“I don’t know, maybe run an errand into the village?”
“You could run to Aberdeen and get Kenny out of jail.” She said it with no emotion whatsoever. I wondered if the doctor still had her sedated. When she turned her black eyes on me, though, the pupils were so close to the color of her irises, I couldn’t tell.
“Sorry. Don’t think my running shoes would last that far. But maybe we could put our heads together and come up with another suspect. You got any ideas, Joyce?”
“Me?” She sounded like I had suggested she’d committed one of the murders.
“I understand you went to school with Jim’s daughter, and Jim seems to have known Mrs. MacGorrie and her brother back in Albany. Did you know them, too?”
“No, and Wendy, Jim’s daughter, was in my kindergarten class.” She gave me a strained smile. “That wasn’t exactly yesterday.”
Strike one. I turned back to Sherry. “You mentioned that first night in Atlanta that your restaurant has bought liquor from Jim’s old company for years. Did you all know him back in his Albany days?”
“Not personally,” she admitted.
“And you don’t either one know anything from his past that might have gotten him killed?”
They both shook their heads, then Sherry added, “Unless his first wife got mad that Jim sold her daddy’s business after he died and Jim became CEO.”
I doubted that was the motive. I hadn’t noticed any short female Southerners skulking around the hills, unless you counted me. But I could ask the sergeant if there were other Georgians in town besides our group.
The discouraging fact was, Norwood was still, far and away, the best suspect for Jim’s murder, and I doubted that anybody could ever prove it. And who killed Norwood? Unless the police could prove Kenny did, it was probable that none of the rest of us would be allowed to go home for a while, because who else could have gotten hold of Kenny’s sgian dubh?
“Still, I heard that Jim’s wife took him for a pretty penny when he left her,” Sherry added snidely, tracing the bedspread pattern with one finger.
“Have you kept up with Jim’s daughter all these years?” I asked Joyce.
“I told you, Wendy and I went to kindergarten together. That’s not usually an age for making lasting friendships.”
“My husband and I met around then,” I informed her. “And I asked because I wondered if that was why Jim hired you to put together this tour.”
She drew her eyebrows together in bewilderment. “What makes you think he did?”
“Laura and I were talking to Watty last night, and he said you guaranteed twenty-five places on the tour. We wondered who paid for the people who didn’t come.”
“People who didn’t come,” she said shortly. “That bad spring storm over here in March scared a lot of folks away, but they had already passed the date to get a refund.”
“Oh.” Strike two. That let a considerable amount of hot air out of my balloon, but I still hoped it might rise. “But did Jim suggest the trip? Was that why you planned it in the first place, to end up in Auchnagar? Or was it your play?”
“Neither.” She stood and brushed lint off her tailored navy skirt. “My company put this tour together because they thought people would enjoy exploring their Scottish roots.”
“But nobody has, except me,” I pointed out.
“Sherry saw Eilean Donan, Laura visited MacDonald sites, Dorothy went to Tain”—she ticked them off on her fingers, her face flushed and her eyes glittering—“and you still have two more days to explore yours here in Auchnagar.”
If you quit pestering me like this. She didn’t say it, but it hung in the air.
At the risk of pestering her a little more . . .
“But if Sherry and Kenny got discounts for persuading Laura to come, Laura may get a discount for bringing me along, and Marcia got a two-for-one deal because her aunt owns this bed-and-breakfast, it sounds like the only people who paid full fare were me, Jim, and Brandi. How can you take a tour with only three full fares?”
She gave me her professional smile, having regained her poise. “You’ll have to write to the e-mail address in your materials to ask that question. Somebody at the parent company may be willing to explain their finances to you. They don’t explain them to me.” Her voice sounded a little bitter. “I’m just the hired hand. And if you will excuse me, the hired hand has some things to do. I have to talk with Brandi about sending Jim’s body home once the police release it, I have to talk to the police about Kenny for Sherry here, and I have to go down to the theater and pick up props that are no longer required.”
She departed, leaving Sherry and me to understand that we might be able to slack off on this lovely Saturday, but some people had enormous amounts of work to do.
I knew Sherry expected me to leave, too, but I had another question for her. “Something has been bothering me. If Kenny didn’t kill Mr. Hardin, how could anybody have gotten his sgian dubh? Didn’t you all lock your door?”
“Kenny lost his key,” she admitted. “Right after we got here. He swore he left it in the lock when we went down to the bar Thursday evening, but it wasn’t here when we got back.”
“Maybe Eileen saw it in the lock and took it back downstairs for safety.”
Sherry shrugged. “Maybe, but I think Kenny probably dropped it somewhere. He’s incredibly irresponsible about things like keys. I left the door open when I went out yesterday morning, because he’d said he’d be coming and going.” Her mouth twisted at what that had meant, and for perhaps the first time in two weeks I actually felt compassion for her. Being married to Kenny couldn’t be easy.
But before I could feel too sorry for her, Sherry snarled, “He must have come up as soon as I left, put on his kilt, packed a few clothes and his bagpipes, and split. I don’t know why he didn’t take his sgian dubh, he was so proud of it. It was a real bargain on eBay.”
