Kilt Dead (Liss Maccrimmon Mystery)

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  “The worm is about to turn?”

  “Exactly.”

  Sherri thought it over while she finished her tea. “Okay. I’m on the day-shift tomorrow. I’ll stop at home to check on Adam, then come straight here”

  Dan was furious. By the time he got home there were no fewer than six messages on his machine about Liss’s accident. None of them were from her.

  “You could have called me!” he shouted when she opened her door.

  “How? My cell phone is at the bottom of the river.”

  “Jesus!” He wanted to grab her and hold on and held back only because he knew she had to be bruised and hurting. Her face was puffy, in spite of the application of ice-she held the bag in one hand and looked as if she were contemplating smacking him upside the head with it.

  Sitting her down on the sofa in Margaret’s apartment, he listened in growing horror as she briefed him on what had happened. An accident? Coming on top of the breakin, he had to wonder. But whatever had caused her car to plunge into the river, he’d almost lost her. The thought chilled him to the bone.

  “Sherri left just a couple of minutes before you got here” Liss’s voice was absurdly calm, as if she’d been talking about someone other than herself. “I haven’t had a chance to feed Lumpkin yet”

  “Let him live on his fat for one night.”

  “Dan!”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll come with you”

  He took care of the cat-minding chores himself. By the time he finished, she’d left the kitchen for the library. He expected to find her scouring the shelves for something to read, but instead she was flipping through the business-card holder on the desk. She looked up when he came in. “I’m curious to see if Graye’s card is here. He claims he never met Mrs. Norris. All I’ve seen so far are cards for the doctor, the dentist, the vet, the florist, and the Chinese restaurant”

  As he watched, she turned over cards for a hairdresser; a copy center; the animal emergency clinic in Three Cities; Fallstown Hearing Services; an eye doctor; a bank; an orthopedist; and one that showed an old fashioned inkwell and read “Will Shakespeare, freelance writer.”

  Liss put the cardholder back where she’d found it and opened the desk drawer. “If the police didn’t take anything besides the computer and printouts, then logically that means they left everything else.” She shifted a checkbook register and an address book and there, stuffed beneath the latter, found what she’d been looking for.

  The card bore the logo of Graye Real Estate, but the name embossed beneath was not Jason Graye. It was Barbara Zathros. “So, maybe he wasn’t lying. Maybe it was Barbara who dealt with Mrs. Norris. Guess I’ll have to ask her.”

  “You’re not going anywhere near her.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Are you crazy, Liss? Stay away from these people. Let the cops-“

  “We’ve been through all that. The cops think I did it. I don’t have any choice but to keep poking around on my own. I’ll be careful.”

  “Damn it, Liss. You have no idea what careful is.”

  One look at her expression had him mentally kicking himself. The only thing he’d accomplished by yelling at her was to make her dig in her heels.

  “Look, I know I can’t stop you from doing what you think you need to do. But can you at least wait until I can go with you?” There’d been more trouble at the work site. It had begun to look as if that employee his father had fired for theft had been up to more than petty pilfering.

  “You have obligations of your own,” Liss said in a practical tone of voice. “Besides, Sherri can back me up “”

  The blind leading the blind! “I’m tied up till late again tomorrow, but-“

  “Dan, it will be all right. I’m not some Gothic heroine racing out in my nightgown to confront-” She broke off, a wry twist of the lips acknowledging that she’d already done just that. “Well, I won’t do it again! Really”

  He wished he could believe her, but Liss MacCrimmon had never been known for her patience.

  Stiff and sore as she was, Liss opened the Emporium on time the next day. Better to stay active, she told herself, but she spent most of her time on the phone trying to cancel and/or replace what had been in her purse and dealing with her insurance company. Her car was still at the bottom of the river. There weren’t that many divers in the area and the one who usually handled retrieval of drowned vehicles was out of commission with a broken wrist.

  One by one, she ticked off driver’s license, health insurance card, and various credit cards. She’d have to get a new cell phone, too, but she could leave that for the moment. Dan had loaned her one of the extras Ruskin Construction kept on hand for workers to use.

