Death of a Lovable Geek

by Maria Hudgins

  Hudgins Death of a Lovable Geek

  Death of a Lovable Geek

  Maria Hudgins

  Copyright © 2008 by Maria Hudgins

  Map by Maria Hudgins

  “Stray Cat Strut” words and music by Brian Setzer, copyright 1981 EMI Longitude Music and Rockin’ Bones Music. Reprinted by permission.

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  First Edition

  First Printing: May 2008

  Published in 2008 in conjunction with Tekno Books and Ed Gorman.

  Set in 11 pt. Plantin.

  Printed in the United States on permanent paper.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  (attached)

  For John and Betsy MacKenzie

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank my Sisters in Crime friends, especially Teresa Inge, Sally Parrott, Cindy Lane, Donna Nichol, Lori D’Angelo, Linda Bux and Phyllis Johnson for their unwavering support in the release of my first novel and in the development of this one.

  Thanks also to Tricia Dyer for her help with the Scottish dialect and current Scots culture.

  To my critique buddies, Amanda Flower and Sally Parrott, my good friends Brian and Marie Smith, and to Peggy Becouvarakis who traveled through Scotland with me and made learning Scottish history fun.

  To the bookstore owners who have given me a chance to present my work to their customers. And a special thanks to Island Bookstore in Duck, North Carolina, Broad Street Books of Ghent, Norfolk, Virginia, Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oxford, Maryland, Borders in Virginia Beach, and Barnes and Noble, Hampton, Virginia.

  I’m forever grateful to my friends and family who have attended signings even when they already had a copy of my book and who showed up to support me whenever I needed them.

  And to Deni Dietz, my tough but loving editor whose advice I always heed, hugs.

  Ground Floor of Castle Dunlaggan

  Cast of Characters

  Dotsy Lamb—History professor from Virginia, she’s come to Scotland for an archaeological dig.

  Lettie Osgood—Dotsy’s friend and traveling companion, she’s here to research her ancestors.

  William Sinclair—owner of Castle Dunlaggan.

  Maisie Sinclair—William’s wife.

  Dr. John Sinclair—brother of William, he’s an archaeologist and director of the dig.

  Fallon Sinclair—John’s wife.

  Tony Marsh—archaeologist, John’s second-in-command.

  Amelia Lipscomb—guest at the castle, she’s a TV news reporter from Brighton, England.

  Brian Lipscomb—Amelia’s husband.

  Alf and Eleanor Downes—castle guests from Texas.

  Robbie MacBane—farmer, musician, and landlord of Van Nguyen and Froggy Quale.

  Van Nguyen—Froggy Quale’s roommate and the dig’s media man.

  Graham Jones—site manager at the dig.

  Joyce Parsley, Tracee Wagg, Iain Jandeson, Proctor Galigher—college kids at the dig.

  Chief Inspector Coates—policeman in charge of the murder investigation.

  Boots—castle handyman.

  Christine—kitchen helper at the castle.

  Wanda and Winifred Merlin—castle guests from England, aka “the weird sisters.”

  Gone but not forgotten:

  Froggy Quale—graduate student, on-site spore and pollen expert at the dig.

  Roger Sinclair—father of William and John.

  Lady Rebecca (Becky) Seton Sinclair—wealthy, much-divorced actress, Roger’s second wife.

  Fenella MacBane Sinclair—Roger’s first wife, William and John’s mother.

  Chapter One

  For the life of me, I couldn’t think why a perfectly good Super Bowl ticket would be lying on the back stairs of a castle in Scotland. But that’s where I had found one, and I had it in my pocket now, waiting for a lull in the conversation to bring it up and find out if anyone else knew anything about it.

  We, the guests and residents of Castle Dunlaggan, gathered in the library every evening after dinner for coffee, and tonight there were six of us: William Sinclair, our host; Dr. John Sinclair and his wife, Fallon; Tony Marsh; my dear friend, Lettie Osgood; and me, Dotsy Lamb. A wood fire crackled in the fireplace. I sat in an armchair on one side of the hearth, my trip journal in my lap and a small glass of Drambuie on the table beside me.

  Lettie, perched in the armchair on the other side of the hearth, studied her road map of Central Scotland and the Highlands as she had done every night since we got here. From my vantage point, Lettie was represented by a few tufts of random-length red hair, two red-nailed hands and a couple of short legs, crossed at the ankles and swinging gently an inch or two above the rug. The rest of her was obscured by several square feet of map.

  “Any catastrophes on the road today, Lettie?” Dr. John Sinclair asked, his tumbler of single malt Scotch sloshing as he tacked away from the sideboard. John was the director of the archaeological dig I was lucky enough to be participating in, my college in Virginia having been so kind as to give me a couple of weeks off at the beginning of fall term, but not kind enough to pay for the trip. John was also the brother of William Sinclair, owner of the Castle Dunlaggan at which we were staying.

  “One small one,” Lettie said, crunching her map into her lap. “I told the man at the rental place, I said, ‘I can either shift gears or I can drive on the left side of the road, but I can’t do both at the same time. I need an automatic.’ ”

  “I’m not surprised that he didn’t have one. We Brits and Scots are keen on shifting our own gears,” John said.

