Kilt Dead (33 page)

She spent a little time online as well, exploring what
might have gone wrong with her car. She found an explanation-or at least a clue where to look for one. Apparently the throttle could stick if something went wrong
with one of the engine hoses. The website did not tell her just what that something might be, but since it had obviously happened to other people, that meant it was a fluke,
not sabotage.

Good, she thought. She hadn’t liked Sherri’s suggestion that her car might have been tampered with.

Her friend had just been upset. She’d let her imagination run away with her.

A wry smile tugged at the corners of Liss’s mouth. It
wasn’t as if she’d lost her brakes. Wouldn’t that have
been a cliche? Out of curiosity, she spent a bit more time
researching potential car problems online. It reassured
her to discover that cutting a brake line was nowhere near
as simple a process as murder mysteries made it seem.

In early evening, after the shop was closed, Liss and
Sherri headed for Mrs. Biggs’s house. The previous day’s
cool, pleasant temperature was a thing of the past. They
were both dripping with sweat by the time they’d walked
the short distance from the Emporium. They spotted Barbara while they were still half a block away. She had
changed into shorts and a halter top after getting home
from work and was sitting on the glider in the side yard,
sipping a tall glass of lemonade the picture of the exhausted working girl after a hard day.

“Do you think LaVerdiere questioned her about my
accident?” Liss asked.

“Doubt it. I heard he was in Augusta all day today.”

Two Adirondack chairs flanked Barbara’s glider. Liss
and Sherri slid into them before their quarry was even
aware of their presence.

“What the hell-?”

“Hello, Barbara. It appears we’re neighbors,” Liss
said.

“So?” She gave Liss’s all-too-obvious bruises a sharp
look but did not comment on them.

“Call this a neighborly visit. I’ve been talking to quite
a few folks who live near the Emporium, trying to jog
memories about the day Mrs. Norris was killed.”

“A: I live a little far away to have seen anything. B: you
already asked me about this. I told you all I know, which
is nothing.”

Liss glanced sideways, across Maple Avenue. Beyond
the pretty little Cape Cod with dormers she could clearly
see the back of Mrs. Norris’s house.

“Besides, I wasn’t here when she was killed.”

“Forgot for a minute, didn’t you? Let’s drop the pretense, Barbara. I know you weren’t with your boss. What
did he do? Drop you here as soon as he realized he couldn’t
get into the Emporium? Oh, no-I forgot. You got a scarf
out of the deal first, didn’t you?”

“What are you implying?”

“I’m asking if you want to change your story. Maybe
you saw something Graye didn’t or maybe you know that
Jason Graye went back to the Emporium later, on his own”

“You were seen, you know,” Sherri said.

Both Liss and Barbara turned to her in surprise.

Sherri nodded earnestly but Liss was pretty sure she
was lying through her teeth. “Your neighbor over there”she gestured toward the Cape Cod-“saw him drop you
off.”

“Okay. Fine. Jase brought me straight home after the
stop at the vintage clothing place. I have no idea what he
did during the rest of that afternoon and evening. Or that
night. But he wasn’t with me. And I was right here, minding my own business the whole time.”

Well, that hit a nerve, Liss thought. Barbara looked
like she might bolt if she had to answer any more questions.

“Are you afraid of him?” Sherri asked.

Barbara’s look of surprise was answer enough. “What?

You think he beats me or something? He’s inconsiderate
and rude, that’s all.”

“Why do you put up with that kind of behavior?” If
he’d been her boss, Liss would have walked out the first
time he shouted at her. He’d never have gotten as far as
boyfriend status.

Barbara shrugged. “The money’s good. You don’t see
many starving Realtors around, do you?”

“I understand Graye put a bid in on the hotel,” Liss
began.

Barbara abruptly stood. “That’s none of your business.
I’ll thank you to leave now.”

“Hey, we’re just two gals out for a stroll.” Neither
Sherri nor Liss made any move to rise.

When a glare didn’t unseat them either, Barbara stalked
off toward the outside stairs that led to her apartment.
Liss stayed put a moment longer, wondering what to do
next. Graye had lied, but that didn’t mean he’d killed
Mrs. Norris.

“Psssst! Over here!”

Startled, Liss turned toward the voice. She hadn’t realized how close the chairs and glider were to the side of
Mrs. Biggs’s house, or that the kitchen window had been
open. Mrs. Biggs herself stood just on the other side of
the screen, beckoning to them.

A few minutes later they were inside, seated at yet another kitchen table, tall glasses of lemonade of their own
in front of them.

“I couldn’t help overhearing,” Mrs. Biggs said, after
she’d tut-tutted over the visible reminders of Liss’s accident-she’d heard all about it at Angie’s Books.

“We didn’t mean to disturb you, Mrs. Biggs,” Liss
apologized.

“Call me Hermione, dear. And you didn’t disturb me
one bit. But my tenant’s lies, well, that’s another thing.”

Liss and Sherri exchanged a look.

“She went back out that day, after Jason Graye dropped
her off. And she was heading toward the Emporium when
she left here”

“Perhaps she had to pick up groceries,” Liss suggested, playing devil’s advocate.

“Store’s in the other direction. Besides, I thought at the
time that her movements were, well, furtive. She kept looking over her shoulder, like she was afraid of being seen”

“Do you know much about her?” Sherri asked.

