“Patience, sweetheart.”
Even over the phone she could hear that he was chewing gum. When Murch didn’t say anything else right away, Liss envisioned him blowing a giant pink bubble. The image made her smile in spite of her frustration at the dearth of information.
“Just do your best,” she said. “We have less than a week.”
A resounding pop confirmed Liss’s suspicion about the bubble gum. “Okeydokey,” Murch said. “I’ve got a couple more things to check out on Udall and Forestall. Then I’ll dig up what I can on those new names. I’ll get back to you later today.”
“Okeydokey,” Liss echoed, hoping some of his optimism would rub off on her.
She’d realized early on in her acquaintance with Jake Murch that he was a chameleon. He displayed characteristics of certain detectives from classic TV shows and movies, at times reminding her of Magnum, PI, and at other times of Columbo. On one memorable occasion she’d even seen a strong resemblance to Indiana Jones . . . if Indiana Jones had been wearing a kilt.
* * *
Liss’s day continued much as it had begun. Every store owner on the square seemed to have a last-minute problem only she could solve. In midafternoon Vi added her two cents to the confusion.
“Organizing these people is like herding cats,” she complained. “One of them even expected me to price things for her. I’m coordinating the yard sale, not serving as general dogsbody.”
“Stick to your guns, Mom. You never have any difficulty doing that when you and I are at odds.”
For a wonder Vi let that snarky comment pass. She was still focused on her own grievances. “It’s not as if there aren’t more important things going on.”
Uh-oh, Liss thought.
“I should be spending my time helping you look for that Clementine person. Margaret told me what she said at the funeral. She has to know something about Charlie’s murder, don’t you think? Maybe she’s the one who killed him.”
“Why would she, even if she could? Never mind the question of why she’d do it in my backyard!”
“Well, I’ve been asking around among some of the women I knew when I was a girl. Those who had an ear to the ground back in the day.”
“Gossips, in other words.”
“No smoke without fire.” Vi, who had been pacing the length of the stockroom and back, stopped in midstride to whirl around and glare at her daughter. “Do you want to know what I found out or not?”
“Yes, Mother. Of course I do.” She resumed packing online orders, reminding herself to take whatever Vi had learned with the proverbial grain of salt and possibly even an entire shaker full.
“Clementine Hillerman appears to have enjoyed a vivid fantasy life when she was younger. No one’s seen her or heard anything about her for years, so all this dates back to when Charlie was reported MIA and then later, when the MacCrimmons held a memorial service for him. I was only sixteen the year he went missing and your father and I weren’t married yet when Charlie was declared dead, so I wasn’t aware of what was happening at the time.” She sounded put out by that fact.
“Mom—Clementine?”
“Oh, yes. Well, she had a crush on your uncle in high school and was convinced he was in love with her, even though, as far as I’ve been able to find out, he barely knew she was alive. After he was reported missing in action, she told people he’d gotten her pregnant and that he would have married her if he hadn’t been sent to Vietnam.”
“Was she pregnant?”
“Only in her own mind. Her parents did their best to keep her from talking such nonsense, but she made a spectacle of herself at Charlie’s funeral—the first one. She apparently saw herself in the role of Charlie’s grieving widow. She certainly dressed the part, but she never approached the MacCrimmons directly. They had no idea she was so delusional.”
Liss added the last package to the pile waiting to go to the post office and thought about what her mother had just revealed. Local eccentrics were fixtures of small-town rural life, even more so all those years ago than in the present day. Such people were tolerated and, for the most part, ignored, much in the same way city dwellers look right past homeless people panhandling on street corners.
“You need to track Clementine down and talk to her,” Vi said.
“Murch is working on it.”
As if on cue, the phone rang. Liss answered, listened, and began jotting down notes on a lined yellow pad. Murch had learned a good deal in the course of one day’s investigation.
“Well?” Vi demanded as soon as Liss broke the connection.
“William Twining lives with his son in California, suffers from Alzheimer’s, and is confined to a wheelchair. Peter Cramer, also known as Greaser, was living in Miami until he died about a month ago. The relatives Murch talked to didn’t recognize the name Charlie MacCrimmon, so it’s unlikely either of his old pals knew he was still alive. Clementine Hillerman definitely didn’t know, not until she saw a news story about his murder.”
“So she says.”
“No, so her caregiver says. The caregiver—her keeper, if you will—was the nondescript woman who accompanied her to the funeral. Because of Clementine’s skewed perception of reality, she resides in a private-care facility. She’s been there for over a decade. I gather her family can afford to keep her confined.”
Vi frowned. “What else did this caregiver say?”
“It seems that when Clementine found out Charlie didn’t really die in Vietnam, she went back and forth between seeing herself as a grieving widow and being furious at him for deserting her. I guess that would account for her calling him a ‘faithless bastard.’ ”
“It would also give her a motive to—”
“Sorry, Mom. On the night Uncle Charlie was bashed over the head with that tree branch, Clementine Hillerman was a good forty-minute drive away from Moosetookalook—and under lock and key, besides.”
