“People need frank and open criticism so they can learn to do better. That’s what I teach in my getting ahead in business classes, that’s what I practice in real life.”
“Oh yeah,” Scott said beneath his breath, “that’s what you practice in real life.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded Heather.
Fergie made a double down-boy gesture, and not to the dogs, who were sitting quietly, tongues lolling, tails beating. “Mr. Krum, Mrs. Krum, we’re getting on for elevenses. I’ll have Nancy make us up a pot of tea and some biscuits—something to warm ourselves with, eh?” His expression reminded Jean of medieval jesters who would slice open the corners of their mouths, carving a permanent smile.
“Fine, fine,” said Heather, and swept past Jean into the house.
Fergie turned his ghastly smile on Jean. “Elevenses?”
“No, thanks, I’m going for a walk through the garden and out to the old church.” She turned toward Scott, intending to make one more attempt to separate child from parents—if this didn’t work, she’d have to give it up before they took her for a pedophile.
Scott spoke first. “If you’re going to the garden, well, last night you said you’d keep an eye on Dakota . . .”
The child looked up, even her fuzzy earmuffs perking.
“I’d be glad to take her with me.” Jean suited action to word by giving Dakota’s slight shoulder a gentle shove. Set in motion, the girl scampered toward the gate, her striped muffler flying behind her.
“See you at lunch, then,” called Fergie, and disappeared inside, presumably not to tell Nancy about Heather’s criticisms lest Nancy spike Heather’s tea with arsenic.
Jean started after Dakota. Behind her, Scott hissed sarcastically, “Thanks, pal.”
“I didn’t know you hadn’t told the old trouble and strife,” replied Pritchard, “you know, the wife, that you were here in September, did I now?”
Whoa. Dakota was already out of earshot. Jean stopped and pretended to tie her shoe.
“No,” conceded Scott. “It’s my own damn fault for thinking Heather and the kid would enjoy the place while I did some business. No good deed, and all that bull. Neither of the MacDonalds was even here in September, but now Heather’s convinced I’ve been getting it on with Diana. Not that I’d have a problem getting it on with Diana. Once those icy ones melt, it’s the ride of your life.”
Well, yes, Jean thought, Alasdair being a case in point. Still, when Pritchard replied with a suggestive snigger, she looked indignantly around and made her worst Medusa face at both men. They were facing the other way, which was just as well.
So Pritchard was up to something behind his employers’ backs. Had he sold Scott the dirk in September? Probably not—a dealer would have wanted the sheath, too. Scott could have stolen just the knife, but then, he would have had to either take it home with him and bring it back, or leave it somewhere in the U.K., both options arguing that he had planned in September to murder a man in December.
And yet, what if Scott had had an appointment with Greg, a fellow traveler in the art and antiquities trade, yesterday afternoon? Or with Diana, all protestations to the contrary? But he’d been with Heather in Kinlochroy then. Hadn’t he?
And then there was Pritchard—he could have been dealing with Greg MacLeod . . .
“Mrs. Fairbairn?” Dakota was holding the gate open.
Jean smiled. “Coming. Sorry. And call me Jean.” Technically she was Ms. or Miss Fairbairn—and this time around she was sticking with that name, considering how she’d spent the last year reclaiming it. No way, though, did that imply this marriage would break down, too.
“Thanks for letting me come with you,” Dakota said. “They keep having the same argument over and over, it’s just the names that are different. So Diana’s pretty. That doesn’t mean, you know.”
Jean stepped into the garden, devoutly hoping that a ten-year-old didn’t know, except in broad outline. And as the gate clanged shut behind her, she thought, speaking of Diana, that made two incidents on the chatelaine’s front doorstep this morning that she’d missed. Had she really gone shopping, searching for, say, a potato with just the right number of eyes? Or had she lied to Fergie—again—and gone somewhere else entirely?