The venom in her voice rocked me so, I couldn’t think of anything else to ask. I was half out the door when she screeched for the world to hear, “The rat took all our traveler’s checks, too. And do you know his bus stopped in the next village and I saw it, but I never saw him on it?”
I figured Kenny had made sure of that.
26
The sun outside my window didn’t fool me one bit into thinking the day was warm. I put on a cardigan under my coat, pulled on my gloves and my soft wooly hat, and closed the door quietly to keep from spoiling Laura’s nap. As I stepped into the hall, Joyce was leaving her room, wearing a lightweight trench coat.
“You need a heavier coat,” I admonished her as we headed down the stairs.
She gave me a wan smile. “I forgot my parka at the theater yesterday. I just hope the place is open so I can get it now. I want to get my books, too.” We fell into step down the brae, she accommodating her longer stride to mine. As we passed the school, she said hesitantly, “MacLaren? I heard Sherry shouting as you were leaving her. I know you are trying to help, and that you may fancy yourself like that detective on television reruns, the woman from Maine? But please don’t pry into other people’s lives, and stop giving advice. I’ve heard you talking to several of the others, and I feel you are a bit too—”
“Nosy?” I was stung.
She gave me her prim little smile. “I was going to say motherly. I don’t want to offend you, but please, stop asking so many questions. Let people tell you what they want you to know. And we are all grown-ups. We don’t need advice.”
That certainly crashed my computer. I wasn’t offended, I was hurt, and couldn’t think of a thing to say. I was actually glad to hear my name being called from the door of the police station. When I turned to see what the bobby wanted, Joyce continued on down the hill.
Sergeant Murray pulled his door shut behind him and came to join me. “You’ve a splendid weekend for your visit. The weather is chust grand!” He peered down at me. “I dinnae suppose ye’ve heard anything from your traveling companions that might assist in our i
nquiries?”
“I’ve just been warned off asking questions,” I told him sourly. “Our tour guide didn’t exactly call me nosy, but she came mighty close.”
“Och, she’s got a lot of responsibility,” he said comfortably. “I’ll need to ask her a few questions myself sometime today.”
“Well, I have a couple for you. Are you positive Mr. Hardin was killed with Kenny’s sgian dubh?”
“Aye. It was still in the wound when we found him, and Watty identified it.”
Watty hadn’t said he had talked to the police, but I did remember the young bobby saying they would talk to Watty if Jim was on a Gilroy’s tour. That made more sense now.
“Do you have any motive for Kenny killing Norwood? As far as I can determine, they didn’t even know one another. However—” I told him about Sherry’s aunt Rose and her diminished retirement. I concluded, “And Kenny does have a temper, but even if he came across Norwood and learned who he was, I can’t believe he would stab him to death in revenge.”
The bobby surprised me. “Och, we know Mr. Boyd’s innocent of that murder. Mrs. Gordon told me last night that she and Mr. Boyd both traveled in to Aberdeen on the eleven o’clock bus, and Mr. Hardin ate lunch at home at twelve-thirty, then was seen a wee bit later driving into town. We found his car behind St. Catherine’s.”
“Then why on earth did they arrest Kenny in the first place?”
“He acted suspiciously at the airport. He showed up asking where the next plane out was going. They told him it went across to Ostend, but was already full. He immediately asked where the next one was going. When they told him Israel, he said that was even better and he’d like a one-way ticket. They pegged him for a possible terrorist.”
“Kenny?” It boggled the mind. “In a kilt?”
“Aye. After all, he’s nae a Scot. They figured he might be planning to bomb any plane he could get on, so they alerted security, who held him. When they asked for his address in the British Isles, he gave Heather Glen, Auchnagar, so they called me. The call came in as I got back from learning that his sgian dubh was missing and sounded very like the one that killed Mr. Hardin, so I told them to hold him overnight. They’re bringing him back this morning, and he’ll get a full apology. That’s your quota of questions, now. Tell me what you’ve got.”
I filled him in on my conversations with Watty, Joyce, Laura, Brandi, and Sherry, and concluded, “Looks like nobody on our trip had a motive to kill Jim, and nobody even knew Norwood Hardin, so can we go now?”
I didn’t mean it to come out sounding like a child who’d been at the mall too long, but that’s how I was beginning to feel.
“You mentioned that Mrs. Boyd had a relative who felt betrayed by Mr. Hardin?” He arched one eyebrow like a question mark.
“Norwood’s company apparently lost her aunt’s retirement fund, and as a result, both Sherry and her aunt have had a hard time financially. But you’ve proved that Kenny was long gone from the village before Mr. Hardin was killed, and Sherry was in the next village all afternoon, shopping. Eileen’s neighbor gave her a ride, and they didn’t get back until we were at tea.”
The bobby stopped and looked speculatively down at Gilroy’s, where a bus was pulling to a stop. “There’s a bus that goes through that village at one-thirty, gets here by two, turns around and leaves here at two-thirty bound for Aberdeen, and arrives back in the next village by three.” He seemed to be talking as much to himself as to me. “I’ll chust check with yon driver to see who was driving that route yesterday.” He picked up his pace and I had to trot to keep up with him.
