The Loch Ness Papers

by Paige Shelton

  She looked at me with wide, fearful eyes. I didn’t see a weapon on Angus but he must have seemed threatening in some way. Elias would have punched him if he thought it would help the situation. He must not have thought it would help. Maybe Elias just wanted to see Nessie too.

  “Okay,” I said. “You saw her, right, Angus?” I said.

  His eyes darted to me. “I did.”

  “Good. You’ve done right by your grandfather, Angus,” I said, but then I hesitated. What I was about to do might upset him. But I knew the truth needed to be spoken. I knew the killer needed to be discovered. And Inspector Winters was right there. Now, before Angus had a chance to think about it, was the time. “You came here for your grandfather, didn’t you? He told you stories, didn’t he? They weren’t about King Arthur. They were about her, Nessie.” I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back.

  “You know who I am?” he said as he turned, and I finally saw a reason to be concerned. A gun stuck up from the side of his jeans’ waistband. His accent was lighter than it had been. There was no hat on his head. He wasn’t over-the-top Texas anymore, but something wasn’t right. “I thought you might figure it out sooner, but you didn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t, but why didn’t you just tell us who you were from the beginning?”

  “I just wanted what was mine. I wanted the papers,” Angus said. “They were mine, you know. My grandfather knew her.” He nodded out toward the water. “Oh, the stories I heard, you’re right about that, Delaney.” He looked at me a long moment. “At first I thought you wanted them. I’d already tried to talk to Norval and then I’d been watching him. I saw you go in and talk to him, and then Gavin came out to talk to you too. I thought you were going to get the papers. You would never give them to me.”

  “So, you shortened your name, hid your identity, stole a book, and made up a story about King Arthur?” Edwin said.

  “Yes.” He stepped toward Edwin, and Inspector Winters put his hand back on his holstered gun. I really hoped he wouldn’t have to take it out. “I thought it was all pretty clever. And if you or she got the papers, I was going to come back and remind you about the priceless book I crossed the sea to return to you. Maybe you’d be kind enough to give me the papers. It was a good plan.”

  Not for people like my boss and me. None of that would have worked with either of us. Edwin wasn’t even going to keep the King Arthur book. It would probably have been donated to a library if we didn’t find its owner.

  “Oh, Angus,” I said. “It was a good plan, but why did you have to kill Gavin?”

  I heard my mom gasp quietly behind me.

  “He wouldn’t give me the papers either. He told me he would sell them to me, but he changed his mind. He wouldn’t take them from his uncle. He changed his mind! If he was gone, all I had to do was prove who I was and I would get them. They were mine anyway. Leopold Fraser was my grandfather, and he cared the most about me, about us. He left Norval and the rest of them and never looked back. The papers were rightfully mine.”

  “You grabbed the knife from Norval’s apartment and used it on Gavin?” I asked.

  “It was easy! Even that crazy old man wouldn’t take the King Arthur book. You said it yourself, that book is priceless! Even if there’s proof of Nessie, the book would be worth more. I don’t understand why he wouldn’t trade with me.”

  Thunder boomed with the spark of a nearby lightning bolt. I ducked reactively and lifted my arm up protectively. As if someone had just turned on a fan, the wind picked up even more.

  “A storm’s coming,” I said. “Come on, Angus, we’ll give you a ride back to Edinburgh.”

  “Oh, I’m not going back to Edinburgh,” he said. He looked out to the sea. “I’m going with her.” He looked back at me as emotion, and probably grief, twisted his face. “I miss him so much, you’ll never understand how much I miss my grandfather. He was such a good man. I loved him deeply. If he’s still to be found anywhere, it’s with her, with that monster he talked about and longed for, forever. I’m going with her.”

  I noticed that he wasn’t wearing his boots. Momentarily, I wondered where they’d gone. I looked back at the tree line. The boots were there, on their sides.