The sunshine held little heat, although the light itself was warm. Soaking in the tentative rays, Jean let Dakota lead the way along the labyrinthine paths. The child pointed out the sculptures hidden in the shrubbery—a faun here, eyes downcast demurely, a Virgin Mary there, eyes cutting upward coquettishly. The vivid colors of a totem pole leaped out of a clearing. Some of the larger trees sported little gnome doors at their bases or eyes, noses, and lips on their trunks.
She should volunteer to do a guidebook for Fergie. He must have interesting stories about where these things were obtained or why he created them. With that thought, Jean straightened, shifting the metaphorical monkey on her back, and enjoyed the scene.
Even in winter, the garden had a derelict beauty. The beds were mostly empty, sleeping beneath a layer of wood chippings, but berries and bits of foliage clung to some of the shrubs and small trees, and the bare twigs of others traced delicate patterns. The shadows of the larger, leafless trees lay across the gravel walks, so that the sun seemed to wink in and out as woman and child strolled along.
The air didn’t seem nearly so cold here, and was scented by leaf and loam with an elusive promise of spring. Beyond their own footsteps and Dakota’s voice, Jean heard birds squawking and singing, the rustle of branches and—was that another set of footsteps?
She looked back, thinking perhaps Scott had ducked his confrontation with Heather and followed them. But she saw no one. Paranoid, moi? You’d think she’d been involved in several murder investigations or something.
Dakota darted past the tree-lined alley leading to the new church and Jean didn’t divert her. She wanted to have her second look at the place with Alasdair, so she could voice her thoughts about Seonaid, and Tormod, and the events of 1822. None of them might have relevance beyond Greg’s genealogical quest, but still, no story should be left unturned.
After fifteen minutes of Jean strolling and Dakota zigzagging from sight to sight, the main garden gate rose before them once again. They’d missed the path leading to the old church. What Fergie needed to sculpt next was a Minotaur.
Now, though . . . “Is this where you saw the ghost?” Jean asked, as casually as she could.
Dakota scuffed through the sodden leaves. “You heard that, huh?”
“It was a little hard not to hear it. But that’s okay, I like ghost stories.”
“It’s no story. We were driving up the driveway and my mom was bawling out my dad for leaving her alone in the pub—”
“Leaving her alone?”
“Yeah, he was like, doing some deal at the office back home but couldn’t get cell phone reception. So he went outside and walked down to the harbor, took him forever, she said. Not so long, he said. If she’d just sat tight in the pub he wouldn’t have had to wander around town looking for her.”
“He had to look for her? You mean, she left you in the pub and went looking for him?”
“Yeah, he was mad she left me alone, but she said it was his own fault and I wasn’t alone anyway, that nice-looking policeman was talking to the bartender. Though she didn’t say ‘nice-looking’ to Dad, just to me.”
She did, did she? Jean thought.
“There were a lot of people there, like the guy with the beard, you know, who was bringing out the breakfast stuff . . .”
“Rab Finlay?”
“Yeah, him. Mom says he can’t speak English but Dad says he’s just got a thick accent. I mean, you can, like, pick out most of it if you pay attention.”
She said. He said. Jean recognized the head-butting dialog of a tense relationship. But that wasn’t her business. What was her business was Greg MacLeod with a phone to his ear. Means, opportunity, the competitive nature of the antiquities trade as
motive. Not that she wanted to finger Dakota’s father—or mother, wandering around town—for murder any more than she wanted to finger one of Alasdair’s friends. “I’m sorry I interrupted. You were driving up the driveway . . .”
“Yeah.” Dakota considered the gate’s decorative scrollwork, a bit rusty in spots but still graceful, like an aging ballerina. “As we went by the gate here, someone, like, stepped through it, out of the light, and shut it behind him.”
“What made you think it was a ghost?”
“He was all shiny, from the lights of the house and from the car lights, too. In dark clothes, but shiny.”
Jean remembered Colin Urquhart standing beneath her window. Had he been on the estate earlier that evening, too? “Could you see his face?”
“No, he had a hat or something pulled down low.”
A hood, Jean thought. “He was going into the garden, not coming out of it?”
“Into the garden, yeah.”
“You’re sure it was a man?”
“Well, no, not really. But he hugged the woman standing inside the gate.”
