“Was she alone?”
“Yeah. I didn't see anyone else out there, before or after, and I was there at the window for maybe fifteen minutes altogether. Pretty weird, huh?” He hesitated. “I've been wondering ... well, you don't think I should have told someone, do you? I mean, an old lady wandering around at night like thatâshould I have worried that she'd have an accident?” He was looking at his mother as he spoke.
This was a very responsible young man, Liss decided, and one who did not need to be burdened with guilt. “You couldn't have known what would happen. And I can assure you that despite what happened to her, Jane Nedlinger knew what she was doing when she took that walk out to Lover's Leap.”
She was willing to bet that Jane had arranged to meet someone there. That was still the only conclusion that made sense. Maybe it had been someone she'd been trying to blackmail, preposterous as that idea had seemed at first. The person she'd met might have been Nola, but Liss was more inclined to put her money on Yvonne Quinlan.
“You're sure you didn't see anyone else out there?” she asked Davy.
“I went back to bed maybe ten minutes after I saw the fat woman,” Davy said in a low voice. His mother had started to back her wheelchair away from the signing table. “I didn't sleep well. I never do in a strange bed. That's why I was up early and decided to go jogging.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Man, I really wish I'd just stayed in bed.”
Liss stood for a moment looking after the young man as he and his mother left the dealer's room. Then she remembered the stack of books she was carrying. “These are for Angie's Books,” she told Lea Wait, dumping the whole pile on the table.
“You'll just want my name, then,” Lea said, and started signing.
Having once started, Liss felt obliged to continue taking Angie's hardcover stock to the other authors to be signed.
“Not Yvonne Quinlan,” Angie said. “She already autographed all the extras while she was still at the store.”
That was just as well, Liss decided. Yvonne's body language and facial expression, whenever she happened to look Liss's way, were decidedly hostile.
Following the group signing there was a break before the teaâactually a late luncheon. During that hour, having closed the dealers' room, Liss and Angie and the T-shirt dealer packed up all the items they'd offered for sale. Liss had her stock boxed and ready to load into the back of Dan's truck in record time. When she glanced at her watch, she saw that she still had a half hour to spare before the tea.
She turned to give Angie a hand and froze when she saw that the bookseller was ripping the front covers off one paperback after another and tossing the remains into a nearby trash bin that was already half full of similar discards.
“What are you doing? Those are books!”
“These are
returns,
” Angie corrected her. “Titles I over-ordered. They didn't sell. Now they have to go back to the publisher. It's cheaper to send just the cover, and that's all the distributor requires.”
Horrified, Liss struggled to make sense of such a system. How could the company that produced the books in the first place encourage their wanton destruction?
“At least I made money on Yvonne Quinlan's signing,” Angie said. “Good thing, too. Hardcover books can't be stripped. I'd have had to foot the bill to ship them back to the warehouse.”
“It was her popularity as an actress that brought out the fans. I'm surprised some of them
can
read.” Making the snarky comment made Liss feel marginally better. Petty of her, she knew, but she'd take comfort where she could. “Stripped” booksâwhat a loathsome concept!
“The woman certainly has had an interesting career,” Angie remarked, “even if she did fake part of it.”
“Overheard that, did you?”
“It would have been hard not to, since you were in my shop at the time. I've got to say, though, that she sure sounded sincere when she said she wrote her own novels.”
“Aunt Margaret thinks she's convinced herself she did.”
“Well, I don't suppose it would be the first time an actor got lost in a role,” Angie said with a laugh.
Â
Dan let himself into the dealers' room with a hotel passkey and was relieved to find that Liss was still there. The only way he'd ever come up with to keep her out of trouble was to stick close to her. True, his attempt to protect her from herself last January hadn't worked all that well. Liss had ended up having to rescue him. But he didn't have any better ideas, and this time around, she seemed inclined to accept his presence. Maybe being engaged to be married helped. In any case, in a few more hours, when everyone at the First Annual Maine-ly Cozy Con had left the hotel and gone home, he'd be able to relax and worry about something elseâlike how to talk the MacCrimmons out of formal Scottish dress as wedding attire.
“Ready to eat?” he asked after they'd loaded her boxes and most of Angie's into the back of his truck.
“Always.”
“Tea, huh?” They walked back inside together and headed up to the mezzanine.
“A substantial tea, with sandwiches and little cakes. And a good crowd, I hope, since they sold tickets to the general public.”
In spite of that warning, Dan was surprised to see so many Moosetookalook people in attendance. Margaret was there, of course, but so were Dolores and Moose Mayfield, Doug and Lorelei Preston, and his own brother, Sam, and his wife.
Dan began to relax as they ate. Liss filled him in on her conversation with Davy Kline and the information the martial arts expert had given her. He considered what she told him and came to the conclusion that Tandy had been right, after all. He didn't say so to Liss, but it made sense to him. Why couldn't Nola have been the one to meet Jane at Lover's Leap? She'd been seen talking to Jane just beforehand. And if Nola had taken a self-defense course somewhere along the line, who was to say she might not have been able to counter an attack by a bigger, stronger opponent by using that opponent's own weight against her? He could see thatâNola flipping Jane right off the cliff. Of course he had no idea why Jane might have rushed at Nola, prompting her to defend herself, but he wasn't going to quibble over details. He liked his interpretation of the facts far too much.
If Nola had killed Jane and then committed suicide out of guilt, that meant Liss was safe. If the killer was already dead, there was no threat to his fiancée. She could ask all the questions she liked and no harm would come to her.
