Bonnie of Evidence

by Maddy Hunter

  Spinning on my heels, I ducked out the cabin door into the cold wind of the afterdeck.

  Okay, I was being a coward, but if the guy who’d added that nonsense about meeting every concern head-on had been in my shoes, I bet he’d do the same thing.

  Scrambling around a large metal pod riveted to the deck, I read the sign that indicated “Ladies” on the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside the two-staller, hoping that Bernice wouldn’t follow me. But just in case she did—

  I locked myself inside one of the stalls and held my breath. If she barged in, would she know it was me behind the door? I stared down at my feet. Would my shoes give me away? I mean, was there anyone else wearing ridiculously impractical platform wedges with ankle straps?

  The wind whistled. Anchor chains rattled. Waves smashed and shook the bulkhead, causing me to stiffen my knees and brace my back against the stall for support. I heard a door bang shut close by, on the “Gents” side of the pod, and then I heard a man speak so clearly, it was as if his voice were being transmitted by speaker phone rather than drifting through the air vent above my head.

  “How much longer?”

  “It better be soon, before you decide to draw any more attention to yourself.”

  I stared at the vent, recognizing the voices immediately.

  “Cool your jets, bro. I’ve done nothing to implicate myself.”

  “Says you. I saw the looks in people’s eyes last night. They think something funny’s going on.”

  “Hey, if you stick to the script, no one’s gonna suspect a thing. I’ve got news for you. This isn’t my first time out. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Stu’s going to be pissed about the collateral damage.”

  “Isobel and Dolly? Look, Stu’s always pissed about something. He’s a pig-headed SOB with a foul temper. But he knows what it’s like in the trenches. He’ll be singing a different tune once we pull the trigger.”

  I sucked in my breath. Trigger? Oh, my God. They were packing guns?

  “No more mistakes. We have to strike, and get out. So … we’re doing it today.”

  “Change of heart?”

  “Yah, the Miceli broad scares me. She’s a ticking time bomb. I think if she gets a hair up her butt and starts snooping around, she could ruin everything.”

  Two toilets whooshed at the same time.

  “Not a chance. If she sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong, I know exactly how to deal with her.”

  “You must have a damned death wish to—”

  “Not my idea, bro. It’s Stu’s.”

  Water running. The sound of paper towels being ripped from dispensers.

  Erik Ishmael laughed a truly evil laugh. “Hey, I’m pumped. Let’s wrap it up. I’m ready to put another notch in my belt.”

  I stood frozen in place as the door banged shut again.

  OhmigodOhmigodOhmigod. Erik and Alex. They were both killers! There was no ancient curse. These guys were hired killers with a contract to take out someone other than the two women they’d already killed. And they were doing it today!

  As the ferry boomed into a trough and climbed the next swell, the deck pitched beneath my feet, slamming me face first into the stall’s metal partition, backward against the wall, then flat onto my butt. I smacked into the toilet bowl as we bucked another wave, and as I felt a stream of warm liquid ooze from my nose, I realized with horror that someone on our tour was being targeted for murder.

  One of us was going to be taken out today.

  The question was, who?

  seventeen

  We staggered off the ferry like the bedraggled survivors of the original Poseidon Adventure, only with drier clothes. The group had exhausted the supply of motion sickness bags halfway through the forty-five minute trip, but the staff promised to have a fresh supply on hand for the return journey. Not that it mattered. If the majority ruled, we’d be returning to the mainland by a method of transportation less traumatizing than the ferry.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you, but me and Helen are taking the train back,” vowed Dick Teig as he and Helen shuffled onto dry land.

  “Me, too,” said Osmond, whose coloring was slowly starting to pinken up.

  I walked beside them, arm in arm with Alice, whose complexion was still only slightly less green than creamed peas. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, guys, but there’s no train.”

  “Are there any plans to get one?” asked Dick Stolee, who was pausing every couple of steps in apparent hopes that the pavement would stop shifting.

