Kilt Dead (32 page)

Fumbling to shove the useless air bag out of the way,
still coughing from the dust it had released, Liss needed
two tries to unlatch her seat belt. She clawed at the door,
trying to open it, but the car was sinking. There was already too much pressure against the outside. It wouldn’t
budge.

Spurred on by the sound of water lapping against the
sides of the car, Liss pushed at the button to lower the
driver’s side window. Nothing happened. She made a sound of exasperation. The engine had stalled. No power,
no power windows.

Through the cracked windshield she could see the
water rising. It was over the hood of the car, inching toward her. All right. She wouldn’t panic. If the car sank, it
would fill slowly with water until the pressure equalized
enough for her to open the door.

All she had to do was find a pocket of air and wait it
out.

A drop of water landed on her nose, jerking her attention upward to the open sunroof. Damn! Without power,
she couldn’t close it. Another couple of minutes and
water was going to come gushing in. So much for waiting
it out.

Liss blinked. Idiot. She was looking at an open sunroof.

Pushing aside her seat belt and the remains of the air
bag, her heart thudding like a jackhammer, she eased herself out from behind the steering wheel and up onto the
seat. As she got her legs beneath her, her bad knee gave a
warning twinge. She ignored it, distracted by the way the
car tilted with the shift of weight.

Don’t rock the boat!

She was trembling and couldn’t seem to stop as she
clambered awkwardly upright, standing on the seat to
thrust the upper half of her body through the opening.
With every movement, the sinking vehicle swayed. If it
tipped over and sank, she’d probably be trapped beneath
it. Bracing her hands against the sides of the sunroof, Liss
levered herself upward until she was sitting on the roof of
the car.

The water had reached the top of the windows. With
no time to lose, Liss pulled the rest of the way out of the
opening and launched herself into the water. It wasn’t the
most graceful of dives, but it took her far enough away from the sinking vehicle to keep her from being caught in
the whirlpool as it disappeared beneath the surface.

She didn’t look back. The river was deep but not wide.
Ignoring a growing number of aches and pains, she
struck out for shore. Cars had stopped along the road, including the SUV she’d swerved to avoid. Someone was
scrambling down the bank toward her.

Strangers helped her out of the river and bundled her
into blankets. One of them used his cell phone to call the
police and it wasn’t long before a deputy sheriff showed up.

“I can’t show you my driver’s license,” Liss told him
when he asked for her name. “I left my purse in the car.”

Paramedics arrived next, wanting to take her to the
hospital to be checked over. “You’re in shock,” one of
them said.

“I’ll get over it. I want to go home”

“You wouldn’t if you could get a good look at yourself.”

She had no real concept of time passing while she sat
in the back of the deputy’s cruiser, but more and more
people kept showing up. The sheriff herself. Then Sherri.
Then LaVerdiere.

“The throttle stuck?” LaVerdiere sounded skeptical.

“I don’t understand it,” Liss murmured. “The car isn’t
that old. I suppose it’s a total loss.” Her mind was starting
to function again, now that she’d stopped shaking, but
slowly. The car, her purse with her identification and credit
cards, and her cell phone-everything was at the bottom
of the river.

Sherri touched her arm and waited until Liss met her
worried gaze. “Liss, where did you park in Fallstown?
Could someone have tampered with the car?”

Liss took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “You
think someone tried to kill me? Like they cut the brakes or something?” Unable to absorb the enormity of that possibility, she tried to make a joke of it. “Oh, goody. That must
mean I’ve been promoted from prime suspect to second
victim.”

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions here,” LaVerdiere
warned. “We’ll pull your car out of the river and take a
look at it, but at the moment this is just another traffic accident. Unless the guilt’s getting to you. Maybe what we
have here is a case of attempted suicide.”

“He is joking, right?” Liss asked of no one in particular.

“Why would anyone try to kill you, Ms. MacCrimmon?” Sheriff Lassiter asked. “Do you know something
about Amanda Norris’s murder that you haven’t shared
with the police?”

