A Scone of Contention

by Lucy Burdette

  William cackled and brandished his sword. “No comment, my friend. Nothing you’ve got is as long as his.” They both howled with laughter this time.

  Then Nathan gazed around at Miss Gloria and me. “You ladies look a little glum. How was your day?”

  “Kind of brutal,” said Miss Gloria. “There was a death at the wheel.”

  Nathan looked horrified and sobered up in an instant. “What kind of death?”

  “Is Vera all right?” asked William, getting to feet and looking wildly around the room as though he’d just noticed that his wife was missing.

  “She’s fine,” Miss Gloria and I chorused. “She was exhausted and so she retired early.”

  “Who died?” Nathan asked. “Tell me you weren’t involved or threatened in any way?”

  “We weren’t,” I said quickly. “But it was a terrible shock to be as close as we were.” I explained what had happened and that we didn’t know the dead man, but how shook up Vera seemed by the incident, particularly in the wake of Glenda’s illness at the dinner party the night before. “I made some Scottish chicken soup—are you two hungry?”

  “Not at all, thank you,” said William. “We’ve been tearing rare meat from bones with our teeth and that sort of thing. If you don’t mind, tell me more about Vera.”

  “She was rattled,” I said. “We didn’t actually see the man fall, but the police were called, and they cancelled the rest of our boat ride, and then we all had to wait to be questioned. She did eat a few bites of supper, but then she went right to bed. Your mom has gone home too. Honestly, it was an exhausting day.”

  I took another quick look at Vera’s husband. “I’d say she needs your support, but I’m not sure she’ll be willing to talk about her feelings.” I leaned toward William. “Nathan mentioned that Vera was feeling skittish before we arrived. Do you mind telling us a bit about why she was upset?”

  “I wish she never gotten involved with this damn project,” he said. “I really appreciate how much she loves Scotland and wants to do right by our history and our people and our special places. But at what cost? Her friends? Her sanity? Her life?”

  “She isn’t going to give it up, that’s one thing I can say for certain,” said Miss Gloria. “I know stubborn women”—she tipped her chin at me—“this one, for example. And your mother-in-law, for another example. Vera isn’t quite so obviously obstinate, but scratch the surface and it’s there.”

  “Takes one to know one,” I said, winking at my friend.

  But Nathan had lost all semblance of interest in cheerful banter, his party buzz gone, his expression stony. He turned to look at William and then me, his voice fierce and intense. “Let’s stay focused here. Am I getting this right—you, or you and Vera, seem to think that the so-called poisoning incident and now this fall and subsequent death have something to do with her book project?”

  “She didn’t say that,” I told the men. “I’m probably leaping to conclusions that shouldn’t be drawn. She was distressed after today’s incident, that’s all.”

  “But she didn’t know the man who fell to his death? He isn’t involved with this project?” Nathan asked.

  “I don’t think so.” I shrugged. “No one seemed to recognize him. And neither Vera nor the others in our party saw anyone that they knew while we were at the site. Maybe William can get more details from Vera than Helen or we were able to. In the end, I think it was a terrible coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” Nathan said. “Coincidences point to a sloppy criminal, and it’s not smart to brush them off. If there’s any chance that these two events were connected, and possibly connected to Vera and her friends, I do not want you traveling off to the hinterlands tomorrow on your own.”

  “I wouldn’t say that Peebles and Glencoe are hinterlands—certainly not Peebles,” I said. I couldn’t fault him for being worried, but Vera was troubled about the deadline for the project approaching. She would freak out if the guys messed up our plans. And honestly, my spidey sense was not tingling as I thought about our road trip. After getting involved in solving too many murders, my radar for danger was well honed. “And there will be a group of us going, and we won’t branch out from everyone else, I swear.”

  “Can you put it off a day?” Nathan asked. “We could go with you day after tomorrow.” He looked at William for confirmation.

  “We have two more days to play,” William said. “Then we’re free. Vera and I talked about meeting you on the Oban ferry to go to Mull. If we don’t make the same crossing, the plan would be to meet you at the hotel in Tobermory. From what I’m hearing, I’m no longer comfortable with that.”

  Miss Gloria put a hand on his forearm and shook her head. “Vera will never agree to postponing for two days or even one. They are on a very tight schedule. Everything has to be submitted to the publisher by the end of the month. The previous photos were not good enough for one thing. And for another, the solstice parade is tomorrow. We can’t wait because we’d miss it completely. It’s supposed to be incredibly special.”

  “We could skip the third day of the tournament,” Nathan suggested to his host. “We certainly don’t need another debauched banquet.”

  The two men looked at each other, and I knew they were thinking they would do whatever they had to in order to protect their wives and family. But I also hadn’t seen Nathan laughing as hard as he had been minutes earlier, not in a long time. Maybe never. He was reveling in the company of his brother-in-law and enjoying the golf and the camaraderie of the other men, and I wasn’t willing to take that away from him.