  Angus threw the gun to one side, and was out of his jacket, shirt, and jeans faster than any of us could register what he was doing. Wyatt ran and gathered the gun, emptying the clip as Inspector Winters and Elias hurried to Angus and tried to grab his arms. Once their shoe-clad feet hit the water they had trouble keeping their balance, so they just grabbed at air as they missed his arms.

  The rest of us hurried to try to help, but seconds later, as we were all standing there, our own shoe-clad feet in the water, the wind only knocking us further off balance, Angus went under.

  “What do we do?” I said as the rain started to fall.

  “Let the police take care of it, lass,” Elias said as he wiped his hand under his nose and looked out at the water. He wanted to dive in, but was smart enough not to.

  I lifted a foot from the slog it was sinking into and tried to step backward, but staying upright with the water, the mud, and the wind was tricky. My foot went deeper into the water instead.

  “Delaney,” Tom said as he took hold of my arm. “Step back, lass.”

  “I’m trying.” I tried to lift my foot again, but it seemed I was stuck.

  The sound of an approaching siren set me further off balance as I turned my head and tried to see around the trees.

  “More help is coming,” Inspector Winters said. “Get out of the water, Delaney.”

  Easier said than done. The water, even only as high as my knees, was pulling me in with more strength than Tom could pull me out.

  At the same moment another flash of lightning and boom of thunder turned our world blindingly bright, I was tipped all the way over. One moment Tom had hold of me, and the next he didn’t. I wasn’t even sure which way I had gone, other than under. I’d heard that the loch fell off into deep waters close to shore, but this depth seemed ridiculously close.

  Surprisingly, I didn’t panic. At first. I was too shocked, maybe, but my thoughts came to me with laser-like precision. I had to get above the water to get oxygen. It was all too dark to figure out which way was up, but I knew I would float in that direction if I just let myself. I hoped the small amount of oxygen I had in my lungs would keep me alive long enough to make it.

  But I didn’t really float. I churned, but not quickly. Not floating was unfortunate, I thought, as panic finally began to balloon in my chest.

  I opened my eyes big and looked all around. I didn’t see anything but a lot of the same—more darkness in every direction. My chest started to burn in ways I’d never felt before when my eyes finally caught something, one thing—okay, two things—that didn’t look like everything else.

  Did I see two glowing blue orbs, small, but round? Reactively, I blinked a few times trying to focus, to no avail. The orbs came closer. And I saw her.

  Or, at least that’s what my imagination said happened, because if I had to describe exactly what my eyes saw in that watery place it would be unreal: two glowing blue round things that might have been eyes sunken deeply into what might be something like a dragon’s head. Maybe. But I couldn’t be sure. And the vision only lasted a few seconds, since after that something seemed to push on me from behind. My hand grazed the long, solid but yielding thing that ran along my back. It felt scaly, or maybe bumpy.

  With a whoosh that made me take in more brackish water, I was shoved hard. Just as I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, I was released into the open, on the shore. I was a good twenty yards away from everyone else who I thought were yelling my name, but I coughed exuberantly enough to get their attention.

  Tom won the race to get to me. It would have been lovely and romantic if he’d taken me in his arms and kissed me passionately, but the elements and the water I needed to get out of my lungs prohibited me from doing anything but coughing, and him from doing anything but kn
eeling next to me, his hand too tightly around my arm, as I recovered.

  Inspector Winters crouched on my other side when I was better. “Are you all right? I need tae help Angus. Are you all right?”

  Mid-cough I nodded that I was, but I lifted my head. Where was Angus?

  Even farther down shore, but only by about twenty feet. He was there, in his underwear and socks only, splayed out on his back. With his face aimed our direction, his vacant stare made me certain that he was dead.

  I tried to stand.

  “Hang on, Delaney,” Tom said. “Inspector Winters will take care of him.”

  I still tried to stand.

  “Oh, Delaney, take it easy,” Mom said. I caught her wide, frightened eyes, and I suddenly felt terrible that I’d come to Scotland for the most wonderful job in the world, only to marry the most wonderful man in the world, and had now forced her to watch her daughter almost drown in the world-famous Loch Ness. Never mind about that damn dress.

