Ho-Ho-Homicide (A Liss MacCrimmon Mystery Book 8)

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  “I take it we’re staying another night,” Liss said.

  “I figured you three would outvote me,” Dan said, “so I conceded the election.”

  “And I started making supper before he could change his mind,” Pete remarked, winking at Liss as he said it.

  She couldn’t help but smile. “Hang on to this one,” she told Sherri. “He’s one in a million.”

  “Oh, I know, and I intend to. He cooks. He cleans. And, back when Amber was a baby, he even changed diapers.”

  Dan gave a theatrical shudder. “Stop making the rest of us look bad,” he told Pete. “Real men are supposed to turn green at the first whiff of baby poop.”

  Liss was turned away from him, hanging up her coat, but she swore she could feel Dan’s eyes boring into her. She knew she should turn and smile and make some snappy comeback, but the subject hit a little too close to home. Instead, she took the coward’s way out and fled, mumbling something vague about needing to phone Gina again and using the phone in Simeon Snowe’s office.

  “Any joy from Gina?” Sherri came into the office, bearing a plate of cheese and crackers. “There’s wine in the kitchen if you want.”

  Liss shook her head. She closed the e-mail program and shoved the wheeled chair away from the computer. The monitor reflected her face, disgruntled look and all.

  “No joy or no wine?”

  “No to both. Gina didn’t answer her phone, so I sent her an e-mail. I told her we were going to take things a day at a time.” She snagged a slice of sharp cheddar and looked up in time to catch Sherri’s expression. “Do you still think she’s up to no good?”

  “I know it’s petty of me, but I’d love to see Gina get her comeuppance one of these days.” She held up a hand before Liss could say anything in the other woman’s defense. “I know. Get over it. Pete tells me the same thing.” With a sigh, she plopped down into the only other chair in the room, an ugly green leather monstrosity patched with silver duct tape, and set the plate on the small table next to it.

  “I did catch Zara at home. I asked her if she knows Juliette Cressy. She doesn’t. She’s never even heard of her or her dance studio, but she said that isn’t really surprising. Dance instructors don’t exactly have a union.” Liss wheeled herself closer to the food.

  “No social networking?”

  “If they do, Zara didn’t mention it. Then again, she doesn’t spend much time online. The computer she uses for bookkeeping isn’t even hooked up to a modem. She says she doesn’t need a high-speed Internet connection, especially not at the monthly fee our one and only local cable company charges.”

  “You’ve been in here awhile,” Sherri remarked as she selected a cracker and topped it with a thin slice of cheese. “What else have you been up to?”

  “Know me that well, do you?”

  “Yup. So give.”

  “I called Andy. She heard about the fire. Well, she could hardly help it. The fire trucks had to go right past her house, sirens blaring. If it had been daylight, she’d have been able to see the smoke from there.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t show up here first thing this morning to check out the damage.”

  “Her mother threw a hissy fit when she tried to leave the house.”

  “Mrs. Dutton must have loved it when the fire marshal stopped by.”

  Liss didn’t bother concealing her grin. “Andy said that she insisted on sitting in on the interview.”

  “As if she was afraid he might arrest her baby girl?”

  “Who knows? Anyway, Andy told him that there were no accelerants stored on the property, and she says he seemed satisfied with that. She also told me something else you may find interesting. No one ever showed her a picture of our John Doe. So that’s what I’ve been doing the last little while—trying to find one online.” After all, it had all started with him.

  Sherri didn’t comment at once, since she had her mouth full. After she’d swallowed, she held out a hand. “Pass me my laptop.” She’d left it on the desk, next to the computer monitor.

  Liss nibbled and waited, glad Sherri had resources beyond Google and Bing. A few minutes later, her friend turned the screen around so Liss could see what she’d found.

  “There you go. John Doe himself.”

  “Ugh.” The photograph showed a man’s face, eyes closed. He looked very dead.

  “This was probably in the local paper. I’m surprised Andy didn’t see it there.”