“She keeps to herself.” Disappointment tinged the admission. “She was from New York originally. Came up
here to college and stayed. She’s only been upstairs for
the last six months” She gave a disdainful sniff. “I think
she moved here to be closer to her boss. They car-pool,
you know. If you ask me, since he didn’t ask her to move
in with him, it would have made more sense to live in
Fallstown, near the office”

Hermione Biggs had been friends with Mrs. Norris,
Liss remembered. Apparently she’d taken a similar interest in her neighbors’ doings, but she had only speculation
to offer about Barbara Zathros. The woman had done a
good job of avoiding her landlady’s nosy questions.

They had polished off the lemonade, thanked Hermione
for her help, and started to leave when Liss remembered
something Hermione had said at the memorial service.
“You were close to Mrs. Norris, weren’t you?”

“I was. I miss her something awful.” She smiled. “She
did the right thing leaving everything to you, dear. You’re
a good girl.”

“I … it was a surprise.”

“Well, of course it was. She’d never have told you.
Someone more deserving might have come along before
she passed”

“Yes, well … I was wondering … I found a looseleaf
binder in the house. Blue. It seems to be filled with odd
notations about fictional characters”

“Oh, that would be the ideas file for her fanfic group.”
At Liss’s blank look, she explained. “It’s one of those online e-groups. FarFetchedFanFic. As a hobby, the members come up with their own stories about favorite mystery
characters. They especially like to cross-pollinate. You
know take one character from one series and put him or
her together with the sleuth from a different set of mystery novels. Oh, I know it isn’t strictly legal. The rights to
use those characters belong to the authors. Amanda felt a
little guilty about that. But she said it was just so much
fun to speculate!”

Liss was still shaking her head when she and Sherri
arrived back at the Emporium. “Well, that’s one mystery
solved. We had it backwards. It wasn’t gossip about the
locals disguised with character names. The scandal was
about characters, using bits and pieces of real life.”

“Well, why not?” Sherri asked. “I mean, why not take
a few ideas from all the gossip she heard? It would have
been obvious all along if we’d seen the record of posts she
sent to the fanfic group and the printouts the state police
took away.”

“No wonder the forensics guys knew blackmail wasn’t
the motive for her murder. And why LaVerdiere looked
foolish for thinking it was. So what now? Barbara still didn’t
tell us the truth, even if she did ruin Graye’s alibi.”

“Much as I hate to say it, you have to call the cops. Tell
LaVerdiere what you just found out and let him take it
from there”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m dead serious. In fact, if you don’t tell him what
you discovered, you could be accused of withholding information.”

Grumbling all the while, Liss reluctantly had to agree
that Sherri was right. “Way back when all this started,
LaVerdiere gave me a number to use in case I wanted to
change my story” She dug it out and reached for the phone.

Five minutes later, after filling the detective in on what
she’d learned and what she suspected, Liss slammed the
receiver down in disgust.

“What happened?” Sherri asked.

“He said he’d wasted enough time listening to amateur
theories and hung up on me “”

fter Sherri headed home for an early night, since she
was now on the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift, Liss fed the
cat, fixed herself some supper, and fumed. She’d have
gone over to Dan’s and shared her troubles with him, but
he wasn’t home yet.

LaVerdiere’s attitude infuriated her. It wasn’t as if
there weren’t grounds to investigate Jason Graye further.
Barbara, too.

Impatience had always been her worst failing. As the
evening wore on, she gave up trying to convince herself
to wait for the police to get a clue. If she wanted to clear
her own name, and to have this mess resolved before
Aunt Margaret got back from Scotland, then it was up to
her to take action. The approach Sherri had used with
Barbara earlier pretending she knew more than she
did had worked once. Why not again?

Liss made the trip back to Mrs. Biggs’s house at the
fastest trot she could manage with muscles still stiff and
sore from the air bag and seatbelt bruises. The lights were
on downstairs, reassuring her that a good scream would
bring help if Barbara took exception to her questions.
Liss rapped firmly on the door to the second-floor apartment and pushed her way in the instant it opened.

“What do you want?” Barbara demanded.

“The truth. For a change” Barbara started to protest,
but Liss cut her off. “Here’s the thing I’m sure it was an
accident. If you’ll just turn yourself in, you won’t be
charged with murder.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Not at all. I understand exactly how it happened. You
wanted to get in to look around the building for structural
flaws. Not exactly an honorable reason, but we’ll let that
pass. You knew a key was kept above the back door.
Mrs. Biggs probably mentioned it. She saw you leave here
again after Graye dropped you off, by the way. So you let
yourself in and started snooping around and Mrs. Norris
caught you at it. You’d been after her to sell her house, so
I don’t imagine she was willing to listen to any feeble excuses. Did she threaten to call the cops?”

“You’re wrong. I never “

“She was a teacher for years, you know. She had that
disciplinarian thing down pat. Didn’t need to use it often,
but when she gave you that look and pointed her finger at
you, you knew you were in trouble.”

“This is ridiculous. I never went inside.”

“But you planned to “

Barbara didn’t have enough chutzpah to brazen it out.
“Alright. I admit I did return to the shop, and I did know
about the key, but I went away again when I realized there
was someone inside already.”

“Who?”

“I … I don’t know. I just saw a shadow moving in
front of a window.”

“Guess”