  I was going to be fine, though. I found my voice. “Let’s all get to him.”

  Tom and my mom and dad helped me navigate the way, and I could breathe fine by the time we got to Angus as Inspector Winters worked CPR on him. The rain came down in sheets and thunder boomed and lightning flashed, but we stayed as more police and an ambulance arrived. Even Ava stayed. At moments, when the lightning flashed, we looked like players in an old, choppy black-and-white film. As the imagery came to me, I remembered the negatives in my jacket pocket, the jacket I’d worn solely to keep the negatives with me. I reached inside but wasn’t at all surprised that they weren’t there. I’d kept them with me to keep them safe, but I could never have predicted I’d be sucked into Loch Ness, and that she’d be there to take them from me.

  Or something like that.

  And when Inspector Winters managed a watery cough from Angus, followed by real breathing and real life, some missing negatives didn’t matter anymore. Besides, we still had the film.

  As we left the cove I almost didn’t look back. But I did, briefly. I can’t say for sure, but I thought I saw a thick tail skim the water, the tail that might have pushed me back onto land.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “I know,” I said into the phone. “Of course, I’ll be there. But I have to do this. You understand? Good. See you soon.”

  I ended the call.

  “Lass?” Elias said as he looked at me in the passenger seat. He’d been baffled since I’d told him to turn right instead of left.

  “We’ll get there. This is important.”

  “Awright. Do ye want me tae come tae the door with ye?”

  “No. I’ve got this.”

  “Awright,” he said again.

  He parked the cab and then hurried around to the passenger door, opening it and helping me out. I exited the cab, careful to keep the dress clean. My mother’s dress. In a million years, I would not have guessed that an old Kansas farm girl wedding dress would turn out to be the most beautiful dress ever made. But it was. Wyatt had hidden it in his luggage. He’d waited until he knew that Inspector Winters and Aggie wouldn’t be able to find the closed shop’s owner or seamstress before he gave it to me. Fortunately, not only could Aggie and my mother bake a wedding cake fit for blue ribbons, they could both alter and sew things too.

  It was simple white, with a lace bodice and a skirt that fell to the ground. It was perfect.

  As I walked down the line of apartments, I glanced up at the mostly clear and sunny sky. “Sunny today would be good.”

  I was pretty sure a small cloud smiled back. I hoped so, at least.

  Foil still covered the window. I tapped a three-knock rhythm, and hoped he really was home. Inspector Winters had told me he’d been released.

  Just as I was about to turn away and rejoin Elias in his cab, the door opened.

  Norval peeked out and then opened the door wide, with a matching, equally wide smile.

  “Have ye come tae take the papers, lass?” he asked.

  Murder is always a tragedy, but Gavin’s, it turned out, had been pointless. Had Angus just told Norval who he was, Norval might have given him everything, if he’d agreed to continue the work. In fact, I’d speculated that Norval would have been so happy to have a part of his father back with him that he might not have even required Angus to do the work. None of us would ever know for sure now.

  Angus could have easily proven who he was, but he chose murder. It seemed that Nessie had been meant to haunt Leopold Angus Murdoch Fraser’s entire family. Monsters did that sometimes.

  There was also a question of Angus’s mental health, which begged more questions. Was there something in that family that caused delusions? Perhaps they didn’t see the same reality the rest of us saw. Maybe some of it was a better reality, but certainly some of it was worse.

  I hadn’t learned much more about the man who’d introduced his son and his grandson to Nessie, one in person, one through stories, but through Inspector Winters I’d come to know the elder Leopold Angus Murdoch Fraser as a hopeless romantic. He’d loved his wife until he met Flora. He’d loved his Scotland family until he was compelled to make an American family. But he’d always loved Nessie. I didn’t understand people who could abandon their families; I didn’t want to try very hard to understand Leopold. I didn’t really have to, though, because he was there in front of me, as part of Norval and part of Angus. I’d seen some bad parts, but Norval had shown me some of the good too.

