Kilt Dead (7 page)

“Stay put,” he ordered, and went into the stockroom.

“She invited me over for apple pie,” Liss whispered in
a broken voice.

Dan reached over and squeezed her hand. “She made
good pies.”

“She made great pies.”

Thibodeau returned, looking as shaken as Dan felt.
“Do either of you know what happened in there?”

Liss shook her head. Dan hazarded a guess. “She
tripped on something? Fell. Hit her head”

“I dunno, Dan. I can’t see anything that would’ve
caused her to do that”

Liss’s eyes widened. “Surely you can’t think … she
wasn’t-“

“Pushed?” Thibodeau didn’t look happy about it, but
he clearly had suspicions. “Seems like you’d have to hit
your head awful hard to die from it.”

“A freak accident-“

“Better let the experts decide. I’m damned if I know
what happened. But the back door’s unlocked and she had
no business being in there. Did she?”

“No,” Liss whispered. “We were closed. The Games. I
just got back”

In her agitation, she’d kept hold of Dan’s hand. Now
she tightened her grip. It was a measure of how upset she
was, Dan thought. Liss MacCrimmon had never been the
type to cling.

He was keenly aware of the irony. He’d wanted to get
close to Liss for years, but this was a helluva way to do it.
Murder? He couldn’t seem to take in the possibility.
Mrs. Norris was a pain sometimes, but she was harmless.
What kind of monster would kill an old lady?

“Whatever happened here,” Jeff said, “it’s an unattended death. I’ve got to call in the M.E. and I think I’d
better send for LaVerdiere, too” He reached for the portable
radio attached to his belt.

“State cop?”

Jeff grimaced. “Yeah. Craig LaVerdiere. He’s the one
assigned to this area so this’ll be his case. It shouldn’t
take him long to get here. He just lives over to Wade’s
Corners.”

“Okay if I take Liss up to Margaret’s apartment?” Dan
asked.

“Yeah, sure. You need to stick around anyhow. LaVerdiere’s going to want to talk to both of you”

Dan lost no time putting some distance between them
and the body.

Once upstairs, Liss started to pull herself together. “I
should make coffee”

“Probably a good idea. Looks like it’s going to be a
long night.” Anything he drank right now would likely
burn like acid, but Dan figured it would help Liss to be
busy. He followed her into the kitchen and settled onto
one of the high stools at the center island.

“Thanks for stepping in. I would have pulled myself
together eventually. I had some idea of running across the square to the police station. But I’m glad you showed up.
I just couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around … I still
can’t.”

“I was on my way here anyway,” Dan said.

The hand measuring coffee into the pot stilled for a
moment, then completed the task. She didn’t turn around.
“Why?”

“Figured you’d be beat after a day at the games. I was
going to suggest sharing a pizza, so you wouldn’t have to
cook” He shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She started the coffee perking and rinsed her hands before joining him at the island. “That was a very nice
thought.”

“Hey, what are neighbors for?”

Her tentative smile vanished along with what little
color she’d regained. Dan could have kicked himself.
Confessing his plan to get reacquainted with Liss had
been intended to take her mind off Mrs. Norris.

Liss studied her clasped hands for a moment, then
abruptly excused herself. “I need … I’ll be back … I just …
make yourself at home”

She needed to be alone for a bit. Dan got that. And
when, a few minutes later, he heard the shower running,
he understood that, too.

The image wouldn’t wash away no matter how hard
Liss scrubbed.

The angle of the body. The wrongness of that cloth
half covering it like some misaligned tartan sash. The
blood. The smell. Bile rose in her throat. She had to brace
one hand against the side of the shower stall until her insides settled again.

Even worse than stumbling upon a body was that the
dead woman was Mrs. Norris. She was a widow with no children, Liss remembered. In fact, she didn’t have any
living relatives. But she’d made all of Moosetookalook
her family. Just because someone moved away didn’t mean
she forgot about them. Liss knew for a fact that Mrs. Norris
still corresponded regularly with Liss’s parents in Arizona. Amanda Norris might not have any descendants to
mourn her, but there were hundreds of people whose lives
she had touched. They’d be devastated by the news of her
death.

