I had just enough time to open the ruffled white organdy curtains in my fitting room and get the hot cider going before the doorbell rang. I took a deep breath to get myself into a relaxed mental space and let Breanna in.
She bustled in with one eye on her watch, her red hair mussed by the wind, as if she’d driven over with all her windows open. She headed straight for my fitting room. “Thanks for squeezing me in. I can’t get away from work this afternoon, so it’s really helpful to get this done on my lunch hour.”
“No worries.” In addition to teaching Highland dance, Breanna worked in the registrar’s office at the university. I imagined she didn’t have much flexibility in that job.
I held up her gown, displaying the full skirt as she exclaimed with pleasure. “Go put it on.” I steered her to the curtained-off corner of my fitting room. While she changed, I pulled out her sash and tidied up the threads. With any luck, she wouldn’t even notice that the fringe was incomplete.
Breanna emerged from the dressing area and posed in front of my three-way mirror. I took up my pincushion and dressmaker’s chalk and pinned and adjusted the fit of the bodice. Even though she had a limited amount of time available, this part of the fitting was so important. I couldn’t cut any corners or the finished product might sag or pull in all the wrong places. Plus, it was the dressmaker’s due to engage in a good gossip.
“I had such a good time at the ceilidh last night,” I said as an opener.
“Oh, I’m so glad you came. What did you think of the girls dancing to Isabelle’s singing?”
I pulled a pin out of my mouth long enough to reply. “It was lovely. I had a tear in my eye by the end, seriously.”
She beamed, as if making me cry was her main goal.
“Here, lift up your arms a minute.” I checked the tension on the side seams. “I really liked watching Gillian King in the sword dance. She’s learned a lot in these past few months, hasn’t she?”
Breanna held up her arms obediently. “She has, but it’s been a struggle all the same. I’m always afraid she’s going to skip out in the middle of dance class or take up smoking while wearing her dry-clean-only kilt. Her father wants me to be a strict authority figure. I’m not sure I can be strict enough for what Gillian needs.”
“What about her mother?” I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Gillian with a woman at church.
“Oh, she’s not in the picture. It’s just the two of them at home. Ryan does his best, you can’t fault him for that.” She craned her neck to try to see the back of the gown.
“I chatted with Ryan at the ceilidh,” I said, moving to pin up the flowing hem. “He seems like a nice guy.”
Breanna laughed with a small flinch that pulled the pin right out of my fingers. “He can be Mr. Congeniality himself, but he can also be the world’s biggest jerk. There was one time when Gillian sassed me throughout the entire dance practice, when she first started coming. Well, I don’t put up with that kind of disrespect. When her dad came to pick her up, I told him that she would have to shape up or she couldn’t continue dancing. He started yelling at her like nobody’s business. Right in front of the younger girls, too. I was afraid he was going to haul off and clobber her. Since then, I’m a little more careful about what kind of comments I make to Dad.”
I lowered my head, intent on the hem near the floor. “Do you think he ever hits her?”
“If I did, I would have to report it. As a teacher, I’m a mandated reporter for child abuse. I’ve only witnessed yelling, never anything physical.” She turned counterclockwise at my request. “I have no reason to suspect it either. We do a lot of quick costume changes in Highland dance, with little thought for privacy. I’ve never seen any suspicious marks on Gillian’s body.”
“Well, that’s good.” Indeed, I felt a strong rush of relief. It sounded like Breanna was looking out for Gillian. But even the reassurance that he probably wasn’t beating his daughter didn’t answer my question as to whether Ryan King was a murderer. “Gillian was telling me that he’s run off all of the boys who tried to date her. She said he even broke the nose of one boy when he brought her home late from a party. That sounded kind of violent to me.”
“Well, that’s a matter for law enforcement. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ryan has a criminal record. They’ve only lived in Laurel Springs for a couple of years. When I’ve asked Gillian about Cleveland, where they used to live, she totally clams up, so I just let it be.” She pirouetted around so I could see the entire sweep of the hem. “I’m not a social worker, you know. I teach dance in my free time, that’s all.”
