Scotched

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  She thought she knew what must have happened. Years ago, for whatever reason, Eleanor Ogilvie had rejected Nola’s novel. Later, as an agent, she’d remembered the writing and persuaded Nola, who still hadn’t sold anything under her own name, to ghostwrite Yvonne’s books. Then Jane had found out about the arrangement. That explained why she’d buttonholed Eleanor, as well as Bill, Yvonne, and Nola, at the opening reception. Jane had been working on two stories simultaneously. One had been about Liss and Moosetookalook. The other had concerned Nola and Yvonne.

  “Uh-oh,” Margaret murmured. “Your bodyguard is back.”

  Liss scanned the ballroom for Dan and located him on the far side of the room. He’d been waylaid by Tricia Lynd, one of the hotel employees, but he was staring right at Liss. She waggled her fingers at him and then showed him her back. “This is getting really old, really fast.”

  “I think it’s sweet,” Margaret said, “and since he’s not keeping an eye on me, I think I’ll just slip away and see what I can find.”

  The look on Margaret’s face alarmed Liss. “Find where?”

  “In Yvonne Quinlan’s suite. I have a passkey.”

  “Margaret! That’s crazy. If you get caught, Joe will fire you.”

  “It’s worth the risk. I’ve been thinking all evening about what you told me. I won’t allow Nola to become a scapegoat. I may be able to find something in Yvonne’s belongings that will prove she’s the guilty one, just as you suspect.”

  The crowd was starting to gravitate toward the exit. Margaret joined the herd, working her way closer to the nearest door. Liss looked again for Dan. For the moment, whatever Tricia was telling him had his full attention. Liss seized the opportunity and followed her aunt. The way the conference-goers were milling about, she imagined Dan would have trouble catching up with them, even if he realized right away that they’d left the ballroom.

  She found Margaret waiting for the elevator, surrounded by banquet-goers. Her aunt’s intentions alarmed her—and gave her a much better understanding of why it was that Dan worried about her so much. And why he tended to turn bossy when he was concerned about her safety. Now that she was experiencing some of those same fears on Margaret’s behalf, she was sorely tempted to order her aunt to cease and desist. Only the fact that she knew it wouldn’t do any good stopped her. When the elevator doors opened, they both got in.

  Snooping around at the hotel was not new territory for Liss. Her only qualms came from bringing Aunt Margaret into the mix. Even though Liss understood that Margaret felt guilty because she’d been the one to convince Nola to hold the conference in Moosetookalook, she’d never expected her aunt to show such a determined streak.

  For a miracle, they boarded the elevator before most of the conference-goers left the banquet and descended on it. And Dan was nowhere in sight as the doors slid shut. There were eight other people crowded into the car. Liss didn’t know any of them, but their presence gave her an added reason not to spend the short ascent trying to talk Margaret out of her plan. If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. It would be very nice indeed if they could find proof that Yvonne was guilty of two murders. She remained silent as she followed her aunt down the third-floor hallway and watched her insert her master key in the lock of Yvonne Quinlan’s suite.

  “I’ve been thinking about Nola ever since I left your house earlier this evening,” Margaret said when they were safely inside. “I owe it to her memory to clear her name and to see that she gets credit for the novels she wrote. That’s the least I can do.”

  Liss studied her surroundings—a two-room suite with clothes scattered here and there and a complimentary fruit basket on the table. “What exactly are we searching for? It doesn’t seem likely we’ll find a diary with an entry reading I did it. I pushed Jane off the cliff and then I did the same to Nola.”

  This was a bad idea, she thought. A really bad, really stupid idea. They were going to get caught. They needed to get out now.

  But Margaret was already heading into the bedroom. “You search the drawers in the armoire that holds the television set,” she suggested, “and the desk.”

  Unless she thunked her aunt on the head and dragged her bodily out of the suite, they weren’t going anywhere until Margaret was satisfied she’d done her best to exonerate Nola. Resigned to helping, if only to speed things along, Liss joined, rather perfunctorily, in the search.

