Scotched

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  “Don’t you want to hear what I found out?” Liss asked as Sherri hustled her along the now-deserted path.

  “I suspect you’re going to tell me whether I want you to or not.” Sherri was resigned to the inevitable.

  Once they were inside Liss’s cozy, inviting kitchen, Liss started talking, first sharing the theory Gordon had confided to her, along with her reasons for rejecting Nola as either murderess or suicide, and then revealing what she’d just discovered online and in her own library.

  “You thought Yvonne killed both Jane and Nola so no one would find out she didn’t write her own books?”

  “Made sense to me.” Liss began to cobble together a meal out of leftovers.

  “Only if you think killing the goose that lays the golden eggs makes sense. If you’re right, then without Nola there would be no more Yvonne Quinlan novels.”

  “She’ll hire someone to replace Nola.”

  “Using your logic, it makes more sense for Nola to have killed Jane. After all, if this ghostwriting thing came out, she’d lose a major source of income.”

  Liss frowned.

  “Besides, even supposing that Jane Nedlinger did reveal that Nola was the one who really wrote Yvonne’s books, who would care? If they’re good books, people will still buy them. Heck, throw in a little controversy and sales would probably skyrocket.”

  “Yvonne’s ego would take a hit. Did you hear her?” Liss popped a cube of cheese into her mouth.

  “Sure. And she’d be just that ticked off if she really did write her own novels. It could be pure coincidence that Nola’s writing seemed similar to you.” Sherri didn’t say so aloud, but she was skeptical about Liss’s ability to identify a writer’s voice—whatever that was.

  “Their styles aren’t just similar, Sherri. The phrasing, the word choices ... it’s just too big a coincidence for them not to have been written by the same person. And don’t even suggest that Nola might have plagiarized something of Yvonne’s. There would be too much chance she’d get caught and prosecuted, since Yvonne is famous and has been for years.”

  “Still—”

  But Liss stubbornly shook her head. “I read a lot, Sherri. The similarities are too striking to miss. I bet if you put Nola’s book and one of Yvonne’s into that computer program they used to try to determine if Shakespeare wrote some of the plays that scholars weren’t sure were his, you could prove the probability is too high for two separate individuals to have written Nola’s book and the Toni Starling series.”

  Sherri held up a hand. “Wait a sec. Who’s Toni Starling?”

  “The detective in Yvonne’s—I mean Nola’s—novels. Do you want something to eat?” She gestured toward the food she’d set out on the table.

  Sherri didn’t even look at the offerings. “No, thanks. I’ve got to leave in a minute. Adam will be wondering where I am. Pete, too,” she added, and couldn’t help but smile at the thought. She did enjoy having a husband to go home to. Then she jerked her thoughts back to Liss’s accusations against Yvonne Quinlan. “Don’t try to distract me. Lacking the scholarly software, I’m going to go with common sense. Let’s say you’re right about the ghostwriting thing. It still seems highly unlikely to me that Yvonne Quinlan threw two women off Lover’s Leap. Just look at the physical aspect. Yvonne might have been able to push Nola around, but she wouldn’t have been able to budge a behemoth like Jane.”

  “That’s one of my arguments against Nola killing Jane,” Liss reminded her. “But what if Yvonne and Bill were in it together?” She settled in at her kitchen table and popped a grape into her mouth. The two cats miraculously appeared, one on each side of Liss’s chair. Lumpkin rapped a paw against her thigh.

  Sherri leaned back against the kitchen counter and tried to think of the best way to talk Liss out of doing anything foolish. Not an easy task! “There are easier ways to handle the threat of bad publicity than killing someone,” she said at last. “Bill Stotz is her business manager, right? Wouldn’t the simplest route have been to threaten to sue Jane if she put the story online?”

  Liss’s mouth quirked into a rueful smile. “That was Stu’s idea, too. At the MSBA meeting,” she added when Sherri sent her a questioning look. “Sue Jane to stop her blogging about me being a magnet for murder.” She winced at the sobriquet.