She had to have fallen. A tragic accident. Anything
else was unthinkable. No one would deliberately hurt
Mrs. Norris. A small sound of distress escaped Liss at that
horrible thought, barely drowned out by the cascade of
water. She desperately wanted to believe Jeff Thibodeau
was mistaken.

With hands that felt stiff and clumsy, Liss shut off the
water, now gone tepid. She rested her forehead against
the glass door of the shower. She didn’t know how long
she stood there, but she was chilled by the time a voice
called her name.

“Liss? You okay?”

Dan. Dan Ruskin. She fumbled for a towel. Good grief.
She’d been more addled by finding Mrs. Norris than she’d
thought if she’d completely forgotten that she’d left him
sitting in Aunt Margaret’s kitchen. “I’m fine,” she called.
“Give me a minute.”

Of all the ways she might have imagined getting reacquainted with Dan, this was not one of them.

“The state police detective’s here” The note of warning in his voice made the hair on the back of her neck
prickle.

“I’ll be right out,” she called.

She quickly finished toweling herself off, glad she’d
remembered to grab clean clothes on her way to the bathroom. It did not take long to blow dry her hair and slip
into a gauzy, ankle-length skirt and a soft, lacy camisole. She didn’t bother with makeup. This was no time for
primping.

Liss paused with her hand on the doorknob. Bracing
herself for whatever new shocks waited beyond the relative security of the bathroom, praying no one would
guess that her composure was all on the surface, she
stepped into the hall.

A lanky blond stranger in gray slacks, white shirt, herringbone jacket, and conservative maroon tie was just
coming out of her bedroom. He had a boyish face that
made her think he must be younger than she was, but his
attitude left no doubt as to which of them was in charge.
“Where are the clothes you were wearing?” he demanded.

Taken aback, Liss just pointed. She’d hung her wool
skirt on the back of the bathroom door and stuffed everything else into the hamper.

“Come into the living room,” he ordered, leading the
way. He gave the uniformed officer already there orders
to bag up her discarded clothing.

Liss felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. He
was acting as if he considered her a suspect. “What on
earth-?”

“You found her, right?”

“Well, yes, but-“

“Why did you take a shower?”

Anxiety abruptly gave way to annoyance. “I’d just worked
all day in the heat and humidity at the fairgrounds. Why
do you think I took a shower?” She left the words you
moron unspoken.

The sound of a throat clearing pulled her attention
away from the detective. Dan sat on the sofa, a mug of
coffee in one hand. His deadly serious expression sent a
shiver down Liss’s spine.

“This is Detective Craig LaVerdiere, Liss. He’s in
charge of the investigation.”

Investigation-she didn’t like the sound of that word.
It seemed to confirm that Jeff had been right and Mrs. Norris’s death wasn’t an accident.

“Would you like some coffee?” Dan asked. He’d already poured a mug for her and set cream and sweetener
out on the coffee table. He’d also unearthed Aunt Margaret’s
brandy, presumably to add a dollop to the brew.

“I’m through with you, Ruskin,” the detective said
when Liss sat down beside Dan on the sofa. “I’ll have a
statement typed up for you to sign tomorrow. For now,
you can go home”

Liss wondered how much time she’d lost in the shower.
Then again, she didn’t suppose Dan had had much to say.
As he’d already told her, he’d been at home until he’d seen
her car and come over to suggest ordering pizza.

She frowned, suddenly acutely aware that Dan didn’t
know exactly when she’d arrived. If she needed an alibi,
she was out of luck.

Don’t think like that, she told herself. This is all some
horrible misunderstanding. Mrs. Norris fell!

Dan made no move to leave. Instead he looked at Liss.
“Would you like me to stay?”

“You’ve got no business-“

“Yes,” Liss interrupted. She might be confused about
some things, but she was certain she didn’t want to be left
alone with this aggressive detective.

As if to underscore the reason for her uneasiness, the
uniformed trooper walked through the room carrying the
bag that contained Liss’s clothes. She assumed he was
taking them away for some sort of testing.

