“I had a glass of wine to relax me and went to bed. Trust me, I did not come out here to the hotel, lure Jane Nedlinger out to Lover’s Leap, and push her off the cliff.”
Her denial didn’t get the reaction she’d expected. Gordon should have found her sarcasm mildly amusing. Instead, he kept his cop face on.
The silence stretched until she almost burst into random speech just to fill it. Just as she was about to give in to the urge, he asked another question.
“Can Ruskin give you an alibi?”
Liss wished she could attribute the coldness in his voice to resentment over the fact that she’d chosen Dan instead of him. But this conversation wasn’t personal. He was all business, and his business was murder.
“No, he can’t,” Liss said. She realized she was twisting her engagement ring around and around on her finger and forced herself to stop.
It was Gordon’s job to suspect everyone, she reminded herself. But surely he couldn’t believe she was capable of murder! He knew her better than that.
Gordon hesitated, then rephrased his question. “He didn’t spend the night?” His tone of voice had changed, ever so slightly.
She blinked, then narrowed her eyes to stare at him. Was she wrong about his ability to separate the personal from the professional? She didn’t suppose it mattered. Neither the man nor the cop would like her answer.
“Dan and I are engaged to be married,” she said in a voice as bland and matter-of-fact as she could make it. “Sometimes he stays over, but we’re not living together. The only ones who slept with me on Thursday night were Lumpkin and Glenora.”
“Glenora?”
“The black kitten who adopted me last Christmas.”
He nodded, remembering, and almost smiled.
“I was planning on talking to Jane Nedlinger yesterday, Gordon, but the only time I actually saw her or spoke to her before she died was at that reception. I didn’t care much for what she had to say, but I certainly didn’t kill her to stop her from writing about me.”
“And yet you admit she threatened you. That makes you a logical suspect in her death.”
“Yeah, I had that figured out.”
“A pity cats can’t testify in court.”
“Was that an attempt at humor?”
“Only if you found it funny.”
Liss rolled her eyes. “At least tell me that you don’t believe I killed anyone.”
Gordon stood up, swinging the chair around to return it to the exact place he’d taken it from. His expression was as unreadable as ever. “I don’t think you’re a killer, but I can’t play favorites. I’ll go where the investigation takes me. Right now it’s forcing me to take a very close look at you.”
“Okay.” She didn’t like what he was saying, but she understood where he was coming from.
“I’ll have more questions for you later, about Nola Ventress’s death, but that’s it for now.”
He signaled to his associate to turn off the recorder and stop taking notes. Liss had all but forgotten the other officer was there, he’d effaced himself so completely from the interview. She felt her cheeks heat. She hadn’t been all that comfortable talking to Gordon about Dan. The knowledge that a complete stranger had heard what she’d said—and recorded every word, too—left her feeling even more flustered.
“You can do yourself a big favor,” Gordon said, “by going back to the dealers’ room and staying there. Let me do my job and clear you of suspicion. Do not try to help.”
“Fine. I get the message.” Fuming, both embarrassed and annoyed, Liss headed for the door. “The last thing I want,” she flung over her shoulder, “is to become involved in another murder investigation!”
Chapter Ten
Sherri arrived at The Spruces just in time to see a flatbed truck leaving with what looked like an entire tree aboard. She grimaced. That wasn’t the kind of evidence anyone collected for an accident or a suicide. Nope. They were looking for clues in a homicide. And that meant she’d blown it, big time, over Jane Nedlinger’s death.
A crime lab mobile unit was parked in the hotel’s back lot. Sherri ignored it and headed for the path into the woods. It was the crime scene she needed to see again. With any luck, she’d find someone there who’d be willing to talk to her. After all, she was in uniform, even if it wasn’t the right shade of blue.
At least she was officially on duty. She hadn’t intended to work, but Jeff hadn’t been able to find anyone to take her place. He’d been all set to put in a double shift himself when she’d called in to get his okay to make contact with the state police at the hotel in a semi-official capacity. Since Pete had taken a sick day to help her look after Adam, she was determined not to feel guilty about insisting to Jeff that she work her own shift. There was no need for her to stay at her injured son’s side every moment of the day. Besides, no one would mind if she made a few stops at the apartment during the next eight hours, just to make sure Adam was okay.
Although Liss had found Nola’s body nearly sixteen hours earlier, the site was still swarming with people. Sherri knew the routine. Last night, Gordon would have done a walk-through to get an overview of the situation and Sherri’s friend George, as M.E., would have come back out to view yet another body in situ at the foot of the cliff. Then they’d have taken photographs. Lots of photographs. It wasn’t uncommon to take a hundred, even two hundred shots of a crime scene. They’d have made a video of the scene, too.
These days the state police did their “chalk outline” with florescent orange tongue depressors stuck in at the head, crotch, arms, and legs. Sherri was glad the body had long since been taken away, safely wrapped in a clean white sheet the state police had brought to the scene themselves. They’d have put brown paper bags over the hands and feet, since plastic destroyed evidence, before they put the remains in a body bag.
