The Scottie Barked At Midnight (8 page)

Liss grimaced. “Isn't that the truth! And I'm facing some pretty stiff competition. I've heard you sing.”

Reaching into the pocket of her tunic, Willetta withdrew a package of sugar-free honey-lemon cough drops, the kind that also cleared the sinuses. “The singing I'm doing here isn't my usual,” she said, fishing one out and popping it into her mouth.

“What's your usual?” In the premiere, she'd belted out a show tune in the style and with the volume of the late, great Ethel Merman.

“Opera.”

Thanks to the cough drop, the word was garbled, but Liss understood it well enough. “Do you have a cold?” She saw no other indication that the singer might be ill.

“No.” Willetta rapped on the top of the coffee table. “Knock wood. I use these as preventive medicine.” She smiled again, showing beautifully straight, gleaming white teeth. It was the kind of smile that made Liss want to smile back.

“She has to be careful of her voice,” Iris said from the chair. She'd been quick to make herself at home. The waterworks had dried up, but she sounded as if she could use one of Willetta's cough drops to soothe her throat.

“Always,” Willetta agreed. “Come on, Iris. We don't want to keep our new colleague from her studies.”

Iris obediently stood, stepped over the circling Scotties, and headed for the door Willetta already had open. Dandy made a dash for freedom, but Liss was faster, catching hold of the little dog before she could reach the corridor.

Willetta used one foot to gently discourage Dondi from making the same attempt. “Nice meeting you, Liss.”

“See you tomorrow,” Iris called.

When they'd gone, Liss set Dandy down. A vague sense of uneasiness nagged at her. On impulse, she grabbed her key card and stepped out into the hall. Iris had already disappeared, but Willetta was still standing in front of her own room, just two doors down from Liss's, cussing softly at the balky lock.

“Hate these things,” she muttered. “What was wrong with old-fashioned metal keys?”

“Not a thing that I can see. Want me to try?”

Even as she offered, Willetta succeeded in getting the little green light to come on. She turned the handle before it could go red again, then glanced Liss's way. “Something you wanted?”

“I was wondering—who told you that Dandy and Dondi had a new partner?”

“Was it supposed to be a secret? Roy Eastmont passed on the good news in an e-mail. Everybody connected with the show probably got one.”

“No secret. I was just surprised that word got around so fast.”

With a wave, Liss retreated into her own suite, double locking the door behind her. She leaned against the solid wooden surface, wondering why the show's MC had been so quick to let everyone know she was taking Deidre's place. She supposed there was no good reason why he shouldn't have done so. In fact, it made perfect sense to send out that e-mail. So why did she find the fact that he had so troubling?

The answer came to her when Dandy went up on her hind legs to lick Liss's hand. Deidre had been convinced that it was one of her competitors who had stolen the Scottie. If she was right, then that person was among those who'd received Roy Eastmont's e-mail. That meant
Liss
was now on the dognapper's radar. Maybe she had good cause to feel uneasy!

 

“Cats,” Liss informed the two Scotties she accompanied outside at a quarter to seven the following morning, “are much less bother.” Especially when it was Dan who cleaned their litter box.

Oblivious to her crack-of-dawn grumpiness, they took their time exploring the area at one side of the parking lot that had been planted with decorative trees and shrubbery and furnished with several benches and a bronze statue of a skier. Every bush, every space between two paving stones, every patch of snow had to be sniffed and marked as Scottie territory. With one leash in each hand, Liss couldn't cover the huge yawn that snuck up on her.

“I'd kill for a cup of coffee,” she muttered. She'd had time to start a pot, but not to wait for it to be ready. Dandy and Dondi had made it abundantly clear that they needed to go out
now.
“Little con artists.”

When the dogs finally got around to doing what they'd come outside for, Liss shifted both leashes to one hand, retrieved the plastic bag she'd slipped into her coat pocket, and set to work cleaning up after them. Mission accomplished, she herded her charges back through a rear entrance to the hotel and down a short hallway to the elevators. She pushed the button for the fourth floor. It was also the top floor. Hotels in rural Maine were rarely higher, especially in places where a skyscraper might spoil the landscape.

