A Wee Christmas Homicide

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  But Ernie Willett was the least of Liss’s worries this morning. Just before Aunt Margaret had left Liss to go back to her own place, she’d said she wanted to have a long serious talk with her niece about the future of the Emporium.

  If not for the tired look on her aunt’s face, Liss would have insisted they hash things out then and there. Instead, she’d resigned herself to spending a restless night before she found out what Margaret really thought of the changes Liss had made since she’d been in charge.

  When Liss had dried her hair and dressed for the day, she ventured downstairs to look for Lumpkin. She found him standing in front of the closed door that shielded the kitten, his tail enlarged to twice its normal size. The expression on his furry face was one of affronted dignity.

  “Give it a rest,” she told him. “You have a visitor. He…or she…has had a rough time of it. You are to be polite.” Mentally crossing her fingers, Liss reached for the knob.

  The black kitten bounded out into the hall. Not at all put off by Lumpkin’s hiss or his stiff-legged stance, it stopped only long enough to give the larger cat an inquisitive look before gamboling straight toward him. Apparently too astonished to move, Lumpkin just stood there while the kitten stropped itself against his side, then ducked under his belly.

  Liss stifled a snicker. It was trying to nurse.

  “No joy there, little one,” she told it, scooping it up just as Lumpkin recovered enough to growl.

  Two mugs of coffee later, Liss entered Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium with the black kitten cradled in her arms. It was only 7:30, but Margaret had already opened for the day. She was standing in the shop doorway, breathing deeply and smiling as she looked out across the snow-covered town square.

  “It’s good to be home.”

  “I’m glad you’re back.” Liss meant it, but she was still uneasy about what Margaret might plan to say to her.

  “So, any new gossip I should know about? Did Marcia’s husband ever come back?”

  “Nope.” Liss shared Moosetookalook news as it happened in her regular letters and e-mails to her aunt and to her parents.

  “Poor Marcia.”

  “She seems to be coping. To tell you the truth, she seems happier without Cabot Katz. Did I tell you she took back her maiden name? She’s Marcia Milliken again.”

  “When does The Toy Box usually open?” Margaret had already lost interest in Marcia. “I’m curious to meet this Gavin Thorne and to get a look at a Tiny Teddy. I’ve never seen one except in pictures.”

  “He’s been opening at eight since the madness started.” His usual hours, and hers, had been ten to five, Tuesday through Saturday, until the advent of the Tiny Teddies had changed all that.

  “He’s got a customer waiting,” Margaret observed.

  Having put the kitten in the shop’s bathroom, already furnished with a litter box and water dish, Liss poured herself yet another mug of coffee from the pot her aunt had brewed. She came out from behind the counter so that she could see past Margaret. It was a glorious day. A scene right off a Christmas card. Anyone who came to Moosetookalook to Christmas shop should be delighted with what they found.

  Except for the guy pounding furiously on the front door of The Toy Box.

  Margaret came inside and moved to the Emporium’s display window so she could continue to watch the stranger without getting chilled. Sipping her coffee, Liss ambled over to stand beside her, then took a step back when she got a whiff of her aunt’s perfume. It wasn’t unpleasant—jasmine, Liss thought, and citrus, and a hint of sandalwood—but it was strong.

  The man on Thorne’s porch alternated between knocking at the door and banging on the plywood that covered the cracked glass. He tried to peer into the shop, but Thorne had done a thorough job. The panels were flush and contained no convenient knotholes to look through.

  “Maybe I should go over there and check on your Mr. Thorne,” Margaret murmured. “It’s odd he’s not opening up when he’s obviously got a customer.”

  “Maybe that guy is a bill collector.” The suit and topcoat were very formal attire for rural Maine.

  “Don’t be facetious.” Her eyes twinkled. “Bill collectors are much more aggressive.”

  They watched for a few more minutes, but there was still no sign of life from inside The Toy Box.

  “Unless Thorne has changed the locks, I can get inside with Warren’s spare key,” Aunt Margaret said.