  Free books from a conference goodie bag were neatly stacked on top of the desk, next to what looked like the script for a new television series. The desk drawer contained only hotel stationery and an HBO program guide. The rest of the living room yielded nothing more interesting than a bra discarded behind the couch. Liss couldn’t help but notice that it was of the padded variety. She joined Margaret in the bedroom just as her aunt opened the door to the closet.

  “Oh, Liss—good. Help me get this suitcase down.”

  Liss lifted it off the shelf. It wasn’t locked, probably because it contained nothing but dirty laundry.

  “I’ve been watching and listening to Yvonne Quinlan all evening,” Margaret said, “and thinking about things I’ve heard her say in the course of the weekend. I think she may have managed to convince herself that she did write all those books. That means it will be a terrible blow to her ego if she’s forced to admit that she didn’t.”

  Halfheartedly, Liss checked the contents of the bathroom while her aunt continued to riffle through the actress’s possessions. “So you think she might have killed two people to keep her secret?” Even though that had been her own theory in the beginning, Liss was starting to have doubts. Like Nola, Yvonne was much smaller than Jane. She’d have had a hard time tossing the bigger woman over the edge.

  “Sometimes it doesn’t take much to provoke murder.” Aunt Margaret bent over to peer under the bed. Finding nothing, she turned to look at Liss. “And wouldn’t a privileged, indulged actress be just the sort of person to think she was above the law? However, the more I consider the situation, the more I think someone else might have acted on her behalf.”

  “The faithful guard dog, Bill,” Liss murmured. His career depended upon Yvonne’s continued success, too.

  But Sherri had made a good point earlier. Would book sales really have been damaged by Jane’s revelation? Liss doubted it. Still, it didn’t matter what she thought, or even what the truth was. It only mattered what Yvonne ... or Bill ... believed.

  Just what was their relationship? Liss wandered over to the window and looked out, but she didn’t see the view of lawn and trees. Her gaze was turned inward as she wondered if fear of potential loss of income could have been enough to motivate Bill Stotz to kill. If there was something personal between him and Yvonne, that would up the ante. But—Sherri’s objection again, and Dan’s, too—getting rid of Nola would be killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. The success of the mystery novels depended upon her talent.

  Liss let the curtain fall into place once more and started back across the room. She stopped at the crinkle of paper beneath her foot and reached down to pick up what she’d stepped on. It was a green chewing gum wrapper. One of Bill’s. Bill had been in Yvonne’s bedroom since the last time the suite had been cleaned.

  Margaret seized the wrapper. Her mouth curved into a grim but satisfied smile. “Well,” she said. “This settles it. We have to search Bill’s room next.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “ We don’t have time,” Liss insisted as she followed her aunt back into the hallway. “We’re pressing our luck as it is.”

  “Piffle. Yvonne’s the star of the conference. Her fans will keep her busy for a while yet, and Bill Stotz sticks to her like glue. They’re probably down in the lounge.”

  Liss gritted her teeth, marshaled a new argument, and stifled it when she saw that the elevator was about to stop at their floor. Margaret gave a guilty start when the doors opened to reveal Yvonne and Bill. Liss forced herself to remain calm. There was no reason for Yvonne to think t
hey’d been in her suite, but she stepped back, giving the couple a wide berth.

  Recognizing her, and no doubt remembering the scene in the bookstore, Bill frowned as he guided Yvonne out of the elevator with a hand on her elbow. The actress ignored Liss completely—or so Liss thought until she boarded the elevator and looked back the way she’d come.

  Yvonne Quinlan had turned her head to glare, her eyes filled with loathing. She looked as if she wished she could make herself into the vampire she’d portrayed for so many years and take a large and fatal bite out of Liss’s neck.

  The elevator doors closed. Margaret mimed wiping sweat from her brow. “She looked seriously annoyed. You don’t suppose she’ll guess we searched her suite, do you?”

  “She’s still pissed off about what I said to her at Angie’s Books. I think you may be right, that she’s convinced herself she really did write all those novels. If that’s the case, then I must have offended her very deeply.”

