Kilt at the Highland Games

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  Sherri knew the story behind Joe’s ownership of the hotel well. He had worked at The Spruces over forty years earlier, when old-fashioned “grand hotels” had still been popular tourist destinations and had fallen in love with the place. When it went bankrupt and was slated for demolition, he’d bought it, renovated it, and reopened it to the benefit of the entire town. Things had been touch and go for the first few years, but now The Spruces had earned a solid reputation as a vacation spot, and the future looked rosy, especially if the hotel made a success of staging special events like the Western Maine Highland Games.

  “Oh, good,” Margaret said, catching sight of her. “Come in and sit. Tea?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  Sherri perched on the edge of an armless chair to the right of the love seat. Both faced Margaret’s desk and had a good view of the three pen-and-ink drawings of Carrabassett County landscapes by local artists that hung on the pale green wall behind it. Margaret herself occupied the desk chair.

  Margaret was a cheerful person by nature, and an active one. When she was enthusiastic about something, she talked a mile a minute, carrying others along on a wave of energy. She left nothing to chance if she could help it, and Sherri was not surprised to see her consult a handwritten agenda.

  “First up,” Margaret said, directing her gaze toward Sherri, “is there any news about Angie and her children?”

  “No luck finding them so far.” Sherri tried not to let her discouragement show. “Strictly speaking, it hasn’t been that long. There could still be a simple explanation for everything.”

  “What?” Liss’s teacup landed in its saucer with a clatter. “That they were called away on some sort of emergency and left without telling anyone? That Beth wouldn’t call Boxer? That they wouldn’t have heard about the fire by now and come back?”

  “Stranger things have happened. Turns out neither Angie nor Beth owns a cell phone.” She shrugged at Joe’s look of surprise. “Not everyone sees the need.”

  Everything possible was being done to find them. All the usual stones had been turned over, but, to mix her metaphors, they’d revealed nothing but dead ends.

  “It looks as though Angie produced some very convincing documents twelve years ago—phony birth certificates for her children and a phony driver’s license from New York State for herself. Don’t get excited. Since it was fake, it’s doubtful that’s where she came from. Still, it was good enough for the state of Maine to issue her a driver’s license with no questions asked. She hasn’t needed much else in the way of paperwork. There’s no requirement to have a business license to open a bookstore.”

  “What about taxes?”

  “She paid state sales tax and income taxes as Angie. Her social security number didn’t trigger any red flags. Don’t ask me how that works. I have no idea.”

  “You’re sure witness protection isn’t involved?”

  “I’d have been warned off by now if they were. Meanwhile, the next step is to have all the local news stations show Angie’s picture on the air, together with a description of her car.”

  Liss’s eyes widened. “Won’t that make her look like a criminal?”

  “The announcement will clearly state that there is no warrant for her arrest. We just want to make sure she’s safe.” Since Liss would leap to Angie’s defense, pointing out that there was no proof of any wrongdoing, Sherri kept to herself the increasingly likely possibility that the bookseller did, in fact, have something to hide.

  To break the tension, Joe picked up the plate of chocolate chip cookies Margaret had set out and passed it first to Sherri and then to Liss before taking one himself. They had come from Patsy’s and smelled wonderful. “I attended church services this morning,” he said before taking his first bite.

  Sherri frowned over her cookie, uncertain why he’d bring that up. She had no idea if Joe was a regular churchgoer or not. “And?”

  He chewed and swallowed. “And during the socializing afterward, there was a lot of chatter. No one had anything useful to suggest about where Angie might have taken Beth and Bradley, but there were plenty of people up in arms about recent events. Everyone seems to know the fire was set, even without an official announcement.”

  “No surprise there.” Sherri bit down hard, taking what comfort she could from the explosion of chocolate as the cookie melted in her mouth.

  “There wasn’t a lot of talk about the parade being canceled,” Joe went on. “Seemed to me that most of the residents of Moosetookalook, as opposed to the downtown merchants, are ambivalent about the Highland Games.”

  “People truly don’t object to the change in plans?” Margaret’s brow puckered, as if such a possibility had never occurred to her.

