After thanking Fran, Liss went back across the lobby and out of the hotel. Sunset wasn’t until around eight o’clock at this time of year, and several hotel guests were still ensconced in the omnipresent Adirondack chairs, enjoying the evening breeze. Liss had no trouble finding one who remembered seeing a woman carrying flowers. According to him, Nola had crossed a swath of green lawn, heading in the direction of the break in the tree line—the start of the cliff path.
She’d taken the flower arrangement up to Lover’s Leap.
The idea struck Liss as a very odd thing for Nola to do, especially when she recalled Nola’s remarks about her dislike of wooded areas. It wasn’t as if she and Jane had been friends. Then again, people had been known to set up impromptu memorials at accident sites. It was common in rural Maine to see a cross or a mound of flowers at the side of a road, marking the spot where a car had crashed, killing those inside.
At least Liss now knew where she’d find Nola. She considered going back inside. Surely it wouldn’t take Nola long to complete her mission. She’d certainly return before sunset, since she’d claimed to have such a phobia about “the great outdoors” after dark. On the other hand, if what Sherri had heard from the medical examiner was right, Lover’s Leap was now a crime scene. Liss was a little surprised that the state police hadn’t yet shown up to cordon off the area.
That meant Nola might inadvertently disturb evidence.
Liss set off across the lawn, thinking that perhaps she could catch up with Nola before the other woman reached the clearing by the cliff. If she wasn’t in time to warn her off, then she could at least get Nola away from the scene before she got herself into trouble with the authorities.
Liss suspected that there was a flaw in her logic, but she did not stop to examine it.
The path was easy to find. It had been groomed to remove hazards to walkers, runners, and joggers. At first she was able to move along it at a good clip, but she slowed her pace when the trail abruptly narrowed and began to wind and twist through thick woods. With twilight coming on, the shadows of the trees gave her the creeps, especially once she passed off hotel property and into the public park owned by the town. What on earth had Nola been thinking to come out this way so close to dusk?
A small wooden sign told Liss when she was halfway to her goal: SCENIC VIEW 1/4 MILE AHEAD. Once again, she considered turning back. Then she shrugged and continued. Since she’d come this far, she might as well go all the way.
While Liss appreciated the area’s natural beauty, a walk in the woods wasn’t really her thing. In fact, she always felt a little edgy when she completely lost sight of civilization. In the intense quiet of the forest, she could no longer hear voices, or cars passing on the road. The only sounds were the soft thumps of her own footfalls as she strode along the path.
Although it hadn’t bothered her as a teenager, when she’d come up here with a boyfriend and two other couples, she couldn’t imagine making such a trek alone in the middle of the night. What on earth had possessed Jane Nedlinger to do so? Then again, maybe she hadn’t been alone.
If she hadn’t fallen, then someone had pushed her. That meant two people had been at Lover’s Leap in the dark of night. The mind boggled. Had Jane agreed to meet someone in the clearing? Or taken this walk with someone? Who? More to the point, why? Liss knew high school kids did it all the time on a dare or because they were desperate for privacy. But it made no sense for a grown woman with her own hotel room to come out here, not even if—and that was a big, fanciful if—she had been hitting someone up for blackmail money.
Liss breathed a sigh of relief when she finally came out into the clearing. It looked much as it had when she’d been sixteen. The fence that stood between the path and the drop-off had been rebuilt since she’d last seen it. It appeared to be even sturdier than the old one.
Liss spotted the flowers at once. Nola’s tribute to Jane had been placed on the far side of the fence atop a small boulder. But where was Nola? The trail continued on. After leaving her offering, Nola could have gone off in that direction, instead of returning the way she’d come. Perhaps she’d thought it would be shorter.
Liss didn’t want to consider the only other possibility, but she couldn’t ignore it, either. Hesitantly, telling herself with every step that it was only her too-vivid and somewhat ghoulish imagination that was driving her, she approached the fence. When she reached it, she took a deep, strengthening breath. Then she looked down.