Chapter Thirteen
Liss was exhausted by the time she got home that evening, but she perked up at the sight of Dan taking his famous noodle casserole out of the oven. It was his recipe, loaded with tomato sauce, ground sausage, onions, and green peppers and topped with both cheese and croutons. It was delicious, as only something so full of calories can be, and the leftovers could be frozen for future meals.
Best of all from Liss’s point of view, she wouldn’t have to decide what to have for supper and then cook it. More good news followed. Glenora was markedly better. She had stopped sneezing and wheezing, at least in the presence of humans, and she was eating, as Dan’s father would have put it, “like a P-I-G hog.”
“I’m beginning to think that having the two Scotties gone has made as much difference as getting those pills down her,” Liss said when she’d polished off the last of her serving of the casserole.
“You may be right, but Audrey said to give them to her for fourteen days. I think we’d better follow vet’s orders.”
“Fun. Fun.” But she smiled as she said it. “Now, if we could just get a break in the investigation, I’d be a happy camper.”
Dan stopped eating long enough to fix her with a quelling glare. “If you’re talking about your uncle’s murder, that investigation isn’t your responsibility.”
“Maybe I meant the water fraud.”
He snorted. “Did you?”
“Well, no, but I could have. And I still think they’re connected. I just hope someone—Murch or Cussler, I don’t particularly care which one—can prove it.”
A short time later, they stood, side by side, at the kitchen sink, one to wash and the other to dry the mountain of pots and pans Dan had used to make his specialty. When the phone rang, Liss answered, expecting she’d once again hear Jake Murch’s gravelly voice on the other end of the line.
Instead, it was Margaret, and she sounded as if she could barely contain her excitement. “You need to come over here right away.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“I’ve found something only Cha
rlie could have left behind in my apartment.”
* * *
Margaret was beaming when she opened the door. Liss waded past the excited Scotties into the living room, with Dan following close behind.
“Well? What did you find? And where?”
According to Sherri, the state police had gone over the apartment with a fine-tooth comb, taking away anything that might have belonged to their murder victim. She’d had a look around herself after the cleaning crew finished, but she hadn’t thought to check for loose floorboards, secret panels, or the like.
“He hid it in my underwear drawer.” Margaret’s grin widened at Liss’s start of surprise.
“Hid what?” Dan asked.
Reaching into the pocket of the loose cardigan sweater she wore, Margaret produced a small black flash drive. “This.”
Liss stared at it. “But Charlie didn’t have a computer.”
“Apparently, he did. Who else could have stashed this under my unmentionables?”
“There was no sign of a PC or a laptop at his place in Florida, and the police didn’t find one here. I was sure we were looking for paper files.”
“Everybody has a computer these days, Liss, even us old fogeys.” Margaret had taken her own laptop along on her genealogy jaunt.
“If Charlie had a laptop,” Dan said, “he probably brought it with him to Maine. That’s why it wasn’t in Florida for you to find.”
“That means his murderer let himself into this apartment and stole it.” Liss’s blood chilled at the thought. She’d previously considered the possibility of a break-in, only she’d assumed it had been a manila folder full of evidence that had been taken. It looked as if the thief had gotten only part of what he’d been after.
“Have you looked at what’s on the flash drive?” Dan asked.
“I was afraid I might mess something up if I tried to read it. That’s why I called you.”
“You need to turn it over to the police,” Dan said.
“Not before we make a copy.” Liss held out a hand and Margaret dropped the flash drive into it. “This must be where he stored the research he did on Merveilleuse International. We can’t risk losing access to that information.”
With Forestall’s one-week deadline looming over the town, she didn’t get any argument. They needed proof of the water company’s bad faith or the selectmen might still agree to the deal Thea had negotiated.
Margaret’s laptop was on the kitchen island. To Liss’s surprise, Charlie’s files weren’t encrypted or password protected and the folder labeled MERVEILLEUSE INTERNATIONAL was easy to find. She didn’t take the time to read what was in it. She copied everything onto Margaret’s computer first, then removed Charlie’s flash drive from the USB port, inserted the blank one she’d had Dan fetch from the Emporium, and made a backup.
That done, Liss selected a document at random. “It’s some sort of report, but I don’t have the expertise to interpret it.”
A glance at Dan and Margaret told her they were equally clueless. Margaret perched on a stool pulled close to Liss’s so she could see the screen. Dan stood just behind her, looking over her shoulder.
“Try another file,” he suggested.
She did, but with no better results. By the third, her eyes had already begun to glaze over with the effort of trying to interpret highly technical jargon. “I give up. Murch has already been in touch with a water expert. We need to shoot copies of these files to him.”
“And the original,” Dan reminded her, “has to go to Cussler. If your theory is right, Charlie was killed in an attempt to keep what’s on this flash drive from being made public.”
* * *
Within an hour of Margaret’s phone call, the state police detective arrived at her apartment. Throughout Margaret’s explanation of how she’d come to find the flash drive, Cussler regarded all three of them with intense suspicion. She looked even more skeptical when Liss told her why she believed Charlie had hidden it.
“He was afraid someone might try to stop him from revealing the truth about Merveilleuse International,” Liss insisted. “You’ve read the memo I found in his house in Florida. I’m certain these files contain proof of the claims he made.”
