by Fran Stewart
Dirk stepped toward him, holding his small but wicked-looking sgian-dubh. “Don’t do that,” I told Dirk.
Mac sneered again. “Do what?”
“Did ye see?” Dirk snarled. “Did ye see what he almost did? He was ready like a fighting boar to run ye over. I’d slit his throat had I half a chance.”
Just as well I’d stopped him, although I doubted a ghost knife could have done any true damage. Remembering that feeling of being enveloped in a mist, I asked him, “Are you the one that kept me from falling?”
“Yes,” Dirk said, at the same time a deep voice just behind my left shoulder said, “I’d be the one who did that.” I turned to see Harper glare at his chief. “Seems to me she needs an apology since you almost ran her down.”
Mac flexed his fingers. Dirk saw it and raised the knife a bit higher.
“Don’t,” I told Dirk again.
“Why not?” Mac sneered again. “You don’t want me to apologize? Do you enjoy being pushed around?” He made it sound like an indecent proposal.
Harper’s grip tightened on my arm. “Let’s go somewhere for a cup of java.” Mac opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Harper scowled at him. “Interview. I’m the detective on this case.”
He turned, pulling me with him. Dirk came up on my other side, and asked, “What would be a detecktiff?” His knife still glinted in the morning sun.
“So,” I turned to Harper and pulled my arm free, “you’re the one who’s going to investigate the murder and detect who did it, since you’re the detective?”
I felt more than saw Dirk nod at my side. “I thank ye.” He bent to tuck his knife away.
Harper’s face went through a series of contortions as he seemed to try out various answers to my inane comment. Finally he settled for “Yes. I am,” and steered me up the street toward the Logg Cabin.
The ScotShop looked so forlorn, with the curtains once again pulled shut behind the display windows. Dirk paused to stare at the mannequins in the window with that look of utter incredulity that made me see the display through his fourteenth-century eyes. Clothing in the fourteenth century must have been so much more utilitarian. I doubt any man back then owned more than two shirts, and a woman who had three dresses was probably minor royalty. Seeing it through Dirk’s eyes, my window looked like a travesty—a caricature of life.
I slowed my pace so Dirk could catch up to me. Harper strode along toward the Logg Cabin with his head down, lost in thought, unaware that I had dropped behind him.
* * *
Karaline stepped through the swinging door at the back of the restaurant, saw Harper and me at the end of the short line, waved, and took a quick look around the room. I knew she could take in everything at once—every table, every guest, and every single one of her staff. She came forward and spoke a few words to Geraldine, the hostess, picked up two menus, and motioned us toward the back, where Dolly had just wiped off a square table. I looked back at the people we’d preempted. “Won’t they be upset?”
“No. They’re waiting for a table for six. We’re moving fairly fast this morning. Everybody’s hot to get out of here and shop.”
“And my store’s still closed.”
“Quit whining. It could be worse.” She put down one menu, looked Harper up and down, winked at me, and set the other one kitty-cornered to my left. “Dolly will be right back to take your order.”
Harper held my chair, ignored the menu, and sat across from me with his back to the wall. Dirk stood looming over me on my right. Dolly placed our silverware, wrapped in napkins, and whipped her order pad out of her brown uniform’s capacious pocket. “Hullo, Officer Harper, Ms. Winn. What can I get for you this morning?”
He raised his eyebrows. Unlike Mac, I thought, Harper has two eyebrows. I stifled a giggle.
“Coffee okay with you?”
I nodded. Dolly knew I liked it black, so I didn’t specify.
“That’s all then.” He smiled at Dolly, and she dimpled. I wasn’t the only one intrigued by his eyes.
Dirk still stood close to my right arm with his kilt swishing as he shuffled from one foot to the other. “I twisted my ankle while I was in Scotland,” I said. “Do you mind if I elevate my foot?” I didn’t wait for his answer, and pushed a chair away from the table. I waited until Dirk sat, then raised my foot and balanced it on the rung. Wasn’t much elevation, but Harper couldn’t see it, and anyway, my ankle was just fine.
“Are you okay,” Harper asked, “apart from your ankle?”
“Of course I am.”
“That was a nasty shove you got from the chief.” When he narrowed one eye, he looked downright piratical. “I don’t think he meant to do it; he doesn’t always watch where he’s going. Just assumes everyone will get out of his way.” His charcoal eyes got even darker. “But he didn’t have to enjoy it so much.”
“Aye. I wanted to rip out his heart.”
I nodded and unrolled my napkin. “Thank you for keeping me from falling.”
“Ye are most welcome.”
“Sure. Happy to do it.”
They spoke at the same time, sounding like lopsided stereo at a symphony concert.
“Why aren’t you wearing a uniform?”
He shrugged. “Detectives usually don’t.”
“But you had one on when you came to the ScotShop.”
Dolly poured the coffee into two enormous mugs. I’ll say this for Karaline, she really knows how to keep people liquefied.
“I was filling in that evening for one of the other guys on that shift. His wife just had a baby, and I had some extra time on my hands.”
“Paula had her baby? I hadn’t heard. Girl or boy?”
He shrugged.
Men.
