by Fran Stewart
Mr. P waited beside my new car on the driver’s side. “Good morning, Miss Peggy,” he said in an old-fashioned, gentlemanly manner. “I’m glad to see you getting about so well after your accident.”
I gestured to my covered-up bandage. “My head must be pretty hard. Took a few stitches, though.”
“Oh? May I ask who did the honors of sewing you up?”
“Dr. Carrin.”
Mr. P’s face went through a funny contortion. I wondered if he had a cramp or something. Before I could ask if he was okay, he said, “May I invite you to dinner this evening?”
“Nae,” Dirk said.
“I’d be very happy to have dinner with you, but it will have to be tomorrow. I’ve missed our monthly tradition.”
Mrs. P had always kept the conversation going. Talking with him over soup and sandwiches was rather awkward.
I opened the passenger door for Dirk and went through the ridiculous charade, placing my purse ostentatiously on the floor as Dirk moved his feet out of the way. I closed the door and walked around the back of the car. Mr. P opened my door for me. I thanked him but didn’t linger. I shouldn’t have agreed. I needed to spend time with Karaline. If she had her eyes on my brother, I wanted to know about it.
“You’ll need to stay home tomorrow night, Dirk. I’ll leave some books out for you to read.”
“I dinna want to stay inside again and wait for ye to be hit by another truck of garbage.”
I slowed down as Hamelin’s one and only traffic light turned yellow. “I’ll be walking next door, not driving.”
He muttered something, but I chose to ignore him. I put on my Scarlett O’Hara persona and decided I’d deal with it tomorrow.
* * *
Gilda didn’t show up for work. Sam called half an hour later, spouting excuses for both of them. Gilda had another migraine, apparently, and Sam said he needed to stay there with her for a while. There was already a crowd of customers. An early morning tour bus had stopped and most of the tourists came to the ScotShop before heading for brunch at the Logg Cabin. Fine with me, but I was swamped. “Call Shoe,” I told Sam with a sharpness I tried to disguise from the nearby customers. “See if he’ll fill in for Gilda. I need him here twenty minutes ago.” I hung up without waiting for an answer.
Two boys, supposedly attached to the tour bus but unsupervised by parents, headed straight for the Loch Ness Monster statues. I was fairly sure something was going to get broken. Before I could intervene, Dirk stalked that way and laid a hand on each boy’s shoulder. They both jumped, shivered, looked wide-eyed at each other, and darted out the front door.
“Where are you boys going?” Their mother’s voice was sharp.
“We’re hungry,” came the reply drifting back as they ran toward the Logg Cabin. In less than a minute, I saw Karaline usher them out into the courtyard. I could almost read her lips. You can wait here until your parents are ready to eat. She handed each of them a biscuit.
“’Twas well done, Mistress Caroline.” Dirk stood beside me looking out the window.
“Thanks, Dirk. You just got hired as my bouncer.”
“What would be a—”
“You’re in charge of getting rid of the obnoxious ones, bouncing them out of the store, so to speak.”
“Och. I see.”
A quiet voice behind me said, “Excuse me? Would you happen to have a Forbes tartan tie?”
I led her to the F section of the tie display and pointed out a bright blue-and-green plaid. “Oh no,” she said. “That’s the wrong one altogether. The one I’m looking for is mostly brown, with only a little bit of green.”
I double-checked the label on the package. Forbes. Before I could speak, Dirk stepped up beside me. “That would be Forbes of Druinnor she’s needing.”
“Right.” I was truly going to have to get more familiar with all these subclans, septs, whatever. Of course, with Dirk here, why should I even bother? I looked farther along the display and picked up a light brown-and-green tartan tie with a narrow white stripe. “Is this more what you had in mind?”
“Oh, lovely,” she said. She leaned close to me and lowered her voice. “My husband has emphysema, you see. I ordinarily wouldn’t leave him, but this was just an early day trip from Boston, and he insisted I come. It’s our anniversary, and I so wanted to visit Hamelin again. We honeymooned here fifty-nine years ago.”
“I’m sorry your husband couldn’t come.”
“My sister came with me instead. She’s widowed now, you know.” Her eyes clouded, as if she wondered whether she might soon be widowed herself. “Henry will love having this tie. Our dog ate the last one.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I ushered her to the cash register and gift-wrapped the tie. Dirk moved out of the way as she and her sister left, chatting happily. I lowered my voice. “You are now not only my bouncer, you’re also the resident tartan expert.”
“I am surprised ye didna know the Forbes tartans, and ye with a shop with Scotland in the name.”
The bell over the door tinkled, and Shoe walked in, causing quite a commotion among the white-haired senior citizens. He did look good in his kilt. There was a flurry of sales once the ladies discovered he worked here. “I just love your store,” one of them gushed at him.
He didn’t try to correct her. “Thank you. We aim to please,” was all he said. I could have decked him, but that would have been bad for business.