  Warren Alden’s small appliance repair shop had occupied the building for years, and Alden himself had been a nice old guy who’d have been grateful for Margaret’s concern. The current proprietor was something else again.

  “He might just be sleeping in,” Liss warned.

  “Or he might be ill. Good neighbors have an obligation to look out for each other.” Margaret rummaged in the junk drawer beneath the sales counter until she produced a key ring. “Warren gave me this four or five years ago, after he accidentally locked himself out.”

  Margaret grabbed the coat Liss had just hooked over the coatrack, slung it around her own shoulders, and sailed out the door. Moments later, before Liss’s aunt had even reached the corner, Sherri Willett appeared on the Emporium’s porch, coming from the other direction.

  “Was that Margaret?” she asked.

  “It was. She got home yesterday afternoon during the storm.”

  “Where’s she headed?”

  “Straight for trouble if Gavin Thorne is in a bad mood. Her curiosity seems to have gotten the better of her common sense. She says she’s worried that Thorne is sick and needs help. He looked perfectly healthy the last time I saw him. He was gloating about all the money he’s raking in. He’s probably just taking his own good time about opening up this morning. Either that or he’s recognized that man pounding on the door and doesn’t want to talk to him.”

  “Maybe that’s his wife’s lawyer,” Sherri speculated.

  “The possibilities are endless. Quiet night?”

  “Yes, thank goodness. Not even any traffic accidents, in spite of the storm. There were a few fender benders down Fallstown way, though. I heard Pete a couple of times on the radio.” Her voice faded as she ducked behind the counter to help herself to coffee.

  “Any reports of a missing black kitten?” Liss continued to watch her aunt through the display window. Margaret trotted up the porch steps to the front door of The Toy Box and said a few words to the stranger. Whatever she told him sent him scurrying back to his car to wait until The Toy Box opened. He started the engine to keep warm but didn’t drive away.

  “Missing kitten?” Sherri repeated. “No one called the P.D. about one.”

  “Take a look in the bath.”

  Behind her she heard the door open and Sherri’s delighted chuckle. “Well, aren’t you the little sweetie.”

  Back on Thorne’s porch, Margaret fiddled with the lock. After considerable jiggling, her key finally worked and she slipped inside the shop, closing the door behind her. Liss glanced over her shoulder, unsurprised to see that Sherri had a squirming ball of black fur tucked under her arm.

  “Where did Sweetie come from?”

  “Wandered into the shop yesterday. I put a sign in the window.” Liss gestured toward the notice, glanced that way, and froze.

  “What on earth…?” Sherri took a step forward, staring through the glass, as Liss was, at The Toy Box.

  The door left standing wide open behind her, Margaret stumbled down the porch steps and into the street. Oblivious to the fact that Dan Ruskin, headed for work in his pickup truck, was bearing down on her, she ran right out in front of him. Tires squealed as he stopped inches from a collision.

  Margaret kept going. Her face ashen, she burst into the Emporium. “Call 9–1-1,” she gasped, her voice barely audible above the jangle of the sleigh bells attached to the door.

  “Sherri’s right here.” Liss had never seen her aunt so upset. She was literally shaking.

  “What’s wrong?” Sherri asked.

  The
sleigh bells over the threshold erupted once more as Dan rushed inside. His face was almost as pale as Margaret’s.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he shouted. “I almost hit you!”

  Margaret didn’t seem to hear him, nor did she respond to Sherri’s blue uniform. Her eyes locked with Liss’s. “There’s a dead man in the toy store!”

  “What?” Liss didn’t think she could have heard correctly.

  “Are you certain?” Sherri was already moving toward the door.

  A horrible grimace distorted Margaret’s features. “I’m sure. Hearts tend to stop beating when someone fires a bullet through them.”

  Ohmigod, Liss thought. Just like the Tiny Teddy!

  Chapter Seven

  The words of a lecture on crime scenes came back to Sherri as she stepped cautiously through the open front door of The Toy Box. “Think like a criminal,” the instructor had said. “Witnesses are not the most important factor. They’re unreliable. The scene, however, does not change.”

