Kilt at the Highland Games

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  The tourist clothes he sported backed up her assumption. He was dressed in shorts that showed off stumpy, stocky, hairy legs. A snug T-shirt revealed that his torso was muscular rather than flabby but did little to enhance his overall appearance. He was, Liss decided, shaped not so much like a barrel as a beer keg.

  The woman who came in with him had a long-suffering look on her face. Liss pegged her as the walking beer keg’s wife. She was not surprised when they separated to explore the contents of the shop. The woman headed straight for the cozy corner and, after a few minutes of browsing, settled into one of the chairs with a biography of Mary, Queen of Scots.

  Liss shifted her attention back to the man. He was examining shelves stocked with imported Scottish foodstuffs, everything from shortbread to canned haggis. That made her wonder if he had a genuine interest in things Scottish. It was possible. The Western Maine Highland Games were still a week away, but someone planning to attend might have decided to come to town early.

  The man moved on to the Emporium’s selection of tartan skirts and ready-made kilts. Liss saw his lips compress into a thin line as he pawed through them. She tensed even before he swung his massive, balding head in her direction, revealing an unlovely face dominated by hooded eyes and sagging jowls. When he frowned, his eyebrows all but knit together.

  “This is an abomination,” he announced in ringing tones. “You must not sell kilts to women!”

  Bracing herself to endure a tirade, Liss held her ground. Over the years, she had encountered a few other Scottish Americans like this one. Pasting a the-customer-is-always-right expression on her face, she waited for the next salvo.

  He marched right up to the sales counter, hands curled into fists at his sides. He was no taller than Liss was, but that didn’t stop him from trying to look down his nose at her. “Only men are permitted to wear the kilt.”

  “That was true at one time,” Liss said in the mildest tone she could manage. Her jaw already ached from forcing her muscles to hold a “shopkeeper” smile. “These days, however, when both men and women play in bagpipe bands, things have become a bit more flexible, especially here in Maine.”

  “It’s wrong,” he insisted. “If you were a true daughter of Scotland, you would insist on maintaining tradition.”

  That this criticism was delivered in the nasal accent of a New Jersey native only made it more grating. After a brief struggle with her better self, Liss gave up and rose to the bait.

  “I am a MacCrimmon,” she informed him. “You may recognize the name. The MacCrimmons produced some of the finest pipers in Scottish history.”

  “And all of them were men,” he shot back. “I am a Grant myself. Angus Grant. No doubt you are familiar with the famous painting of the Grant piper.”

  “I am.” Liss had to bite her lip to keep from adding that she’d always thought it was an extremely ugly and poorly executed portrait.

  “Well, then?”

  A soft, pleasant voice insinuated itself into this awkward exchange. “Angus dear, come and look at this thistle pin. I’ve never seen one quite like it. The card says the stone is a tourmaline.”

  Liss glanced over the man’s shoulder to send a grateful smile in his wife’s direction. She was quiet and colorless in comparison to her husband, but a dimple flashed in her cheek when she smiled back. Then she winked.

  With one final scowl for Liss, “Angus dear” obeyed his better half. They spoke together in low voices for a few minutes. Then he left Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium to stand staring at the ruin on the far side of the town square. Mrs. Grant—Janine, according to her credit card—purchased the pin.

  In a way, Liss was sorry when they’d gone. Angus Grant’s diatribe had been annoying, but at least it had distracted her from wondering what had happened to Angie, Beth, and Bradley.

  Chapter Three

  As Dan Ruskin worked, he listened to music on a sound system he’d installed when he converted the one-time carriage house into a workshop for his custom woodworking business. He’d been in the mood for folk songs that morning and cued up a selection that dated from his parents’ childhood—Peter, Paul, and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, Gordon Lightfoot, and others. He was applying a coat of polyurethane to a jigsaw-puzzle table and humming along with “Bridge Over Troubled Water” when the door opened and his next-door neighbor, Sandy Kalishnakof, walked in.

