by Fran Stewart
“Took the entire contents of the sporran along wi’ the necklace.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Upended it. ’Tis what he said.”
Harper didn’t like it when I told him all of that. “So now I’m looking for a completely unknown thief?”
“Maybe he was lying to her,” I suggested.
“Why would he do that?”
“For why would he?” They sounded like slightly skewed echoes of each other.
Harper shrugged off the necklace situation. “If somebody did steal it, it’ll show up soon enough in the pawnshops. And if he’s lying, then when I arrest him it’ll show up in his sporran. I’m more concerned now with proving the murder.”
“I would like to know how Large William ended up in the water room.”
“Bathroom.”
“What about it?” When I told Harper what Dirk had said, he told me that didn’t matter. “We already knew he was dragged. There were parallel marks on the carpet.” He drummed his fingers against the table for a few seconds. “The problem will be to convince the rest of my team—and the district attorney—that I was able to get all this information through good solid police investigative techniques. Somehow I doubt the DA would believe”—he looked at the (to his eyes) empty chair—“that I learned it from a chatty ghost.”
Chatty. The nurse’s aide. That was what I’d forgotten. “You might talk to your sister-in-law,” I said. “I think a dog bite might make a good starting point.”
When Harper left soon after I explained what I was talking about, I turned to Dirk. “Don’t you ever leave me like that again. Never.”
For some reason, Dirk looked at the door through which Harper had just passed. “I willna say never, but I do promise to stay as long as ’tis possible.”
Of course. He was thinking about going home to his Peigi. Someday.
I hoped it wouldn’t be too soon.
* * *
Harper held the phone away from his ear while his sislaw vented.
“I knew that aide should have had her mouth taped shut.”
“Amy?”
“As many times as I’ve told her not to talk about the patients—”
“Amy?”
“And she goes ahead and does it anyway. First it was—”
“Amy!” This time his voice seemed to penetrate her rant. “It’s a good thing, believe it or not. I needed to know about the man who was bitten.”
She stopped. “Why do you need to know?”
He crossed his fingers, a CYA habit left over from the childhood he and his brother and Amy had spent getting into and, sometimes, out of scrapes. “I can get a subpoena easily.” Not without better cause than a ghost told me. “But for now what I really need is just to know the location of the bite. And your best guess as to when it happened. And maybe the severity of it.”
“That’s three questions, brolaw. You’re going to owe me.”
“Steaks, grilled the way you like them, once we get this guy in jail?”
“You got it. Lower part of his calf. Only a couple of stitches. He came in late Thursday night, but the bruising was already fairly severe. I’d say he waited a while before coming to the hospital—maybe four or five hours.”
“Thanks, Amy.”
“Wait. One more thing. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the murder—”
“I didn’t say anything about a murder.”
Amy scoffed. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Why else would you be asking with that I could get a subpoena fiction? Smith had bruises on the pads of a couple of his fingers. I’ve never seen anything like that, except once on a guy who just barely hung onto the gutter of a roof for about ten minutes before they could get a ladder to him.”
“Smith?”
“That’s what he said his name was.”
If Smith had a dog bite from Silla, that pretty much cleared Shay Burns. Unless she’d been an accessory.
“Thanks again, Amy. One more question?”
“This is your last one.”
“Promise. If I show you a picture, would you be able to identify this Smith guy? Or maybe pick him out of a lineup?”
“Piece of cake.” She giggled. “For a piece of steak. Medium rare. Don’t forget.”
Harper couldn’t think of anything else to ask. For now. “Keep an eye out for a text,” he said.
“You never answered me about the date of the surprise party. Are you going to make it?”
Harper’s mind had already leapt ahead. “What? Oh, yeah. I’ll be there.”
“Why don’t you bring Peggy along?”
“Peggy?” His mind stopped churning.
“You know, Peggy Winn?”
Why did his sislaw sound like she was laughing at him?