“Well, you do a fantastic job of it. I did want to ask you who makes the girls’ costumes. If you ever have need of a seamstress, just let me know.”
She laughed and assured me that I would be first on her list if she ever needed professional help with the costumes. I unpinned the back of her gown and steered her to the changing area. While she dressed, I considered what I’d learned about Ryan, if anything. Breanna’s suggestion that he might have a criminal record piqued my interest. Indeed, if he went around breaking kids’ noses, he probably did have some kind of an assault record. I wondered how I could go about researching that.
Breanna breezed out of the changing area, paused for just an instant to set up her next fitting appointment, and dashed out the front door. On to the next thing.
I carried her gown upstairs and started right in on the alterations I needed to make to the bodice. I liked to get to the changes as soon as possible after a fitting because it was easy to forget or to lose pins or markings if I let the garment lie for any amount of time.
I worked on Breanna’s gown for the next hour or so, until I felt comfortable leaving the rest for later. Then I headed downstairs to look into lunch. The house was so quiet. I was used to Pete being gone much of the day, but Aileen was usually around, making noise and commotion at every turn. With a pang, I wondered how she was faring in jail.
I grabbed a quick lunch and headed out the door for a walk around the neighborhood in the sunshine. I enjoyed the quiet downtown streets in the early afternoon, before kids got out of school to liven things up. I hurried past the brown house with the gingerbread trim where the two Dobermans lived. I had been told they were the gentlest of family dogs, but I had a hard time believing it. Their frenzied barking shattered the peace and quiet until I had passed by and no longer posed a threat. Was Ryan like those Dobermans, all bark and no bite? Or was he capable of the kind of ferocious behavior the breed was known for?
I headed for Cramer’s Pond, the popular downtown park and duck pond that was my favorite place to unwind. The playgrounds were bustling with small children and their parents, while a few older people walked methodically around the pond. I sought out a secluded park bench and sat down to enjoy the sun. I pulled out my phone to do a bit of research.
When I looked up Ryan King, I found a typical number of hits for various people with the same name, but I couldn’t hone in on the one I was looking for. I wasn’t interested in paying for the people-finding services, so I couldn’t come up with anything specific for him. I did try to search the archives of the Cleveland newspaper, The Plain Dealer, but all I came up with was a couple of obituaries. No luck there. I resolved to ask McCarthy if he had any tricks up his sleeve when it came to researching individuals, and moved on to my next topic, the rivalry between Ladd Foster and Patrick Ames. I searched for the Whidbey Island Highland Games from ten years ago.
I was able to find news articles and even YouTube videos from the Games. I watched a younger, slimmer Ladd throwing the caber, followed by several tosses by a similarly younger Patrick. There weren’t any videos of the two of them arguing. News articles focused on the surprise ending to the Games, when Ladd outstripped the heavily favored Patrick and captured the title as winner of the heavy athletics. The article went on to insinuate that Patrick had cheated, without mentioning any w
rongdoing on Ladd’s part. I imagined Patrick would resent that kind of negative publicity. It wasn’t hard to see how their lifelong enmity was born. I shivered, reflecting that the enmity had indeed lasted until the end of Ladd’s life. Had Patrick had a hand in that ending?
I spent some time doing Internet searches on each one of them by name. I learned that they’d competed against each other in over twenty games throughout the past ten years. In most of those games, there was some report about one or the other of them cheating, although proof was never forthcoming. I wondered why they both hadn’t been thrown out of the sport for good. I also noticed that one particular name showed up in almost all the articles: Herman Tisdale. The name sounded familiar—it took me a few minutes to remember that he was the announcer from our own Highland Games. Evidently, he was a former athlete who had competed alongside Ladd and Patrick until he retired four years ago. It looked like he was keeping his hand in by running the Laurel Springs Highland Games this summer. I wondered what he could tell me about the Ladd-Patrick rivalry. I resolved to track him down at my earliest convenience, and then I shelved that idea and looked up his phone number to call him on the spot. No time like the present! I introduced myself and asked if we could meet to talk about his time competing in the heavy athletics. I might have misled him into thinking I was doing a story for the newspaper. At any rate, he agreed right away to meet me in an hour’s time.
