by Fran Stewart
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
ACT 1, SCENE 1
I headed toward Shay, who, after that first outburst, seemed to be keeping her voice level fairly low, which in itself was a minor miracle. She tended to be a full-volume kind of person. All I could hear at the moment was a hum of monologue. Her monologue, of course. But what was she saying? Where was Dirk when I needed him to spy for me? I spotted him in the front corner, peering between mannequins out onto the square.
Two more customers waylaid me. By the time I made it to Big Willie’s side, Dirk was there, too, but Shay had fallen silent.
“Thank you,” Big Willie told me as he clipped the leash on Silla. He seemed to be avoiding looking at Shay. What was that about? “I hope to see you down in the meadow.”
“You definitely will.” I swept my arm around, indicating the store. “I have to be here most of the time during the day, but I have a schedule of the events, and I’ll try to show up when you’re competing. I hope it’s in the morning, because in the evening, I may need to help out at the Tartan Tie booth we have down on the Game grounds.”
“I understand. I’ll be happy to see you anytime you can make it.”
I bent, and Silla licked my hand. She ignored Shay, who strode out through the door, and studied Dirk momentarily. Scamp gave a funny whiffle sound, and Silla seemed to decide against trying to lick Dirk, almost as if Scamp had warned her not to. She walked quietly away beside Big Willie. When she reached the door, she swiveled around and gave one good-bye woof that turned heads yet again. The bark of a Scottie is something of an anomaly. Such a small dog and such a huge sound, as if a German shepherd had somehow been compressed into a short-legged body with a fringe of black hair reaching to the ground. I watched Scamp leap onto his ottoman, the one in the display window.
Gilda materialized beside me. “Do you believe the gall of that woman?”
“What are you talking about?”
“She ordered that nice man, the one with the Scottie, to leave town. She accused him of—”
I raised my hand to stop her indignant voice. “Not here, Gilda. Not now. We have customers.” I shouldn’t have had to remind her of that. My curiosity about what Shay Burns was up to would have to wait.
Gilda turned abruptly. She was seldom one to get her dander up, and I certainly hoped she wasn’t about to start now. But then I saw that she’d been responding to a raised voice I hadn’t even heard. Was I losing my touch? I’d been so concerned about Shay, I’d gone off into la-la land. I debated whether or not to head after Gilda, but she seemed to have the matter in hand. A couple of teenagers looked like they were having a little tiff about what to buy—or not to buy. That was the question. I smiled to myself as memories of my dad’s love of Shakespeare came to mind. To be or not to be—to buy or not to buy. I shook my head and went to straighten a stack of shoeboxes that looked in danger of toppling over. On the way I passed the jewelry counter and noticed that the chunky plastic necklace was still in place. Gilda hadn’t talked the woman into buying it after all. Who did Gilda think she was kidding, asking me to charge more for the thing? If it wouldn’t sell at this price, who on earth would pay more for it?
The price of that necklace was a low priority, though. I needed to do something about the crowd of potential customers I could see gathered around my window.
I walked out through the open front door. A red-haired man asked if the dog was for sale—I got that question a lot. “Everything except the dog,” I said. “Come on in and look around.” As people swarmed toward the door, I saw an unmistakable figure across the street. He looked like he’d just walked out of Sweetie’s. Harper. I knew the depth of his dark gray eyes, but I didn’t know what his favorite candy was. One more thing to learn. I waved, but he’d already turned away.
* * *
Harper watched the tall man and Shay Burns emerge from the ScotShop. He turned his back, as if to study Sweetie’s display of Highland jelly beans in the most disgusting flavors—porridge, haggis, and some red-and-green-striped ones called Purty Plaid, which sounded to Harper like they should have been at the Games in Georgia instead of here in Vermont. But his mind wasn’t really on the jelly beans. He studied the reflection of the lopsided pair—one so short and one so tall—as they turned uphill. What was Shay doing with him? And was he really the one? The mug shot hadn’t been that clear, but the height was right. Why would he bring a dog along, though? Maybe as camouflage?