Jean stopped in her tracks. “Woman? Inside the gate?”
“I just caught a real quick look as we drove by, you know? The man stepped through the gate, shut it, and walked right up to a woman with long skirts and funny little curls hanging down beside her face. I saw her face, it was white as a sheet. Do you think she was a ghost, too?”
Jean went giddy, as though the path beneath her feet had whisked away and she’d dropped into free fall. Seonaid. The man—if it was a man—had seemed to hug her because he walked right through her. He hadn’t seen her. But Dakota had. Dakota was allergic to ghosts.
“I always get, like, a creepy feeling when I see a ghost.” Hesitantly, Dakota’s mitten-covered hand indicated the back of her neck.
Jean closed her eyes, grasped her equilibrium, and prayed for the right words—honesty wasn’t always the best policy, as Heather had proved. She looked down to see the child’s small gamin face turned upward.
“I’m sorry, I’m not suppose to tell stories like that.” Dakota’s hand fell back to her side and she looked down, waiting for the ruler of logic to rap her knuckles.
“But it’s no story, you just said. Sometimes,” Jean went on, “people see things that aren’t really there, like thinking the wake of a boat is the Loch Ness monster. Optical illusions, wishful thinking, whatever. It happens. But sometimes we—and I do it, too—sometimes we see things that other people can’t see. That creepy feeling on the back of your neck. I know exactly what you mean.”
Dakota looked up. Sparks flared in the depths of her big, dark eyes.
“I think the man you saw was just that, a man. A living one. I might have seen the same man standing outside the house later on. He was probably on the way to the village and stepped out of the driveway when he saw your car coming. The woman, though, yes, she was a ghost. I saw her on the staircase last night. She’s Seonaid MacDonald, who died in 1822.”
“Oh wow,” said Dakota, the sparks exploding into fireworks. “Cool!”
Jean bit back, no, it’s not cool, you’ve already seen how your parents reacted. “It’s like an allergy. Some people have it, some people don’t, and it’s hard for the people who don’t to understand.”
“And they don’t want to hear about it. Yeah, I know. My grandmother has to be real careful with Chinese food because MSG gives her a headache, but my mom says it’s all in her head, that why aren’t the people in China walking around with headaches, then?”
Jean started to say, “A headache is definitely in your head,” but this was no joking matter. “I call being able to sense ghosts an allergy, but it’s not a medical condition, a situation science can recognize and explain. Yet, anyway. It’s weird, and it’s very personal. I know some people who get, well, vibes off things, which is similar, but you’re only the second person I’ve ever met who actually sees ghosts.”
“Who’s the first?”
For asking that, Jean awarded her another atta girl. “My, er, husband, Alasdair Cameron.”
“Oh. Him. He doesn’t say much, does he?”
“He gets his point across,” Jean said with a grin.
Grinning back, Dakota did a dance step through the leaves.
Jean’s grin wobbled into a squirm. She’d just picked up her own disciple.
Time to move on, and without laying this is our secret, okay? on the child’s already burdened shoulders. If Dakota told her parents what Jean had told her, well then, they’d deal with it. The child was going to spend her life dealing with it. Jean remembered her own youth, the impatient sighs, the indulgent nods, the teasing and, worse, the sincere offers of psychiatric help. And then there were the people who assumed she must share their own weirdnesses.
Reticence, edging into Alasdair’s taciturnity, worked real well.
Briskly, Jean pushed open the garden gate and sent a suspicious glare toward Pritchard’s picturesque cottage. In the summer it would even have roses growing around the door, but now the gray stone facade glowered behind a few thorny twigs. “I saw another gate around the side of the house,” she told Dakota. “It might be a more direct route to the old church.”
“Sure,” Dakota said, all weariness evaporated. Absolved, maybe.
Side-by-side, they walked past the three parked cars and around the corner of the house to the flagstone and gravel yard. From this side of Fergie’s office window, Jean saw the door of the new kitchen, flanked by garbage bins. The garage filled in the entire space between the house and the wall. If you wanted to reach the sea from here, you’d have to go into the house and out the far side, or back around the front of the house, or through the small wooden gate, where, yes, the hand-lettered sign read, To Old Dunasheen Church.