  “It’s kind of hard laying track across a six-mile stretch of ocean.”

  “That’s all right,” announced Helen. “We don’t mind waiting.”

  I was fortunate not to have lost my cookies on the ride over, but my nose had bled all over my raincoat, and I could feel a lump forming on my forehead, so I looked as bad as everyone else, if not worse.

  Our bus was waiting at the end of the quay. The wind was still gusting, the sky had clouded over with storm clouds, and the damp sea air was sending a chill through my bones. It was a miserable day to be anywhere other than in front of a cozy fire. And if it started to drizzle, I suspected we’d have a hard time convincing people to even step off the bus, which meant they wouldn’t get to explore the Italian Chapel, or the Ring of Brodgar, or Skara Brae.

  I glanced toward the sky and prayed for rain.

  “Open seating today,” Wally announced as I delivered Alice to the base of the stepwell. “So, sit anywhere.”

  As I waited for Alice to clear the stairs, I felt Bernice close ranks behind me. “Are you planning to climb aboard or are you waiting for a written invitation?”

  I ascended the stairs and looked far down the aisle to where Erik and Alex were sitting. I nodded the usual pleasantries as I passed by, then staked out the seat directly behind them. The seat backs were pretty low on this vehicle, more like a city bus than a touring coach, so I was in a great position for spying. The guys wouldn’t be able to blink at each other without my seeing them. They didn’t know it yet, but I was going to be on them today like bark on a tree.

  I just wished Nana and Etienne weren’t stuck in Wick.

  I was suddenly feeling very alone.

  “The quicker you take your seats and get settled, the quicker we can leave,” Wally called out from the front.

  Once settled, I pulled out my cell phone and held my breath as I checked the signal. It was on! Not trusting it to remain on, I typed a message to Etienne as fast as my thumbs would fly. “Need verification. Imperative u check background of Erik and Alex. Pleez hurry.” I hit the send button.

  The Iowa contingent must have noticed the signal was up, too, because the bus was suddenly filled with the familiar dinging sounds of text messages landing in phone inboxes.

  Ding! From the front of the bus. Ding! From the rear of the bus. Ding! Ding! Ding!

  Erik shifted in his seat to address me over his shoulder. “I hate to complain, Emily, but I really think you should outlaw cell phone use on the bus. It’s not so bad outside, but on the bus, it’s so annoying. It diminishes the impact of the whole tour experience. It doesn’t even seem as if we’re in Orkney anymore.” A scowl settled on his handsome face. “It feels more like the men’s room at Port Authority.”

  Alex tsked disapproval as the dings continued. “I agree.” He pivoted around to look me straight in the eye. “Even if the messages are critically important, what can anyone do about anything from here?” His gaze dropped to the cell phone in the palm of my hand.

  I forced a half-smile as I held it up like a booby prize in a spelling contest. “That’s the beauty of owning a cheap model,” I lied. “Their range is so limited, you can’t actually use them.” I slid it back into my pocket.

  “Forget your cell phone, muffin,” chided Alex. “What about your raincoa
t? You’re never going to get that blood out if you don’t treat it immediately.” He fumbled about in the vicinity of his lap, where his sporran was resting. “I remembered to bring my stain removal pen today.” He lobbed it at me over the seat back. “But, if we’re dealing with dry clean only, don’t even bother to open the cap because you’ll have a major disaster on your hands.”

  “Actually, it’s wash and wear.”

  “Hallelujah. Do you have water?”

  I pulled a bottle out of my shoulder bag.

  “And a cotton handkerchief ?”

  “I have a packet of tissues.”

  “That won’t do at all.” He thwacked Erik’s forearm. “Give Emily your handkerchief.”

  “What if I need it?”

  “Don’t be a putz. When’s the last time you had to blow your nose?”

  “I—”

  “Never,” Alex scolded. “I don’t even know why you bother to carry one. Hand it over.”

  “Why don’t you give her yours?”

  “Because, dear heart, I’ve already used it.”

