by Fran Stewart
“Nae. That she willna do. Can ye no see she is mourning? She knows Large William is gone.”
Large William. Taking more care than the task required, I wound the leash into a small circle and placed it in the cloth drawstring bag at my waist. The handle made an awkward lump, but I didn’t care.
“She may nae ken the how or the why, and she may hope he will come again someday, but for now, can ye no see her sadness?”
“Aye. I mean yes. I guess I can.”
“Can what? What’s wrong with Silla? Where’s Big Willie?” Gilda was full of questions, but I had to put her off until closing time.
It was probably best all around that we stayed incredibly busy right up until eight. I didn’t have time to think, much less to cry.
Still, at the back of my mind, while I advised customers about the best way to wrap an arisaidh, helped people find the perfect tie or the right scarf, straightened those poet shirts that insisted on slipping askew on their hangers, and rang up plenty of sales, there was one corner of my mind that wondered, Why did Shay confront Big Willie here in the ScotShop? Why was she late showing up for the opening ceremonies? And where is Big Willie’s ruby ring?
About seven, I sent Shoe and Sam down to the tie booth to take over from the temps. My two cousins worked long hours during every single Highland Festival. So did we all, only Sam, Shoe, and Gilda got paid for their overtime, and I didn’t. By the time I closed the door behind the last customer of the day, I felt completely drained. I never attended the Friday night ceilidh at the hotel. Most of the townspeople—the ones who had stores at least—chose not to. We were too pooped by the end of the day to do all that dancing. Anyway, today, after Big Willie, it didn’t seem like a good time to dance. It took every ounce of self-control to count up the sales for the day, empty the register, put tomorrow’s cash in the safe, and tally the bank deposit. I placed cash and checks in my bank bag and tucked it safely into my arisaidh.
I should have known Gilda wouldn’t let me off so easily. She planted herself in front of me and demanded to know what was going on. “Why is Silla here? Where’s Big Willie? Why were you gone so long this afternoon?”
“Ye canna answer her.”
“I know.”
“Know what?”
“I’m sorry, Gilda. I meant, I don’t know. I don’t have any answers for you.”
“You’re lying.”
I stared at her. The alcohol rehab program she’d gone through had taught her a great deal about speaking her truth, or some such thing. I didn’t want to hear it right now. “I’m not lying. I have no answers to your questions. Or, at least, none that I’m allowed to talk about.”
“So, what happened to Big Willie? Is he hurt?”
I shook my head.
“Sick?”
“No.”
Her wide eyes clouded over with a film of tears, and she whispered her question. “Is he dead?”
Scamp woofed and Silla howled a mournful sound. A-roooo. The timing was coincidental of course, but shivers ran up and down my back and wouldn’t go away. Dirk handed me the shawl. Luckily Gilda had turned away from me, so she didn’t see it magically appear. I could have wrapped my arisaidh around me, but right at that moment, the shawl felt better. By the time I had it around my shoulders, relishing the warmth of it, she was on her knees beside the two dogs.
“Poor little girl,” she crooned. “Do you want to come home with Scamp and me?”
“No!” I held up my hand. “I mean, I don’t mind taking care of her.”
Gilda’s curls shivered as much as my back was doing. “You’re a cat person. What would Shorty say if you brought a dog into your house?”
I wrapped the shawl more tightly around myself and pulled the leash out of my waist bag. “He gets along just fine with Tessa, and she’s a dog.” Tessa was my twin brother’s service dog, and while Shorty tolerated her, I couldn’t in all honesty say the two were friends. But at least they weren’t enemies, either.
I bent and snapped the leash on Silla’s collar, but Gilda reached out and took hold of it. “That’s Scamp’s leash. And Silla needs to stay with Scamp.”
Doggone it, she was probably right. I didn’t answer her. I just stood and walked to the front door.
Gilda clipped a green leash onto Scamp’s collar. Thank goodness we’d had an extra one in the storeroom. The two dogs led the way to the door. When we went outside, I locked the door and then turned to the right, knowing Gilda would turn to the left. I heard the whine of Silla’s leash unwinding. I didn’t even want to watch her walking away from me, so I kept my eyes resolutely on the courtyard between the ScotShop and the Logg Cabin. A low woof emanated from somewhere near my left Achilles tendon. Silla had planted herself as inexorably as Gilda had done only a few minutes earlier. Woof, she said again when the blue leash had stretched out to its maximum point. It pulled at her collar. “Come, Silla,” Gilda called from the other end of the leash, but Silla didn’t move.
Neither did I.
* * *
Moira turned over her little kingdom to Mary Beth Armstrong, the part-time night dispatcher Mac had hired a few months earlier. He’d grumped about it, but he eventually was convinced when Moira had mentioned how great it was that now he’d be the chief of a twenty-four/seven department. Sounded childish, she thought, but then again, Mac was nothing but a big baby half the time. Moira saw through all his posturing. He was irritating as all get-out some of the time, most of the time. But every so often she’d glimpse the little kid who never seemed to get what he really needed. An unfortunate attitude to have in a chief of police.