The police Land Rover headed our way. “Looks like Constable Roy has managed to successfully fill the car with petrol.” The way his eyes twinkled, I suspected Sergeant Murray was a pretty fair judge of Constable Roy’s capabilities and shortcomings.
“Wait!” I called him back. He turned. “If Kenny caught the eleven o’clock bus, doesn’t that mean he couldn’t have killed Jim Gordon, either?”
He hesitated. “Unfortunately, no, it doesn’t exclude him on that one.”
Which was why they were bringing Kenny back instead of simply releasing him. He didn’t say it, but the implication was clear.
I continued down toward the bridge, mulling over the murders.
One scenario I liked was that Norwood and Jim got into a fight, Norwood bopped Jim and killed him immediately after Jim stabbed Norwood with Kenny’s sgian dubh. Jim and Brandi returned before Kenny and Sherry on Thursday night, so Jim could have taken Kelly’s key from the door and stolen the dagger then. And hadn’t I read a story in which somebody got stabbed and was able to walk about for quite some time before they collapsed? In which case, Norwood might have gone home to lunch—
With a sgian dubh in his ribs? asked a pesky voice that lives in my head and gets in the way of all my best ideas. Don’t you think the laird or his lady would have noticed? And why would Norwood and Jim fight in the Catholic church? Wouldn’t even Roddy have heard a tremor? And surely you weren’t about to suggest that when Norwood realized he was dying, he returned to the church at the exact time Roddy was fetching cigarettes and laid himself down in the other coffin, à la Romeo and Juliet?
It wasn’t my own good sense that kept me from admitting it. It was a blue Jaguar barreling onto the bridge at such a speed, I barely leaped out of the way before I got flattened.
I leaned across the parapet feeling downright sick, gasping for breath and imagining Morag’s chiding voice in my ear: “Fit ye deein’ in the middle of the r-r-road?”
I peered around to see where the Jag had gone and saw Kitty MacGorrie climb out next to the post office. It was past ten, but her brother’s murder had probably messed up her schedule.
Grieving sister or not, my first impulse was to march into the post office, accost the woman, and demand “fit she thought she was deein’,” driving like that in the middle of town. But I had no idea of the prerogatives of lairds and their ladies. For all I knew, she owned the road.
And while it would be comforting to think she’d developed her haughty airs in Scotland, it was more likely she’d learned them at her mother’s knee. She made me want to carry a poster wherever I went in Auchnagar: “Georgians aren’t all like her.”
I’d been woman-handled all morning, between Joyce, Sherry, and Kitty. Fuming and furious, I stomped on along the way I’d been going. When I got to the main road, I turned toward the cemetery without thinking, my feet remembering the way. I did at least make sure to walk along the right of the road instead of the left, and was careful to stay well over on the verge.
I passed the cemetery and kept walking. Eventually the rhythm of my pace dredged up a little prayer I used to teach kindergartners in Sunday school: Guide my thoughts and keep them pure. Guide my hands and make them yours. Guide my heart and keep it sweet. And please, dear Jesus, guide my feet.
But my thoughts were still in turmoil, and the only place my feet were going was in a straight line. If I walked far enough, would I eventually get to either Edinburgh or London, where I could catch a plane home?
On my right was the burn, then the mountain which we saw from Heather Glen and which dominated the village. On my left, as Watty had pointed out, a wide strip of pasture lay between the road and the shoulder of the mountain as it began to rise. There wasn’t as much flat land as you’d find in Middle Georgia, but few places are as ideally situated for golf as Augusta. Somebody could carve a pretty decent course out of these pastures, if they preferred a few people chasing balls to a lot of sheep eating grass.
Of course, a couple of centuries ago, somebody had preferred sheep eating grass to farmers feeding families. Perhaps this new rage to develop Scotland for tourism was just the Highland Clearances in a new manifestation. In America, it was big box stores rising in small towns like Hopemore, destroying smaller businesses like ours. I suddenly saw history as successive waves of grabbers rolling over the earth, taking what they wanted and little caring whom they shoved out of th
e way. Seen in that light, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan were no more heroes than corporate CEOs and big housing developers. Maybe we ought to rewrite history books and call former heroes what they really are: Takers of the Earth.
I knew, though, that I was currently fuming at those people to keep from examining what truth there might be in what Joyce had said about me. Mama always said, “The truth about ourselves is a lot like chocolate-fudge cheese-cake. We can’t take but a little of it at a time.”
“Miss? Oh, miss?” The voice broke into my thoughts, but I did not recognize it was calling me until I heard the familiar bawl, “Fit ye deein’?”
Morag stood beyond a low stone wall that enclosed a two-story stone house standing in a rough lawn. The house was large and unlovely in the highest degree, gray granite with gray trim at the windows and a gray front door. The only color was a break of evergreens that sheltered it from the worst of the wind and a scraggy broom with a few yellow blossoms at one corner. Flowers might eventually brighten patches of broken earth scattered about the rough lawn, but this early in the spring it was a stark old place, standing apart from the rest of the village.
Did You Declare the Corpse? Page 25