Mac—Hamelin’s police chief Mackelvie Campbell—had stationed Fairing down in the meadow, dressed in civilian clothes, making her way from vendor to vendor, but keeping an eye on the well-traveled path from town. Easy for someone, even someone as noticeable as this fellow, to just happen to be there during some of the noisier events. Harper grinned to himself; all the events were noisy when that many Scots came together.
Except for that magic moment when the closing bonfire was about to be lit, when silence descended like a blanket of snow, broken nine heartbeats later by the sound of a lone bagpiper from the base of the Perth Trail. The piper was preceded by a stick-wielding man—the silver-headed stick was called a mace—in full Scottish regalia. His outfit included an imposing furred “bearskin” hat, complete with white horsehair tassels, that increased his normal six-foot height to a towering seven and a half feet. He would lead the procession of kilt-clad men representing every clan in attendance down the trail, around the field, and into a wide ring around the stacked wood. For a number of years now, the drum major leading the procession had been Mr. Stone, one of the most impressive-looking men Harper had ever seen, even when he wore khaki slacks and a polo shirt; but put him in that enormous hat, and he looked not just impressive, but fierce indeed.
He turned to follow Shay and the stranger at a discreet distance, but caught a movement from across the street. Peggy had stepped out of her store to greet a crowd of people ogling the display window. Ten to one that dog had climbed onto the ottoman they kept there for him. He was the best advertisement the ScotShop could hope for.
As Harper watched, Peggy gestured everyone inside. He hoped she’d make a lot of sales today.
By the time he looked back up the street, Shay and the man were out of sight.
Not a problem. Harper’s orders were to keep the fellow in sight but not to approach him. They’d probably gone into Cameron’s.
But they hadn’t. Inside the hardware store, he listened for the sound of dog toenails on the creaky old wooden floor. He listened for customers clucking and cooing over the cute little canine. He peered down each aisle, hoping beyond hope that his quarry was sequestered behind one of the tall shelf units. All the hope in the world, though, couldn’t make the man in the mug shot materialize. Harper had lost him and was going to have to answer to the Secret Service.
Harper couldn’t understand what Shay had to do with this mess. Maybe it was just a coincidence? He checked his watch. The agents should have been there by now. He hoped Mac wouldn’t alienate the agent in charge too much. Mac would either storm or grovel. Either way, it would be irritating.
* * *
I stopped to help a woman find the right clan tie for her boss back in Connecticut, who was, as she said, “very proud of his Scot heritage.” A few months ago I wouldn’t have known which tie to sell her, and I would have had to ask my ghost, but I’d found a chart online that listed Scottish names in one column and the clan to which they belonged in the second column. I’d printed it and had the pages laminated. When she told me his last name was Gillespie, I sold her a Macpherson. Easy as pie, although I had no idea where that saying had come from, since the pies I’d tried to make over the years had all turned out to be disasters. But at least with this chart I didn’t have to rely so much on Dirk to keep me straight.
“Isn’t there a Gillespie clan?”
“Not a Scottish one. As far as I know, Clan Gillespie is an Irish clan. If your
employer is Scot, then he’s in Clan Macpherson.”
Next, a middle-aged woman wanted to know why ghillie brogues had no tongues. I held one of the narrow shoes and turned it from one side to the other, wondering how to answer her. I’d never thought much about it. “Simplicity of design,” I finally said. She seemed satisfied and urged her husband to try them on.
Beside me, Dirk lifted a foot and studied his sturdy handcrafted boots. “I dinna see for why any the one would wear such triffle traffle. Yon wee shoon are nae built to last.”
“They’re primarily dress shoes,” I explained to the woman—and to my ghost. “They’re meant to be worn with the formal kilt.”
“Can’t see wearing them any other time,” her husband chimed in. “They’re not very comfortable.”
“They should be. Maybe you need a different size.”