  “Seems not.” A twinkle appeared in Joe’s eyes. “Now, if we’d had to ditch the fireworks, that would be another story.”

  Margaret sighed and scratched something off her list.

  “What had folks up in arms was this plan by the board of selectmen to close the library.”

  “Such a stupid idea,” Margaret said.

  Sherri could tell that she was itching to move on to the next item on her agenda, but Joe wasn’t done with his report.

  “Dolores Mayfield has started a petition to remove Jason Graye from office.”

  “Good for her,” Liss said. “I’ll be happy to sign it.”

  “And she asked for volunteers to come to her house this evening to form a committee to save the library. Funny thing—she seemed to think Liss here has already agreed to be on it.”

  Liss groaned. “Just what I need—another committee!”

  “We should all lend a hand,” Margaret said, “but not until after next weekend. Now then, we still need to schedule an event to replace the parade. Here’s what I have in mind.”

  * * *

  Dan Ruskin reluctantly followed his wife up the steps to Dolores Mayfield’s front porch. She lived on Upper Lowe Street, just three houses away from his father’s place, the house where he and his brother, Sam, and his sister, Mary, had grown up. They’d learned at an early age not to bother Mrs. Mayfield at home, whether it was Mary trying to sell her Girl Scout cookies or Dan wanting to retrieve a baseball that had accidentally ended up in her backyard. Her drunk of a husband, universally known as Moose, had frightened small children even when he was sober. He wore his long hair shaggy around an oversized head that was home to a brain the size of a pea.

  Dan glanced at Liss as she rang the bell. Coming here as a guest must feel strange to her, too. The ghost of a smile flitted across his face. The one and only time she’d previously set foot on the Mayfields’ property, she’d been sixteen and bent on “borrowing” Moose’s truck. The memory of her one and only foray into grand theft auto embarrassed her now, but Dan thought the whole escapade was pretty funny.

  The way Liss told it, she’d been in desperate need of transportation to get to a Scottish dance competition. Since everybody in town knew that Moose had a habit of leaving his truck parked in the driveway with the keys in the ignition, she’d had the bright idea to take advantage of that fact. It had been sheer luck that she hadn’t been caught and arrested, but as things turned out, Moose had been so drunk that day that he’d never even noticed that his truck had gone missing.

  Liss had won her competition.

  When Dolores opened the door and invited them in, she was smiling. “We’re in the living room,” she announced.

  “We” turned out to be most of the members of the Moosetookalook Small Business Association, together with many of the library’s regular patrons. It was standing room only. Dan and Liss threaded their way through the crowd to squeeze in next to Stu Burroughs in the corner by the fireplace. Only then did Dan get a good look at the room’s décor.

  “Holy crap,” he whispered.

  Liss’s eyes widened as she followed the direction of his gaze. “Oh, my.”

  Weapons were displayed on every wall. Crossed swords hung above the fireplace with a shield showing
a family crest between them. On the opposite side of the room were two glass-fronted cabinets. One contained an assortment of hunting rifles. The other held a collection of knives, most of them with wicked-looking blades. A bow and a quiver of arrows, the kind used in competition, not the Renaissance Faire–Robin Hood variety, occupied a place of honor atop an upright piano, while a blunderbuss, the style of gun used in colonial days, rested on a shelf three-quarters of the way up the wall behind the sofa.

  “You didn’t know about Dolores’s little hobby?” Stu’s lips twitched. “She’s quite the expert. Moose likes things that go bang. Dolores prefers stuff that stabs.”

  Dolores clapped her hands together. “All right, people. Listen up. We’re here for two reasons. First, we need to rally support to remove Jason Graye from office. Then we must convince the other selectmen to change their minds about closing the library. One way to do that is to come up with alternative sources of funding.”

  “Hey, Dolores,” Stu called out. “I’ve got one. Why don’t you give a lecture on ‘Curious Weapons of the Past’ and charge admission.”

  Dolores looked as if she might consider it, although there was a marked lack of enthusiasm from the rest of those present.

  The warped sense of humor for which Stu was famous had him throwing out another suggestion. “Or you could give a fencing demonstration.”

