Plaid and Plagiarism

by Molly Macrae

  “Unless he put her up to it in the first place,” Tallie said.

  Janet shuddered.

  “Come on,” Tallie said. “Let’s go. We haven’t had our lunch yet. We’ll eat our bridies in the tearoom. Or in front of the fire with Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “For Basant’s sake, you should eat it.”

  “We didn’t get our library memberships.”

  “We live here now and have all the time in the world. We’ll get them another day.”

  It started to rain on their way back to the bookshop. They arrived sodden and somber. Janet went straight upstairs to change, leaving Tallie to tell the others about the incidents at the library. When Tallie went up a short time later, she found Janet still in her wet things, sitting on her bed and staring at the two bags of garbage.

  “I think maybe the garbage is a metaphor,” she said, not taking her eyes off the bags. She’d tried calling Curtis again, then texting. He wasn’t answering. “Clear away the garbage. Clear the air. Clear up the mystery of Una’s death. Wouldn’t it be nice if it worked that way? Fat chance, though. Or rat’s chance.”

  “Do you want to just kick back and take the afternoon off?” Tallie asked. “It’s been kind of a fraught day. One of several. No one would blame you.”

  “No. Work and being surrounded by books are always a good antidote for what ails me. A quiet evening and an early night sound good, but I’ll get changed and go on down.” She continued staring at the garbage bags.

  “Do you really think the garbage will tell us anything?” Tallie asked. “We don’t even know if Rab came back with any of the same stuff he carted away.”

  “Will it hurt to look through it, though? I might need this piece of hope. Even if it turns out to be a banana peel under my foot. Or it might be just the tiniest piece of hope the size of a crumb. But then it might be a crumb of the best bread, and we can use it to catch a rat.”

  “Should I worry about you fixating on rats, Mom?”

  “No, honey, you don’t need to worry.”

  “Good.”

  “The rats in our lives. They’re the ones who need to worry.”

  At closing time, Christine announced they all needed a change of scenery and routine for the evening. “We’ve been working hard and there’s been too much stress over the past few days,” she said. “We’re all going down the pub.”

  “You girls go,” Janet said. “I’ve got a date with my reading lamp and my pillow.” The Bludgeon in the Bothy was waiting for her upstairs. So were the contest entries. And she felt as though she’d been rubbing shoulders with so many people in the past few days that her shoulders must be raw.

  “Nonsense,” Christine said. “No one stays behind. I’ll bring Mum and Dad, too. It’ll chuff them no end to get out, and folks will be happy to see them. They’ll want to see you, too, Janet.”

  “A pub full of strangers—”

  “No one’s a stranger around Mum and Dad. Why do you think I’m bringing them along? They’ll be our entrée. Stick with them and you’ll be old mates and buying rounds with the regulars in no time.”

  “The Fin and Feather?” Summer asked. “It’s cute from the outside.”

  “Nev’s,” Christine said. “At seven thirty. No, better make it eight. Wrangling the wrinklies can be like herding cats.

  When Bedtime Stories, their B & B above the bookshop, opened it would have four rooms for paying guests. Janet, Tallie, and Summer were using three of those rooms, and that evening, in the hour before they were to meet Christine and her parents at the pub, they turned the empty fourth into their crime lab. Summer spread issues of the Inversgail Guardian on the floor. Janet brought in the two bags of garbage.

  “Shall we just dump them out,” Tallie asked, “or do you have a favorite rubbish sorting and classification method you’re aching to teach us?”

  “As tempting as it is to treat it like garbage and dump it out, let’s take our time and sort as we go,” Janet said. “Start with a rough sort into like piles and go from there.”

  They each pulled on a pair of the rubber gloves from Paudel’s. Then Janet took hers off again to untie the knots Rab had put in the neck of each bag.

  “Envelopes will probably tell us more than anything else,” Janet said. “But Constable Hobbs may well be right that we won’t find anything to help us identify the perpetrator.”