  “Talk to you a minute?” Sandy had to raise his voice to be heard.

  “Sure thing.” Dan kept up the steady strokes necessary to ensure a smooth finish. “Go ahead and kill the music. I don’t want to stop in the middle of this.”

  Like Dan, Sandy was self-employed. He owned Dance Central in partnership with his wife, Zara. Years ago they’d both been members of the same touring dance company Liss belonged to, before a knee injury ended her career as a professional Scottish dancer. Later, when the company disbanded, Sandy and Zara had decided that Moosetookalook would be a good place to settle down and raise a family.

  Dan laughed about it now, but when he’d first met Sandy, he’d been jealous of Liss’s former dance partner. Sandy was a bit shorter than Dan’s 6’2” and a couple of years older, but his jet black hair and dark blue eyes and the fact that he looked good in a kilt always made women give him a second glance. Although Dan wasn’t exactly Frankenstein’s monster, he knew his own looks to be ordinary—light brown hair, brown eyes, and regular features. Fortunately for everyone, Sandy had been head over heels in love with the woman who was now his wife. In the years since, Dan had become good friends with Liss’s “best pal.”

  Sandy had been in the shop often enough to know where the controls for the sound system were located. With the music off, he eased himself onto a high stool to one side of Dan’s oversized work table. “Zara’s been after me to buy her one of your puzzle tables.”

  “You’ll get the neighbor discount, but you’ll still have to wait a couple of months for me to make you one.”

  “Doing that well, are you?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  Dan usually had seven or eight orders backed up, and it took about a week to complete each jigsaw-puzzle table. He wasn’t making a fortune by any means, but he liked working with his hands, and he liked being his own boss. The trade-off was worthwhile.

  “Greg’s called a meeting for tonight,” Sandy said.

  Dan wasn’t surprised. Like a coach following a game, Greg Holstein, Moosetookalook’s fire chief, liked to gather all the town’s volunteer firefighters together after a fire to discuss what had gone right and where they needed to improve.

  “He wants you there,” Sandy said.

  “Issue me a pager and he won’t have to send a messenger.”

  Dan continued applying polyurethane, but he no longer found the repetitive motion soothing. The frustration he’d felt the night before came rushing back. He hadn’t contributed much, and that nagged at him.

  Sandy stopped toying with a small piece of discarded wood to send a questioning look his way.

  “Sorry. It’s my own fault. I haven’t made time to finish the classroom stuff and pass the CPAT. I should have started the whole process a long time ago.”

  “Greg’s talking about setting up a training session, making the equipment available so everyone can practice carrying the hose and raising the ladder.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “It’ll be fun at this time of year. Ninety degrees in the broiling sun, suited up and lugging fifty pounds of equipment.”

  Dan shot him a disgruntled look. “I can manage.”

  “Uh-huh. Then there’s the stair climb. You’ll have to wear additional weights—two of them at twelve and a half pounds apiece.”

  Dan managed to suppress a groan. “What about the other CPAT components? Any chance of practicing things like forcible entry and the ceiling breach and pull?”

  Sandy shrugged. “Maybe. Greg’s hoping to get permission to set fire to an old barn in Little Moose. The roof collapsed last winter under t
he weight of the snow. It’s going to fall down on its own, so we might as well have the good of it.”

  Little Moose was one of the four villages that made up the town of Moosetookalook. Moosetookalook village, with its town square and municipal building, was the largest of the four. They didn’t have the tax base to support more than one fire truck and had to rely on an outfit in Fallstown, where the closest hospital was also located, for ambulance service. Since it took at least twenty minutes for those folks to respond to a call, Moosetookalook’s lone fire truck was loaded with supplies for medical emergencies, as well as for search-and-rescue missions and equipment for fighting fires, but only a few of the volunteers were qualified as EMTs.

  Sandy was one of them.

  “Were you one of the ones who checked out Angie’s apartment?” Dan asked.

