Scone Cold Dead Read Online Free

do you figure that?”
    â€œAfter your knee surgery our insurance premiums went up.”
    The experience hadn’t exactly been cheap for her, either, not with all the copays, but there was no point in telling Victor that. “I lost my career,” she reminded him instead.
    â€œYou seem to have landed on your feet. I heard about your inheritance.”
    Liss repressed a sudden temptation to pick up an entire plate of hors d’oeuvres and dump them over his head. Apparently there was no winning with Victor. Not tonight. He might not have had as much to drink as Stewart, but he’d imbibed enough to make him both belligerent and unreasonable. Perhaps having an open bar at the reception had not been one of her better ideas!
    â€œNice meeting you, Emily,” Liss said.
    Without another word to Victor, she left the two of them and resumed circulating. It did not take long to find more agreeable companions among the cast and crew. She accepted a bear hug from Ray Adams with good grace. He was a big man in his forties. His nose was big, too—his most prominent feature. His hair was gray at the temples and he had deeply incised laugh lines around his mouth. He’d always been one of Liss’s favorite people.
    â€œSo, how you doin’, Liss?” Ray’s voice was a bit on the nasal side, a raspy baritone straight out of New York City. He couldn’t speak more than a dozen words without throwing in a rhetorical “y’know?” and his hands automatically went into motion the moment he started talking. “Never figured you for a country girl.” His gesture seemed to indicate all of Fallstown.
    â€œIf you think a big town like this is the boondocks, you should see Moosetookalook!”
    Too late, Liss realized Dan had come up beside her in time to overhear her flippant remark. He was not smiling. He probably didn’t appreciate the criticism of their hometown, but it was too late now to take back what she’d said.
    â€œDan, this is Ray. He’s our stage manager and one-third of our backstage crew. He specializes in running lights on all kinds of systems, some extremely antiquated. He was also the one to provide emergency first aid—ice packs—the night I injured my knee.”
    Waving off the praise, nodding a greeting to Dan, Ray returned to the one subject Liss wanted to avoid. “You call this a big town? I dunno, Liss. You should pardon the expression, but two days in the back of beyond and I could die of boredom already.”
    â€œCity boy,” she teased him. “Think of it as a chance to catch up on sleep.”
    Dan, community pride piqued, jumped in with suggestions. The Fallstown movie theater offered six screens. There was a potluck supper tomorrow at one of the local churches. And the motel where Ray was staying had cable with NESN.
    â€œNESN?” Ray asked, straight-faced. “Never heard of it.”
    â€œNew England Sports Network.”
    Liss kept mum. She knew Ray was just stringing Dan along. He knew perfectly well what NESN was. But he had a point. Not everyone in the company was happy about spending a quiet weekend in rural Maine. Still, they didn’t have another booking until Monday evening and it was far less expensive to stay in Fallstown than to arrive early and pay exorbitant sums for an extra night in the Boston area, near their next gig. Victor, almost as frugal as Charlie and Jock, had jumped at the chance for two nights at cheaper rates.
    Sandy and Zara joined them just as Dan mentioned that the Boston Bruins hockey game would be televised the next afternoon. Liss headed off Ray’s response—he was not a fan of any New England sports team—and turned the conversation back to what had been happening among the members of Strathspey since she’d last seen them.
    Ray recounted a particularly hilarious encounter with a group of locals during a road trip—what was it that made some men