  “I doubt very much that this incident had anything to do with us or with Vera’s project,” I said confidently. “You said yourself that Vera has been a bit jumpy lately. But I know you wouldn’t be off playing golf if you thought either of us was in danger. The book project is on a super tight deadline, and you guys are having so much fun. And there’s a whole caravan of us driving to Peebles. And we will be so, so careful, and we’ll go to the police if there’s any inkling of any trouble. Immediately. There are four of us, and we are strong women who will look out for each other. And we’ll see you on the ferry in two days, right?”

  The men agreed reluctantly, though both also seemed relieved.

  Nathan fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but I was having trouble dropping off. I’d assured the men that we couldn’t possibly be in danger, but was that true? I had no idea. Nathan was right: coincidences were rare except in badly written novels where the writers were desperate to wrap up loose plot points. I tossed and turned, punching the feather pillow and rearranging the blue quilt, trying to block out Nathan’s soft snores. I gave up and rolled out of bed, heading for the kitchen. Maybe a half a scone and a cup of decaf tea would help me drop off.

  While waiting for the scone to toast and the water to boil, I noticed the yearbook that Vera had pulled out of the bookshelves earlier in the evening. I poured hot water over the tea leaves and left them steeping for a few minutes. After slathering the scone with butter from a local dairy, I paged through the yearbook. It dated from Vera’s senior year at St. Andrews. She looked young and beautiful in her graduation photo, if still a bit haunted around the eyes. I wondered if she’d ever share the details of her abduction with me. Or the ways in which she believed that incident had affected her and her family.

  There were candid photos at the end of the book, mostly the seniors all dressed up in their fanciest clothing—high heels and tight dresses with flapping graduation gowns layered over top. In one shot, Vera, Glenda, and Ainsley had their arms around each other, mugging for the photographer. They looked so happy, as though the great big beautiful world lay out in front of them, theirs for the taking.

  Chapter Twelve

  The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and sli
ppered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.

  —Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

  Nathan left for the golf course early the next morning, leaving me to cuddle with the two tiger cats, Archie and Louise, who’d slipped into our room as he left. Archie seemed to have extended his affection for Vera to me, though not if Nathan was nearby. He walked across my chest, back and forth, and finally circled into the crook of my elbow. Louise waited until he was settled, and then she stretched out alongside him. Their rough purring lulled me back to sleep. Sometime later I awoke at the sound of what I thought was a knock at the front door. I threw on Nathan’s Key West Police Department sweatshirt over my pajamas and hurried out to check. I peered through the peephole: a beefy police officer with a round face and prominent ears waited on the stoop. He held up his badge, which I studied carefully. It looked authentic and so did he.

  “I’d like to speak with Vera Campbell, Hayley Snow, and Gloria Peterson,” he said once I’d cracked the door open. “It’s about the death at the Falkirk Wheel.”

  “I’m Hayley. Please come in.” I opened the door wider and waved him through. “Sorry to greet you in my PJs. I’m so embarrassed—I never sleep till nine o’clock. We had a very busy day yesterday, so we’re having a bit of a lazy morning. I’ll start a pot of coffee or water for tea, and then get the others.”

  I seated him at the kitchen table, noticing that one of the husbands had made coffee earlier. It would taste a little stale, but better than offering him nothing. I poured the man a cup of the strong brew and went to fetch the other women. First, I knocked on Vera’s door and, in response to her muffled hello, told her a police officer was waiting in her kitchen. Then I trotted back downstairs to shake Miss Gloria awake. It wasn’t too often that she slept later than I did, but the jet lag must have been wreaking some havoc with her system.

  “Cop in the kitchen,” I hissed. “He wants to talk with all of us.”

  She rolled out of bed, pulled on a robe, and stumbled down the hall behind me, with her hair standing up in cirrus cloud wisps. In the sunny kitchen, she blinked like a hedgehog who’d climbed out of his den after a winter of hibernation, like a character from Wind in the Willows. Within minutes, Vera followed us in and took the farthest seat from the cop. I poured Miss Gloria a cup of coffee and made Vera a cup of tea, and joined them at the table.

  “How can we help you, officer?” Miss Gloria asked.

  “Following up on yesterday’s incident at the Falkirk Wheel, we’ve identified the deceased. His name was Joseph Booth.” He pushed a black and white photo to the center of the table. The man was dressed in formal suit and tie and stylish glasses, and his expression was dead serious, as though he’d been applying for an important position. Or possibly a passport. He had a square chin and laugh lines around his eyes so I imagined he had a nice smile too. Since I hadn’t really gotten a good glimpse of the man yesterday, this face meant nothing to me except for feeling a whisper of sadness. He looked to be in his early forties, far too young to die.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know him,” I said. “Though we’ve only been in this country two days, so we hardly know anyone.” I stopped myself from babbling off a list of every person we’d met on the trip so far.

  “I don’t know him either,” said Miss Gloria, “though I’m very sorry for his family’s loss.”

  We waited for Vera. After a pause, she shook her head. Her lips were pinched, which gave a grim cast to her face. Looking as though he didn’t quite believe her, the policeman angled the photograph so it faced her directly.

  “There is some question remaining about how the man came to fall from the wheel. Did any of you see this happen?”

