Dan’s shrug spoke volumes. “I could hardly stop Stu from calling her.”
To Liss’s annoyance, they locked gazes for another full minute, as if they were silently exchanging ideas about how to control her actions. Finally, Gordon answered her question. “Stu Burroughs did not kill anyone, but only because he crashed his car into a tree instead of hitting another vehicle or a pedestrian. He was arrested for drunk driving. The bail commissioner isn’t going to let him out until tomorrow, so you may as well go back home.”
“But Stu said—”
“Yeah, I know what he said.” Gordon ran his hand over his short-cropped hair and stared at the ceiling. “I interviewed him. What he meant was that he feels responsible for Nola’s suicide. It seems they had a big fight yesterday at the hotel. He thinks she killed herself over some of the nasty things he said to her, and he’s upset because he didn’t really mean them. He was just trying to pay her back for abandoning him all those years ago.”
“He’s probably been carrying a torch for her since she left.” Liss found that possibility both wonderfully romantic and heartbreakingly sad.
“Get a grip, Liss. Next you’ll be saying that they quarreled because he asked her to marry him and she turned him down.” Dan looked faintly disgusted by the idea.
“If that were the case, it would have been Stu who took the header off the cliff,” Gordon said.
Liss glared at them both. “Whatever his reasons, Stu was terribly upset by Nola’s death. He was drinking heavily all last night and into this morning.” And after she’d left him all but passed out in his kitchen, he’d apparently slept off his first drunk and started on a second.
“You’re partly right,” Gordon grudgingly admitted. “He had a lot of unresolved feelings. It ticked Stu off that Nola accepted her ex-husband’s offer to take her back to the hotel on Thursday night instead of going with him.”
Gordon’s stance was rigid, his face a mask, but Liss couldn’t help but wonder if he was seeing parallels between Stu’s disappointment in love and his own rejection when Liss decided to marry Dan. Of course, the situations were nothing alike, but she felt her cheeks grow warm all the same.
The three of them nearly filled the claustrophobically small lobby, but Gordon had not suggested they move into a meeting or interrogation room to continue their discussion. That meant he didn’t intend to spend very long talking to them. Liss told herself she was relieved, but she still had questions.
“What happened when Stu and Nola met on Friday at the hotel?” she asked. “I know they quarreled and Nola was upset, but what did they say to each other?”
For a moment, she didn’t think Gordon would answer her. She imagined he had to wage a brief but violent struggle with himself—not that she could see any evidence of such a thing in his stony countenance—before he relented.
“Stu taunted Nola with her lack of success. According to him, she had big plans and none of them materialized.”
“He was wrong about that. Sort of.”
“So I hear.” Gordon sent a speculative look her way. “Been talking to Sherri, have you?”
Liss ignored the question. “After Nola’s death, when Stu got good and drunk and maudlin, he must have decided that his taunts had driven her to kill herself. He didn’t give her enough credit. She was stronger than that. And more successful, too.”
“And maybe she was already distraught about something else,” Gordon suggested.
“Guilt-ridden, according to your hypothesis, because she’d killed Jane Nedlinger? I don’t think so.”
“Let’s just agree that Nola Ventress didn’t kill herself because of Stu Burroughs. I’ve already informed him of that.” Gordon’s stiff formality eased for a moment when he added, “He wasn’t as grateful as you’d think he’d be for that information. Then again, he’s still pretty soused.”
“Can we talk to him?” Liss asked.
“No.”
“But I’m the one he called. If he’d used his one phone call for a lawyer, you’d let the lawyer in to see him.”
“You’re not a lawyer. However, if you want to be the one to pick him up tomorrow, I’ll have dispatch call you just before he’s released. His car’s totaled, so he’s going to need a ride.”
Liss felt a headache coming on. She was already supposed to be in two places at the same time in the morning—the dealers’ room and Lenny Peet’s funeral. Splitting herself three ways just wasn’t possible. “I’ll find someone to come for him. Will you tell him that?”
