My orange cat, Mohair, pulled me out of my reverie with her plaintive meows. She stropped against my ankles to convince me that I had abandoned her for all time, instead of just the one day. I scooped her up and carried her into the kitchen, where I filled her bowls and then settled down with some peanut butter crackers and orange slices for a light supper. Too tired to think about either sewing or murder, I put all thoughts of Aileen out of my head, pulled out my new autographed thriller, and started in on page one.
I was soon immersed in the palace intrigue that filled the opening pages of Over the Sea to Skye. The novel opened with a dramatization of the true events surrounding the overthrow of James II of England, aka James VII of Scotland, who was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and fled to France. His grandson, Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, gathered the Scottish clans in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and challenged King George II of Great Britain for the throne. I had just gotten to their crushing defeat at the Battle of Culloden, which dashed Bonnie Prince Charlie’s chances of restoring the Stuart line to the throne, when I heard the front door closing.
It was Pete. He was alone. He dragged into the kitchen and dropped into a chair at the table. He ran both hands through his long brown hair and then looked at me. “They’re holding Aileen at the jail. I tried to post bail, but they wouldn’t let me.”
I filled a glass at the sink and plunked it down on the table in front of him. “What are they holding her for? You stopped her from swinging her guitar at the cops. She went quietly in the end.”
He sighed and reached for the glass of water. “Yeah, she went quietly, all right. She completely clammed up at the station when they started asking about her relationship with Ladd. Wouldn’t say a single word. When the officer told her she’d be arrested if she didn’t start talking, she started quoting Ecclesiastes: ‘For everything there is a season.’ Who would have guessed that she knew the whole passage? I would have busted out laughing if it weren’t for the seriousness of the issue. After fifteen minutes or so of ‘…a time to keep silence, and a time to speak,’ the officer got fed up and told her she was being detained on suspicion of murder.”
I sat down next to him at the table. “What’s gotten into her?”
“I dunno, she feels like her privacy is being violated or something? She’s choosing to go to jail rather than talk about this Ladd Foster dude. What’s up with that?”
What indeed? I filled Pete in on Aileen’s reaction to seeing Ladd at the Highland Games. “She obviously has some history with him. I thought she was going to kill him with her bare hands when he was playing her guitar.”
“Well, anyone fool enough to touch Aileen’s gear without permission deserves what he’s got coming to him.” The short-lived grin faded from his face. “You don’t think she really did kill him, do you?”
I didn’t even want to go there. “What do the police think? That’s what matters.”
Pete got up to place his glass in the sink. He turned back to face me. “Since when does the opinion of the Laurel Springs Police Department make the slightest bit of difference to you? If you think she’s innocent, you’ll move heaven and earth in your quest for proof. Right?”
I could have laughed at the plaintive note in his final word, but this wasn’t a laughing matter. Pete obviously wanted Aileen to be proven innocent, and he was counting on me to do it. I hoped I could live up to his faith in me.
Chapter 6
I woke up the next morning with my mind filled with the confusing images of a murdered caber tosser mixed up with the grandson of a deposed king raising an army to fight to regain the throne he himself had never held. McCarthy was right; I shouldn’t have started reading Over the Sea to Skye if I didn’t want to be up all night. But Hart’s prose was so riveting, I couldn’t stop until I’d finished the section on historical background in the novel.
I refrained from diving into the contemporary part that opened with the introduction of Stu Rohan, an architect in Eastern Pennsylvania. I couldn’t spend my day curled up with the hottest thriller of the summer. In addition to establishing the innocence of my housemate, I had a kilt to construct.