It had taken a while to find the right person for the night dispatcher’s job. They’d gone through, what? Three now? But Mary Beth was by far the pick of the litter.
They didn’t get that many calls late at night, so Mary Beth had a lot of time to study for her part-time college courses. When the girl slept was anybody’s guess, but Moira had checked on her often enough at odd hours and always found her alert and ready to do her job right. Not like that last one, who’d fallen asleep so deeply nothing could wake her up. Alert and competent. That kind of combination could be hard to find. The Hamelin force was lucky to have Mary Beth.
“You’re liable to get more calls than usual tonight,” Moira warned her. “And the team will be checking in off and on all night long, what with this murder on our hands. We’ve tried to keep it quiet, but with this many people in town, the word can leak out.”
“Has it? Leaked out already, I mean.”
“Good question. Not that I know of. The people who were at the hotel know something was wrong, but when they wheeled the body out, they cleared the lobby first.”
Mary Beth looked dubious. As well she might, thought Moira.
“The ceilidh’s going on this evening, so there may be some drunk and disorderlies from that.”
Mary Beth nodded and adjusted the green plaid scarf around her ponytail.
“But we have extra officers there just in case.”
“Plainclothes?”
“Yes.” Of course, Moira knew most of them would stand out like sore thumbs, but at least they’d be there.
Moira’s nephew walked in, took a look at the officers still writing reports, looking up things on their computers, doing the normal stuff cops do—only they do more of it when there’s been a murder in town—and threaded his way between the desks. He nodded a hello to Mary Beth and turned to his aunt. “You ready to go?”
Moira grinned and turned on her Southern charm. “Honey chile, yew got heah jest in the nick of time. I was about wore out waitin’ fer yew.”
Mary Beth laughed and waved them away.
* * *
On the way home, Silla stopped to take care of her dog business, so I pulled out my phone. “I have to call Karaline and let her know what happened.”
“Aye,�
�� Dirk said. “That ye do for certes.”
“I’m not looking forward to this. She really liked Big Willie.”
“Aye,” he said again. “He was a good man.”
“Karaline,” I said when she answered.
“What’s wrong?”
How like a friend to know, after hearing only three syllables, that something was wrong.
“Do you need me to come over? I can leave right now. Where are you?”
“No. No, it’s just that . . . there’s been a murder.”
She breathed something that sounded like not another one but all she said was, “Are you okay?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. It was . . .” I hated to be the one to tell her it was Big Willie. I couldn’t tell her on the phone. “I know you have to get up early tomorrow,” I said, “but could you come by for a little while?”
“Be right there. On my way. I’ll bring food.” And she hung up. How had she known I’d be hungry?
Silla bumped her head against my leg. I was going to have to figure out all her dog language so I’d know when she had to go out and when she needed to eat. Oh shoot—I didn’t have any dog food. Poor Silla, she probably hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday morning. Maybe longer. I knew some people believed it was good for dogs to fast one day a week—I’d read that somewhere—but this was no time to starve her. Dirk and I would have to drive to that all-night grocery store in Arkane to get her something.
But I took off running as soon as I turned the corner onto Hickory Lane and saw my brother’s van parked in my driveway. Silla ran along beside me, obviously not understanding what was going on, but happy—or at least hopeful—with a dog’s sweet acceptance of whatever was happening, that something good was in process.
“What are you doing here?” I called as I rounded the back of his vehicle. “I thought you’d be out of town another week.”
“Finished the job early.” He clasped his hands in the air above his head. “Didn’t want to miss the Games, and now I don’t have to. Who’s this?”
Silla had bounded up the ramp ahead of me, and came to a screeching halt in front of my twin’s wheelchair. She ignored Tess, who had risen, stretching her rear end skyward as her front legs reached out before her in blissful ease. She reminded me of that yoga pose I hadn’t been practicing lately, the one whose name always made me smile. Downward-Facing Dog.
“Hello, sweet Tessa,” I said, ruffling her soft black fur. She licked my hand, dipped her head in Dirk’s direction—she knew better than to try to lick him—and turned to investigate the interesting end of the new dog on the porch.
“This is Silla,” I said. “Silla, meet Andrew, my twin, better known as Drew, even better known as primary drive-me-nuts guy because he travels around the country on his job and I never know where he is.”
Drew took a swing at my arm, which I didn’t quite manage to avoid. “I go wherever the dinosaurs are.”
“And this,” I continued with my introductions, “is Tessa, Drew’s all-around good dog, better known as the best dog in the world.”
Silla sat down.
“Change that to tied for first place as best dog with Silla, the other best dog.”
Silla stood and bobbed her head. Darn, it looked like she’d understood my silliness.
“Ye didna introduce me.”
“You’ve already met,” I said.
“Huh?” said my brother. “Met who?”
Dirk laughed.
“Me,” I said.
Ignoring my apparent inanity, Drew said, “You sure took long enough to get home tonight. I’ve been waiting forever.”
“Let me guess. Twenty minutes?”