I sent a text to McCarthy, asking if he’d like to come along to meet Tisdale. I figured if I brought a Daily Chronicle photographer along, Tisdale couldn’t accuse me of arranging a meeting under false pretenses.
He texted me back: “Nosy seamstress has a lead? Happy to come along for the ride!”
I slipped my phone in my pocket with a smile and got up from the park bench to head home. As I strolled down the sidewalk, I tried to think of what questions I wanted to ask Herman Tisdale. Good thing I wasn’t really a newspaper reporter, as the thought of coming up with interview questions made me anxious. I resolved to just let things happen naturally.
McCarthy showed up forty-five minutes later and followed the detailed directions Tisdale had given me to get to his home on the south side of town near the Southern Reserve. It took us an extra ten minutes to find the house once we located his street. For some reason, half the houses had no visible numbers on them, leaving visitors to guess which one was which. We ended up knocking on three doors before we hit on Tisdale’s house. He lived in a small ranch house with neatly mown grass and an army of mossy garden gnomes lining the stone path to the front door.
Tisdale answered my knock. On close inspection, he was a brawny man of late middle age with thinning hair and a perpetually red nose. He wore corduroy trousers and an oversize Phillies T-shirt that revealed his thick, muscular arms. He acknowledged McCarthy and me with an exuberant smile.
“Come in, come in! Always a pleasure to talk with representatives of the media!”
He led us into a small living room bursting with jumbled bookcases, no less than three leather recliners, piles of newspapers and magazines, and an elegant silver tea service laid out on the coffee table. He waved at the recliners and carefully poured us each a cup of tea from the steaming pot.
I sat down gingerly, balancing my tea and hoping the recliner wouldn’t flip me backward without warning. I had a good view of the rows of built-in shelves flanking the doorway. They contained an impressive collection of trophies, cups, and ribbons I assumed were from his days as a competitor in various Highland games.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Tisdale,” I said.
“Please, call me Herman. You said you wanted to know about my history as a Highland athlete.”
I gave him my most winning smile. “I’m particularly interested in the Whidbey Island Games that took place ten years ago. I’ve heard there were only three athletes who threw the caber that day: you, Ladd Foster, and Patrick Ames. What was that competition like?”
“That was the first time I’d ever been to Whidbey Island. Only time, for that matter. I had to take a ferry to get there, and I was seasick the whole way. If I hadn’t planned it so that I got there a day ahead, I would have been useless in the heavy events.” He leaned forward and shook a finger at me. “Always plan a day to acclimate when you’re traveling cross-country. That’s the best advice I have to give you.” He paused, and I realized he expected me to take down this quote. I pulled out a notebook and jotted it down. McCarthy watched me with a secret smile in his eyes.
“So, tell me about the caber toss,” I went on. “What did you think of your competitors?”
“Well, that was Patrick Ames’s debut, you know. He was an up-and-comer, just like Jamie Deakens this past weekend. Patrick was one of the best rookies I’d ever seen. He handled that caber like he was used to throwing logs around his backyard for fun.”
I briefly wondered how one trained for the caber toss, but that wasn’t what I’d come here to learn. “What about Ladd Foster?”
