“I just love this place!” Willa’s enthusiasm made Liss smile.
“You may have noticed we’re not exactly swamped with customers,” Liss said in a wry tone of voice after they’d adjourned to the stockroom for a quick course in packaging items for shipment. Not a single person had come in since Willa’s arrival. “I do most of my selling online and spend a lot of time back here. If you’re not out front when someone does come in, you’ll hear the bell over the door so you’ll know to go out.”
At three, Liss declared a coffee break. Willa asked for tea instead. Once it was ready, they carried their mugs to the cozy corner.
“I encourage customers to browse and to sit here to look at the books I have for sale.”
“Do you have a problem with vagrants?” Willa asked, taking her first sip of the tea. “At the bookstore we had two or three homeless people who’d come in and stay all day if you let them.” She wrinkled her nose. “They smelled. The real customers didn’t like going near them.”
“That must have been a difficult situation for the store manager,” Liss said. “Not only is it bad business to turn people out, especially if there’s a chance that some hotshot newspaper reporter will get wind of it, but I know it would prey on my conscience if I had to be unkind to someone who was already down on his luck.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Liss shook her head. “No. I think it would present a real dilemma. And I am very, very grateful that, being in a place as small as Moosetookalook, I’m not likely to have to face it myself.”
“Don’t you have any poor people here?” Willa sounded astonished.
“Of course we do. In fact, I’d say most of the population is ‘poor’ by city standards. But, for whatever reason, no one’s sleeping on the park bench or coming into local shops to get warm.”
“That’s nice,” Willa said, and helped herself to one of the cookies Liss had brought out to go with their beverages.
While Willa munched, Liss wrestled with her conscience. She had asked the young woman to come in so she could train her, but she’d had other reasons, too. She needed more information about the day of the murder. Willa could keep the shop open, allowing Liss to venture beyond downtown Moosetookalook in search of it. But she might also be a valuable resource herself. Still, Liss hesitated to upset her new employee. She probably shouldn’t broach the subject of Palsgrave’s murder with Willa at all. And yet, how could she not? Weighed against the possibility of proving her father’s innocence, Willa’s feelings had to come in a distant second.
Liss cleared her throat. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I have copies of Professor Palsgrave’s book for sale.” She indicated the row of them on a nearby shelf.
To her dismay, Willa’s cheerful, confident manner instantly crumbled. Tears welled up in her agate-colored eyes and her hands began to tremble so badly that she had to hastily set down her teacup.
“It was so terrible. So awful,” she whispered. “Blood everywhere. I have nightmares. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Of course not. I didn’t mean to upset you. Drink some of your tea.”
Willa obeyed. Either tea really was a sovereign remedy for everything, as the best British mystery novels seemed to imply, or the built-in resilience of youth kicked in again. After only a few sips, Willa calmed right down.
Once her new employee looked steady, Liss cautiously broached the subject of Willa’s duties as a work-study student in the history department. She hoped this would be safer territory but still provide her with useful information. Willa might not have worked for the department head himself, but Liss felt certain she’d have seen and heard a good deal of what went on, perhaps more than she realized. With luck, Willa might even know something that would help clear Mac MacCrimmon of suspicion of murder.
Keeping the young woman on topic, however, proved harder than trying to teach Lumpkin to jump through hoops. Willa went off on tangents at the drop of a hat. Liss heard all about her archaeologist ancestor, one Serena Dunbar, who’d apparently made an important discovery on the family island and had then been discredited when her rivals—all men, of course—claimed she had seeded the dig site.
“I’m curious about something,” Liss said, giving up on subtlety. It had never been her strong suit anyway. “If someone didn’t go in through the front entrance of Lincoln Hall, how else could he, or she, enter and exit that building?”
“Which front entrance?” Willa asked, sipping her tea. “Oh.”
Her eyes widened and her face started to scrunch up. The cup dipped and tea sloshed toward the rim. Liss caught it and set it down. She managed to refrain from catching Willa by the shoulders and shaking her, but it was a near thing.
“Don’t you dare cry!” she ordered. “Don’t think about the classroom. Focus on the other exits from that building.”
Willa drew in one deep breath, then another, then nodded. “I’m okay.”
“Look, Willa. Your job does not depend on assisting me with this, but I’d really appreciate it if you could help me visualize the inside of that building. Okay?”
Willa nodded again and managed a lopsided smile. “I may have to draw you a floor plan. Try to draw one,” she amended. “Lincoln Hall is just the strangest building. Some places inside are a real rabbit warren.”
“A what?” Liss thought she might have heard the term before, or maybe come across it in one of the historical mystery novels she’d read, but she had no idea what it meant.
“Oh, sorry. That’s an expression I picked up from Professor Halladay. She’s into all kinds of medieval arts and crafts and mysteries—that’s mystery in the sense of a profession. Like Mystery Play?” At Liss’s bemused look, she rushed on. “Anyway, what I meant by calling it a rabbit warren is that Lincoln Hall, the theater half anyway, has all these corridors with twists and turns and odd angles. It’s because of the stage, you see—because of the way they had to build it for the acoustics? And because the auditorium is sort of V shaped, wider at the back and then it narrows down toward the stage.”
