“No problem, boss.” Sherri said.
Dan pictured her wearing a cheeky grin. He heard the back door open and close as the state police detective left. A light patter of footsteps marked Sherri’s return to the living room.
When Liss remained frozen in place, Dan wondered if she was counting to ten. Was she upset that Tandy had taken off? Or was it the fact that the state trooper had warned Sherri not to confide in her that ticked her off? By the time Liss cautiously opened the cellar door, Tandy was long gone. The kitchen’s only occupants were feline. Lumpkin perched on top of the refrigerator while the kitten was crouched below, trying to figure out how to climb up there with him.
“Something’s going on,” Liss muttered.
“Police business,” he reminded her.
“Maybe I can worm it out of Sherri.” But she made no move toward the living room. “No, maybe not.”
Dan set the box on the kitchen counter. Taking Liss by the shoulders, he gently turned her toward him until he could see her troubled expression.
“What we just overheard…I hadn’t realized till then how much Sherri risks every time she confides in me. I don’t want to put her on the spot.”
“So you won’t ask her any questions about the case. Why is that a problem? You were going to stay out of the investigation anyway, remember?”
“How could I forget with you and Gordon reminding me every five minutes!”
“Whoa! Don’t bite my head off.” He dropped his arms and stepped back.
“Sorry.” One hand went to her forehead, rubbing it as if to ward off a headache. “I just…I like tossing ideas around with Sherri. That’s all. I’m not getting involved!”
Dan thought the lady protested a bit too much, but there was no point in saying so. Let her be mad at Gordon Tandy, not him. Retrieving the carton, he carried the candles into the living room, entering just in time to hear Pete suggest that everyone sing Christmas carols while they finished decorating.
Liss waved her hand in the air in the manner of a pupil trying to get a teacher’s attention. “No musical talent whatsoever, remember?”
“I thought you learned to play the bagpipes when you were a kid,” Dan teased her.
“I tried to learn. It was not a success. My best effort sounded like cats strangling. And I’m definitely no singer.”
Dan tried to think if he’d ever heard her vocalize. Nothing came to mind. He found himself intrigued. Something Liss couldn’t do well? This he had to hear.
She remained stubbornly silent while the others belted out “Good King Wenceslas.”
Dan poked her in the ribs. “Come on,” he whispered. “You can’t be that bad.”
“I can’t carry a tune.”
“No one cares.”
“So you say now.”
“I may not have much tolerance for bagpipes, but I can put up with a little off-key singing.” He winked. “Besides, if it’s really awful, I’ll just stick my fingers in my ears.”
In a cheerful mood and well rested, Liss stepped out onto her front porch to check on progress at the crime scene before going to work the next morning. The yellow tape was still up, flapping in the breeze, but there didn’t seem to be anyone inside The Toy Box. There were, however, a great many cars parked along Liss’s end of Pine Street and onto Ash, where Thorne’s shop stood. Puzzled, she turned the other way, toward the Emporium…and froze.
More vehicles of every shape and size, including a Winnebago, lined all four sides of the town square. At the corner where Pine met Birch Street, they were double parked and creating a traffic jam in front of Second Time Around, Marcia’s consignment shop. Liss narrowed her eyes against the glare of the winter sun on snow. A half dozen people were crowded onto Marcia’s front porch and two of them looked as if they were about to pummel each other. Wondering if someone was going to have to call in the riot squad, Liss hastily did up the buttons on her coat and headed that way. Opening the Emporium could wait a few more minutes.
All the “regulars” were there. Lovey Fitzpatrick—wearing bright crimson this time—and the man in the gray coat, and two or three others Liss recognized as people who had bought one of her kilted bears and gone on to shop at The Toy Box. Just as Liss started up the porch steps, Marcia unlocked the door and the crowd surged inside.
Liss followed more slowly, taking time to read the sign Marcia had posted. Second Time Around did not have a display window, or even a bow or bay window in the front room. Two normal-sized windows flanked the door. A notice had been taped to the inside of one of them: NEW SUPPLY OF TINY TEDDIES AVAILABLE NOW. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED.
