The Corpse Wore Tartan

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  “Anything else I can tell you?” MacHenry asked.

  Sherri hesitated. “I suppose you know the MacMillans pretty well?”

  “I’ve been acquainted with them for years. We’re founding members of SHAS, you know. The MacMillan twins, Richardson Bruce, and my late wife and I.”

  “So you’ve seen this brooch before?” Sherri reached for a manila folder and retrieved the printout she’d made from the .jpg file she’d downloaded from Phil MacMillan’s laptop. She slid the page closer to the lantern so that Harvey could get a good look at it.

  “Gaudy thing, isn’t it?” Harvey chuckled. “Phil sets great store by that, especially since he found it before Phineas did and there was only one to be had.”

  “Valuable?”

  “Reasonably. I don’t pretend to know what things like that are worth. I prefer less pretentious decorations myself.” His kilt, Sherri noted, was one of those anyone could wear—the Black Watch tartan. His jacket was of plain black wool. It had silver buttons and gauntlet cuffs but no epaulettes or other furbelows. His sporran was black leather with leather tassels and looked as if he’d owned it for a good many years.

  “Well, thank you, Mr. MacHenry,” Sherri said, dismissing him. “You’ve—”

  “You know, I suppose, that Phil MacMillan is having…financial difficulties?”

  Sherri exchanged a look with Pete. “Go on.”

  “As a rule, I don’t tell tales out of school, but it’s hardly a secret that Phil made some bad investments. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”

  “I see.” She smiled encouragingly. “What kind of investments?”

  “I don’t have many details.” His thin lips set in a prim, disapproving line. “And, as I say, I’m not inclined to spread stories. Idle gossip can be harmful, you know.”

  Sherri waited.

  “He lost a bundle on the stock market. And I understand that the MacMillans now have their house on the market.” He lowered his voice. “Can’t meet the mortgage payments.”

  The MacMillans and a lot of other people, Sherri thought. “Well, again, thank you for your insights, Mr. MacHenry.”

  This time he accepted the dismissal. It took him two tries to get out of the chair, but once he was on his feet he was as spry as a man twenty years his junior. Moving at a good clip, he headed back to what had long since turned into the Maine equivalent of a “hurricane party.”

  At just past two in the morning, Dan Ruskin shut down the portable bar he’d been operating. It looked as if the crowd was finally thinning out. More than half of the guests had retired for the night. Those who were still in the lobby, however, seemed reluctant to leave the warmth of the hearth for their chilly bedrooms.

  Bed sounded pretty darned good to Dan, especially if he could convince Liss to let him share hers. At the least, he hoped for a little quality time with her, snuggling together by the hearth. The fireplace in the tower suite was one of those approved for use. It wouldn’t take any time at all to get a cheerful blaze going.

  “Too late to get another drink?”

  Jerked out of a very pleasant daydream by Russ Tandy’s slightly slurred voice, Dan took in the other man’s bleary eyes and unsteady hands and decided that Russ had consumed more than enough alcohol for one evening. Good thing he wasn’t planning to drive home to Waycross Springs tonight.

  “Sorry, Russ. We’re closed.”

  When Russ had returned to the lobby after his tour of the gift shop, Sherri had still been interviewing guests. Liss had persuaded him not to resume his impromptu concert. Instead, aside from a couple of trips to the john, Russ had spent the entire time since then slouched in the chair closest to Dan’s station and knocking back one Scotch after another.

  “’S okay,” he said now, but in lieu of another glass of whiskey, he reached for his bagpipe.

  Before Dan could think of a way to stop him, a horrible screeching filled the air. This time no one intervened. Sherri had talked to everyone she wanted to and no longer required quiet. In fact, she and Pete looked as if they were actually enjoying the racket.

  Whether the piper was drunk or sober, the pipes well or badly played, Dan found the resulting noise both mind-numbing and deafening. It made him think of cats fighting. Or maybe just one big cat being strangled. He fled into the office area, but that didn’t provide enough distance. Not by half. He wished he’d thought to soundproof the conference room.

