“Getting the full effect, are we?”
I straightened up with a start and turned to face a woman about my own age, dressed in faded bib overalls covering a soccer jersey. Her wispy hair was loose about her face and her tawny eyes seemed to take in everything. An official museum badge dangled from a lanyard around her neck, and she held a feather duster, of all things, in one hand. She brushed her oversize headphones away from her ears and regarded me calmly, waiting for an explanation, no doubt.
I gave her a big smile, trying to channel McCarthy. “Yes! I’m making a kilt for a client, so I came to get as much information as I could from observing this historic kilt. I’m a seamstress. My name’s Daria Dembrowski.” I rummaged through my shoulder bag and produced one of my business cards, which promoted my business, A Stitch in Time. “I was just wishing I could get a look at the back of the kilt, to see the stitching on the pleats.”
The young woman read my business card, then turned it over to check the other side before handing it back to me. “No worries.” She slipped on a latex glove and plucked the hanger off the wall and held it out at arm’s length so I could see the kilt in its entirety. “I’m Julie Lombard. I’m an intern here at the museum.” She lifted the overlay of the kilt so I could see the inner construction. She made no objection when I took photo after photo. When I was finished, she simply hung the kilt back up and peeled off the glove.
“Thanks, that was awesome,” I said. “How long have you been interning at the museum?”
“I’ve been here for a couple of months. I’m a grad student at St. Andrews University in North Carolina. I’m doing a project on the Oliphant collection.” She indicated the kilt and surrounding objects. “You got a good look at how it was made. Want to know who wore it and when?”
“Absolutely!” I didn’t really have a ton of time because I needed to meet Pete to go visit Aileen in jail, but Julie’s offer was tantalizing. “What can you tell me about the history of this kilt?”
“It belonged to Margaret Oliphant Tremington’s father, Jock Oliphant. His real name was Jacob, but his clansmen called him Jock. He was the leader of the Clan Oliphant in Gask, Scotland, and led his clansmen in the Forty-Five. He …” She paused at the blank look on my face. “You know, the Forty-Five. The Rising of the Clans. The Jacobite rising of 1745, led by Bonnie Prince Charlie, in his quest to regain the British throne. They call it the Forty-Five to distinguish it from the Fifteen, when the clans attempted to retake the throne for Charles’s father, James Stuart, in 1715. They called James the Old Pretender, and Charlie was the Young Pretender. The Fifteen failed, and then the clans rose again in the Forty-Five.”
“Kind of like World War I and World War II?” I said, fascinated by this history lesson.
She smiled, as if I were a child just about to finally understand. “Kind of…but actually, not at all like that. Anyway, the Oliphant clan was one of Charlie’s most steadfast allies, so they fought with him at Culloden on April 16, 1746. Legend has it that Jock wore this very kilt on the battlefield.” She slipped the glove back onto her hand and lifted the front flap. “You can see a tear right here, which might have been made by a thrusting bayonet.”
I looked at the frayed little tear. It was small, so the bayonet thrust must not have been significant.
“When Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated at Culloden,” Julie went on, “the clan chieftains had to flee Scotland just like he did. Charlie returned to France, but Jock and his family went to America. That’s how Margaret Oliphant came to Laurel Springs. She was heartbroken to leave her beloved Scotland.”
“Hmm, I’ve never heard that part of the story. I thought she was excited to come here and fall in love with Judge Tremington. That’s how we learned it in school.”
Again that smile, like she knew something I didn’t. “That may be the official version, and maybe that’s the story Margaret wanted people to hear. But in private, she told a different version.” Julie paused, grinning.
“Okay, I’ll bite. How do you know what Margaret thought in private?”
“See, when you do an internship in a museum, you get to go into the archives and see all kinds of cool stuff the public never sees.” She pointed to a door with a small sign that read, “No Admittance.” “That door is the gateway to a world of treasures guaranteed to boggle the mind.” She held a dramatic pause until I started to fidget. “One of those treasures is Margaret Oliphant’s diary, which she kept from the age of eleven.”