“What’s going on here, detective?” she asked. “I thought
Mrs. Norris fell and struck her head”

“I ask the questions, Ms. MacCrimmon. You answer
them”

“Very well. But Mr. Ruskin stays” She wasn’t ashamed to admit that she felt less vulnerable with Dan beside her.
Everyone needed a little support sometimes.

LaVerdiere gave her a fulminating glare but after a
moment he settled into the chair opposite the sofa and retrieved a small, spiral-bound notebook from his breast
pocket. When he’d turned on the small tape recorder sitting next to the brandy, he recited the day and time for the
tape and identified himself. Then he asked Liss for her
full name.

She gave it to him with a straight face. “Amaryllis
Rosalie MacCrimmon.”

He never looked up from his notebook, and she grudgingly gave him one point for sensitivity. The fanciful
name her mother-Violet had given her had always embarrassed Liss. As a child she couldn’t even pronounce it.

“You say you were at the fairgrounds today?” LaVerdiere
asked.

Liss doctored her coffee and took a tentative sip before she answered. “Yes. I was there all day. I left here
around six-thirty this morning.”

“The store was closed for the day?”

“That’s right. It always is for the Highland Games. I
set up and ran the Scottish Emporium booth”

“What time did the games end for the day?”

“Six.”

His eyebrows lifted. “So you were home for some time
before you discovered the body.”

She shook her head. “I found her only minutes after
arriving here. It took awhile to close up. Some of the
stock had to be repacked and stored in my car. And the
weather was bad driving back to Moosetookalook.”

“What time was it when you entered the shop?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t look at a clock.”

“Did you see anyone when you came in?”

“No “’

“Do you know why the victim was in that storeroom?”

“No’

“Do you know how she got into the building?”

“No, although it would be easy enough to find Aunt
Margaret’s spare key. She always left it on the sill over the
back door. Half the town probably knew that”

“I certainly did,” Dan said.

LaVerdiere ignored him and asked Liss more questions she couldn’t answer. The interrogation seemed endless and soon became annoyingly repetitive. LaVerdiere’s
tone, never exactly soothing, slowly turned downright
hostile, as if he didn’t believe a word she said.

“And no one can confirm precisely when you arrived
back in Moosetookalook?” he asked for the third time.

Sick of his not-so-veiled hints that she’d been lying to
him, Liss reached the limit of her patience. “Why don’t
you just say straight out what you think happened here?”

“Oh, we know what happened,” LaVerdiere drawled.
“The M.E. will confirm it with the autopsy but it’s obvious from the angle of the body and the force of the blow
that she didn’t just stumble into those shelves by accident. She had help. Someone shoved her. Hard. Someone
killed her, Ms. MacCrimmon.”

“Well, it wasn’t me!” Outraged by the ridiculous insinuation, she let her feelings show.

“You were here.”

“I found the body.”

“You’d be surprised how many times the person who
reports a crime is the one who committed it.”

“She was already dead when I got home! How many
times do I have to tell you that?”

“Until you make me believe it.”

“If she was murdered, I want her killer caught and
punished even more than you do. I knew her. She was a part of my childhood, a good, kind, decent woman who
didn’t deserve to die that way!”

“So you say.”

Left momentarily speechless by his gall, Liss just
gaped at him.

Before LaVerdiere could make any further outlandish
comments, a deputy sheriff stepped into the room. The
state police detective clicked off his tape recorder and left
his chair to confer with the other officer.

Liss scowled at the two of them, blindly at first. Then
her gaze sharpened and she realized that she knew the
man in the brown uniform. It was Pete Campbell, last seen
hurling the stone and wearing a kilt over fluorescent swim
trunks. The sense of unreality she had felt ever since she’d
discovered Mrs. Norris in the stockroom ratcheted up another notch.

“Pete’s a cop?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Amazing, isn’t it? Listen, Liss. You
hang in there. You’re right not to let LaVerdiere bully you.
He’s only picking on you because he’s hoping for an easy
solution.”

“Somebody killed Mrs. Norris.” Whispering the
words aloud brought a painful tightness to her chest.
“Somebody murdered her.”

“LaVerdiere seems to think so”

“He seems to think it was nie.”

“He’s barking up the wrong tree. Damn, I wish I’d
seen you arrive home. I’d have been with you when you
found her.”