Scot & Soda

by Catriona McPherson

  “It’s got engraving at the top,” I said. “Four letters. Numbers. Letters. Numbers.”

  “Can you read them?” Todd said.

  “BC545,” I said. At least, I might have said it. It didn’t feel like me anymore.

  “What’s underneath the engraving?” Todd said.

  “A finger,” said the voice that might have been me. Far away on the couch someone giggled and someone hushed them.

  “What’s lower down the face of the ring than the engraving?” Todd said.

  “A stone,” said the voice. “A blue and yellow stone. A marble. A stone. A marble. Glass. A glass stone.”

  “Anything else?” The voice was strained.

  “Three bubbles. Circles. Bubbles. Three balls. Bubbles.”

  “You’re feeling refreshed and calm. You’re coming back. You’re waking up. You’re alert and awake. You’re a freaking maniac when you’re hypnotised, Lexy.”

  I sat up blinking. Todd was flushed and breathing fast. The three on the couch were clutching each other, gnawing knuckles and stuffing shirttails into mouths to smother helpless laughter. One of the bowls of chips was spilled all over the floor.

  “Did it work?” I said.

  Todd thrust a pad of paper and a Sharpie into my hands. “Draw it before you forget,” he commanded.

  I took the pen and sketched a pretty skillful drawing of a big ugly lumpen ring with the legend BC545 across the top, a yin-yang swirl of a stone in the middle and three little circles underneath. One on the left and two on the right.

  “You’re sure those three bubbles were laid out like that?” Todd said. “It looks unbalanced.”

  “That’s what I saw,” I said.

  “Never mind that!” said Kathi, coming to stand behind me and look at the sketch. “BC545? Maybe that’s why it disappeared!”

  “Why?” I said.

  “One of the frogmen stole it,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “To sell, of course,” Kathi said. “To sell on the black market and fund his kids’ college careers.”

  “How come?” I said. “What does BC545 mean?”

  Kathi gave me the kind of look you’d give to an idiot. “You’re an idiot,” she said. “It means it’s over two and a half thousand years old!”

  “If the bronze age jeweller who made it happened to know when Christ was going to be born,” I pointed out.

  “Oh yeah,” said Kathi, rubbing her nose.

  I noticed that nobody spilled their chips laughing at her, even though that was dumber than anything I’d ever said by far.

  “But you’re right about what must have happened to it,” Noleen said. “That was smart thinking, Kath.”

  I felt a little slump inside. I didn’t mind being single and I loved my friends, but it would be nice to have a partner sometimes. Someone to soothe my pride after I’d made a complete fool of myself. That must be sweet.

  “You think one of the divers pocketed it?” I said. “So even if it’s not an ancient artifact, you think it might be valuable?”

  “What stones are blue and yellow?” said Roger.

  “Sapphire with the gold of the setting sun showing through?” said Todd. “A sapphire that size would be worth a decent chunk.”

  “But aren’t the frogmen actual police?” I said.

  “Maybe in New Orleans they are,” said Roger. “Or San Francisco. Somewhere with water. What’s the bet they’re hired by the hour from the local diving club here in Cuento?”

  “Something else to check out,” said Todd. “Along with the vet

  student.”

  “And the pet groomer,” I said. “Before Della takes out a contract on me.”

  Seven

  Cuento is at its best early on a November morning. For a Scot anyway. It’s still t-shirt weather but the ground fog tamps the dust down and the low sunlight burnishes the dying leaves on the walnut trees turning them briefly picturesque. What a disappointment walnut trees are! Their blossom isn’t a blossom for a start. It’s little grey-green wormy things, that look like diseased leaves unless you put your reading specs on. And in autumn they turn a uniform shade of donkey brown, curl up like crumpled lunch bags, and let go at the first puff of wind. And as for the walnuts? Well, okay, the walnuts are gorgeous but they’re ten dollars a carrier bag at the fruit stand, so it’s hardly worth going out gleaning like some nineteenth-century peasant. And they’re a bugger if you step on one when you’re bladdered.

