Scones and Scoundrels

by Molly Macrae

  “I’m sure you’re right, sweetie. I’ll forget all about it and focus on these scones.” Janet took another bite. “They’re orange, no question. A hint of almond? And something else, but I’m not sure what. What do you think?”

  “That you aren’t really sure I’m right about Summer. You only call me sweetie when you’re distracted.”

  “What an interesting tic. How long have you been taking advantage of it? But you know, dear, you can’t always be right. That’s my job. I’m the smother.”

  Tallie laughed, as Janet knew she would. “Never in your life have you smothered,” Tallie said. “You are the very model of unsmothering motherhood. But going all Mother Hen is another story. You do know that Summer won’t appreciate you clucking over her, don’t you?” She wrapped her scone in the napkin and put it on the bottom shelf of the book cart, then looked at her mother over the rims of her glasses.

  “And she won’t appreciate you ignoring that scone,” Janet said.

  “Saving, not ignoring. It’s Monday. I want to get these books put away before the Highland Holidays coach pulls in after lunch.”

  “Good thinking. Do you want help?”

  “Nah. I’ll shelve the books. You shelve your worries.”

  Janet mimed putting a book on a shelf. “There you go. Under U for Unfounded.”

  “And if you ever write your memoirs, I’ll shelve them under N for Nuts I’ve Known and Loved.”

  Janet blew Tallie a kiss and watched her disappear with the cart of books down the aisle between some of the tallest and most eclectic of their mismatched bookcases. She finished her scone, thinking of it as fortification for the onslaught of day trippers the Monday tour bus out of Fort William usually brought. The identity of the spice that complimented the orange so well in the scone eluded her. But that was what labels in the bakery case were for.

  She wiped her fingers on her napkin and congratulated herself. She still had a mother’s touch. And a mother’s ability to reassure her child, no matter how old, how accomplished, or how astute that child might be. What Tallie hadn’t heard about bloody murder wouldn’t hurt her.

  2

  On the other hand,” Janet said to Christine during a lull half an hour later, “it won’t hurt for me to run over to the school and talk to Gillian myself.”

  They stood in the door between the bookshop and the tearoom, Christine not quite towering over Janet. An acquaintance had once called Christine “willowy” and Janet “pillowy.” Christine had shot back that they preferred “acutely angular” and “amply cute.”

  “Take a couple of our new scones with you,” Christine said. “If Gillian is dealing with Sharon-the-librarian on a murderous rampage, on top of wrangling a fussy author-not-yet-in-residence, she’ll need something to bolster her spirits.”

  “Good thought.”

  “If not something for a last meal.”

  “Tcha.”

  Janet and Christine had met in an elementary school in Champaign, Illinois. Christine, the transplanted Scot, had been a school social worker. Janet, the public librarian and daughter of a pig farmer, had been her son’s show-and-tell demonstration that day. She’d woken ears in every classroom the length and breadth of the school with a reenactment of her state fair blue ribbon champion pig call. Christine claimed it was friendship at first soooooo-ey.

  “And imagine what else Gillian might be dealing with,” Christine said. “What if the list you saw is the least of her worries? What if that’s only the preposterous tip of an absurd iceberg of even more ridiculous authorial demands?”

  “I’m sure it’s not,” Janet said. “You’re usually more matter-of-fact than this, Christine. What’s gotten into you? The committee’s been working out the details for this program for months.”

  “No doubt,” Christine said. “For a year, more than likely.”

  “And with the amount of money that must be involved to bring Daphne Wood here for most of a school term, somewhere along the way they would have asked her for references.”

  “Must have done,” Christine said. “References, background checks, and whatnot galore. That’s the way things are done these days, isn’t it? And a good thing, too. Especially where children are concerned. Wait here a moment. Incoming.” She went to greet two couples who’d come into the tearoom through its front door.

