Thistles and Thieves

by Molly Macrae

  MOLLY MACRAE

  THISTLES

  and

  THIEVES

  THE HIGHLAND BOOKSHOP MYSTERY SERIES

  BOOK 3

  For the real Ranger, who lost his best friend, but found two more.

  “. . . for the decoction of the thistle in wine being drank, expels superfluous melancholy out of the body, and makes a man as merry as a cricket; . . . my opinion is, that it is the best remedy against all melancholy diseases.”

  —from The Complete Herbal by Nicholas Culpeper (1653)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  1

  Janet Marsh pedaled for the rise ahead, wondering if shifting bicycle gears would come back to her as easily as riding. After how many years? Fifteen? Twenty? All right, since she’d ridden with her youngest on the back of the bike in graduate school. Could it really be thirty years? But she felt fit, despite the years and extra pounds. She’d been walking up and down hills every day since moving to the Highlands. Almost every day.

  Her initial plan for her maiden bike ride had been too easy—sticking to the somewhat level streets running parallel to Inversgail’s High Street and working her way, zig by zag, down toward the harbor and her shop, Yon Bonnie Books. That hardly gave her and the sleek new bike—or the striped yoga leggings—a workout. She’d sailed past the bookshop, singing, “By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie books,” with more than enough time to pedal back home, shower, change, and arrive to help her daughter and their business partners open the shop and tearoom at ten. Too much time.

  No, if she wanted to be ready for the next Haggis Half-Hundred Ride—her first Half-Hundred—she needed more of a challenge. And if the hill she’d started up proved to be too much, then all she had to do was turn around and coast back down.

  Janet pictured herself gaining speed on the downward glide, wind streaming off her gleaming blue-and-black helmet. Like a carapace. An aerodynamic exoskeleton. Empowering. The shell’s color scheme went well with her graying hair, too; she’d noted that when she tried the helmet on in front of the mirror before stepping out into the chilly fall morning. She adjusted the helmet’s chin strap, glad she’d adjusted the bike’s brakes before setting out, too. And that she’d tested them. Twice. She tested them again, then put her mind and her thighs into the climb ahead, up into the hills that embraced her new town, her new life.

  She sang a few lines from an old favorite, “I’m goin’ up the country, baby don’t you want to go? I’m goin’ to some place I’ve never been before.” But she put the brakes on that song pretty quickly. The twang in that one didn’t work in this landscape of banks and braes. She looked at the autumn-browned bracken covering the hills around her and imagined a cold wind rattling corn stubble in a field back home in Illinois. Home but not home. Not anymore.

  What’s this? A wee bit homesick? Janet examined that unexpected twinge of emotion and decided there was nothing wrong with it. But as the road took a sharper incline, she countered her twinge with a burst from a more appropriate favorite: “On the steep, steep side o’ Ben Lomond.”

  Breath for singing soon failed. Janet pressed the pedals grimly onward, muttering altered words to another favorite. “But I would ride 500 miles, and I would ride 500 more, just to be the lass who rides a thousand miles, to fall down dead at her own door.”

  And I’d . . . like to see, she thought between gasps, the bloody . . . Proclaimers . . . do . . . a better job . . . of singing . . . while pedaling . . . up this . . . bloody . . . hill.

  She ground to a halt. Straddled the bike. Gulped air. Leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the handlebars. Maybe she’d proved enough for one morning. The downward glide toward home was calling.

  She straightened and looked behind her—the view! She felt it in her heart. And no, this is not a heart attack. It’s love. Undulant hills rose to the left and right, with the slate rooftops and chimneys of Inversgail nestled in their laps. The tide was out in the harbor, but that didn’t matter. Even the colors of the harbor muck were picturesque at this distance. Could she see the islands? Just barely. And the sea—cerulean shades all the way out to where they blended into the sky. A view to die for.

  If she could make herself go a little farther, she could turn again and stretch her arms to hold it all in her embrace. If I can gasp my way to that bridge . . .

  By the time Janet reached the ancient stone bridge, she didn’t think she’d stay standing if she got off the bike. Her legs felt like a quivering blancmange. But the bridge looked just wide enough for a car to pass her safely. She stopped at the crown of the span, close to the lichen-covered wall, and leaned herself and her bike against it. The top of the wall was a perfect height for her to rest her elbow on, and she was glad for the strength of the rough, cool granite.

  She pondered “bridge” and “strength” as her breath caught up with her. Age had nothing and everything to do with the strength of this bridge. Built by whose hands, she wondered, and how long ago? Made of stones, the bones of the earth. Not like the abandoned bridge she’d walked across with a group of birders back in Illinois. She hadn’t enjoyed that experience, didn’t like heights with poorly guarded edges. Remembering the creaking and groaning of the arthritic planks as they’d skirted holes in the deck of that bridge, Janet shuddered. Not the smartest thing she’d ever done. That poor stretch of wood and iron was barely more than a century old and already left to rust and rot.

  She patted the side of this stout fellow, like patting the flank of a trusty steed. Your strength has been, it is, and it will continue to be. It was also the only thing keeping her from toppling into the burn below. She chanced a look over the side to see where she would go if she did topple. Headfirst onto rocks the size of Shetland ponies and Highland cattle, by the looks of it.

