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said. “It’s a way of coping.”
    She shivered. “I’m not a cop. I’m a dancer. I’m in
charge of Aunt Margaret’s shop,” she amended, and that
triggered another concern. “They’d better not mess up her
inventory.”
    “You can keep an eye on things if you stay with me,”
Dan said. “Nobody’s using your old room”

    The suggestion warmed her. She didn’t want to think
too deeply about why that should be so. Neither did she
give herself time to come up with objections.
    “I’d like that. Spending a few days in the house I grew
up in sounds like heaven just now.” Liss gave Dan the full
benefit of her smile. “There’s a lot to be said for the old
and familiar.”

ChapteR Five

    Id and familiar?
    Dan reached into the refrigerator for a cold one. Not
quite how he’d seen himself in relation to Liss MacCrimmon. He took a swallow of the beer and wandered back
into his living room. It was pretty obvious Liss still didn’t
return his interest in her.
    Bad timing anyway, he told himself, what with Mrs.
Norris dead and-
    “Damn! Lumpkin.”
    The thought of Mrs. Norris’s bad-tempered cat took
Dan straight to the picture window. Given the location of
the streetlight, right in front of Moosetookalook Scottish
Emporium, he had no trouble seeing that the number of
police vehicles had multiplied and that there was crimescene tape around both Margaret Boyd’s place and the
house next door.
    Dan debated with himself, but not for long. He could
almost hear Mrs. Norris’s voice in his head, lecturing her
third graders on their responsibility to the animals they
claimed as pets.
    He let himself quietly out of the house and wandered
back across the square. So far, it looked as if everyone
was in Margaret’s building. Mrs. Norris’s house was dark
except for a light in her kitchen.

    “Something I can do for you, Dan?” Pete Campbell
loomed up out of the shadows, armed and dangerous.
    Dan cleared his throat. “You the one assigned to keep
gawkers away?”
    “Pretty much. How’s Liss?”
    Just that quickly, the authority figure turned back into
the old pal from high school. Dan let out a breath he hadn’t
realized he’d been holding. “Snoozing peacefully, I hope.
I got her to eat something first, and she said she was
going to take one of the pain pills left over from her knee
surgery to help her get to sleep.” It had been too late to
order pizza, so they’d shared a can of Chunky soup and a
bologna sandwich.
    “You should get some shut-eye, too”
    “Yeah. Right. When a neighbor gets murdered in my
nice quiet village, I think a good night’s rest is pretty
much out of the question.” When that neighbor was a
woman everyone knew, everyone liked well, tolerated,
anyhow he had to wonder whether anybody was safe
from random violence. “What’s going on in there?”
    Pete shrugged. “They took still shots and videos. Medical Examiner did his thing. The body’s gone to Augusta
to be autopsied.”
    “But they haven’t been into Mrs. Norris’s house yet,
right?”
    “Right. Why?”
    “Lumpkin’s in there. I was thinking I could take him
home with me”
    Pete hesitated.
    “Even LaVerdiere can’t object to me giving an orphaned cat a home. Or does he intend to interrogate
Lumpkin, too?”
    “Now that I’d like to see. Come on” Pete held the yellow tape out of the way so Dan could duck beneath it and
follow him toward the house. “Better you tackle that damned cat than me. Last time I stopped by to chat with
Mrs. N., he bit me on the ankle.”

    Dan glanced at Margaret Boyd’s place as they went in
through Mrs. Norris’s unlocked kitchen door. She’d had a
good view of the entrance to the stockroom. If someone
had been trying to rob the Emporium, knowing it was closed
while the Highland Games were in session, Mrs. Norris
could have seen the intruder find the key and enter the building. That much made sense. What didn’t was her failure
to