  One of the women took a moment to look around before sitting with the others at the table in the tearoom’s front window. Janet followed her glance as she took in the brightly painted walls. The woman lifted her nose and sniffed, turned to look out at the harbor, and then sank into the chair Christine held for her. The look of approval on her face was exactly what Janet had hoped to see.

  The couples laughed at something Christine said when she left them. She stopped at two other tables on her way back to Janet, leaning in at one to better hear an elderly woman. The woman patted Christine’s arm and Christine put her own hand over the gnarled fingers.

  “An old friend of Mum’s,” Christine said when she returned. “She prefers our tearoom to the scandalous T-shirt shop we replaced. Why are you still standing here? We have businesses to run.”

  “You asked me to wait. You were backpedaling on your worries over further ridiculous authorial demands.”

  “So I was. Well, no need to worry.” Christine flapped the worry away with her hand. “I’ve been practicing that empathy meditation you turned me on to. Putting myself into some other poor sod’s shoes. I tell you, it’s really been helping me deal with Mum, the poor old dear. You see? I just called her ‘poor old dear,’ showing that I empathize with her for being as old as the fairies—and away with them, as often as not.”

  “I’m not sure you’ve understood the underlying philosophy, Christine.”

  “Does that matter? I feel calmer and more in tune. And there, did you hear that? I’m reverting nicely to my native accent. Dear old Mum will still say I’m hopelessly Americanized but I can still say tune as God intended.” She’d pronounced it closer to chune than tune.

  “And by ‘God,’ you mean Robert Burns.”

  “Of course. And what you just now called my worries over further ridiculous authorial demands was merely a meditational glitch. My empathy took a wrong turn and put me in Sharon’s head. Now, there’s a woman who might need help.” Christine tapped a forefinger to her temple.

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” Janet said. “And I hope this whole thing doesn’t get off to a bad start. I know you can’t judge authors by their books any more than you can books by their covers, but I think I’m going to like Daphne Wood.”

  “Anyone who’s spent her adult life living in the woods like Goldilocks with a bunch of bears has my admiration,” Christine said. “I like Gillian, too, so remember to take the scones when you go see her. Anyone who spends her days cooped up with teenagers and their hormones, trying to drum English literature into their heads, also has my admiration and, moreover, deserves an award.”

  Janet called the Inversgail High School, hoping to catch Gillian on her lunch hour. She didn’t, and instead left a message on her voice mail.

  “It’s Janet Marsh, Gillian, wondering if you can give me a few minutes after school. It’s just some last-minute questions about the signing, and I’ll be over that way, anyway, so I’ll stop by. If that won’t be convenient, give me a call.” Janet flicked her phone off. When she looked up, Tallie had slipped in behind the sales counter.

  “You’ll be over by the school?” Tallie asked, giving her mother another look over the rims of her glasses before pushing them up her nose.

  “I will be once I walk over there. But I didn’t want to worry her and make it sound dire by telling her I’m making a special trip. I’m sure she has enough on her plate. Besides,” Janet avoided Tallie’s eye and patted her hips, “it’s about time I got more exercise, don’t you think? Because sampling Summer’s scones day in and day out isn’t doing me any favors. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “What questions d
o we have about the signing?” Tallie asked. “Anything to do with the irate librarian this morning?”

  “Things I could easily ask her over the phone. But it shouldn’t take more than half an hour there and back.”

  “Except Gillian’s a chatter,” Tallie said.

  “I’ll tell her I have to get back. Keep her on task. Besides, doesn’t it look like a lovely day for a walk?”

  “Better take your umbrella.”

  “Good idea.”

  Janet took her walk during what they’d been calling the nappish part of the afternoon. It came after most of the deluge of tourist buses had departed Inversgail and before the after-work dribble of customers arrived in the shop. It was generally a safe time for one of them to get out to the shops—to “do their messages,” as Christine and Scots the country over called shopping.

  And there, Janet thought as she passed the chemist. That’s something interesting about Summer. She still says drugstore, not chemist. She still does her shopping, not her messages, and she brings in the mail, never the post.