Once that was settled and I’d sold the couple two complete Highland outfits—one for him and one for her—I got caught up in a flurry of incoming customers. I couldn’t believe how many people asked if I sold bagpipes. Nobody had asked for months, and now a dozen or so wanted to know. When I first opened the ScotShop, I used to waste a lot of time explaining how bagpipes couldn’t be learned quickly. People had to start by learning to play the chanter before they ever dealt with the actual bag. Unfortunately, people’s eyes generally glazed over before I made it to explaining the drones, the long “pipes” that stuck up from the bag. Those were what created the constant underlying notes that never changed—was that where the phrase he droned on and on came from? I finally got smart and ordered a store copy of the Green Book, which is what the standard piper’s bible was always called. When I showed it to potential pipers, it scared most of them away. I supplied the ones who seemed serious with the URLs of several really good bagpiper stores, and—during the Games at least—I always reminded them of the piper’s tent down in the meadow.
It was funny that a Scot-themed tourist town like Hamelin didn’t have a bagpipe store. On the other hand, there probably wouldn’t have been enough of a demand to cover the overhead a storeowner would have to pay. For a product like bagpipes, an online store made more sense.
And Porter Macnaughton, one of the best pipers in the Northeast, gave lessons. I thought of Shoe and his lum-thingies—what had Dirk called them? I did know Porter had started Shoe with the Green Book a couple of years ago, but it sounded to me like Shoe still had a long way to go. Why was I not surprised? Practicing regularly was a novel idea that Shoe didn’t seem to have absorbed, unless it was practicing baseball—that he’d do in a heartbeat.
Dirk, of course, had never seen a copy of the Green Book, since he’d been born in 1329, well before the printing press was invented. He peered carefully over the shoulder of one particularly obnoxious man in a bright plaid Windbreaker who seemed determined to read the entire book while his wife waited anxiously. “What,” Dirk asked, “would be a semiquaver?” Apparently musical notation wasn’t a lesson he’d learned in the fourteenth-century Highlands. Music scores might not have been invented yet. I had no idea.
The man brushed at his ear, almost as if Dirk’s breath had tickled him.
I turned away to answer a customer’s question about kilt pins. A few moments later, Dirk’s voice rang out. “Ye canna take the wee book, without ye pay for it, ye miswenden manny.”
I spun around in time to see the man withdraw his hand from the front of his jacket. “That’s a store copy, sir,” I said quietly, so as not to disturb other customers.
He put on an affronted air and spread his Windbreaker open. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It isna in his coat,” Dirk informed me before I could apologize in the face of the man’s obvious innocence. “He gave it to the wee woman to hide in her—” He pointed to the oversized handbag slung over the woman’s shoulder.
I held out my hand to the wife. “Thanks for returning it without creating a scene,” I told her. Before she or her husband could claim otherwise, I said, “I wouldn’t want to call in the constable.” Good grief. Dirk’s language was invading the twenty-first century. “The cost of a new book, with a CD to accompany it, is less than thirty-five dollars. I assure you, the fine for shoplifting is considerably higher than that.” I kept my voice pitched low. “If you return it now, I won’t press charges.” My tone—and my expression—told them that if they didn’t, I would.
“What would be ‘shop lifting’?”
Hush, Dirk, I thought. This was no time for me to play dictionary.
The husband still looked like he was going to try to get away with it. “I have a witness,” I said, a spur-of-the-moment inspiration.
“There’s nobody close enough,” he said, and his wife cringed. Most likely it hadn’t occurred to him that his comment was an admission of guilt.
“Hidden camera.” I couldn’t very well say hidden ghost.
The woman glanced at her husband and sheepishly withdrew the book.
