As they sipped hot chocolate, the conversation slowly turned from wedding plans back to Strathspey . “So, how did we look from out front?” Zara wanted to know.
“Pretty darned good. I have to tell you, though, that it was strange seeing someone else dance my part.”
“Emily’s not bad,” Sandy conceded. “Sarah was better, though.”
“Sarah?”
“The first dancer Victor hired to replace you.”
“I thought Emily was—”
“No, she came in when Sarah left, at about the same time you sent word that you wouldn’t be back at all.”
“So this Sarah was just hired as a temp?”
Sandy and Zara exchanged a glance. Then Zara shrugged. “I never was a believer in ‘speak no ill of the dead.’ She would have been your permanent replacement if Victor hadn’t told her she’d have to sleep with him to get the job. She smacked him upside the head, accused him of sexual harassment, and threatened to bring formal charges against him. I’m not sure what changed her mind.”
“I guess I’m not surprised,” Liss said. “Victor made a pass at me shortly before my accident. That was just after you broke up with him, Zara.”
“I swear I don’t know what I ever saw in the man, although he could be charming when he wanted to. He didn’t pressure me into a relationship, in case you’re wondering.” She reached for Sandy’s hand and he gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. “But after it was obvious Sandy and I were developing feelings for each other, Victor went out of his way to make things difficult for us on the road. We’ve been considering leaving Strathspey.”
“I don’t understand. Victor was always a pain, but he wasn’t petty.”
“He’d been under a lot of pressure,” Zara said. “My guess is that the company is on shaky ground financially.”
“Has attendance fallen off?”
“Not so’s you’d notice, but expenses are up. Gas for the bus, for instance.”
And rates for health insurance, Liss thought, remembering Victor’s complaint. “I can sympathize. I’ve learned more about finances than I ever wanted to know since I started running the gift shop. My aunt was barely making ends meet before we restructured her mail order business and made the entire inventory available online.”
Encouraged by questions from Sandy and Zara, Liss talked a bit about what she’d done to turn the business around. She hoped she didn’t sound as if she were boasting, but she was extremely pleased with the success she’d had so far.
Sandy took a thoughtful bite out of one of the molasses cookies he’d found by foraging in her cupboards. “Sounds like you might be able to work the same magic on Strathspey if you were to step in as manager.”
“You did say you’d love a chance to come back,” Zara reminded her.
“Well, yes, but—”
“Someone’s going to have to take Victor’s place.”
She temporized. “It seems a little callous to talk about this now.”
“The man’s dead. The show isn’t,” Sandy said bluntly. “Not yet.”
They were watching her intently, making Liss extremely self-conscious. Then a yellow paw appeared over the edge of the table. It patted the surface, reached farther, found the plate with the cookies, and had almost snagged one when Liss tapped it lightly with one finger.
“Bad boy, Lumpkin.”
“Does he do that often?” Zara asked.
“Every chance he gets. And anything he finds goes straight into his mouth. Even lettuce. Even, once, a pearl onion. He spit that back out, though.” Liss glanced at the clock, then stood and collected their mugs, dumping them in the sink to deal with after she’d slept. “I don’t know about you folks, but I’ve just hit the wall.”
Sandy and Zara exchanged a look but they didn’t say any more about Victor’s job. Liss knew she’d made her point—she wasn’t prepared to make any decisions tonight.
Ten minutes later, they had all retired, but the sleep Liss craved was slow in coming. What Sandy had proposed intrigued her. She wasn’t sure why she’d hesitated. They were right. She had been looking for just such an opportunity . . . before she’d settled into life in Moosetookalook.
What she’d said at the reception had been a holdover from those first days here, when she was still mourning her lost career. Things were different now. As much as she might enjoy returning to the road, it would not be the same. She wouldn’t be dancing again. She’d be handling the business end of things, just as she was in Moosetookalook. Where she was settled. Productive. Content.
Besides, she had responsibilities to her aunt, to the shop, to Lumpkin. She refused to add Dan into the equation, but even without him, and in spite of a certain wistful longing to return to what had been, Liss told herself she was happy in her new life. Wasn’t she?
Three hours after Liss, Dan, and everyone else had left the Student Center, Sherri Willett was still in the building. With Pete’s help and that of a campus security officer, she was meticulously searching every nook and cranny.
She was playing a hunch. There had been something distinctly odd about Victor Owens’s death. That’s why she’d grabbed the plate with the remaining cocktail scones and suggested to the Fallstown police officer who’d shown up to take charge of the scene that its contents, and the scone Owens had been eating when he died, be analyzed. She’d tasted one herself and could well believe that the filling had contained mushrooms.
But who made scones with mushrooms? Nobody, that’s who.
Sherri was no great shakes in the kitchen, but Liss’s experiments with making her own scones over the last seven months had taught her friend a thing or two about the ingredients that went into that particular flaky pastry. She wished Mrs. Eccles, “the Scone Lady,” hadn’t left the reception before Owens died, but Sherri was certain she wouldn’t have put mushrooms into her scones, either, especially after Liss had specifically told her, and all the others who’d provided food for the reception, that one of the guests was allergic to them.