  The elevator stopped on the second floor.

  “Oh, no,” Liss objected. “We’re not—”

  Margaret stepped off and headed down the corridor.

  “Margaret, this is insane.”

  “He’ll stay with Yvonne for a while yet.” She sounded confident. “Maybe even all night. When will we have a better opportunity to search his things?”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Liss said, but she followed her aunt into Bill Stotz’s hotel room.

  They hadn’t even begun to search when the door opened behind them and a man walked in. It wasn’t Bill Stotz. It was worse. It was Dan.

  Dan couldn’t believe his eyes. Or rather, he could. He just didn’t want to.

  “Out,” he ordered, his voice a low, threatening growl, “or I’ll call the cops on you myself.”

  Margaret’s cheeks turned a bright, embarrassed pink. Liss just looked exasperated.

  “No, you won’t,” she said. “You don’t want the bad publicity.”

  For a moment Dan saw red, but he quickly harnessed his temper. He was more frustrated than angry. And, as usual, Liss had scared the daylights out of him with her impulsive behavior. She was going to turn him gray before his time with her antics, and she’d never learn patience. He resigned himself to a lifetime filled with edge-of-the-seat moments like this one. His future wife simply wasn’t the type who could sit back and let other people handle things, not even when those other people were duly authorized officers of the law.

  “I have to admit that you two don’t look like typical housebreakers,” he admitted.

  They were both dressed to the nines, or what passed for the nines in rural Maine. Dan couldn’t remember when he’d last seen either of them in high heels or wearing so much makeup. Heck, he rarely saw anyone in Moosetookalook sporting anything but the most casual clothing. Most folks looked on a nice pair of slacks and a dress shirt or frilly blouse as putting on the dog. He didn’t count the outfits Margaret had always worn when she was working at Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. She’d just been modeling the merchandise, wearing a lot of long tartan skirts to showcase items she had for sale.

  He caught a whiff of flowery perfume—something else Liss rarely wore—as she stepped past him into the hall. He was surprised she didn’t realize—since she read so many crime novels—that she’d leave some of that fragrance behind, proof that an intruder had been in Stotz’s hotel room during his absence.

  Margaret dawdled, checking the drawer in the bedside table before she finally obeyed Dan’s order to leave.

  “I don’t know why I put up with this nonsense,” Dan muttered as he shepherded both women down the corridor in the direction of the stairs he’d used to reach the second floor. The elevators had been too slow for him, crowded with conference-goers on their way back to their rooms after the banquet. When he’d come out of the stairwell a few minutes earlier, he’d been just in time to see Margaret insert her passkey into the lock of a guest room door.

  “You love me,” Liss said in reply to his rhetorical question. “People in love put up with a lot from each other.”

  “You needn’t sound so smug about it.”

  She stopped, turned, and threw her arms around him, hugging him tight. “I’m sorry, Dan. I know I promised to stay out of trouble, but—”

  “It was all my fault,” Margaret cut in. “I was determined to conduct a search, and Liss thought it would be safer if she came with me.”

  “So that both of you could get yourselves killed instead of just one?” Dan asked.

  “So you do think we’re onto something?”

  Margaret sounded so elated that Dan hastily revised his analysis of the situation. Maybe it was Liss’s aunt who’d been the instigator. This time.

  “Did you find something?” he asked.

  “Gum wrapper,” Liss said succinctly, digging it out of a tiny bag on a long thin chain. She’d slung it crossways to free her hands, an odd look with the slinky red dress and high heels. “Spearmint,” she added, holding it up.

  “Okay. So what? You already knew that Stotz is a gum chewer.”

  “I picked this up in Yvonne’s room.”

  “So Bill shared a stick with her. Big deal.”

  “I think he shared a lot more than a stick of gum. I found this in her bedroom.”

  “The fact that they may or may not be having an affair doesn’t make either of them a murderer.” Even for someone with Liss’s imagination, that seemed a leap.

  “You’re forgetting that another of these same gum wrappers was found at Lover’s Leap.”