  “Her mother must have censored it. Andy was still a teenager at the time.”

  “Did the police question her at all?”

  “I asked her that. Mike Jennings talked to her, but he didn’t tell her anything except that Snowe was missing. He didn’t say a word about John Doe. She picked that up at school.”

  Sherri sighed. “Pete says Mike is a nice guy, but there’s such a thing as being too considerate of someone’s sensibilities. If John Doe spent any time at all at the tree farm before he was murdered, Andy would have been the most likely person to have seen him.”

  Liss overcame her initial revulsion and studied the photo. The face was long and thin, with a blade of a nose and a scar on one side of a high forehead. The lips were thin and looked cruel—but perhaps that was her imagination working overtime again.

  “Quite a piece of work, isn’t he?” Sherri asked.

  “I can’t believe no one recognized him. He ought to have stood out in a crowd.” She relinquished the laptop. “A pity you can’t see his eyes. What is it they say? The eyes are the mirror of the soul?”

  With intense concentration, Sherri began to type. “There’s one more thing I can try. My contact in New York may be a little more forthcoming if I tell him about the fire.”

  Both women jumped when Pete entered the room through the door behind them.

  “Chow’s ready,” he announced. “You two want to eat or what?”

  After supper, Sherri returned to Snowe’s office alone. As she’d hoped, she had a reply to her e-mail, one that contained an attachment. She opened it to find an artist’s sketch of John Doe. The eyes Liss had been curious about were small and set too close together.

  He was the victim, she reminded herself. He couldn’t help the way he looked. But every feature screamed “Villain” at her.

  The e-mail itself also contained a description—height and weight and coloring. As Liss had suspected, he had been a small man, only five-foot-seven and 140 pounds.

  It occurred to Sherri that she ought to take a look at a netter for herself. A glance at the clock on the wall told her it was late, but not all that late. If Liss asked Andy Dutton to join them in the Quonset hut, she could explain how netters worked and take a good, hard look at the two likenesses of John Doe while she was at it.

  A half hour later, Sherri, Liss, and Andy stood in front of the two remaining netters.

  “Mr. Snowe had three of these out into the field during the harvest,” Andy said. “We stacked the netted trees on pallets until they could be picked up.”

  Sherri gave the handle of one of the netters an experimental turn. It looked easy enough to operate. There was even a hook to help haul the tree—or the body—into the net. She reached into the pocket of her coat to retrieve the printouts she’d made of the photograph and the sketch. Unfolding both, she handed them over to Andy. “Have you ever seen this man before?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Sherri asked.

  “He’s the man in the netter,” Liss said.

  “The police should have shown you these pictures seven years ago,” Sherri said.

  Andy gave a rueful laugh. “My mom would have had kittens. Bad enough she had to let them ask me about Mr. Snowe. She didn’t even want me to hear about the guy who got gunned down and put through the netter.”

  Sherri stared at her. “Gunned down? What are you talking about?”

  “You know, shot.” Andy put her index finger to her temple and mimed firing a pistol.

/>   “John Doe didn’t die from a gunshot wound.”

  “Yeah, he did,” Andy insisted. “That’s what everybody at school said.”

  “Well, everybody got it wrong. No gun. No bullet wound.”

  Liss had an odd expression on her face. The light fixture in the Quonset hut gave it a greenish cast. “Do I want to know what did kill him?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Well, I do,” Andy said.

  Sherri’s hesitation only made her more determined. Hands fisted on her hips, chin thrust out at an aggressive angle, Andy was a formidable sight. Strong enough, Sherri thought, to have wrestled a man of John Doe’s size onto a netter table and through the machine.

  “My contact in New York was pretty cooperative once I told him about the fire, although he’s not convinced it has any connection to the murder. He sent that sketch, and he also told me that John Doe was still alive and was probably bleeding from a blow to the head when he was put through the netter. The actual cause of death was suffocation.”

  Startled, Andy blurted, “You mean the trees—”

  “Smothered him. Yes,” Sherri said.