“I’ll see that he’s informed.” Gordon turned away, heading for the heavy, reinforced door that led back to the dispatch center.
“Will you also inform him of something else while you’re at it?” Liss called after him. “Tell him I don’t think Nola killed herself at all.”
A spin on his heel and two quick strides brought them toe-to-toe and face-to-face. Liss took an involuntary step backward, bumping into one of the plastic chairs that were the only furnishings in the minuscule lobby. Gordon’s face was no longer impassive. Temper sparked in his eyes and his mouth was set in a hard, thin line ... until he opened it to yell at her.
“Damn it, Liss! I’m not going to go putting ideas into his head. The next thing you know, Stu will be trying to play detective. Bad enough that you are.”
“I’m not—”
He silenced her with a look that promised retribution if she interrupted him again. “I’ll be at The Spruces tomorrow. And, yes, I am pursuing other possibilities. I know damned well Sherri’s just passing on ideas you’ve come up with. If something pans out, I’ll be grateful. But if I even suspect that you’re meddling in police business again, you’ll be sitting in a jail cell, just like your pal Stu, waiting for someone to bail you out!” This time, when he turned away, he signaled for the dispatcher to unlatch the door the moment he reached it. It closed behind him with a solid thunk.
“There’s no point in denying it, you know,” Dan said as they walked back to his truck. “You can claim you only went along with Margaret to keep her out of trouble, but I know better and so do you.”
“Is it so wrong that she doesn’t want to see her friend blamed for something she didn’t do? I can’t help but sympathize with that.” And nobody wanted a murderer to go free.
“I’m not going to argue with you about it,” Dan said.
“Fine with me.” She was too exhausted and discouraged to have much fight left in her.
They accomplished the drive back to Moosetookalook in contemplative silence. Dan parked in his own driveway and walked Liss back to her house, but when she would have said good night to him and gone inside alone, he slung an arm around her shoulders and went in with her.
“You’re not going to be able to sleep,” he predicted. “You’re going to stay up, going over your lists, hoping you’ll think of something the police haven’t. Why don’t you let me take a look at them with you? Maybe you can use me as a sounding board. Who knows? We might even come up with a solid lead.”
“To tell Gordon? Do you really think he’d listen? He’ll be too busy throwing me in the slammer. That’ll really make his day.”
Dan ignored her mini-rant and the long-suffering sigh that followed. He simply hung around until she did what he wanted. They settled down on the sofa, one cat on his lap and the other behind Liss’s head, and Liss handed over her lists. He started with the page that listed all the people Jane Nedlinger had talked to and/or threatened at the opening reception.
“Bill Stotz,” Dan read aloud. “Yvonne Quinlan. Me. Who’s Eleanor Ogilvie?”
“She’s the woman Jane talked to after she finished interrogating you,” Liss reminded him. “Remember? You pointed her out to me the next day.” At least, she thought it had been the next day. Events were beginning to run together in her mind. She shook off her lethargy and explained how Eleanor, the editor who was now an agent, was connected to both Nola and Yvonne.
“Okay,” he said. “Then you’ve listed Nola. You left
yourself off the list. Anyone else?”
“No one else that I know of talked to Jane Nedlinger that night. And that makes sense. The names on my list all fit into one of two stories Jane was writing. You and I represent one exposé. Bill, Yvonne, Eleanor, and Nola were connected to the other.”
“But there were others,” Dan mused. “Didn’t Tandy tell you that he found some of Jane’s notes in Nola’s room?”
Liss nodded. “I’ve been assuming she deliberately left the ones about me behind, and she’d have destroyed anything relating to her, so if there were notes left for Gordon to find, they must have been about other people at the conference. There could be someone here we haven’t even thought of who wanted Jane Nedlinger out of the way.”
“Tandy has their names. He’ll have checked them out.”
“Yes. Good. That’s good.” She fought a yawn.