Just as Jean lifted the latch and pushed the gate open, she caught a movement in the corner of her eye. Fergie stood in his window, the telephone to his ear, a cup of tea in his hand. He lifted the tea in salute.
Jean waved, thinking, baronet under glass. Castle under siege.
“He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?” asked Dakota.
“Yes.” Jean closed the gate, hoping that “yes” was an honest answer.
The child bounded up a narrow path between an evergreen hedge and the bare ruined choirs of a vegetable garden, her shoes squelching. Here, too, a few stubborn leaves quivered in the still air, gulls squawked overhead, and a low booming resonance that flowed through Jean’s ears to fill her heart was the surge of the sea.
What she heard with her head was a small but distinctive snick from behind. Was that the gate shutting, the latch falling into place, her paranoia becoming flesh? She looked over her shoulder but saw nothing around the curve of the hedge except a small brown bird flapping frantically across the path, fleeing . . . She walked into Dakota’s back. “Oops. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I wasn’t sure where to go. This way?”
The main path bent off to the left, running into the streaked shadow beneath the trees. A thinner path skewed suddenly to the right, up a low hill, and around and over several boulders. “The church should be that way, yes. Beyond the trees.”
They picked their way to the boulders, and past them, and emerged onto a hillside shelf above the sea. “Whoa,” Dakota said on a long whistling breath.
Jean didn’t say anything. She breathed in the cold, sweet-salt air, and shaded her eyes with her gloved hand. Sure enough, beyond the brilliant dark blue billows of the water, the horizon was closed by an undulating rim of land tinted violet-blue by distance and melting into the cobalt blue of the sky. Even though she knew she was looking at two of the Outer Hebrides, Harris and Uist, she felt she could see clear to Ireland. And beyond, to Tir nan Og, the Celtic version of heaven. No wonder the early Celtic saints had braved that sea to share their beliefs. No wonder generations of residents had built places of worship here, in this place that proved “earthly nirvana” was no oxymoron. No wonder generations of emigrants were ca
lled to return. Blood is thicker than water.
To the left rose the remains of the church, broken walls and pointed gable ends of dark gray stone, cracks still black with soot. Beyond it the ground fell away, and then rose again into a line of cliffs, mounting higher and higher until the topmost hillock was crowned by the white block-and-spire of Keppoch Point lighthouse. No more than half a mile separated it from Dunasheen Castle.
There was the exit from the path Jean and Alasdair had taken yesterday, beneath the eaves of the trees at the far end of the grassy shelf. Could the murderer have run from the beach, via one or the other garden path, to the driveway in time for Dakota to see him? Yes, with knowledge of the landscape, a flashlight, and a strong pair of legs.
Urquhart must know his way around Dunasheen Estate. Would Dakota recognize him if she saw him again? If she’d seen him to begin with.
Remembering her brief as educator, Jean turned back to her. “Fergus MacDonald has found ‘fairy houses’ here, ancient stone walls hidden in the heather and covered with lichen. They could go back thousands of years. And his grandfather found some Roman coins, although whether they were left by the Roman fleet that may have reached here, or whether they were brought back by some tourist, is open to debate. No context, you see.”
“They should get archaeologists out here.”
“Yes, they should. There are too many interesting sites to dig them all, though. And once you dig a site, you’ve destroyed it forever.”
“Oh. Yeah. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Jean and Dakota swished through the tall, reddish-gold grass toward the latest and last church. Even at midday, the sun hung at half-mast, so low that the shadows of the walls reached toward the sea. “A hermit may have lived here ages ago. The original church was built around the first millennium. At least one since then was sacked by Vikings.”
“Cool.”
“Not to the sackees,” said Jean. “This church was built by a notorious cattle-thief and raider in the fifteenth century to atone for his crimes. There’s no way of knowing if it worked.”
That went past the child’s head.
The Blue Hackle Page 14