by Molly Macrae
“Christine,” Janet and Tallie said in unison, one voice sharp, the other appalled.
“We’re all friends,” Christine said, spreading her arms, her teeth making a particularly wicked smile. “And here are two delightful, intelligent, attractive, single women. What else could it have been, Ian, but a social call? I leave the rest to your imagination.”
Ian’s imagination didn’t seem to know if it should believe Christine. She put an arm around his shoulders, started him toward the door, pulled it open, and guided him through. “Ta for now, Ian,” she said. “Haste ye back.” As the door closed behind him, she turned back to Tallie and Janet. “That’s always a nice touch, don’t you think? Oh, and here’s the reason I left my tearoom lair. No need to hang back, Martin.”
Martin Gunn, reporter for the Inversgail Guardian, stood at the end of the nearest aisle, eating a scone. It was easy to see that his imagination was having a field day with what he’d heard from Christine.
12
Martin says he’s planning to write a review of our business domain,” Christine said.
Janet was used to seeing Martin in the lower light of Nev’s, and more often from behind, throwing darts. He looked younger in the brightly lit shop and his clothes looked older, his jeans frayed at the cuffs and his wool suitcoat springing moth holes. The messenger bag slung around his shoulders and the asymmetrical cut of his hair, though, brought him into the realm of au courant and she figured him to be somewhere in his eager but still impecunious late twenties.
Martin popped the rest of the scone in his mouth and gave a jaunty wave. “I’ve just been sampling your wares.”
“You’ve been sampling them for weeks,” Christine said. “You didn’t invent this review to get free baked goods from our Summer, did you?”
“Not at all.” Martin looked properly shocked. “The review is Haviland’s idea, but I’m all on board. I think it’s brilliant.”
His cheeks turned a more brilliant shade of pink to go with his enthusiasm. Janet suspected his cheeks were a mortifying flaw to him and that he cultivated the stubble on them as a remedy. Knowing that he’d been at Daphne’s when Reddick spoke to her the night before, Janet was glad to see Martin wasn’t making furtive notes either in a notebook or into a voice recorder. Just the same, she decided to keep an open mind about being open with him.
“I plan to work the review around a central theme,” Martin said.
As opposed to a peripheral one? Janet told her thoughts to be quiet and pay attention.
“One of the central themes in Daphne’s own work is impact,” Martin said. “She touched on that when she presented the award to Alistair last night. So what I want to do is take the larger idea of impact, narrow its focus to Daphne and the impact she’ll have on Inversgail and the students while she’s here, and then make it even more specific and personal by showing how she and her books impact your business.” He held his hands out as though they were holding something like a beach ball. “Layer within layer within layer,” he said, moving his hands closer with each repetition of layer. “Until I get to the core of what Daphne Wood means for us”—he flung his hands apart again—“and what she means for the bigger picture. I’m fascinated by the idea of her having one foot in the separate and self-contained world she created in Canada and the other foot in a global environmental network. From the incredibly small to the vast and huge.”
“Wow,” Tallie said. “Sounds good, but”—she pointed her thumb over her shoulder—“customers. I’d better go.”
“I agree with the ‘wow,’” Christine said. “Definitely ‘wow.’ Teapots are calling, though, so I’d best get back, as well. You fill Janet in and she’ll pass it along to us.”
Janet watched the two hurry away. Or are they scurrying away like—but no, that wasn’t fair. Someone had to take care of customers, and if Martin was willing to include Yon Bonnie Books in his big picture ambitions, she was willing to listen.
“I’d like to get pictures of her here with her books, and I’ll get her to say something about how much she values bookshops. We can show her in the tearoom, too, and get some close-ups of shortbread or scones that will make people drool down their chins. And then the B&B. Can we get pictures of Daphne staying the night? Can I stay the night, to get the full experience?”