Frowning, Dan skimmed over the local names on her list—members of the Moosetookalook Small Business Association who’d attended the emergency meeting at Liss’s house. “We can’t discount anyone who knew Nola from before. Who knows what enemies she made when she lived in Moosetookalook? But with Jane’s murder in the mix, I think we can narrow things down a bit.”
“Wonderful choices there—your father, my aunt, Stu, and Doug.”
“Too bad Lorelei Preston wasn’t at the meeting. She strikes me as the jealous type. She wasn’t happy to hear that her husband had spent time with his ex-wife.”
“She didn’t even know Nola was in town until we told her,” Liss reminded him, “and that was after Nola was already dead. Besides, she’d have had no reason to kill Jane.”
“I agree, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. Do you suppose there’s any way we can include Dolores Mayfield among the suspects? She knew Nola before, and she wanted very badly to talk to her on the day Nola died.”
“About the class reunion,” Liss recalled.
“So she said. What if Dolores wanted to see Nola for some other reason?”
“You think she had murder on her mind? Why?” Liss was just groggy enough from lack of sleep to give serious consideration to the suggestion. Hadn’t Margaret mentioned something about Moose Mayfield having had a bad case of puppy love for Nola Ventress?
Dan shrugged. “Who knows? But Dolores had a link to Jane, too. She talked to her at the library on Thursday.”
“Dolores doesn’t kill people,” Liss muttered. “She just talks them to death. Besides, knowing Dolores, she’d be the last person to want to get rid of Jane. She was probably hoping she’d be quoted in The Nedlinger Report. It would make more sense to suggest Davy Kline as a suspect.”
“Davy Kline?” Dan needed a moment to place the name. “You mean the kid who found Jane’s body?”
“If Gordon can suspect me just because I found Nola, then I can put Davy Kline on my list.”
“He’s what, twenty? He probably still has trouble telling the difference between the blood and gore in video games and real death.”
“And you’re so much older.” But thinking about Davy, picturing him, sobered her. “He came to the conference with his invalid mother. Someone said she has a heart condition. Anyway, he sticks close to her, taking her wherever she wants to go, pushing her in a wheelchair.”
“Altruistic?”
“He did climb down the goat track to try to help Jane. If he’s accustomed to taking care of his mother, he probably has some training in first aid.”
“My father said he recognized Jane. Do you know how?”
“He’d seen her at the reception.”
“Seen her? Or talked to her?”
The realization that Dan was not only taking her seriously but also making suggestions—getting involved—gave Liss a second wind. Her brain began to function at full capacity again. “I don’t know, but I think I should find out.” She took back her lined tablet, turned to a fresh page, and scribbled a note to herself. There was one day left of the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con. Chances were good that Davy and his mother would pay another visit to the dealers’ room. If not, she could waylay him at the tea, the last event of the day.
Flipping back to the list of people who might have wished to harm Nola, Liss made a few revisions. When she was done, she’d circled five names. Four were people who’d also had reason to dislike Jane.
“Bill and Yvonne, because of the ghostwriting thing,” Dan said, studying the list. “Not Eleanor?”
“I don’t think so. But add her if you like.”
“Stu and Doug,” he read. “But they didn’t exactly hate Nola. It was more like she was the one who got away. The lost love.”
“There’s always the ‘if I can’t have her, nobody can’ motive,” Liss reminded him. “Plus love and hate sometimes get all mixed up. And both Stu and Doug have tempers.”
“Okay. Leave them on the list. Who’s Phoebe Lewis?” He pointed at the last name Liss had circled.
“She was Nola’s second in command. I overheard them quarreling over conference business. My take is that Nola may have been charming to most people, but she treated Phoebe like dirt and Phoebe resented it. She did all the grunt work while Nola took all the credit.”
“That’s a pretty poor reason to push someone off a cliff.”
“Is there any good reason?” Liss rubbed her forehead. Her headache was back, more fierce than it had been earlier. “The best scenario I can come up with involves Yvonne and Bill acting together, because the same argument I have against Nola killing Jane applies to Yvonne acting alone, as well. Jane was a big woman. Yvonne isn’t as tiny as Nola was, but she’s so slender she looks as if a good breeze could blow her away.”