I settled down with a cup of tea and my computer to research Scottish kilts. All I really knew was that they had to be constructed a certain way for the plaid pattern of the tartan to come out right across the pleats in the back of the kilt. For the next half hour, I took note of the difference between casual and formal kilts and considered the merits of a five-yard versus an eight-yard kilt. I decided Corgi wanted to look professional, so I opted to go with a heavyweight eight-yard kilt. I could only find sketchy instructions online to describe making the kilt, so I just had to guess that I would be buying four yards of sixty-inch-wide tartan fabric and cutting it lengthwise to come up with the requisite eight yards. Then I would need cotton duck cloth to make the lining, and some leather strips for the straps. I could get those items locally, but I would need to order the tartan fabric. I worked up an estimate for Corgi and then called him to arrange a meeting to get his measurements. Unfortunately, I woke him up. I would have guessed that ten o’clock on a Sunday morning was fair game, but evidently not. Like Aileen, he tended to sleep until all hours. He mumbled the suggestion that I meet him at the Catholic church at one-thirty, where he would be making the haggis for the ceilidh later in the evening.
I chafed at the delay, because I wanted to get the tartan fabric ordered as soon as possible. Corgi was the one who wanted me to make the kilt on a tight timeline. He must think of me as a miracle worker or something.
I thumbed through my planner, wondering how to best use my time this morning. I was too late to go to church. I didn’t always make it to Sunday services at First Presbyterian Church, even if it was only a few blocks away from my downtown neighborhood. I was more of a casual believer than a committed convert. If I had realized Corgi wouldn’t be available until afternoon, I might have made an extra effort to go to church, if for no other reason than to keep tabs on Gillian and her father. He fell into the “committed” category, so I knew they would be in worship.
Pete was out, off to work on the set of Amish Christmas, a movie filming outside of town. Movie producers didn’t have any qualms about working on a Sunday. They were keeping him busy in his job as camera operator.
I saw a note in my planner about Breanna’s next fitting tomorrow. Her Scottish-themed wedding was coming up in a week and a half. I had her gown mostly finished and ready for a full fitting. She and I had designed a simple, long-sleeved satin gown with a low, off-the-shoulder neckline and a fitted princess-seamed bodice that flared out to a sweeping skirt with a full-length train. Instead of lace or beading, she had chosen a tartan sash to wear over the shoulder, along with a lovely headpiece comprised of tiny tartan bows and a stunning sprig of heather. She dearly desired her groom to wear a dress kilt with an appropriate evening jacket, but to date she hadn’t gotten him to agree. I had suggested I could make him a tartan cummerbund and bow tie to match her sash, but she hadn’t given me the go-ahead for that yet. She was still holding out hope for the full Highland dress. I hoped she didn’t think I was going to make her fiancé a kilt at the last minute! I had my hands full to bursting with Corgi’s kilt.
I decided to use my time to fringe Breanna’s sash. Rather than a tidy hem around the edges and along the ends, she wanted a raveled edge a good inch deep. This involved pulling out thread after thread of the woven cloth all along the three-yard length of the sash. It was a mindless task, although I did have to keep an eye on the pattern so I didn’t destroy the sett, or sequence of threads making up the tartan, by pulling out too many threads. Still, it gave me ample time to think.
Unfortunately, the only thing I could think about was Ladd Foster’s spectacular collapse. Honestly, it was a wonder that no one else had gotten hurt. I shuddered at the thought of that mammoth caber swinging through the air. It could have landed on
an innocent spectator, even a small child. I wondered if the murderer had thought of that possibility, or if he even cared.
So, what did I know about this murderer? If I assumed it wasn’t Aileen, I needed to consider who else might have wanted Ladd dead. I supposed I was making a big assumption about Aileen’s innocence. She did have an altercation with Ladd that could have turned ugly at the drop of a guitar pick. I even thought she looked enraged enough to kill him. Did she in fact do that sometime later, by slipping torch fuel into his flask of whiskey? It was hard to imagine. I could far more easily picture her slamming her guitar over his head.
I pushed aside that disturbing image and concentrated on my fringe. Breanna would look lovely on her wedding day. She’d asked her Highland dancers to perform a lilt during the service. Privately, I questioned the wisdom of this idea. The lilt was such a lovely dance and the Highland dancers were so adorable, they posed the very real risk of outshining the bride. I knew Breanna was looking for the perfect wedding of her dreams, and I hoped she wouldn’t feel upstaged by her students.
