by Maddy Hunter
“Hamish Maccoull meant the words as more than a warning, Mrs. Miceli.” Morna Dalrymple eyed the dagger as if it had just grown a viper’s fangs. “He meant them as a curse.”
eight
“Say what?”
“The dirk,” Morna repeated. “It’s cursed.”
I waited a beat, fighting back a grin. “You actually believe that?”
Her expression grew stony. “Are ye saying ye don’t? Why do ye think Hamish Maccoull was the most feared chieftain in all the highlands?”
I’d seen Braveheart. I knew exactly why people were afraid of these primitive types. “Scary face paint?”
“He had the eye.” She tapped her finger high on her cheekbone. “He could as easily kill ye with a look as with his claymore, and fer added effect, he’d throw in a curse.” She suddenly wiped her hands down the sides of her robe, as if to cleanse her palms of toxic contamination. “You’ll want ta return this ta the place ye found it.”
“Drive all the way back to Braemar? We can’t do that. We have to head north tomorrow.”
She skewered me with a wary look. “If ye want ta avoid more death,” she said, pronouncing the words with exaggerated slowness, “ye’ll do as I tell ye.”
“More death?” I frowned at what she was implying. “Are you suggesting that Isobel’s passing can be blamed on the dirk?”
“Was she the one who found it?”
“Well, yah. But—”
“Is she dead?”
“Yah. But—”
“Pull yer head outta the sand, girl. She died because she stole Hamish Maccoull’s dagger. It was his curse that killed her.”
I lowered an eyelid and stared at her through the slit. “I thought she died because a legion of demons flew out of her mouth and strangled her.”
“That’s before I knew of the dagger. We’re in Scotland. Curses always trump demons. Ask anyone.”
“Pardon me, Mrs. Dalrymple.” The waiter who’d delivered the breakfast tray appeared at the library door, confusion running rampant on his face. “An emergency van has pulled up ta the front door. They’re asking about … a body?”
“Room twenty-four. Mrs. Miceli’s husband is waiting fer them. Tell them I’ll join them presently.”
With a tired sigh, Morna Dalrymple threw her shoulders back and cranked her neck to left and right, as if preparing herself for the ordeal ahead. “But they’ll have ta wait until I change inta something decent. I’ll not be welcoming visitors ta my inn wearing my nightgown and robe.”
She made her way to the door, pausing halfway across the room to issue a parting decree. “Please tell yer grandmother ta peruse the Maccoull book with my blessing. The text is in English, so she should have no problem. As fer the dirk, ye’ll do me the favor of removing it from the premises. Immediately. I’ll not have the cursed thing in my hotel.”
_____
“So what’d you do with it, dear?”
“I ran into our bus driver downstairs and asked him to stow the box in a safe place on the bus.”
I’d stopped by Nana’s room on the way back to my own to give her and Tilly a heads up on our most recent calamity.
“I hope he don’t get nosy and snoop inside,” Nana fretted as she unwound a turban of toilet paper from around her fresh perm. “What if he opens the lid? That curse could escape and sock the rest of us.”
“I believe that’s Pandora’s box you’re referring to, Marion.” Tilly lingered by the window, observing the emergency van that was still parked in the front of the hotel. “All the evils of the earth flew out into the world. This is different. I don’t believe curses are capable of flight.”
“There’s always a first time.” Nana folded her one-ply into a neat stack and plumped her curls in the dresser mirror.
“C’mon, Nana,” I chided from my perch on her bed. “Since when do you believe in curses?”
“Since that Kronk woman dropped dead of one.”
I wagged my finger at her. “You see? This is how rumors get started. I told you. Etienne found an epinephrine pen in her bathroom, which means she was severely allergic to something.”
“You bet she was,” Nana agreed. “Curses.”
I shot a pleading look across the room. “Tilly, would you please tell my grandmother there’s no such thing as a curse?”