“You really get into your work, don’t you?” Janet said. “Those all sound like great ideas. The bad news, although it’s good for us, is that the B&B is booked solid. But it wouldn’t really be necessary for either of you to stay there, would it? Why don’t you talk to Summer and see if you can arrange a time to take pictures up there?”
Martin’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out with an apology. Janet didn’t know if it was the interruption that made his cheeks go pink again or the suggestion he talk to Summer. He blew out a single short, sharp breath, then looked at her and blinked as though reorienting himself to the world in front of him.
“Summer. Good, I’ll talk to her. Sorry about—” He trailed off and looked at his phone again, then held it up. “Police released the name of the victim. Samuel Smith, twenty-two, American, from Pennsylvania. Not much else.” Martin swallowed. “But the interview and article. I will, um—”
“Do you need to get back to the office?” Janet asked.
“Sorry? Oh. I should, yeah. But I’ll get back to you. Ta.”
Martin was out the door so fast that Janet imagined his words still hanging in the air, not knowing quite what to do with themselves. She felt the same way. She hadn’t expected to have an emotional reaction to hearing Sam Smith’s name confirmed. Almost as though his soul or ghost or shade had hung in the mist behind Nev’s, not knowing what had happened and not knowing what to do. But now Sam was well and truly dead, and it took having his name confirmed to bring the bleak sadness of it home to her.
Janet looked around their very pleasant space filled with books and pictured Danny finding Sam that night. Curled on the pavement, Danny had said. No question he’d been killed. With a brick. A blunt object. An impact.
“Go get a cup of tea,” Tallie said, reappearing to give her mother a quick hug. “I’ve got the shop.”
“It was more of a shock than I thought,” Janet said when Christine put one of their blue teapots on the table in front of her. “He was just a boy, really.” She wasn’t whispering, but she kept her voice low. She didn’t want her words drifting over to disturb other tables.
Christine touched Janet’s shoulder and then went to greet two women who’d come in. Summer set a cup and saucer on the table, then pulled out the chair opposite Janet and sat down.
“You must have felt that same shock when Reddick came in Tuesday morning,” Janet said.
“Maybe,” Summer said. “Mostly I felt bad because I didn’t remember more about him. I wish I could say he reminded me of someone, but there isn’t even that. And how long was I a reporter? Fifteen years? I can’t even tell you how tall he was.”
Summer’s fingers were tented on the table in front of her as though muscle memory would have them pounding a keyboard any second. If it had been Tallie or Christine sitting across from her, Janet would have touched those tense hands to calm them. Instead, she asked a question. “Was he traveling alone?”
“He stayed here alone. Otherwise, I don’t know.” Summer took her phone out and brought something up on the screen. “I should get back, give Christine a hand, but I received the same tweet with the police statement that Martin did. The statement was that short, too. Name, age, where he was from.” She passed her phone to Janet. “Do you see what detail is missing?”
“They didn’t release a cause of death.”
“That’s interesting, don’t you think?”
Janet kept thoughts of the missing detail at bay through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. Saturdays brought more of the bread-and-butter tourists to town, and selling books to them and straightening shelves after they’d browsed away a rainy afternoon kept her mind well oc
cupied. An hour before closing, Daphne came in. Janet braced herself.
“Mom,” Tallie whispered. “Chill.”
“Trying,” Janet said between gritted teeth that didn’t look as much like a welcoming smile as she thought they did. “How are you, Daphne? What can we do for you?” And please don’t say find Sam Smith’s killer.
“I’m having a get-together tomorrow and I’d like you both to come.”
“What kind of get-together?” Tallie asked.
Tallie did a fine job of sounding pleasantly inquisitive. Janet thought her own effort would have ranged closer to unpleasantly suspicious.
“An icebreaker,” Daphne said. “Not so much chatting over refreshments, though. In fact, not that at all, because, frankly, I’m not interested. But I thought you might be interested in learning about Forza—the sword work you saw me doing the other morning.”
“So the get-together is more of a demonstration?” Tallie asked.