“We’ve looked everywhere,” Pete said, breaking into her thoughts. He sounded tired and a trifle exasperated.
The campus security officer looked bored, but he pointed to an alcove Sherri would otherwise have missed. “There’s one more office off there.”
“Think maybe you might be taking that online course of yours a bit too seriously?” Pete had to stifle a yawn halfway through asking the question.
“No.”
And thank God she’d signed up for it. She’d learned more about investigative techniques in the last couple of months than she’d ever dreamed possible. Most of it was plain hard work and boring to boot, but it had to be done. In the end it usually yielded results.
“If there’s nothing here,” she said, “then I want to go to the motel where he was staying.”
“I doubt they’ll let you into his room, and they certainly won’t let you search any of the others.”
“Then I’ll go through the Dumpsters.” She tried the office door and to her surprise found it was unlocked. She went in, flicking on the light. Pete and the security guard stayed in the hall, since there was barely room for one person to turn around inside the cubicle.
Sherri heard the guard mumble something about watching too many crime dramas on television.
“Yeah,” Pete agreed.
Traitor! Ignoring both of them, she peered into the wastepaper basket beside the desk.
“Not every death is a murder,” Pete added in a louder voice—a blatant attempt to convince her to give up the search.
“But some are,” Sherri murmured. “Uh, Pete?” She raised her voice as she lifted the receptacle. “You want to come in here and take a look at this?”
Chapter Three
Liss was barely awake the next morning when her doorbell rang. Deciding what to wear had been beyond her when she’d rolled out of bed twenty minutes earlier, so she’d thrown on the brightly colored silk caftan Dan had once said made her resemble a circus tent.
Liss had not passed a peaceful night. Every time she closed her eyes, an instant replay began. First it had been of that ridiculous quarrel with Dan. Then she’d been back at the reception, watching helplessly as Sherri and Pete tried to revive Victor Owens. She felt a nagging sense of wrongness about the way Victor had died. It should not have happened, especially not on her watch.
Liss knew it was absurd to feel guilty about his death. She’d done everything she could to keep mushrooms off the menu. Nor was it her fault that Victor had evidently forgotten to carry an EpiPen. But he’d died at a function she’d arranged. She couldn’t help thinking that there might have been something she could have done to prevent the senseless accident that had taken his life.
Was it any wonder that the idea of taking his place with the company no longer appealed to her?
The ringing changed to banging.
“Coming!” Liss fumbled with the chain, the dead bolt, and the brass key in the old-fashioned lock beneath. Nothing worked right with only an ounce or two of caffeine circulating through her bloodstream. She hadn’t managed to consume more than a few sips from her first mug of coffee of the day.
A blast of icy air swirled inside when she jerked the door open. A man wearing a ski jacket open over a sports coat and dark slacks stood on her porch. He was holding up a badge, as if he expected her to ask to inspect it before she let him in. “Amaryllis MacCrimmon?”
“Yes?” She wrapped her arms around herself, but that didn’t stop a chill from running up her spine. She suddenly wished she’d taken the time to look through the side windows first. Then she might have been able to pretend she wasn’t home.
“I’m State Police Detective Gordon Tandy. I wonder if I might talk to you for a few minutes. It’s about the incident at the Student Center last night.”
Liss hesitated. It seemed odd to her that the state police would interest themselves in an accidental death, but she told herself there must be formalities to go through when the deceased had been a visitor to the area and had no family near at hand. She wasn’t sure how much help she’d be. She had no idea where to find Victor’s next of kin.
“Come in out of the cold, Detective Tandy.” As she said his name, it belatedly rang a bell. “Tandy’s Music and Gifts?”
“My brother’s place.” His glance strayed next door to Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. “Ah. I should have guessed. You’re the little girl who used to win all the dance competitions.”
Liss frowned at the “little girl” part as he moved past her into the foyer. “And you’re one of the bagpipe-playing Tandy brothers. Small world.”
She studied him as he shrugged out of the ski jacket. She knew he must be at least a dozen years older than she was, but he didn’t look it. He had the kind of face that made people think “boy next door” at any age. The body wasn’t bad, either.
Liss decided she must be more sleep deprived than she’d thought if she was ogling a strange man at this hour of the morning. That didn’t stop her from admiring the thick, reddish brown hair Tandy revealed when he took off his hat. He wore it trimmed very short, a good match for his almost military bearing.
Definitely not her type!
“This way,” Liss said when she’d hung his coat and hat in the closet, and led the way to the kitchen. Lumpkin, she noticed, was still sound asleep on top of the refrigerator. “Coffee?”
“That would be great. Thanks.”
His smile was warm, and there was something in his eyes—so dark a brown that they almost looked black—that made Liss think he might disagree with Dan’s opinion of the way she looked in the caftan.
She found the notion that he thought her attractive an agreeable one, but suspected it was a delusion induced by lack of caffeine. “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not too coherent yet,” she apologized as she reached for the coffeepot. “It was a late night and I’m not fully awake. I have two houseguests. Members of the dance troupe. Do you want to talk to them, too?”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions first. Alone.”
