Mac closed his eyes for a moment. “Do you know what the kicker is? The autopsy showed Charlie would have been dead in a couple of months anyway. He had cancer. He was on major pain meds. If I knew he was alive, even drove him to Moosetookalook myself, how come I didn’t know that? If I wanted him dead, all I had to do was wait.”
“I wonder if that’s why he returned,” Liss mused. “Maybe he was in our yard because he thought you and Mom still lived there.”
“In the middle of the night? After he’d been in town long enough to find out we were renting this place? I don’t think so, Liss.” Mac buried his head in his hands. His voice was faint but determined when he added, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Go home, you two.”
Liss started to protest, but when her mother made little shooing motions, she reluctantly gave in. She kissed Mac on the cheek and hugged Vi before shrugging into her coat and following Dan outside.
“I’d like to give that Kelly Cussler a piece of my mind,” she muttered as soon as she was settled in the passenger seat of the truck.
“You’d do better to stay away from her. Interfering will only make things worse.”
“She thinks my father murdered his own brother. Can you imagine what a horrible mixture of grief, anger, and loss he must be going through? I’m an only child. I can never completely understand what that relationship is like, especially for two boys only a year apart in age, but I can see how much Daddy is suffering. Cussler’s unfounded suspicions are making everything a hundred times worse.”
“She has to consider the most obvious suspects first.” Dan kept his eyes on the road. “I’m pretty sure you and I also are on her list, but once she eliminates members of Charlie’s family, she’ll move on. C’mon, Liss. You know how these things work. Cussler will keep asking questions until she gets to the truth.”
Liss said no more, but she spent the rest of the drive home making a mental list of the people she intended to talk to and the questions she planned to ask.
* * *
The following morning at the Emporium, while Liss was getting the Scotties settled for the day, she was struck by an odd circumstance she hadn’t thought much about at the time. When she turned her considering gaze on the door behind the sales counter, a vivid image popped into her head. The previous week, before they’d found her uncle’s body, Dandy and Dondi had been intensely interested in the stairs leading up to Margaret’s apartment. Liss had assumed they just wanted to go home, but what if . . . ?
She continued to stare at the stairwell door. That had been Wednesday. She was almost certain of it. Kelly Cussler had told Liss’s father that Charlie flew into Portland on Tuesday. She wondered how he’d gotten from the jetport to Moosetookalook. A taxi was unlikely, given the distance, and bus service only ran as far as Fallstown. That left a rental car. Had one been found? Had Charlie been traced to one of the hotels or motels in the area? Or did it make more sense that he’d gravitated toward familiar surroundings?
Duncan MacCrimmon had opened the Emporium when his three children were still in grade school. He’d bought the building and created the upstairs apartment, where Margaret now lived. If Liss was remembering correctly, her grandfather had inherited the house at 4 Birch Street shortly after that, which meant Charlie had probably lived in both places.
Her father was right to be angry. There had been plenty of time for his brother to find out that Mac and Vi were at Ledge Lake. Come to think of it, since Charlie was apparently a licensed private investigator, he could have discovered that much before he left Florida. He must have been aware that his sister made her home in the apartment above the Emporium. He might even have learned that she was going to be out of town for two weeks.
Liss hesitated. Should she call Sherri before checking out her theory that Charlie MacCrimmon had been in Margaret’s apartment the previous Wednesday? No, she decided. She’d look for evidence first.
When she’d retrieved Margaret’s spare set of keys from the drawer behind the sales counter and had the door to the stairwell open, Liss cocked her head, listening for any sound from above. She wasn’t surprised when the only thing she heard was the tap of doggie toenails on the hardwood floor behind her.
Leaving the door open, she started up the stairs. Dandy and Dondi followed close on her heels. On the landing she hesitated again, wishing she’d thought to tuck her cell phone into her pocket.
Margaret was somewhat cavalier about security. Neglecting to lock the outside door that led to exterior stairs had caused her no end of trouble just a few months back. She’d been more careful after that incident, but this entrance could only be reached through the Emporium. Had she considered it important enough to secure?
Apparently, she had not. The knob turned easily in Liss’s hand.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside. Dandy and Dondi came in after her and began to sniff at everything in sight. She watched them closely, wondering if they were looking for Margaret or if they’d caught the scent of a stranger.
The living room looked exactly as it should—comfortable sofa and chairs, end tables with lamps, and a coffee table holding neatly stacked magazines. A thin layer of dust coated every surface. That was hardly a surprise in a place that had been unoccupied for over a week.
Liss began to relax. She’d let her imagination run away with her. If Charlie MacCrimmon had camped out in his sister’s apartment, someone would have noticed. She’d have heard movement—floorboards creaking, doors opening and closing, pots and pans rattling. Lights showing after dark would have been a dead giveaway, too.
Cautiously, feeling a little foolish when she realized she’d gone up on tiptoe, Liss moved from the living room into the narrow hallway. She peeked into Margaret’s bedroom. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed.
When she was back out in the hall, she was faced with three closed doors. She frowned. That seemed a bit unusual. Ordinarily, Margaret left two of the three open.
