by Fran Stewart
“And for the coffeepot,” Gilda added helpfully as she headed that way, presumably to get said pot a-brewing.
I ignored the interruption, other than to say, “Bring the cash box for the tent while you’re back there.” I turned back to Shoe. “It’s not your own private storage unit.”
“They don’t take up much room.”
It took me a second to register what he’d said. “They? They, as in plural? You have two bagpipes now?” Bagpipes was one of those strange words that was sort of singular and sort of not. It was one bagpipe or one set of bagpipes. People referred to their bagpipes if they’d collected fifty of them. But sometimes they used the same word if they had only one of the blasted things.
He wrinkled his forehead and looked down at his feet, as if they’d suddenly become the most interesting objects in the room. “I . . . uh . . . bought another one. This one’s more portable than my big one. It doesn’t take up as much room. The drones aren’t as long, and it comes with its own carrying case.” He held his hands out to indicate something about the size of a boot box.
“I don’t care,” I said. “You are not to leave them—no matter how many—in the storeroom.”
Gilda handed him the cash drawer, tucked into a box with SCARVES & TIES written on the side. She let him out the front door and locked it behind him. So far we didn’t have a line outside, but I knew from past experience that would soon change.
I looked around the store. What to do with Silla. Dirk must have read my mind. “Why d’ye no put her beneath the rack where she and the wee Scamp like to stay? Will she not be more at peace there than any the where otherwise?”
Why did Middle English use so many words? His language—translated somehow into twenty-first-century American English—must have lost something, or gained something, during the translation. And how could I possibly know how Chaucer had really spoken? Poetry was one thing; everyday speech was another.
“Under the sweaters,” I said. “Right.”
* * *
I spent a good deal of the morning and half the afternoon trying not to think about Big Willie’s body as I’d last seen it, but events conspired against me to keep the image fresh in my mind. A pipe band marched up Main Street, preceded by Mr. Stone and his drummers. The sound brought to mind a funeral dirge. Several people with Scotties came into the store, reminding me of my little Silla. No, not mine. And I didn’t know if she ever would be. Scamp emerged to investigate each one of the visiting dogs, but quickly returned to Silla after each foray out from under the Fair Isle rack. The weather was warm enough that not many people even looked at the sweaters, so the dogs remained relatively undisturbed all day.
Around four my cell phone vibrated, and I excused myself to answer it. “We have a problem,” Shoe said without an introduction. “Josh cut his hand. It’s pretty bad. We’re at the first aid tent and they say he needs stitches.”
I judged the relative merits of what was open to me. Should I send Shoe to the hospital with Josh, or take him myself, leaving Shoe to supervise the newer temp in the tie booth and Gilda to oversee the store? Neither option was particularly inviting, but the second seemed easier to deal with. “Can he walk, or is he in danger of passing out?”
“He made it here to the first aid tent just fine.”
“Okay. You two head back to the booth and sit him down somewhere at the back of it. Be sure he drinks some water. He didn’t bleed on any of the ties or scarves, did he?” Without giving him time to answer, I added, “Give me ten minutes to get my car. I’ll call you when I get close to the arch and you can walk with him. From then on, it’ll just be you and—” I couldn’t remember her name. “Uh, just you and her on your own. Can you handle it?”
“Does a bear . . .”
“Shoe, do not finish that sentence,” I interrupted, “especially if there’s anyone within earshot. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
Gilda rolled her eyes yet again when I told her what was going on, but she stepped up to the challenge. “I’ll get back as quickly as I possibly can,” I promised.
“Drive safely,” she said. “I can’t handle any more labor shortages.”
On the way to the front door I asked Dirk to stay behind and watch after Silla. He’d heard me explain the problem to Gilda, so I didn’t need to fill him in.
“Of course I will,” he said, the r in course sounding like five of them strung together.
* * *
Amy Harper took a quick break to use the restroom. She stopped a moment to call her husband. “It’s crazy around this place . . . Oh, you know, the usual: a knifing, a drug overdose, an underweight baby born in the car on the way here. As I left to take a break, some guy came in who’d slammed his hand in a cash register drawer and split it wide open . . . No, he wasn’t trying to steal anything; he worked there. Just careless, I guess . . . Yeah, love you bunches. Speaking of love you”—she let her voice drop to what she hoped was a sultry tone—“I’ll see you tonight.”
With a smile in her heart, she passed the double doors that opened from the waiting room. They swung apart and she glanced out. She recognized a woman sitting there and took a brief detour. “Ms. Winn? I don’t know if you remember me—”
“Sure, I do,” Peggy Winn said. “You were my nurse when I had that car accident last year.” Amy was intrigued to see Peggy blush. What was that about? “You’re Amy, Harper’s sister-in-law.” Her voice caught when she said Harper.
Oh, so that’s what the blush was about. Amy wondered how she could encourage Harper to do something about this. Speaking of her brother-in-law, he still hadn’t called her back about the surprise party. Maybe she could suggest he bring Peggy along.
Speaking of Peggy, Amy couldn’t see any outward sign of injury. “Has someone helped you yet?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I brought in one of my temps. He needed stitches.”
