A Scone of Contention

by Lucy Burdette

  “Mercury is in retrograde,” Lorenzo said, shaking his head. “Not always the best time to have relationship-altering discussions. And it’s a full moon. We’re going to get a whopper King tide here in town, and that makes everyone even more crazy than they already are. Not only because of the moon, but because people panic when they see the water on the streets. As well they should.” He frowned and patted Connie’s arm. “That’s not to say your husband is crazy—more that people in general are crazy. Because the world we know has gone mad.”

  “So true, dat,” said Miss Gloria, who had come up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. “I am so happy to see your familiar faces. Though I admit it makes me a little bit homesick to see you all sitting on my deck,” she added, her voice wistful. “Even though it’s beautiful here and we have some wonderful things planned. Did you tell them about the dinner party last night?” she asked me.

  “Not yet,” I said. “We were talking Ray and scones.”

  Vera came into the kitchen, her face looking grim. She pasted on a smile. “I guess I should always look for you two in the kitchen.”

  I introduced her to my mother and my friends on the screen. “Can you imagine, this is Nathan’s sister?”

  “I could pick her out of a lineup in a New York minute,” said my mother. “Except, don’t tell Nathan I said this, but you’re much prettier.” We all laughed. “What happened at dinner?”

  “Someone from the party last night got sick—she had terrible stomach cramps, and I gather she’s trying to pin this on the chef,” said Miss Gloria. “The cops came around this morning, asking questions. Nathan pressed them until they admitted they’d discovered traces of digitalis in her stomach contents.”

  “Digitalis? Does she have a heart arrhythmia?” I asked, looking at Vera.

  At the same time my mother said, “Isn’t that used for congestive heart failure? Does your friend have a heart problem?”

  Vera shook her head no, then turned to me. “I came to let you know the men are leaving, and we should be in the car shortly after so we don’t keep the others waiting.” Miss Gloria saluted, and Vera smiled and left the room.

  My mother whispered, “She seems wound up.”

  I nodded glumly. “A lot of pressure on her project. Before we go, tell me quickly about Ray,” I said.

  Connie sighed. “In a nutshell, Ray won’t tell me anything about what’s bothering him. I did exactly what you suggested and went down to Duval Street to the gallery to talk with the owner and Ray’s friend Jag. Jag is an artist too, and he’s known Ray for years. He said he’s never seen him so jumpy.”

  Connie fell silent and my mother took her hand and stroked it gently, with the same motion she’d used to comfort Nathan’s dog.

  “Can you say more about what Jag noticed?” I asked. “What exactly did he mean by ‘jumpy’?”

  “Jumpy, hypercritical. When they were hanging the show, if Jag said a painting should be hung here, Ray said it should go somewhere else. And not in a nice way apparently either, but like he was going nuts.

  “Jag even wondered if Ray had started taking something.”

  Now we were all quiet, waiting for the rest of what Connie had to say.

  “Is that possible do you think?” my mother finally asked.

  With her lips clenched tightly, Connie shook her head. “I would know that—a wife would know.” She sighed. “And somehow Ray found out I’d been at the gallery, and he asked me to stay out of his business. So that’s the end of that.”

  I wasn’t at all sure it would have ended there for me, but she was the one married to Ray, so I had to respect her choices.

  As we signed off, Nathan and his brother-in-law, William, came into the kitchen from the backyard. They wore pressed khaki pants and matching green polo shirts that brought out the mossy color of Nathan’s eyes.

  “You two are adorable,” Miss Gloria said. “Are all the teams required to dress as twins?”

  I giggled as Nathan mugged a scowl.

  “We tee off in half an hour,” William said with a cheerful slap to Nathan’s back. “Wish us luck.”

  “We’ll need it,” Nathan added, grinning at his brother-in-law. “And god forbid I should hit a ball into one of those steep sand bunkers. Even the pro golfers have trouble getting out of those. We might not make it home before dark.”