It was worth the wait. “Wow. Have you read it?”
Julie’s face fell. “I’ve paged through it, but I haven’t really studied it. It’s very fragile, and no one has scanned it yet to produce a digital version. I’m working on that project. Of course, I want to read every page while I’m scanning, which would take a really long time. I might have to extend my internship.”
“When will the digital images be available to the public?” I couldn’t say why, but I was suddenly overcome with curiosity about Margaret Oliphant’s experience coming to America as a teenager and marrying Judge Tremington. Maybe sewing wedding dresses all the time brought out the romantic in me. I always asked my clients to tell me about their first date.
“I don’t know, it could be years. Historical scholarship isn’t exactly breaking news, you know. But if there’s something you’re interested in, I could email you some of the digital images.”
“Really? I’m a sucker for how-we-met stories. I’d love to see the pages from when Margaret met Judge Tremington and fell in love with him.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can find.”
I fished out my business card again and handed it to her. “If there’s anything about the making of her wedding gown, please send me that too.”
“Okay.” She tucked my card into the front pocket of her overalls. “Have you seen her wedding gown?”
“What? Don’t tell me Margaret Oliphant’s wedding gown is one of the treasures hidden behind that door?”
Julie laughed like a little kid coming downstairs on Christmas morning. “We’re working on restoring it right now. It was packed up in a trunk that was recently fished out of the attic in one of the dorms at Oliphant University. Who knows how it ended up there? Margaret’s diary was in the trunk as well. Both pieces are destined for a special addition to the local history exhibit upstairs, which will be opening in a week and a half. But I could probably get you in to take a peek at the wedding dress if you want.”
“I would love that! I’m so glad I met you today. I don’t have time right now, but if you could arrange a time for me, that would be awesome.”
She agreed to be in touch, and I headed out of the museum, well pleased with my trip to the Tremington.
I caught the next bus home so I’d be in time to meet Pete for our trip to the jail. He found me waiting on the porch swing when he drove up.
He waved out the window of his pickup, calling me over. “Let’s get this over with. Hop in.”
I clambered into the passenger seat and threw my brother a critical glance. He held the wheel tightly, reining in a lot of tension with his grip. Poor Pete. I knew the last thing he wanted to do was go to the jail, even if he was just visiting. After spending a few days there under suspicion of a different murder, no one could blame him if he avoided the place like the plague.
“Thanks for setting up this visit with Aileen,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”
He gave me a tight smile as he pulled away from the curb. “You never know what Aileen will appreciate.”
We drove the next few blocks in silence, until Pete’s tension made me nervous. I started talking at random. “I saw Corgi making the haggis for the ceilidh this morning. It smelled good, but the deer stomachs they’re using to contain the stuff looked positively disgusting. They were all pale and lumpy, and I’m not even going to tell you what they smelled like.” I felt like I was babbling, but
my inane conversation was better than the apprehensive silence. The topic of haggis lasted us all the way to the jail.
Pete pulled into the one open parking place. It seemed somehow ominous that all the parking spaces at the jail were full. The whole point of living in a small town was to avoid the high crime typical of a big city. I hoped Laurel Springs wasn’t sliding down that slippery slope toward more and more crime.
Pete and I got out of the truck and pushed through the double doors to the jail. We entered the tiny reception area that had two orange plastic chairs facing a desk behind a bulletproof window. The chairs were occupied by a couple of tough-looking teens who scowled at us as we walked in. I had the fleeting thought that if I were walking in with McCarthy, he would probably call out a friendly greeting to the youths, who he probably knew from one thing or another. But Pete and I didn’t have that kind of rapport with them. We sidled past them and pressed the button on the window. It only took half an hour for us to get in to see Aileen.