“It’s all nonsense, Marion.” She made a shooing motion with her hand, as if scattering a swarm of midges. “Why, when I was living among the Dani in New Guinea, one malcontented woman was forever invoking curses on her fellow tribesmen. ‘May your head fill with black bile and explode with the sound of a thousand roaring rivers. May your man-meat wither like a dead snake and drop onto your feet.’ Quite poetic stuff for a diehard headhunter, actually.”
“So what happened?” asked Nana.
“Well, as a consequence of the woman’s constant incantations, the tribal chief decided to relocate his village to another part of the jungle.”
Nana gasped. “He picked up stakes and left the troublemaker behind?”
“Unfortunately, no. He was married to her, so he ended up taking her with him.”
A moment of silence, followed by, “That don’t make no sense. If he had to drag her along with him, how come he moved?”
“Too much cranial viscera on the ground. You couldn’t walk outside your hut without tripping over someone’s jawbone or Mr. Winky. It was especially treacherous during the rainy season.”
Nana turned slowly in my direction and arched a defiant eyebrow. I glared at Tilly, wild-eyed. “Did I miss something? Didn’t you just get through telling Nana that curses are nonsense?”
“I did. That’s because they are.”
“So what’s with the exploding heads?”
“Oh, that.” She shrugged. “Pure coincidence. I’m sure it was just a fluke.”
Nana polished her glasses on her robe and slid them onto her face. “Well, we better hope we don’t get surprised by no fluke when our driver is sittin’ behind the wheel of our bus, toolin’ down a hill that drops off on either side and don’t got no runaway truck ramp.”
A digital chiming caused Nana to snatch her Smartphone off the dresser. “It’s George,” she said, eyeing the screen with a crooked grin.
“Text message?” I asked, wondering if the rumor mill had already begun pumping out misinformation.
“It’s a picture.” She flashed it in my direction, allowing me a glimpse of what appeared to be naked flesh.
“A picture of what?” I asked with sudden apprehension.
“George’s best feature.”
“OH, MY GOD! Are you sexting?”
She pressed a finger to her lips, smiling impishly. “Don’t tell your mother,” she whispered. She punched the screen. “You wanna see a close-up?”
“No, I don’t want to see a close-up! Oh, my God. Does George know you’re willing to share his private … stuff with the general public?”
“It’s not the whole public, dear. It’s usually only Tilly.”
“You show it to Tilly?”
“He don’t mind. He’s real proud of them body parts of his.”
“Euuuw.” I fell backward onto the mattress as if shot, forearm over my eyes, tongue lolling out of my mouth. “Mom’s gonna find out. I know she’ll find out. Oh, God. I can’t think about it.”
Nana jacked my forearm off my face and poised her phone an inch above my nose. “See?”
It filled my field of vision like a mini IMAX—the pert, fleshy protuberance with its fluid dips and angles, its unapologetic nakedness, its exquisitely turgid shape. I blinked at the image. “Why did George send you a picture of his nose?”
“It’s his best feature.”
I propped myself on one elbow, giving her a narrow look. “Has anyone explained to you that the whole purpose of sexting is to tra
nsmit images of body parts that are actually—how do I say this—physically provocative?”
Nana lifted her brows. “You mean, like George’s Mr. Happy?”
“Yes, like George’s Mr. Happy.”
She gave me a hangdog look and sighed. “He had a notion to do that once, but it didn’t work out so good.”
“What stopped him? Fear of public exposure?”
She shook her head. “The screen wasn’t big enough.”
“Movement down below,” Tilly announced from the window. “They must be preparing for transport.”
I popped off the bed and tore across the floor in a footrace with Nana, arriving a half length behind her. Man, I really needed to think about working out.
“Oops, false alarm.” Tilly shifted her weight as she leaned more heavily on her walking stick. “It’s only one of the technicians lighting up a cigarette.”