  It did if it had been messed with.

  A strange man knelt next to Gavin Thorne’s body.

  “You! Stand up and turn around. Slowly.” Sherri didn’t see a weapon, but she drew her own. Better safe than sorry.

  The man blinked at her in confusion. Hands in the air, he tried for an innocuous smile and missed. He wore a dark gray wool coat that shouted expensive but the faint greenish tinge of his complexion was common as dirt. “I’m sorry. I think I’m going to—”

  “Outside. Now!” She barely had time to get out of his way before he rushed past her to deposit his breakfast in the bushes beside the porch. She followed him, giving him a moment to recover before she spoke again. “You done?”

  He nodded, eyes closed.

  “Name?”

  “Mark Patton. Innocent bystander. I swear.”

  “Then why did you go inside?”

  “Something upset that woman.”

  “Try again.”

  “I was looking for a Tiny Teddy, okay?”

  “Okay. Stay put. You’ll have to give a statement.” She wasn’t sure she trusted him to follow orders, but she had his name and made a mental note of the license number on his car before she went back inside. If he took off, she could find him.

  The basics of murder investigation had been drilled into Sherri at the police academy. There were only three departments in the entire state that handled them—the cities of Portland and Bangor and the State Police. The local P.D., however, had its role to play. Sherri was the one responsible for making initial observations. She might be asked to assist the state police further, if she had special knowledge of the case to offer. What she did in the next couple of minutes could be crucial, not only to solving Thorne’s murder but also to her career in law enforcement.

  Secure the scene? No. Not until she’d made sure Thorne was really dead. Although she wasn’t in much doubt, she wasn’t supposed to take a civilian’s word for it. A few steps inside the shop she stopped to brace herself for the sight and smell of violent death.

  It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. There was blood, but not buckets of it. Thorne lay sprawled on the floor on his back. His Harry Potter glasses had landed a short distance away. One lens was cracked.

  Her gaze shifted back to the body. Gavin Thorne had been shot in the chest. Good aim, Sherri thought. She wasn’t a doctor, but it looked to her as if the bullet had struck the heart, just as Margaret had said.

  And just like the last victim she’d eyeballed in The Toy Box.

  After one long stare to verify that there was nothing anyone could do to revive Thorne, Sherri turned her attention to her surroundings. She wasn’t the one who’d examine blood-spatter patterns or ballistic evidence or determine cause of death. The experts in those areas would arrive soon enough.

  Quiet engulfed her, the silence of a building empty of life. No one, she was certain, was hiding on the premises. Whoever had killed Thorne was long gone.

  It was warm in the shop. No doors left open, then. Not for long, anyway. Thorne might even have been killed the previous evening, since he was fully dressed and did not seem to have turned the thermostat down. It had been considerably chillier in The Toy Box the night she’d come to investigate the broken window and mutilated bear. On the other hand, he might have gotten up early and been preparing for the day when someone shot him.

  Surveying the shop from her central vantage point, she tried to determine if anything had been vandalized or stolen. Thorne’s arm had struck a small table as he fell, knocking it over and spilling a display of American Girl products onto the floor. Other than that, nothing seemed to be out of place or disturbed.

  Giving the dead man a wide berth, she approached the high sales counter and climbed the steps at the back to check if Thorne’s computer and cash register were still there. Both looked intact and untouched. Using only her fingertips, she opened the drawer where she’d seen him stash his gun. There was no sign of it now. That wasn’t good, but she knew better than to mess with the crime scene by continuing to search for it.

  The distant wail of a siren warned Sherri that she didn’t have much time left for observation. From her lofty vantage point, she gazed down at the shop. The boarded-up front window cut out most of the natural light, but the overhead fixture showed her much the same arrangement she remembered from her previous visit with Liss and Marcia. If anything had been taken, the thief had been neat about it.