  Belatedly, Dolores caught on to the fact that he was mocking her. Her mouth tightened into a thin, hard line before she forced herself to smile and wag a finger at him. “I was a champion fencer in college. You’d best remember that.”

  If she meant to look playful and sound good-natured, she missed by a mile. Dan doubted she’d ever been able to laugh at herself.

  Chuckling, Stu was quick with a comeback. “Here’s a thought: challenge Graye to a duel. Now that I’d pay money to see.”

  “If you’re through making ridiculous suggestions,” Gloria Weir cut in, “I have a serious proposal to offer. The library can host a craft fair.”

  “I see how that would benefit you and your shop, but how does it help the library?” Thanks to Stu’s needling, Dolores sounded testy.

  “The library would get a percentage of the proceeds.”

  “We could organize a bottle drive,” Betsy Twining suggested. The proprietor of the Clip and Curl, Moosetookalook’s combination beauty parlor and barber shop, didn’t hesitate to jump in with her idea. She did everything the way she cut hair—boldly and with no excuses. If you hadn’t expected your hair to end up quite as short as she cut it, Betsy would assure you that you’d love the new style when you got used to it.

  Dan went out of town when he needed a trim, rather than turn Betsy loose with scissors and razor blade.

  “Never work,” Moose Mayfield muttered from the depths of his recliner.

  “Sure it will,” Betsy insisted. “Collect returnable cans and bottles and put all the money we get from the local bottle redemption center into a special library account.”

  “Anyone who bothers to save up all them cans and bottles,” Moose shot back, “is gonna want to keep the nickel apiece for himself and buy more beer.”

  Betsy glared at him. “I’ll have you know that the animal shelter down to Fallstown does very well with a similar deal. The woman who runs the place told me all about it when we went there to adopt Skippy.”

  “Is it still bringing in money?” Dan asked. If he remembered right, it had been four or five years since the Twinings agreed to take in the two-year-old fox terrier. When Lenny Peet, Skippy’s previous owner, had died of old age, Liss had made it one of her causes to find him a new family. She’d even made a speech about it at Lenny’s funeral. Right after that, Betsy had come forward to volunteer.

  “I can find out,” Betsy answered.

  “You do that.” Dolores’s terse comment served to put her back in control of the meeting. “If it looks feasible,” she added, “go ahead and start negotiations with the local redemption center on behalf of the library.”

  Dan had to smile. The grimace on Betsy’s face made it clear she hadn’t intended to offer to do quite that much for the cause. He was well aware that, with the notable exception of Jason Graye, people didn’t often say no to Dolores Mayfield and resolved to keep his own mouth firmly shut for the rest of the meeting. Like most bossy women, Dolores was good at delegating time-consuming tasks to others.

  Kate Permutter spoke up next. “The other day, I read a blog written by the librarian in Hartland. It was all about selling donated and discarded books online to raise money. He claimed to have made $4,500 for his library in just one year.”

  Dolores promptly assigned her to e-mail the Hartland Library for additional details.

  Hesitantly, Liss raised her hand. “What about contacting the Daily Scoop?” When several people looked blank, she clarified. “That’s our local online newspaper. It isn’t exactly the Washington Post, but a lot of people do read it.”

  “Do you want them to interview Dolores?” Stu asked. “Or to skewer Jason Graye?”

  “Why not both?” Dan spoke before he could stop himself.

  “I could give them an earful,” Dolores muttered.

  “You need to be careful what you say if it’s going to appear in print,” Liss warned. “None of the accusations against Graye over crooked real estate deals ever held up in court.”

  “How about this?” Dolores made air quotes to indicate a newspaper headline. “Local librarian vows Jason Graye will be first against the wall when the revolution comes!”

  An appalled silence fell over the room.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Dolores rolled her eyes. “That was a joke, people!”

  Maud Dennison, a retired school teacher who worked full-time as the manager of Dan’s shop, reprimanded her in a prim voice. “You shouldn’t kid around about shooting people, Dolores.”

  “That was a quote, Maud.”