  I couldn’t remember hearing my husband as excited about anything as he seemed this morning about playing golf on the Old Course. And I couldn’t help noticing the expression on his mother’s face—bemused, bordering on astonished.

  “Do you mind if we come down and watch you hit your first shot?” I asked.

  “It would be ugly,” he said, grinning. “You’d be disappointed. I never did play well with a gallery in attendance.”

  “We won’t linger,” Vera said, glancing at her watch. “We’re due to meet the others, and it’s an hour and a half drive. Could we watch from a distance?”

  “Better still, come tomorrow when I’ve sanded some of the rust off,” Nathan suggested. “If that’s okay?”

  “Sure. Miss Gloria said the cops were here?” I asked him. “Any new leads? Miss Gloria said something about digitalis?”

  “In Glenda’s stomach contents,” he said, his cheerful smile falling away. “Which could mean everything or nothing at all. Apparently she does not take this medication routinely, so its appearance is suspicious. They’ve promised to keep me in the loop as a matter of professional courtesy. And that means my family and friends can stay away from trouble. Please.”

  “Of course,” I said, wondering to myself whether Grace, the chef, had gotten this news. She would be distraught.

  “Gotta go, partner,” William said, patting Nathan’s back.

  I kissed him goodbye, and then we piled in Vera’s car to drive to the local sites. Next to me in the back seat, Miss Gloria drifted off to sleep almost instantly.

  “I never thought I’d see him play golf again,” Helen said as we pulled out of town. “I can still remember the day he quit. He came home announcing that he’d chucked his clubs into the dumpster at the local supermarket. He was desperate to separate himself psychologically from his father, and hurt him if possible—and he did both by informing him that golf was an elitist game for rich men without enough athletic talent to play any other sport. He sounded so bitter. And that made his father so angry. And sad, though he never would have admitted to that.” She had a pained look on her face, remembering what must have been a painful day.

  “You know what his father asked?” Of course, the rest of us had no idea. “He said, ‘Don’t tell me you threw out your grandfather’s putter too?’ Nathan stung him hard with that move. The passing of that precious putter from grandfather to son to grandson had been a rite of passage. It meant everything about love and pride and hope that those silly men could not articulate any other way.”

  “Your husband was angry about everything in those days,” Vera said, not even claiming her father as a relative. Her hands gripped the steering wheel hard, and she stared straight ahead. “You all were.”

  “We were mostly scared,” said Helen softly. “We almost lost you. You know this family—when we’re sad or scared, we don’t know how to handle it. We’re terrible at putting our feelings into words. The best we managed in those days was to act angry. And your father was trying to control the only thing within his grasp—our family.” She glanced at her daughter, her expression full of regret. “I’m sorry.”

  Vera snapped on the radio and turned up the volume on the Celtic music so that further conversation became impossible. I must have dozed off, and I woke an hour later, hungry and droopy and needing a bathroom stop. “Is it possible we’ll be near a restroom soon?”

  “We’re meeting Gavin and the others at the Falkirk Wheel, but first I’ll drive you by the Kelpies. Gavin insisted on including these in our book. There’s a restroom at the plaza and a little snack bar.” With a tight voice, she added, “There isn�
�t a whisker of a thin place for miles around. But I will have to leave that argument to the editors. Or the readers who trash the book because the authors persisted in including commercial sites with no real spiritual value.”

  “What are kelpies? What exactly are we seeing?” Miss Gloria piped up from the backseat next to me.

  “They are a couple of giant horse heads made out of metal,” said Vera grimly.

  “Horseheads made of metal?” her mother asked.

  “It’s hard to describe them in any other way. A kelpie is a supernatural water horse that’s supposed to haunt Scottish lakes and rivers. Legend has them appearing as horses but able to adopt the human form. Some of the local folks are quite proud of them, as they are meant to commemorate the role of horses in Scotland. They were designed by a well-known artist, and fans see them as powerful guardians of the gateway to the Forth and Clyde Canal.” I could see her roll her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Obviously I’m not one of the fans. As metal horse heads, they are impressive. As a sacred site, not at all.”

