“Thanks.” I fell into thought.
Rosie stood. She picked up Hector and joined me at the front of the shop, bringing my pacing to a stop. She handed Hector to me. I held him close.
“It’s going tae be all right,” she said. She wasn’t usually the one doing the comforting, but she took on the role well.
“If this doesn’t work, Rosie, I’m going to try to convince Edwin to open up somewhere else,” I said. I thought I heard Hector harrumph.
Rosie’s eyebrows lifted. “Aye? Well, I dinnae want tae disappoint ye, but he’s auld, set in his ways, and he loves this place. There’s not another for him.”
I thought about the bookshop in some shiny new location with pristine walls and floors. That would be awful. Not for a new bookshop, one that hadn’t yet lived its life, but for this one, it would. The blood, the vital organs of The Cracked Spine were inside these lathe-and-plaster walls, these old shelves, that ladder. The marble floor was in terrible shape, but it was also one of the most beautiful floors I’d ever seen. Tears came to my eyes as I remembered the first time I walked into the shop and saw those floors, how scared I’d been, how, when I’d seen the ladder that rolled up and down the shelves, I’d so quickly felt at home. The light was bad, the furniture old and worn. It was the most perfect place ever.
“I guess you’re right,” I said to Rosie. “This is the only place the bookshop could ever be.”
“Aye, lass. Aye.”
I pulled out my cell phone. A resolve had come over me. I dialed Mary’s number.
“Hello?” a voice said, but I didn’t think it was Mary’s.
“Yes, I’m returning Mary’s call. Delaney Nichols from The Cracked Spine.”
“Aye? It’s Eloise, Delaney. Mary’s resting but I’m happy to let her know you called.”
Sometimes reaching out and taking someone’s hand is the beginning of a journey.
The bookish voice didn’t come from the book about Queen Elizabeth. It came from Hamlet’s inspirational calendar. I looked at the back table and saw him there, peering at something on his laptop. His tear-away calendar was behind him. I must have read the words recently.
“Yes, thanks. Eloise…” I said.
“Aye?”
Maybe I did need to get going on the journey of knowing Eloise; she and I seemed to find each other easily. “Any chance you have time for dinner tonight?”
“Well, I suppose I do. I don’t think Mary will be up to attending. Should I invite Gretchen?”
“Yes, please. I’ll invite Tom.”
We solidified plans and I told her I’d see her in a couple hours. I wondered if Mary would wake up and want to join us. I wasn’t sure if that would be a good or a bad idea.
“That should be interesting,” Rosie said when I hung up.
“Want to come?”
“I need tae search for those approval forms and the Burgess Ticket. Not this time, but I’ll expect tae hear aboot it.”
“Of course.”
It wasn’t long before Tom came through the door. He saw the expression on my face and stopped in the entryway.
“Uh-oh, what happened?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you all about it on the way,” I said as I tried to look less terrified. “We’re going to dinner.”
FIFTEEN
On the way, Tom had asked me why I’d wanted to ask Eloise and Gretchen out to dinner. I hadn’t gone into detail about my bookish voices with him yet, so I didn’t mention that a calendar had told me to. I’d shrugged and said it was just a feeling I’d had. He thought that was a good enough reason. However, it was then I decided we needed to have a conversation about the bookish voices. It wasn’t technically a lie that I hadn’t shared that quirky part of me, but quirky things were supposed to be shared with significant others. I wished I’d told him already.
We’d met at a pizza place right at the top of Victoria Street. When I first arrived in Scotland, I thought a pizza place didn’t quite fit with my idea of Scottish food choices, but I’d come to accept that it was okay for restaurants in Scotland to prepare and serve international fare.
Though still tinged with grief, Eloise and Gretchen seemed happy to be joining us; happy to have a distraction maybe. We were all quickly comfortable with each other too, Eloise greeting me with a hug and a quick, “See, I told you, once you meet someone through Mary, you’re friends for life.”
Once the pizza had been served, I asked Gretchen, “Did you see Mary too? How’s she doing?”
Gretchen said, “I’m not as close with those weirdos as Eloise is.”
“Oh.”
She chewed a bite of pizza and quickly stuffed it into her cheek. “I mean the past-life people. They are a strange group, and since Henry is—was—with Mary, they weren’t my favorite people to hang out with. Eloise had to drag me to dinner the other night. But you were all fine.”
“I’ve been Mary’s doctor for years,” Eloise said. “I was the very first person she told about her past lives, many years ago. It’s okay for me to share; she tells people that all the time.”
“I didn’t know until much later, after they became friends and we started socializing together. I took an immediate disliking to Mary as she did to me. We’ve become friendlier over the years, but she and Eloise are much closer,” Gretchen said.
“Would you still be friends if you weren’t her doctor?” Tom asked Eloise.
“I think so, but we probably would never have established a relationship. Gretchen and I have been together thirty years. I met Mary about twenty years ago, in a clothing shop in Glasgow. She fainted, and told me she didn’t have a doctor. I’ve been her physician ever since, and once she started talking about her past lives, she felt like she could trust me with whatever she wanted to say, get it all off her chest maybe. It was a burden she carried for years.”