Lovey Fitzpatrick’s shrill voice rose above the hubbub inside the shop. “What do you mean you’re holding some back?”
“Just what I said.” Marcia glanced Liss’s way and grinned at her. “I intend to auction off the last of the lot to the highest bidder on the final afternoon of the pageant.”
“How many?” the gray man demanded.
“Which design?” someone else wanted to know.
Marcia whipped out a stack of fliers, complete with pictures. Hands grabbed them away from her. She laughed and reached under the sales counter for more. Eventually, one made its way to Liss.
She waged a brief battle with herself over whether or not to stay and find out where the bears had come from, but Marcia’s plan to auction off some of them at the pageant made that information Liss’s concern. She waited for a break in the buying frenzy—a near riot by Moosetookalook standards—and slipped close enough to speak privately with a flushed and excited Marcia.
“Where did you get the bears?” she asked in a low voice.
“They’re not counterfeit, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Marcia whispered back.
“I wasn’t.” Liss hastily made the “cross my heart” gesture. She truly didn’t suspect Marcia of anything underhanded.
Marcia took money from a customer and rang up the sale. She was charging $150 a bear. Reasonable, Liss supposed, at least compared to Thorne’s prices.
Things got busy again after that, but Liss stubbornly stuck around.
“You still here?” Marcia asked a half hour later. The rush had subsided to a trickle.
“I’m still here.”
Marcia sighed. “Okay. Okay.” She peered around the store, as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping on their conversation. “I suppose you’ve got a right to know, since you’re the one in charge of the pageant and the auction.”
“Yes. The auction I didn’t know we were holding.”
Marcia just grinned at her. “But it’s a brilliant idea, isn’t it? It will keep people here through the weekend.”
“The bears, Marcia—where did they come from?”
“Spoilsport. Well, I kept a couple of the elves back. I said I was sold out but I really wasn’t.” She shrugged. “I saw what Thorne was doing to the prices, so I thought, why not? See how high they go, then reveal my own ‘last bear in New England’ to the world.”
“You’ve got more than a couple of elf bears now,” Liss persisted. “Did you buy them from Eric Moss?”
“Second thoughts? Too late, Liss. He may have offered them to you first, but you turned him down. Your loss. My gain.”
“No problem. I thought his price was too steep. You know that. I left you a phone message to tell you so.” Marcia looked smug. “So you bought them? The entire batch?”
“Yup.”
“I thought you only took things on consignment.” And she’d thought Moss had sold his bears to Gavin Thorne.
“That’s the way it usually works, but this deal was too good to pass up.” She chuckled. “You know what they say about something that sounds too good to be true, but as far as I could see there wasn’t any downside to this deal.”
“But what took so long? Moss had the bears days ago.” And why, come to think of it, had Moss been ready to let them go for only fifty bucks a bear?
Marcia shrugged. “We’ve been negotiating. He
finally agreed to my counteroffer and delivered them this morning.”
A rosy-cheeked woman with a child in tow approached the counter with two Tiny Teddies and a credit card in hand. Marcia lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Do you know where Moss got them?” Liss asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. I own them now and they’re selling like hotcakes.” Ignoring Liss, she waited on her customer.
In a thoughtful frame of mind, Liss left Marcia’s shop and belatedly opened Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. It was a slow morning, and would no doubt get even slower once Marcia ran out of the Tiny Teddies she was prepared to sell that day. She had a different selection of bears set aside for Friday and yet another batch selected for Saturday. Any left over on Sunday—and Liss expected there would be only those Marcia had already decided to hold back for the auction—would be sold at the end of the pageant.
Marcia Milliken was either a very clever businesswoman or an extremely shady character. Liss tried to imagine the other woman shooting Thorne in order to steal his bears but the picture refused to come into focus. For one thing, it was a pretty stupid reason to kill someone. For another, Liss had begun to suspect that Marcia’s business plan for the little bears had been devised only in part to maximize her profit. Making just a few available for sale at a time meant she could take the rest of each day off. Liss was sure she was right when Marcia drove by an hour later…towing her snowmobile trailer.