“Yeah. I just may do that.” If she’d agree to go with him.
The churning began again. How was he going to get a photo of—he smiled to think of what Peggy had said the ghost had called this guy—the wee murderer?
* * *
As Dirk and I walked down the hill toward the meadow after closing the ScotShop Sunday evening, I resolutely refused to talk about what was going to happen. The truth was, I didn’t know what was going to happen, but since everybody would be leaving town the next day, I sure hoped Harper and his team had managed to get some proof. I turned my thoughts—or tried to turn them—toward the evening ahead of us.
One of the fun things about Highland Games is that each one is unique. Oh, they all have a great many of the same elements. You’ll always have bagpipers and drummers galore and dance exhibitions and the hefty competitors throwing big heavy things around as if they were so many matchsticks. There’s usually a tug-of-war, and there frequently is a bonfire of some sort, although I firmly believe Hamelin’s is the best of the best. But the opening and closing ceremonies are seldom the same from one Highland Festival to another, even though the two may be geographically close, say, in neighboring states.
Hamelin has always given out the winners’ awards early on in the final ceremonies. I guess the idea was to get all that folderol out of the way so people could enjoy the bonfire, which really was the high point of the entire long weekend. Even before the award part began, a lot of the people would stake out their chosen seating in relation to the huge pile of firewood.
Karaline and Drew had arranged to get there early and set up the blanket. I, of course, had to wait until I could close the shop. I veered to my right inside the flowered arch—the wilted flowers from yesterday had been replaced—and looked around until I saw the red foot-wide hibiscus flowers on Karaline’s caftan billowing in the breeze her arms created as she waved to me.
They’d spread the blanket fairly close to the stage. I didn’t like to have my head tilted back at such an acute angle like that, but it looked like there weren’t many other places available. I also would have preferred to find a place a little closer to the bonfire site so we wouldn’t have to move after the awards were completed, but maybe everybody had shown up early and there hadn’t been much choice. I shortened Silla’s leash and headed that way. Andrea Stone and her mother sat in the middle of my planned route, so I steeled myself.
Ahead of me I could see Sergeant Murphy in civilian clothes, with an Irish plaid sash thrown across one shoulder, taking pictures, as if he were a tourist. He asked several groups of the people congregated behind the stage to pose with arms linked. It looked like a class reunion. It looked like a Scottish festival. But why was Murphy collecting photos? He snapped several of the Highland Dance teams, the drum major with two of the drummers, some of the caber toss contestants. After a very short time—it’s no fun watching someone else take pictures—I headed toward Karaline, but I had to pass Andrea and her mom first.
Andrea for once wasn’t roaming the crowd with her reporter’s paraphernalia. She sat with her
mom near the right front corner of the stage. I could see the empty chair they were obviously saving for Andrea’s dad. I smiled at Mrs. Stone as we walked past them, and I even would have nodded at Andrea if she’d deigned to look at me. Instead she took a long drink from her Pepsi bottle and placed it with some deliberation in the cup holder on the arm of the well-padded folding chair. Silla and I kept walking. I doubted the Stones knew why Andrea and I had stopped being friends.
Karaline hardly said anything, other than to smile at Dirk and mutter hello at me. She seldom showed nerves like this. In fact, she looked like I felt. Dirk scanned the crowd and said, “I willna sit w’ ye. ’Tis more important, d’ye not ken, that I find our wee murderer.”
Since he and Karaline and I had already agreed on this plan, I couldn’t see why he was repeating it. Maybe he was as nervous as Karaline. I was nervous, too. Not having anything concrete to do was my least favorite way of approaching a problem. But this really did have to be in Harper’s hands.
Dirk craned his neck and headed off to the right of the stage, past Mrs. Stone and Andrea. I noticed that they both unconsciously folded their legs back out of the way as Dirk drew near. He stepped over a rope boundary of some sort and hovered near the necklace husband, who kept clenching and unclenching his fist. Part of me wished I didn’t have such a clear view of him. I swiveled around, looking for Dolores, the necklace-thieving woman, but couldn’t spot her. Surely she’d show up for the awards. I didn’t know what I’d do when I saw her.