  Desperate to find a refuge, he backtracked. At first he thought he might cut through the dining room to the kitchen, maybe make himself a snack while he was at it. He changed his mind when he passed the door to the basement. It would be even quieter down there. And there was food in the staff break room.

  Just closing the stairwell door behind him muffled the sound of the bagpipe. Dan breathed a little easier, but his sense of relief was short-lived. Before he was halfway down the steps, he heard something that was even more distressing than the screeches produced by Russ Tandy’s playing.

  The high, eerie, keening, but clearly human cry came from the basement. Fearing that someone was hurt, Dan rushed headlong down the remaining stairs. Two steps beyond the door at the bottom, a running figure barreled into him. It nearly knocked him off his feet and his flashlight did go flying.

  Dan grabbed on to the other person for support. His hands clenched hard on bony arms. In the glow of the exit signs and of the nearest of the small emergency lights spaced at intervals along the corridor, he belatedly recognized Sadie LeBlanc.

  Tears streamed down her gaunt, deeply lined face. Deep, hacking coughs racked her body, alternating with that odd, high-pitched wailing. Beneath his hands, Dan could feel the shudders running through the housekeeper’s skinny frame. She’d been traumatized by something. Or someone.

  Shifting Sadie so that he could retrieve the flashlight, which had gone out but had not been broken, Dan switched it back on. Then, keeping an eye peeled for potential assailants, he half dragged, half carried the distraught woman to the room the hotel staff used for their breaks. He eased her into one of two overstuffed armchairs and snagged a bottle of water from the refrigerator. Kneeling in front of Sadie, he unscrewed the top and extended the bottle. Her hand shook so badly that the water slopped as she lifted the bottle to her mouth.

  “What’s wrong, Sadie? What happened to you?” He saw no blood, no tears in her clothing, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been attacked.

  She swallowed several big gulps of the water, then choked. Dan pounded her on the back, growing more worried by the minute. Clearly something had terrified the woman, but what?

  “Sadie! You’re safe now. Everything’s okay. But you have to tell me what it is that upset you.”

  The horrible hacking cough had stopped, but she was weeping even harder than before. She fumbled in the pocket of her plain black slacks for a tissue and noisily blew her nose. Her face scrunched up, as if she might go on crying forever, but after another minute or two of gulping and sniffling, she managed a few words.

  “He’s dead,” she croaked. “There’s a dead guy in the number two storage room.”

  Chapter Seven

  Reluctantly, Dan left Sadie alone in the break room. He had no choice. He had to verify her story.

  Storage room #2 was the one where the lanterns and flashlights had been stockpiled. Whoever had been the last one out hadn’t locked the door behind himself. The knob turned easily. Right inside, lying facedown in the narrow aisle between two rows of shelving, as if he’d come through the door only to fall flat on his face, was a man in a kilt. Blood had pooled beneath him. A lot of blood.

  Careful where he put his feet, Dan stepped close enough to squat down, lift the man’s wrist, and feel for a pulse. No spark of life remained. Dan hadn’t expected to find any. Not with that much blood.

  Cautiously, he backed out of the storage room. As he closed and locked the door behind him, he felt a curious sense of detachment. The reality of the death—and a violent death, at that—had not yet sunk i
n.

  Without saying a word, Dan collected Sadie from the break room and escorted her upstairs. She’d stopped crying but now wore a dazed look on her face. She went with him without protest, allowing him to steer her as far as the arched entrance to the lobby. There he stopped and scanned what remained of the crowd for Sherri Willett. It didn’t take long to spot her. She was sitting on a couch with Pete, laughing at something her fiancé had just said. Dan tried to catch her eye, but she wasn’t looking his way. No one was except the hotel’s intern, Tricia. Something in his expression must have given away his state of mind. Tricia reached his side a moment later.

  “Boss? Something wrong?”