Just before the car began to rise, the doors opened again to reveal a gaunt, unhealthy-looking man in his sixties. Liss recognized him as the stand-up comic competing to be champion of champions. He carried a take-out coffee from the coffee bar next to the concierge desk and a bakery bag that smelled of cinnamon and grease.

Liss stared at the cup with longing, doubly glad she'd hit the BREW button on the suite's coffeemaker before heading outside with the dogs. There was fresh coffee waiting with her name on it. A few more minutes, and she'd be sitting in a warm room and sipping a cup of hot, reviving liquid wake-me-up.

Her gaze shifted to the man. His appearance was unappealing—sunken chest; narrow, bony shoulders; and spindly legs—but since he specialized in insult humor, she supposed he might consider those features to be assets. He sent an irritated glance in the direction of the dogs, who were sniffing his pants legs, then raised faded gray eyes, a good match for what was left of his thinning hair, to give Liss a baleful look. She saw recognition flare, not because he knew who she was, but because he realized that the person walking Deidre Amendole's two dogs had to be her replacement. . . and his competition.

Don't judge a book by its cover,
Liss warned herself, and dialed up the best smile she could manage at this hour of the day. “Good morning. I'm Liss Ruskin. You must be Hal Quarles.”

“Must I?” His sneer emphasized sallow, sunken cheeks and made the bags beneath his eyes stand out.

Okay. Not a morning person.
She made no further attempt at conversation and was surprised when he spoke again.

“I suppose the daughter was too cheap to spring for the upscale digs.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You don't think the producers put Deidre Amendole up in that fancy-schmantzy condo, do you? She rented that place with her own money—she had pots of it—so she wouldn't have to live cheek by jowl with the rest of us.”

“These suites aren't exactly shabby.”

He shrugged. “I've stayed in better places.”

Liss was relieved when the elevator finally came to a stop. She held the dogs back to let Quarles get off first, then followed him down the hallway. His room turned out to be just before hers on the opposite side of the corridor. Watching him hunch over the door handle, glancing suspiciously from side to side as he used the key card, as if someone might be about to bop him on the head, break in, and steal his possessions, she found herself picturing him in Victorian dress. He'd make a perfect Ebenezer Scrooge . . . with a dash of Ichabod Crane thrown in.

So what if Deidre had been wealthy enough to upgrade her accommodations? Quarles's complaint sounded like the lament of a sore loser to her. Sour grapes. The green-eyed monster.

And that made her wonder if
he
had been the one who'd dognapped Dandy. If he had, Dandy apparently bore him no resentment. The little dog had behaved in a perfectly normal manner around the man.

Good, she thought. One less suspect.

In much better humor, Liss let herself into her own room, inhaling the welcome scent of that long awaited, much anticipated cup of coffee.

 

Five Mountains Ski Resort's hotel boasted an enormous ballroom on the second floor. A harried-looking young woman carrying a clipboard checked Liss's ID card, or rather Deidre's, which had been in the packet Desdemona had left for her, and directed her to an area marked off on the floor with blue tape and numbered with the numeral three. Similar rehearsal spaces had been allotted to each of the competitors, but at the moment they all appeared to be clustered around two tables set up in front of a bank of windows at the far end of the room. The tables held assorted pastries and fresh fruit, pitchers containing various juices, and industrial-size dispensers of coffee, decaf, and hot water for tea or cocoa.

Liss went first to Area Three to put down her tote bag and the two carriers containing Dandy and Dondi. Out in the open like this, she didn't worry that someone would walk off with one of them. The Scotties would be safe enough for the few minutes it would take her to grab a cup of coffee—her third of the day—and a doughnut.

“Be good,” she told them. “I'll be right back.”

“Hello, Liss,” Willetta greeted her when she joined the throng. “Dig in. The food won't last long with this crowd.”