  “And putting roundabouts in all the intersections, so you have to go backward around your own elbow to make a turn,” Lettie added.

  Fallon Sinclair, John’s wife, scanned the floor-to-ceiling books along one wall and beckoned to Tony Marsh to join her. Tony was John’s second-in-command at the dig and, so far, my favorite of the bunch. He was knowledgeable about Scottish history and about archaeology in general, but not priggish. John Sinclair was just knowledgeable. Fallon pulled out a small book and, eyebrows raised, handed it to Tony.

  “Dotsy, here’s the very book for you, compliments of the Sinclair family library.” Tony leaned across a dictionary stand to hand it to me.

  A thin volume entitled Macbeth and the Early Scottish Kings h, it looked like no more than one evening’s bedtime reading. In the past year I had dug up all the information I could find on Macbeth. The real Macbeth, not the murderous villain invented by Shakespeare. A simple question from one of my students had prompted me to research the Scottish king and discover that little had been written about him compared to all the other Scottish kings. After a few online inquiries, I had concluded that no one in Scotland wanted to talk about him. As soon as I find someone doesn’t want to talk about something, I do.

  “Thanks, Tony,” I said, taking the book from him. “Do I have to check it out if I take it to my room?”

  Tony and I both turned to the burly, ruddy-faced William Sinclair who seemed confused by my question, but Tony clarified it. “Is this a lending library, William? Does Dotsy need a reader’s ticket?”

  “Nae, just take it,” William said.

  “Speaking of tickets, can somebody explain this?” I dug into my skirt pocket and drew out a small, re
ctangular strip. “I found this in the stairwell of the round tower before dinner.”

  Tony leaned over the back of my chair and took the strip for a closer look. “Super Bowl?”

  “Super Bowl,” I said. “The ultimate American football game. It’s our equivalent of the World Cup finals.”

  Fallon Sinclair took the ticket from Tony. “But what you call football isn’t what we call football.”

  Lettie said, “What you call football, we call soccer.”

  John took the ticket from Fallon. “There’s a diagram of the stadium on the back. Row ten. Section one hundred ten.” He angled the ticket under the beam of a desk lamp. “It looks as if this would seat you near the middle of the field.”

  “On the fifty-yard line. I’ve already checked it,” I said.

  “How much would a ticket like this sell for?” Tony asked.

  “Thousands.”

  “Thousands of dollars?” Fallon took the ticket back from John and studied it, almost reverently, I thought. “This may be a memento. Someone’s keepsake, don’t you think? I mean if they paid thousands to attend this game, they wouldn’t simply throw the ticket away.”

  Tony turned to William. “Have any of your recent guests been the sort to have attended an American Super Bowl game?”

  William took the ticket. “Not that I can recall,” he said.

  “Look at the date,” I said. “This isn’t a keepsake. This is a ticket for next February’s Super Bowl.”

  William passed the ticket to Lettie. Now, six people: John, Fallon, William, Tony, Lettie, and I, had left our fingerprints on the ticket.

  Chapter Two

  A half mile from Castle Dunlaggan, Van Nguyen danced in full view of the road. The window of his second-floor room wide open to the wind sweeping in from the moor, he improvised as wildly as the cord to his headphones would allow. A strand of his long black hair escaped from its restraining rubber band, and` he smoothed it back with one hand while shifting the mouse connected to one of his computers with his other hand.

  One whole wall of the room was stacked solid with electronics. Two monitors flashed a series of photos while two others, with their screen savers morphing from one geometric form to another, stood by. Multiple layers of shirts hung from a peg on the back of the door. Socks, T-shirts, and jeans lay on a shelf above one of the two single beds, intertwined with electric cables, bungee cords, and CDs. Van stopped dancing long enough to click on a few choices from the bank of photos on one of the active screens.

  Outside, near the road that ran past, a young woman in an anorak and with a camouflage hat pulled down low over her face watched the window from behind a scrubby Scots pine. She stood on the concrete slab of an old roadside shelter, a remnant of the days when milk in stainless steel cans was picked up by a truck before dawn. Van came to the window, and the girl stepped back a bit, putting more pine between herself and him.

  Van plucked an air guitar and tossed his head backward. He sang, a bit off-key, “ ’Cause I got cat class an’ I got cat style!”

  His desk light flickered. He pulled his headset off and turned toward the desk. The light flickered again, in unison with the ringing of his cell phone. He yanked the phone from its cradle and said, “Hello.”

  A pause, then, “He’s not here.”

  After another short interval, Van said, “He’s probably at the camp, hanging out. I guess you’ve already tried his cell phone?”

  Then, “Yes, ma’am.”

  And a few seconds later, “Maybe he went to the—what do you call it? The loo?—and left his phone outside.”

  Then, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll tell him to call you.”

  While Van finished his phone call, the girl studied the road in both directions and peered across the meadow toward the Castle Dunlaggan with its dark towers and turrets piercing the night sky. She hitched up her shoulders and walked off, southward, down the road.