Stone-faced, Cussler turned the flash drive over to the state trooper who’d come with her, ordering him to take it to someone who could make sense out of the files. “Put a rush on it,” she added.
As soon as he’d gone, she pulled out a small recorder and suggested that Liss fill her in on the whole story of Moosetookalook and Merveilleuse International, starting at the beginning. Liss agreed, but she had to bite her tongue to keep from asking why the detective hadn’t already followed up on Charlie’s memo.
Margaret, in what for her was a significant concession, made coffee. Once the four of them were seated around the kitchen island with the steaming mugs in front of them, Liss sketched in the background of the controversy and added her conclusions. Dan and Margaret chimed in to keep her from overlooking any pertinent details while the Scotties, who had been remarkably quiet since Cussler’s arrival, listened attentively.
Liss wished she’d had time to decipher the evidence Charlie had collected. Without concrete facts her claim that someone associated with an international conglomerate had murdered her uncle was only a theory—one that sounded a trifle far-fetched even to her. She half expected the state police detective to dismiss the idea out of hand. Instead, Cussler looked thoughtful.
“So,” she said after a moment, “according to you, the most likely people to have killed your uncle are this Jeremiah Forestall, his employee, Wade Udall, or Thea Campbell, a member of your board of selectmen.”
Thea hadn’t been high on Liss’s list, but now that Cussler had included her as a suspect, she realized that Thea was extraordinarily committed to making the deal a reality. Was it possible she had killed her old boyfriend, not because of anything that happened years ago, but because he stood in the way of a lucrative business deal?
The detective turned off the recorder and hopped down from her stool. “I’ll take this new information into consideration. In the meantime, do yourself and me a favor and steer clear of my investigation.”
“Do I look like I have a death wish?” Liss intended to stay far away from both Forestall and Udall.
Already on her way out, Cussler didn’t bother to answer. She stopped only when her exit from Margaret’s kitchen was blocked by Dandy and Dondi. The Scotties sat in the doorway, tongues lolling, gazing up at the detective with identical expressions of interest.
To Liss’s surprise, a faint smile kicked up the corners of Cussler’s mouth. She unbent enough to reach down and ruffle the fur on each dog’s head before gently moving them out of her way.
* * *
Murch phoned early the next morning to report that the files on Charlie’s flash drive appeared to verify all the claims he’d made in his memo. He promised a full report as soon as possible, but that initial confirmation was enough to convince Liss that she needed to talk to Thea again.
She hesitated only briefly when she remembered that Thea might have killed Charlie. She had considered and rejected that idea once before and now did so again. Thea might have been hot-tempered in her youth, but not now. Liss simply couldn’t imagine her launching a physical attack, not on Charlie and not on her.
She called the town office first, where Francine Noyes, who had been town clerk since the Jurassic Age, informed her that the selectwoman had not yet come in. “I don’t expect her until this afternoon.”
“Is she at home?”
“As far as I know.” Although unspoken, the clerk’s tone of voice seemed to ask, “Where else would she be?”
“I’ll catch her there, then.” Liss disconnected before Francine could pry into her reason for wanting to meet with Thea.
It was but a short walk to her destination. Thea’s home was located only a block and a half down Main Street from the center of the village. Not too far beyond her house, the m
ain road to Fallstown veered left toward Ernie Willett’s combination gas station and convenience store, while a second street, Spruce Avenue, climbed sharply upward to the right to lead to The Spruces.
The Campbell house and its semidetached garage were set back from the road. The entire lot was surrounded by a hedge and given even more privacy by several large trees growing on the spacious front lawn. The structure dated from the same period as most of the buildings around the town square, having been erected late in the nineteenth or early in the twentieth century. Like Liss and Dan’s house, it featured large, double-hung windows and white clapboard siding. Only the bright blue roof was obviously from a later time. Several years earlier, Thea had replaced old-fashioned shingles with metal.
Liss’s steps slowed as she followed the gently curving driveway that led from the street to the house. She’d never been inside, which seemed odd to her, now that she thought about it. Pete Campbell was only a couple of years her senior. As a teenager he’d been into football and other team sports, but he’d also participated in athletic events at various Highland games—the same ones where she’d usually won Scottish dance competitions. Despite having their heritage in common, it hadn’t been until her return to Moosetookalook that they’d socialized. He’d moved out of his mother’s house long before that.
As for Thea, she’d already been a member of the board of selectmen by the time Liss came home to stay, but Thea kept her public and private lives completely separate. Liss had never heard of her entertaining constituents in her home. She wasn’t likely to be pleased to find Liss on her doorstep.
Too bad, Liss thought. If there was even the slightest chance that Thea could influence the other board members to give in before the deadline Merveilleuse International had set, she needed to be shown the evidence Charlie had collected. Squaring her shoulders, Liss mounted the three steps leading up to the porch and rang the doorbell.
The folds of the white curtain covering the glass panel in the front door were eased aside far enough for Thea to see out. From where Liss was standing, only one of Thea’s eyes was visible. It glared at her before the curtain fell back into place.
A View to a Kilt Page 19