  Had the light been on when Thorne was shot? She hadn’t flicked the switch beside the door, but Margaret might have. Or Mark Patton. Sherri frowned, staring at Patton through the still-open door. There was something familiar about him. It came to her a moment later. He was the disappointed customer who’d been swearing so creatively because Thorne’s prices were too high. When had that been? Sunday, she thought. The day the news crew came to town. She couldn’t help but wonder what would bring Patton back to Moosetookalook three days later.

  She was about to go out and ask him when she realized something was different about The Toy Box. She didn’t see a Tiny Teddy anywhere. Sherri hadn’t expected clowns or ballerinas—they’d sold out—but Thorne had supposedly acquired a new supply. Could they all have been bought up so quickly? More likely, having learned his lesson, Thorne had put them elsewhere for safekeeping overnight. She moved cautiously toward the back of the shop, intending to take a peek into Thorne’s storage closet.

  “Officer Willett?” Jeff Thibodeau’s shout came from just outside the front door.

  “In a minute!” she hollered back.

  “Get out of there,” he ordered. “Now.”

  Jeff knew the ropes, particularly what not to do. He had no intention of entering the crime scene himself.

  “I’m just making sure the killer isn’t still on the premises,” Sherri called, using the first reasonable excuse she could come up with. “I want to check the apartment upstairs.”

  “You need backup?”

  “I’m okay. Just being thorough.”

  “Don’t mess anything up. Go up from the inside of the building but exit by way of the outside stairs.”

  “I knew that,” Sherri muttered, but she didn’t sass her boss.

  Jeff had been in law enforcement for a long time. He’d been the policeman who’d visited the local elementary school as Officer Friendly when Sherri was a kid. Even then he’d had a Santa Claus build and a distinct shortage of hair. Granted, his promotion to chief had been more reward for long service than vote of confidence in his ability to run the department—the selectmen had been looking for someone whose salary wouldn’t break the budget—but Jeff was no dummy. He’d heard too many cautionary tales of murder scenes contaminated by local cops who didn’t know what they were doing to let any of his officers be careless.

  Sherri made her way around the perimeter of the shop, careful not to touch anything except the doorknob and the stairwell light switch. Someone else would have to examine the contents of the storage closet.

 
; Like most of the old Victorian houses around the town square, The Toy Box had started life as a private home. Over time, a business had taken over the lower floor and the upstairs had been turned into living quarters.

  Thorne’s apartment had a Spartan appearance, with few pieces of furniture and no curtains. Only shades covered the windows, pulled down so that the whole place was full of shadows. At a guess, although he’d won the contents of his old toy store in the divorce settlement, his ex wife had kept the household goods.

  Sherri didn’t take time to inspect the boxes and cartons that filled the spare bedroom and half the space in the living room. Instead, she poked her head into the master bedroom. She couldn’t tell how recently the bed had been slept in. A spread had been haphazardly thrown on top of the blankets and pillows. It might have been left that way only hours earlier or be untouched since the morning before.

  In the kitchen, the dish drainer next to the sink was full of clean, dry dishes. Did that mean he’d had supper last night and washed up before he was shot? Sherri had no idea. She wasn’t familiar with Thorne’s habits and didn’t know what was normal for him. Maybe he never put dishes away.

  She glanced at the coffeepot—a French press. There was no indication he’d made himself a cup that morning. Then again, maybe he didn’t bother with breakfast. She couldn’t imagine starting a day without coffee herself, but she wasn’t Gavin Thorne.

  With no excuse to linger—no perpetrator; no conveniently discarded gun with fingerprints; no Tiny Teddies—Sherri unlocked the apartment’s back door and made her way carefully down the slick, snow-covered outer stairs. Her boots sank down a good five inches, adequate proof that no one else had come this way since the storm. Relieved that she didn’t have to worry about messing up evidence on her descent, she hurried as fast as she could, anxious to report to her boss.

  It took some time to circle the house. The wind during the night had swept much of the snow off the stairs only to deposit it in drifts three times as deep elsewhere. Sherri’s steps slowed even more when she saw that Jeff Thibodeau had been joined by Pete Campbell, her fiancé.