The body lay roughly fifty feet below. In the light of the setting sun, Liss could see the blood pooled beneath the head and the unnatural angle of the neck. And she could see the features of the ravaged face well enough to make an identification.
She’d found Nola Ventress.
Chapter Eight
Liss sat down with her back against the rail fence and fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone. Then she just stared at it. Call the Moosetookalook Police Department? Hit 911? Or just speed-dial Sherri at her apartment? Given the turmoil of her thoughts, the latter made more sense.
“She’s dead,” Liss blurted when Sherri picked up. “Nola Ventress. She’s at the bottom of the cliff.”
A dead silence that lasted a full minute greeted this announcement. When Sherri finally spoke, her voice was tight. “Are you certain?”
“That it’s Nola? Or that she’s dead?” A bubble of hysterical laughter, totally inappropriate to the situation, threatened to erupt. Liss quelled it with an effort, but her voice was still unsteady. “She can’t be alive. Not with all that blood.”
But the possibility nagged at her. Could Nola have survived? There was a track that led down the cliff, but in the lengthening twilight it would be suicide to try to descend that way.
“Liss, why did you call me?”
“I ... I don’t know.” Liss’s thoughts refused to settle. At first Sherri’s question made no sense. Of course she’d call Sherri. Sherri was the local law. Then she remembered Adam, and that Sherri wasn’t at the P.D. She was at home with a small boy who couldn’t be left alone. “Oh, God. Oh, Sherri, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
Sherri had to be conflicted for other reasons, too. She’d been at the scene when it was Jane Nedlinger lying down there on the cold, gray rocks. And she’d failed to see that Jane’s death might have been something other than an accident.
Jane’s death had to have been murder, Liss thought as she clutched the cell phone more tightly. Jane’s death and Nola’s death both had to be. Two deaths at the same spot from the same cause in two days—that simply could not be coincidence.
“Are you alone there?” asked Sherri’s voice in her ear.
“Yes. And it’s getting dark.” Why, oh why hadn’t she thought to bring a flashlight?
“I need you to get off the phone so I can call the state police.” Sherri’s tension remained evident in her voice, but she was calmer than Liss was and she knew the procedure she had to follow. “When I disconnect, call someone at the hotel to come out there and wait with you. Okay?”
Liss nodded, only realizing that Sherri couldn’t see her when her friend’s voice rose an octave.
“Liss? Okay?”
“Yes. Yes, I will.” But as soon as Sherri broke the connection, the number Liss dialed was Dan’s. He’d planned to go back home after he dropped her off. She could only hope he was still there and hadn’t decided to go out for a beer at the local pub or over to his brother’s to mooch dessert.
Dan picked up on the first ring. “Hey, Liss. What’s up? The auction can’t be over already.”
“Dan.” Her voice shook so on that single word that he knew at once something terrible had happened.
“What’s wrong?”
“N-n-nola. She’s dead, too.”
He swore colorfully, then asked, “Where are you?”
“At Lover’s Leap. Please come.”
His expletives became considerably more forceful, but he knew she needed him. There was never any question but that he’d com
e. “Hang in there,” he said just before he broke the connection. “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
The wait seemed endless. Liss hated feeling weak and frightened, but finding Nola had been a shock. Nola had to be dead. No one could have survived that fall, or landing that way. Liss was sure Nola’s neck was broken. But what if she still had a spark of life left? Liss glanced over her shoulder toward the edge of the cliff. She’d be risking her own life to try to climb down there. And what could she do when she got there? She knew only rudimentary first aid. No, Sherri had said to stay put, hadn’t she? Besides, if she fell and broke her own neck, or an arm or a leg, that wouldn’t help anyone.
She gasped at a rustling sound in the underbrush. A squirrel, she told herself. Or a chipmunk. Or a rabbit. Or a bird. But it belatedly occurred to her that, if Nola had indeed been murdered, her killer could still be lurking nearby. Liss pulled her knees up beneath her chin and wrapped her arms around them, partly to control her shivering and partly to make herself as small as possible.