But he intended to stick close, just in case he was wrong about that.
When Margaret stopped by their table with the news that Tandy was in the hotel, Dan felt relief rather than irritation. That made a nice change.
“Gordon talked to Yvonne Quinlan this morning,” Margaret reported, “and to Bill Stotz and Eleanor Ogilvie. I think he's finally decided to take Liss's theory seriously.”
More likely he was just being thorough, Dan thought. Once again, he kept his opinion to himself.
When Margaret had moved on, returning to the table where she'd been sitting with several other local residents, Liss turned to Dan. “I need to talk to Gordon.”
“Do you want to end up in jail?”
“He didn't mean that.”
“I wouldn't be so sure. Anyway, what can you tell him that he doesn't already know?”
Liss smile looked forced. “He doesn't know I searched Yvonne's room.”
“And since he's not likely to dust it for fingerprints, he never will. Leave well enough alone, Liss.”
“I suppose he's already talked to Tricia and to Davy Kline.”
“I know he questioned Tricia. She told me he did.”
“But he came out here and talked to the people he knows I suspect. That means he's keeping an open mind. I wonder why he didn't arrest one of them?”
“Maybe because he was able to rule them out? I'm sure he has good reasons for theorizing that Nola killed Jane and then herself, probably more reasons than he's shared with you.”
She leaned toward him across the table, her expression intent. “I agree, but I still don't buy that explanation. I have a viable alternative, one that doesn't involve Nola killing herself in the middle of the conference she spent most of a year planning. The Cozy Con meant too much to her, Dan. I know it did. No matter whatâeven if she did somehow manage to kill Janeâshe'd have stuck it out until today. Until this tea and the closing ceremonies.”
“And exactly how are you going to convince him you're right?”
“He doesn't know Yvonne was once a stuntwoman. That information might make a difference.” She was already on her feet. “He's probably in the hotel library.”
“If you're determined to do this, I'll come withâ”
“No.” She put a hand on his shoulder and left it there until he resumed his seat. “I need to do this alone. There's something else I want to say to Gordon, too. Something ... personal. I've had the feeling, the last couple of days, that he and I need ... closure.”
Dan had no argument to offer against the pleading look in her eyes. She'd interpret any further objections on his part as jealousy. As far as he was concerned, the rivalry between himself and the state police detective for Liss's affections had ended the day she'd accepted his proposal of marriage, but if she felt she needed to make that clear to Tandy, so be it. Closure? Yeah, he was all for it if it meant she'd be finished, once and for all, with that chapter in her life.
“I'll be waiting right here when you get back,” he promised.
Â
Liss poked her head into the library and found it empty. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath. She'd wanted to get this over with, finish it for Nola
and
for herself.
Here she was, all psyched up to set the record straight with Gordon, and he wasn't where he was supposed to be. She considered going straight back to the tea. The closing ceremonies were probably getting started about now. But maybe Gordon hadn't gone far. She tried to think where else he would be. Somewhere in the hotel seemed likely, maybe Nola's room, or Jane's. Or he could be re-interviewing staff members. The gift shop was on her way back to the lobby, so she stopped in to ask Fran Pertwee if she'd seen Gordon.
“Not a single living soul has come in here since well before noon,” Fran told her. “I'm thinking of closing up and going home. There's not much sense in Joe paying me overtime to stand around and twiddle my thumbs.”
Liss's next stop was the check-in desk. Joe Ruskin hadn't seen Gordon for at least an hour, but he did offer the information that the mobile crime-scene lab was still in the parking lot. “You could ask whoever's in there where Gordon's got to,” he suggested.
The state trooper who'd been taking notes when Gordon had interviewed her was alone in the police trailer, but he knew where Gordon had gone. “He was headed out to the crime scene,” the trooper said, “to take down the yellow tape.”
“I wouldn't think that was Gordon's job,” Liss said, surprised.
“Somebody's got to do it, and he wanted one last walk through the site.”
Liss glanced at her watch. It would take at least ten minutes to hike out to Lover's Leap, but she'd certainly be able to talk to Gordon in private out there. He'd have to listen to her long enough for her to tell him that Yvonne Quinlan knew how to snap someone's neck with her bare hands. And, once she'd given him that information, she'd offer a long-overdue apology.
She'd taken the coward's way out and had Gordon's brother break the news of her engagement to him. She owed it to him to tell him straight out that she'd chosen Dan over him not only because she loved Dan, although that was the biggest part of it, but also because of the way she acted when she was around Gordon. He, or his profession, turned her into a daredevil. She took risks she shouldn't. It was as if he brought out her competitive nature, and in the worst possible way. She'd almost gotten both of them killed the previous winter, and the killer they'd been chasing
had
ended up dead.
No more Nancy Drew, she vowed as she started across the grass toward the woods. Or Jessica Fletcher. Or Buffy. She'd turn in her deerstalker cap and her magnifying glass, set the record straight between herself and Gordon, marry Dan, and stop meddling.
Closer to fifteen minutes elapsed before she came out of the woods at Lover's Leap. Gordon was nowhere to be seen. That the crime scene tape was gone told her he'd been there. She realized that she'd probably just missed him. Hands on her hips, a little out of breath from her trek through the trees, Liss fumed with frustration and disappointment as she crossed the clearing to the fence. She hadn't bumped into Gordon on the trail on her way in, so he'd no doubt left by way of the path that came out on Spruce Avenue. In all likelihood, he was already back at the hotel. And Dan, concerned that she'd been gone so long, would be worrying and wondering what had happened to her. Oh, this day just got better and better!