  She spent a little time online as well, exploring what might have gone wrong with her car. She found an explanation-or at least a clue where to look for one. Apparently the throttle could stick if something went wrong with one of the engine hoses. The website did not tell her just what that something might be, but since it had obviously happened to other people, that meant it was a fluke, not sabotage.

  Good, she thought. She hadn’t liked Sherri’s suggestion that her car might have been tampered with.

  Her friend had just been upset. She’d let her imagination run away with her.

  A wry smile tugged at the corners of Liss’s mouth. It wasn’t as if she’d lost her brakes. Wouldn’t that have been a cliche? Out of curiosity, she spent a bit more time researching potential car problems online. It reassured her to discover that cutting a brake line was nowhere near as simple a process as murder mysteries made it seem.

  In early evening, after the shop was closed, Liss and Sherri headed for Mrs. Biggs’s house. The previous day’s cool, pleasant temperature was a thing of the past. They were both dripping with sweat by the time they’d walked the short distance from the Emporium. They spotted Barbara while they were still half a block away. She had changed into shorts and a halter top after getting home from work and was sitting on the glider in the side yard, sipping a tall glass of lemonade the picture of the exhausted working girl after a hard day.

  “Do you think LaVerdiere questioned her about my accident?” Liss asked.

  “Doubt it. I heard he was in Augusta all day today.”

  Two Adirondack chairs flanked Barbara’s glider. Liss and Sherri slid into them before their quarry was even aware of their presence.

  “What the hell-?”

  “Hello, Barbara. It appears we’re neighbors,” Liss said.

  “So?” She gave Liss’s all-too-obvious bruises a sharp look but did not comment on them.

  “Call this a neighborly visit. I’ve been talking to quite a few folks who live near the Emporium, trying to jog memories about the day Mrs. Norris was killed.”

  “A: I live a little far away to have seen anything. B: you already asked me about this. I told you all I know, which is nothing.”

  Liss glanced sideways, across Maple Avenue. Beyond the pretty little Cape Cod with dormers she could clearly see the back of Mrs. Norris’s house.

  “Besides, I wasn’t here when she was killed.”

  “Forgot for a minute, didn’t you? Let’s drop the pretense, Barbara. I know you weren’t with your boss. What did he do? Drop you here as soon as he realized he couldn’t get into the Emporium? Oh, no-I forgot. You got a scarf out of the deal first, didn’t you?”

  “What are you implying?”

  “I’m asking if you want to change your story. Maybe you saw something Graye didn’t or maybe you know that Jason Graye went back to the Emporium later, on his own”

  “You were seen, you know,” Sherri said.

  Both Liss and Barbara turned to her in surprise.

  Sherri nodded earnestly but Liss was pretty sure she was lying through her teeth. “Your neighbor over there”she gestured toward the Cape Cod-“saw him drop you off.”

  “Okay. Fine. Jase brought me straight home after the stop at the vintage clothing place. I have no idea what he did during
the rest of that afternoon and evening. Or that night. But he wasn’t with me. And I was right here, minding my own business the whole time.”

  Well, that hit a nerve, Liss thought. Barbara looked like she might bolt if she had to answer any more questions.

  “Are you afraid of him?” Sherri asked.

  Barbara’s look of surprise was answer enough. “What?

  You think he beats me or something? He’s inconsiderate and rude, that’s all.”

  “Why do you put up with that kind of behavior?” If he’d been her boss, Liss would have walked out the first time he shouted at her. He’d never have gotten as far as boyfriend status.

  Barbara shrugged. “The money’s good. You don’t see many starving Realtors around, do you?”

  “I understand Graye put a bid in on the hotel,” Liss began.

  Barbara abruptly stood. “That’s none of your business. I’ll thank you to leave now.”

  “Hey, we’re just two gals out for a stroll.” Neither Sherri nor Liss made any move to rise.