  “And he’s not alone in thinking that,” said Tallie. “But that won’t stop us.”

  They emptied the bags, piece by piece, making stacks of envelopes, newspapers, receipts, church bulletins, advertising circulars, and miscellaneous, which included grocery and to-do lists. Before they’d emptied half of the first bag, Summer further divided the envelopes into preaddressed return envelopes, envelopes with residential addresses, and other. Tallie subdivided the bulletins, advertisements, and newspapers by town of origin, unless they were addressed to someone in a different town.

  “Campbell Street,” Summer said. “I think it’s safe to say that most of this came from the Crowley and Watson households on Campbell Street. Do you know where that is, or recognize the names?”

  “We’ll know where in a second.” Tallie pulled the stack of envelopes toward her and typed an address into her phone. “About a mile from here. Is that useful?” She looked at Janet.

  “I don’t see how,” Janet said. “And I had such hopes for this garbage.”

  “It’s always been a tenuous lead,” Summer said, “but let’s not give up on it yet. We can walk by those two houses, and we might see something. What kind of place are we going tonight?”

  “Nev’s? I’ve never been,” Janet said. “Curtis might have.” She tapped her fingers on her bared teeth for a second. “Anyway, from what I’ve heard, it’s an authentic local where locals go. David and Helen’s local, I guess. They’re Christine’s parents. You’ll like them. He was head teacher at the primary school and she was a nurse.”

  “Then we’ll ask questions there, and we might hear something,” Summer said. “We’re still in the information-gathering stage, and a local with locals could be fruitful.”

  “Right,” said Janet. “But we’ll want to be careful when we’re asking questions.”

  “Especially you,” Tallie said. “You have a way of riling strange men when you’re not careful.”

  “Only when I get excited and go off script. Let’s make a separate page in the cloud for questions we might want to ask tonight. Not too many questions, though. We don’t want to confuse ourselves. We’ll keep it simple.”

  “We’ll try to keep it simple,” Summer said. “Questions have a way of begetting more questions. But if that happens, we should add them to the cloud, too. And any answers we get. If we get them.”

  “Good,” Janet said. “We have a plan. Plans give me hope.”

  “I have a plan for the questions, too,” Summer said. “As much as we want answers about the garbage, there aren’t many questions we can ask about it in the pub without flagging ourselves as—”

  “Eccentric?” Janet asked.

  “That works. I wasn’t going to be so polite. But it’ll be natural for people to be talking about Una. If they do, listening might be more important than asking questions to begin with. Then use what you hear to prompt more information. For instance, if someone mentions a funeral service for her, you might ask if her family has to travel far to be here for it. And keep in mind what we noticed about Una for ourselves. She was on what you could call the hyper spectrum, so you might mention something about her energy and see what comments you get. She was ambitious, so you could—”

  “Mention her wish to write the great American novel,” Tallie said.

  “Really? She wanted to do that?” Summer pushed the stacks of envelopes away. “She was obviously a woman with problems, but I wish I could’ve gotten to know her. I wish I could’ve read her novel.”

  “Sharon was pretty caustic about her today at the library,” Tallie sa
id. “And Ian said she had literary pretentions, which isn’t exactly polite.”

  “And who knows how useful those tidbits will be,” Summer said, “but one of my managing editors called this technique chumming the waters.”

  “Una asked about tension among the four of us,” Janet said. “She said it makes a better story. And Jess and Pamela both said she saw herself as an investigative reporter. So maybe she made a habit of looking for tension. Or maybe it followed naturally in her wake. If she did seduce Neil Pollard, his wife might have snapped under the tension. I can understand that happening.”

  “Unintended consequences,” Tallie said.

  “But entirely predictable if people would think with their brains instead of their—”

  “Easy there, Mom.” Tallie put a hand on Janet’s knee. “But what if looking for tension wasn’t enough for her? If she set out to create tension, then that could’ve led her into trouble.”

  “Easily,” Summer said.

  “That’s why Jess freaked when you came in today, Summer,” Janet said.

