Town in a Wild Moose Chase (31 page)

Ben made a face and shrugged. “Not particularly. But why would he avoid me?”

Candy leveled a finger at him. “That’s a great question. And I think I’m going to go find out. Excuse me.”

She rose from her chair and started across the room. Maggie and Preston were currently on the opposite side of the dance floor, so she angled toward them, threading her way through the other couples on the floor.

She was several couples in when she felt a hand brush across her shoulder. She stopped and turned.

A svelte woman in her mid to late fifties, dancing with her spouse, smiled at her. “I’m sorry,” the woman said, “I don’t mean to disturb you, but I love your dress. Where did you get it?”

“Oh, this?” Candy looked down absently. “A friend loaned it to me.”

“Well, it looks lovely on you. You know, I have one exactly like it. I bought it at Neiman Marcus when we were visiting our daughter down in Boston last fall. I would have worn it tonight, but my husband forgot to pick it up at the dry cleaner’s yesterday.”

Candy was mortified. She could feel her cheeks redden and her face grow hot. Her whole body began to tingle. She felt lightheaded, and for a few moments thought she might collapse if she didn’t sit down instantly.

But she steadied herself, blinked several times, forced herself to focus, and said in the most natural voice she could muster, “Well, if I had known that I would have worn something else.”

“Oh, dear, don’t you see?” the woman said with obvious delight. “If Sid had picked up the dry cleaning, we’d both be wearing the same dress! This way is much better. I decided to wear Chanel, which I picked up in New York the last time we were down in the city, and you look so much better in that dress than I do. Everything turned out for the best, you see!”

Candy mumbled a quiet “thank you” and slinked away as the woman turned back to her husband, Sid, delighted at her good fortune.

Candy took a moment to get her bearings, and put Maggie clearly in her sights.

But just then the string quartet plunged into the final notes of the Vivaldi piece and ended with gusto. As the music stopped, the couples around her pulled apart as applause rippled across the dance floor and around the room. The cellist announced that the group would be taking a short break, and a staff member rang a bell, announcing that dinner was imminent and would the guests kindly take their seats so they could get started with the evening’s program.

With that announcement, everyone in the room, suddenly animated, shifted en masse, and Candy was caught amid a swarm of moving bodies. She held her place, waiting for the crowd to dissipate, and when a clear line of sight finally opened up again to the far side of the dance floor, Maggie and Preston were gone.

Candy looked in both directions, searching for them. She thought she caught a glimpse of them headed out through the French doors, into the hallway beyond.

Curious, she followed. Preston’s behavior had become increasingly odd over the past day or two. It was time to find out what was behind it all.

Waiters with the first course arrived through a side door to her left, so she hurried through the French doors into the hallway beyond to avoid any more traffic jams. Only a few guests lingered here, glasses in hand, chatting away obliviously. A staff member was just coming through the hall, encouraging the guests to take their seats. Candy waved her down.

“Did you just see a middle-aged couple go through here?” She briefly described Maggie and Preston, and the staff member pointed toward the front lobby area.

“I believe I saw them headed that way.”

Candy started off again, moving at a quicker pace.

Why are they headed to the lobby?
she wondered. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps Preston simply wanted to check
on a reservation, or maybe they were looking for a quiet place to talk.

But maybe it was something else. Preston’s brief appearance at the ball had been too suspicious. Candy suspected he was up to something. But what was it? Where was he taking Maggie?

Her mind jumped too quickly to several conclusions, which she forced down as she approached the lobby.

She scanned the place in a matter of milliseconds but saw no sign of her friend. Shifting direction, she was just about to ask the two women behind the front desk if they’d seen any sign of Maggie and Preston when she glanced out the inn’s twin front glass doors and spotted Maggie outside under an awning, without her coat, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she stared into the darkness toward En-glish Point Lighthouse and the coastline.

Candy ran out to her. “Mags, are you all right?” She couldn’t keep the worry from her voice.

Maggie looked at her, slightly bewildered. “I’m not sure.”

Candy took her by the shoulder. “What happened? Where’s Preston?”

“He left.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know, he… he said he wanted to show me something outside. Then he suggested we go back to his place. I told him I didn’t think that would be a very good idea. And then he got very… strange. It’s like something clicked inside him. He pulled me out here and gave me this really cold look.” She turned to Candy. “To be honest, he was a little scary.”

“Did he do anything to you?” Candy asked, worried for her friend.

But Maggie shook her head. “No, he… he told me to tell you something.”

Candy felt a little chill go through her, and it had nothing
to do with the fact that they were standing outside without their coats in twenty-degree weather. “What is it?”

“He said just two words, and then he—”

But Ben walked out of the door behind them just then, with an expression of concern on his face. “Candy, there you are. Is everything okay? I saw you running out of the room and I—”

He stopped as a police car turned into the driveway in front of the inn, lights flashing, and slid to a stop just a few feet from them, its rear end fishtailing a little on the ice. The door popped open and Officer Jody McCroy leapt out. He came around the car in a rush as a second police car pulled up behind him, its roof lights flashing also.

Ben instinctively put his hands on the shoulders of both Candy and Maggie, gently pulling them out of the way. As a trio, the three of them took several steps back, giving the officers plenty of room.