“She’s been asking questions, okay?” Sherri ignored
LaVerdiere and spoke to her boss. “So have I. Maybe
someone’s getting nervous”

“Who do you suspect?” Unwilling to let another officer interfere in his case, LaVerdiere reluctantly pulled out
his notebook and prepared to write down names.

Liss, with interjections from Sherri, told him everything. Unfortunately, it didn’t amount to much. He showed
minimal interest in the blue looseleaf and dismissed her
suspicions of Jason Graye and Barbara Zathros as the result of too much imagination.

It was getting dark by the time Sherri drove Liss home.
“I still want to talk to Barbara,” Liss told her as they
turned onto Pine Street. “It’s a cinch LaVerdiere won’t.”

“No way. Not tonight. You’re going straight to bed. If
you don’t hurt all over now, you will by morning. I hate to
tell you this, but you have a fat lip and burns on your
hands and I’m betting you’ve got some spectacular bruises
all across your torso from the seat belt. Besides-Well,
damn”

Ned was parked in front of the Emporium. He jumped
out of his car as soon as he saw Sherri’s truck. His face
blanched when Liss eased herself out of the passenger
side.

“What-? You look like … what happened to you?”

“Little accident. I’m fine.”

Ned took a moment to process that, then reverted to
form. “Where have you been all day? I’ve been sitting in
the car for hours. You never did give me a key after you
changed the locks.”

“Sorry, Ned. What did you want?” She was limping as
she started up the walk to the porch.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day.
About snooping around on your own. If you’re still determined to do that, there’s someone you should take a hard
look at. Guy named Jason Graye. He has a real estate office in Fallstown.”

Liss exchanged a look with Sherri. “I know who he
is.”

“Yeah? Well, watch out for him. He’s shifty”

“And how is it that you know that, Ned?”

“He tried to con me. Wanted me to give him information about the Emporium, or better yet, let him inside to
look around”

Y•

“That’s the way he operates. So I hear. Snoops around
properties he wants to buy, looking for structural problems and the like. Figures if he can point out that the
place needs expensive repairs, the owner will be quicker
to sell and for less.”

Struck by a thought, Liss turned slowly to face her
cousin. “Ned, did you tell Jason Graye about the key over
the back door?”

“No! Of course not” His innocent look faded into a
frown. “I don’t think so”

“You’re the one who just suggested he might be the
killer,” she reminded him. “That could explain how he
got in.”

“Yeah, but that would mean it was partly my fault.”

She could see he didn’t like that idea. Typical Nedself-centered and inconsiderate, but probably sincere in
his concern for his mother’s future, at least insofar as he
expected to one day inherit whatever she had left. Now
that Liss knew how precarious Aunt Margaret’s finances
were, she had some sympathy for her cousin … but more
for her aunt.

Sherri stayed after Ned had gone, accepting Liss’s offer
of a cup of tea. “If your car was somehow tampered with,
you should let the police handle things from now on.”

“I might, if I thought LaVerdiere knew what he was
doing. Ned’s claims make me even more certain someone
needs to follow up with Barbara. You said your father
thinks Graye is a suspicious character, too?”

Sherri gave Liss a brief account of her visit to Ernie
Willett. “When he came back in from pumping gas,” she
added, “he told me he wanted a chance to get to know
Adam, be a real grandfather to him. I was floored. All this
time, he’s never shown any interest. I thought he didn’t
care. I guess that just proves you can never predict what
other people will do”

“I can’t even predict what I’ll do half the time.”

“You’re not going to stop asking questions, are you?”

“Not unless LaVerdiere gets off his duff and does his
job”

If anything, her close brush with death had made her
more determined to clear her name. It would have been
unbearable to die and have people believe, as LaVerdiere
did, that she’d killed herself out of guilt.

“Meet me here tomorrow afternoon? We can talk to
Barbara then. I’m pretty sure Graye lied about the two of
them being together to give himself an alibi.”

“That gave her one, too,” Sherri pointed out.

“Yes, but what if that was the final straw? He seems to
constantly take advantage of her. He’s rude about it, too.
She must be getting fed up with that treatment by now.”

“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.