My Very Best Friend

by Cathy Lamb

  “Yes, you have, and now you will be punished.” She raised the bow again, and again, as the priest kept scrambling to escape, to hide. She shot three arrows off, deliberately missing, to keep him scared. The thought of what the priest had done inflamed her. The priest was now the prey instead of the predator. That’s why this chase had to happen.

  “I will pray for your soul,” the priest shouted, gasping, tripping. When that didn’t work, he tried scripture, then he started swearing at her, that foul man, calling out the most disgusting names, threatening violence, then back to his useless pleading.

  “God does not listen to the prayers of the Devil,” she told him, then thought, Excellent. That statement was not a cliché. “I will show you the mercy you showed others.”

  “No, no, don’t!” the priest begged, slowing down, unable to carry his corpulent self any further. “Show more, I am a man of God.”

  “That is incorrect, biblically speaking,” she corrected him proudly. She had been taught the Bible. “You are no man of God. You attacked the innocent. I can’t have that happen again.”

  “I won’t do it again!”

  “Yes, you will. You will stop only when you’re in a grave.”

  When the priest was exactly where she wanted him, where she thought his body would never be found, the archer took aim at his sweating, panting, panicked face.

  “You will go to jail for this!” the priest yelled.

  “Once again, that is incorrect. No one will ever know. You, however, are going to hell.”

  The arrow shot through the black velvet night, the misty rain blowing down from the Scottish highlands, and a handful of fog.

  She never missed.

  No mistakes.

  That was the most important.

  Unfortunately, the archer thought, taking another sip of peppermint tea, she had made a mistake in the burial. She didn’t think that monster would ever be found. He had been buried as deep as they could get him. She had taken his keys, wallet, and eyeglasses so that people would think that the bastard had run off and not look for him. You would take those items if you were running.

  But now his decaying corpse and his personal items had popped up. What to do?

  The archer knew she could leave the village. Hide. But where would she go?

  She studied her garden. It was dull now, but Bridget, sweet Bridget, had made her such a pretty plan and she would hate not to see it to fulfillment.

  Plus, would a jury convict her?

  She put her shoulders back, though she had started to shake. She had done what she had to do. If Angus Cruickshank had not been shot through with her arrow, more girls would have been raped.

  She was defending their innocence and taking revenge at the same time, God help her. It was an eye for an eye. She was a proud Scotswoman. She believed in her fellow Scots. They would not convict her.

  She would take her chances.

  The archer smiled to herself. She had won awards as a girl, and as a young woman, for archery. It had not taken much practice before she was fully up to speed again. Her aim had been true. Everyone would now know of her prowess. She could not help being a wee proud.

  The newspapers had a field day. Carston Chit outdid himself.

  Body of missing priest found, Part Four . . . it’s almost the sixteen-year anniversary and here’s the body! Murdered priest accused of molesting many girls buried in a deep grave in the hills . . . Murderer of the Catholic priest unknown . . . Who killed Father Cruickshank? Would a jury convict the murderer, even if he was found?

  The village was all aflutter, especially at that last question. The consensus was that, no, a jury would not convict the murderer for getting rid of a child rapist.

  Chief Constable Ben Harris kept our names out of the paper, so we were identified as the “man and woman who found the body after the storms when a hill gave way.”

  I thought of Bridget. She would be glad to know that Father Cruickshank had not been roaming the earth searching for other victims whose lives he could wreck. As he was in hell and she was in heaven, they would not cross paths.

  I knocked on the door to Lorna’s house.

  “Charlotte, how lovely to see you. Please come in!”

  We sat and chatted. She brought out chocolate croissants and served peppermint tea. She was nervous, though, her hands shaking, her breath coming in short gasps.

  We settled into her kitchen nook facing the garden. “I’m going to make my garden exactly like Bridget’s drawings.”

  I’d noticed that Lorna had had the drawings matted and framed, as I had. “My husband and I are saving for a proper fountain.”

  We chatted about gardening, but she was distracted, stressed. “Lorna, you know that Father Cruickshank’s body was found.”