Liss signaled for a time-out. “You’ve lost me, Willa.” She went back to the sales counter and returned with a lined tablet and a pencil. “Show me how the theater end connects to the classroom section.”
Willa was no artist. She drew two large rectangles connected by a third that was equally long but less than half as wide. “Classrooms,” she said, pointing to one end of the drawing. “College theater, until they built that big, new arts center on the other side of the duck pond.” She tapped the other end of the drawing.
“What’s in the old theater section now?”
“It was converted into offices. Mostly. For the history department.”
Oh-ho, Liss thought. Now we’re getting somewhere.
“There’s still a stage,” Willa went on. “Some student-directed productions are put on there when the other facilities are booked for more important things. Gabe has performed on that stage a few times. But mostly the old auditorium is used as a lecture hall.”
“Back up,” Liss said when Willa drew breath. “Gabe’s an actor?”
“He’s a theater major.” Pride radiated from every pore.
Liss filed that tidbit away to be considered later.
“What’s this narrow section?” Liss indicated the long, thin rectangle that connected the other two in Willa’s drawing.
“That’s the art gallery. The entrance is in the same foyer as the box office.”
“What about on the other side? The classroom side. Is there a door there?” Liss was beginning to see possibilities.
“Yes, but it’s kept locked. Well, so is the one on the theater side, unless the gallery is open, and it hardly ever is.”
“No exit that way, then.”
“Well . . .”
“What?” Liss tried to tamp down on her impatience. There was no sense getting annoyed at Willa just because it was like pulling teeth to get information out of her. At least she was no longer teete
ring toward hysteria every time she thought about the grisly discovery she’d made.
“Dr. Palsgrave always used the art gallery as a shortcut from his office to the classroom and it didn’t matter if it was open or not because he had his own key.” She sighed. “Poor Dr. Palsgrave.”
Liss scrutinized the young woman’s face. “You’re not going to cry again, are you?”
“No. I’m fine.” There was a note of pleased surprise in her voice. “I really am.”
“Are you up to talking to me about the professor?”
“I guess. What do you want to know?”
“Did he have any enemies?”
Willa looked blank.
“Did he quarrel with his coworkers?”
“Not when I was around. I didn’t really have much to do with him, except for battle practice. Rehearsals, you know.”
“With swords,” Liss murmured.
Willa blanched and swallowed hard. “Yes.”
Liss decided to veer away from that topic. Another matter seemed more pertinent now anyway. She picked up Willa’s rough sketch of the building and studied it.
“Who else knows about this shortcut?”
Willa shrugged. “I have no idea. Everyone in the department, I suppose.”
“Do they all use it?”
“Oh, no. Only Professor Palsgrave.”
“Let me make sure I have this straight.” She returned the sketch to the coffee table so she could point to each area as she named it. “There’s a door on each end of this art gallery. And the one leading into the classroom section is always kept locked?” She tapped that end of the long narrow rectangle.
Willa nodded.
“And this door from the theater foyer into the art gallery is locked whenever the gallery is closed, which is most of the time?”
“Right. I think it’s only open weekend afternoons.”
“So instead of having an open passageway between the two sections of this building, they’re kept completely separate. Anyone who wants to get from one to the other has to go outside and back in again.”
Willa nodded. “Crazy, huh?”
“Inefficient, to say the least. But Palsgrave, as chairman of the history department, with his office in one section and his classroom in the other, had a key that allowed him access to this shortcut.”
“Right.”
“Does anyone else have a key? Does Dr. Halladay, for example, use this shortcut to get to her classes?”
“I don’t think so. I know I’ve seen her on cold winter days all bundled up like an Eskimo just to walk up the hill to teach a class.”
Liss was still studying the sketch. She tapped the right side with the eraser end of the pencil. “So this is the street?”
Willa nodded and pointed to a spot on the lower left. “There’s a parking lot here and this”—she traced the left side of Lincoln Hall—“is a paved path that runs between buildings. It ends in another parking lot. The classroom entrance faces that way, not out onto the street. Only the theater entrance faces the road.”
“So someone could enter the building that way?”
But Willa shook her head. “The theater door and the one at the back of the building, facing the driveway that goes down to the lower parking lot, are kept locked. You can get out, but not in. The only entrances are here and here.” Once again, she indicated the classroom building door off the upper parking lot. Then she pointed to a spot at the lower left-hand corner of her sketch, close to the lower parking lot. “That’s the way in to the history department. Someone told me once that they put the offices in what used to be a scenery shop, which makes sense, I guess. That section of the building is directly under the stage.”
And around and around we go, Liss thought in dismay. She was definitely going to have to make a trip to Three Cities.
“Where was the picket line?” she asked.
“Here. On the street. The demonstrators weren’t supposed to set foot on college property, but no one could make them leave if they stayed on the sidewalk.”
The spot she tapped was close enough to the front of Lincoln Hall that the protestors would have been able to see anyone entering or leaving the building. Liss sighed. She’d already assumed as much and that fact didn’t help her one bit, not if the killer had followed Palsgrave through the art gallery.