* * *
Around three o’clock, Harper walked in. I was in the middle of another flurry of customers and glad about it, so I didn’t want to stop to talk quite yet. He pointed at himself, at me, at the storeroom door, and raised his eyebrows. I love sign language. I nodded and rang up a rather healthy-sized purchase. Dress kilt and all the trimmings. If this kept up, I’d more than make up what I’d lost in sales those days the store was closed. After Mason was killed. I shook my head. No cloud of gloom today. I absolutely refused to think about that.
Eventually the customers trickled out, leaving enough people that I thought Shoe could take care of them without me. “I’ll be in back,” I told him. “Call if you need me.”
Dirk preceded me through the door and strode to the desk, where Harper sat thumbing through the old paperback. Harper looked up, almost as if he were aware of Dirk, but turned immediately to me and stood. “Do you have a few minutes?”
“Yes, although I’ll have to go back in there if Shoe needs help. What’s up?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “I brought you the note, the one we found in the sporran.”
“Don’t you need it as some sort of evidence?”
“This is only a copy.” Instead of handing it to me, he spread it on the desk. The ragged edges of the small wrinkled paper had left a shadow around the printing, so we could tell the exact size of the original.
Dirk bent over it. I hadn’t explained photocopying to him. Please don’t ask anything, I urged him inside my head.
“You said you wanted to show it to your brother?”
“We’re twins. We discuss everything.”
“Everything?” Was there a shade of something else in that simple word? “It’s good you’re so close.”
I moved a bit to my right so I wouldn’t run into Dirk’s head again, and leaned over the paper. “I still don’t get it. It’s just nonsense.” I read it out loud, line by line, thinking that, if I heard it, it might make more sense.
L side 18 to wl
,000 dentists
L
4
_& 10
_ _stars
/100 %
1 R
brother against brother
ended just in time
It still made no sense at all.
“Something like this is too definite,” Harper said, “too distinct to be nonsense
. It has to mean something.”
I pulled my cell out of the holder at my waist and called Drew. “Listen, I’ve got the paper.”
“Paper?”
“The one with the dentists on it.”
“Great,” he said. “When can I get it?”
“Let’s get together tonight.” I looked up at Harper and raised my eyebrows. He nodded. My girl-talk with Karaline—and our little project of tearing apart a wall—would just have to wait.
“Harper’s coming over, too. Want to meet at my place?”
“Tessa and I will bring dinner.” Drew loved to cook. “You supply salad and a table.”
“If you’re doing the cooking, that’s fine with me. Maybe around six?”
Harper nodded, and Drew agreed. “While you’re there,” I told Drew, “don’t let me forget to give you your card.”
“What card?”
“The 1982 one. I put it in my box by mistake.”
“You stole my card?”
“See ya, bro.”
Harper scratched his chin. “Did I miss something?”
“How so?”
“The 1982 card? What’s that about?”
Sam opened the door. “Need you, please.”
“Be right there.” I folded up the copy Harper had made for me and started toward the door. “It was after you left. We found a card we’d missed. It had a whole bunch of ads and news stories from 1982, the year Drew and I were born. I’ll show it to you tonight.” A sort of warm tingly feeling started way down around my toes and headed upwards. Tonight. Dirk growled, like a German shepherd guarding a bone.
24
Card Game
In an insane parody of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” I couldn’t decide whether my grandmother’s china would be too much or just right. My mother’s mother. No, too fussy, too formal. I put it away and set out three of the mismatched plates from Goodwill that I usually used. I gathered them back up. They wouldn’t do for company. Drew wasn’t company, but Harper . . .
“Why have ye changed the trenchers twice?”
“Trenchers?”
He pointed to the three plates I held. “Aye. Can ye no make your decision?”
“It’s just . . . I don’t want to be too . . . These aren’t the right ones. They’re too casual.”
“Nae? Then what would be the right ones?”
I thought about it for a minute and pulled the little stepstool over to the left of the pantry. The white plates with the blue lines around them would be perfect. I lifted half of them down from the upper cabinet.
Dirk inspected them. “Would ye say these are the best?”
“I think so. Well, best for this evening.” I rubbed one plate affectionately. “They belonged to my Granny Winn, my father’s mother.”
“Why would ye have them put awae like that?” He motioned to the upper cabinet.
“I never use them.” If one got broken, it would be another little piece of Granny gone—and I didn’t want to lose any more of her.
Dirk stepped back and inspected the table. “They look bonny indeed.”
Tessa barked from outside, and thoughts of Granny faded as I went to open the door. My twin’s lap held a great big casserole dish sitting on layers of what looked like a beach towel. Bright red oven mitts perched on either side.
“Good dog, Tessa. You make a great doorbell. How’d you train her to do that?” I slipped on the oven mitts and lifted the casserole. “Damn, this smells good. Chicken?”
“Yeah. Chicken, wild rice, mushrooms, broccoli, cream, and a few other things.” He gave Tessa the release command, and she bounded ahead of us into the kitchen. “Stick it in the oven so it’ll stay hot, would you? Did you make a salad?”
“Yep.”
He repositioned each leg. “Is Harper here?”
“Nope.”
