The Footsteps on the Stairs // The Troublemaker — Jean Potts

THE FOOTSTEPS ON THE STAIRSWhen Enid Baxter runs into her old lover, Vic, she has a premonition that he is going to murder her. She shares this thought with her neighbor Martin but swears him to secrecy. So when Enid is found stabbed to death in her apartment, naturally Martin assumes the worst. But Martin has a haunting secret of his own. Back in his home town-though cleared of the crime--everyone assumes that he murdered his own wife by pushing her over a cliff. So he feels a certain bond with Vic. And besides, Vic has an alibi. He and his wife Thelma were in their own apartment when the murder occurred. But someone was heard running down the stairs that fateful day. Someone who either loved Enid too much to share her...or hated her enough to kill her. THE TROUBLEMAKERTo some men, Lisa is a skinny little thing not worth a second look. But to Quentin, middle-aged college professor, she is enchanting. So he leaves his wife, and he and Lisa drive up the coast to Maine, where they find work at a summer seashore resort. Bax, who owns the resort with his wife Janet, is as enchanted by Lisa as Quentin. But Janet immediately pegs her as a troublemaker. It certainly isn't Lisa's fault that men are attracted to her. Before Quentin there had been Carlos, one of his students, who has fled his smothering mother and followed them to Maine. But perhaps Janet is right, perhaps Lisa is trouble, because one morning her body is found at the bottom of the sea cliff. The cops think it's murder. Many men had loved her-but which one turned their love to murder?