  Janet shuddered again and made herself focus instead on the gurgling water, letting her eyes follow the burn wending its whisky-colored way beyond the rocks and between banks of frost-killed thistles. There were more rocks farther along. But rocks on their own weren’t threatening. Except—what was that?

  On the nearside of the burn, near the largest nonthreatening rock—what was that in the thistles? A bike wheel? And beyond the wheel, half in the burn—plastic? A bag? Cloth. A sleeve, an arm. Not moving.

  2

  A burn and a bed of dry thistles was no place for a nap.

  Janet cupped her hands to her mouth and called, “Hello along the burn!” There was no answer, no movement. She thought for a moment and then climbed off her bike, her legs not at all like jelly. Maybe she’d exaggerated their distress. She walked the bike back off the bridge, losing sight of the sleeve and the other bike’s wheel, and looked along the embankment for a way down to the creek.

  It’s steep, but not a bluff, Janet thought. There is no edge and the world is not waiting to tip me off of one. There was no clear path, either, but the verge was wide enough for a car to have pulled off the roadway, at least to get two wheels off the pavement, anyway. She stepped over tire ruts to
study the slope. It didn’t immediately strike terror, so she leaned her bike against the bridge, and made sure her helmet sat straight and firm on her head.

  “I can do this,” she said out loud and then, calling, “Hello! Hello!” even louder, she picked her way downward. The burn continued its gurgle. A curlew cried. No one answered her calls. When she reached the burn and started along its bank, Janet took her phone from the pack at her waist.

  She came upon the bike first, its rear mudguard knocked sideways. Then the man—crumpled. She didn’t know him. He’d been wearing a helmet, too. It hadn’t saved his neck, though, and it was clear he would never be able to tell her how he came to be there.

  She said, “Hello,” again, softly, as she knelt to feel for a pulse. His skin was as cold as the rock she stumbled backward to and sat down on.

  She pressed three nines on her phone—the police emergency number—and looked back up toward the road. How had he managed to lose control so completely and end up all the way down here?

  “A man,” she said when the dispatcher answered. “Older, but not elderly. He and his bike came off the road.” She held back tears, wondering where they’d come from, and answered the dispatcher’s questions about where and who and how. “He must have flown down the bank and then came off his bike. And then the rocks. Or first the rocks. I don’t know which, but he hit his head or broke his neck. Or both. Yes, I am sure. He is dead. Yes, I can do that. I’ll stand by the bridge—the Beaton Bridge? I’ll stand there so you’ll see where.”

  Before she climbed up to the road, Janet went back to stand over the man whose tweed blended in with the thistles. He’s dead. Thistles are dead. A natural and unnatural bed. One of his hands lay in the burn palm upward, fingers curled and cupping the water like an offering.

  She made another call on her way up the bank. Constable Norman Hobbs answered. “Norman, I’ve just called 9-9-9. It’s Janet. Marsh. To report a fatality. In case you haven’t already heard.” She knew she was babbling.

  “I have heard, Mrs. Marsh. Are you safe?”

  She hadn’t considered that. She stopped, listened, scanned the area with all its possible hiding places. Hiding what? Who?

  Hobbs cut into her thoughts. “Janet?”

  “I think so?” She hadn’t meant it to sound like a question. And of course he’d heard about her call. As local constable, he would be first on the scene, if she’d stop delaying him. “Yes, I’m perfectly fine. I’ll be standing by the bridge.”

  “I’ll see you shortly.”

  When Hobbs disconnected, Janet debated calling her daughter to let her know she might be late to the shop. But Tallie was the one who’d asked her if she was trying to prove something by getting back on a bike after all these years.

  Janet called their business partner Christine instead. She and Christine Robertson, a Scot transplanted to Illinois and now replanted in her hometown, had been friends since Tallie was in grade school. Christine, a retired social worker, knew a thing or two about people proving themselves. Janet pressed Christine’s number, meaning to remain calm and give only the basic facts. The climb up the steep bank got to her, though, and the facts became even more basic.

  “It’s me,” she said. “I’ve found a body.”

  Christine’s response was more basic yet. “Again?”

  3

  Norman was very fussy and wouldn’t let me show him where to find the body,” Janet said.

  “Norman’s always been perjinkly. He’s an old plod. As stodgy as the porridge he probably eats for breakfast.” Christine set a cozy-covered teapot from their adjoining tearoom on the bookshop sales counter. “There. Let it steep and that should set you right.”

  Being back in the shop and surrounded by books was all it took for Janet to feel right. After she’d thanked Hobbs for arriving quickly—and why wouldn’t he? I didn’t get that far from Inversgail in my slow as treacle uphill ride—she’d pedaled back home, showered, and changed into her bookseller’s khakis. Then to prove something, again, she got back on her bike and rode to Yon Bonnie Books. She’d wheeled the bike into the storeroom, taken over for Tallie at the cash register, and spent the next hour in bibliotherapy—selling, recommending, and being soothed by the presence and weight of books. During a lull, she’d told Tallie and Christine her story.