Silla curled between Karaline and me, her head resting on my lap. I stroked her with one hand and kept the leash wrapped around my other. Tessa watched Dirk, but then folded herself into a tight circle on a corner of the blanket next to Drew’s feet.
A minute or two after I was settled, Shay and her entire committee trooped out onto the stage. I was fairly sure she hadn’t managed to get her necklace from Windsor. I knew if she’d gotten it out of his grasp, she would have been wearing it in triumph. She and the other committee members did the usual self-congratulatory stuff, and then Shay introduced Vermont senator Josie Calais. Everyone was attentive, although the people had their eyes on the stage and the police officers had their eyes on the crowd. Except for Lieutenant Murphy. He seemed to be texting somebody. If he didn’t pay attention to his job, he was going to get a reprimand of some sort. I couldn’t decide if he was off work for the day—that was ludicrous; all the cops worked during the Games—or if he was undercover, so to speak. Probably the latter. But taking pictures? Made no sense.
Senator Calais looked stunning in her blue-and-black Clark plaid as she handed out the medals and trophies to winner after winner. The Traveled the Farthest award went to a couple from Australia, who cracked everyone up with their obviously exaggerated accents as they accepted. It took a long time to get through the list, but the audience was unusually subdued. I did wonder if they were remembering the earlier ceremony—the opening on Thursday night—and wondering if there might be another sniper somewhere out of sight. But there were an inordinate number of police officers and security guards roaming through the crowd and ringing the stage.
I picked Harper out of the crowd behind the stage. He, too, was texting someone. The bluish glow on his face was unmistakable, and his thumbs were going so fast they almost looked blurry.
As the presentations wore on and on, folks relaxed, lay back on their blankets, stretched out in their folding chairs, or simply sat on the grass, and absorbed the soft evening air. Karaline and Drew held hands. I stroked Silla and watched Dirk watching Windsor.
I had no idea what was going to happen, how Harper would handle this. I had barely heard a word from him. There had just been two texts, about an hour ago. Amy helped. Thanks. Big lot of info that was. And Bring Silla to closing. Keep her close to you on leash. What on earth was that about? Anyway, I’d never had any intention of leaving her alone.
As I stroked her, my fingers felt an area where her fur seemed to be thinner. I pulled out my phone and used the flashlight app to inspect the area. She was definitely missing a patch on her side. Poor thing. She’d probably scraped it while she was digging through that wall.
I looked up to see Mr. Stone watching me from where he stood near the top of the stage steps. I drew in my breath. As drum major, he had on a tall bearskin hat, with his sashes and badges all shiny and his plaid elegantly pleated and arrayed. He’d tucked his silver-headed mace close against his chest, the pointed end of it resting on the stage beside his booted left foot, the head reaching almost to his shoulder. He looked so magnificent in that stunning outfit, all I could do was shake my head in wonder.
Silla stirred in her sleep, and I bent to murmur some gentle nonsense. When I looked back, Mr. Stone still seemed to be watching me. Probably wondering why I wasn’t talking to his daughter anymore. I wondered briefly what she’d told him.
Shay droned on and on. There sure were a lot of awards to hand out.
It took me a while to discern what was different about the ceremony this year. Always before, the winners had been called up from the audience, and they wove through the chairs and blankets to reach the stage. But this year, all the winners seemed to have been asked to gather in that roped-off area in back of the stage, and as Shay Burns announced each name, the winner walked up the same steps the president had used, to receive their medals from Senator Calais before they headed out into the audience to rejoin their friends or family. One of the drummers beat the drum along with each winner’s footsteps. Everybody laughed when some of the winners walked either very fast or very slowly, and some obviously tried to flummox the drummer by skipping or dancing. The drummer—I wished I knew his name—never missed a beat, though.