“I wonder,” Dan said, “who was working the check-in desk Thursday night? Whoever it was might have seen Jane leave the hotel, and maybe who she was with, too.”
Asking someone who’d know seemed so obvious Liss could have kicked herself for not thinking of it before. She supposed that Gordon had already thought to do so, but it wouldn’t hurt for Dan—the boss’s son—to make his own inquiries. She wrote herself a note about that, too. Then she turned to the page where she’d sketched out a time line.
“One big problem with figuring this out,” she said, “is that just about anyone could have killed Jane. As for Nola, anyone who was at the hotel that afternoon could have slipped away and followed her along the cliff path, just as I did.”
“I don’t like to think about that. The murderer could still have been in the vicinity when you found Nola’s body.”
“Then I’d have met him—or her, or them—on the path. Unless he, she, or they took the trail that comes out on Spruce Avenue and walked up the drive to get back to the hotel.”
“Or into town,” Dan added, playing devil’s advocate.
“In any case, I didn’t see anyone. Nola was probably already dead by the time I started looking for her. Yvonne or Bill weren’t at the auction, but Doug was there and Stu—” She broke off, shaken by a memory.
“Stu what?”
“Stu came in late. He was out of breath. You don’t suppose. . . ?”
“No, I don’t. First of all, Stu is often late. That he was on time for the MSBA meeting on Friday was the exception to the rule. Second, if he’d killed her, he’d have confessed to it when he was arrested, instead of just rambling on about suicide. Who else did you see at the auction before you went to look for Nola?”
“Margaret. She was the one who asked me to find Nola. And—oh, you’ll like this—Dolores and Moose.”
He cracked the ghost of a smile.
“But I keep coming back to Yvonne and Bill, who weren’t there. And when you add in the gum wrappers—”
“Which are pretty darned common. You can’t build a case based on litter. Besides, if they were acting together, don’t you think one of them would have been smart enough to make sure they didn’t leave any evidence behind?”
Liss mulled over what he’d said, but she had a clear picture in her mind of the two of them gan
ging up on Jane and pushing her over. “She was a big woman,” Liss mused. “It would have taken considerable strength to shove her hard enough so she’d fall and break her neck.”
Dan hid a yawn behind his hand. “Pushing someone off a cliff seems like a pretty dumb way to commit murder. People can survive falls like that.”
“That’s what Gordon said, too. I suppose they hoped it would look like an accident. And it did, at first.”
“Me, I think I would have broken her neck before she went over the side, just to make sure she died.”
Liss stared at him, suddenly reminded of a scrap of conversation in the dealers’ room, a careless comment that hadn’t made any real impression on her at the time. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “She wouldn’t have needed help, after all.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Yvonne Quinlan. She was a stuntwoman before she was an actress. She all but came right out and told me that she knows exactly how to break someone’s neck.”
Chapter Fourteen
On Sunday morning, Liss awoke slowly. She was reluctant to get out of bed. She had so many things to do in the next few hours that she was tempted not to do any of them. She had not slept well. She didn’t remember much about her dreams, but they’d definitely included an enraged Yvonne Quinlan, showing fang and gleefully snapping necks. Far-fetched? Only the vampire part.
She forced herself to sit up. The first order of business was to ask Dan to drive to Fallstown and bring Stu back to Moosetookalook. He could leave right after Lenny Peet’s funeral, which was scheduled for nine that morning. It was an odd time for such a thing—right before Sunday church services—but that was apparently what Lenny had requested. Liss told herself she should be grateful. She’d only be an hour late getting to the dealers’ room.
The smell of coffee drifting up from the kitchen told her that Dan had been up for a while and explained why the cats weren’t still in bed with her. She decided she could get used to having someone make coffee for her in the morning. Maybe Dan would agree to do it every day after they were married. On that cheerful thought, she dragged herself out of bed and into the shower.
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