The sun had fully set, leaving only pink streaks on the horizon, before Liss heard running footsteps on the path. She staggered to her feet. Her heart leapt into her throat when a man’s shape emerged from the darker shadows of the forest. The silhouette was big and solid, but it wasn’t Dan. A scream welled up inside her. A fraction of a second before it could escape, the beam of a flashlight hit her full in the face and the newcomer spoke her name.
Or rather, State Police Detective Gordon Tandy said, “Damn it, Liss! Why can’t you stay out of trouble?”
Liss flung herself into his arms, embarrassingly close to tears but filled with relief that she was no longer alone in the gathering darkness. “I just wanted to talk to her. Nola Ventress. Someone said she’d headed out this way, so I followed her, and then I found her. She’s dead. She went over the cliff.”
“Did you push her?” Gordon’s voice was cold and official-sounding. His hands tightened on her shoulders.
Liss jerked back and out of his grasp just as Dan burst into the clearing. “How can you even think such a thing?” she demanded. “Of course I didn’t push her!”
Dan came directly to Liss and enveloped her in a bear hug. After a moment, he eased back far enough to lift his hands to the sides of her face and stare deep into her eyes. It was getting too dark for him to see much there, but he seemed satisfied that she wasn’t hurt or in shock. “God, Liss. You scared me half to death.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay. I was just so upset to see her down there. And then the light was going and I started imagining all kinds of things.” She shook her head to clear it and realized that Gordon had gone to the rail and was playing the powerful beam of his flashlight over the scene at the foot of the cliff.
Clinging to her fiancé, Liss watched Gordon detach a portable police radio from his belt and call for assistance. Soon the place would be swarming with forensics people. When Gordon was through barking orders into the portable, he spared Liss one quick, assessing glance, then spoke to Dan. “Take her back to the hotel and keep her there. I’ll talk to her after the team from the state police crime lab takes over here.”
Liss didn’t argue. She was glad to get away. But she knew she could not escape from what had happened at Lover’s Leap. Nola’s image was imprinted on her brain. And Gordon—Gordon had all but accused her of pushing Nola over the edge. Did he already know that she’d bene-fitted from Jane Nedlinger’s death? He probably did. That had to be why he was suspicious of her. And because she’d been the one to discover Nola’s body. The mystery novels got that much of real life right. Gordon would have questions for her, all right. Liss just wished she had a few answers.
“We can wait in your aunt’s office,” Dan said when they emerged from the woods and stepped onto the hotel lawn.
Unlike the dark path behind them, this area was illuminated by both ornamental lanterns and subtle floodlights. Dan kept one arm around her, as he had all the way back from Lover’s Leap. He hadn’t asked any questions, not even why she’d gone looking for Nola in the first place.
“I need to tell Aunt Margaret what’s happened,” Liss murmured.
“No, you don’t.”
But Liss shook him off. “I have to. And she’ll need to tell Nola’s assistant. Phoebe something. Someone has to decide whether to keep the conference going or send everyone home.”
Dan frowned. “It has two more days to run.”
“Exactly my point.” Besides, Liss needed to do something. If she had to sit in a chair and wait for Gordon to come and question her, she’d go crazy.
Although it seemed to her as if hours had passed since she’d left the hotel, in reality less than one had elapsed. The auction was still going strong. When Liss and Dan entered the ballroom, a stocky, hatchet-faced woman had just made the winning bid on a set of signed first editions by the late Charlotte MacLeod, a Maine author Liss had loved for years.
“Jane Nedlinger talked to that woman last night,” Dan said.
Liss took a hard look at the bidder. She didn’t know her and wasn’t close enough to read her name badge, but if the Nedlinger woman had singled her out, that automatically put her in the running as a suspect. She looked husky enough to have gone one-on-one with Jane. Tossing Nola over the edge would have been a piece of cake.