  Her lips tightened. “Yes. He was the Devil.” She took a sip of tea. Her hands shook so hard she had to put the cup down.

  “You know that Toran and I found the body?”

  “I figured as much. It was on Toran’s land.”

  “I thought you would want this back.” I took the arrow out of my bag. “Toran and I removed it before the authorities arrived. We wanted you to know that they didn’t find it. We thought you might be worried.”

  She paled.

  “Are you going to faint?” I asked.

  “I might.”

  “I want you to know that I’ll catch you, Lorna. Would you like to lie down?”

  “I hated Father Cruickshank, Charlotte.”

  I knew why. “Because of what he did to Malvina.”

  “Yes. My poor Malvina, that monster!”

  “Does Malvina know that you killed him?”

  “Yes. I told her. I had to. She used to be a cheerful, social, athletic girl, a wonder at archery—I taught her myself—and after the rapes, when she finally told me—he had threatened to kill me if she told—she pulled into herself.

  “My Malvina changed, almost overnight. She wouldn’t talk to me, and she cried all the time. I finally forced her to tell me, when she tried to kill herself two years later. I became so incensed! I knew what had to be done. I knew he couldn’t live on God’s earth for one more day. I had to let Malvina know that Father Cruickshank could never, ever come after her again, or threaten my life.”

  “So you shot him with your bow and arrow.”

  “I did. I delighted in it.” She sat straight up. “I enjoyed seeing him frightened, begging, running. It was a fair, and just, punishment. I showed no mercy, as he had not shown any. I had it all planned out.” She set down her tea, and for the first time she smiled. “I like things organized. It’s important.”

  “Did you know that Angus Cruickshank had attacked Bridget, too?”

  “I didn’t. After reading Carston Chit’s article, I think he started attacking Malvina about a year after he attacked Bridget. I had heard, at the time, from her mother and others, when Bridget left school, that she was training to be a nun. Given her father’s fanaticism, that was not surprising to me. I later on heard vague rumors of a pregnancy but didn’t believe them. Then I heard that Bridget was off at university. But during that time I was also dealing with Malvina and her abrupt change in personality, her deep depression, so Bridget wasn’t uppermost in my mind, my daughter’s precarious mental state was. I should have put it together, but I didn’t.

  “When Carston Chit’s article came out about Bridget . . . Charlotte, I felt so guilty. Horrendous. I am a terrible woman. Terrible.” She actually covered her head with her arms. “Terrible. I am terrible.”

  “You have been, but I’m liking you more knowing you stuck an arrow through Angus. Toran and I will never tell a soul, I promise you, but I do have one more question, if I may ask it.”

  “Please.” She spoke through her arms, then put them down, her face pale.

  “You buried the body . . . by yourself?”

  “Laddy helped me. She is a loyal, loving sister and she was furious about what Father Cruickshank had done to our Malvina. We kn
ew that he had to die immediately, to be judged by God. We could not allow him to rape another girl. It was our Christian duty to eliminate him and protect the innocent.”

  Lorna, of the imperious bottom. Laddy, grumpy lady.

  “I chased him into the woods. I didn’t always used to be this fat. I was quite trim then. I took aim and followed him, guiding him. I shot him rather close to our ultimate grave destination. Who knew the hill would ever give way? Curse it. Other than that, there were no mistakes. That’s important, too.”

  I cleared my throat. “Well. I’m incredibly impressed by your aim, Lorna. A bow and arrow is difficult to shoot.”

  She smiled, suddenly pleased with herself. “I used to win prizes for archery.”

  “Something to be proud of.” We drank our tea in silence. “You eliminated the devil from the planet Earth. For that, you deserve another prize.”

  “Thank you. I would like to be your friend, Charlotte.”

  “I think we could do that.”

  “You do?” Her voice pitched in hope.

  “Yes. Let’s take a peek at Bridget’s garden plans again, shall we?”

  It was Rowena who made up the rhymes and songs about Father Angus Cruickshank. “He attacked my friend’s younger sister, Joycie, and no one did anything about it.”