  He glanced up in time to catch Sandy’s nod and the bleak expression on his face. “We should have gone on down into the bookstore. Just to be sure.”

  Dan’s movements stilled. “They haven’t—?”

  “No.” Sandy huffed out a breath. “No sign that anyone was in the building. Thank God. But early this morning, when I heard that Angie and her kids hadn’t been seen anywhere . . .” He let his voice trail off, reluctant to utter aloud the paralyzing fear he must have felt until it was confirmed that no bodies had been found.

  “No one in their right mind would have tried to get out through the shop.”

  Sandy gave a snort of laughter. “Since when do fire victims think straight? But the door to the stairs was closed. Hell, it was locked. I tried it myself. And I know I did everything by the book. Checked the bedrooms, the closets, even pulled back the shower curtain to make sure no one was hiding in the bathtub.” He shook his head. “But the place was already full of smoke. It would have been easy to miss something in the rush to get back outside and help put out the fire.”

  “But you didn’t miss anything. There was nothing to miss.”

  A furrow appeared in Sandy’s forehead. “Nothing to miss, but there was something missing.”

  Dan cocked a brow at him. “What?”

  “No idea. I’d forgotten till now, but there was something odd in one of the bedrooms—a couple of shelves on one wall.”

  “What about them?”

  “They were empty.” He shook his head. “I don’t suppose it’s important. Maybe Angie had been cleaning house. Or she was getting ready to redecorate. Hardly matters now. Those shelves are nothing but ash.”

  “I can’t believe how fast the whole place went up. If we’d had more men, we might have saved the building.”

  “We need more volunteers. No question there. Especially younger guys.”

  Dan just looked at him. Neither of them were exactly over the hill.

  “You want to help recruit? Talk to anyone over eighteen who has a high school diploma and a driver’s license.”

  “I couldn’t have started that young,” Dan admitted, “but I should have volunteered when I first came back to Moosetookalook after college.” The application of polyurethane finished, Dan turned his back on Sandy to clean the brush he’d been using.

  “And when, exactly, would you have scraped out time for training? Until the last year or so, you were working three jobs.”

  “There weren’t so many requirements back in the old days.”

  It seemed to Dan that the state added more rules and regulations every year. Even when he qualified to fight fires, his training wouldn’t be finished. There were required meetings, like the one tonight. Even without the hours spent fighting fires and cleaning up after them, volunteering required a huge commitment, and if he ever opted to go to the Maine Fire Academy, at his own expense, he’d have to be away from home for the duration.

  Dan put the can of polyurethane on its shelf with a little more force than necessary. Other people managed to find time to take the training. Ninety percent of the firefighters in the state were volunteers.

  Sandy eased himself off the stool. “I’ve got to get going. See you tonight.”

  He winced as he stood, making Dan wonder if he’d hurt himself fighting the fire at Angie’s Books. That was yet another obstacle in the recruitment of volunteers. There were no benefits, and if a volunteer firefighter was paid at all for his services, it was at a rate of no more than eight dollars a call. Dan shook his head as he watched his neighbor walk gingerly toward the door.

  What a deal, he thought. Risk your life and pay for the privilege of doing it.

  * * *

  The quiet of Liss’s house acted like a balm after a day that had, at times, seemed endless. The latest news from the fire scene was mixed. Good because no human remains had been found. Bad because arson was looking even more likely, and the Hogencamps were still among the missing.

  Liss wanted nothing more than to collapse on the comfy sofa in the living room, put her feet up, and use the landline on the end table to call Graziano’s and order a pizza with everything. No way was she cooking supper. She felt as if it would use up her last reserves of energy just to lift the phone off the hook.

  The cats, of course, had other ideas.

  No sooner did Liss apply backside to cushion than Glenora appeared. She had stayed out of sight earlier in the day. She’d been taking no chances. What with Liss tripping over her and that godawful wailing siren, who could blame her? But cats had short memories, and bottomless pits where their stomachs should be. Staring hard at Liss, she let out a plaintive meow, cocking her head as if to ask, “Aren’t I just the cutest little thing you ever saw? Why aren’t you feeding me already?”