  “And you’re forgetting that it could have been lying there for days. Jane and Nola and whoever was with them, if there even was anyone else with them, are hardly the only people who’ve ever been up there.”

  Dan could remember a few steamy evenings at the site himself, back when he’d been fifteen or so and leery of bringing a girl home. His mother had still been alive then. She’d had a strict rule about no girls in his bedroom.

  “Time is getting short,” Margaret said when they reached the foot of the stairs. “They’re all leaving tomorrow. The conference attendees and the guest of honor.”

  “And I’m sure the police can track them down if they need to. It’s time to go home, ladies, and leave sorting this out to the people who know what they’re doing.”

  “Gordon still thinks it’s a case of murder/suicide, that Nola killed Jane and then took her own life out of guilt and remorse,” Liss reminded him. “What if thinking that way keeps him from looking at the other possibilities?”

  “Tandy’s good at his job,” Dan said, albeit grudgingly. He had to give credit where credit was due. “Trust him to do it right. Now, not another word about it. Either of you. Go home, Margaret, and stay out of trouble. And you—” He was pretty sure that another kind of heat shone in his eyes when he glared at his fiancée. “What you need is a distraction.”

  Dan could tell she was receptive to that idea. He also knew there was a smart comeback on the tip of her tongue. Before she could utter a single word, her cell phone rang.

  “I thought you had that thing turned off. Let it go to voice mail.” Dan entertained a brief fantasy that involved sweeping Liss up into his arms, carrying her to his truck, and taking her away to someplace where they wouldn’t even have to think about murder, let alone try to do anything about it. It occurred to him that they could catch a flight to Las Vegas tonight and be married by this time tomorrow.

  “I did turn it off earlier.” Unaware of his flight of fancy, Liss fished the small cell phone out of her tiny purse, giving him a brief glimpse of the rest of the contents—her house key, a lipstick, and a couple of tissues. “I turned it back on thinking I might need to call for help in a hurry if—”

  She broke off when she looked at the caller ID. Dan shifted until he was close enough to see the readout over her shoulder. The incoming call was from the Carrabassett County Sheriff’s Office.

  “You don’t have to answer.”

 
“Yes, I do. It might be important.”

  Since cell phone reception was better outdoors, Liss shoved open the door that led to the floodlit parking lot behind the hotel, the one used by employees. Margaret had gone on ahead of them and was already backing out of her space. She and Liss exchanged waves and Margaret drove off. Only then did Liss answer her phone.

  She paced while she listened to whoever was on the other end of the line and occasionally replied with a monosyllabic mumble. Mostly the conversation consisted of long silences on her part. The look on her face worried Dan. It combined disbelief with incredible sorrow. She’d gone pale, too. Whatever she was hearing, she was having a hard time accepting it.

  At last she disconnected. “That was Stu Burroughs,” she said. “He’s in jail. He says he killed Nola.”

  Liss had never been to the Carrabassett County Sheriff’s Office and Jail in Fallstown before, even though Sherri had once been a dispatcher there and Pete still worked for the county as a deputy sheriff. It was a long, low brick building with bars on the windows and a well-lit parking lot. Inside, a tiny lobby funneled visitors straight to a glassed-in area. On the other side was the dispatch center.

  “I’m here because Stuart Burroughs phoned me,” Liss informed the uniformed female who came to the window. She was a motherly-looking person, a bit on the plump side, but her expression was better suited to a junkyard dog.

  “So, you were his one phone call, huh? Sit yourself down, then. Someone will be out to talk to you in a minute.”

  They settled into hard plastic chairs, the kind designed to discourage long stays. Five minutes passed, then ten. It was going on fifteen before Liss heard a loud click, the sound of a door being remotely unlocked, and Gordon Tandy stepped out of the secure area into the jail lobby.

  Liss shot to her feet. “Did you talk to Stu? What did he say? Did he really push Nola off Lover’s Leap?”

  Gordon ignored her question and spoke to Dan. “I thought you were going to keep her out of this.”