A Wee Dose of Death

by Fran Stewart

  “She’s going to be okay,” I assured him, hoping to convince Karaline and myself, too. “I know people died from wounds like this back in the fourteenth century, but we have surgery and antibiotics nowadays.” I’d tried explaining antibiotics to him once, and he’d listened politely to my treatise on germs, but I could tell he didn’t really believe me. So much of twenty-first-century life was just a great big fairy tale to Dirk.

  “Chirurgery?” He rolled the word around on his tongue.

  “It’s something that’s going to help her. The good news is this is the only place she’s bleeding.”

  “No . . . exit . . . wound,” she managed to say between whimpers.

  “Right. Isn’t that great?” It was hard to sound enthusiastic when deep down inside you had a dark feeling that your dear friend might die after all.

  “That means . . . the bullet . . . is . . . stuck inside me?”

  “Crapola on toast!”

  Years ago my mother had tanned my hide for saying a swearword. I guess the lesson stuck. But there were times I just had to say something more pertinent than gosh golly darn it. And saying it at full volume seemed to help somehow. At least it felt good for half a second as my rage reverberated in the cold air.

  Ambulance. I whipped out my cell phone. “Crapola! No service.” I could have gone on shouting, but it wasn’t helping Karaline.

  I pulled myself back together and turned to Dirk. “What we need to work on first is to get a bandage put together, and then all we’ll have left to do is get her down the mountain.”

  It took him just a moment to register what I’d said. Then he turned and slammed his fist violently but soundlessly against the wall. “I canna help ye’ move her.” The anguish in his voice tore into me. “What good is my life here when it isna really a life and I canna aid my friends when they ha’ need o’ me?”

  I’d never in my life heard so much anger followed so quickly by so much sorrow. I didn’t know how to answer him, so I busied myself taking off my lightweight sweatshirt, since I didn’t happen to have a petticoat to tear apart with my teeth. All I had left on was a silk tee. I didn’t even bother with modesty. I’d be clothed in goose bumps soon enough. They’d cover me nicely.

  Dirk paid no attention whatsoever. He stationed himself next to Karaline, hand on his dagger, watching her intently, forming a ghostly barrier between her and anything that might come her way. If he’d been between her and the shooter when the shot was fired, I wondered, what would have happened to the bullet?

  * * *

  Harper glanced over his right shoulder. Even with the snows that had fallen since last week and the tracks of two or three other skiers, he could see a wide, depressed swath that led from this spot up to the top of the hill. He never would have thought Mac had it in him. It must have taken an incredible amount of determination to crawl that distance in the shape he was in. Adrenaline would have helped a lot, but surely the adrenaline charge must have worn off after a while. What would have kept him going in the face of all that pain?

  Harper pictured the big, burly police chief, always ready with scorn, but powered by a bluff congeniality that usually worked with men. Some men. It had been enough to get him appointed as chief and to keep him in that position for all these years. Harper had seen the covert cringes, though, in the body language of women who’d had official dealings with the man. Political correctness went out the window when Mac walked into a room. If Mac hadn’t been related to someone on the Board of Selectmen, he never would have been appointed as chief of police. Harper was half expecting Fairing to enter a charge of harassment any day now. The only woman on the Hamelin force, she’d had to put up with—

  “Crapola on toast!”

  He heard the voice as clearly as if the speaker stood next to him, even though he could tell it had drifted down to him from over the hill to his right. Even as he executed a jump turn, the fastest way to change direction on a pair of cross-country skis in motion—although he’d never before managed it while he was standing still—he knew it was Peggy. She was the only person he’d ever heard using that particular turn of phrase. He’d know her voice anywhere, anytime.

  He topped the rise and, glad there was such a steep slope down into the little clearing where the cabin stood, he crouched and used momentum, ski poles, and gravity to propel him toward where he knew she must be.

  33

  His Peigi’s Shawl

  Harper was the last person I expected to see burst through the open doorway, and I couldn’t prevent a cry that was 50 percent surprise and about 90 percent delight. Even as he stepped into the room, causing Dirk to jump back out of the way, I could see his eyes swing over the entire space, checking for danger.

  He looked me over with a glance that was so all-encompassing, and so . . . so soft, I felt like I’d been touched. I hoped to all get-out it wasn’t just my imagination. Then his eyes moved to Karaline, and the blood. After one more quick glance around, he knelt beside her.

  “She’s been shot.”

  “Are you hurt?” His nod encompassed my bloody hands.

  “No. Just her.”

  “Bandage?”

  “I’m trying.” I held up my sweatshirt. “Okay, Karaline, let’s move your hand. . . .”

  “And . . . elbow,” she grunted.

  Harper supported her arm, and I could see how white her knuckles had become as I peeled them away and pressed my folded sweatshirt over the hankies against the center of the wound, hoping with every ounce of me that the bullet hadn’t torn into anything vital, anything that couldn’t be repaired.

  Harper zipped his parka the rest of the way open and extracted a long scarf. It looked hand knitted. When I glanced from the scarf up to him, he said, “My mother knitted this for me, but I don’t think she’ll mind if I put it to a better use than warming my neck.” He slid one hand, firmly clutching a scarf end, behind Karaline’s back. I grabbed it on my side and worked it underneath her left arm.