  Olive came over one day. She handed me an article a friend had sent her. It was written by Kitty Rosemary. “Are you Georgia Chandler?”

  Shoot. I didn’t want anyone to know. “Yes.”

  “I have all your books. I love them. If only you had more animals in them, specifically pigs and chickens. . . .” She winked at me and swore not to tell a soul.

  PEPPERMINT TEA, A SOUL MATE, AND THE SCOTTISH LEAP

  A ROMANTIC TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURE

  THE FINAL NOVEL

  By Georgia Chandler

  McKenzie Rae Dean tilted her head back and let the Scottish rain stream down her face and hair.

  She was soaked. She didn’t care.

  The thunder pounded around her, the lightning racing to keep up, streaking crookedly through the black night. Her feet were one foot from the edge of the cliff. She would soon do what she knew she had to do.

  McKenzie Rae had a chance to go back in time to the exact same time period in St. Ambrose, where Brodie was. The chance wasn’t surefire, but she had to take it. She knew she could be leaping into a whole new time period in the past, a dangerous one at that, but she was tired. She couldn’t live without him anymore. She had to try.

  McKenzie Rae had flown from Seattle to Amsterdam to Edinburgh, then had taken the bus to St. Ambrose and a cab to her former home with the Scotsman.

  Before she left, her dear, dense, clueless father chuckled and wished her an “exciting adventure in Scotland. See you in three weeks! I’ll miss you. I love you.”

  Her mother was pale, worried sick. As a time traveler herself, she knew what obstacles her daughter faced.

  The goal was to jump to the time tunnel that McKenzie Rae had whizzed through before. She had come in through the cliffs, had actually landed right here, in that spot, on a rainy, thundering night, and had walked to the Scotsman’s cottage for help. This was the exact day, and month, and time, as her previous visit, endlessly long ago.

  Ideally, the cosmic energy from that time tunnel would envelop her as she jumped and yank her back in. There were gravitational dynamics and pull involved, the space-time continuum, Einstein’s theory of general relativity, time dilation, special dimensions, warp speed, and faster than light backward traveling, but McKenzie Rae believed it would work.

  Probably. Maybe. It could, possibly.

  She peered down the cliff, the North Sea a whipped-up, frothing mess below, the gray skies churning as if they were being twisted in a mixer. The storm was a brewing disaster, lightning brightening up the sky like a galaxy lightbulb.

  She and Brodie had made love on that beach at night. They had watched the sun come up. They had danced on the sand. His cottage, the cottage they had lived in together, made of beige stone, was nearby.

  It was ramshackle now, the garden she had worked so hard on an overgrown wreck, except for her purple clematis, which rode the leaning picket fence like a wave. She had called it The Purple Lush. The white window shutters were filthy and askew, the red door banged up, the roof partially cratered on one side, the brick walk bumpy.

  An obese man lay prone near the kitchen chomping on a chicken.

  She snuck inside when he went to sleep, the chicken carcass on his shirt. His snoring was an appalling roar.

  The stench was overwhelming, hitting like an invisible wall when she entered. The home smelled of layers of dust and years of decay, as if a graveyard had moved in, followed by a gang of pigs, and farts.

  McKenzie Rae’s stomach heaved as she silently moved through the home, a home where she had experienced so much happiness, love, and romance with Brodie.

  A cat with silver-colored fur ran up and curled around her legs. She bent down and picked her up. “Hello, Silver Cat,” she whispered. Silver Cat meowed.

  Not only did the house smell like rotting dung, it was jammed with junk.

  The couch was clearly a mice home. She heard them scurrying, having a busy day. Two cushioned lounge chairs had dark brown spots in the middle. There were three kennels for dogs, but no dogs. Inside the kennels were blankets and Styrofoam. An aquarium full of algae, half filled with water, held three dead fish, floating.

  There were broken lamps and three ice chests, empty beer cans inside. Boxes of junk, including old clothes that smelled like hell, had rotted. There was another couch, gray, spotted as if it had chicken pox. Two beds had old mattresses and seemed diseased. Same with the blankets and bedspreads on them.