I marked the time on the nightstand clock. “Yikes, it’s getting late. I need to run back to the room to throw myself together, and you’d probably appreciate my clearing out of here so you guys can finish getting dressed. I’m just glad you were awake when I knocked.”
“Tilly and me’s been awake for a long time, dear.”
“Jet lag?” I asked as she escorted me to the door.
“Brainstormin’.”
“At this hour of the morning?”
“We still don’t got no team motto, so we’re tryin’ to come up with somethin’ before we forget we need one.”
“Any success?”
“We was thinkin’ about ‘You go, girls,’ but we figured the fellas wouldn’t be too keen on it.”
“Yah, guys don’t generally like being referred to as girls. But speaking of mottos, what’s with Team Three’s ‘There is no dog’? Do you have any idea what that means?”
“It don’t mean nuthin’. It’s what happens when you stick an atheist and a dyslexic on the same team together.”
As she opened the door to the hall, I nodded at the book I’d left for her on the dresser. “I hope you’ll have time to skim at least a few pages of Mrs. Dalrymple’s book before we have to leave tomorrow.”
“Isn’t this somethin’?” whooped Nana. “All these years not know-in’ nuthin’ about my Scottish kin, and now I get a chance to read a whole book about one of the big kahunas on the family tree. What’d you say his name is?”
“Hamish Maccoull.”
“Hamish Maccoull.” She rolled the name around on her tongue as if it were a favorite candy. “That’s a real nice name.”
“Uhh … There’s just one small detail I should probably tell you before you begin reading.”
Her eyes brightened in anticipation. “They’re gonna make it available for download on Amazon?”
“Not exactly. Your relative Hamish? He’s the one who placed the curse.”
_____
Wally made the announcement to the whole dining room an hour later, before the breakfast buffet opened.
“Could I have your attention, please?”
Chatter waned. Cups stilled. Heads turned.
“I’m sorry to have to start out your day on a sad note, but I have some tragic news to share with you. Early this morning, Isobel Kronk passed away quietly in her room.”
Gasps. Whispers. A table-rattling belch. “Don’t know where that came from,” Dick Teig apologized. “Sorry.”
“I’ve spoken to her son,” Wally continued, “and we’re making arrangements to have her body flown back to Indiana.”
“She looked good at dinner last night,” Lucille Rassmuson called out, pausing thoughtfully before adding, “Although, why she wanted a rats nest of gray hair straggling down her back is beyond me.”
“Her complexion was suffering from serious sun damage,” said Stella Gordon. “If I’d been in her shoes, I’d have opted for a submental necklift and laser skin resurfacing rather than a trip to Scotland.”
“She had very nice teeth,” commented Mom.
“They were probably capped,” said Bernice.
“Do you know what caused her to die so suddenly?” Alice Tjarks inquired.
Margi fired her hand into the air, wrist flopping, fingers flying. “I know! It happens to patients at the clinic all the time.” She paused for effect. “Her heart stopped.”
Even from my table at the back of the room, I could see Wally’s eyes begin to glaze over. “That’s true, Ms. Swanson, but in this instance, there might have been a trigger that precipitated the event.”
Helen Teig gasped. “She was shot?”
“No!” Wally choked out. “Her son confirmed our suspicions that she was allergic to wasp and bee stings, so the medical examiner is theorizing that she might have been stung and suffered a fatal reaction. He’ll know more after the postmortem.”
“Is this going to have any effect on the contest?” Bill Gordon demanded. “Because I don’t think it should. My heart’s bleeding about Isobel kicking off, but it wasn’t our fault, so why should the rest of us be made to suffer because of it?”
Scattered applause. A subdued, “Here, here.”
Gee, it was heartening to see how broken up Bill was about a death in our midst.
Wally’s expression grew pinched, his voice tight. “Since the local authorities are in charge now, there’s little more we can do, so they’ve encouraged us to continue our schedule as planned. But I expect each of you will want to remember Isobel in some small way today, either with a moment of silence, or in some other way that’ll be meaningful to you.”