  Once it was over her tummy, Harper checked the placement of the sweatshirt bandage and tied the scarf tightly in place. “I hope that’ll hold,” he said, “until we can get her out of here.”

  By this time I was shivering uncontrollably. I donned my parka and felt the kilt pin in my pocket. I pulled it out and handed it to Harper. He smiled warmly as he pinned the scarf so it would be more secure. Karaline raised one corner of her mouth about a quarter inch. I had the feeling that was about as much of a smile as she could manage.

  He nodded and pulled out his cell. “No service.” He slipped it back into his pocket. He looked around, muttering under his breath. “Three pairs of skis. We’ll need two pairs for us.”

  “There’s no way she can walk,” I said.

  “We could probably work up some sort of sling to support the upper half of her body, but I’m afraid her legs will have to drag all the way down the mountain.”

  “I can . . . take it,” Karaline said in a voice that was more bravado than certainty.

  “We really need three poles,” he said, “to make a travois.”

  “What would be a travoy?”

  “The Indians used them. Triangular contraptions to haul goods on.”

  Harper looked at me funny. “I know that.”

  Karaline chuckled; at least, I thought it was a chuckle, but hardly any air came out. She must have been in incredible pain, and she let out an involuntary moan.

  Harper took off his parka.

  “What are you doing? It’s five degrees out here.”

  “We need a big block of sturdy material to support her weight. We’ll have to attach this to the skis somehow and tie her onto it.”

  “Stop,” Dirk said, and Karaline and I both looked over at him.

  Harper noticed the direction of our gaze, and looked around. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I looked at Dirk and raised an eyebr
ow.

  “Ye need the shawl. Yon man may be gallant, but he would freeze wi’out his coat. His coat isna large enow any the way.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  Harper drew back his chin. “What’s true?”

  “Ye could use my Peigi’s shawl.” Dirk lifted it from his shoulder where it had been draped over his kilt pin.

  “You can use my shawl,” I said to Harper.

  His eyes swept this way and that, searching for the as-yet-invisible shawl. I pushed myself to my feet. “I left it over by the woodpile.” I headed that way, almost tripping on my untied laces. Dirk followed and handed it to me as I bent as if to pick it up from behind the logs. I turned around and held it up for Harper to see.

  He looked as if he thought he might have missed something, but couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. Boy, was he right. What he’d missed stood right in front of him wearing a kilt. Harper put his parka back on.

  The shawl had always been large, warm, and enveloping, but as I held it now, it seemed heavier, denser, longer than I remembered. That was ridiculous. I’d had it on in my living room this morning. I couldn’t have forgotten its size in the past few hours. But somehow, it was big enough to tie firmly at the corners so it formed a sling between Karaline’s skis.

  We set it up so the curved, pointy ends of her two skis would slide along the ground behind us. I picked up the square back end of one of her skis in my left hand and my ski pole in the other. Harper, to my left, took up the other ski.

  Poor Karaline was horribly unbalanced, what with Harper’s and my disparate heights, but we did the best we could. We couldn’t keep her weight from pushing the shawl down to the ground, so it wasn’t just her feet that dragged. It was her whole bottom.

  We managed to struggle all the way across the clearing and up the tree-topped incline before Karaline’s groans became almost more than I could bear. We eased the makeshift arrangement down as gently as we could. I stepped out of my skis and knelt beside her. “I don’t know what else to do, K. We have to get you back to town.”

  Before she could answer, before Harper could say anything, Dirk walked up beside me. “I havena been able to help before this, but I do think I may be of some small service.” He laid a cool, transparent hand on Karaline’s forehead, and a look of genuine amazement came into her eyes. “Ooooh,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  Harper looked from Karaline to me, and back again. When his gaze returned to meet mine, he asked, “What just happened?”

  She didn’t look dead, but I felt for her pulse, just to be sure. “I, uh, I think she fainted.”

  I had the feeling he wouldn’t let this one pass. What on earth could I tell him?

  I stood, kicked my toes into the ski bindings once more, and got ready to pick up my side of the load again, but in doing so I looked forward down the hill to where two slender birches bent in solemn promise toward the old maple tree. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be back in just a moment.”

  Dirk stayed standing beside Karaline, his hand touching her head and then her waistline, while I retrieved Mac’s buried ski and presented it to Harper in triumph.

  “Right,” Harper said. Karaline stayed blissfully asleep while we repositioned the shawl and added the third ski, creating a stable triangle. It involved a bit of fancy footwork on Dirk’s part so he could keep his hand in contact with Karaline’s forehead or tummy without letting Harper run into his ghostly presence.

  34

  Off the Mountain

  Pulling a makeshift travois down a mountainside across deep snow is not easy. We hadn’t gone much farther than the Robert Frost spot. Harper wasn’t breathing as heavily as I was—a northern winter is a dead giveaway. Little puffs of mist came out of his nose or mouth every four or five seconds. I, on the other hand, looked like a steam engine, with an exhalation gushing out in front of me every second or so. I hoped maybe he wouldn’t notice.