A stern officer met us at the side door leading from the reception area and ushered us into a large room with numerous round tables guarded by half a dozen prison guards. Orange jumpsuit-clad inmates sat at the various tables, talking with their visitors: lawyers, family members, or the like. In some cases, it was hard to distinguish the inmates from the visitors; they all seemed to have the same look of hopelessness in their eyes. I scanned the room looking for Aileen.
I totally did not recognize her. The only reason I noticed her at all was the fact that she sat alone at one of the round tables. She looked like she’d been put through a car wash. All traces of makeup were erased, down to the black nail polish that normally coated her fingernails. Her jet-black hair lay limp on her shoulders, devoid of any gel or styling. If the guards could have stripped off the hair dye, I’m sure they would have. She wore a regulation orange jumpsuit instead of her normal flamboyant clothing. I wouldn’t have been more shocked if she had been naked. All her rock-star trappings had been stripped away, leaving nothing but the vulnerable human behind. I turned away to hide the tears threatening to overwhelm me.
Pete managed better than I did. He waved and called out, “Aileen!” He led me through the maze of tables and found a chair for me to sit down facing her. He pulled out a grin and said, “Wow, one day in the clink and you’re a changed woman.”
My mouth fell open in astonishment at his insensitivity, but Aileen just snorted. “Yeah, you wish, Moron!”
“No, not really,” he murmured. He laid his hands palms up on the table. “I tried to bring you in a bottle of hot sauce, but they wouldn’t let me. How are you managing with the food?”
“It’s bland. Everything about this place is bland. I’m holding out for a deranged serial killer or something, but so far they’re all bland.”
Privately, I hoped Aileen never saw any deranged serial killers, but I didn’t see the need to dash her hopes. “So, how long are they going to hold you here, Aileen?”
She scowled at me. I guess I’d broken the joking mood or something. “They’re waiting for me to come clean about my relationship with Ladd Frigging Foster. There’s nothing clean about that lowlife.”
“So all you need to do is tell them about your relationship and then they’ll let you go?” I couldn’t imagine any reason not to comply with that request. “Sounds pretty straightforward to me.”
“I don’t do ‘straightforward,’” she shot back.
I twisted my hands together under the table. Aileen seemed like her own worst enemy at this point. “It looked like you knew him back at the Games, like you two had some kind of history together.”
“That’s what it looked like, huh?”
I held her gaze. “Yeah, that’s what it looked like. Is that the way it was?”
She leaned forward and reached for my neckline, prompting a guard to bark, “No contact.” She leaned back in her chair and threw her hands behind her head. “What, are you wearing a wire or something? Collecting information for the man?”
“Oh, come on! ‘The man’?” I tried to keep my voice down, but Aileen’s scornful glare pushed all my buttons. “You know you’re a suspect in Ladd’s poisoning, right? You may be innocent until proven guilty, but if you keep acting like you’re guilty, it’s not going to get you anywhere!”
Pete laid a hand on my forearm. His frown warned me to slow down. “Why don’t you want to talk about Ladd Foster?” he asked.
Aileen continued to glare at me. “He’s not worth my time.”
I tried to pull away from Pete, but he held on. He couldn’t shut me up, though. “Exactly! He’s a worthless piece of dung—certainly not worth spending even one minute in jail for. He’s also dead, and you’re one of four people who could have done him in. Of course the police want to know about your relationship with him! I want to know about your relationship with him. You came within seconds of smashing him over the head with your guitar in front of half the town. Now you’re hiding out in jail and refusing to say one word about him.” I threw up my hands. “Why should the police even look for anyone else?”
Pete pulled me up from the table by the arm and hustled me away from Aileen before she could take a breath to reply. “Don’t ever start a fight in the jail,” he hissed in my ear. “Get it together right now!” He pulled me to a halt as a guard loomed right in front of us. “Sorry. She’s kind of upset. We’re leaving.”