  Miss Gloria piped up, pressing her fingers to her temples. “I had the worst headache. I hate to malign one of your important Scottish monuments, but that wheel gave me a terrible feeling of claustrophobia. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention the way I usually do. We’ve solved a few murder mysteries ourselves,” she began to add.

  Under the table, I tapped her foot with mine to cut her off. Our nosing into other crimes didn’t seem like the kind of conversation we’d want to have with a foreign police officer. Nathan and Steve Torrence didn’t appreciate our butting into crime solving, and they knew us well and loved us. We should stick to the facts and keep our theories to ourselves, I thought.

  “Can I get you a refill on coffee?” I asked, noticing that he’d barely touched what I’d poured for him earlier. “Or tea maybe?”

  “No thank you, ma’am,” he said, fixing his gaze on me. “Did you see what happened?”

  “No, we were at the other end of the boat, facing forward, away from the platform,” I told him. “I didn’t notice anything unusual before the fall either. Of course, we all shifted over to look out once the yelling began, but it was too late to understand what had happened by then. He’d already fallen.”

  “Same,” said Vera briskly. “Only I was seated on the water side of the boat and saw even less than my friends did.” She stood up as if to tell the cop the interrogation was over. He followed her lead, standing and collecting the photo after dealing out business cards to each of us.

  “Should you remember any other details, please call me on my mobile or at the station.” Vera thanked him for his time and closed the door firmly behind him.

  Once he was gone, I pictured the scene on the boat after the man’s fall, trying to visualize each of our party’s positions. Vera had said that she and Ainsley were seated across the aisle, a ways behind us. I didn’t remember them moving to rubberneck. Glenda and Gavin would have been sitting together, but not near us, I thought. But I hadn’t actually seen them, so I couldn’t say for sure.

  Why was Vera wound so tightly about this incident? Did she know more than she was willing to say? Did she really not recognize the dead man?

  I would have liked to have questioned her about whether she told the cop the truth. The pause, the pinch of her lips, made me wonder. But I was a little afraid of her reaction, and she hustled off so quickly toward the hall leading to the bedrooms that I couldn’t get the question out. I heard her footsteps on the polished wood of the staircase, going up. I exchanged a glance with Miss Gloria, and we both got up and trailed her down the hallway like puppies.

  “Can we do anything for you?” I asked Vera.

  “I need some time to prepare for our trip,” she called back down the stairs. “When dealing with Gavin, it’s best to have very specific instructions about what photographs must be taken. Otherwise, as he demonstrated so completely yesterday, he goes off on his own, and Lord only knows what the results might be. I will see you downstairs at noon, with your luggage in hand.”

  We watched Vera disappear into her bedroom from the bottom of the stairs. “She’s a complicated character. Who in the world knows what’s going on in her head?” Miss Gloria whispered. “I have a mah-jongg game online with Mrs. Dubisson, unless you need me for something?”

  I shook my head at the wonder of her being technically savvy enough to set up and play mah-jongg on her iPad with her best Key West pal, time difference and everything. “No problem. I’ll work on my articles and get ready to go.”

  As I was eating a bite of breakfast—cheese and toast with English jam—a text message arrived from chef Grace: I know you’re leaving for Peebles today, but any way we could chat for a few minutes before then? I can meet you at the statue in the center of town? Would prefer to talk in person.

  Another mysterious missive. Be there in 20, I texted back.

  I pulled on my most comfortable black jeans, a turtleneck, and my jean jacket and sneakers, and headed outside to meet Grace. The day was turning out to be glorious, sunny with puffy white clouds, but cool and not a bit humid, so you knew it was Scotland and not Key West. Vera’s flower garden looked lovely in the morning light, some of the buds beginning to unfurl into a pale lavender. If it wasn’t for the stressful eve
nts of the last couple days and my sister-in-law’s distress, I would have reveled in the free hours and taken my time exploring the town. As it was, I checked the map on my phone to be sure I was headed in the right direction and walked briskly to meet Grace.

  She was pacing around the statue.

  “Thank you for coming, I know it’s an imposition. But I didn’t know who else to turn to.” Her eyes were blinking furiously, from the effort of not crying I suspected.

  “It’s okay. Tell me what’s up.”

  “The police were at the house again this morning,” she said. “They reported that there were traces of poison in Glenda’s plate at the dinner the other night, but only her food.” At this point in the narrative, Grace lost her battle with tears. They flowed down her cheeks as she said, “How in the world could they figure this out if everything had already been scraped into the trash? Wouldn’t everyone’s leftovers be mixed together?” Suddenly a look of horror crossed her face.

  “Do you mind walking that way? I totally forgot that I have a cake in the oven. Mr. Dougal will need tea while you lot are off in the countryside.”

  I pinched my arm to keep from asking what kind of cake. It didn’t matter right now. What mattered was one death that was possibly a violent murder, and another possible poisoning attempt. At the house, maybe I would also get the chance to talk to Ainsley, be able to ask her about the conflict behind the scenes in this book project.

  I trotted across town behind Grace, who had set a quick pace, wondering how such a talented and experienced chef could forget something as basic as leaving a cake in the oven. The answer had to be that she was distracted by something that felt even more important.