  But this morning, as Todd and I skirted the south end of town headed round to the stables at mucking out time, Cuento was doing its Brigadoon impersonation and doing it beautifully too.

  Todd was kitted out in an L.L.Bean-looking red puffy waistcoat with a beanie on.

  “Aren’t you hot?” I said.

  “It’s winter,” said Todd. “In fact, let’s stop at Daivz for hot chocolate, in case we end up standing around talking to Kimberly and get chilly.”

  “Unless she’s hanging her horse for butcher meat and won’t come out of the cold store, it doesn’t seem likely,” I said. “But I could go for an iced Americano. We could get her something too as a sweetener.”

  Daivz, the cool coffeeshop in the downtown as opposed to the drive-through out by the self-storage, did make the best cocoa, it was true. If the temperature ever dropped low enough for me to put a cardigan on, I might even order one.

  “You sure you want iced?” said Todd. “Is this the beginning of the menopause?”

  “Sod off back to Ireland and plant your potatoes,” I said. I leaned out of the window as he was crossing the street. “Get pastries!”

  He didn’t answer unless you count the extra wiggle he gave, like his bum was winking at me. I was still watching him when something more interesting than an out-of-bounds (although undeniably pretty) bum crossed my field of view. It was the cat groomer again.

  I’d have said it was a different car, but then I don’t really care about cars enough to notice them properly, and it was definitely the same decal: line drawing of a cat, emetic poem about a cat, and six numbers followed by FELIX. 10-23-17 FELIX. I keyed it in and waited.

  “Yup?” said the voice that answered my call.

  “Hi again,” I said. “This is Lexy Campbell. I called a couple of days ago. Maybe it was only yesterday. There’s a lot going on. About booking an appointment.”

  “For?”

  “Grooming. Two kittens. Pretty urgent. They might need sedation.”

  “Who is this?” the voice said.

  “Lexy Campbell?” I said. “But they’re not my kittens. I’m calling for a friend. Oh! But it’s my money. You’d be sending the bill to me.”

  “Oh it’s your money? You’re helping out a friend?” She didn’t sound like a cat groomer. Cat groomers should be friendly and a bit mental.

  “Flynn and Florian,” I said. “The kittens. The friend is Diego. But you wouldn’t be dealing with him. He’s—”

  “Oh I wouldn’t be dealing with Diego, huh?” She sounded … like someone who didn’t work in any job where customer relations had a part to play.

  “Or maybe I’ll try again at a better time,” I said. “It’s early.”

  I clicked the phone off and then stared at it. Truth is, I was beginning to get used to the insane levels of courtesy and service in California. I was beginning to like getting smiled at and greeted like a long-lost cousin in shops. I was beginning to love knowing my waiter’s name so I could call him over and ask for another substitution on top of the five I’d already described while I was ordering.

  “’Sup?” said Todd, arriving back with the coffees.

  “Nowt,” I said. The day I admitted I liked friendly waiters and helpful shop assistants was the day I would have to eat crow like the Beteo County all-star crow-eating champion at the state fair. And the day I admitted I like
d the eating competitions at the state fair, I might as well give up and buy a Tesla.

  Early as it was, the stables were hopping. Muck was being raked, concrete hosed, and enormous bags of hay lugged around, making the stable girls look like dung beetles. There was even a class returning from a riding lesson. Americans—and I’d never get used to this, no matter what drive-through, boxed-to-go, download-the-free-app weirdness I managed to wrap my head round—didn’t half get up early. School started before eight. The lunch rush was over by one. Blue plate specials kicked in at half four, and late-night telly got going before the sun went down. That probably wasn’t even the first riding lesson of the day.

