Scotched by Kaitlyn Dunnett Page B

someone got an extra-large conference T-shirt in their goodie bag and wants to know if it comes in a smaller size?”
    â€œBut it doesn’t,” Phoebe objected.
    â€œExactly. That’s why a representative of the Cozy Con needs to be at the registration desk all the time. To tell people that.”
    â€œBut why does it have to be me? Susie could do it.”
    Nola looked as if she wanted to hit Phoebe upside the head with her clipboard. “You’re my second in command. It’s your responsibility,” she said through clenched teeth.
    â€œSecond in command, my ass,” Phoebe muttered as she stomped past Liss on her way to the door. “Slave labor is more like it!”
    Soon after that, the room began to clear out. It was almost time for the first two panels to begin. According to the program, they’d run from 9:30 to 10:30 and be followed by a signing session for the participating panelists from 10:30 to 11:30.
    â€œI wish you’d stop talking about it, Davy,” the woman in the wheelchair said as she and the young man pushing her passed Liss’s tables. “I get palpitations every time I think about you climbing down that cliff to check that poor woman’s pulse. You could have fallen to your death yourself, and then where would I be?”
    â€œI was perfectly safe, Mother,” the young man said, and shoved her chair out into the corridor with just a little more force than seemed absolutely necessary. Liss had a feeling it wasn’t the first time he’d been obliged to reassure her.
    With the first rush of business over, Angie began to tidy the piles of books on the tables in front of her. Dozens of people had picked up titles and read back cover copy and even the first page, but from what Liss had seen, few had actually bought anything.
    â€œWhat on earth was that woman doing out at Lover’s Leap in the first place?” Angie asked as she worked.
    â€œApparently, she was out jogging,” Liss said. Her stock, too, had been pawed through. She refolded a tartan scarf and straightened a stack of boxes that contained pins in the shape of bagpipes. “That’s what Joe Ruskin told me when I got here.”
    Angie’s brows shot up. “Jane Nedlinger didn’t sound to me like the type for early-morning exercise, but I guess you never know.”
    â€œYou can’t judge a book by its cover,” Liss quipped, then winced at her own misplaced sense of humor. A woman was dead. That was nothing to joke about. Or to be glad of, either, even if it did mean that she, along with the hotel and the town, were now unlikely to be written up in The Nedlinger Report .
    Liss hadn’t had much time to gather information. She’d already been running late by the time she’d arrived at The Spruces. “All he said was that one of the guests—apparently that young man, Davy—found Jane Nedlinger dead at the foot of the cliff this morning. He said it looks as if she went out there, jogging, at the crack of dawn, got too close to the edge while admiring the view, and took a fatal fall.”
    â€œStill strikes me as some peculiar,” Angie said.
    â€œBe glad it’s so cut and dried. The last thing we need around here is another murder.”
    The sound of a throat clearing made Liss look up. Yvonne Quinlan stood on the other side of the display table. Liss and Angie had been so intent on their conversation that neither of them had heard her approach. The only other person left in the dealers’ room, besides the three vendors, was Nola Ventress. She was on the opposite side of the room, fussing with the display of auction items.
    â€œPerhaps,” Yvonne suggested with a faint smile, “Ms. Nedlinger was lured into the woods by a vampire. It’s well known that vampires have the power to compel obedience from mere mortals.”
    â€œUh-huh,” Liss said. Looking past Yvonne, she saw Nola start to walk