“I remember her, all right,” griped Bill. “I remember how she tried to screw the rest of us and cheat her way to a win.”
“That’s water over the dam now,” Alex Hart pointed out, his emotional stability and calm making him sound even more reasonable than Doctor Phil. “She can’t ever do it again, so why don’t we just forget about it and move on? Besides, she wasn’t a very adept cheat. She stole the wrong thing. Remember?”
Bill smashed his fist on the table, giving us all a start. “Her team should be punished! How do we know they weren’t in cahoots with each other?”
“Because we weren’t!” Cameron Dasher protested. “She admitted to everyone last night that she acted on her own. Did you miss that part of the conversation?”
“And you expected us to believe her?” Bill snorted.
“I believed her,” said Alice Tjarks, raising her hand in support.
“So did I,” admitted Mom.
“Me, too,” said George.
Osmond popped out of his chair. “Show of hands. How many folks think Isobel was telling the truth about acting on her own?”
I watched heads turn left and right as people tried to gauge how everyone else was going to vote before they cast their own.
“It doesn’t matter if you think Isobel acted alone or not.” Wally boomed out his pronouncement as if he were channeling the Great Oz. He motioned Osmond to sit down. “We started the contest with five teams, and we’ll end with five teams. I’ve spoken to the Micelis about this, and we’re all in agreement. There was no harm done yesterday, no matter how outraged you are about what Isobel did, so as far as we’re concerned, the issue is resolved. However, I’m troubled by another issue.”
He paused meaningfully to scan the faces in the room. “Isobel left her medical form blank, so we didn’t know about her allergy. Maybe if we had known, we might have been able to help her. So if, when you were filling out your medical histories, it slipped your mind that you have a life-threatening condition, I’d encourage you to get your information up to speed. I always have the forms handy, so if you remember anything you’d like to add, or delete, speak to me in private, and we’ll get it taken care of. The important thing is for the information to be as accurate as possible in case of medical emergency.”
Spines stiffened. Eyes shifte
d. Guilt marched with heavy feet across the suddenly self-conscious faces of everyone at my table—Dick Teig, Margi, Osmond, Dad.
Dad? I stared at him in disbelief. Oh, my God! Dad had lied on his medical history?
Stella and Bill Gordon, on the other hand, sat rigidly stone-faced, apparently convinced that nothing Wally was saying applied to them.
“I want to go on record as opposing your radical secular socialist decision not to disqualify Isobel’s team from the contest,” Bill protested.
“Opposition duly noted,” said Wally. “But instead of dwelling on Isobel’s misconduct, maybe you should all start gearing up for your next challenge.”
The onslaught of negative vibes crackling throughout the room slowly ebbed, replaced by a low-level buzz that swelled to a chirpy titter. “You’re still going to let us geocache?” asked Grace Stolee.
“You can count on it,” Wally assured her. “The current situation
is out of our hands, so there’s no reason we can’t proceed as planned. I’ve written the day’s itinerary on the whiteboard in the lobby, so please check it out after breakfast. In a nutshell—geocaching at Urquhart Castle first, a late morning stop at the Loch Ness Exhibition Center, an afternoon cruise on Loch Ness itself, and then dinner in Drumnadrochit, where you’ll be entertained by a trio of bagpipers and treated to a smorgasbord of original Scottish delicacies such as Cullen Skink, Clootie Dumplings, Rumbledethumps, and Dundee Cake.”
Margi looked stricken. “Those things don’t sound like they’re going to taste very good, except for maybe the cake. Will we be able to order off the menu?”
“There’s no menu,” said Wally. “It’s a fixed meal.”
“Why are we having a smorgasbord in Scotland?” asked Helen. “Are they going to serve Swedish food?”
“Is skunk Swedish?” asked Alice, who gave her hearing aid a little tap.
“I think skunk is one a them Southern delicacies,” Nana piped up. “Kinda like chitlins, or roadkill.”