  We visited the bathrooms and bought candy bars and cardboard cups of coffee and then stood outside with Vera, our necks craned up at the sculptures. “They’re thirty meters high and built of steel,” she said. “Honestly, they are marvelous creations, but they absolutely don’t belong in a book of mythical places in Scottish history.”

  “Can’t you put your foot down?” Miss Gloria asked. “Aren’t you the lead author?”

  “The tides have shifted on that. Gavin may be a major pain in the butt,” she said, “but in addition to the fact that he’s a brilliant photographer, our publisher adores him. He’s desperately afraid that he paid too much for our book and can’t possibly sell enough copies to get the money back, so he flails around, looking for new ideas to buff up the concept. Gavin is always happy to generate new ideas, no matter how ridiculous they sound to the rest of us.”

  Helen looked worried, as if she wanted to dispense advice or hugs or some kind of motherly comfort. But Vera’s fierce and closed expression made it clear that none of that would be welcome.

  “If we’ve seen enough of the metal horse heads, we’re due to meet the others at the Falkirk Wheel,” Vera said. We followed her to the car and got back in, and she resumed her travelogue. “You are about to experience a boatlift that connects the Forth and Clyde and the Union canals. There used to be a staircase involving eleven locks that took boats an entire day to transit. Now it happens in less than an hour, and tourists flock here for the chance to experience the ride in a glassed-in boat.” She sighed. “The wheel was opened for business by the queen in 2002, which was a very big deal.”

  “This also sounds very different from the other sites you’ve mentioned,” I said.

  “You think?” She turned around to glance at me. “I suppose it is a modern feat of engineering, so I don’t argue that point. And it’s clever and brilliant as a solution to connecting the canals. But I can’t believe anyone will ever have a spiritual moment while packed into a glassed-in boat and rotating around a wheel.” She sighed again, more deeply. “You’ll see.”

  Chapter Ten

  My heart beat too fast and under my skin it felt mealy, like an old apple.

  —Lily King, Writers and Lovers

  As Vera had described, the wheel was a multistory contraption made of concrete and steel. The tall central axle, which she told us was modeled after a Celtic axe crossed with a ship’s propellor married to a whale’s ribcage, allowed two boats to rotate at the same time, one up and one down.

  “See what I mean?” she asked. “It’s like the kelpie horseheads—amazing design and structure, but a zero as a place of Scottish spirit. At least not the kind of spirit that I find interesting.” She headed for the office to purchase tickets, and soon returned to distribute one to each of us. We met Ainsley in line, waiting to board the boat.

  “Where are the others?” asked Vera. “Is Glenda all right? And how about you? Nathan said the medical results showed signs of high levels of digitalis?” She squeezed her friend into a quick hug and then let her go.

  Ainsley nodded and pointed down the pier to Gavin, who was taking photographs of the previous boatful of tourists as it descended slowly to the canal. A few steps past him, Glenda waited, watching him work. She looked perfectly healthy from a distance.

  “She says she’s fine,” Ainsley said, pressing her hands to her temples. “But Gavin pulled me aside to tell me that she’s all shook up. She fears that someone targeted her directly at the dinner, and she doesn’t know who to trust—especially me. I have no idea how to talk to her about all this. She’s freezing me out.”

  We all looked at Vera, who shrugged helplessly.

  “Let’s remember, we’re friends first, and we’ve been through a lot together,” Vera said to Ainsley. She kept her voice so low I had to strain to make out the words. “There’s simply no way anyone would blame you for what happened.”

  Which made me wonder about what they’d been through. Vera, I knew, had experienced a terrible trauma before moving to Scotland for college. Had more happened after that? I reminded myself to try to corner Ainsley alone. Maybe she’d be willing to talk to me without an audience. I hoped she’d also talk about Grace, her talented chef. Had she had noticed Gavin’s inappropriate contact with the chef or heard about it from someone else? Or could it be that Grace overreacted? Was there any possibility that Grace had intended for Glenda—or Gavin even—to get sick? I hated to think that because I liked her very much. But the question needed to be asked.