“Exercise group,” Daphne corrected. “Why don’t we call it that? Exercise with a sword. Extremely liberating.”
“I actually liked the looks of it when I saw you,” Janet said.
“Wonderful. Invite your team in the tearoom, too, will you? There’ll be a few others. Six, maybe eight. Tomorrow morning, ten-ish. I’ll supply the swords.”
“Where?” Janet asked.
“Your back garden will be perfect,” Daphne said on her way to the door. “Dress comfortably.”
“Wait,” Janet called after her. “What if it rains?”
“We get wet.”
Janet and Tallie watched the door close behind Daphne, Janet nodding. “This will be good,” she said. “She kind of got off on the wrong foot when she arrived. Two wrong feet, really. Or six, if you include the dog. But now she’s reaching out. This will be good. I think we’ll enjoy it.”
“She can supply that many swords?” Tallie asked.
Thoughts about the missing detail had their chance to surface at the end of the day, as Janet and Tallie closed the bookshop and Christine and Summer the tearoom.
“Maybe they still have questions about the cause of death,” Janet said to Tallie as they settled the cash register.
“Or there’s something significant about it that they’re keeping to themselves.”
“Significant about the way he was hit? About the brick?”
“Or some other detail we don’t know anything about,” Tallie said.
“Huh.” Janet planted her elbows on the counter and rested her chin on her steepled hands.
When Christine and Summer came through from shutting down the tearoom, they found Tallie working around her mother. Christine nodded at Janet. “Where’s she gone?”
“Sorry.” Janet straightened up, and then rubbed her hands to warm them. “I was giving myself the willies again, wondering what the police don’t know, or what they don’t want us to know.”
“Martin told me something I didn’t know,” Summer said. “He and James stopped back at the office that night. Martin heard the fight outside Nev’s.”
Christine shook her head. “Danny says it wasn’t anything more than an argument that he sent outside. Lads and a few fists, and the fists were out for show, not for blood.”
“Martin called it a rammy.”
“A brawl?” Christine considered that. “Danny’s ex-navy, so his ideas of argument and rammy might be different from Martin’s. Whichever it was, he stopped it, and he didn’t think Sam Smith was part of either the celebration that brought the lads in or the argument. Of course, neither was Tom Laing, but he threw one of the punches.”
“I thought Gillian took Tom home,” Tallie said.
“She did. At least, that’s what she said when they left,” Janet said. “So that’s interesting. Did she leave and he stayed? Or did he leave and come back? And if he came back, was that with or without Gillian?”
“I think I’m more interested that there are two versions of what might or might not have been a fight,” Tallie said.
“At least two versions,” Summer said.
“At least,” Janet agreed, “and almost certainly more. And what version would Sam Smith tell us if he could?”
Janet was glad to see the sun the next morning. She had mixed feelings about meeting Daphne and however many people she’d invited for the exercise group in the back garden. Learning sword moves appealed to her, but the possibility of the exercise group turning into a tea party in her living room didn’t. She’d bought real cream on the way home the evening before, though, just in case. And she’d told Christine and Summer about Daphne’s invitation. Summer said she’d think about it. Christine said she’d pass. To make up for Christine’s defection, Janet opened the cream for her own tea at breakfast, and kept it out for a second and then a third cup.
Tallie came in the kitchen and spotted the carton on the table. “A cream-fix kind of day?”
“Yes, it is,” Janet said without looking up from her crossword. “And I’ll thank you to remember you’re a lawyer and not a judge.”
“You’re harder on yourself than I would ever dream of being.” Tallie gave the top of her mother’s head a kiss, and then looked out the window over the sink. “I think we have future Forza fanatics lurking at the bottom of the garden.”
“Already?” Janet put her pen down and drained her teacup. “I’ll go on out. You’re coming, aren’t you?”
“Be there in a few minutes.”
