A Wee Christmas Homicide (16 page)

“Push back?”

“That only makes things worse.” Sherri heaved a deep sigh and waved Liss toward a bow window furnished with a window seat. “I’ve got some information for you, but I’m not sure it’s worth much.”

“I found out something, too.” She told Sherri what Jason Graye had revealed about the land along the border.

Sherri gave a low whistle. “So it belonged to the Thornes. Interesting.”

Puzzled, Liss forgot what else she’d been about to say. “Why interesting?”

Sherri drew her deeper into an alcove. “I couldn’t tell you this before because I knew about it from the official investigation, but since the checking I did on my own after you left the office this morning led to the same information, I figure that means Gordon can’t object if I tell you what I found.”

Liss wasn’t certain she followed Sherri’s logic, but she nodded anyway.

“I was able to get a look at the state’s online records for both snowmobiles and ATVs. I checked on everyone I could think of. Felicity, Marcia, Marcia’s ex husband, and Stu all registered snowmobiles this year. Stu also has an ATV.”

“What about Moss?”

“Nothing. Forget Moss.
Here’s
the interesting bit—Felicity Thorne and Cabot Katz listed the same home address on the forms they filled out.”

For a moment, Liss didn’t see the connection. Then her eyes widened. “Thorne’s ex wife and Marcia’s ex husband are a couple? They’re living together?”

Sherri made a “keep going” gesture, urging Liss to continue that line of thought to its logical conclusion.

“He’s her alibi for the time of Thorne’s murder.”

“Bingo!”

A round of applause reached them from the ballroom. Liss wondered briefly how much the latest Tiny Teddy had sold for. Then she focused her attention on what Sherri was saying.

“I think you may be on to something with the smuggling idea, only it makes more sense if Thorne himself was running the show.” Sherri’s brow furrowed in concentration as she supplied the details she’d worked out. “Since he once owned that land, the whole scheme could easily have been his idea from the beginning. Then his ex found out what he was doing, they had words, and boom! No more Thorne.”

Liss picked up the thread, unraveling it further. “Thorne probably tried to toss her out. He pulled out his gun to convince her to go, but somehow she got it away from him.”

Inside the ballroom, someone let out a whoop of triumph.

“Is she strong enough to have wrestled it out of his grip? I’ve never met her.”

“Oh, yeah.” Liss tried to visualize the scene. “Or the gun could have gone off during the struggle. Or maybe
she
went for the gun and he was the one trying to disarm her.” She could picture it going down any of those three ways.

“Doesn’t matter.” Sherri’s face glowed with excitement. “She’s the prime suspect, just as Gordon seems to have thought all along. Cabot Katz lied to protect her.”

“I hate to be a wet blanket, but there are a few problems with that theory. Where does Eric Moss fit into it? Where
is
Moss? And why would Thorne have gotten involved in smuggling in the first place? I’d think it would be pretty hard to start bringing in Tiny Teddies unless he already had contacts on the other side of the border.”

Sherri’s face fell. “Drat! And there’s an even bigger problem than any of those. There’s not a shred of proof. Unfortunately, the law requires evidence.”

“There’s the atlas I found at Moss’s house.”

“What would that prove, assuming we had it, which we don’t?”

Liss tried to think logically, but she had the feeling she was still missing too many pieces of the puzzle. “Moss is the one who sold the Tiny Teddies to Marcia, so maybe Katz
isn’t
lying. Maybe Moss and Thorne were in it together and
they
were the ones who quarreled and fought over the gun. Maybe
Moss
shot Thorne.”

Someone
had killed him. It made sense that the fatal shooting had occurred during a quarrel over smuggling Tiny Teddies into the U.S. from Canada. But beyond those two assumptions lay a morass of contradictions and unanswered questions. Liss felt as if she were on a merry-go-round, spinning faster and faster and in imminent danger of being flung off.

“The bears Moss sold Marcia are not the same as the ones Thorne had.” Sherri sighed. “In fact, there is no concrete proof that there have ever been
any
smuggled bears in Moosetookalook.”

“You
believe it.”

“But Gordon doesn’t. I’ve got nothing to use to persuade him, either. Worse, it occurred to me while I was looking up names online that someone using a snowmobile or an ATV to commit an illegal act probably wouldn’t bother to register it in the first place.”

Back to Eric Moss, Liss thought. “We’ll figure it out. We
have
to.”

“Why?”

There were more shouts from the ballroom, but Liss ignored them. “What do you mean?”

“I know why I want to solve this crime. I have a career to advance. But why are you so…obsessed with finding answers?”

“Because this is all my fault.”