“Meeting Eloise opened the gates for her,” Gretchen said with a hand flourish.
I wondered if Gretchen and Mary truly had become friendlier toward each other or if Gretchen just pretended.
“What has she told you about her lives?” I asked.
“Can’t tell you any more than I have. Doctor-patient privilege and all,” Eloise said.
“Of course,” I said. “Were you Henry’s doctor too?”
“No. In fact, I don’t think Henry had been to a doctor in years, until recently. Mary mentioned that he’d gone to see someone about his knees but we never talked about it much.”
“Tell me about your art studio,” Tom asked Gretchen.
“I have a shop and a studio together.” Gretchen smiled and then continued, “I sculpt animals, smaller than actual size.”
“Where’s your place?” Tom asked.
Gretchen sat back in her chair and wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “I wondered when you’d ask that.”
There was nothing light or fun in her tone. Almost in tandem, Tom and I cocked our heads as we looked at her.
“That’s why you asked us to dinner, right?” Gretchen said.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Gretch, I don’t think they know. I think they were just being sociable.”
“Really,” I said as Tom and I shared a glance, “we don’t understand. Have we offended?”
Gretchen’s expression softened. “Perhaps I’m being sensitive. Never mind.”
Eloise gave one stress-lined laugh. “I think it’s okay to tell them, hun. The police will clear you.”
“I think so too, but I don’t want anyone to accuse me of anything.…”
“Tom and I aren’t quick to accuse,” I said.
“All right.” Gretchen sat forward, pushed her plate back, and put her arms on the table. “I think Henry was trying to shut down my shop, my whole studio.”
“Let me guess. Was there an upcoming vote? An alleged bad report from an inspector?” I said, anxiety zipping through me. Is this why my intuition wanted me to make friends with these women?
Gretchen sho
ok her head. “No, nothing like that. I received notice that I was to present something called a Burgess Ticket.…”
“Yes, the things that were once delivered in miniature coffin-like boxes?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Eloise said, but she didn’t look at me. I wondered if she remembered our conversation on the bus about Henry angering people.
“Anyway, I don’t have anything like that,” Gretchen continued. “My studio and shop are in an old building that has been home to many different businesses over the years. There’s no way to track down the original business owner, or maybe even what the original business was.”
“There aren’t city records?” I said.
“Not going back that far, not that I could find. The tickets go back to the eighteenth century. I guess some people kept them, but I didn’t even know about them to inquire when I purchased the building. Since I don’t have one, I have to spend a fortune to bring the building up to today’s standards. Who’s ever heard of such a thing? We are all about our old buildings, our history. Anyway, I think Henry was behind all of it.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I thought I would see if the council switches gears now that Henry is dead.” Gretchen shrugged again. “I have an alibi though, I need to make that clear. I haven’t talked to the police or anything, but I have an alibi for the morning that Henry was killed. I mean, I would never kill anyone anyway, but I was setting up a presentation at a local school when the car bomb exploded.”
I wasn’t sure that made much of an alibi. Where was she when the bomb was planted? Where were any of us? Supposedly all of us were home in our beds asleep, but I didn’t know when the police thought the device had been put on the car. No one had questioned any of us at the bookshop; Gretchen either, it sounded like.
“Where’s your studio and shop?” I asked.
“In Cowgate, right next to Dina’s antique shop.”
I slid a napkin over to her. “Write down the address? I want to come look closely at the building.”
She looked at the napkin and back at me. “I don’t understand.”
I looked at Tom. He nodded. “Let me share with you our situation. Then you might understand.”
I explained everything, giving them every detail I possibly could. Even if one of them had killed Henry, we were on the same team, of sorts. What had been Henry’s motivation for wanting to close any business?
“That’s terrible,” Gretchen said when I finished. “That bookshop has been around forever. I’ve been in a few times over the years. Maybe the vote won’t happen now. I’m sorry if that sounds unsympathetic.”
It wasn’t just Gretchen, we all felt guilty about looking at any bright side to Henry being gone.
“I think it’s set in stone,” I said.
“Go to the meeting, fight,” Gretchen said.
“Oh, I will. We will,” I said.
“Have you talked to Mikey about all of this?” Eloise asked.
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“He’s a councilor too,” Eloise added. “That wasn’t mentioned at dinner?”
“What?” I said. “I had no idea.”
“Me either,” Tom said.
“He’s the one who told Gretchen and me that it was Henry who had started the whole mess with the Burgess Tickets,” Eloise said.
“He probably knows about The Cracked Spine too,” I said.
Eloise shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him. I remember wondering why Henry didn’t mention he was a councilor. He’s usually … well, he usually liked people to know that about him. Mikey doesn’t talk much no matter what, so I’m not surprised he didn’t say anything.”
“Do you think Mary knows about all of this?” I asked.
Eloise thought a long moment. “I really don’t. She hasn’t brought it up to me, and she tells me everything. Besides, she would have been angry with Henry for doing anything to jeopardize Gretchen’s business. We were going to talk to Mary, Henry, and Mikey about it the night of the dinner, but then you all showed and it didn’t feel right to bring it up, and then Henry was killed.”