The sound of the drum made me think of a steady rainfall—why, I’m not sure—and that made me think about Big Willie’s funeral. I didn’t know when it was going to be, or where, but I wanted to attend it. I tightened my hold on Silla’s leash.
The final awards on the agenda were always the heavy games—the weight toss, stone put, hammer throw, and caber toss—followed by the People’s Choice award, the one event festival attendees had enjoyed the most. As people voted on Sunday afternoon at the People’s Choice tent, they had their hand stamped with an indelible-ink thistle. Once stamped, a person couldn’t vote a second time. Just a little safeguard.
I hadn’t voted. I hadn’t seen enough of the Games to have a preference. Still, when I thought about it, I realized I did have one. A preference. I looked back at Mr. Stone. I would have voted for him and his group of drummers. They were fun to watch and fun to listen to, and to hear off in the distance, and even up close.
Karaline leaned across Silla and whispered, “What are you so pensive about?”
“I just figured something out.”
“About the murder?”
“Don’t I wish. No, I decided I should have voted for Mr. Stone and his drummers.”
She looked up at him and nodded her head. “He sure does look great in that hat, doesn’t he?”
I nodded. It felt like we were at a bobblehead convention. “I wonder why he isn’t in place on the far side of the meadow. He’s supposed to walk in front of the lone piper.”
Karaline shrugged. “Beats me.”
She turned to say something to Drew, and I puzzled over the logistics for another few seconds. Oh well, Shay had probably figured out how it was all going to work. I supposed they’d take a few minutes after the awards for all the parade participants to quietly disappear and convene at the starting point on the Perth Trail.
“And now,” Shay effused into the microphone, “the awards for the Highland athletic competitions!”
The drum major barked out an order and raised his mace. This time, one of the drummers began a steady roll as the entire group walked farther forward on the stage.
Silla lifted her head. I felt a low rumble as she began to growl. I laid a hand on her. “What’
s wrong, girl?” The hackles on her back rose. Tessa roused, unfolded herself, and laid her head on Drew’s knee.
“As I’m sure you’ve already figured out,” Shay shouted into the microphone, “one man has led the pack for the fifth year in a row!”
How would her voice ever last if she kept up this yelling?
At the foot of the stage steps, I saw Harper reach for his cell phone. There was a flash of light as the screen lit his face. I could tell he’d just gotten a text. He read it, did a double take, and then seemed to look at it again, just to make sure.
“Head on over here, Windsor Stone, and get what’s coming to you!”
Nobody else seemed to notice what a strange invitation that was. Was Shay about to strip him of his past victories, the way Dirk had said she’d threatened to? Could she even do that? Windsor mounted the steps to the stage, his arms raised in victory, but he looked a little bit tentative as he strode across the stage, the drum echoing his footsteps. “Here I am!”
Dirk followed Windsor, his arms loose at his side, but his fingers tense. He was crouching slightly, as if ready to spring.
Harper shoved his cell phone into the holder at his waist and bounded up the stairs. “Robert Stone,” he called. “You are under arrest for the murder of—”
Why did he say Robert Stone? The murderer was Windsor Stone. I saw the drum major’s face, a mask of anger and disbelief. Dirk whirled around, his face a study in confusion.
In less than a heartbeat, the drum major swung his mace and knocked Harper off the edge of the platform.
Windsor Stone stood with his arms still up in the air, the first two fingers of each hand still forming the V for victory, his mouth open in a silent O.
Mrs. Stone—the Mrs. Stone I’d known for most of my life, Andrea’s mother, the woman who had welcomed me into her home when I was a kid, the woman who had smiled at me not half an hour before—screamed.
Silla bounded forward, barking, and the leash pulled me to my feet almost before I could think what was happening. People right and left drew back away from the Scottie’s obvious fury. Silla jerked as she reached the end of the retractable lead.