Sherri shook her head in disbelief. “Get over yourself, Liss. It’s not that I don’t appreciate your help brainstorming or the clues you’ve come up with, but you have no stake in this. Not really. You aren’t a suspect. No close friends of yours are suspects. You didn’t know the victim all that well. Heck, you didn’t even like him. So why are you pursuing this and, more to the point, taking unnecessary risks?”

Liss opened her mouth and shut it again, unable to come up with a good answer. She supposed she should have asked herself the same question long before this, but it simply hadn’t occurred to her to do so, not even when she stood trembling with fear behind the shower curtain in Eric Moss’s upstairs bath.

She didn’t like the first answer that came to mind. Was she really just TSTL?

The second explanation was no better, involving snoopiness, nosiness, and just plain blatant curiosity about things that were police business and none of hers. She certainly had no desire to become a cop, or a private detective, either.

“Liss? Hey, I didn’t mean to send you into a fugue state.” Sherri looked relieved when Liss blinked at her. “It wasn’t my intention to insult you, either. I just…” Sherri groped for the right words. “I just worry about you, okay?”

“I worry about me, too. I don’t know
why
I feel compelled to find all the answers, Sherri. I just know that I need to do it. I don’t think I can stop myself.”

“Then swear to me that you’ll be careful? No more sneaking into empty houses. No more questioning of suspects on your own.”

Liss made the cross-my-heart sign, but Sherri wasn’t looking. Head cocked, she was intent on listening to the hubbub on the other side of the double doors.

Belatedly noticing that the clamor from inside the ballroom was steadily increasing in volume, Liss frowned. “What on earth…?”

She and Sherri exchanged a look of alarm and were on their feet an instant later. For a short person, Sherri had a ground-eating stride when she ran full tilt. Liss was halfway across the mezzanine, following in her wake, when she heard a horrendous crash.

A woman screamed.

Pandemonium broke loose.

T
he ballroom was engulfed in chaos. Stu, hopping up and down on the stage, shouted into the microphone but someone had disconnected it. Liss could not make out a word of what he was saying.

Santa Claus jumped into the crowd, shouting for order. No one paid any attention to him. Most people knew he was their chief of police, but that didn’t seem to matter. Mark Patton, the dealer who’d been desperate to get into The Toy Box, shoved past Jeff so roughly that he was bowled right over. He fell behind the stage and did not reappear.

Some of the pipers, all of whom had congregated after their performance in the corner where the cash bar was located, advanced toward the center of the disruption, moving like the military unit pipers so often were. Once at the foot of the stage, however, they didn’t seem to know what to do next. Gordon’s brother Russ attempted to take command, but he was only marginally more successful than Jeff Thibodeau had been. At least no one knocked him down.

Marcia, her face livid, shoved her way through a clump of milling spectators, including several of the elaborately dressed dancing ladies. She caught up with a rapidly retreating man in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Leaping onto his back, she began beating him about the neck and shoulders with her fists while she showered him with epithets.

A few feet away, Lovey Fitzpatrick fended off a wild-eyed attacker by swinging her oversized purse at the other woman’s head. Liss sincerely hoped the police had confiscated Lovey’s gun.

Mark Patton caught Liss’s attention again as he reached the far side of the room. He broke free of the crowd and headed for a service door at a dead run. He clutched something—or rather several small somethings—close to his chest. A yard short of his goal, Liss’s Aunt Margaret stepped in front of him, blocking his escape.

At that, Liss waded into the fray, shoving people out of her path with every bit as much ruthless abandon as Patton had displayed. Lacking his brute strength, she only made it halfway to her aunt before a deafening whistle stopped every man, woman, and child in their tracks.

Liss spun around, seeking the source of the loud, totally unexpected sound. Sherri stood on the stage, a police whistle held ready to produce another blast if it became necessary.

Taking advantage of the momentary silence, Sherri bellowed, “I’m Officer Willett. I’m ordering all of you to cease and desist!”

The burgeoning riot abruptly dissolved, leaving behind small clusters of people in varying stages of embarrassment. Most of them had the look of schoolchildren caught misbehaving on the playground. Only Marcia refused to release her hold on the young man she’d captured.

Liss looked again at the service exit, prepared to rush to her aunt’s rescue, but Margaret appeared to have Mark Patton under control. They stood talking quietly together. Changing direction, Liss headed for Marcia and the man in the hoodie.

From behind the low stage, a large, rumpled figure in red and white rose like Marley’s ghost, one hand holding the side of his head and the other trying in vain to shove his fake beard back into place. Jeff Thibodeau took in the scene with an all-encompassing glance and drew the correct conclusions.

“Carry on,” he barked at Sherri, and went in search of first aid.

Liss reached Marcia’s side just as Dan and his father came into the ballroom. The other woman was breathing heavily but had a triumphant gleam in her eyes. She’d twisted the man’s arm behind his back and showed no inclination to let go.