  “This is very generous of you,” I said as Erik sailed the perfectly folded square in my direction. These guys were so genuinely nice sometimes that it was hard for me to believe they were hardened killers, but I realized that “nice” wasn’t who they really were; it was only who they were pretending to be.

  “Quick like a bunny now,” instructed Alex. “Dab, dab, dab. Scribble, scribble, scribble. Then blot. Trust me. I’ve had a lot of experience removing bloodstains.”

  My hand froze on the cap of the pen.

  “His father was a butcher,” Erik piped up, giving him the eye.

  Sure he was.

  Wally’s breath hissed through the mike as he drew our attention to the front of the bus. “Before we take off, I want to introduce you to our coach driver. He’s a local lad who’s been conducting tours through Orkney for a few decades now. Would you care to tell us just how many years, John?”

  I boosted myself higher in my seat, my eyes widening as I caught sight of the shriveled skeleton of a man who was standing beside Wally. Uff-da. We’d hired the Crypt-Keeper as our local guide.

  The old guy crushed his slouch cap to his chest and smiled broadly into the microphone. “Fin puddy nae goon a weenie.”

  My head fell to my chest in despair. Oh, God. Not again.

  “What’d he say?” Bill Gordon yelled.

  Wally paused. “Uhh—More years than he can remember. Okay, shall we buckle up and get this show on the road?”

  I attended to my raincoat as we motored out of the harbor and onto a road so painfully narrow, there was no center line down the middle. Lush meadowland stretched across the flat terrain, providing a backdrop for a profusion of dazzling wildflowers. Hand-hewn posts with chicken-wire fencing marked property boundaries. Telephone poles marched in drunken formation across the perimeter of fields, delivering needed services to the occasional farmhouse. We passed a church, a herd of grazing sheep, and a red phone booth marooned near the intersection of two crossroads, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. To call the Orkney Islands “a little remote” was a bit like calling the Antarctic plateau “a little chilly.”

  “Fer nook a gootie nae brae ma doon hookie,” John mumbled over the microphone.

  “Tell him to speak up,” yelled Bernice. “I can’t hear him.”

  “I still can’t understand what he’s saying,” shouted Bill.

  “Neither can I!” griped Stella.

  “Nuff nae bawdy?” asked John.

  “He says that Orkney is made up of seventy islands,” Dad spoke up, “even though there’s controversy about the final number, because some of the islands are nothin’ more than a single rock poking out of the water. Only sixteen of the islands are inhabited by people. The largest one in the chain is called the Mainland, and it measures thirty miles at its widest point. The entire chain measures fifty-three miles north to south. The island we’re driving across now looks like a galloping horse on the map; the other sixty-nine look like a school of deformed fish.” Dad forced a chuckle. “I guess that’s a little Orkney humor.”

  Awed silence.

  Bill Gordon burst out in laughter. “Good one, Bob! You got all that out of six words?”

  Dad shrugged. “He threw in a few more statistics, but I didn’t wanna bore you.”

  “I motion that we hand the microphone over to Bob Andrew,” shouted Dick Teig. “He can tell us what we’re supposed to be hearing. All those in favor say, ‘Aye.’”

  “AYE!” came the thunderous response.

  “Opposed?”

  “Wait a second,” Osmond bristled. “You can’t put a motion up for vote. That’s my job.”

  “The ayes have it,” said Dick. “Let’s hear it for Bob.”

  Applause. Whistles. Hoots.

  Wally leaned over to speak to our driver, then motioned Dad to the front and handed him the mike. “John is okay with the new arrangement … I think.”

  More applause.

  I settled back in my seat, my gaze shifting between Erik’s and Alex’s heads.

  Who were these guys? Who did they work for? The Mafia? The mob? Could you work for both without getting whacked for double-dipping? And if they were professional hitmen, how could they accidentally kill two unintended victims? Could pros afford to make mistakes like that? Or were they actually amateurs trying to work their way up to the big leagues? Had they goofed up on their own, or had someone given them the wrong information?