Something in his tone sounded ominous. Frowning, Liss filled another mug and topped off her own. She gestured toward the table, brought the coffees over, and took a chair for herself.
“Victor Owens’s death was not an accident,” Tandy said as soon as he was seated.
Liss heard what he said but her mind refused to take it in. “He had food allergies—”
“Yes. And that’s how he was killed. There was mushroom filling in the scone he was eating just before he died.”
Very slowly, Liss lowered her coffee mug. The small sip she’d taken had turned to acid in her mouth. With an effort, she swallowed. “That’s impossible. The cocktail scones Janice Eccles supplied were made with sweet fillings. And she knew about Victor’s mushroom allergy. Everyone who supplied food for the reception knew. I told them myself. None of them are idiots. They know how careful they have to be about things like that.”
“As I said, this wasn’t an accident. Our best guess right now is that someone slipped a batch of their own scones in with Mrs. Eccles’s creations.”
“You’re saying someone murdered him?”
“I’m saying someone murdered him.”
For a moment Liss didn’t say a word, although several unprintable ones were whirling around in her head. Victor’s death had been bad enough, but this . . .
Tandy cleared his throat. “There’s more. It doesn’t appear to have been just a tragic oversight on Mr. Owens’s part that he didn’t have epinephrine on him when he needed it. An EpiPen was found in a wastepaper basket in the Student Center, wiped clean of fingerprints.”
“Good Lord!” In her pleasant kitchen, redolent with freshly brewed coffee, Liss found this new revelation even harder to accept than the idea that someone had deliberately planned Victor’s death. She toyed with the nubbly edge of her place mat, trying to wrap her mind around what Gordon Tandy was telling her. She didn’t want to believe him, but what choice did she have? He wouldn’t be here if it weren’t true. Victor had been murdered.
“I understand you knew the victim fairly well,” Tandy said.
“I worked for him for about eight years, if that’s what you mean. He was the manager of Strathspey.”
“Did you get along with him?” Tandy did not have a notebook out or a tape recorder turned on—unless it was small enough to be hidden in his jacket pocket—but Liss had the feeling he was keeping close track of everything she said. He drank his coffee, watching her over the rim of the bright green ceramic mug.
“Most of the time. He was . . . temperamental.” She leaned closer to the table. “This doesn’t make any sense. Victor could be a pain in the ass, okay? And he came on too strong with women sometimes. Not exactly politically correct. But I can’t think of a single reason why anyone would want to kill him.”
“You may know more than you think, Ms. MacCrimmon. After all, you are familiar with all the members of the dance company.”
She’d been afraid that was where he was going with this. “You think one of them murdered Victor?”
“I think that’s a more likely explanation than it having been a random act by someone local who’d never met him before last night.”
He had a point.
Tandy set his empty coffee mug aside. “I’ll level with you, Ms. MacCrimmon. My predecessor here in Carrabassett County did not cover himself with glory investigating the last murder in these parts. You, on the other hand, came up with several viable leads and eventually discovered the killer’s identity.”
She grimaced. “I didn’t have much choice. Your idiot of a predecessor was convinced I was the one he was after. He didn’t look for anyone else.” In retrospect, Liss wished she hadn’t, either. She hadn’t liked what she’d found.
Then t
hose compelling dark eyes locked on hers. “I don’t intend to make the same mistakes he did, and it has been suggested to me, by the person who had the foresight to look for the missing EpiPen, that you may be able to help me avoid some of them.”
A harsh jangle from the wall phone interrupted Tandy in midpitch.
“Excuse me,” Liss said, and grabbed it on the second ring.
Fiona’s voice, agitated, exploded in her ear. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?” she demanded. “I’m getting the runaround from these people. They won’t let me have Victor’s body.”
“They’re probably still trying to locate next of kin.”
Tandy’s eyes narrowed when he overheard Liss’s words.
“He had no kin left,” Fiona said. “Look, all I want is to arrange for a memorial service on Monday morning so we can all attend before we leave.”
“Fiona, I’m going to give you to a state police detective. His name is Gordon Tandy.” She put her hand over the receiver. “This is Fiona Carlson.” As Fiona was the senior member of the company, it made sense she’d be filling in for Victor to handle practical details. She’d helped out before with bookkeeping, scheduling, and other management tasks.
Liss refilled both her coffee mug and Tandy’s while he explained the situation to Fiona. She heard him tell Fiona it would be helpful if she could make arrangements for the troupe to stay in the area longer. Liss expected he’d get an argument about that, but to judge by the one side of the conversation she could hear, Fiona readily agreed to cancel Monday night’s show in Lowell, Massachusetts.
After asking Fiona not to tell anyone yet that Victor had been murdered—he wanted to break that news to each individual himself—Tandy handed the phone back to Liss. She assured Fiona she could make arrangements to hang on to the rooms the members of Strathspey currently occupied. It made sense for her to handle that, since she’d been the one to make the reservations in the first place.
“Was Ms. Carlson close to Victor Owens?” Tandy asked when she hung up.
Scone Cold Dead Page 4