“I was ripped off,” her captive whined.

“That’s no excuse!” Marcia tightened her hold, making him wince.

“What did he do?” Dan came straight to them while Joe veered off to consult with Margaret.

“He jumped onto the stage, grabbed the Tiny Teddy he’d been bidding on—he was
not
the winning bidder!—and tried to take off with it.” If the look on Marcia’s face was any indication of her boiling point, steam should already be coming out of her ears.

“Give the bear back,” Liss instructed.

With ill grace, the captive reached beneath his hoodie, fished it out, and handed it over.

“Now you let him go,” Dan ordered.

Grudgingly, Marcia relaxed her pincer grip and the freed man slunk away, rubbing his sore arm.

“I’m surprised you managed to catch him in this crush,” Liss remarked. “Didn’t he have a head start?”

“Dumb ass tripped over the microphone cord. That slowed him down some. Besides, I’m stronger and faster than I look.” Marcia inhaled deeply. “Sorry. Nasty display of collecting fever. It was building up all through the auction. You could almost smell it in the air. I’d think it was just testosterone, except that some of the women were as het up as the men. That nutcase wasn’t the only hothead in the crowd.”

Liss and Dan watched Marcia stalk back toward the stage. For a moment, neither spoke.

“She seems…rejuvenated by the skirmish,” Dan observed.

“I need volunteers to right fallen chairs,” Sherri said into the microphone. Her first order of business had been getting it reconnected.

She’d settled everyone down and convinced most of them to take a seat by the time Pete turned up looking for her. The auction was about to resume.

Dan rejoined Liss, having spent the interim helping Sherri, and the two of them, together with Pete, moved off to one side of the room. In a whisper, Liss provided an abridged summary of events.

“Fisticuffs had broken out in pockets all over the ballroom,” she said at the end of her account, “but Sherri put a stop to that nonsense. You’d have been proud of her, Pete.”

“She should have been at home,” Pete grumbled. “She’s supposed to be off duty.”

Liss eyed his uniform. “And you aren’t. Are you jealous of Sherri?”

Her thoughtless question went over like a lead balloon. Pete mumbled a denial and plunged into a brooding silence.

In for a penny
, Liss thought: “Sherri’s good at her job. Give her a break.”

Pete continued to stand there like a stone statue while Stu took the podium to sell more Tiny Teddies. Across the room, Moosetookalook’s chief of police, minus long white beard and Santa hat, returned from having the cut on his head patched up. He still wore the rest of the jolly fat man’s costume.

Dan drew Liss a little apart from Pete. “You did a good job defusing Marcia. Thanks.”

“Nice to be able to accomplish something.”

“Do I want to know what that means?”

“Sorry. Frustration talking. Don’t mind me.”

Dan started to say something, but at that moment his father caught his eye and beckoned to him. “Catch you later, Liss?”

“Sure,” Liss agreed, but her attention was already focused on the bidding.

The crowd applauded as Lovey FitzPatrick paid a truly outrageous price for one of the bears. Abruptly Pete came out of his brown study to give the toy collector a hard look. “Isn’t that the woman Tandy arrested?”

“Sure is. Lovey FitzPatrick. She shot out the window at The Toy Box. Killed her a b’ar.”

Pete ignored her poor attempt at humor. Or maybe he’d just never heard the
Davy Crockett
theme song. “If I was running that murder investigation, I’d be taking a real close look at Ms. FitzPatrick right now.”

“It wasn’t her gun that killed Gavin Thorne,” Liss reminded him. “It was his.” Neither Sherri nor Gordon had come right out and said that, but it seemed pretty obvious.

“A whacko like her would use whatever weapon came to hand.”

“She is hell on wheels with a shoulder bag,” Liss admitted, but she wasn’t about to put Lovey FitzPatrick on her list of suspects. There were too many others who seemed far more likely to have killed Gavin Thorne.

Dan caught up with Liss just as she was leaving the hotel. She was nearly the last one out, having stayed till the very end of the auction. “My truck’s out back if you need a lift.”

“Thanks. I walked up with the parade. I figured I could cage a ride home with Aunt Margaret.”

“She left an hour ago.”

“Then I’ll definitely accept your offer.”

He drove to his house, then walked her around the corner to hers, all the while keeping conversation light. He talked about the rocking chair he was attempting to build. She mentioned, again, that she’d run out of space for books but added that, somehow, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from buying more.

“Come in for a minute?” she asked.

He hesitated. He could see how tired she was and suspected she’d only asked from force of habit. He didn’t care. He accepted, plopped himself down on her sofa with the casualness of an old friend, and turned on the late night news while she plugged in the Christmas tree lights.

She sank down beside him. “I’m too pooped to fix anything. Help yourself if you’re hungry or thirsty.”

“I’m good.”