I thought about Gillian, the oldest of the Highland dancers. Could she have been the one who poured that torch fuel into Ladd’s flask? Even though she’d had it in her possession, I didn’t think she was a viable suspect. She had seemed genuinely upset about his death, and she didn’t seem to know about the poison when the two of us had struggled over the flask.
Maybe I should focus on the flask itself. Gillian had left it on a table in the VIP tent, where it sat until Ladd went in and took a swig. He’d left it there on his way out of the tent, and it stayed there until Gillian and I found it and then subsequently left it when Patrick Ames came in. After that, it disappeared.
Gillian had said the whiskey smelled different from the time when she’d sniffed it right after Ladd handed her the flask to the moment when she and I smelled it after he collapsed. I think it was fair to surmise that the torch fuel was added to the whiskey between the time that Gillian stashed the flask and the time when Ladd went in to take a drink.
So who had been in the VIP tent during that time? I thought back to the field events yesterday. I had been standing with Corgi, watching the four massive men take their turns at the various events. We had both been surprised by Aileen’s reaction to seeing Ladd. She had gone into the VIP tent to hide—and bumped into Ryan King on his way out. So both Aileen and Ryan had had access to the flask. Then Patrick Ames had missed Ladd’s perfect toss because he was in the VIP tent at the time. He had also come in and interrupted Gillian and me when we were trying to make sense of the smelly flask. We had skedaddled, and when I went back the flask was gone. Patrick was the most logical person to have taken it. I resolved to look closely into his rivalry with Ladd.
Then Ladd had ducked into the tent for a quick drink—and he had bumped into Morris Hart, the author, on the way in. Hart had pointedly ignored Ladd, as if he wanted nothing to do with the boisterous athlete. It seemed ludicrous to imagine a bestselling author poisoning one of his fans, but I had to admit Hart did have the opportunity to tamper with the flask. Plus, he had had a conversation with Ladd before the caber toss in which it looked like Hart wasn’t pleased with what Ladd was saying. I wondered if that was a casual conversation between two people who’d just met or if they had some kind of deeper relationship.
I racked my brain, but I couldn’t remember seeing anyone else go into the VIP tent between the time Gillian dropped off the flask and when Ladd went in for his fateful drink. Unless there was someone in the tent the whole time that I’d never seen, there were only four people who could have poisoned Ladd’s flask: Aileen, Ryan King, Patrick Ames, and Morris Hart. I had my list of suspects.
I also had a cramp in my hand from pulling threads for the past hour and a half. I still had a couple of yards to go, but I bundled up the sash and stood up to stretch and shake out my hands. I had time for a leisurely lunch before meeting Corgi at the church at one-thirty.
I thought about texting McCarthy to see if he wanted to go out to lunch with me, but then my eye fell on my new copy of Over the Sea to Skye. I made a quick peanut butter sandwich and took it and the novel out to the porch. I curled up on the porch swing and immersed myself in the tale of Stu Rohan, the Pennsylvania architect whose journey began with an unexpected message that accompanied the results from a DNA kit he’d received as a Christmas gift. I was up to the part where he was about to meet the message writer in a dark parking garage on the south side of Philadelphia when my phone dinged. It was a text from Pete: “I get off at 5:30 today. Going over to the jail to see Aileen. Want to come?”
I checked the time—I needed to head over to the Catholic church to meet with Corgi. I texted Pete back: “Sure,” and reluctantly tore myself away from the novel.
St. Martin’s Catholic Church was one of the half-dozen historic churches spread out along Church Street, just a few blocks away from my house. The congregation had just celebrated their three-hundred-year anniversary with much pomp and circumstance. The church building wasn’t quite that old; it was the third structure on that site since its founding. Still, the present building dated from the mid-eighteen hundreds, requiring constant and expensive upkeep. Its wooden belfry needed shoring up, and the rose window in the front of the sanctuary leaked around the lead seals holding the delicate stained-glass pieces together. Luckily, today wasn’t a rainy day.