  It took more effort than he’d expected to give her a coherent answer. Snap out of it, he ordered himself. There were things he needed to do. At the moment, he couldn’t think exactly what they were, but he knew that they were important.

  With excruciating slowness, his mind began to function again. He remembered that his father had already turned in for the night. That meant the responsibility for reporting what had happened fell to him. So did looking after the poor woman who’d made that grisly discovery. He forced himself to speak.

  “Tricia, take Sadie to the conference room and keep her company until Sherri can come talk to her.”

  He saw questions in Tricia’s eyes, but the look on his face apparently convinced her that it was not the time to ask them. She grasped Sadie firmly by the elbow and led the older woman away. Dan watched them go and then pulled himself together and made a beeline for Sherri and Pete.

  This was so not good.

  With one hand shielding her mouth and nose, Sherri Willett bent toward the body. The battery-powered lantern she held in the other hand provided the only light and made everything look surreal.

  She wished this were a hallucination, but she’d already confirmed what Dan had told her, and what Sadie LeBlanc had told him. This man had no pulse. He was definitely dead. More than that, he had been murdered.

  Sherri now had to do what Dan hadn’t. She swallowed convulsively, then bent closer. She saw the cause of death all too clearly. The victim’s throat had been cut.

  The murder weapon lay nearby. A skean dhu. Sherri could make out a clan crest on the handle, but the angle was wrong and the lighting too poor to allow her to identify it. She glanced at the top of the victim’s kilt hose and spotted an empty sheath. Apparently, he’d been killed with his own knife.

  Spots appeared before Sherri’s eyes. Suddenly the smell of blood was too much for her. She started to gag.

  Hands clamped down on her shoulders, hauling her out of the storage room and into the corridor. She made no objection when Pete closed the door on the horror within. Neither did she protest when he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. Her stomach roiled, then settled, but shudders continued to rack her body.

  They stood that way, clinging to each other, for several more minutes, until Sherri finally managed to stop shaking. She’d seen death before, even murder, but not like that. Even with the solid wooden door separating her from the body, the sharp tang of all that blood stayed with her. She wondered if she’d ever be able to forget that smell.

  “I’m okay,” she said at last, easing out of Pete’s embrace. She had to be. “I’ve got work to do,” she added in a voice that was slightly steadier. “First off, we need to contact the state police and…”

  The words trailed off as she realized she wouldn’t be able to follow standard procedure on this one. The same howling winds that had knocked out power and phone service had damaged the towers that relayed signals for cell phones and police radios. Until work crews braved the storm to make repairs, she was cut off. On her own. She, Officer Sherri Willett of the Moosetookalook Police Department, was solely responsible for securing and preserving the crime scene and for handling the initial stages of the investigation. If she screwed up…

  Well, she wouldn’t. True, she couldn’t complete the first two steps—calling the state police and the attorney general—but she would go by the book for everything else.

  She just wished she had a copy of “the book” with her.

  Sherri glanced at the storage room door. Had she touched anything? She didn’t think so. Still, she should have put on gloves before she went in. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? Had she gotten the victim’s blood on her hands? She stared at them, but didn’t see any stains. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. Lantern light didn’t provide the best illumination in the world.

  “Okay. Okay, I can do this,” she said, more to herself than to Pete. “The scene has already been contaminated. Sadie. Dan.” She swallowed bile. “Me.”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” Pete said. “Obvious as it seemed that he was dead, you had to confirm that there was nothing you could do to save the victim’s life.”

  She leaned against the wall, trying to organize her scrambled thoughts. “Oh, God, Pete! This is a bad dream. The state police will have my head—and my job—if I screw this up.”

  He couldn’t deny it. Expression somber, he nodded. “Pretty much the worst-case scenario possible from their point of view,” he agreed. “And a no-win situation for us.”

  “Me.”

  “Us. You’re in charge, Sherri, but I’m here to help.”

  She pressed both hands to her temples. If only she could wrap her mind around what she had to do. The problem was that there was no good way to handle the body and the crime scene. Both ought to be left just as they were, but who knew how long it would be before a proper detective and his team of technicians could get there?