That he must have done so was the only thing that made sense. And that he’d left the same way, unseen in spite of wearing bloodstained clothing and carrying a sword.
At least this wasn’t a locked room mystery anymore, although Liss didn’t feel that change brought her any closer to solving it. She had to learn more, not only about the building where the crime had occurred, but also about the people on her list of suspects.
“Can you come in to work tomorrow, Willa?” Liss asked. “I have some errands to run and it would be a big help to me if you were here to keep the shop open. My mother will be right next door if, by some fluke, there’s too much business for one person to handle.”
Willa leapt at the chance.
Chapter Nine
The next day, Liss faced her first challenge even before she left the house. She had to convince her mother to stay home. She finally persuaded Vi to do so by using the excuse that she needed her to keep an eye on their new employee.
“I’m just going to pick up my gown and the bridesmaids’ dresses,” Liss insisted. “No big deal.” It wasn’t a lie, but she had other business with Melly Baynard, as well.
For at least half the drive to Three Cities she expected her cell phone to ring—her mother calling to demand she come back and pick her up. When she realized she was obsessing about the possibility, she pulled over into the breakdown lane, fished the phone out of her purse, and turned it off.
She reached Three Cities at midmorning and drove straight to Melly’s house. The seamstress was waiting for her, all three gowns ready for transport. After they’d been safely loaded into Liss’s car, Melly offered coffee, the perfect entrée for Liss to ask questions.
“So what’s the gossip around campus?” she asked when they were settled at Melly’s kitchen table, steaming cups in hand. She tried to sound casual, but her mother’s old friend saw right through her.
“You mean you want to know who killed Lee Palsgrave if your father didn’t?” She chuckled. “You should see the expression on your face! Don’t worry. I’m not a mind reader. I’ve talked to Vi on the phone a couple of times since you were here last.”
“If she’s shared her thoughts with you, you’re doing better than I am.” Resentment stirred, but she tamped it down.
“Now, Liss, it’s only natural that there are some things a woman doesn’t want to talk to her daughter about. She needed a sympathetic ear and I could understand why she’s upset.”
“And I wouldn’t?”
“You’re Mac’s daughter, too.”
Liss’s eyes narrowed. “We’re all on the same side here.”
Melly looked confused. “But Mac wasn’t even in the picture when—Oh, I see. I do believe we’re talking at cross-purposes.” Her cheeks went pink with embarrassment.
“Are we? What did you and my mother talk about?”
Melly waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, you know. This and that. Reminiscing. We were students together at Anisetab College, you know.”
If Melly’s focus was on events way in the past, Vi hadn’t confided nearly as much as Liss feared she had. She started to let it go, but her curiosity got the best of her. “Perhaps you could share?”
She soon regretted asking. Melly told her more than she wanted to know about her mother’s college days and her relationship with A. Leon Palsgrave, the young and handsome professor. There had been secret meetings, since student-faculty fraternization had been frowned upon. There had also been lovers’ quarrels and tears and tantrums.
“It was all a long time ago,” Liss interrupted when she couldn’t stand hearing any more. “What concerns me now is that the police are looking at my father as t
heir prime suspect. He had an argument with Professor Palsgrave in Palsgrave’s office a week or so before the murder and he was on campus the day the professor was killed. And then they found what they think is the murder weapon in the trunk of his car.”
“Really?” Melly looked intrigued. “What was it? That detail hasn’t made the news.”
“A hand-and-a-half broadsword.” She indicated with her hands just how long the weapon was.
Melly’s surprise was obvious, but she made no verbal comment.
“My father didn’t do it. He was framed.”
“I have no problem believing that,” Melly said.
“Does anyone in particular spring to mind as a likely murderer?” Liss whipped out a pocket notebook and a felt-tip pen, ready to jot down names.
“Well, just lately, there are all the people he pissed off with his theories about Henry Sinclair.”
“You know about them?”
“Who doesn’t? Lee was always up on his soapbox.”
“You sound as if you didn’t like him much.”
“You’re right. I didn’t.” Melly shrugged. “But I didn’t dislike him enough to kill him.”
“Did anyone?”
Melly considered this. “I don’t know any of the demonstrators well enough to say. But I’d think the broadsword would rule out some people. You’d have to have the physical strength to heft one.”
“It was a reproduction.”
“A stage weapon? Still, they’re pretty unwieldy. I sure couldn’t manage one.” Melly chuckled as she indicated her considerable girth. “Anything else you’d like to know?”
Aiming for nonchalance, Liss admitted there were one or two things she was wondering about.
“I’ll just bet there are.”
“What do you mean?”
Melly made a snorting sound. “I’ve read about you, Liss MacCrimmon. In the newspapers. This isn’t the first time you’ve gotten involved in investigating a murder.”
Liss winced at the reminder. “Never by choice. And I’m not involved in investigating this one.”
Bagpipes, Brides and Homicides (Liss Maccrimmon Scottish Mysteries) Page 11