  The more Janet thought about it, the more she realized she was right. Not that she or Tallie were trying to pass themselves off as natives. Far from it. But Janet did try hard not to be so American that she turned heads. Was she—and Tallie, too—having an easier time making the language segue because they’d spent so many summers in Inversgail? Or was Summer making a conscious effort to avoid adopting local vocabulary? Was this an interesting tic of Summer’s? Janet didn’t know. If it was, she wondered what it meant.

  Or maybe I don’t want to know what it means, she thought. Not if it means Summer’s having trouble adjusting to the move. Or if it means she doesn’t want to adjust because she wants to go home.

  Janet stopped and faced the harbor. She filled her lungs, enjoying the scents of seaweed, salt, and fish. Slowly, she let the breath out and then filled her lungs again. They weren’t in Illinois anymore, and that suited her more than she’d imagined it would. But they were all also working harder than any of them had probably imagined. It was late August and the days would grow colder, shorter, and darker. She could understand regrets and second thoughts.

  Another deep breath, in and out.

  A breeze lifted the hair from her forehead. That breeze had skipped across the waves from the sheltering Western Isles. It kited an empty crisps bag into the street before whispering between the shops and over the houses and up into the hills and beyond.

  Janet filled her lungs deeply one more time. As she released the breath, she pictured her worries catching the tail of the breeze and following it over the hills and far away. It was a fine hope, but about as practical as shelving the worries under U for Unfounded back at the shop. She didn’t mind laughing at impracticalities, though, or herself, and continued up the High Street with a chuckle and a shake of her head.

  “Up the High Street” was, in this case, literal. The main street of shops skirted the harbor and then took a puffing climb up the headland that marked the northern edge of town. A thin strip of white sand beach lay below the headland. Both the Inversgail Library and Archives and the Inversgail High School sat atop it, one behind the other.

  Janet pushed herself to climb the hill at an aerobic clip rather than her usual stroll. When she reached the library, she stopped to admire the view of the Western Isles. It was a crisp, clear day, and she knew the view would take her breath, if only she hadn’t already lost it in the climb. Giving her prairie-bred legs and lungs another few minutes to recover, she debated which further stamina-improving route she should follow to the school. She had two options: the first leg of a new footpath starting in a garden outside the library and running past the school before it trekked into Glen Sgail, or the more prosaic and straightforward pavement. She checked the time; the pavement won.

  The library and high school buildings, not quite five years old, were built on land left to the town by the same Stuart Farquhar who’d established the bookshop. Farquhar’s family house—he’d called it his Victorian pile—had crowned the headland until it burned a few years after his death. Only his garden remained.

  Inversgailians were proud of their modern school and library, with their state-of-the-art connectedness to the whole wide world. The local council felt shrewd for having slipped under a wire of opportunity to secure government funding for the buildings. That wire had since been pulled tight, cutting off monies for other towns that hadn’t been as nimble.

  Janet liked the looks of the new school. Its design gave a nod to traditional highland architecture, with gable ends and clean white walls, but on a much larger scale than a croft house. And the school gained a sense of vigor and light from a dozen or more tall windows looking toward the library, the harbor, and the sea. A much more inviting place to learn than schools that look like industrial office blocks, Janet thought.

  A couple of girls on their way out held the door for her, and she entered an airy lobby hung with artwork. A sign told her it was a show of student and faculty work inspired by the writings of Daphne Wood, the soon-to-be author-in-residence. Janet was impressed by the talent, and immediately pictured student and faculty art hanging in the bookshop or the tearoom. She made a quick note in her phone to bring the idea up with her partners and then followed an arrow to the administrative office.

  Several students were there ahead of her, waiting for the attention of a woman behind a barricade-like desk. Janet joined the short queue, only to be waved forward out of turn. With apologies, she moved ahead of the students.

  “Janet Marsh for Gillian Bennett,” she told the woman. “She’s expecting me.”