Appalled by the way her mind was working, Liss nevertheless set a course for her aunt that passed close enough to the woman in question to read the name so prominently displayed on her chest—Eleanor Ogilvie. By the color of her badge, she was a speaker at the conference. Liss didn’t think she was an author, but she remembered that there was at least one panel made up of “industry professionals.” Ms. Ogilvie was probably an editor or an agent. Or maybe another book doctor, like that woman who’d left her card in the dealers’ room. The program book would give her the answer to that question.
Aunt Margaret took one look at Liss’s face and knew at once that something was wrong. The fact that Dan was hovering protectively behind her niece provided confirmation, if she’d needed any, that there was bad news in the offing.
“Did you ... find Nola?” she asked.
As gently as she could, Liss told her what she’d discovered out at Lover’s Leap. Margaret closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, unshed tears glinted. “Another accident?”
Liss and Dan exchanged a look.
“It’s too early to say,” Dan said. “Gordon Tandy will be in shortly. I expect he’ll want to talk to people.”
Margaret pulled herself together with an effort. “Then we have a lot to do first. I need to locate the two women who were Nola’s lieutenants. She had a committee. One of them will have to take over, to make sure everything runs smoothly for the rest of the weekend.”
“You don’t think they’ll decide to cancel the rest of the events and send everyone home?” Dan asked.
“I don’t see how they can. There will have to be some sort of announcement, though. Jane Nedlinger’s passing had no particular impact on the other attendees, but everyone knows ... everyone knew Nola. Her disappearance will be noticed even if we try to keep the circumstances quiet.”
“Now that the police are involved, the press will catch wind of a story,” Liss predicted.
“Oh, Lord, yes. Well, we’ll just have to make the best of it. I’ll hunt up Phoebe and Susan. You’d better tell Doug, Liss. And Stu. But wait until after the auction is over with.”
In the background, they could hear Stu Burroughs trying to up the bidding on a theme basket provided by one of the attending authors. He seemed to think the T-shirt alone was worth fifty dollars.
Margaret took off before Liss could ask why Doug and Stu, in particular, needed to be told of Nola’s death. They’d known her, of course, but so had several other people. Joe, for example. She voiced her question to Dan, but he had no more idea of the answer than she did.
“In any case,” he said, “it’s up to the police to decide who’s told what and when. And you need to
go to Margaret’s office and stay there.”
“You’re siding with Gordon?”
Her attempt to tease him fell flatter than a soufflé after a buffalo stampede. Dan’s expression remained grim.
“In this, I am. You’re in enough trouble with the law already. If Gordon hears you’ve been running around talking to potential witnesses, telling them about Nola before he can, he’ll pitch a fit.”
“I only told Margaret!” she objected.
But Margaret was even now taking Phoebe aside to break the bad news. Dan was right. Gordon would not be pleased with her. She wasn’t supposed to do anything but wait quietly for him to come and interrogate her. And there was that whole thing about not releasing the name of the victim before next of kin had been notified, too.
All of a sudden, the events of the evening hit her with the force of a wrecking ball. Without further protest, she headed for her aunt’s office. At Dan’s urging, she curled up on the love seat. He found an afghan in the closet and draped it over her as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block the memory of finding Nola’s body.
It did no good. The image continued to play across the backs of her eyelids.
Liss wished she’d never followed Nola out to Lover’s Leap. It would have been far more sensible of her to go back to the auction, tell Margaret where Nola had gone, and wait patiently for the conference organizer to return.
Except that Nola would not have come back.
But I wouldn’t have been the one to find her, Liss thought.
“I need to tell my father what’s going on,” Dan said. “Will you be okay alone for a little bit?”
“Go ahead,” Liss said, and flipped the corner of the afghan up over her face, blocking out the light from the desk lamp he’d turned on.
She heard the door close softly behind him and then, remarkably, felt herself slide into an exhausted sleep.
Liss had no idea how much time passed before someone awakened her by gripping her shoulder and giving her a shake. Groggily, she sat up and opened her eyes to find Gordon Tandy’s gaze boring into her.
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