  Summer looked blank.

  “I bet you anything that’s why.” Janet rubbed her hands with pleasure. Summer continued to look blank.

  “It’s all right, Summer,” Tallie said. “It’s a minor disconnect. Over time you’ll get used to it. Mom?”

  “Jess was telling me that Ian Atkinson tried to buy this building. He had a bid on it before we even came along. He didn’t want it for the bookshop, though. He wants to start a boutique distillery. Somehow the deal got scuttled, and Jess was getting all wound up about who Ian blames for the scuttling, and was just about to tell me, when you came back from the paper. Jess freaked when you said you’re the new Una. She has a real thing about Una, dating back to childhood. So when she was about to speak ill of the dead, you came in and announced you’re Una risen from the dead, and her freak fits.”

  “And what does it mean if the freak fits?” Summer asked.

  “You said we should keep in mind what we’ve heard about Una. We’ve heard that she ruined a business chance for Ian Atkinson, and we’ve witnessed that she elicits powerful reactions in Jess.”

  “Ian Atkinson, who got in your face when you asked him about the night of the murder.” Tallie looked at her mother until she nodded.

  “He’s on your list for Guardian and online searches,” Janet said. “Why don’t you bump his name up to priority status?”

  “And Lauren the betrayed, and Jess of the powerful reactions?” Summer asked. “What priority level for them?”

  Janet wanted to hesitate but didn’t. “Put Jess next one down from Ian, then Lauren.”

  “I thought you were sure Jess couldn’t have done it,” Tallie said. “Hobbs seems sure she didn’t, and the specialists let her go.”

  “Yes, but the specialists are consulting with Ian, and Norman seems to think that says more about the specialists than it does about Ian.” Janet drew in a deep breath, letting her shoulders rise. She held the breath for a few seconds before letting it go. It was a more positive way of affirming a decision than sighing or grinding her teeth. “Believing that someone I’ve known and liked might be a murderer doesn’t seem right,” she said. “But I’m working with what we’ve got. I’m listening and I’m asking questions to beget more questions, as Summer put it.”

  “A newswoman’s tactic,” Summer said.

  “A lawyer’s tactic,” Tallie said. “I bet Christine used it as a social worker, too.”

  “And good reference librarians use it to figure out what information muddled patrons are asking for. So now, I’ll be the first to admit being muddled about this mess.” She flapped a hand at the garbage. “Do we have any reason to keep it?”

  “Possibly not,” Tallie said. “But as soon as we get rid of it, we’ll wish we hadn’t. In the meantime, it isn’t in our way up here and there’s nothing in it to attract rats.”

  “Small pleasures,” Janet said. “I’ll take them where I can.”

  “Besides, our garbage problem, here and at the house, has raised enough questions to merit its own page in the cloud. I called it ‘Rubbish In,’ but all I’ve got is questions so far, and they might not be any more useful than the actual garbage.”

  “Read what you have,” Janet said.

  “I probably could’ve called it ‘Rubbish Out,’ but I’ll read it in my lawyer voice to give it some punch. ‘What company did Jess hire to clear the garbage out of the house? Who cancelled it and who called Rab? Concerning the garbage out back: Did Rab really just happen by and find it? If yes, then did he find the right stuff when he went to get it back from the recycle center? How did he know? How would we know if he didn’t? Did he keep anything back? Does this latest incident prove that Una didn’t dump the stuff in the house? Is the garbage a threat? If it is a threat, then it’s stupid, because we don’t understand it.’ That last note is an observation rather than a question.”

  “But an insightful observation,” Summer said.

  “I thought so.”

  “Add two more questions,” Janet said. “Did Lauren Pollard dump the garbage? And is there a connection between the garbage and the letters?”

  “Except that they’re both bizarre, I don’t see one,” Summer said.