  Kimberly didn’t take much finding, despite being identical to every other girl in the stables, not to mention the horses. Long limbs, good hair, great teeth, ton of expensive kit. She was standing picturesquely framed against the morning light rising over the distant mountains, pummelling a pony’s behind with two brushes, like a shoeshine man. The pony was steaming gently in the cool air and its breath was shot through with sunbeams. Kimberly herself—in long boots, tight jodhpurs, and a skimpy little thing that looked like a stab-vest (but couldn’t be)—looked like a Hollister catalogue made flesh. Not much flesh either. She accepted the cocoa and cinnamon roll Todd offered and inhaled both without blinking.

  “I’m carb-loading,” she said, ruining it. “Cardio day today.”

  Todd chatted knowledgably with her for a minute or two about ketogenics and fascia breakdown. I wasn’t quite sure enough that they were kinds of dressage steps to join in, so I waited, patting the pony on her steaming rump and trying not to notice the stump of her tail, sticking out like a spoon in a pudding.

  “Agnetha, right?” I said, when Todd ran out of small talk. “Poor baby.”

  Kimberly turned her mouth down and nodded.

  “Will it grow back?”

  “Eventually,” she said. “In a year or two.”

  “What do you think it was about?” I said. “Have you ever heard of someone doing that before?”

  “No way,” said Kimberly. “Freaky.” Maybe it was unconscious, but as she spoke, she took the scrunchie off her own lustrous, coppery tail of hair and ran her fingers through it. I must have imagined the pony giving her a look that said Bitch, please.

  “And it wasn’t for the hair itself, was it?” I said. “I mean, you said it was dropped all over the path, so you skidded in it. Right?”

  “Right,” Kimberly said. She pulled her own hair halfway through the scrunchie again and left it in a messy hank on top of her head. The pony rolled her eyes, I swear to God.

  “Unless it was just a few hairs left on the path,” said Todd, “and the assailant took most of it away?”

  “No,” said Kimberly. “It was a lot. All of it, I think.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone?” I said. “Stealthy, eh?”

  “Quick anyway,” Kimberly said.

  “And you didn’t hear anything either?” said Todd. “That’s the thing that’s troubling me. I mean, if it was quick enough to not spook the horse, how’d the guy—let’s say it was a guy—manage to cut through all this really strong, thick hair?” He was brushing his hand over the raw ends of Agnetha’s tail stump as he spoke. She looked round, affronted, and the skin on her enormous bum twitched and flinched.

  “Sorry,” Todd said and took his hand away. “But you see what I mean? He’d need shears to do it quickly and you’d hear the blades. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Did you have a riding helmet on?” I said. I couldn’t remember the picture in the paper. “Do they cover your ears?

  “So many questions!” Kimberly said. She was looking more uncomfortable than I could account for. Even more uncomfortable than Agnetha.

  “I don’t think it’s a guy behind this,” I said, barely aware of deciding to speak. Kimberly gave me a frozen look. “Seriously. That doesn’t strike me as something a guy would do. Chopping off a ponytail is girl’s stuff.”

  “Delilah?” said Todd.

  “Right, Kimberly?” I said, ignoring him. Kimberly stared at me, horrorstruck. “You know who it was, don’t you?” I said. “You suspect someone, anyway. Someone jealous of you, or of Agnetha? Someone you’ve had run-ins with? I don’t know what stables are like for intrigue. Anything like gyms? More like schools?”

  “You—you mean you think someone did this because they think Agnetha is pretty and they’re jealous? That they wanted to make her ugly? Someone who doesn’t—doesn’t—doesn’t like me?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said, alarmed by how hard the notion had hit her. She surely had had a pretty golden life so far. “It might have been more like a threat.”

  Kimberly had been raking through her long hair again. Maybe it was how she comforted herself. But when she caught my meaning, she wound her mane into a rope and tucked it down inside the neck of her stab vest.

  “It’s only a theory,” Todd said. “And it might be nothing to do with you. Or Agnetha. You might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, because of some other incidents that took place in town, we think that’s probably the most likely scenario, don’t we Lexy?” He glared at me. I had spooked our witness good and proper and we hadn’t even done what we came here to do yet.