“Did the mother live?” Dirk’s question was almost breathless.
I looked at him. “Of course,” I said. Dirk looked at me funny.
“Of course what?” Harper was looking at me funny, too.
“Sorry. I get lost in thought sometimes.”
“Sounds like you answer yourself, too.” His eyes crinkled. It was a good thing. If he’d been complaining, Dirk might have decked him.
He set down his mug. “Your twin brother called me.”
“He did?”
“I didna know ye were a twin.”
“What did he want?”
“He offered me advice on how to do my job.” Harper’s voice was dry.
“That’s Drew. He likes to manage things.”
“Aye. What would be wrong with that?”
I started to kick Dirk under the table and then recalled that I probably wouldn’t be able to. And didn’t want to find out for sure. I’d either break my toe on the chair leg or run into his dirk. Dagger. “My brother and Shoe are good friends. They grew up together.”
Harper nodded but didn’t say anything.
I looked over at Dirk. He was studying Harper intently but seemed to sense my stare and looked back at me. “What’s that ye twa are drinking?”
“Ah,” I said. “Coffee.”
“That doesna answer my question. What is coughee?”
I looked back at Harper. “I wonder when people here first learned to brew coffee from ground-up roasted coffee beans. Do you know?”
“What?” I was pretty sure he thought I’d lost my mind, but he put on a gentlemanly pose. “Coffee. Right. It had to have been well after Columbus. Coffee didn’t reach England until the late fifteen hundreds.”
“What would be a klumbus?”
I gaped at Harper. “How on earth would you know that?”
He grinned. “Social studies project in seventh grade.”
“What would be a klumbus?” Dirk was louder this time.
I interrupted. “How is Shoe doing? Have you seen him?”
“I’ve talked
with him several times. Just like your brother says, Shoe swears he’s innocent.”
“Well, of course he is. Why can’t you look for somebody else, the person who really killed Mason?”
“Ms. Winn,” he said in an exceptionally patient voice, “that’s just what I’m doing. But you know as well as I do that our chief is the one who arrested Shoe, so he insists that Shoe is guilty.”
“Yeah, but Mac’s an—” I stopped abruptly when Dirk cleared his throat at my side. “He’s all wet,” I added, rather lamely.
Harper laughed out loud. “Whatever you were intending to say is probably more to the point.” He pushed his coffee mug aside. “Do you have any idea whatsoever, no matter how farfetched it may be, as to why”—he looked around the restaurant, and I turned to follow his gaze. Most of our near neighbors were engaged in animated conversation. He turned back to me and lowered his voice—“any idea why Mason was in your store at night?”
A tiny spider skittered across the table toward Dirk. Did all ghosts attract spiders or just Dirk? Or was it a coincidence? “I’ve thought about it, but I can’t come up with anything. He had no reason to be there.” He used to have plenty of reason, but that time was quite simply dead.
Dirk spoke up. He, too, watched the spider. “Mayhap he was meeting someone, and that person killed him.”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“Doubt what?” Harper was looking at me funny. Again. He scooped the spider onto his napkin and transferred it to a nearby potted plant.
I propped my elbows on the table and leaned my chin into my hands. My head was disconcertingly close to Dirk’s. I pulled back a few inches. Dirk gave me a look I couldn’t identify. I cleared my throat. “Maybe Andrea knows.”
“Who would this Andrea be?”
Harper twirled his coffee mug around. I think he was trying to figure out how much to tell me. “She said she had no idea. She’d just kicked him out that night.”
“She did? That’s the best sense she’s shown in a long time.” I hated to give her credit for anything.
Harper snickered, I’d swear he did, but he covered it well by converting it into a cough.
“I wonder why she threw him out?”
“She said she’d found out he’d been cheating on her.”
“Really? With who?” He didn’t answer me. I guess I understood why. It wasn’t any business of mine. I wished I’d slugged Mason twice.
“Mayhap Andrea killed him.”
“Yeah. I mean, too bad we can’t nab her for the murder, but she doesn’t have enough sense to plan something like that.”
“You’re right,” Harper said. “Mason’s murder looks like it wasn’t planned, though.”
“You can’t dump a heavy bookcase like that over on somebody without planning how to do it. It had to have been moved away from the wall first—”
“Aye, did I not say so?”
“—and that’s not an easy job,” I finished. “Maybe the other woman killed him. She might have found out about Andrea.” And me, too. Who else?
“No. She has a cast-iron alibi.”
“I thought alibis could be faked.”
“Not this one.” He fiddled with his coffee cup again. “That blow to Mason’s head . . .” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.
I thought back to the scene that morning. When we lifted the bookcase off him, there was a deep indentation right across his chest where the front edge of one of those heavy, immovable hardwood shelves had landed. “My bookcase killed him?” My stomach twisted, and I clenched my teeth to keep the coffee down.
Harper leaned across the table and pried my fingers off my coffee mug. “No. Absolutely not. He was killed by a person, someone who slammed him brutally and then dumped the heaviest thing he could find on top of his victim.”
He was right. Technically. Murder is done by people. Still, it could have been my bookcase. Maybe I could sell it to that store up in Montpelier . . .