  “Neither do I. Or I don’t want to.” Janet rubbed the back of her neck. “You were right, Summer. Una could have written those letters and left them here. So could Jess, Rosie, either of the Lawries, or Sharon Davis, for that matter. They all had the opportunity. Or it could’ve been no one we know. It’s not likely that Lauren left them here, but Rab could have. It doesn’t seem like something he would do, but I can’t say that I really know him. Maybe he’s the connection between the letters and the garbage. And do you know what’s bothering me most about that? If it turns out Rab is guilty of something in all of this, I think it will break Ranger’s heart.”

  “Then there’s the bigger question,” Summer said. “Are the letters or the garbage connected to Una’s murder? Or are we barking up the wrong tree?”

  21

  The pub that Christine and most of the locals called Nev’s had no curb appeal. If there had ever been anyone named Nev associated with the place, he would have been fine with that. Nev’s wasn’t looking for new clientele. Attracting tourists was all right for the shinier and better-lit establishments nearer the water. Nev’s occupied a narrow, nondescript building several streets back from the harbor, happy in its anonymity.

  Nev’s neighbor on one side was Smith Funerals, and on the other the Inversgail Guardian. There’d been a sign hanging near the door once, with the pub’s name of record—The Chamberlain’s Arms—but the sign came down in a terrible, sweeping storm. Or was pulled down by rowdy holidaymakers from London. Or was removed for repainting. There were other versions of the story, several started by the publican, and the sign’s demise entered into the pub’s lore. Also in the pub’s lore were stories about how it came to be called Nev’s, none of which involved the disappearance of the sign or Neville Chamberlain.

  Janet, Tallie, and Summer closed the door on their crime lab and walked to Nev’s. The High Street was alive with tourists enjoying the balmy evening or on their way to dinner reservations or pints in the shinier pubs. There weren’t the hordes of people that business owners hoped to see during the week surrounding the literature festival, but the number of strolling couples and parents cautioning children as they walked along the harbor wall brought good cheer.

  “This?” Summer asked when they arrived at Nev’s. “There isn’t even an ‘open’ sign. I walked right past it this morning. It looks like storage for the Guardian. Or for the funeral home. More like a dump than a destination.”

  “I think that might be its beauty,” Tallie said. “Are you balking at adventure?” She pulled the door open. The mingled aromas of meat pies, fried fish, and strong ale drifted out on a babble of talk and the yodel of a country and western ballad. When the other two only looked at each other, Tallie walked on in.


  Janet gestured for Summer to go ahead of her. Summer gestured for Janet to do the same. Then, through the open door, Janet heard Christine greet Tallie, and Christine’s mother’s warm laugh, and she knew that spending the evening with these people she loved was the right thing to do. She bowed to Summer and went in.

  “About time you closed the door,” the barman said. “Keeps the riffraff out.”

  Nev’s dim interior gave the impression of being smoky without the presence of actual smoke. The walls, floor, and ceiling were dark, having ripened in the pre-ban age of nicotine fug. A polished bar ran partway down the left side of the room, with tall chairs for those who wanted to rest their feet while leaning their elbows close to the source. A bench against the opposite wall ran the length of the room, interrupted halfway along by a digital jukebox and an open doorway. Three high-backed booths against the street wall offered the illusion of privacy. And a dozen or so tables danced down the middle toward the far end, where two more of the tall chairs sat on a small stage. Janet and Summer stopped beside Tallie at the bar.

  “A half pint of—”

  “Try the Selkie’s Tears,” the barman said. “It’s a new craft ale made in Dornie we’re giving a try. Malty with a hint of toffee.” He held up a glass of dark amber ale so they could admire the color. “It’s on special tonight. Yeah? Half for each of you? And David’s got this round.” He nodded to where Christine and her parents sat at a table halfway down the room. “It’s great seeing him and Helen in again. And Chrissie.”

  Janet heard something in the barman’s voice when he used Christine’s childhood name. He’d gone to fill their glasses, though, and she missed the look in his eye. When he handed their drinks to them, his eye had already strayed to the next customers waiting.

  “Do you have live music some nights?” Tallie asked before he got away.