniformed officers. A hint of relief showed in his otherwise stony expression when he turned toward her, but that did nothing to soften the effect of his next words.

  “Tell your father to back off, Liss,” Gordon said. “We have a search warrant for Margaret’s apartment.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Now just a darned minute!” Mac MacCrimmon’s shoulders hunched aggressively as he started to follow the state police detective and the two troopers.