Gordon Tandy had been designated the primary for the case. It was his area, after all. That meant he and other officers would talk to everyone and then re-interview many of them two or three more times to verify every detail, tease out anything that might have been overlooked the first time around, and cross-check all the facts. He wouldn’t necessarily be looking for a motive. One wasn’t required for arrest or prosecution. But he couldn’t be happy about Liss’s involvement in the case. He’d have to suspect her in both murders. She’d clashed with Jane and she’d been the one to find Nola, both damning circumstances. Sherri felt sorry for both Gordon and Liss, especially if Gordon was still carrying a torch for her.
The first person she saw when she came out into the clearing at the top of the cliff was Gordon Tandy. She steeled herself to face his disapproval and kept going, ignoring the scowl he sent her way when he caught sight of her. His team was still in the process of going over the terrain, inch by inch, picking up and recording the location of everything they found. There was no way to tell at this stage what might turn out to be important
“Is there a reason you’re here?” Gordon demanded. If she hadn’t known him so well, she might have been intimidated by his brusque manner.
She felt warmth creep into her cheeks, but she answered him with the truth. “I wanted to be sure the forensics team found everything I saw here Friday morning—condoms, tissues, and especially gum wrappers. Those might be important. Bill Stotz is a compulsive gum chewer. He’s one of the people Jane Nedlinger talked to at the reception. There was a name-badge holder, too.”
Even as she spoke, she saw one of the officers drop the badge holder into an evidence bag.
“We’ve got it covered,” Gordon said.
“The way I hear it, everyone at the MSBA meeting was pretty het up over the threat of bad publicity for the town.”
That caught Gordon’s interest. “You weren’t there?”
“I was home with my kid.” When he looked blank, she filled him in on Adam’s broken arm.
He softened a fraction. “I’m sorry to hear that. Maybe you should get back to him.”
“Pete
’s there. Look, Gordon, Jane Nedlinger annoyed a lot of people. Me, for instance.”
“You talked to the victim?” She had his full attention at last, and wished she didn’t.
Feeling like a pinned butterfly, Sherri gave him a succinct report on Jane Nedlinger’s visit to the P.D. “I didn’t much like her, but I had no idea how much trouble she meant to cause.”
“You were the first officer on the scene when she was found. Didn’t you recognize her?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I never saw her face, just a body dressed in jogging clothes. I know this sounds like I’m making excuses, but I only went into the office yesterday morning to find a replacement so I could stay home with Adam. As soon as Jeff arrived on the scene, he sent me home. That was after the M.E. said the injuries were consistent with a fall but before anyone identified her.”
Gordon gave her a searching look. “You feeling guilty?”
“Well, yeah. I should have—”
“Get over it. Yes, the call was a bad one, but you weren’t the one who screwed things up. Jeff relieved you before the body was brought up. You had no reason to think anything but what you did. George and the rescue team saw things the same way. If anyone blew it, it was George, for not noticing the discrepancy in the time of death sooner than he did.”
“So it’s not Jeff’s fault, either?”
“Trust me, no one’s going to blame Jeff.”
Sherri started to say more, then thought better of it. She doubted that Gordon had a very high opinion of Moosetookalook’s home-grown chief of police. Jeff had been given the job because he was willing to accept the ridiculously low salary that was all the town selectmen would authorize for the job.
She started to leave, then turned back. “Gordon? Did Jane Nedlinger contact anyone in your outfit about her story? I told her the state police had a public relations office.”
“She didn’t get hold of them,” Gordon said.
But something in his tone made Sherri wonder if Jane had talked to him.
At the check-in desk in the lobby, Joe Ruskin was once again on duty.
“Did you get any rest last night?” Dan asked him. “You look done in.” Dan sometimes wondered if his father ever slept.
“I’m okay, but I wouldn’t mind it if you spelled me here for an hour or two.”
Backed into a corner, Dan assured his father that he’d be glad to take over at the front desk. He wasn’t happy at the prospect of being trapped there. He’d planned to spend time with Liss, on and off, throughout the day. With everything that was going on, he felt uneasy about leaving her to her own devices. He knew her too well.
Once Dan was ensconced behind the check-in desk, Joe didn’t immediately take off. “Something on your mind, Dad?”
“It’s hell getting old, son.”
“Old!” Dan scoffed. “You’re not even sixty yet.”
“Yeah, that’s me. A real spring chicken.” But his expression remained solemn. “Nola will never make it to sixty.”
“So, you knew her well?” Dan was still trying to wrap his head around the Doug-Nola-Stu triangle. It was hard for him to imagine either of those men as young and in love, let alone part of a sex scandal.
Joe shrugged. “You know this town. It was even smaller back then. Everybody knew everybody, or thought they did. Besides, I saw Nola once after she divorced Doug and left Maine.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dan wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.
“You know I went into the navy right after high school.” Joe snorted. “Smart-ass kid that I was, I called myself a draft dodger. There was still a draft back then, you see, and I was afraid I’d end up in Vietnam if I waited for the army to grab me. Anyway, I was young and carefree and I liked the life pretty well. I did two tours of duty as an aviation electrician’s mate, mostly stationed on aircraft carriers. That’s how I learned I could work with my hands. When I wasn’t at sea, a friend of mine got me helping to build sets for a local little theater. That got me thinking I might be pretty good at putting houses together, too.”