  When a glare didn’t unseat them either, Barbara stalked off toward the outside stairs that led to her apartment. Liss stayed put a moment longer, wondering what to do next. Graye had lied, but that didn’t mean he’d killed Mrs. Norris.

  “Psssst! Over here!”

  Startled, Liss turned toward the voice. She hadn’t realized how close the chairs and glider were to the side of Mrs. Biggs’s house, or that the kitchen window had been open. Mrs. Biggs herself stood just on the other side of the screen, beckoning to them.

  A few minutes later they were inside, seated at yet another kitchen table, tall glasses of lemonade of their own in front of them.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing,” Mrs. Biggs said, after she’d tut-tutted over the visible reminders of Liss’s accident-she’d heard all about it at Angie’s Books.

  “We didn’t mean to disturb you, Mrs. Biggs,” Liss apologized.

  “Call me Hermione, dear. And you didn’t disturb me one bit. But my tenant’s lies, well, that’s another thing.”

  Liss and Sherri exchanged a look.

  “She went back out that day, after Jason Graye dropped her off. And she was heading toward the Emporium when she left here”

  “Perhaps she had to pick up groceries,” Liss suggested, playing devil’s advocate.

  “Store’s in the other direction. Besides, I thought at the time that her movements were, well, furtive. She kept looking over her shoulder, like she was afraid of being seen”

  “Do you know much about her?” Sherri asked.

  “She keeps to herself.” Disappointment tinged the admission. “She was from New York originally. Came up here to college and stayed. She’s only been upstairs for the last six months” She gave a disdainful sniff. “I think she moved here to be closer to her boss. They car-pool, you know. If you ask me, since he didn’t ask her to move in with him, it would have made more sense to live in Fallstown, near the office”

  Hermione Biggs had been friends with Mrs. Norris, Liss remembered. Apparently she’d taken a similar interest in her neighbors’ doings, but she had only speculation to offer about Barbara Zathros. The woman had done a good job of avoiding her landlady’s nosy questions.

  They had polished off the lemonade, thanked Hermione for her help, and started to leave when Liss remembered something Hermione had said at the memorial service. “You were close to Mrs. Norris, weren’t you?”

  “I was. I miss her something awful.” She smiled. “She did the right thing leaving everything to you, dear. You’re a good girl.”

  “I … it was a surprise.”

  “Well, of course it was. She’d never have told you. Someone more deserving might have come along before she passed”

  “Yes, well … I was wondering … I found a looseleaf binder in the house. Blue. It seems to be filled with odd notations about fictional characters”

  “Oh, that would be the ideas file for her fanfic group.” At Liss’s blank look, she explained. “It’s one of those online e-groups. FarFetchedFanFic. As a hobby, the members come up with their own stories about favorite mystery characters. They especially like to cross-pollinate. You know take one character from one series and put him or her together with the sleuth from a different set of mystery novels. Oh, I know it isn’t strictly legal. The rights to use those characters belong to the authors. Amanda felt a little guilty about that. But she said it was just so much fun to speculate!”

  Liss was still shaking her head when she and Sherri arrived back at the Emporium. “Well, that’s one mystery solved. We had it backwards. It wasn’t gossip about the locals disguised with character names. The scandal was about characters, using bits and pieces of real life.”

  “Well, why not?” Sherri asked. “I mean, why not take a few ideas from all the gossip she heard? It would have been obvious all along if we’d seen the record of posts she sent to the fanfic group and the printouts the state police took away.”

  “No wonder the forensics guys knew blackmail wasn’t the motive for her murder. And why LaVerdiere looked foolish for thinking it was. So what now? Barbara still didn’t tell us the truth, even if she did ruin Graye’s alibi.”

  “Much as I hate to say it, you have to call the cops. Tell LaVerdiere what you just found out and let him take it from there”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m dead serious. In fact, if you don’t tell him what you discovered, you could be accused of withholding information.”

  Grumbling all the while, Liss reluctantly had to agree that Sherri was right. “Way back when all this started, LaVerdiere gave me a number to use in case I wanted to change my story” She dug it out and reached for the phone.