“The cash register guy?”
Peggy nodded with a woeful grimace.
Two nurse’s aides wearing blue scrubs walked past, one of them chattering nonstop. “Did you hear about the dog bite that came in Thursday night?”
Amy excused herself and pulled the two to one side of the public area. “You don’t ever, ever say a single word about any patient when you’re in a public place.” Her tone was quiet, but forceful. “Do you understand? You have no idea who might be sitting in that waiting room or how they might use—or twist—that information.”
The aide blanched. “I didn’t mean anything by it, and anyway nobody was listening.”
“I wasn’t listening, but I heard you loud and clear. Don’t let it happen again.” She sent them on their way, hoping there wouldn’t be a lawsuit of some sort from someone else who might have heard. She loved her work, except for hassles like this.
“Sorry about that,” she said when she returned to Peggy. “I can’t stay long. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
Peggy seemed distracted. “I’m all healed up. Doing well, I guess.”
She guessed? Didn’t she know? “How are the Games going?”
“I haven’t seen many of the events. In fact, I haven’t seen any of them. I’ve been . . . uh . . .” She lowered her voice. “Did you know there was a murder?”
Amy nodded. “It was on the news this morning, but here at the hospital we find out things early. I’d already heard about it yesterday.”
“I . . . uh . . . I’m the one who found the body.”
Amy reached out and touched Peggy’s arm. “Oh, I’m so sorry. That must have been awful for you.”
Peggy nodded. “I’m just wondering. That nurse said something about a dog bite?”
Oh crap, Amy thought. “They weren’t nurses, and they had no business talking about patients like that in a waiting room.”
“But there was a dog bite?”
“I really can’t talk about it, Ms. Winn.
Hospital policy. Privacy issues. I’m sure you understand.”
Peggy nodded, but she said, “Thursday night,” as if she was planning to use the information.
20
One woe doth tread upon another’s heel.
ACT 4, SCENE 7
Luckily, the stitches didn’t take too long. Of course, I ended up with a temp sporting a fat bandage, but maybe it would engender sympathy buying.
I returned Josh to the meadow, dropping him off as close to the arch as I could. I watched him until one of the traffic cops motioned me to move on. By the time I went home, parked my car in my garage, and walked back to the ScotShop, I’d lost a total of two and a half hours. Considering we’d gone to an emergency room, I thought that was a fairly quick turnaround. And I’d had a lot of time to think about that dog bite.
“How’s it been going, Gilda?”
She looked a little stressed out, but not too bad, all things considered. Dirk wandered over close by and gave me a hello nod. “The wee doggies havena stirred from where ye left them, but Mistress Gilda seems to be in something o’ a dither.”
“Sales are good,” Gilda said calmly enough, although Dirk was right. I seemed to hear some strain in her voice. “The dogs have been quiet.”
I bent to peek under the sweater rack. As Dirk had predicted, Silla still lay in a tight curl. Scamp had draped his head across her shoulders. It didn’t look at all comfortable for either of them, but what did I know about how dogs relaxed?
I motioned to Sam to cover the store and asked Gilda to follow me into the back room. Dirk slipped through the door after her.
“All right, Gilda. What are you not telling me?”
“There’s been a theft.”
“Oh, no. What did they take? Did you see it? Did you call Har—call the police?” Not that I thought that would do any good, what with all of the cops working on either the Games or the murder. A theft here would be the lowest priority imaginable.
Gilda’s voice sounded strained. “The necklace,” she said. “The really expensive one. It’s gone. I have no idea when it happened, either. I don’t think I looked in the case at all yesterday. I certainly would have noticed if it had been gone.”
“You mean the plastic one with the fake silver beads?” What a relief. “It hasn’t been stolen, Gilda. I gave it to Marti Fairing.”
Gilda’s face drained of its color. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
“Whyever not?”
“She can’t accept anything that valuable. It would look like a bribe.”
“Valuable? You’re kidding, right?”
“Don’t you know what that was?” Gilda sounded incredulous. What had gotten into her?
“It was a cheap necklace,” I said. “It was cute, but it was just something I bought at a flea market.”
“What would be a ‘flea market’? Why would any the one choose to buy a flea?”
I shot Dirk a quelling glance, but he just looked a bit bewildered. It had been an honest question. He scratched idly at his shoulder, as if imagining a fourteenth-century fleabite.
“You never told me that.”
“Told you what?”
“That you got it at a flea market.”
“Why should I?”
She examined my face, as if looking for someone who wasn’t Speaking Her Truth. “If you thought it was so worthless, why were you charging so much for it?”
I shrugged. I needed to get back to the customers. “It was hefty. It felt substantial. I thought somebody might pay a lot for it. But I should have cut the price three or four years ago when it didn’t sell. I would have let it go for half of the tagged price. Or even a tenth of it, and I still would have made a healthy profit.”
Her face went even more pale. “You wouldn’t.”
“What on earth is wrong with you, Gilda? It was a cheap plastic necklace, and I only paid a few dollars for it. It couldn’t be worth very much.” How often did I have to repeat myself?
