by Maddy Hunter
“Which explains why he dumped you on your keister,” Erik taunted. “Will you just open the door and wish everyone a goodnight?”
“Goodnight, all.” Alex swept his hand toward his waist and sketched a deep bow before making a dramatic exit into his room.
Erik rolled his eyes. “What can I say? The radiation has finally affected his brain. Big day tomorrow, folks. Get some sleep.” He executed a two-fingered salute before crossing the threshold and closing the door behind him.
I cocked my head, giving Wally a squinty look. “Are rocket scientists exposed to radiation?”
“Beats me. Why don’t you ask Alex?”
I just might have to do that, I thought after I closed my door and locked it. I stared at the phone on the nightstand, wishing Etienne would call with news. Any news. He’d been gone for five hours already. He should know something by now, shouldn’t he?
I turned the television on manually and flipped through the channels—all three of them. One was an international news network where the events of the day were being commentated by a bottle-blonde sex kitten with eye-popping cleavage. I was sure I was watching Fox, until my brain kicked in and I realized she was speaking a language that sounded suspiciously like Russian. The other two channels featured ghost figures delivering weather reports for the highlands and islands behind a veil of staticky snow. A weather channel marred by bad reception wasn’t my idea of exciting TV viewing, but the static provided the kind of subtle white noise that often helped people sleep … or think.
I stared mindlessly at the screen, casting about for something to boost my spirits, but all I kept hearing was Wally’s words, playing back on an endless loop in my head: two people dead and guests at each other’s throats.
Two people dead.
Nana would tell me that people die all the time, especially old people. Since our tours catered to seniors, the law of averages was simply doing its thing, so I shouldn’t spend time fretting over mortality charts.
But Isobel and Dolly weren’t that old, a voice inside my head argued. They should have had a lot of years ahead of them.
So why had they died? Why them? Was it happenstance—I turned my head in slow motion to eye the shoulder bag I’d dropped on the bed—or something else?
Dragging the bag toward me, I removed Hamish Maccoull’s dirk and set it beside me, unwilling to buy into the mythology.
It was a knife. A very old and possibly bloodstained knife. Bad luck could not hitch a ride on an inanimate object by order of a man who’d been dead for over three hundred years. I mean, even if the whole curse thing had been powerful enough to actually frighten clansmen to death three centuries ago, the twentieth century had introduced a concept that people took far more seriously than ancient curses.
Expiration dates.
Everything expired these days—driver licenses, passports, anti-aging eye creams. Shouldn’t curses follow suit?
I shot the knife a defiant look. “I’m revoking your active status and placing you on the inactive list. What do you think of that?”
I paused for a moment’s reflection … and hung my head.
Oh, God. I was talking to a knife.
I leaped half a foot off the bed as the phone rang out like a fire station bell on steroids. “Geez!” I ran around the foot of the bed to grab the receiver. “Hello?”
“They’re allowing me no more than a five-minute conversation, bella, so I’ll need to talk fast. Personal calls using department equipment are apparently frowned upon.” He jacked his voice up a notch. “A problem that could be resolved if the existing phone system had more than one line.”
I smiled. “Did the person that was directed at hear you?”
“Probably not. He’s too busy staring at his gigantic flat-screen TV. Did you know they can pick up Fox News over here, Emily? But the really odd thing is, they’re dubbing the female commentator in Russian.”
“Have the officers finished questioning Nana?”
“For now. She answered all their questions honestly and without hesitation, but they’re insisting she spend the night.”
“Oh, no. Why?”
“Because the postmortem was inconclusive. They don’t want to let your grandmother go until they have a better idea of what actually killed Dolly.”
“And when is that likely to happen?”
“This is probably going to sound vaguely familiar, bella, but the medical examiner needs to send lab samples to a facility with higher tech equipment before he can fill out the death certificate.”
I sucked in my breath. “Just like Isobel?”
“Unfortunately. And the similarities don’t end there.”
A nerve-rattling crash erupted from the room next door, followed by a brief exchange of angry shouts. I flinched. Man, I couldn’t guess what Erik and Alex had broken, but if it was hotel property, they better offer to pay for it.
“The ME completed the autopsy in record time,” Etienne continued, “but his initial analysis has caused a headache for Officer Bean. Apparently, Dolly died from a condition the ME has never had occasion to see before.”
A chill darted up my spine and shot tingling sensations all the way to my fingertips.
“Her stomach appears to have exploded.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Do the police know about Isobel’s exploding stomach?”
“They do now. Provincial labs might not boast cutting-edge technology, but they have an outstanding computer system with an easily accessible data base. Bean was all over it.”
“What does that mean for Nana? Oh God. They can’t be thinking she’s responsible for two deaths, can they?”
“Let’s just say, Bean isn’t about to let her slip through his fingers.”
“But she has no motive!”
“The contest,” he said flatly. “He floated a theory that your grandmother wanted to slow Dolly’s team down in order to give her own team a chance to catch up, so she slipped a debilitating substance to Dolly, all dressed up as a dietary supplement. Regrettably, it not only slowed her down; it ended up killing her.”