“Jim, what’s going on?” Ben asked one of the officers as he rushed past. The officer glanced at him but continued on as a third police car, and then a fourth, pulled into the driveway.

Chief Darryl Durr stepped out of the passenger seat of the last car and watched as his men converged on the building.

He saw Candy, Ben, and Maggie, nodded casually, and started past them toward the inn’s front doors. But a question from Candy made him pause.

“Are you here to arrest Duncan Leggmeyer?” she asked.

Chief Durr turned and regarded the group for a moment before he said, “No. We’re here to arrest Liam Yates.”

The operation was performed efficiently and with minimal disruption. Most of the guests inside at the ball never knew what was happening; since the ballroom’s windows faced out the back of the building, the occupants didn’t see the flashing lights of the police cars out front. However, a few regular hotel guests were on hand to witness the procession as Liam Yates was escorted through the lobby about five minutes later, handcuffed, dazed by this latest development, head bowed in embarrassment, saying not a word.

Boy, he’s having a bad night
, Candy thought as she stood near the front desk with Maggie and Ben, watching as two uniformed officers led Liam out through the front doors to one of the waiting police cars.

A few moments later, Duncan Leggmeyer emerged from a nearby room, also with a police escort, though without the handcuffs. On his face was an expression of despair mixed with anger.

Candy’s reporter instincts threatened to get the better of
her, and she was tempted to start calling out questions to the officers as they passed by her. She knew Ben felt the same way, but they both held back their inquiries, at least for the moment.

Still, Ben couldn’t keep still for long. “I have to find out what’s going on,” he told her as they watched Chief Durr nod to the inn’s proprietor, Oliver LaForce, who stood with hands clasped in front of him beside the assistant innkeeper, Alby Alcott. They both appeared grim yet determined to get back to business as quickly as possible.

Candy turned to Ben. “It probably has something to do with the hatchet,” she told him, and he listened with lips pursed tightly as she explained how Solomon had found the body with a hatchet in its back and had passed the murder weapon on to her so she could deliver it to the police department.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked, expressionless.

“There was so much going on. I never had a chance.”

He nodded and pulled her over to one side, out of earshot of the others gathered in the lobby. “Okay, tell me everything you know,” he said, and he cast his eyes downward in concentration as Candy explained what she had discovered that day, with Maggie eavesdropping on their conversation.

“I have to call Finn,” Ben said when she’d finished, “and see if he’s heard anything. Then I should head over to the police station.” He took her hand. “I’m sorry our big night out has been ruined,” he said sincerely.

She gave him an understanding look. “It was brief but wonderful. Go do what you have to do.”

“I don’t mean to leave you stranded. Can you find a ride home?”

“Maggie will take me.” She gave him a quick hug. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.”

“Okay. I’ll call you as soon as I know something,” he said, and kissed her before he ran off to grab his coat.

After he’d gone, Candy took a deep breath. “Well,” she said to Maggie, “at least we got in one good dance before things got crazy.”

Maggie sighed along with her. “You’re lucky. I barely had that. And now it appears my date has run out on me—though I’m not sure exactly what I did. And to think I got all dressed up for this.”

Candy turned toward her friend, eyes suddenly blazing. “Speaking of dresses…”

If Candy expected any sort of sympathy from her friend—or, heaven forbid, an apology—she was left sorely wanting, for Maggie defended herself vigorously. “Well, no, I didn’t tell you about that part of it because I knew you’d have a cow,” she said lightly, “but there’s no harm done. She doesn’t know the dress is hers—that’s old Mrs. Stevenson, by the way. One of the summer people. They just came up from Connecticut for the weekend. Really nice folks. He made his money in Laundromats. Can you believe that? He’s a millionaire because people plunk quarters into machines to wash their clothes. He’s made his millions a quarter at a time! Anyway, they dropped off the dress the last time they were here, between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s been hanging back there on the unclaimed rack for weeks. And as far as they’re concerned, it’s still hanging there. They’ll probably leave town tomorrow, and it’ll hang there for another few weeks until they get back to town and finally pick it up.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Candy said. “It’s not mine. I have to get out of it at once.”

“But it looks sooo good on you,” Maggie protested.

That, Candy had to admit, was true. She’d received a number of compliments tonight while wearing it. “I do hate to part with it. Do you think she’d sell it to me?”

“I have a better idea,” Maggie said slyly.

“What is it?” Candy asked, and abruptly paused as she
reconsidered her question. “No, wait. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“It’s nothing illegal,” Maggie assured her. “I promise.”

But Candy would not be swayed. “It doesn’t matter. Just take the dress back, put it back on the rack—after sending it back out for cleaning, of course—and let’s be done with it.”

Maggie made a huge deal of sighing in a very dramatic manner. “Fine. Be that way.”

“Good,” Candy said, trying to convince herself that this indeed was the right course of action.

“Good,” Maggie said, affirming that it was—the decision had been made, and that was that, and they were moving on.

Resigned to the fact that she had to give the dress back, Candy changed to another less sartorial subject. “Anyway, back to Preston. Outside, when Ben interrupted us, you were about to tell me something Preston had said—about a message for me?”