Scone Cold Dead (27 page)

“Okay. Okay, you're right. But on the twelfth day we can make a terrific spectacle out of all of them.” Her enthusiasm only momentarily dimmed, she rummaged in another pocket for a pencil and started making notes on the back of one of her lists. “We'll put a pear tree up in the town square next to the municipal Christmas tree. I know a taxidermist who can supply a stuffed partridge. Jump ahead to—”

“Jump ahead to customers arriving in droves to spend money,” Thorne interrupted, “and to the prices we're going to charge. People will pay a heck of a lot more than ten bucks for these babies now.”

Liss looked as if she wanted to object, but held her tongue when she saw Marcia's eyes light up.

After Thorne and Marcia had agreed to attend the selectmen's meeting that evening with her, Liss and Sherri left the two of them engrossed in a discussion of the best wording for their ads.

“Time to get back to the P.D.,” Sherri said. “You won't need my help dealing with the MSBA. You've already got an in with the top man.” Dan Ruskin, newly elected as president by the other small businesspeople in town, was one of the two men Liss had been dating since she'd returned to Moosetookalook seventeen months earlier.

Sherri started to cross the square, then paused to look back over her shoulder. “By the way—thanks, Liss.”

“For?”

“Salvaging my morning. I was bored to tears.” She grinned. “And if this plan of yours actually works, it will also be thanks for all the overtime I'm going to earn working crowd control.”