  The woman made eye contact long enough to say, “Staffroom, no doubt. I’ll ring. Step aside.” She gave equally efficient answers to the students while she waited, with the phone to her ear, for someone in the staffroom to answer. No one did, and she turned her attention back to Janet. “Classroom, then. Sign the clipboard, please. Do you know the way?”

  Janet added her name to the list of school visitors, then followed the woman’s directions to Gillian’s classroom, which she gave with the crisp hand signals of a traffic warden—left out of the office, straight away down the corridor, left again at the first opportunity, door on the right halfway along, number thirty-three.

  Janet enjoyed repeating the room number softly to herself, with its full complement of rolled Rs, until she remembered the less delightful rolled R of that morning. Murder. And not just murder, but bloody murder. Should she warn Gillian of that plot, she wondered? Let her know that Sharon had asked if she’d like a chance at killing Gillian? No, probably not. Janet did know Gillian, but not well enough to gauge how seriously she’d take such a statement. Because, although of course Sharon’s question about committing bloody murder had certainly not been serious, Sharon had been seriously angry. Likely not angry enough to kill, though, so why look for trouble?

  Janet turned left where she was meant to turn left. Looking down the corridor, she saw a woman about Tallie’s age standing outside an open classroom door, halfway along on the right. Gillian’s room, presumably. The woman laughed at something going on in the room and then, with a hand on her hip and an exaggerated flounce, launched into an animated response or remark of her own. Janet slowed her steps, then she stopped, not wanting to interrupt or intrude.

  “A prima donna if ever there was one,” the woman said, doing a sloppy pirouette. “Right down to her—” On her second revolution she saw Janet and lurched sideways. She steadied herself with one hand on the doorframe, and with the other she smoothed her skirt.

  “Are you all right?” Janet asked.

  “Looked a bit of a fool, didn’t I?” the woman said. “Sorry, can I help?”

  “I’m here to see Gillian Bennett. Is she—” Janet tipped her head toward the door the woman was now blocking.

  “Bad luck. I think you’ve missed her.” The woman turned and called to whoever was in the room, “She’s missed Gillian, hasn’t she?”

  “Who has?�
� a male voice answered. A man came to the door, tall with a broad forehead and close-cut dark hair. The woman moved aside and he pulled the door shut behind him. “From the bookshop, aren’t you?” he said with a nod to Janet. “Jenny? Janie? Janet.” He crossed his arms over his chest, looking satisfied with the last answer, but rumpling his tie.

  “Janet, yes. Janet Marsh. You have a good memory.” Janet had seen this man before but his memory had the advantage over hers. She was one of a mere four new owners of the bookshop, while he was one of at least several hundred Scotsmen she’d seen in Yon Bonnie Books over the past four months. He’d been in the shop with Gillian, though. He taught math, or was it science? Tom.

  “And you’re Tom,” she said, happy to have sifted half his name from her head. “But I’ve forgotten your last name.”

  “No worries. It won’t be the last name I’m called.”

  “Gomeril,” the woman said to him. To Janet, she said, “He’s Tom Laing, but he’s short on manners.” She held her hand out. “Hello, I’m Hope Urquhart. I work with Gillian in the English department. I knew I’d seen you somewhere. I’m afraid I don’t get into the bookshop as often as I’d like. I’ll be there for the signing a week Sunday, though. Or will we see you at the ceilidh Friday night? First look at the visiting author, and honoring Gillian’s dad and all? Should be a grand time.”

  “Plenty of drink,” Tom said. “Surprising how that helps on these occasions.”

  “Hush, you,” said Hope. “Great food and music. And dancing. I’m far less clumsy when it comes to Dashing White Sergeants.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Janet said.

  “See you there, then. And you, Tom, behave yourself.”

  Tom’s answer to that was a half-smile. Without knowing him better, Janet hesitated to think of it as a smirk. She watched his face as he watched Hope walk away, though, and the possible smirk turned briefly into what might be a leer. When Hope disappeared around the corner, Tom flicked a glance at Janet and she felt as though she’d been caught spying. She covered her embarrassment by holding up the bag with the scones.