The cold stone sanctuary was deserted when I entered, but the sound of voices carried up the stairs from the basement. I clattered down the stairs and collided with McCarthy on the landing. His camera, which dangled from a cord around his neck, banged sharply against the railing.
“Whoa, not so fast!” He caught me before I could careen into the opposite wall. “Can’t wait to get to that half-baked haggis, can you?”
“Sorry.” I indicated his camera, which he was carefully examining. “I thought you were going to take pictures of the whole haggis-making process.”
He released the camera, satisfied it was undamaged. “I did get a bunch. But there’s a student photography exhibit opening at the Tremington tomorrow afternoon, so I’m off to cover the setup for that.”
I had first encountered McCarthy at the Tremington Museum, when he was photographing an exhibit of Civil War artifacts and I was making uniforms for a group of Civil War reenactors. I hoped this new exhibit wouldn’t cause as much trouble as that one had.
“I’ll see you at the ceilidh tonight, right?” I said.
He grinned and fired off a series of shots of me in the stairwell. Who knows what he wanted with those? “Sure. I need to get some shots of the finished product, and of the expressions of the people who try it. I can’t wait!” He blew me a kiss as he bounded up the next flight of stairs on to his next gig. Always busy; that was McCarthy.
I continued down the stairs, breathing in the sweet and savory aromas that led me to the kitchen.
I found Corgi at work in the kitchen, his arms up to his elbows churning through a large pan that appeared to be filled with some kind of porridge. Another man shook on a liberal amount of spices from an oversize spice jar. Corgi saw me come in and waved before he thought, spewing oatmeal about like drops of water off a dog’s back. His companion swore as he swiped at his glasses, speckled now with the thick mixture. Corgi hastened to apologize, and the man trudged off to wash up.
“What’s in the pan?” I asked, leaning over Corgi’s shoulder. On closer inspection, it appeared to be a mixture of oatmeal, water, and seasoned ground beef, a bit like the meatloaf my mother used to make of a Saturday evening. I looked around for the ketchup bottle, but apparently Scots didn’t use ketchup.
“Haggis, of course.” Corgi scratched his forehead with a slimy gloved finger before diving into the pan once again. He was dressed in an oversize apron with a shocking-pink image of Kokopelli emblazoned across the front. His light brown hair was streaked with bits of oatmeal and his apron sported liberal chunks of
the stuff as well. “Everyone groans about how nasty haggis is,” he went on, “but it’s nothing more than Scottish sausage. Robbie Burns calls it the ‘chieftan o’ the puddin-race,’ but it’s just oatmeal, ground beef, and organ meat cooked in a sheep’s stomach. How’s that different from the link sausages you get at the grocery store?”
I bit back a smile at his comfortable use of the poet’s nickname. “You lost me at the sheep’s stomach. Where do you even get one of those?”
Corgi waved at a tray sitting on the counter, which contained a number of gray, leathery-looking lumps. I tried not to think of them as “lumps of flesh,” but honestly, that was what they were. “We had to improvise. Percy’s Meats and Stuff was fresh out of stomachs of any description, so we went with some deer stomachs Ryan saved from last year’s hunting season. It’s a good thing we’re only inviting friends and relations, because you can’t serve the public game you hunted, evidently. Five deer stomachs should do the job.”
I tore my gaze away from the stomachs and pulled out my estimate pad. “I’ve done some research on kilt-making and worked up an estimate for you.” I shot him a sharp glance, looking for signs of whiskey imbibing even at this early hour. Apart from his customary scatterbrained demeanor, he looked quite sober to me. I held out the pad so he could see it. “Have a look at this and then let me know if you’re ready to proceed.”
Corgi wiped his hands on his apron and reached for the pad, but I pulled it away.
“I’ll hold it, so it doesn’t get messy.” I pointed out the costs for fabric, expedited shipping, and labor. “The whole thing will cost you eight hundred fifty dollars. Honestly, you could get a made-to-order kilt from Scotland for less than that. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
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