  Five minutes later, after filling the detective in on what she’d learned and what she suspected, Liss slammed the receiver down in disgust.

  “What happened?” Sherri asked.

  “He said he’d wasted enough time listening to amateur theories and hung up on me “”

  ChapteR Twenty

  fter Sherri headed home for an early night, since she was now on the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift, Liss fed the cat, fixed herself some supper, and fumed. She’d have gone over to Dan’s and shared her troubles with him, but he wasn’t home yet.

  LaVerdiere’s attitude infuriated her. It wasn’t as if there weren’t grounds to investigate Jason Graye further. Barbara, too.

  Impatience had always been her worst failing. As the evening wore on, she gave up trying to convince herself to wait for the police to get a clue. If she wanted to clear her own name, and to have this mess resolved before Aunt Margaret got back from Scotland, then it was up to her to take action. The approach Sherri had used with Barbara earlier pretending she knew more than she did had worked once. Why not again?

  Liss made the trip back to Mrs. Biggs’s house at the fastest trot she could manage with muscles still stiff and sore from the air bag and seatbelt bruises. The lights were on downstairs, reassuring her that a good scream would bring help if Barbara took exception to her questions. Liss rapped firmly on the door to the second-floor apartment and pushed her way in the instant it opened.

  “What do you want?” Barbara demanded.

  “The truth. For a change” Barbara started to protest, but Liss cut her off. “Here’s the thing I’m sure it was an accident. If you’ll just turn yourself in, you won’t be charged with murder.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Not at all. I understand exactly how it happened. You wanted to get in to look around the building for structural flaws. Not exactly an honorable reason, but we’ll let that pass. You knew a key was kept above the back door. Mrs. Biggs probably mentioned it. She saw you leave here again after Graye dropped you off, by the way. So you let yourself in and started snooping around and Mrs. Norris caught you at it. You’d been after her to sell her house, so I don’t imagine she was willing to listen to any feeble excuses. Did she threaten to call the cops?”

  “You’re wron
g. I never “

  “She was a teacher for years, you know. She had that disciplinarian thing down pat. Didn’t need to use it often, but when she gave you that look and pointed her finger at you, you knew you were in trouble.”

  “This is ridiculous. I never went inside.”

  “But you planned to “

  Barbara didn’t have enough chutzpah to brazen it out. “Alright. I admit I did return to the shop, and I did know about the key, but I went away again when I realized there was someone inside already.”

  “Who?”

  “I … I don’t know. I just saw a shadow moving in front of a window.”

  “Guess”

  “It could have been anybody.”

  Liss held her breath.

  “It could have been Jase. At the time I thought it was. I didn’t try the door because I didn’t want to talk to him. We’d quarreled earlier. He said I wasn’t doing much lately to earn my keep. Jerk. I put on one of my best per formances over that damned kilt.” She gave a humorless laugh when she saw Liss’s expression. “You didn’t guess. Damn I’m good. It was all an act. Jase wanted to get a look at the building, just as you said. He thought he could con you into lending him the key. He didn’t know about the one over the door.”

  “And you didn’t tell him?”

  “I would have if he hadn’t been so snarky. Then I thought, why don’t I take a look around for myself. If I found something we could use to convince your aunt to sell cheap, he’d give me credit for it. I’ve got to say that much for him-he’s fair with commissions.”

  “Did he kill Mrs. Norris?”

  “How would I know?”

  Barbara’s perfume, Liss thought, wasn’t the only thing about her that stank to high heaven. “You must have suspicions. He claimed he was with you, as if he needed an alibi.”

  She shrugged. “Could have been something else he didn’t want people to know about. Maybe out at the ho-” She bit off the word, then shrugged. “Oh, hell, I’ve said this much. If he killed that old woman it won’t make much difference anyway. He’d been talking about doing a little sabotage out at The Spruces. Helping Joe Ruskin along toward failure so he could step in and scoop up the pieces. I don’t know if he did anything or not, but he did talk to some guy Joe’d fired”