  * * * * *

  Beside a drystone wall some thirty yards from the northwest corner of the Castle Dunlaggan, a blue tarp lay crumpled. Thin fingers of fog crept up the valley, across the field and into its folds as dew collected on its surface.

  From under the blue tarp, a laughing horse, a novelty ring tone on a cell phone, whinnied again and again.

  Chapter Three

  I was drifting off to sleep when Lettie tapped on my door.

  “Psst! Dotsy.”

  I padded to the door. Lettie, wrapped in a blue robe, pulled me into the hall. Her face was smeared with some sort of green goo, another one of her age-reversing miracle creams, I supposed.

  “I hear a strange noise,” she said.

  We stood silent for a few moments before I heard it, too. It was a sort of rhythmic clanking sound, like metal on something non-metal. The walls in the stone hallway, I knew, could play tricks with sound so I walked to the north end of the hall with Lettie, trembling, attached to my left armi I heard nothing from that end. At the south end of the hall, I carefully pulled on the door to a winding staircase and listened again.

  The sound was louder here and coming up from below. That stairwell led up to the third floor and down to the first. Possibly below ground as well. The noises stopped. I turned to Lettie and chuckled. Her hands clasped tightly under her chin, she wore a comically exaggerated expression of fear on her green face.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “No idea.”

  “Are you going down there?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  It started up again. Clink, shush, clink, shush.

  “I’ll never be able to get to sleep, now,” Lettie said. “Even if it stops, I’ll be listening for it to start up again.”

  “We can ask William about it in the morning. For now, I’ll lend you a book on Neolithic flint that’s guaranteed to put you to sleep.”

  * * * * *

  At six a.m., I started up the spiral staircase to the bathroom on the third floor of the round tower. My room was actually closer to a bathroom at the southern end of the hall, and there was another, a half bath, on the ground floor beneath it, but those two were generally occupied in the morning, and I hated to wait in the hall with my towel and soap, like some summer camper.

  To get to the top of the round tower, you had to start at ground level then climb the narrow stone stairs that wound up the turret within the tower, like a straw in a glass. The only light came from the occasional arrow-slit window and a wall-mounted bulb which popped and went dark as soon as I flicked the switch. I had my flashlight, my towel, and my roll-up travel toiletry kit with me.

  At the foot of the stairs, I paused. This was where I had found the Super Bowl ticket yesterday evening. On the third step. I had racked my brain to think of a reasonable explanation for a yet-to-be-played Super Bowl ticket to be lying, fresh and untrampled, on the steps of a castle in Scotland, but I hadn’t come up with a thing. If this were a castle where public tours traipsed through, I could understand it. But Castle Dunlaggan was a bed-and-breakfast, catering to the sort of people who like to go off the beaten track. To my knowledge, there had been no American guests but Lettie and me for the last week or so at least, and if that ticket had been lying there more than a day, I would have found it earlier.

  The landing at the base of the stairwell adjoined a large, round room, currently used for storage, and a door leading outside to a small stone stoop in the inner courtyard. Last evening, I remembered, I had left my boots and trowel on the stoop because the boots were too muddy to bring in. I stepped out and checked them. The mud was still damp. I plopped myself down on the stone and began to work away at the mess with my trowel because I had to wear those boots again today.

  It certainly hasn’t taken me long to make myself at home in a castle, I thought. Here I sit, in my pink bathrobe and slippers, cleaning mud off my boots in the morning sun.

  The open courtyard had once been a completely enclosed quadrangle, but the north wing had crumbled a few hundred years ago. It had once joined the round towerP
%v the northwest to the kitchen and servants’ quarters in the east wing, but now it went only a third of the way across before tapering down to rubble. I stopped scraping my boots for a moment and breathed in the morning air. The sun, rising over the kitchen roof, had not yet reached the ground in the courtyard, so the grass was still covered with dew.

  Banging the boots against the stone a couple of times, I placed them inside the door and climbed the stairs. The room on the second floor of the tower was circular like the one below it, but this one was nicely furnished as a bedroom. Until yesterday, the two women Lettie and I called “the weird sisters” had been staying there. I had heard William dragging their luggage across the front drive and the car doors slam last night shortly after I’d gone to my room. This morning, the bedroom door stood open.

  On the third level, I flung my towel over the shower curtain rod, hung my toiletry kit from the light beside the mirror, and looked out a narrow window while I ran the water to heat it up. I could see the old drystone wall that ran northward between a dew-covered pasture and the back lawn. On the pasture side of the wall lay a bright blue tarp that I couldn’t recall seeing there yesterday.

  In the distance, Christine, a local teen-ager who helped in the kitchen, crested a small hill and slogged across the meadow on her way to work. I imagined that her shoes and socks were getting soaked. I checked the shower’s water temperature again.

  “Crikey! Oh my Lord, oooh!”

  I dashed back to the window in time to see Christine jump the wall and fly across the lawn toward the kitchen. I turned off the water and ran out to the stairs. My eyes had no time to adjust to the gloom. Feeling my way down the spiral stairs, I grabbed the iron handrail on the inside wall and hoped for the best. I dashed out the side door, around to the wall and over it, swinging my feet onto the grass a few feet from the blue tarp.