  “Orkney’s been inhabited for five thousand years,” Dad told us as he interpreted John’s spiel, displaying the unexpected skill and aplomb of a UN translator. “And for five thousand years, the only way to get from one island to the next was by boat. But at the start of World War II, a German U-boat changed all that.”

  Dad’s voice grew more dramatic, with a hint of breathless anticipation. “The sub sneaked past the channel defenses between the Mainland and Lambholm Island and entered the inner harbor, the Scapa Flow, where the British Royal Fleet was at anchorage. It sent three torpedoes into the HMS Royal Oak, killing eight hundred thirty-three men. So to prevent future attacks, Winston Churchill ordered the eastern approaches from the sea to be sealed off, and he did that by building a series of causeways connecting three of the smaller islands in the chain.”

  Dad let out a relieved breath. “Churchill’s decision is credited with saving the Scapa Flow and the rest of the British Fleet from future attack, and in later years, with chopping several hours off a Sunday drive from Burwick to Kirkwall. We’ll be hitting the first one just over the next rise.”

  Erik had mentioned someone named Stu. Was it Stu who’d given him the wrong information? Who was this Stu? Stu, as in Stuart? Stuart, as in Bonnie Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the wannabe king who’d deserted his troops and escaped his enemies dressed in eighteenth-century drag?

  “This first causeway is called the First Churchill Barrier,” Dad informed us, “and we’ll be crossing two more just like it before we arrive at our first destination. North Sea to our right; Scapa Flow to our left.”

  As we drove across a narrow byway that was flanked on either side by a manmade seawall of massive concrete blocks, and enhanced by the spectacle of a World War II vintage ship lying belly up in the channel, I heaved a frustrated sigh, too puzzled to be able to make sense of anything.

  I could understand how they might have isolated Dolly on the streets of Wick to kill her, but how had they isolated Isobel? She’d died alone in her bed with the door locked. If Erik had assaulted her earlier in the evening, wouldn’t she have cried out for help? Or had she felt so ostracized by the rest of the group that she thought people would accuse her of making the whole story up? Had she crawled into her bed that evening in excruciating pain, feeling too disenfranchised to call for help? Were we all, in fact, responsible for
her death?

  A surge of guilt washed over me, followed by an incredible surge of anger: Guilt, that I hadn’t addressed Isobel’s personality issues with more expertise. Anger, that Erik and Alex had used her character flaws to prey upon and eventually kill her. And she hadn’t even been the right target!

  I angled a long look down the center of the bus, my eyes darting from seat to seat. So who was the right target?

  Two women with nothing in common other than they belonged to the same team were dead. Did that suggest the real target was a woman?

  Although, to be entirely accurate, Isobel and Dolly did have something else in common.

  They were both Scottish. Sworn enemies, but Scottish nonetheless. And I couldn’t dismiss a niggling suspicion that that was somehow significant.

  The drizzle started as we crossed the third Churchill Barrier onto the tiny island of Lambholm. The rain began as we pulled into the parking lot of what appeared to be a converted Quonset hut. The downpour commenced as John came to a stop and cut the engine.

  “This is the Italian Chapel,” Dad chirped enthusiastically, “built by Italian prisoners of war who were captured in the North African campaign. They were housed right on this site, in thirteen huts known as Camp 60, and their main purpose for being here was to help construct the four Churchill Barriers.”

  Through the raging deluge, I saw the whitewashed, gabled facade of a country church superimposed over the homely entrance to the Quonset hut. It had gingerbread house appeal, with two Gothic windows flanking the central doorway, an ornamental belfry, architectural doodads that looked to have been squeezed out of a cake decorating bag, and simple pillars that added a touch of grandness to the portico. On the Continent, the main pursuit of POWs had been to practice their escape skills; on Orkney, the main pursuit had apparently been to practice their artistic skills.

  John opened the door, sitting calmly in his seat as horizontal sheets of rain dashed against the stairs and handrail, driven by hurricane force winds.