  “Ah. Figures.”

  “Someone pointed out that it’s hard to sue before the fact, and after—well, it’s too late then. The damage is done.”

  “There are other legal options.”

  “And no one took them. So, back to Bill. You did say you saw gum wrappers up at the Leap.”

  “Spearmint,” Sherri said. The picture suddenly came clear in her mind—soggy green wrappers lying just off the trail.

  “Bingo.” Liss stopped with a glass of orange juice halfway to her lips, eyes alight.

  “I take it that’s the kind Bill Stotz chews?”

  “Yes. I’m sure of it. I smelled it on his breath.” She set the juice back down, untouched. “So that’s it. Bill killed them.”

  “You’d better hope he didn’t,” Sherri said. “The way you were throwing accusations around, you may have made yourself his next target.”

  Liss gave an uneasy laugh. “Then I guess I should hope I’m wrong, but I don’t.”

  “Right or wrong, you need to stay out of the investigation. Let Gordon do his job.” Sherri was well aware that she was repeating advice Liss had already heard more than once from Gordon himself. Still, maybe this time she’d listen.

  “Gordon seems to be set on Nola as the villain.” Liss speared a chunk of cold chicken with her fork, looked at it more closely, and put it back down. What looked like congealed cream of mushroom soup clung to it, along with a few stray grains of white rice. “What if he isn’t even looking at any other suspects?”

  For herself, Sherri liked Gordon’s theory. It wrapped things up in a neat little package. Aloud, she said only, “Gordon Tandy’s a good cop, Liss. You know that. And he’s not closed-minded.”

  “Maybe you could steer him toward Bill—tell him that you found Nola’s book online.”

  Sherri didn’t get a chance to reply. At that moment, the back door opened and Margaret Boyd rushed in. She was out of breath and flushed, as if she’d been running.

  “Did you see the news?” Margaret gasped.

  Sherri glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes past five. The first of three local news broadcasts had run at five.

  “I saw it at the hotel and came straight home.” Margaret looked close to tears. “This is terrible, Liss. Just terrible. We’ve got to do something about it.”

  They trooped into the living room so that Liss could turn on the wide-screen television she’d bought herself as a Christmas present. They were in good time to catch the 5:30 report. They watched the camera zoom in on Yvonne Quinlan’s tear-streaked but still beautiful face. “Poor Nola,” she sobbed—prettily. “She was a wonderful woman. A true devotee of the genre.”

  Nothing so terrible there, Sherri thought as the camera panned, giving a nice bit of publicity to Angie’s Books, before coming back to the reporter. Sherri had been out in the square at the time, riding herd on the last of Yvonne’s black-clad fans.

  “The state police detective in charge of the case refused to comment on camera,” the reporter stated. Behind him, Sherri caught a glimpse of The Spruces. “An official statement will be issued tomorrow. In the meantime, we have learned from other sources that this is the second suspicious death at the same location in as many days, and viewers will recall that the seemingly peaceful little village of Moosetookalook was recently the scene of several other murders.”

  The spot ended and a close-up of the studio anchorman came on the screen. He lifted one expressive eyebrow at his female cohost. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Is there a real-life Cabot Cove in the Western Maine Mountains?”

  Margaret buried her head in her hands.

  Liss groaned aloud.

  Sherri sighed
and slipped quietly out of the house, heading home. A quiet evening with her son and her new husband was sounding better by the minute.

  Liss’s phone started to ring moments after Sherri left. She hung up on three reporters in a row and then let the fourth call go to the answering machine. In between interruptions, she gave her aunt the capsule version of her afternoon, ending with her confrontation with Yvonne and Bill at the bookstore.

  Margaret said nothing, but her face creased into a deep frown.

  “What?” Liss leaned forward in her chair, toward Margaret, who was seated on the sofa.

  “I think you’re right about that ghostwriting business. Do you remember that I told you how Nola lived all over the place before she returned to Maine? Well, she was in Vancouver for quite a while. She could easily have met Yvonne there. That’s where her vampire series was shot.”