“Peggy?” His hand tightened on mine. “Are you okay?”
I focused my eyes with some difficulty and looked down at my hand, where Harper’s fingers gripped hard. Dirk’s hand clutched my arm. Maybe that’s why I felt so cold all of a sudden.
Harper held up his other hand, and Dolly scooted over. “We need a glass of water.”
Between all the fussing, first from Dolly and then from Karaline, I managed to get enough water in me to float a boat. Talk about being liquefied. I did feel better, though.
Finally, I was back to normal, or as close to normal as I could get, considering what I’d just learned. “Did you notice that the wallpaper behind the bookcase was damaged?”
“I know. We checked behind the bookcase during our examination of the crime scene. Any guess as to what happened?”
“I’m sorry. All I know is the wallpaper was in fine shape when I installed the bookcase three years ago.”
“And then there were those holes,” Harper said.
“Do they go all the way through into the bathroom on the other side of the wall?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you call it?”
“There’s a toilet in there and a sink.” Of course there also were all those shelves of stuff. I didn’t have a very good inventory system. “So, did the holes go through?”
“No. I wasn’t sure at first. It was hard to see considering all the . . .”
He seemed to be looking for the least offensive word. Junk. That was what he was thinking.
“. . . merchandise in there.”
When I’d first opened the ScotShop, there’d been a sink in the back but no hookup for a toilet. I moved in a composting toilet—it worked just fine, although the little separate room walled off around the sink had been awfully crowded already, what with built-in shelves along the wall it shared with the showroom. Still, the toilet didn’t take up too much space.
I’d been meaning to reorganize those shelves for months—years—but never seemed to find the time. I wasn’t about to apologize for it, though.
Harper didn’t seem to expect an apology. “We shifted around some of the stuff so we could get a clear look at the wall from that side, and there weren’t any marks, which isn’t all that surprising. Thin drill bits won’t go through seven or eight inches.”
“What would be thindril bits?” Dirk’s first question in quite a while. I’d almost forgotten about him.
“Why would a . . .” I groped for a way to explain to Dirk without setting off the barm-alarm, but couldn’t think of a thing. “I thought interior walls were only as deep as a two-by-four.”
“A what? What would be a to-before?”
“They usually are,” Harper said. “But then again, this building probably has two-by-six studs. It was built a hundred years ago.”
“Is that all?” Dirk sounded incredibly haughty. “The chapel in Edinburgh Castle is nigh on three hundred years old. ’Twas built near the start of the twelfth century.”
I was about to retort, but then I thought about it. A building built in the early twelfth century would have been—I did a quick calculation—a little less than three hundred years old in Dirk’s time, but now it would be nine hundred and something. “A hundred years isn’t really all that ancient, is it? I read once that the difference between Scots and Americans, is that they think a hundred miles is a long way, and we think a hundred years is a long time.”
Harper just looked at me and couldn’t seem to think of what to say.
“Does it still stand on its verra high hill? Edinburgh Castle?” Dirk sounded wistful.
“Edinburgh Castle has huge, thick walls,” I said. “I’ve visited it several times.”
Dirk sighed with relief. “Ah, ’tis nice to know.”
Harper leaned his elbow on the table and propped his chin in his hand, mirroring my own position. He gazed at
me, and I felt lost in those charcoal eyes. Before I could go too limp, he asked, “What are you talking about?”
I sat up straighter. “Thick walls?”
Dolly, bless her heart, chose that moment to refill our cups. “You doing okay now? Do you need more water?”
I shook my head and then smiled at Harper. “You were talking about how thick the back wall of the shop is.”
“Uh-huh.” He eyed me with some concern. “Is that wallpaper something you put up yourself?”
I shuddered. “Not hardly. I inherited it from the last owners. That kind of pattern is awfully old-fashioned. I thought it made the place look . . .” I recalled the dark shop between the rowan trees in Pitlochry, and glanced at Dirk. “. . . look sort of old-world and authentic, so I kept it. I like that kind of store.” But not that horrible flocked wallpaper. Would rowan trees grow in Vermont?
“Anyway,” I went on, “it was in pretty good shape. I think it was the original wallpaper, which would make it antique, and I didn’t want to spend any extra money on replacing it. The shop setup was expensive enough as it was.”
Harper turned his mug around and around. “You must have paid a fortune for that bookcase.”
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” I started to smile, but then I remembered what that bookcase had done. Damn. Why had I ever bought it? “I got it at an estate sale. Cheap.”
Dirk was drumming his fingers on the table without making a sound. I laid my hand flat on the table but couldn’t feel a vibration. “What would be a nestate sale?” He sounded peeved.
Poor Dirk, but I was getting tired of trying to answer him without getting myself committed. “It was one of those old houses down in Brattleboro. The owner died and they had to sell everything.”
Harper didn’t pay attention to that. He looked at my fingers splayed out beside my coffee mug and shook his head ever so slightly. “Was anything missing from the shop?”
“Not that I noticed, but I didn’t even think about it at first. I was just busy getting the bookcase righted. And then Mac kicked me out of there before I had a chance to do any sort of inventory.”