  Liss sighed. “Give me a break, okay? I’m too pooped to pop.”

  Glenora leapt into her lap and began to knead. Needle-sharp claws easily penetrated Liss’s cotton slacks to make contact with bare skin. Biting back a yelp of pain, Liss came to her feet, dumping the little black cat onto the floor. She could swear Glenora smirked at her.

  “All right. All right. You win.” Brushing cat hair off her slacks, Liss followed the feline through the arch between the living room and dining room and headed toward the kitchen. She was not at all surprised to find Lumpkin waiting for them. “What are you? Backup?”

  The big yellow Maine coon cat was almost twice Glenora’s size. He had already opened the door of the kitchen cabinet where his food was stored. He had not yet figured out how to pop the top on a cat food can, and since he’d once chewed his way into a bag of dry food, Liss had taken to storing kibble in a large plastic container with a secure lid.

  By the time she’d dished out equal portions and refilled the cats’ water bowls, Dan had come in from his workshop. His custom jigsaw-puzzle tables were even more of a niche market than selling Scottish-themed knickknacks. It had only been in the last few years that profits had been high enough for him to stop working part-time in the family business, Ruskin Construction, with the occasional weekend filling in at The Spruces. Together, Dan and Liss managed to make ends meet and then some, and they’d long since agreed that being happy in their work was more important than earning a lot of money.

  Dan greeted her with a kiss, which instantly made her feel better. She was about to broach the subject of pizza and suggest they make it an early night when a quick, one-two rap on the front door was immediately followed by the sound of footsteps in the hallway. A moment later, Margaret Boyd walked into the kitchen.

  “Oh, good. You’re here. We need to talk.”

  Liss and Dan exchanged a worried look. That was a phrase that never preceded good news.

  “What’s wrong?” Liss gestured for her aunt to take a chair at the kitchen table and sank into one herself. She was not at all sure she wanted to hear what Margaret had to say.

  “Do you need me?” Dan asked.

  Margaret shook her head. “It’s Highland Games business.”

  With a wave, he went off to take a shower.

  Liss sent her aunt a narrow-eyed look. “I thought everything was set.”

  As events coordin
ator at The Spruces, Margaret had been responsible for bringing the annual Western Maine Highland Games back to the grounds of The Spruces. For many years, the venue had been the county fairgrounds in Fallstown, but the one year they’d held the festivities at the hotel, The Spruces and several other businesses in Moosetookalook had seen a healthy profit.

  “So did I,” Margaret said, “but what sealed the deal for us was our promise to augment the games with a parade and fireworks.”

  Liss’s heart sank. She’d been so distraught by the fire and the disappearance of three people she cared about that she hadn’t twigged to the wider ramifications. “The parade route isn’t going to work, is it?”

  “You can see the problem. The parade was supposed to start at the hotel, wind its way through town, and end up in the town square for the opening ceremonies. All the village shops were planning to stay open—if not to sell things on the spot, then at least to show attendees what they had to offer in the hope they’d come back during the weekend. We were planning to trade on our image as a quaint New England village, picture-postcard perfect and all that.”

  No wonder she looked glum. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to get the fire site cleaned up before next Friday?”

  “Not a prayer. Worse, according to Francine, the board of selectmen has what they’re calling a work session scheduled for this evening. She tells me Jason Graye wants to cancel the parade entirely.”

  “Damn. That’s a little extreme. Surely we can find a new route.”

  “I need you to come to this work session with me. Help me convince them that it isn’t necessary to throw in the towel.”

  “Moosetookalook isn’t all that big,” Liss said, beginning to have doubts of her own. “Most of it is pretty ordinary-looking.” The stores a block away were typical—a laundromat, Graziano’s Pizza, High Street Market, and, in back of that, a hardware store. “But I suppose the parade could finish up at the athletic field at the school instead of in the town square.”