  Angus had stopped by Ava’s cottage one other time, but she hadn’t been home. He didn’t know who she was; he’d only gone there because that cove, Wikenton, was a location his grandfather had talked about. When she didn’t answer her door, he made his way inside. He saw the picture on her wall too, and when it came time for him to leave Edinburgh, to fly back home to where his crime might never be found out, he couldn’t bring himself to board the plane. He had to go back to that place and find out more about that picture, maybe take it with him. She would have handed it over if he’d only asked instead of cornering her and Elias as he ranted about the monster, Norval’s papers, and his grandfather, all while a gun was tucked into his jeans.

  Gavin MacLeod’s clients were upset with him, but none of them was truly murderous enough to kill him, though I wondered if Brodie had gotten closer than he’d admitted. Fortunately, we’d never have to know that answer either.

  Maybe Nessie wasn’t the monster. Maybe she had brought out the monster in the Fraser family. Perhaps Norval had been correct. Perhaps their family was cursed.

  “Well, no, Norval, I’m not here to take the papers. You look well, though.”

  He shrugged and smiled thinly. His teeth shifted.

  We’d returned the projector and the films to Norval’s flat. None of us had discussed it, but it seemed unspoken that we wouldn’t tell anyone what we’d seen. I wasn’t sure why we didn’t want to, other than our collective understanding that not everything needed to be illuminated.

  The deck of cards had never been recovered. It looked like that mystery would remain unsolved, for now at least.

  “I’m so sorry about Gavin,” I said.

  “Thank you, lass. Ye are lovely.”

  “Thank you. I’m getting married today.”

  “Aye? Weel, best wishes tae ye and the lucky lad.”

  “Thank you. I wondered, though. Do you want to come? I’ve got a cab right over there. Nisa is our officiant. You’ll know her. The police officer, Inspector Winters, will be there.”

  “He was kind tae me.”

  “Good. You can meet my family and my coworkers.”

  He still seemed hesitant.

  “The cake is going to be amazing!”

  His eyes lit a moment but then dimmed again. “I’m not dressed.”

  “No. It’s come as you are. Very informal, in the bookshop, with the reception in my groom’s,” ah, my groom’s, “pub. We’d love to have you join us.”

  “In The Cracked Spine?”

  “Yes.”

&n
bsp; “How lovely.”

  “It will be fun and we’d really love to have you there.”

  “Well, awright, then. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  I always knew a bookshop could encompass whole worlds, but this one had taken on the role literally. My parents and Wyatt, Elias and Aggie, Artair, Edwin, Rosie, Hamlet, Birk, and Inspector Winters were there. Regg had joined Rosie, and Vanessa had joined Edwin. Everyone was going to love her.

  Norval was there too. He needed more family, I thought, one that wasn’t cursed, and this seemed like the right one to bring him into. Millie was going to be fine in the place Edwin had found for her, but she wasn’t at the wedding. I’d asked Ava if she wanted to come, but she hadn’t. She was no worse for the wear from the time in the storm, but she had wanted to stay home, and, I suspected, have a discussion or two with Nessie. I didn’t ask, though. It felt like none of my business.

  I’d even invited Albert Winsom, but he’d also declined. He’d brought in the tooth the day after our incident at Loch Ness. There was no doubt it was a tooth, but it could have belonged to any sort of creature that had once had two-inch-long, sharp teeth in its mouth. It was an interesting artifact to be sure, but there was no way to determine if it was Nessie’s.

  Tom wore a kilt I’d never seen before. It was a pleasant surprise. When his cobalt eyes locked onto mine as my dad escorted me down the bookshop’s side aisle, I had such a sense of destiny that I suddenly felt as if I’d had this place and these people inside me all the time, just waiting to come out and show me I truly belonged.

  Reverend Nisa said words. Tom and I said words. I got his name right. Everyone cried a little, and the city outside the shop whispered things to me. They weren’t bookish voices, they were those of passing time and history, and, I thought, probably held the voice I’d heard call my name at the loch, whoever that was.