“I hope there were no cameras at the hotel tonight. Entirely too many people make a habit of sending video clips to the local television stations.”

“You want me to turn it off?” He reached for the clicker he’d tossed onto the end table. It had landed on top of one of Liss’s lined notepads. Curious, he grabbed that, too.

It contained several lists, all of which baffled him. “Ouist? Muck? Orkney?”

“Islands in Scotland.”

“Okay.” The next one made even less sense: Sookie, Susanna, Watson, Frevisse, Wimsey, Arly, and Dash.

“Characters in various mystery series.” She took the clicker from him as the weather report concluded and shut off the news anchor in midsentence. “That’s where the name Lumpkin came from, you know. The Lumpkins are a family in Charlotte MacLeod’s Peter Shandy series.”

The light dawned. “You’re trying to find a name for the kitten. Where is the little guy, anyway?”

“Last I knew,
she’d
discovered Lumpkin sleeping on the bed upstairs and curled up next to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still there.”

“They getting along better?”

“Only when he’s asleep.” Liss shifted so she was facing him, her legs curled under her.

“What name did you decide on?”

“I haven’t yet. Any suggestions? Sherri voted for Sweetie.”

The way the tree lights were blinking, sending flashes of red and green across Liss’s face, gave him a few ideas. “Yuletide? Jingle Bell? Noel?”

“Oh, please!”

“No! No, wait, I think I’m onto something here. What was that Scottish name for New Year’s Eve?”

“I am
not
calling her Hogmanay.” But his teasing had the desired effect. Liss relaxed and started to giggle. “That’s even worse than naming her Claus!”

The following afternoon, refreshed by a good night’s sleep and a leisurely morning at home—Margaret had offered to work at the Emporium and give her a day off—Liss’s thoughts inevitably returned to Gavin Thorne’s murder.

It bothered her that she remained fixated on the case. There was probably some deep, psychological explanation…one she didn’t want to hear. Or else she’d been possessed by the ghost of Miss Marple. Whatever, she craved answers. Well, why not? She hated loose ends in mystery novels. They were even more aggravating in real life.

She knew there weren’t always satisfying endings to real cases. Some mysteries were never solved. But surely whoever had killed Gavin Thorne would be caught eventually.

Liss considered her suspect list: Eric Moss, Felicity Thorne, Stu Burroughs.

Stu Burroughs…who had registered both a snowmobile and an ATV.

He had quarreled with Gavin Thorne right before Thorne was murdered, but Liss hadn’t seriously suspected him. She still didn’t, but it occurred to her that a few judicious questions might just rule him out. Once she was certain Stu hadn’t murdered anyone, he could be an excellent source of information about
other
people who owned snowmobiles.

Liss had promised Sherri she’d stay out of potentially dangerous situations, but she decided there was no real risk in a visit to Stu’s Ski Shop during business hours. “Too bad you aren’t a dog,” she told Lumpkin. “I’d take you along for protection.”

The big cat looked offended. Then the kitten, trailing after him, swatted his tail and they were off, chasing through the house with the abandon of a pair of three-year-old children. Hearing no howls, snarls, or hisses, Liss left them to it.

Stu’s Ski Shop, after a brief burst of business immediately following the storm, had returned to its usual gloomy emptiness. Eye-catching displays might have helped, Liss thought, taking a look around, and the place looked as if it hadn’t seen a dust rag in years. No wonder business was off!

“Oh, it’s you,” Stu greeted her. “I don’t suppose you’re here to buy something.”

“I might be.”

“You don’t ski.”

“I’m thinking I should get out more.” Spotting a rack labeled
SNOWMOBILE SUITS
, she headed that way. A row of helmets with full face shields sat on a shelf above it.

“Motorized division, eh? You know you’ll have to wait for good snow.”

“What’s wrong with what’s out there?”

“The weather warmed up. This is our second day of snow melt. Another day or two and we’ll be back to bare ground.”

“It’s still deep enough to ride on now, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Snow melts, you get slush. The temperature drops again at night and the slush turns to ice. Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to drive very fast on that kind of surface.”

“I wouldn’t want to go very fast anyway.” Sliding one hanger after another along the bar, she gave a small portion of her attention to the gear, noting that most of the suits Stu stocked came in two pieces with a high bib in the front.

“Are you serious about this?” An avaricious gleam came into Stu’s eyes when she nodded. “Have you ridden a snowmobile before?”

“I rode on the back of one a few times when I was in high school.”

“Not the same thing as being the driver. Come on.” Grabbing his coat off the back of a chair, Stu led her out through the back door of the store and along a covered walkway toward his garage. Entering though the side entrance, he clicked on the light and pointed at two large lumps covered with bright blue tarps. When he whipped off the nearest covering, clouds of dust billowed up.