  As the descending boat reached the concrete pier, workers began to unload the passengers onto the dock, and Gavin and Glenda returned to our queue.

  “The light is exactly right this morning,” Gavin said when he arrived. “The photos are going to be amazing—and from a perspective that most people don’t have the opportunity to see. I climbed several meters up the structure before an ignorant and annoying guard insisted I come down.”

  Vera glared at him. “Sometimes rules are important.”

  At Vera’s suggestion, Miss Gloria, Helen, and I took the three seats that remained open in the front of the boat, while the others headed toward the back. The captain explained the safety features such as where to find life preservers, and the importance of all guests remaining seated during the ride. “The landing area at the back of the craft is not safe and strictly off limits to our guests.” The boat began to move slowly up, almost like a super slow-moving Ferris wheel.

  As we were lifted higher, the Scottish flatlands spread out all around us: green fields, industrial buildings, the reedy canals that the Falkirk Wheel had been designed to connect, and way off in the distance the kelpies. Once we had almost reached the top of the ascent, out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something fall. And then several people began to yell, and a woman in a seat toward the back of the craft screamed and then burst into tears. The boat rocked as everyone rushed to that side to see what was happening. The captain’s crackly voice blared out from the speaker.

  “Folks, please take your seats instantly,” he said in an urgent tone. “We are going to be returning to the pier.”

  As we filed back to our original seats, Vera began to look around the boat, her eyes wild. “Oh my God, where’s Gavin? Has that fool gone missing! The authorities told him not to climb anywhere.”

  The wheel rotated in slow motion, the descent feeling twice as slow as our trip up. Off to the left in the canal, I could hear shouts. We watched the captain throw two orange life preserver rings into the water. Maybe there was the sound of splashing? I hoped so because that might mean whoever had fallen could have survived the fall.

  “This can’t be happening,” said Vera. “I swear I will kill him if he fell out of this boat.”

  My surprise must have shown on my face, as she continued, “You have no idea how hard I’ve worked to get this project off the ground. And then Glenda sweet-talked the publisher into saddling me with her idiot husband. And first
she thinks someone’s poisoning her, and now he’s tumbled out of this idiotic boat, which never should’ve been part of the book to begin with.”

  “I wouldn’t assume it was him,” said Ainsley softly. “He’s a brilliant man who occasionally manages to make himself look like a clumsy fool. And he looks out only for himself, but he does that nimbly. He’s not likely to take a dive from a high place.”

  Which sounded like an odd and unattractive description of a close colleague.

  Vera was practically shaking with fury—or was it fear?—by the time we reached the bottom of the curve. Three men dressed in black, wearing train conductor hats with black and white checked bands, met us at the exit door and began directing the tourists off the boat and away from the figure that was splayed on the cement next to the boat. Scottish policemen, I realized, my horrified mind slow to grasp what I was seeing.

  I glanced again at the shape on the pier, wishing desperately that this person could have landed in the water rather than on concrete. Hadn’t the captain thrown out life preservers? Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I feared. My head knew that no one could have survived plummeting from that distance onto an unforgiving surface, but my heart was having trouble computing that fact.

  “Please wait over here next to the entrance,” said one of the policemen. He pointed to the visitors’ center where we’d planned to have lunch. “We will need to speak to passengers regarding what they might have seen prior to this individual’s descent. Do not discuss this incident with the other passengers.” He herded us past the motionless form. I couldn’t help looking, but I could not see enough to tell me who it might have been. Besides, everyone I knew in this country was right here with me. Almost everyone.

  The next thought landed with a jolt. Did all this police concern mean the fall might not have been accidental?

  “Did you notice anything out of order before the captain began shouting?” I whispered to Miss Gloria as we were herded toward the cafeteria building. The cop surely hadn’t meant I couldn’t talk to my friend.