  “How horrible,” Liss whispered.

  It was a sickening image. No question about that. But Sherri knew of worse ways to die. She kept her focus on Andy, trying to decide if the young woman knew more about John Doe’s death than she was saying. She took back the photo and sketch. “How did you first hear about the dead man?”

  Andy didn’t even have to think about her answer. “From one of the kids at school. Everybody was talking about it—how he’d been shot and wrapped up like a tree. I was mad because Officer Jennings never said a word about the dead guy when he asked me when I’d last seen Mr. Snowe. Joey Crockett was the one who spread the word. It should have been me.”

  The surname rang a bell, but Sherri couldn’t place it. She glanced at Liss, who seemed equally at sea. “Who’s Joey Crockett?”

  Andy had eased herself onto one of the sturdy netter tables. Her boot heels thumped rhythmically against the supporting legs. “His mother is the dispatcher at the police department. She knows everything.” Suddenly she grinned. “Except that she got that wrong, didn’t she? He wasn’t shot.”

  “Did you help in the search for Simeon Snowe?” Sherri asked.

  “Mom wouldn’t hear of it. Of course, there wasn’t much point in anybody looking for the first day or two, what with the weather and all.”

  Sherri cocked her head. “Bad, was it?”

  With her hands dangling between her legs, Andy seemed perfectly relaxed as she talked about events seven years in the past. She’d unbuttoned her coat, showing off yet another Christmas-themed wool sweater. This one featured a giant Santa Claus face.

  “There was a freak October snowstorm,” she said. “We got out of school early the day after I talked to Officer Jennings, and everything was closed down the day after that.”

  By the time the search resumed, any tracks, and any scents for dogs to follow, would have been obliterated. Sherri wondered why Mike Jennings had omitted that little detail when he talked to Liss and Dan.

  “Are you going to find out what really happened?” Andy asked.

  “Only if we’re very lucky. Tell me, has anyone shown an interest in this property, particularly in the field where the fire started?”

  “You mean lately?”

  “Any time in the past seven years.”

  “What’s so special about that crop?”

  “Don’t you know?” Sherri shot back.

  Andy shrugged. “The trees were planted closer together than usual. It was the last crop Mr. Snowe put in before he disappeared. He fussed over it.”

  “What do you mean?” Liss asked.

  Another shrug was her answer.

  “This could be important, Andy,” Liss said. “Exactly what did Snowe do that constituted ‘fussing’?”

  “He kept moving the trees. I don’t know why. It was like he was . . . I don’t know . . . making tiny adjustments in the way they were arranged. He didn’t ever seem to be satisfied. Every time I’d come over, he’d been doing more digging.”

  “Getting the pattern right,” Liss murmured.

  “Did you ask him about it?” Sherri asked.

  “Sure I did. But he wouldn’t answer me.”

  “Did you ever notice anything that would indicate that someone besides you and Mr. Snowe took an interest in that field?”

  Andy shook her head. When she shoved her long hair away from her face, Sherri saw that she looked angry. “It was so mean to set that fire. What did those trees ever do to hurt anyone?”

  “She doesn’t know anything,” Liss said after Andy left. “Not even that it was a maze.”

  “I don’t think she does, no. Although I think it’s a little strange that she seems to care more about trees than she does about people.” Sherri moved closer to the netter. “Help me with something, will you? See if you can lever me up into this thing if I go limp.”

  Liss made a moue of distaste but admitted that she’d tried to envision the same thing when she’d first seen the netter and heard about John Doe. She was taller and heavier than Sherri and in good physical condition, but she had trouble maneuvering her friend’s body into position. When she finally succeeded, she stopped to stare at the hook.

  “What am I supposed to attach it to?”

  Sherri twisted her head to look behind her. The red netting loomed above her. She took the hook from Liss, noting that it was metal and heavy enough to make a good weapon. Was that how John Doe had been knocked unconscious?