  “We do,” I said. “We think this was set up to play out and you two, Agnetha and you, got mixed up in it for reasons that are nothing to do with either of you. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. You could safely take that same route—if it’s your favourite ride or whatever. That spot is nothing significant.”

  I thought I was ladling out tip-top comfort, but Kimberly was looking frozen again.

  “That place is nothing significant?” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean the incidents that unfolded at Halloween have their source elsewhere and else … when.”

  “You mean,” she said, her eyes huge and her voice so taut that she was unnerving the pony. Agnetha shifted restlessly and threw her head up. “You mean I’m not safe anywhere? Even if I avoid the bridge?”

  “No, no, no,” said Todd. “That’s not what she meant at all. It’s a language thing, Kimberly. Brits are hard to decipher, you know. Elsewhen isn’t even a word in American.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Todd kicked me. Well, not really, but he moved his foot so it pressed against mine and his meaning was clear.

  “And, look, we don’t want to take up any more of your day,” he went on. “We’ve just got one more favor to ask you. We want you to look at a photograph and see if you recognize someone.”

  “Okay,” Kimberly said. Maybe she had spent her whole life around horses and it was rubbing off, but I swear her skin was twitching now and she was paddling her feet in her shiny boots just the same way Agnetha paddled her shiny hooves.

  Todd gave her a kind smile and drew his phone out of his back pocket. He had set it up so the modified picture of Tam was right there when he swiped it open. He showed the screen to Kimberly, who immediately started nodding.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think so. I couldn’t swear to it, in a court of law, but yes, I think that’s the man who cut off Agnetha’s tail. I’m sure I’ve seen him hanging around the stables. I think he used to sit on the bus bench at the edge of the pavement. He never talked to me, but he always looked. You know that way some guys look at you. Yes, that’s him. Tell the police I said so.”

  “Thank you,” Todd said. “That’s all we needed to know. We’ll let you get on with your day.”

  Back in the car, we both tried talking over each other.

  “What the hell?” was my brilliant contribution. “It can’t have been Tam!”

  “You screwed that up royally,” was what Todd went for.

  “What? What did I do? Tam was days dead!”

  “You freaked her out saying it was some mast
er plan and she can’t put it behind her. You made her lie to us.”

  “I would have freaked her out, if I’d said that,” I admitted. “But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything like that. And anyway …”

  Todd said nothing for a while as he navigated one of Cuento’s hairiest four-way stops—the one with a bike rack too close to the roadway, a tree with too many squirrels, and sudden swerving from pedestrians when they saw the smiling chump with the SPLC clipboard.

  “And anyway what?” he snapped once we were past it all and headed under the tracks again.

  “There’s something off about the whole thing, don’t you think?” I said. “The pony stops dead and won’t cross the bridge. While it’s stopped, someone—not Tam—jumps out from the bushes—”

  “Are there bushes?”

  “Let’s go and see. And this person manages either to chop off a major chunk of pretty sturdy horse hair quickly but silently or manages to snip away until the job’s done without the horse realising anything’s happening? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “And why was the pony scared of going over the bridge?” said Todd. “If anything, she’d be trying to get away from the maniac giving her ass a buzz cut, wouldn’t she?”

  “That’s certainly what happens with Maggie in the poem,” I said. “She’s running away and the witch grabs her tail. This is just like the cutty sark. It’s close but no coconut.”

  “Banana,” said Todd, like it mattered. But he was turning the car round in an illegal U-ey to take us to the overpass, so I let it go.

  Eight

  There were no bushes.

  Todd and I stood on the rising slope at the town side of the canal and stared around.

  “Sniper’s paradise,” Todd said. “She’s lucky it was just horse hair he was after, whoever he was. I agree, by the way: not Tam.”

  I nodded. There were a few trees near the path, trunks too skinny for anyone to hide behind, and no actual cover for fifty yards in both directions. What there was—still—was a few of the shiny black hairs from Agnetha’s tail, blown to the edges of the path and caught in the weeds there.