It continued to be quiet into the afternoon. Margaret had gone to the hotel, leaving Liss with no one to talk to. Before long she found herself doodling on a notepad. Eventually, the doodles turned into a list of names.
Eric Moss was number one. He’d supplied Marcia with Tiny Teddies. Had he also supplied Gavin Thorne? Then, had he turned around and taken them after killing the man? She’d always thought Moss was honest. Then again, he had met Jason Graye in suspicious circumstances at the town office the night of the selectmen’s meeting. What had that been about?
Graye styled himself an entrepreneur and it was an open secret that he’d run for town selectman only to give himself an “in” to decide zoning questions. That went along with his main occupation—shady real-estate broker. He’d walked a thin legal line in the past, and Liss had no doubt he’d do it again. The question was whether Eric Moss was cut from the same cloth. Maybe, she thought, she should ask Moss that question…and a few others.
No. Maybe Gordon should question him. She was supposed to stay out of it. Funny how hard that was to remember.
Telling herself she was engaging in harmless speculation, nothing more, Liss continued to the second name on her list: Felicity Thorne.
Thorne’s ex wife was the most obvious suspect, she supposed. There had been no love lost between them. They’d quarreled shortly before his death. And Felicity had been in town at least once after that. She’d been in the Emporium with Lovey FitzPatrick. Had it only been yesterday afternoon?
Liss wondered how well the two women knew each other. She could ask, she supposed. She had a feeling Lovey would be sticking around until after Sunday’s auction. She might complain about the prices, but she was an avid collector. Such people were addicted to the hunt. Maybe tonight at the hotel, in between the milkmaids and the leaping lords—actually the high school’s men’s gymnastics team—she could find a moment to chat with Ms. FitzPatrick.
The next name on her list wasn’t exactly a name. She’d written “man in gray coat” as number three.
Stu Burroughs was number four on her list. Stu hadn’t liked Gavin Thorne, but Liss had a hard time believing he’d murder the other man. She started to cross out his name, then stopped. Everyone was a suspect at this point.
The sleigh bells over the door jangled loudly and Sherri breezed in. From her happy-as-a-clam expression, Liss concluded that Gordon must still be keeping her in the loop. She felt a small stab of envy.
Sherri zeroed in on Liss’s list. “Your man in the gray coat is named Mark Patton. He’s in the clear as far as we can tell.”
“He’s still in town.”
“There are still bears.” That seemed to say it all.
“Collector?”
“Worse. Dealer. He’s got customers waiting back in Connecticut.”
“You sure he’s off the hook? That’s two counts against him.”
“Funny, Liss. There’s a third strike, too. He was in town last Sunday and pretty steamed over Thorne’s prices. He didn’t buy any Tiny Teddies that day.”
“So maybe he helped himself to some later?”
“Then why stick around? Why call attention to himself by pounding on Thorne’s door after the murder?”
“Good point, but I’m not crossing him out.” She gave Sherri a sharp look. “Are you supposed to be sharing information like this?”
“Some things are general knowledge, or soon will be. For example, Felicity Thorne was looking good. Seems her ex never changed his will. She gets The Toy Box and anything else he owned. But she’s got an alibi.”
Sherri skimmed Liss’s list again, then tapped Moss’s name with one short, unpolished fingernail. “Why did you put him at the number one spot?”
Liss gave her a quick recap of Moss’s whispered conversation with Jason Graye at the town office and Marcia’s confidences about her source for the Tiny Teddies. “Has anyone talked to Moss yet?”
“I passed on your suggestion to Gordon, but no one’s been able to track Moss down. He may be off on a buying trip.”
“Marcia saw him just this morning,” Liss said. “Talk to her.”