A look of profound sadness filled his eyes. “Laddy was one of a kind. You’ll never meet anyone so full of life as he was.” He set his teacup down on the floor. “Ladd and I were drinking buddies in those days. Whenever we showed up at the same competitions, we would do everything we could to beat the other on the field, and then we’d close down the bars together afterward. And when I say ‘everything,’ I mean everything. Laddy was the dirtiest cheater I’ve ever met.” He chuckled. “There was that one time—in Dunedin, Florida, I think it was—when he sabotaged one of the cabers by drilling a hole in it beforehand. He’d arranged with a couple of teenagers to stage a fight on the field as a distraction while he pulled out the wood plug he’d stuck in and inserted a steel bar. So the caber was a good ten pounds heavier for all his competitors than it was for him. None of us saw what happened. Guess who won the caber toss that day?”
Realizing it wasn’t a rhetorical question, I said, “Ladd?”
Tisdale slapped his knee. “You got it! He crowed about it over drinks afterward. The thing about Laddy was, you could never hold stuff like that against him. You just had to take it as a challenge to try to get him back the next time.”
I wasn’t sure I could be so unconcerned about habitual cheating. “What about Patrick? Did he hold stuff like that against Ladd?”
“Oh, Patrick.” Tisdale blew out a gusty sigh. “Patrick had this idea that he was going to make a fortune, or even just a living, as a Highland athlete. I told him if you want to make it big in sports, pick football, for crying out loud. But he wanted to be the Terry Bradshaw of caber tossing or something. So of course he didn’t take kindly to Ladd’s cheating. He was always trying to get the officials to disqualify him. But Laddy could be pretty sneaky, so you couldn’t always prove he was cheating. You just had to roll with it, I guess. Poor Patrick, he never learned how to do that.” He picked up his teacup and poured himself a refill. “You saw him this weekend with the pole push, right? Ladd wasn’t even cheating yet, but Patrick went into the match with a chip on his shoulder. All that struggle and fighting—it was all Patrick.”
McCarthy was taking notes in his small spiral-bound notebook. “Do you think Patrick could have had something to do with Ladd’s collapse?”
Tisdale frowned. “They say somebody poisoned Laddy’s whiskey. What a horrible way to go! But it must have been somebody who knew Ladd well, to know he would be taking a wee dram now and again during the competitions. Could it have been Patrick?” He pursed his lips. “It’s possible. I hate to say it, but it is possible.” He scratched his head and reconsidered. “I wouldn’t have thought it of him, though. He’s still trying to make it in the caber-tossing business. Committing murder doesn’t get you any sponsors, does it?”
“What about Ladd? Was he trying to make a living as a Highland athlete?” I asked.
Tisdale laughed. “Ladd? I doubt it. Laddy had a hand in all kinds of different things. Back in the day, he had a ba
nd he was touring with. He played banjo and guitar and sang too. He had a nice baritone voice, for all that. At one time, we all thought he was going to make it big, but that fell through. He broke up with the young woman he was touring with and moved on to take up sailing. He said he wanted to sail around the world. There was always something with him.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m going to miss him, and that’s the truth.”
I took pity on him at the sight of his mournful face. “I saw a bunch of trophies in the living room. What can you tell us about those?”
Tisdale led us back to the living room and posed with his trophies while McCarthy took a series of photographs. He lovingly described each trophy and the event it was associated with and told a snappy anecdote about nearly every one. When the litany was finished, I figured it was about time to wrap things up.
“Thank you so much for having us here this afternoon,” I said. “If you think of anything else about the Highland Games we might need to know, or about Ladd Foster, please be in touch.”
I shot McCarthy a glance, which he correctly interpreted. He pulled out a card and handed it to Tisdale. “You can reach me at the Laurel Springs Daily Chronicle.”
Tisdale turned the card over and over in his hands, seemingly reluctant to let us go. I took a deep breath to resist my natural impulse to get on with it and simply waited. McCarthy followed my lead.
After a full minute of silence, Tisdale shoved McCarthy’s card into his pocket. “You’ll be printing an obituary for Ladd in the newspaper, right?”
I had no idea.
McCarthy, sensing my hesitation, stepped in. “Usually the family provides the obituary, oftentimes through the funeral home. I haven’t heard if Ladd’s family has approached the paper.” He paused, waiting for Tisdale to make the next move.
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