Dan leaned his elbows on the counter, fascinated by this glimpse of his father as a young man. Joe wasn’t much given to reminiscing. As if he’d just realized that himself, he shrugged and looked self-conscious, but he continued his story.
“I was stationed stateside when one day, out of the blue, I got this phone call from Nola. She was in town, attending a writer’s conference, and she’d decided to look me up. I already knew what had happened back home.” His lips twisted into an ironic smile. “Your grandmother was still alive back then and she kept me in the loop. Anyway, I agreed to meet Nola for a drink. By that time, your mother and I were planning to get married. I wasn’t going to re-up when my tour of duty was over. I was ready to come home, settle down, and start a family. That was why, at first, I was too dumb to catch on to what Nola wanted.”
Dan couldn’t help grinning. “She tried to put the moves on you?”
“That she did, son.” He shook his head. “And all the while she was telling me about the big plans she had now that she’d shaken the dust of Moosetookalook off her feet.”
“Plans other than scoring with you?” Dan couldn’t resist ribbing his father.
“Oh, yeah. She was more of a dreamer than I am. She was going to be a famous writer. Make a fortune at it. Hit all the bestseller lists.” Sadness replaced the twinkle in his eyes as he made a gesture that encompassed the entire hotel. “I was lucky. Some dreams do come true. Others don’t. Poor Nola. Seems to me that organizing this conference and inviting all her favorite authors to attend was the closest she ever got.”
Liss passed the registration table on her way back to the dealers’ room after a bathroom break. Nola’s second in command, Phoebe, sent a brilliant smile her way and waved a flyer at her. “Want to sign up now for next year? Special early-bird registration fee,” she called out. “And our guest of honor has just confirmed.”
“That’s great,” Liss called back, but she didn’t take the time to stop and find out who that person might be.
She did wonder if she should suspect Phoebe of murdering Nola. The woman certainly seemed to have come into her own since she’d taken charge of the conference. She might have pondered the possibility further if she’d had time at first to think about anything but business, but for once she had customers waiting. In rapid succession, she sold two more skean dhus.
“This is just like the one used in that murder, right?” her second customer asked.
“Close enough.” She told herself that a small business owner could not afford to be squeamish and took his money, but the reminder that her hometown might really become infamous as the “murder capital of Maine” had her stomach twisted into knots.
After the next set of panels got under way, Liss once more had too much time to think. She replayed her session with Gordon in her mind. Had there really been no notes in Jane’s room except those relating to Moosetookalook? Surely she’d been working on more than one story. She’d blogged daily, and her piece on Liss hadn’t been scheduled to run until after the weekend.
Liss could think of several people at the conference who might have wanted to stop Jane from writing bad things about them. She’d already given Gordon their names. Surely it wouldn’t be interfering in his investigation if she just jotted down a few questions. They might even trigger an idea that would help him. She burrowed in her tote for a notepad and a felt-tip pen and began to write.
Who was Jane Nedlinger?
Where did she come from?
Why did she hate mystery novels?
Did she come to Moosetookalook only because
of the previous murders?
Liss paused to tap her pen against the table. It seemed likely that Jane had found out about the murders because of the conference. In that case, she might have had an interest in the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con other than talking to townspeople. She wrote:
Who else was Jane after at the conference?
On a
separate page she listed names of all the people she knew of who’d had conversations with Jane:
Bill Stotz
Yvonne Quinlan
Dan
Eleanor Ogilvie
Nola
There might have been others. There probably were. She’d have to remember to ask Dan and Margaret if they’d seen Jane talking with anyone else at the reception.
Her third list contained the names of everyone who’d been at the MSBA meeting. She listed Dan and Nola again, then added Stu, Patsy, Betsy, Doug, Joe, Margaret, the couple from the jewelry store, and the craft store woman. Everyone had been pretty riled up, but Liss doubted that any of them had been mad enough at Jane to kill her. Besides, only Nola and Dan, Joe and Margaret had ever met Jane, and Joe and Margaret’s contact with her had been ephemeral at best.
Liss flipped back to the first page. There was one other question she needed to add, one that had no sensible answer. It had been the middle of the night—pitch dark and overcast after a rain storm—when Jane had gone over the edge of Lover’s Leap to her death. Why had she been out there in the first place?
She started a new page for Nola. It was possible that Nola had fallen by accident, but why had she taken flowers to the scene? She’d certainly had no love for Jane Nedlinger.
Liss filled two more pages in her notebook with questions and speculation, but for once writing things down did not help her think more clearly. All it did was raise more questions. She started doodling, a clear reflection of the way her thoughts were circling round and round without reaching any conclusions. She really wished she’d managed to talk to Nola Ventress before the other woman’s death.
“I’m giving myself a headache,” Liss muttered, and was glad when the next influx of conference-goers distracted her. Most of them got in line to have their books signed by the authors who’d been panelists during the last hour. Very few bought anything. The T-shirt vendor across the way was doing a far better business than either Liss or Angie.
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