The exception, the bathroom, was straight ahead. As soon as Liss opened that door, she noticed another anomaly. The shower curtain had been shoved back and was bunched together at one end of the tub. Her frown deepened. She was certain her aunt always left it pulled all the way across. Margaret liked the way its colorful flower pattern brightened the otherwise nondescript room.
The towels hung neatly on their racks. If any of them had been used since Margaret left, they’d long since dried. A quick glance at the contents of the medicine cabinet didn’t provide any clues, either. There was a toothbrush in the toothbrush holder, but it was probably Margaret’s. If she was like most people, she’d taken a new one with her on her trip.
“Overactive imagination,” Liss muttered, and headed for the guest room.
The moment she stepped inside, she stopped dead and stared. The bed, which Margaret kept neatly made and ready for unexpected guests, had been slept in. A pair of striped pajama bottoms had been carelessly tossed atop the jumble of sheets and blankets. A duffel bag sat on the room’s single chair, unzipped and partially unpacked. Through the open closet door, Liss could see masculine clothing on Margaret’s pretty padded hangers.
It took a few seconds for her to gather her scattered wits. Once she had, she sprang into action. The police hadn’t found any identification on her uncle’s body, so it seemed logical that he’d left his ID here. It didn’t take her long to find a wallet among his possessions. The Florida driver’s license confirmed his identity, as did Charlie MacCrimmon’s name and address, neatly printed on the luggage tag attached to the duffel bag. A printout confirming his seat on a flight returning to Florida in a week’s time was tucked into an inside pocket.
Liss put everything back where she’d found it. She was tempted to paw through the clothes still in the bag and to search the entire bedroom more thoroughly, but Charlie had been murdered. The last thing she wanted was to be accused of tampering with evidence.
Before she called the police, she went into th
e kitchen. Charlie had apparently waited until after she went home for the night to cook. If he hadn’t, she’d not only have heard him, she’d have smelled the result. Judging by the scraps in the trash can, he’d made liberal use of onions and garlic.
A flashlight sat on the counter, answering the question of how he’d managed after dark. To avoid giving away his presence, Charlie must have had to use it sparingly, spending most of the hours after sunset in total darkness . . . when he wasn’t prowling around backyards and getting himself killed. In a town the size of Moosetookalook, even that narrow beam of light, coming from an apartment that was supposed to be empty, would eventually have been noticed by someone.
Nothing she’d found gave Liss any answers. The fact that Charlie had been hiding out in his sister’s apartment only raised more questions. Why had he gone to such lengths to avoid being seen? Could he have known someone wanted to kill him?
Liss rounded up the Scotties and took them back downstairs. It was time to call the local police. She’d leave it to Sherri to alert Detective Cussler to her discovery.
Chapter Six
Once the state police arrived to search Margaret’s apartment, Liss closed the Emporium and took the Scotties home. After lunch she left them in Dan’s charge and sought both refuge and enlightenment at Moosetookalook’s public library.
When she reached the top of the wide staircase that ran from the hallway outside the town office to the library entrance, she was unsurprised to find Dolores Mayfield waiting for her. From her effusive greeting, Liss gathered that the librarian had been keeping a close eye on the activity on the far side of the town square. She had an excellent vantage point from the windows behind her desk.
“I take it Charlie MacCrimmon was hiding out at Margaret’s place.” It was a statement, not a question.
“It looks that way.”
They entered together, letting the glass-fronted door swing closed behind them. Although the library was open from noon to six on Tuesdays, Liss was the only patron on the premises.
“Why there?” Dolores asked, but she answered herself before Liss could get a word in. “Margaret was his sister.”
“The real question isn’t why there, but why hide? Why not just come over to the house or into the shop and introduce himself to me?”
“Well, Charlie always was contrary, and he’d been gone a good long while.”
Dolores made a beeline for her accustomed place behind the large desk that dominated the main room of the two that took up almost the entire second floor of the municipal building. She settled into her comfortably cushioned chair, leaving it to Liss to decide whether to stand on the other side or take a seat at one of the long wooden tables. She sat, hoping to look less like a supplicant.
“I gather you knew my uncle back in the day.” Liss’s tone was as dry as the oldest volumes in the stacks.
Dolores stared off into space. “Everybody knew Charlie. A great many tears were shed when word came that he was missing and presumed dead. Female tears, in particular.”
Dolores, Liss recalled, had been in Margaret MacCrimmon’s class in high school, which made her four years younger than Charlie. Had she been one of the weepers? Unsure she wanted to know, she asked another question instead. “Didn’t anyone ever question that report?”
Shifting her gaze back to Liss, Dolores chuckled. “As I recall, there was some speculation that if anyone could outsmart the Viet Cong and escape, it would be Charlie MacCrimmon. He was always a great one for getting into trouble and talking his way out of it.” She sent Liss a narrow-eyed look through the rimless glasses that perched on her long, thin nose. “I suppose you’re here to try to find out where he’s been all these years.”
“That’s the plan.” Plus, pumping Dolores for her memories and the names of any other present-day Moosetookalook residents who knew her uncle as a young man.