  She glanced down at what had to be years of porn magazines.

  “How does a woman walk with boobs like that, Silver Cat?” she whispered. “It’s like she’s got watermelons with nipples attached to her chest.”

  She turned a page, disgustingly fascinated. The magazines appeared to be the only things that didn’t have dust on them. “Oh, for God’s sake!” she thought. “That is perverted!” She shut the cover.

  “Silver Cat, do not look at this, or it will rot your mind.”

  McKenzie Rae gasped when she saw her dining room table. It had made it through the years!

  It was covered with food wrappers, a bicycle tire, a truck bumper, and a medium-sized cage. Brodie had made it. Brodie had been a master craftsman, in addition to being a successful farmer with a massive amount of land. She and Brodie had eaten there, made love right on top of it. She had made bread, jams and jellies, and cut out sugar cookies. Brodie had played the bagpipes sometimes from the garden as she baked.

  McKenzie Rae walked past the obese sleeping man and found two chairs Brodie made her, upside down, near a car engine, two shovels, a tent, and a tarp. Each had a wobbly leg.

  She found her armoire, which was now crooked, clothes strung across it, a kitchen sink and handlebars of a bicycle on top. Brodie had carved a honeysuckle vine into the doors, as he knew she loved honeysuckle. She had kept her china in that armoire.

  In the ten years she had lived with Brodie, people said she had the Scottish Second Sight. She had been in Scotland two other times during her time travels and she knew history, so she knew what was to come. Sometimes, though, she didn’t understand her predictions herself, they were often confusing, nonsensical. It had been a gift and a curse, both.

  McKenzie Rae wiped impatiently at the tears that ran down her cheeks. The obese man was still snoring, like a jackhammer, the chicken bones on his chest. She headed for the cliffs through the curtain of cold rain.

  The thunder was almost right above her now, a lightning strike, jagged and fierce, touching down north of her, splitting the earth.

  When she was at the edge of the cliff, she peered down only briefly at the craggy rocks below.

  McKenzie Rae Dean spread her arms out, as if she were hung on a cross, started chantin
g the day, the month, and the year in which she wanted to land, and jumped.

  My grandma’s name was McKenzie Rae Mackintosh. Before she married my granddad, Brodie Mackintosh, it was McKenzie Rae Dean.

  She and my granddad were wildly in love. I saw them dancing together, their arms around each other, her face tipped up to his. I loved my granddad and I loved my grandma, which is why I developed an entire character around her.

  I loved her Second Sight, too.

  Which has, with remarkable clarity, always been right. Every time.

  I mailed three chapters of my tenth novel to Maybelle.

  Maybelle called me. I heard a piercing scream in the background. Then a cackle of glee. She almost blew my eardrum out, which can happen in extreme situations. She said, “Cover me with rose petals and straight shots, I love it.”

  21

  I am selling my home on Whale Island off the coast of Washington. Toran and I will be returning to toss out all my frumpy clothes, give my furniture away, and transport Teddy J, Daffodil, Dr. Jekyll, and Princess Marie to Scotland.

  I put Olive and Rowena in touch with my friend, Olga, who owns a gift shop, and she is selling Rowena’s Scottish Rocks of Love and Lore jewelry. It’s popular, and Rowena can barely keep up with the orders from Olga and other shops in Scotland.

  I suggested to Olive that she try making knitted animal hats. Lions with dizzy eyes, elephants with trunks down the back, confused cats with drooping whiskers, inebriated raccoons with long raccoon tails. She loved the idea, Olga loved the product, and now they’re in business, too.

  Rowena and Pherson had a date.

  Apparently it was successful. When I dropped by Rowena’s a few weeks later, in the morning, to give her some cinnamon bread I’d baked, my mother’s recipe, Pherson answered the door.

  I looked up at him and we laughed, then hugged.

  Gitanjali and the Chief are adorable. That’s the word for it. He told me, “Dating befuddles me so I think it would be easier on Gitanjali and me if we were married. I do so hope she says yes. I have spent thirty days trying to find the ring. Here, Charlotte. Do tell me. What do you think of it?”