Right on cue, somebody knocked, and I scooted to the door, followed closely by Tessa. Harper’s eyes did one of those quick once-overs that men always seem to think women won’t notice. “Beautiful . . .”
I opened my mouth to thank him for the compliment, but he kept speaking. “. . . dog,” he said, bending to pat Tessa. “I didn’t get a chance to see her closely at the party. Anyway she was working, so I wouldn’t have patted her then.”
My brother rolled his chair up behind me. “Thanks. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know service-dog etiquette, but she’s not a real service dog. She’s just a natural for helping me.”
I closed the door and listened to their enthusiastic dog conversation for quite a while. I felt thoroughly miffed, but I wasn’t about to admit it.
“The chicken should be ready,” Drew finally said, and I went to the oven.
“Here, let me.” Harper took the oven mitts away from me and bent over the stove. I looked at Drew. He grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.
Once the casserole dish sat on a couple of trivets, I pulled out the copy of the old note.
“Good idea,” Harper said. “Let’s take a quick look at this, and then our brains can marinate ideas while we’re eating.” I laid the paper beside Drew’s plate.
Drew read it out loud, and Harper glanced over at me.
I shrugged. “Twins think alike.”
Drew finished the list and settled back in his chair. “This line about the dentists has to be a clue of some sort.” He patted Tessa absentmindedly and signaled for her to lie down.
I motioned to Harper to start serving the salad while I spooned casserole onto each plate. “I think that line about the brothers is significant, but what’s with the part about ending in time?”
He ran one thumb along the blue line on the plate I handed him. “My grandmother had plates just like this. Sure did eat a lot at her house. Granny could cook like nobody’s business.”
Granny. He called his grandmother Granny. I gave Drew his plate. He looked from Harper to me and back again.
“Where’s your card?” Harper asked. “The one you said you were going to show me.”
“It’s my card,” Drew said. “The one she stole from me.”
“I’m going to disown you someday, brother, and then you’ll be sorry for plaguing me so much.”
“Yeah, like I’m worried about that.” He winked and shoveled in a forkful of chicken casserole.
We batted ideas around while we ate, but nothing much came of it. Afterward, Harper insisted on washing dishes, and I let him. Drew dried, and I put everything away. We made a good team.
I ducked into the living room and retrieved the card. While Harper looked through it, Drew and I studied the dentist paper. I pointed three lines up from the bottom. “R for Republican, maybe?”
Drew tapped the R. “Could be. Or maybe R for Red?”
Harper set down the card.
“Mayhap it means right.”
I looked at Dirk. “Oh, how obvious!”
Drew and Harper looked at each other. “She does this sort of thing a lot lately,” my brother explained.
“Listen, you guys. What if the R stands for right, and the L could be for left.”
Harper nodded, and Drew scowled. “That still doesn’t explain the dentists.”
“Okay, so what? Let’s go through it line by line and see what we can figure out.”
We started at the top. “If we’re right and the L stands for left, then the top line reads: Left side one-eight to w-l. Right?” Drew looked at us both for confirmation, and we nodded.
“Aye. ’Twould seem so.”
“Then there’s the dentist line,” Harper said.
“Dentists, plural,” I reminded him. “And that comma with three Os after it—”
“They’re not Os,” Drew said. “They’re zeroes.”
“Okay, so we’ve got at least a thousand dentists.”
“What would be a dentist?”
Poor Dirk. I hadn’t explained tooth care to him. “So, dentists, uh, people who work on teeth.” Harper looked at me funny when I said that. I kept going. “Why would we need a thousand of them?”
We all three looked at each other. Nada. Phooey.
“There’s a Left after that,” Drew reminded us.
“Yeah. But what’s four and ten?”
“You’re nuts, sis. The four’s on a separate line, and there’s a little underline before and.”
Harper held up a hand. “Maybe it’s meant to be five-and-ten, like a dime-store ad.”
“What would be a dyme’s torrad?”
I held up my own hand. “So, let’s fill in what we have.” I took a separate piece of paper from the junk drawer and wrote:
Left side 18 to wl
___,000 dentists—We need a number here
Left
4—no idea what this means
5 & 10
I set down the pencil. “What about the stars? Any ideas?”
“No,” Harper said, “but I’d be willing to bet there are either two letters or two numbers there.” He pointed to the two lines before the word.
“’Tis a number,” Dirk said. “Except for the left and right, and the ending lines, these are all numbers.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“’Tis logical.”
“Yeah, but how do we find out what they are?”
Drew poked my arm. “Sis? Are you in there, or have you been abducted by aliens?”
“It’s just . . . I’ve been . . . There’s a . . . You wouldn’t . . .” I petered out and tried again. “Maybe they’re all numbers. So many dentists, so many stars, and some sort of percentage.”
They looked at me, bent over the paper, and both of them nodded at the same time. “Ivory soap.” They said it together and high-fived in front of me.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you get it, sis?” When I just looked blank, he blew a puff of air out. “Females,” he muttered. “What are you going to do with them?”
Harper took pity on me, I guess. “Ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent pure,” he intoned.