Janet was surprised by how much she really was looking forward to the class or whatever Daphne wanted to call it. She’d never held a sword before, and she wasn’t usually attracted to weapons, but she had an idea she would be good at this. Or at least good at making a fool of myself, she thought. For comfort, she’d first put on her old sweats, but after looking at herself in the mirror, she’d decided presentable needed to be part of the equation and changed into blue jeans.
A small but interesting group met Janet at the bottom of the garden. Summer and Gillian were there, and the teacher Janet had met at the high school and seen dancing at the ceilidh, Hope Urquhart. Rhona from the GREAT-SCOTs was there, too, talking to Maida. Maida had her back resolutely turned to her house, as though she’d been warned against even sneaking a peek at it as long as Daphne and Rachel Carson were staying there. She looked as though she’d come from church, which was possibly as comfortable as she ever looked. Gillian, Summer, and Rhona wore jeans, yoga pants, and hiking shorts respectively. While they greeted each other and exclaimed over the sunshine and wondered where Daphne was, they heard a hullo from the top of Janet’s garden, and Tallie came into view, followed by Christine.
“Seemed too good to miss,” Christine said when they’d joined the others. “My inner swashbuckler got the better of me. I thought you said this started at ten.”
“Ten-ish,” Janet said.
“That ‘ish’ rather sums up my impression of Daphne,” Rhona said. “A bit unpredictable.”
“That’s certainly a nice way of putting it,” Christine said. “Especially after her rant at the library Friday night.”
“She had a rough first few days, I think,” Gillian said. “What with jetlag and adjusting to an urban setting, even if we’re only a town and not Glasgow or even Fort William. But isn’t it nice of her to invite us to learn her workout routine?”
“In Janet’s garden rather than her own,” Christine said. “That makes it nice-ish.”
Their talk wandered as they waited for Daphne. Janet told them about seeing Daphne practicing Forza in the middle of Ross Street. Maida told them about seeing Daphne smoking the night she arrived. They wondered if that had been to steady her nerves after driving across from Glasgow in the dark and the fog. Hope told them Daphne was visiting her literature classes the next day, her first official day in the schools. Christine asked Hope if she was worried how Daphne would do in the classroom, after hearing her Friday night. Hope hesitated, looking thoughtful, but Gillian said she wasn’t worried at all. Maida whispered to Janet th
at she would worry.
Despite the sun, hands began disappearing into pockets against the chill, and now even Maida cast occasional glances toward Daphne’s house.
“So, Gillian,” Christine said, “did your Tom go back to Nev’s without you Monday night?”
“Sorry?” Gillian said.
“You said you were taking him home when you two said good night. I was just wondering when he decided to go back.”
Janet wondered if Gillian hadn’t known Tom went back. But more interesting than Gillian’s apparent confusion over Christine’s question was the look on Hope’s face as she watched Gillian stumbling over an answer. Janet thought back to Monday afternoon at the school and the interplay between Hope and Tom. Did Gillian know how Tom looked at Hope?
“You know,” Summer said, rubbing her arms and stamping her feet, “it really isn’t warm out here. How long are we going to wait for Daphne?”
“That almost sounds like a philosophical question,” Tallie said. “I’ll go knock on her door.”
They watched her fumble, briefly, with a latch on the gate at the bottom of Daphne’s garden, and then trot to the back door. Tallie knocked, waited, knocked again, listened, shrugged. By the time she’d trotted back, Gillian had her phone out.
“Daphne? Oh—” Gillian took the phone away from her ear for a moment. “Voicemail.”
They listened to Gillian leave a message. Janet thought she did well to keep it upbeat, although her voice sounded higher and tighter than usual, possibly with the strain of keeping it pleasant.
“Typical,” Gillian said when she’d disconnected. “She almost never answers.”
“Text her?” Summer said. “She might pay more attention.”
Gillian tapped and sent. They waited, staring at the phone. Like people at a séance waiting for a message from a crystal ball, Janet thought.
Christine broke the spell. “We’ve been stood up and I’m not quite broken-hearted.”