  “Did Nola work in the film industry?”

  “I don’t know, but now that I’m thinking about it, she was always making up stories when she was young. Stands to reason she might have tried her hand at scriptwriting. And she must have had some connection to Yvonne. How else could she have gotten such a big name to come to her little conference?”

  “Bill Stotz said he arranged it. Yvonne claimed she’d never met Nola before she arrived at the Cozy Con.”

  “Now, I know that isn’t true. I don’t remember exactly what Nola said to me, when we were setting things up for the conference, but I got the distinct impression that she and Yvonne were already on friendly terms. Not bosom buddies or anything, but more than mere acquaintances.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.” Liss leaned back in her chair, arms folded across her chest. “So Yvonne lied to me. And it’s clearly important to her to keep the ghostwriting secret. That means she might well have committed murder to hide the truth.”

  “Does it have to be murder?” Margaret asked. She toyed with the thistle pendant she wore and avoided Liss’s eyes. “Why couldn’t Nola have fallen by accident, just as that Nedlinger woman did?”

  “But Jane Nedlinger didn’t just fall.” Liss repeated Gordon’s theory that Nola had killed Jane and then committed suicide out of guilt over her crime.

  “No,” Margaret said firmly. “No, that explanation won’t wash. Nola put too much effort into this weekend not to see it through. Even being arrested in the middle of the conference would have been preferable to killing herself that way.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell Gordon.” She grimaced. “I also promised him that I’d let him handle things.”

  “Well, you can’t,” Margaret said. “No matter how much better a verdict of murder/suicide might be for the town and the hotel, the truth needs to come out. I owe Nola that much for talking her into coming here in the first place.”

  “Finding out that Bill and Yvonne did it wouldn’t be a bad outcome,” Liss mused. “At least they aren’t local people.”

  Margaret switched her attention to the fringe on the sofa cushion. “It’s the local people I’m worried about.”

  “You aren’t seriously suggesting that either Doug or Stu was responsible for Nola’s death? We’ve known both of them forever.”

  At Margaret’s stricken look, Liss could have bitten her tongue. Anyone could kill. They both had reason—more reason than she liked to think about—to know that. But she couldn’t apologize for her thoughtless words. That would only make matters worse. Instead, she expanded on her reasoning.

  “Nola left Moosetookalook a long time ago. Doug has a new wife and a son. Stu just isn’t the type to hold a grudge that long. He loses his temper, explodes, and then it’s over.”

  But that image bothered her. What if he’d exploded up at Lover’s Leap? At Nola?

  When the phone rang again, both women jumped. Liss grimaced as she listened to the message—another demand for an interview. Muttering to herself, she went from room to room, unplugging every extension in the house. For good measure, she burrowed in her purse for her cell and turned that off, too.

  By the time Liss returned to the living room, Margaret had pulled herself together. “You’re right, Liss,” she said. “Neither Doug nor Stu would have any reason to want to kill Nola now. And, of course, neither one of them knew Jane Nedlinger. But someone committed murder, and I want that person caught and punished. I want Nola’s name cleared. And if Gordon Tandy isn’t looking in the right place, then we have to help him.”

  “That’s misplaced guilt talking,” Liss told her. “It’s not up to us.” The thought of Margaret meddling in a murder investigation sent cold chills down Liss’s spine.

  “I understand that. I know full well that Jane Nedlinger might have been killed wherever the conference was held. Nola, too. But the attendees and the guest of honor would have been the same. That makes all of them potential murderers.” Margaret glanced at her watch and abruptly rose from her chair. “We’d best get a move on. The banquet starts at seven.”

  “The banquet? But I wasn’t planning to—”

  “You bought a ticket, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “So did I.”

  “But I’ve already had my supper,” Liss protested.