  “Could you ID the body?” Pete asked.

  Sherri groaned. She’d seen the sides of the victim’s throat from the back. That had been enough to make her forget all about taking a look at his face. “I’ll have to go back in. Lift his head.” Look at the full horror of a slash that most likely cuts straight across the front of the neck.

  She took a deep breath. She could do this. She had to do this.

  “What can I do to help?” Pete asked.

  “I need you to go out to the cruiser for a box of disposable gloves, the roll of yellow crime-scene tape, and the department’s digital camera. You’ll find all that stuff in the trunk.”

  “You’ll be okay?” His dark eyes bored into her, as if he needed more reassurance than her verbal answer could provide.

  Sherri didn’t bother to lie. “I’ll have to be. Go. Please. Oh, and bring chalk and a tape measure, too.”

  Before she touched the body again, they’d take pictures and measurements. Even do a chalk outline, old-fashioned as that was. She’d disturb the scene as little as possible, but even a small change could be detrimental in a homicide investigation.

  Once Sherri was alone, she eyed the storage room door with distaste. She did not want to go back in there. She could just cover the door with the yellow tape that read POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS, and leave everything as it was until the state police turned up. But then they’d have to wait until someone was reported missing to discover who had been killed. She wasn’t sure that was wise.

  She had to stop dithering. She was a law enforcement professional. It was time she started acting like one. But when the stairwell door suddenly burst open, she shrieked like a heroine in a bad horror movie and jumped about a foot. Hand over her heart, she turned to see Liss MacCrimmon running toward her.

  Dan was hard on her heels. “Stay away from the storage room,” he called after her. “I’ve seen what’s in there, and you don’t need to!”

  Liss ignored him. She caught Sherri by the shoulders and peered worriedly into her face. “Are you all right? Pete said that seeing the body really shook you.”

  “I’m fine. But Dan’s right. You shouldn’t be here. Pete and I will handle this.”

  “Who is it?” Liss asked, casting wary eyes toward the closed supply room door.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “He was wearing a kilt,” Dan said.

  “So,
one of the Burns Night Supper people. Sherri, did you recognize the tartan?”

  That would narrow it down, Sherri realized. She really hadn’t been thinking straight. Apparently, she still wasn’t. She knew that pattern. She’d seen it earlier. But she’d seen a lot of different tartans since she’d arrived at the hotel. The ID wouldn’t come to her. “A lot of yellow,” she told Liss, “and a kind of orangey red.”

  Liss’s voice was faint and shook a little. “That’s the MacMillan tartan.”

  As soon as her friend said the name, Sherri knew who the victim was. Or at least she was able to narrow the identification down to two possibilities. The dead man was either Phil MacMillan, the guy whose brooch had been stolen, or his identical twin, Phineas.

  “There…there might be ID in his sporran,” Liss suggested. “Or a room key.”

  “That would be good,” Sherri said, “but I can’t touch anything till Pete gets back with gloves.” And she wasn’t sure she should do so even then. Now that she’d been spared looking at the victim’s face, she wasn’t anxious to go back inside for any reason.

  Liss stared at the closed door, her face creased with worry.

  “Liss? Do you know something that might help with the identification?”

  “They wore different bow ties.”

  Sherri grimaced. “Probably not going to help,” she muttered.

  “Why not?” Liss asked.

  “Covered with blood,” Sherri answered before she thought. “Oh, damn. Forget I said that.”

  “His throat was cut,” Dan said, tightening his grip on Liss’s shoulder.

  “Suicide?”

  Sherri stared at her. “Why would you think that?”

  “Sorry. I just…well, you know the old story about the skean dhu being just big enough for a Scot to slit his own”—she broke off at the expression on Sherri’s face—“What? It was a skean dhu?”

  Sherri nodded. “His own, by the look of it.”

  Liss buried her face in Dan’s shoulder. Her voice was muffled. “That’s horrible.”