Dirk and I ushered them out of the store, although they weren’t aware of the ghostly half of their escort. I wondered yet again if there was any way I could hire Macbeath Donlevy Freusach Finlay Macearachar Macpheidiran of Clan Farquharson. There weren’t any employment forms with a long enough blank for his full name. No wonder I’d opted to call him Dirk. Anyway, his first name had enjoyed a truly cruddy connotation ever since Shakespeare, and I couldn’t very well call him Mac—that was the Hamelin police chief’s first name. Dirk sure was handy to have around, though, no matter what I called him.
As we returned from the front door, I smiled at him and whispered, “You’re a darn sight better than a security camera.” He sketched a brief bow, which necessitated his having to adjust the fall of his plaid over his shoulder. I couldn’t blame him for looking a bit smug.
Then he sidled up beside me. “What would be a sakoority kamra?”
3
Stay, and speak.
ACT 1, SCENE 1
Although Andrea Stone, my former best friend, hadn’t darkened the threshold of the ScotShop ever since that day last year when I’d found her in, shall we say, a compromising situation with my former almost-fiancé, that didn’t mean she’d phased completely out of my life. This was too small a town for that to be possible.
Now, of course, with the excitement of opening day, Andrea, a would-be reporter, seemed to be everywhere. That wasn’t fair of me; she was a reporter. Of sorts. She had some kind of news blog. She did human-interest spots for a local radio station, only I didn’t think they were very interesting. Of course, I might have been a wee bit biased against her. She had a regular column, which I tried to ignore, in the Hamelin Piper, our town newspaper, complete with a prominent photo of herself. Why hadn’t I ever noticed how self-serving she was?
Right at the moment she was interviewing somebody in the courtyard. She’d bought a little handheld recording device. I could see her reach down and adjust it every once in a while.
“For why are ye standing here gazing through the window?”
“Uh . . . I’m just looking around.”
Dirk looked from me to Andrea and back at me. He lowered his voice. I’m not sure why he ever does that. Nobody else can hear him. “Who is yon woman, and why d’ye study her sae oft?”
“I don’t . . .”
“Excuse me?” A rather stout man in an unfortunate pair of khaki shorts stopped beside me and peered through thick glasses. “You don’t what?”
I cleared my throat. “I, uh, don’t see anyone helping you. Could I be of service? Were you looking for anything in particular?”
“If ye would stop dithering, Mistress Peggy, mayhap he could answer ye.”
I gave that unfair comment the attention it deserved, which is to say absolutely none. But I did grind to a stop.
“Yes, well, now that you mention it, I was rather hoping to find something to do with Clan Forrester. For my
wife.”
A scarf, I thought. All he’ll want is a scarf.
“You wouldn’t happen to have one of those long skirts . . .” His voice faded.
I brightened considerably and reminded myself not to make negative assumptions based on what people were wearing. “Yes,” I said, motioning him to follow me, but he stared past me, out the window.
“Look! Is that Andrea Stone? Her column is a favorite of mine. I recognize her from her picture.” He adjusted the rather limp collar of his polo shirt. “I’ll, uh, I’ll be back later.”
I watched him almost stumble in his haste to get out the door, across the pavement, and down the two shallow steps into the courtyard.
I turned my back on the window and went to help some real customers.
* * *
Silla pranced beside her person. She did not like the other one, but she enjoyed the walk along the winding streets. She tried not to listen to the two people. When they moved between two houses, left the buildings behind, and entered the forest path, she fairly quivered with excitement. This was a new place, one she had never seen before.
“Okay, you win,” her person said, and Silla heard the sadness in his voice. “But after that, I want you to leave us alone.”
Us. That was right. Silla and her person. Us.
Silla wanted that other person to go away.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” that person said. “I never want to see you again. Not after what you did to her.”
Silla looked around. To who? She didn’t see another her anywhere. Only an empty path.
Her person looked at that shiny thing on his hand and then he reached into the place where he kept Silla’s treats. Silla’s ears perked up, but all her person took out was that other thing he kept with the treats. Silla had tried to chew on it once when he left the little bag on his bed, but he had taken it away from her.
“Here they are,” her person said. “And I never want to have to deal with you again.”