  “You are going to the banquet,” Margaret said in a tone that brooked no disobedience. “We both are. Where else are we going to find all of our suspects conveniently gathered together for questioning?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Dan Ruskin’s plan was to stop off at his house just long enough to grab a shower and then spend the evening, and hopefully the night, at Liss’s house. He’d heard something about reporters being turned away from the hotel, but with the state police still there in force, he hadn’t actually encountered any. He hadn’t had to field phone calls, either. Joe had taken over at the front desk soon after Liss and Sherri headed for town. Dan had spent the rest of his shift in the hotel office doing assorted bookkeeping chores. He’d foolishly assumed that the “unfortunate accidents” story had been accepted by the press, until he turned on the six o’clock edition of the evening news, hoping to catch the weather report.

  Even while he was still watching Yvonne Quinlan’s tearful performance and listening to the news anchor’s snide speculations, Dan tried Liss’s number. It just kept ringing. Either she was ignoring it, or she’d unplugged the phone. He slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

  From his bedroom window, he could see her house, and there was Margaret, just leaving.

  As he hunted for clean socks, he tried her cell from his and was sent straight to voice mail. He supposed he wasn’t really surprised. With newshounds on the scene, he’d be avoiding phone calls, too.

  He was halfway down the stairs when the landline in the living room rang. He hesitated, glaring at the jangling phone on the end table. He didn’t want to talk to the press any more than Liss did, or to some gossipy neighbor. On the other hand, the person on the other end of the line might be Liss herself. She’d probably noticed his truck in the driveway.

  He answered on the third ring.

  The voice in his ear was a MacCrimmon of the female persuasion, but it wasn’t Liss. It was her mother.

  “Vi, I’m just on my way out. Can I—”

  “What’s going on there, Dan?” Violet MacCrimmon interrupted him. “Dolores Mayfield phoned us here in Arizona to say it was all over the news that there’d been two more murders at the hotel.”

  “And Liss isn’t answering her phone,” Donald MacCrimmon put in from the extension.

  Good old Dolores, Dan thought.

  “Dan?” Vi sounded impatient.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, except that Liss and I are fine and only peripherally involved.” It was a lie, but only a white one. Liss had better not be planning to embroil herself in more trouble.

  “What does that mean?” MacCrimmon sounded suspicious.

  “There was an unfortunate accident at Lover’s Leap. It had nothing to do with the hotel or with your daughter.” He hoped.

&
nbsp; An ominous silence answered this second foray into telling half truths.

  Dan didn’t say anything more, either. He didn’t want them to worry. What was the point? They were too far away to be of any help. For that matter, they wouldn’t be much use even if they lived right next door. Look how little impact his presence was having!

  “Will you be seeing Liss this evening?” Vi asked.

  “I was just heading over to her place when you called.” That, at least, was the truth.

  “Well, then, give her a message from us, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell her we’re changing our travel plans. We have no real reason to wait until next month to close up the house here and head for Moosetookalook. We’re going to load up the car tonight and start your way first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Wait! Vi, that’s not necessary. I—”

  “We were already thinking about an earlier departure before this happened,” she interrupted. “We just can’t wait to see you and Liss again. And to be on the spot to help my daughter with all the last-minute wedding details.”

  Phone still to his ear, Dan rested his forehead against the wall. This wasn’t a disaster, he told himself. Liss’s parents were a nice couple, people he’d known all his life, and they were going to be his in-laws soon. But now that Violet MacCrimmon had abandoned the subject of murder, Dan knew what was coming next.

  “Have you ordered your kilt yet?” Vi asked.

  After Margaret left, Liss hurried upstairs to change into something suitable for a banquet. It wasn’t earmarked as a super-dressy affair, but she felt grubby in the clothes she’d been wearing all day. She slipped into a sleek silk dress that made her feel ultra feminine and took the time to freshen her hair and makeup. She heard the sound of Margaret’s car as her aunt headed back to the hotel, but felt no need to rush. She’d be a little late, no matter what.

  She’d just come back downstairs when Dan let himself into the house with the key she’d given him. He gave a low whistle of approval when he got a load of her outfit. Liss turned in a circle so he could admire it from all sides. The dress had a demure neckline, but it was red and clingy and he clearly liked what he saw.