The shaking in his voice did more to shut me up than anything else he could have done. I whispered, “I’m good,” and walked with him down the hall. I kept quiet while the guards cleared us to exit. We walked out through the double doors, and Pete breathed in a lungful of fresh, unchained air. “I am never taking you there with me again!”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, following him through the lot to his truck. “She makes me crazy. You’d think she likes being in jail.” I could feel myself getting worked up all over again. “What’s wrong with her?”
Pete unlocked the door and slid in to the driver’s seat. “Are you headed home or shall I drop you off somewhere else?”
I hopped into the truck and checked the time. “The ceilidh doesn’t start until seven thirty tonight, so home sounds good.” I kept my eye on the road as he pulled out of the lot. I felt like a driver’s ed teacher taking notes on his skill level. He passed. “Are you free to give me a ride to the ceilidh?”
He gave an exaggerated sigh, to let me know I was imposing on him. “Are you going to behave yourself?”
I dropped my head in my hands, totally trusting him to maneuver the streets in safety. “Yeah. It just freaked me out to see Aileen all ordinary like that. It’s like they sucked out her spirit, leaving a zombie behind or something.”
Pete started laughing so hard he almost lost control of his truck. He swerved into the oncoming lane and quickly overcorrected, sending us sharply in the other direction. Ignoring my loud gasp, he straightened out and drove carefully the rest of the way home, still chuckling.
He pulled up to the curb in front of the house and I unclenched my hand from the door handle. He laid a hand on my arm before I could escape from the truck. “It was weird seeing Aileen without her rock-star getup, I’ll give you that. But she’s no zombie. She’s got some plan going with this silence thing, and there’s no way we’re going to force her to talk. You’ll just have to find out what’s between her and Ladd Foster some other way.” He gave me his crooked smile that I could never resist. “I hope I can count on you to figure that out, just like you can count on me to get you safely to your ceilidh.”
Chapter 8
True to his word, Pete drove me to Hollystone where the Laurel Springs Pipe and Drum Corps was hosting the ceilidh. This stately eighteenth-century mansion, once the mayor’s residence, sat on the northwest corner of Oliphant University and served as the university’s admissions office. I supposed the elegant rooms filled with period furnishings were designed to impress p
rospective students and their tuition-paying parents. Once the students enrolled in the university they never had occasion to enter Hollystone again, and the gracious reception room was available for local parties and events.
I paused on the wide porch flanked by imposing white columns and adjusted my flowing silk skirt. It was my version of the little black dress: a black silk shantung skirt that fell just below the knee, combined with a black tatted lace tunic with a wide neckline and fluttery cap sleeves. Over my shoulders for a wrap, I wore a length of lightweight fabric in the pale purple and green plaid with white accents of the Isle of Skye tartan. I had other fabric that would have made a more striking shawl, but I thought I’d pay a tribute to Morris Hart’s Over the Sea to Skye. Secretly, I wondered if the author would even recognize the tartan, assuming he was here, of course. I wore my thick brown hair down, with only a single pewter comb catching it up in the back. It was a welcome change from the bobby pins that normally pulled my hair away from my eyes so I could concentrate on my sewing.
The subdued sound of bagpipes floated out the open door. Wishing I had brought along a few earplugs, a necessary accessory when one lived with a metal band in the basement, I entered the spacious reception room. A small crowd milled around a lavish refreshment table set with silver and decorated with sprigs of heather. I saw Corgi, decked out in his kilt, hovering around the food. Another group of people surrounded a lone musician sitting on a chair, bending over the bagpipes in his lap. I edged closer, fascinated.
These bagpipes looked nothing like Corgi’s, which he held with the drones over his shoulder and the bag under his arm with a blowpipe to inflate it while he played notes on the chanter attached to the bottom. This piper held the drones across his lap with a bellows under one arm and the bag under the other, both elbows pumping as his fingers flew on the keys of the chanter. The volume was much less than that of the Highland bagpipes, making this instrument far more conducive to an indoor gathering. A couple of tiny girls wearing leggings and bright pink and purple tutus ran over and started spinning and hopping around to the sprightly music. The crowd chuckled dotingly.
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