“Is that why there was a strain in the air when we came upstairs?” I asked.
“Probably,” Eloise said.
I thought about telling them the state I’d seen Dina in earlier, but I didn’t. It suddenly occurred to me, though, that she might have been at the licensing office because of something similar to what The Cracked Spine and Gretchen were going through. Was there more to her emotions than a late payment? What had those papers really been? Was she upset because of her uncle’s murder or those papers, or both? Surely, Henry hadn’t been trying to shut down his niece’s business too?
It was tumultuous to have bad feelings for someone who had been killed, someone who had recently hosted a lovely dinner where you’d had a good time and enjoyed delicious food. But I was now more convinced that my meeting Mary and us being invited to their castle was some sort of setup. What I wasn’t so sure of was if Mary was a willing participant in the setup, or a convenient pawn.
“Eloise, when you left Mary today, was she still resting?” I asked.
“She was. I left a note that you’d called though. She’ll get back to you.”
“I’m sure,” I said. She’d called me first after all. However, I suddenly wished I hadn’t stalled in calling her back. If not to tell me Inspector Buchanan was going to ask me some questions, what did she want?
The front of the restaurant was a long row of windows. That was one of the features I liked so much about the place, the people watching. I looked out through them now and saw the same sorts of people I always saw; tourists, locals (those who didn’t look around with awe, but simply made their way along), and the random man in a kilt. There weren’t enough kilt-wearing men in Scotland anymore.
It had rained recently, and things glimmered. The light from the old-fashioned streetlights sparkled everywhere, off the brick buildings, the cobblestone road, the old shopfronts.
This part of Edinburgh wasn’t about modern and new, but old and traditional. However, this part of Edinburgh was also built right on top of another version, an older version. There were probably even Burgess Tickets buried somewhere under the surface.
Time marched on. Things changed.
Was it time for the bookshop to close?
No! I thought as my dinner partners laughed about something I hadn’t paid attention to. My eyes landed on someone who was walking past the window, looking at a book they carried. I didn’t know the stranger, but I couldn’t help but wonder what he was reading, and if he’d maybe picked the book up from the greatest bookshop on the planet.
Oh, it couldn’t close. It just couldn’t.
I turned back to the pizza and our new friends, grateful that we stopped talking about all the sad things, and moved the conversation to happier things, things new friends typically discussed.
But even as we enjoyed dinner, time continued to march on all around us.
SIXTEEN
I checked my phone again as Joshua walked toward me. Mary hadn’t called yet, but it was still early in the morning.
It was rare that Joshua and I didn’t meet inside the museum, but he’d asked to meet outside it today. His long legs moved swiftly my direction and I smiled at the Gryffindor scarf around his neck. I hadn’t thought about it before, but with his dark hair and black framed glasses, he was only a lightning bolt to the forehead away from looking like a tall version of the beloved Harry Potter. I was surprised I hadn’t seen it before.
Joshua was surely magical, in that he knew so much about so many things. I enjoyed our sibling-like friendship, and I dreaded the day one of his PhDs would take him someplace other than the National Museum of Scotland only a few blocks from the bookshop. Mostly, I cherished his friendship, but I also liked his brain too. I had some questions for it today; stuff about Mary, Queen of Scots, of course, including the papers I’d read about, the ones Mary had written her
self and had been found in a box in the basement of the museum.
The café’s outside seating area was covered by a wide canopy, but if I aimed my face in the right direction, I could feel the warm sun peeking around some puffy clouds.
“Hello, my friend,” Joshua said as he joined me at the table. “Where have you been? Oh, that’s right, on a honeymoon. Was it lovely?”
Joshua hadn’t been able to attend the small wedding.
“It was.” I stood.
We hugged and then sat across from each other. The café was humming pleasantly with other customers, but not too many. We shared quick personal updates that were peppered with the sorts of things we always talked about—old things we’d read about that might have been discovered at archeological sites throughout the world as well as inquiries on each other’s circle of people. Joshua and Rosie had struck up a fast friendship and I was surprised that she’d already told him about our dinner with Mary and Henry and their friends. I was glad they’d found a grandmother-grandson relationship with each other.
“She has quite the obsession,” Joshua said, speaking about Mary Stewart after I told him (retold him from my perspective instead of Rosie’s) about my time with the woman with the past lives and her murdered husband.
“Even Lyle, the business license guy mentioned it that way, an obsession. Do you think you’ve ever met her?” I asked.
“Not that I recall. No, in fact, I would have remembered her, particularly if she looks as much like you as you and Rosie say.”
“We could be sisters.”
“Not mother and daughter?”
“She’s twenty years older, so it’s feasible, but sisters seems more appropriate. So, what about the recent Mary, Queen of Scots’ papers that have been found?” I asked.
Joshua smiled. “They are extraordinary. Well, they are both ordinary and extraordinary. Notes, journals, lists about some of the things she had to do as queen, things such as having taxes collected and such. But still, even ordinary things are interesting if you know they were written by Mary.”
“What shape were they in when you found them?”
The Stolen Letter Page 10