“But that’s ridiculous! Nana doesn’t need to win our contest to finance her next trip. She’s a bazillionaire. She can afford to go anywhere she wants without having to knock off the competition. And furthermore, his theory is totally warped. Isobel died when Team Five was at the back of the pack, not the front, so why would Nana feel compelled to kill a woman who wasn’t even a contender at the time?”
He hesitated, lowering his voice to a seductive whisper. “Have I ever told you how irresistible you are when you’re railing against injustice?”
“Etienne! This is serious!”
“I know it is, bella. I’m sorry. It’s just that … I miss you.” With a sigh of resignation, he continued. “Officer Bean has also made some cryptic references to clan Maccoull and their legendary penchant for savagery and revenge. Do you have any idea what he’s referring to?”
I rolled my eyes. “More nonsense. Nana can explain, if they’ll let you talk to her. Is she nearby? Any chance I can talk to her for a few—”
“They’re giving me the signal, so I need to hang up.”
“Are you coming back to the hotel tonight or—”
“I’d prefer not to leave your grandmother alone, so I’ve requested a cot, and they’re amenable to my spending the night. I’ll call you tomorrow. Early. Ti amo, bella.”
“I love you, too.” The line went dead.
I placed the receiver back on the hook, my hand trembling with cold, my mind racing to make sense of the new information.
Two women. Two horrific deaths. Two identical pathologies pointing to a cause of death so violently lethal and rare, that it was unfamiliar to two separate medical examiners.
So what was the thread that connected the two de
aths? Isobel and Dolly had obviously engaged in some activity or event that had condemned them to share the same fate. But what was it? Were they taking similar medications that might have been either contaminated or recalled?
Nope. Isobel had been packing an epinephrine pen; Dolly had been packing baby aspirin.
Did they share a genetic abnormality that might have manifested itself at the same time?
What were the chances? They weren’t related. Isobel had been a Campbell; Dolly had been a MacDonald. How could they share similar genes?
In fact, the only bond the women seemed to have had in common was that they belonged to the same team and despised each other.
And lest I forget, they were both thieves.
As the disturbance next door escalated to a shouting match, I walked to the foot of the bed to stare at Hamish Maccoull’s knife.
Isobel had told us why she’d stolen the dirk, but why in the world had Dolly? Had she intended to pawn it? Keep it? Use it? If she’d known about the curse beforehand, would she have stolen it anyway, or would she have been too superstitious to go near the thing?
I guess we’d never know now. But there were several indisputable facts we did know.
Isobel had stolen Hamish Maccoull’s dirk and suffered a gruesome death.
Dolly had stolen the dirk and suffered an equally gruesome death.
Their autopsies revealed their deaths were eerily similar … yet inexplicable.
So the question to resolve was, what would cause two human stomachs to disintegrate in exactly the same way, in a manner so alien to medical science, that it completely confounded local experts?
I hugged my arms to myself as I studied the knife, not daring to admit the inconceivable truth surrounding it.
Was it possible the knife really was cursed? I felt like a dimwit buying into such foolishness, but the evidence seemed so overwhelming that—
Damn.
What else could cause the kind of internal damage the women had incurred?
My shoulders slumped as I sank into the chair Wally had vacated. I wasn’t a doctor. How would I know? But the body of evidence before me pointed in only one direction, forcing me to concede, with great reluctance, that there existed a slim possibility that Isobel Kronk and Dolly Pinker … might have been felled by the power of an ancient curse.
There. I said it.
BOOM!
The landscape art suddenly flew off the wall and fell onto the bed, followed by the appearance of a booted foot as it punched a hole through the wood paneling directly above the nightstand.
“Sorry about that!” Erik called out. “Foot slipped.”
I stared at the sole of his hiking boot as he wrenched it out of the wall, unable to drag my eyes away from the gaping hole.
I put my brain on rewind.
Felled by the power of an ancient curse?
Either that … or a roundhouse kick to the abdomen by a man once dubbed the greatest kickboxer in the world.
sixteen
“John O’ Groats is the northernmost settlement in Great Britain,” Wally informed us early the next morning as we motored along the narrow A836, bucking crosswinds that caused every rivet in the bus to creak and groan. The terrain was flat as a tabletop, with sweeping vistas of the rockbound, wave-battered coast to our left. A profusion of purple heather blanketed the landscape, adding cheer to the gray rock and dull grass, but when the color faded, I suspected this treeless, wind-torn moor could be the bleakest place on earth. “The town was named for a Dutchman who petitioned King James IV for permission to run a ferry between the mainland and the Orkney Islands. His name was Jan de Groote, and his venture was one of the big success stories of 1496, because the ferry has been in service ever since.”
“And it’s still seaworthy?” Margi called out, stupefied.
“It’s the same operation.” Wally chuckled. “Not the same boat.”
“It better have an engine,” hollered Dick Teig, “because I’m not about to tear my rotator cuff by rowing across that channel in these winds.”
“Then I assume you’re planning to stay on shore,” Alice chided, “because a boat built in 1496 is not going to have an engine.”