  “If Norman’s an old plod, what does that make you?” Tallie asked Christine. “You’re always telling us you used to change Norman’s nappies.” At a look from her mother, she backtracked. “Not that I think either of you are old. I just like saying ‘Norman’s nappies.’ He was right to make you stay back, though, Mom. There wasn’t any chance he’d miss the body, was there?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s his job to preserve the scene until they determine cause of death. The fewer feet, the better.”

  Tallie had left a burnt-out career teaching law when she joined her mother, Christine, and her own former college roommate, Summer Jacobs, in the move from Illinois to Inversgail.

  “Did you think I was speaking ill of Norman?” Christine asked. “Perish the thought. He’s perfect for his job. He was an old plod as a wean, as well.”

  “Did you want to go back and see the body again?” Tallie asked.

  “No and yes,” Janet said. “The man was alone with no one to wake him.” She shook her head. “That didn’t sound the way I meant it. I didn’t mean prod him awake.”

  Tallie put her arm around her mother’s waist. “I wonder who he was?”

  “An older man. Probably older than we are, Christine. I couldn’t really tell, but his skin had that thin, papery feel.”

  Christine nodded. “Fragile. Like the backs of Mum’s hands.”

  “Bicycle clips,” Janet said. “He wore a tweed suit and had bicycle clips at his ankles. They made him look old-fashioned. But it wasn’t an old-fashioned bike, now that I think of it. It was something serious enough for the hills. I wonder if he was one of the Haggis riders yesterday?”

  “Wearing a wool suit?” Christine asked.

  “It isn’t a race,” Janet said. “It’s a challenge. More of a fun ride, with haggis when you finish. But he would have been riding with a group, or they would have reported him missing.”

  “A wild animal could have startled him,” Christine said. “Or run in front of him.”

  “What kind of wild animal?” Janet asked. “Do deer come down from the hills this close to town? One of those beautiful red stags?”

  “I was thinking more of cattle,” Christine said. “Or sheep.”

  “Your feelings toward sheep are completely uncalled for,” Janet said. “They’re sheep. They’re placid.”

  “And, technically speaking, they aren’t wild,” Christine agreed. “But they smell and they gather in mobs.”

  “They’re called flocks and they only smell if you get too close,” Janet said.

  “That’s why I avoid them.”

  “Any animal could startle someone,” Tallie said. Then, heading for the children’s reading nook, she called over her shoulder, “Dog, rabbit, fox. Can you imagine if an eagle swooped down at you?”

  “Terrifying,” Christine said. “It was more likely a hairy coo, though, or one of the larger sheep. The beast startled him, he came off the road, and he couldn’t stop once he started down the bank. It’s a horrifying thought, but yes, it could have happened that way.”

  Tallie came back with a stuffed toy cradled in her arms. “Did you see sheep this morning, Mom? Or a coo like Hamish?” She held the toy, a red-haired, long-horned highland cow, up to her cheek. “Look at that face. How could anyone be afraid of him?”

  “Aye, people think they’re cute,” Christine said. “They think the Outlander lad is cute, too. Romantic fancies are always in vogue.”

  “We make good money off those fancies,” Janet said.

  “And nothing wrong with that,” Christine said, giving the cow and Tallie pats on their cheeks. “Good for us. Here’s another theory. Maybe the cyclist was
riding solo, traveling through, and unfamiliar with the road. There’s a turn before that bridge, isn’t there? He might have missed it. Gone off the road in the fog. It was a murky one last night.”

  “Why would he be out riding an unfamiliar road in the dark and the fog?” Tallie asked.

  “Senile,” Christine said. “Lost in the fog, inside and out. Why do you think we don’t let Mum get on her old bike?”

  “Norman knew him, though,” Janet said. Judging by their raised eyebrows, she’d left that part out of her story. “Sorry. He wouldn’t tell me the name.”

  “Next of kin and all that. We’ll know soon enough.” Christine sighed. “And now I’ve been gone long enough. I honestly don’t know how Summer puts up with my wandering ways. Have your cuppa, Janet. Raise it in the old fellow’s honor.” She waved a hand over her shoulder and disappeared down the aisle with the tallest bookshelves toward the clinking of teacups and cutlery in the tearoom.

  “Does Summer think Christine wanders out here too much?” Janet asked.

  “I haven’t heard her say anything, and Summer does her share of wandering over to the paper.”

  Summer wrote a weekly advice column for the Inversgail Guardian.

  “True,” Janet said. “Do you think she and James are turning into a bit of a thing over there?”

  “You could always ask her these questions if you really want to know.”

  “Mm. But it seems so nosy.”

  Janet had gone over to the natural history shelf, and so made that comment more to the books than to Tallie. She found the guide she was looking for and took it back to the counter. “They actually seem to get along quite well, don’t they? I’m talking about Summer and Christine.”

  “Did you have your doubts?”

  Janet ignored the teacup Tallie put in front of her and leafed through the book. “Well, you know how Christine is. She can come across as prickly. Somewhat.”

  “Somewhat? Sort of the way you come across as absentminded when you have your nose in a book? Somewhat.”