  “Yes, I know. From A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I believe. That’s not the point.”

  “The point,” Dolores declared, “is that nobody in this room would be the least bit upset if someone did shoot Jason Graye.”

  Before the argument could become any more heated, a hulking figure erupted from his chair. “Hell of an idea,” Moose Mayfield mumbled. “Shoot the bastard.”

  He staggered slightly as he crossed the room, his inebriated condition so obvious that Dan was embarrassed to witness it. He suspected that everyone else in the crowded living room felt the same way. No one said a word as Moose made his way to the antique oak lowboy the Mayfields used as a TV stand and fell to his knees in front of it.

  He jerked open the bottom drawer and reached inside. When his hand reappeared, it held a gun.

  “Holy shit!” Stu hit the floor.

  Seeing that Liss seemed frozen in place, staring in disbelief at the weapon, Dan thrust her behind him. He took a step toward the lowboy, then stopped as Moose rose to his feet. What did he think he was going to do? Even if Moose had been unarmed, he outweighed Dan by a good fifty pounds.

  “Is that thing loaded?” Gloria’s question came out as a squeak.

  “’Course it’s loaded.” Moose gestured with the gun as he spoke. “Wouldn’t be much use against a burglar if it wasn’t.”

  Everyone ducked as he swung the weapon in a wide arc.

  Moose laughed. “Got robbed once. Some lowlife stole my truck and went joyriding. Filled the tank up again and thought I wouldn’t notice. If I ever find out who that sumbitch was, I’ll teach him not to mess with Moose Mayfield!”

  “Oh, God,” Liss whispered.

  Dan felt her shift so that his body completely hid her from Moose’s view.

  “For God’s sake, Roger. That was more than a decade ago.” Dolores sounded thoroughly disgusted with her alcoholic husband. “Stop obsessing about it.”

  Moose shifted his big, awkward body toward his wife, but as he turned, his already precarious balance deserted him entirely. In a last-ditch effort to stay uprig
ht, he flailed both arms. The hand holding the gun flew upward. A split second later, the weapon discharged with a deafening roar.

  Dan turned, wrapped Liss in his arms, and dragged both of them to the floor. Plaster rained down on their heads. Shrieks and curses rose up all around them, but Dolores’s outraged bellow drowned out everyone else.

  “Roger Mayfield, you put that gun down this instant!”

  Dan lifted his head far enough to see what was going on. Moose was still on his feet, staring at his gun as if he couldn’t figure out how it had come to be in his hand. “Aw, geez, Dolly,” he whined, “I was just trying to help.”

  Dolores marched right up to him, eyes blazing. “If anyone’s going to shoot Jason Graye, it’s going to be me. Give me that gun, you moron.”

  Meek as could be, he handed it over. As soon as she grabbed hold of it, he winced and shrank back, almost as if he expected her to strike him.

  Dan’s mind boggled. Moose Mayfield was scared to death of his wife.

  “Dolly?” Liss whispered.

  Was anything as it seemed?

  * * *

  Liss did not sleep well. On Monday morning, she detoured to Patsy’s on her way to open Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. She was not in the mood for her own coffee, or for her own company.

  As usual, Patsy was doing a brisk morning business. Those who didn’t come for the coffee showed up for the baked goods. The good smells alone would add inches to her waistline, but for once Liss didn’t care. She ordered two sticky buns to balance out the infusion of caffeine and hoped the combination would distract her from increasingly dismal thoughts.

  She’d dreamed of Angie, Beth, and Bradley. They’d been running across an open field. She’d been trying to catch up with them, but she kept stumbling and falling. Their lead had increased with every tumble until she could no longer see them at all.

  Order in hand, she looked around for a place to sit. Both tables were occupied. So were the five stools at the counter. Two of the three booths were also taken, one by a family of four and the other by a man sitting alone.

  She stared at him, taking in an average build, a snub nose, and long, thin fingers wrapped around the coffee mug he was just lifting to his lips. He wore his hair in a buzz cut so short it was impossible to tell its color. He was no one she recognized—probably another hotel guest who’d wandered into the village on an early-morning constitutional.