  “Maybe he went through feetfirst,” Liss suggested. “The hook could go into his shoe.”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe his collar?”

  “Creepy, no matter how it happened.”

  “Don’t forget crazy. The netters were out in the field. If he was killed on the spot, he had to have been lured there.”

  “More likely he was brought. There’s a logging road. Knock him out, put him in the bed of a pickup, and back up to the netter. Slide him out. Okay, can we stop hypothesizing now? I’m going to have nightmares as it is.”

  “Whoever did this was not a small person. Or a weak one,” Sherri mused. “And if Snowe himself didn’t kill John Doe, then it’s a good bet the person who did intended to make it look like he did.” She sat up. “So, who had a bone to pick with Simeon Snowe?”

  “I haven’t heard of anyone who was feuding with him. Mixed reviews as to his personality, but no one seems to have hated his guts.”

  Sherri joined her at the door. With one last assessing look at the netters, she switched off the light. “The murderer might not have been anyone local.”

  “Are we back to a mob hit?”

  Sherri laughed. “No. This has ‘impulse’ and ‘amateur’ written all over it. Actually, I was thinking of Gina or her father. I’ll be very interested to see what’s in that package she sent you.”

  Back at the house, Dan had already turned in. Pete was watching the VHS tape of Ghostbusters on the ancient television set in the living room.

  “Bed for me, too,” Liss declared, although it wasn’t much past nine.

  Sherri sprawled in one of the overstuffed chairs and tried to enjoy the antics on the screen, but the movie didn’t hold her interest. Pete was nodding off on the sofa, but she was wide awake and restless. He woke up with a start when she pushed herself to her feet, grabbed the jacket she’d left on the back of a chair, and headed for the door.

  “Whassup?” Pete mumbled in a sleepy voice.

  “I’m going to make a quick run into town. See if I can score some Moxie.” Since Liss hadn’t known they were coming, she hadn’t stocked any of Sherri’s favorite beverage.

  Pete’s nose wrinkled. He didn’t share her taste for Maine’s official soft drink. “It’s late. Do you want me to drive you?”

  “Thanks for the offer, but you’d probably fall asleep at the wheel. I’ll be back before you have time to miss me.”<
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  Ten minutes later, she stood in the infamous grocery store parking lot. It was deserted at this time of night, all the stores in the neighborhood closed and locked up tight. Sherri was not surprised. She’d have liked to be able to pick up a bottle or two of Moxie—she really had come to love the taste—but her alleged craving had also provided her with a handy excuse to take a look around. As Pete had predicted when Liss first told them about the olive oil, there was nothing left to see in the area where Dan had parked his truck.

  She got back into the car and drove slowly along New Boston’s empty streets. Apparently, they rolled up the sidewalks at an early hour on weeknights. Even Commercial Street looked deserted. She pulled in across from Dance-Ex. At All Things Mystical and several other retail shops, dim security lights cast a faint glow behind display windows. Everything else in the neighborhood was dark.

  Sherri sat in the car, engine and lights off, staring thoughtfully at the storefronts. She wasn’t certain what she expected to see, but when a light flashed briefly—a side entrance opening and closing—she went on alert. A moment later, a furtive figure emerged from the narrow alleyway next to Dance-Ex and scurried away. A man, she thought, although it was hard to tell when he kept to the shadows between the widely spaced streetlights.

  If he’d been taking one of those private ballroom dance lessons she’d heard about, Sherri thought, it took the phrase “dancing in the dark” to a whole new level. Either that, or Dance-Ex had every window covered with blackout curtains.

  She was about to follow the retreating figure when the front door of the studio opened and two women came out. They got into separate cars, both parked across the street from Sherri’s vehicle. Sherri had seen photos of each of them online. The blonde was Juliette Cressy. The brunette was Kitty Sloan.

  Sherri waited until both women had left the scene and then drove to the New Boston police station. She was hoping to talk to Mike Jennings. Instead, the moment she stepped into the tiny lobby, she came face-to-face with Wyatt Purvey.