Of the people helping themselves to breakfast, Liss recognized only Valentine Veilleux. She sent the photographer a friendly wave.

“We have to eat when we can,” a melodious male voice chimed in. “We never know where our next meal is coming from.”

It was the lament of all professional performers. Liss turned, fairly certain it must have been the magician, Oscar Yates, who had spoken. She was right, although he didn't introduce himself by that name.

“I am the Great Umberto,” he said, “magician extraordinaire.”

“Liss Ruskin, dog wrangler.”

They didn't shake hands. His were already full of food and drink. And yet, when his admiring gaze swept over her, Liss
felt
as if she'd been touched. The Great Umberto had charisma up the wazoo.

Seeing his act on the season premiere hadn't prepared her for the impact of meeting him in person. Although he'd given a smooth, polished performance, it hadn't included any illusions Liss hadn't seen before. Up close, though, he gave off vibes strong enough to make her think that he really could work magic. Oscar Yates had been blessed with the kind of rich blue-black hair that reflected sunlight. In combination with olive skin and regular features, the result was a striking appearance.

Liss cleared her throat and reached for a plate. “I'm looking forward to meeting the rest of the contestants this morning.”

“And here we all are.” Willetta sounded amused.

Liss stole a sideways glance at Yates, who stood just a little too close to her at the buffet. He radiated animal magnetism, but he wasn't really her type. For one thing, the sideburns, mustache, and short, neatly trimmed beard made him look a little too much like a nineteenth-century music-hall villain.

At least two dozen people swarmed around the two tables, making it difficult for Liss to locate the two competitors she had not yet encountered. While watching the first episode of the season, she'd noticed that they were both redheads, but she'd been paying more attention to what they did than to how they looked.

Yates kept pace with Liss as she collected her second breakfast of the morning. “I was sorry to hear about Deidre,” he said. “How are her canine partners doing?”

“They don't seem to be pining.”

Reminded of her responsibilities, Liss craned her neck for a better line of sight with the dog carriers. Two members of the production crew were walking in the direction of Area Three, but neither showed any inclination to stop, let alone a propensity for dognapping.

“I'm a little surprised to hear that.” Yates unleashed the full impact of his dazzling smile. “There always seemed to be such a strong bond between Deidre and her doggies.”

Liss started to reply, but the magician's assistant, Iris, chose that moment to materialize beside him. She slid her fingers into the crook of his elbow and gave Liss a nod in greeting, but the welcome was noticeably colder than at their two previous meetings. Liss would have had to be blind to miss the possessiveness in Iris's manner.

“Ready to rehearse?” she asked her boss.

Iris had changed her earrings, Liss noticed. At Deidre's condo she'd been wearing little silver hearts. Last night it had been small gold hoops. This morning the earrings du jour were tiny bouquets of flowers.

Yates kept his voice smooth and a pleasant expression in place, but he didn't look at his young assistant. “I'll be with you in a minute, Iris. Here. Take my plate and go wait for me in our rehearsal area.”

Was he oblivious to Iris's feelings, Liss wondered, or was he ignoring them in the hope that she'd grow out of her crush on him? It was impossible to tell.

Reluctantly, Iris released her grip on his arm and relieved him of the food he hadn't yet touched—a muffin, an apple, and a glazed doughnut. Yates stayed put, sipping his coffee as she carried them toward a tall, brightly painted magician's vanishing cabinet.

After one more sip, he made a face and abandoned the cup on the small table set up to collect empties. “Bitter. I prefer things sweet.”

His smile and the flash of deviltry in his dark eyes made Liss think he was considering kissing her hand. There was something suave and Continental about him. Instead, he clicked his heels and gave a small bow. “A pleasure to meet you, Liss Ruskin, dog wrangler. I hope we will have another chance to talk together soon.”

Charmed in spite of herself, Liss watched him glide away. No other word would do to describe the smooth way he moved. “That man took dance lessons as a kid,” she said to no one in particular. “I'll bet good money on it.”