“Lucky for you I’ve already made a start.” She tapped a small pile of printouts neatly stacked on top of her desk. “I’ve checked a few of my sources.”
“I’d be interested in your personal recollections, too.” Liss got up to collect the papers and carry them back to the table. It bothered her a little that the nosy librarian had been snooping into something that was really none of her business. On the other hand, Dolores’s efforts had saved her the trouble of doing all the legwork herself.
“I never dated Charlie.”
Dolores’s abrupt disclaimer sounded defensive, instantly putting exactly the opposite image into Liss’s head. She banished it immediately. Bad enough to know as much as she did about her mother’s youthful indiscretions.
The next instant she gave herself a mental slap upside the head. If she was going to discover why her uncle had come back to town, she couldn’t overlook anything that might be a link to his past, especially not old girlfriends.
“I gather he was quite the ladies’ man,” she said aloud.
“Love ’em and leave ’em. That was Charlie. I don’t know why those girls put up with it.”
“Do you remember any of their names?”
“Fallstown girls, mostly.” She said that as if Fallstown was as far away as New York City, instead of a short twenty-minute drive from Moosetookalook.
Liss wondered if Dolores had ever known their names. The four-year age difference meant she’d been about fourteen when Charlie left town.
“I understand my uncle was good friends with Moo—” She stopped herself in time and substituted Moose Mayfield’s real first name. “With Roger.”
“Oh, yes. They got into trouble together on a regular basis when they were teenagers, but there was a distance between them after the accident.”
Liss looked up from the first article in the pile, a piece from a Florida newspaper about private detective agencies in the Miami area. “What accident?”
Dolores settled back in her chair. “It was Charlie’s senior year in high school. It would have been Roger’s, but he was left back. Twice. Anyway, the two of them and some other boys borrowed a car from the Sears parking lot down to Fallstown—”
“Borrowed? You mean stole?”
Dolores made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “Semantics. They’d have brought it back. Unfortunately, the boy who was driving got a little carried away with seeing how fast it would go and ended up slamming them into a tree. He was killed instantly.”
For a moment Liss was bereft of speech. When she could force out a few words, they sounded odd even to her own ears. “And the others?”
“Just minor injuries, but the experience took an emotional toll on the survivors.”
“How so?”
There was a rueful expression on the librarian’s face. “Roger and Charlie reacted very differently to their narrow escape. Roger was real cautious after that. He didn’t want to take any kind of risk.”
When she hesitated, Liss wondered if Moose’s drinking problem had started at around that time. Then again, boys being boys, they’d likely been high on something when they got the bright idea to boost a car in the first place.
“How did Charlie react?” she prompted when Dolores’s silence lengthened.
“Charlie MacCrimmon thought he was invincible. He was in a car crash that could have killed him and all he got out of it were a few scratches. He must have figured his luck would hold, because it was right after that when he enlisted in the army.” She gave a short laugh. “Expected bullets to bounce off him, I guess, like he was Superman or somebody.”
“The boys were what—seventeen?”
“About that.”
“Do you remember the names of the others?”
“After all this time? Hardly!”
Liss wasn’t sure she believed that, but she let the denial stand unchallenged. “Do you think your husband will talk to me about Charlie?”
“About their childhood? Sure. But he doesn’t like to remember being in that wreck.” Dolores jerked her head at the printouts. “Are you going to read those or not?”
&
nbsp; Subject closed, Liss thought. For now.
She resumed her study of the material Dolores had found for her. The librarian’s sources were nearly as wide-ranging as those the police could tap into. In the past they had occasionally been more useful than what had turned up through official channels.
Twenty minutes later, Liss straightened the pages and stood. Despite Dolores’s diligence there was a huge gap in the time line. After reports of his disappearance during the war, Uncle Charlie’s name didn’t resurface until he set up as a private investigator in Florida. What he’d been up to during the thirty-plus years in between remained a mystery.
“You’ll probably find more references to your uncle in the microfilm of the Carrabassett County Clarion,” Dolores said from her perch behind the desk. “If nothing else, he’ll have been mentioned in the write-ups of Fallstown football games. He was the star quarterback his senior year. There’s likely to be a photo or two as well.”
Liss made a face, remembering what a long, slow process it was to use a microfilm reader to find things in old newspapers. Even though she knew what year Charlie graduated from high school, she’d have to scroll through every issue. Only the possibility she might also find an account of the accident Dolores had mentioned persuaded her to seek out the secluded corner of the library, hidden behind a row of tall bookshelves, where the microforms and readers were kept.
The Clarion had been published biweekly in Fallstown since 1883 and covered local news for that town, Moosetookalook, Waycross Springs, Wade’s Corners, and several other smaller communities in Carrabassett County. It didn’t take Liss long to find what she was looking for, since no issue was longer than eight pages.
Black-and-white photos illustrated a news story that carried the headline FALLSTOWN BOY KILLED IN DRUNK-DRIVING ACCIDENT. One shot showed the car after it had come into violent contact with a tree. Another, captioned as “The Joy Spot,” pictured a ramshackle building on a dismal-looking side street.
A View to a Kilt Page 8