Chapter Ten
The eight little milkmaids, including ten-year-old Beth Hogencamp, were charming to look at and sang on key. Liss envied them. Her own performance the other night, when Dan finally coaxed it out of her, had left him with a strained expression on his face and a sudden desire, she suspected, to purchase earplugs.
As Liss and Margaret and about two hundred others watched, the nine lords a-leaping launched into a gymnastics routine in the ballroom at The Spruces. They showed enthusiasm and considerable skill, but Liss couldn’t help but be a trifle disappointed.
“They don’t quite match my image of the stanza from the song,” she whispered to her aunt.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Margaret reminded her. “At least they’re crowd pleasers.”
And they had given in on the costumes. It couldn’t be easy for teenage boys to appear in public in green tights and tunics. Liss joined in the appreciative applause at the end of their act.
The hotel’s largest function room had been decorated in grand style for the holidays. The scent of evergreen boughs drifted into every corner. Festooned with garlands and twinkling lights, the room was dominated by a twelve-foot Christmas tree placed midway along the window wall.
After the evening’s ceremony closed with another appearance by Jeff Thibodeau as Santa Claus, spectators and performers alike milled about. Hotel employees threaded their way through the crowd with free eggnog, punch, and sugar cookies. An array of other nibblies had been set out on a buffet table and a cash bar at the far end of the room provided stronger libations to those who desired them.
Liss abandoned her aunt to sidle up to Lovey FitzPatrick as the bear collector loaded a plate with fancy crackers, assorted cheese cubes, and carrot sticks. “Good evening, Ms. FitzPatrick. I didn’t think you’d still be in Moosetookalook.”
“I came for the Tiny Teddies. There are still Tiny Teddies to be had.”
“Yes, indeed. You’ll stay for the auction on Sunday, then?”
“That’s the plan.” She moved steadily along the length of the buffet, adding tidbits to the collection on her plate.
“I wonder…do you happen to know how I might contact the former Mrs. Thorne?”
Ms. FitzPatrick’s hand jerked in the act of spearing a thin slice of raw zucchini. “Who?”
“Felicity Thorne. I’m sorry. I assumed you knew her. Her hair is very black but just starting to go gray and I’d
say she’s about the same age as her ex husband. She was in the Emporium at the same time you were the other day.”
“Oh. Yes, yes I do vaguely remember someone like that. Didn’t get her name.” Moving more quickly now, Lovey FitzPatrick left the buffet table and sped toward a single empty chair at one of the small tables arranged around the room. To judge by the startled expressions on the faces of those already seated, she was a total stranger to them. That didn’t stop her from plunking herself down and starting to eat.
Interesting, Liss thought. Lovey didn’t want to talk about Felicity Thorne. She wondered why not. She was still pondering that question, considering whether to mention Lovey FitzPatrick’s odd behavior to Gordon, who had just entered the ballroom, when Dan Ruskin materialized behind her. A faint stirring of the air and a whiff of familiar aftershave identified him a moment before he spoke.
“How’s it going?”
“Not too bad.” She glanced over her shoulder to smile at him, but quickly returned her attention to Gordon. She frowned as she watched him make his way toward Stu and Marcia. He had that “official” air about him, which meant he was on duty.
“People seemed to like having the ceremony here,” Dan remarked.
Still keeping her eyes on Gordon, Liss murmured something affirmative.
“You might want to consider continuing to use this venue.”
“What?” That remark captured her full attention.
“I’ve heard several people say how nice it is to be inside and warm. There’s really no reason you have to go back to the town square for the remaining—”
“No reason? There’s every reason! The whole idea was to get customers into our shops and they, in case you’ve forgotten, are located downtown.”
“But by the time you hold the ceremonies in the evening, stores have closed for the night anyway. Why not move all that here, where it’s more comfortable?”
“And the final pageant? What about that? It’s scheduled for Sunday afternoon.”
“Hey, don’t bite my head off. I’m just trying to help. Do you really want people to see the boarded-up window and the crime scene tape when they’re supposed to be thinking happy thoughts about the holidays?”
A Wee Christmas Homicide Page 11