  “Do you have enough breath to tell me what happened? Did you recognize the person who did this?”

  “No. He had on a black ski mask.”

  Harper’s stride faltered. Maybe there was a fallen branch under the snow.

  “He was short,” I said, “and he talked funny, like he was trying to disguise his voice.”

  Harper took another few steps. This wasn’t like cross-country at all. With all this weight behind us digging into the snow, there was no way we could glide, but I knew that if we took off our skis, we’d sink up above our knees. “Do you think he might be someone you’d recognize if you heard his voice?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” I ran a brain scan over the citizens of Hamelin, but couldn’t think of anyone. “He was about the same height as Mr. Pitcairn.” Harper had met my next-door neighbor. “But I know it wasn’t him.”

  Harper didn’t ask why; he just waited for me to get my thoughts together. He seemed to be thinking, hard.

  “With the mask, I couldn’t see much skin, but his lips looked . . . young somehow.”

  “Young?”

  “You know. There weren’t any wrinkles.”

  “Good observation. What about eye color?”

  “Dark, not light, but that was about all I could tell. He wasn’t wearing glasses.”

  It kept on this way for quite a while. I managed to tell him most of what had happened, leaving out any mention of Dirk, of course.

  He already knew about Karaline’s connection with Wantstring, and he seemed to accept without comment my description of Dr. W’s squirreling habits.

  “He had ballpoint pens—green ones—but nothing to write on,” he told me as we took an extremely short rest break. I knelt beside Karaline’s left hand, but she seemed to be sleeping still.

  Harper moved to Karaline’s right side, and Dirk simply stepped across Karaline. I had to move up closer to her head so my busy ghost wouldn’t run into me. I pulled off my glove and laid a hand on her forehead. Cool, but then, in this weather everything seemed cool. I hoped her toes weren’t freezing.

  Harper continued with his thought. “There weren’t any writing materials in the cabin, no laptop, nothing like that.”

  “He had to be using paper. The charge wouldn’t last long on a laptop.” I told him what Karaline had said about a special project. “Do you think whoever murdered him took something he might have been writing?” It certainly made sense to me. I just wondered what he’d been working on. Whatever it was, it probably held the answer to why Dr. Wantstring was murdered.

  “Could be. He was wearing a backpack.”

  I couldn’t remember having mentioned that fact. “How did you know that?”

  He moved back up to the front of our rig. “I passed the guy on my way up here.”

  “And you didn’t stop him?”

  “He was just a guy skiing.” He bent to lift his side of the jury-rigged travois. “Have you caught your breath? We need to press on. I don’t want her getting frostbite on our shift.”

  Dirk stayed beside Karaline the entire time. I glanced back a couple of times, and his hand was either on her forehead or on the bandage at her waist. The third time I looked back, it seemed as if both his hands had disappeared, had merged with her wound. It was a good thing he didn’t have to watch where he put his feet; he never would have been able to manage. He didn’t even seem to be moving his legs. He just sort of hovered there beside her. I couldn’t stare too long, though. I needed to watch where I was skiing. Some of us had legs that had to move.

  Not that they were moving very fast. We tried at one point to take off our skis and pull her that way, but we sank so far down into the snow cover with each step it was like slogging through mud two feet deep. “We should have brought snowshoes,” I said.

  Harper didn’t even bother to answer.

  Once Harper could get cell service, he called for an ambulance to meet us on the
outskirts of town. The paramedics swooped into action the moment we reached them. Dirk had to back out of the way, but I could see in his eyes how little he wanted to give up his contact with Karaline. I answered their questions as best I could. After only a minute or so, Harper touched my arm. “I’ll get my car,” he said. “Wait here.”

  “No. I’m going with Karaline.”

  “Sorry,” said an ambulance attendant. “You can follow later. We’re taking her to the Arkane hospital.” They hoisted the gurney between the yawning doors, and the bright artificial light inside swallowed my friend. They jumped in after her, and I stood alone, beside the remains of the travois, watching the red taillights of the ambulance as it pulled out of sight. Only I wasn’t really alone. Dirk touched my shoulder, and I felt a cool stream of comfort, even through my winter parka.

  Before Harper returned with his car, I dismantled the skis, wrapped myself in the shawl—it was really cold with only a silk tee on underneath the parka now that I wasn’t working to haul Karaline—and thanked Dirk for his service. “I think you saved her life.”

  “I didna know what else to do.” He shook his head, and the trees I could see behind him seemed to waver a bit. “It felt . . . It seemed . . . right somehow to lay my hands upon her.” He raised those hands and stared at them. “I couldna see my own hands when I touched her.”

  “I know,” I said in a dry tone. “That’s because they went inside her.”

  At his look of confusion, I told him what I’d seen on the trail. I didn’t really believe it. But then again, I had a ghost attached to a shawl that was woven in the fourteenth century. If I believed that, why not believe anything? Like the fact that the shawl fit my shoulders just fine now, but for the last few hours it had been big enough to support Karaline’s six-foot frame when she needed it and the corners had been skinny enough to tie around a ski. It made no sense. But then again, neither did having a ghost.