He grinned. “More like ten. Where’d you pick up this sweet little Scottie?”
When I didn’t answer immediately, he looked at me. “Let’s get you inside, sis. You need a cup of tea, or something a little stronger, and maybe a good long cry on your big brother’s shoulder.”
“Whaddya mean big? You’re five minutes older than I am.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“You’re right. That might help.” I unlocked my front door. “Do you have any dog food in your van?”
“Yep. Do you have any people food in your house?”
“Not enough for a chowhound like you, but Karaline will be here in a few minutes.”
His eyes lit up with more anticipation than the thought of a free meal deserved. I could only wonder why he hadn’t swung by her house first. But then, I knew why he’d come here. He was my twin. He knew when I needed him. Just as I’d known he needed me that day he broke his back falling off the dinosaur frame. That was when he’d lost the use of his legs.
Silla woofed. It sure sounded like feed me. Drew laughed and headed back out to his van.
Dirk waited for the door to close. “What would be a ‘tchow hown’?”
18
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer’d?
ACT 4, SCENE 1
Marti Fairing couldn’t say she loved murder investigations; the reasons that drove that part of her work were just too horrible to contemplate. But she couldn’t help loving the connection she felt with everybody at the station when they were actively working a case. She glanced over at Mac’s closed door. He was probably taking a nap in there. Okay, so the connection with almost everybody. She wondered why they hadn’t roped in Fenton, the Secret Service fellow, as some sort of consultant. Seemed to her he might have been a good resource. But Mac was awfully touchy about his territory. Mac made a lousy alpha dog. She wasn’t sure about town politics or the details of who was related to whom, but she was fairly sure the only reason he’d gotten appointed chief was that he was related to a couple of town big shots.
Murphy, at the desk beside hers, was looking something up on the Internet. Harper was studying the huge wall map of Hamelin, tracing an imaginary line from here to there and back again. Mary Beth, the relatively new night dispatcher, was hunched over a big book, her headset lending her the air of a studious Dumbo. Outside, the dark night seemed to beat against the station windows. Fairing knew it was just the wind, and she spared a moment to pity the people in tents on the far side of the meadow; it sounded like it would create havoc once it made its way inside.
“We need a name for our murderer.” Harper’s voice seemed to float over the desks.
“Duh,” said Murphy. “Once we have a name we arrest the guy, right?”
“No,” Harper said. “I mean we need something we can call this guy instead of saying ‘the murderer’ each time we refer to him.”
“Or her,” Fairing pointed out.
“Gotta be fair to the opposite sex,” Murphy said.
Fairing threw a pencil at him. “Opposite to what? Maybe you’re the opposite one.”
Murphy threw the pencil back at her, and she caught it with a deft movement. “How about Piper?” he suggested. “Name for the murderer.”
“No,” Fairing said. “Piping isn’t easy. Somebody who worked hard to learn to play the pipes would never risk damaging a set that way.” She thought a moment. “How about Cord?”
Harper made a little humming sound. “I like it.”
“Sounds good to me,” Murphy agreed. “Kills with cords, hits hard enough to break a spinal cord.”
Ewww. Marti hadn’t thought of that angle.
Cord it was.
Fairing pushed aside the yellow legal pad she’d been scribbling notes on and started to stand, but something poked her in the leg. The little package from Peggy Winn.
The blue wrapping paper matched her uniform. The silver ribbon matched her badge. She smiled to herself and untied the ribbon. She smoothed out the paper and laid the necklace, a rather pretty concoction of big silver-toned beads and faded white plastic leaves, across it. She didn’t have a thing in the world to wear
it with, except that little black dress she never had reason to put on.
“What’s that?” Murphy jostled her elbow. “You been shoplifting again?”
“Cretin,” she said with a totally fake frown.
“Oh, forgive me. I forgot. You don’t shoplift. All you do is chase innocent Secret Service agents.”
Fairing grinned.
“You two planning on getting any work done?”
“Nope,” said Murphy. “Now that we have a name for our perp, we plan to goof around all night.”
“Come look at this.”
Fairing led the way to the map. “What have you found?”
“Bowman was last seen alive around two, here.” He pointed. “After that, to the best of our knowledge, he stayed in his room.”
“Doing what?” Fairing knew there was no answer to that, but she sure wished she knew. It might have had something to do with why he was murdered.
“Right.” Harper had obviously read her mind. “If we knew the answer to that, we might be a lot further along.” He moved his pointing finger to the meadow. “How long would it take . . . Cord . . . to get from the hotel to the stage?”
Fairing couldn’t figure out where he was headed. Murphy saw the reasoning first. “Shay Burns? You want her as the suspect?”
“Shay? Why Shay?” Marti couldn’t see a connection.
“That’s right,” said Murphy. “You were busy wasting time in the attic with Turner. Shay—who I might remind you has never once been late to her opening ceremony, except the year her sister died, when she missed it altogether—came running onto the field just moments before the president arrived. The agents wouldn’t let her on the stage until the action was all over with.”