“Yes, it will,” argued Dick Stolee. “It just won’t be diesel.”
Oh, God.
I clutched the hand-grip on the seat in front of me as the bus swerved in the battering winds.
The gang was on edge this morning because their cell phone service was still down, so they were having to talk to each other instead of text. I was on edge this morning because I thought I knew what had happened to Isobel and Dolly … but I was at a loss how to prove it.
“The ferry comes fully equipped with an engine, indoor and outdoor seating, a snack bar, and restroom facilities,” Wally assured us, “so no one’s going to have to stay behind. And just to finish my story, Jan is Dutch for John, but the O’ Groats appears to reflect the ferryman’s habit of charging each passenger one groat for the ride.”
I’d stayed up past midnight trying to resolve the “hole in the wall” issue with the hotel’s night manager. Since I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, I’d had to wake up Dad from a sound sleep to translate. And Mom decided to join us since she was awake anyway, worrying about how to prevent news of Nana’s incarceration from leaking to the Legion of Mary’s Newsletter committee. Erik explained the mishap by pleading the Little Miss Muffet defense: he’d spied an enormous black spider halfway up the wall, and he’d tried to kill it.
“With your foot?” I’d asked.
“Of course with my foot. You don’t think I was going to smoosh it with my hand, do you? I mean, euw.”
In the end, the manager apologized profusely for the insect problem and upgraded Erik and Alex to the bridal suite, bought Mom and Dad’s silence about the infestation by upgrading them to the room Mary Queen of Scots would have slept in if the hotel had been around back then, and fixed the unwanted porthole in my wall by taping a piece of cardboard over it and giving me a can of bug spray, just in case the spider had been traveling with an extended family. So everyone went to bed happy.
Except me.
I was going to have to tell my husband that I suspected our contest had been infiltrated by a killer who was using his feet as deadly weapons.
“The ferry isn’t scheduled to leave for another half-hour,” Wally continued, “so you’ll have plenty of time to grab a cup of coffee or use the comfort station before we board. And please remain in your seats once we’re parked because Emily has an important announcement to make about the contest.”
Buzzing. Whispers. Distrustful looks from the guests in the seats around me.
“What kind of announcement?” Bill Gordon yelled.
“We’ll be arriving at the harbor in a few minutes, Bill. I suspect you can wait that long to find out.”
I was a bit leery about how people would react to my idea, but Wally was on board, and I was pretty sure Etienne would be on board, too … once I told him, even though he’d probably never heard of Oprah. I would have told him this morning, if our five- minute time limit hadn’t expired before I could get it out.
“Is anyone seeing what I’m seeing in the water over there?” George asked in a disbelieving tone. “What is that? A reef ?”
I looked out the window to see a frothy swell of white water bubbling out of the sea like a tsunami wave, churning and roiling with volcanic intensity. Only, it wasn’t breaking toward shore. It was just staying in the same place, like a permanent gash in the ocean’s surface, bleeding out constant spume and brine.
“I’ve read about this,” Wally enthused, “but this is the first time I’ve seen it with my own eyes. What you’re witnessing, ladies and gentlemen, is the exact point where the Atlantic Ocean encounters the North Sea. There’s no reef. It’s just a friendly meet and greet between two power
ful bodies of water.”
“Meet and greet?” questioned George. “Looks more like a full frontal attack to me.”
“Seas might be more choppy today because of the wind,” Wally added, “so if you’re predisposed to motion sickness, I suggest you take a prophylactic before boarding the ferry.”
Snickering. Whispers. Snorts.
“Psst. Emily.” From behind me, Osmond poked his fingers through the divide between the seats to tap my arm. “I got a condom with me, but I don’t get how it’s gonna prevent sea sickness. What am I supposed to do? Wear it, or swallow it?”
I looked heavenward and shook my head. Really? I mean, really?
The harbor at John O’ Groats consisted of a parking lot filled with recreational vehicles and several single-story, whitewashed buildings spread out along a circular drive. After Calum maneuvered the bus into a vacant space and turned off the engine, I joined Wally at the front of the vehicle and took over the microphone, praying all the while for an outcome more favorable than total rebellion.
“Good morning. I thought this might be a good time to tell you about a new wrinkle I’ve decided to add to the contest.”
All eyes were focused on me. Faces conflicted. Mouths stiff.
“I wasn’t anticipating some of the problems we’ve run into, so to thank you for hanging in there with me and taking things in stride, I’m adding a few more prizes to the contest. Instead of giving away one free trip, Destinations Travel will be giving away”—I paused for effect—“five!”
Lips softened. Brows inched upward. Eyes gleamed with disbelief.
“One trip will go to the winning team, and the other four will be awarded to one member of each losing team.” It would cost the agency a fortune, but I figured we could recover more quickly from a one-time output of capital than from the bad publicity that litigation would bring.
Studied silence.
“Are you telling us that you’re chucking the competition?” Tilly asked in a stern voice. “That the geocaching skills we’ve honed over the past few months are being discarded in favor of a mindless and wholly random drawing?”