She shook her head back and forth, like a ponderous buffalo contemplating a yipping prairie dog. “It was old ivory and solid silver, Peggy. Probably worth ten times the price you put on it. Or more. Maybe a lot more.”
I pulled out one of the wooden straight-backed chairs at the worktable and sat down rather suddenly. “Tell me you’re kidding. Please.”
Her face was grim as she shook her head.
“I . . . uh . . .” I took a strangled breath, only that reminded me of the bagpipe cords. I hunched my shoulders up to my ears and let them fall. “I told Marti if she didn’t like it she could give it to Goodwill.”
Gilda sat down and buried her face in her hands.
* * *
Fairing hated sitting around staring at her list. She’d been interviewing possible witnesses for what felt like forever. Nobody had seen anything. Or heard anything. She and Murph, and Harper, too, were just running around in circles, talking to anyone who’d ever spoken with Big Willie Bowman, trying the whole time to avoid talking about murder. With the reputation Bowman had—a good one, earned over many years of Games competition—that meant just about everybody in town knew him, as did half the people who were visitors. And, of course, everybody knew of him. Many of the people she’d talked with had expressed their surprise that Bowman had left town before competing, and she hadn’t enlightened them. Mac had been absolutely insistent that they keep quiet on the M-word—that was what he’d called it. Still, people knew. Many of them.
Harper and Murphy kept coming back to Shay Burns. They kept drawing that narrow triangle on the map. Shay’s house to the Hamelin Hotel—the murder site—to the meadow—late for the opening ceremony—and back again. If the streets hadn’t meandered a bit, it would have been a straight line, right down Main Street.
But Fairing still didn’t buy it. She was willing to admit that someone could strike out in anger with a force they never would have been able to command otherwise, but Shay? No. Fairing couldn’t see her as Cord. Even though when Fairing and Harper had told Shay of Bowman’s death, she hadn’t seemed all that put out. “Can you keep it quiet,” was all she’d asked, “so it won’t disrupt my Games?” Like she owned them.
Marti had to be fair, though. Shay put more effort into the Games than anyone else. She had a committee, supposedly, but seemed unable to delegate anything. Four years ago, when her sister had died and she’d left before the Games even opened, things had been in something of an uproar for the first day or two.
Mac walked through the room. “Anything yet?”
“We’re working on it.”
He stared at her.
“Sir,” she said.
“Well, get busy.” And he disappeared once more into his lair. She had to stop thinking of it like that. Not his lair. His office.
There was a commotion at the door. Shay walked in, followed closely by Harper. Fairing pushed the wrapping paper with the necklace on it to the back of her desk and laid a blank yellow legal pad over her list of people still to be interviewed. It wasn’t too long a list. Only half the town to go. She stifled a sigh.
“Just for a few questions,” Harper was saying.
“I don’t see why you couldn’t ask me in my office, or even my house, but for heaven’s sake, hauling me in here like some common criminal or something?” She tugged irritably at her wide belt. “What will people think?”
Fairing could see Harper take a deep breath. “If you’d agreed to come in and talk to us when we first requested it, this whole process would have been easier.” Fairing had to strain to hear Harper’s well-controlled voice.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Captain”—Shay invested the title with particular venom—“I’ve been busy. I have the town’s biggest moneymaking event of the year to oversee. Do you think I want to be pulled away from real work just so I can mollify you on this fishing expedition of yours?”
Whoo-ee. Fairing saw Moira, headphones over only one ear, whip around in her swivel chair and give Shay the evil eye. Not that Shay noticed it.
“If you’ll follow me back this way, we can have some privacy while—”
“While you grill me?”
Fairing thought this might be a good time to clear her throat. Loudly.
When she did, Shay whipped her head around, almost as fast as Moira’s chair had turned. “Did you have something to add?”
“No, ma’am,” Fairing said across the length of the room, happy to see that the few other officers in the room all seemed to be following the conversation. “I was just listening. It was hard not to hear.”
That stopped Shay in her tracks. “All right, Captain. Let’s go see this interrogation room of yours.”
“The interview room is back this way.” Harper led the way past Fairing’s desk, without looking to see if Shay followed. He didn’t have to. Her footsteps in those clunky high-fashion shoes of hers tracked her like a homing beacon.
She sailed past Fairing without acknowledging her. Her steps faltered and she backtracked. She pointed a hand weighted down by an enormous diamond ring. “Where’d you get my mother’s necklace?”
* * *
“Sergeant Fairing, would you please join us?” Harper didn’t want to be alone with Shay Burns even for a moment. Not only because it was police department policy, but because he felt for just an instant that he might need protection.
Fairing, professional as could be, nodded slightly and said, “Yes, sir.” But Harper thought he detected a gleam in those brown eyes of hers.
Once Shay was seated at the oblong table, Harper sat across from her. Fairing took a chair against the wall and pulled out an unobtrusive notebook.
Harper made sure his face was perfectly neutral. “Do you have something you’d like to tell me, Ms. Burns?”
“That necklace out there was my mother’s.”
“How do you know that?”