Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “That they’ve been turfing folk out of the cemetery for years now—the fancies about Francis Bacon’s papers have spread like weeds. They cannot do a thing about the Dingwalls on no more than our word, but they’ll have a look even so. Have a care, you’re not doing heart surgery.”

  “There! Got it!” The splinter seemed to shrink to a fraction of its former size once it was no longer burrowing into Alasdair’s skin. She wiped the blood away with a tissue and applied antiseptic. Of course he hadn’t turned a hair during the entire operation, no grimaces, no groans. “You owe me one.”

  “Is a foot rub by way of being adequate repayment?” he asked, with the lopsided smile she’d come to read very well.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Well then.” He headed for the bathroom, peeling off his jacket and unbuckling his kilt.

  Jean switched off the lamp in the living room, double-checked the lock on the door, and peeked out the front window. A human shape strolled down the sidewalk just outside, a guard, perhaps, or someone from the night staff at the nearby hotels—in the darkness the shape was unisex. Oddly enough, this person, too, was whistling “Over the Hills and Far Away.”

  Jean watched the mysterious human shape until it vanished into the night, then tested the window lock and re-closed the drapes. “Over the Hills and Far Away” was one of the standards of Williamsburg’s famed Fifes and Drums, she rationalized. No surprise it would be ear-worming two different people. And even if this whistler was the same person who’d been watching from the shadows as Sharon and Tim escaped the tartaned arm of the law, he or she wasn’t necessarily following them.

  Jean realized she was standing in the dark. Ironic that she could sense ghosts but was also afraid of the dark. Or perhaps the latter stemmed from the former. She scurried into the bedroom.

  The house was chilly. No need to turn on the heat, though. There were other options involving turning-on. Thinking of Tim and Sharon making love, her smothered by his flesh, him chipping a tooth on her collarbone, Jean turned back the comforter atop the bed and lay down. Before she had time to take off her socks Alasdair was back, wearing no more than a T-shirt and pajama bottoms but unfazed by the chill in the room. He’d been born and raised in the Highlands, misty snow-covered mountains, chill lochs, and all. He endured discomfort much better than he endured fools.

  His warm hands, large as those of a manual laborer, cultivated as those of an artist—he’d have made a good sculptor—drew off her socks and started prodding the tightness in the balls of first her right foot, then her left.

  She eyed his down-turned face, the bones beneath the skin softened by the shadow of his lashes. “Why me?” she asked.

  “Eh?” His voice was soft as his touch.

  “You’re basically a loner. The lawman striding down Main Street, cleaning up the town. Why me?”

  He smiled. He had a nice smile when one was drawn from him, a perfect trapezoid between the smooth angles of cheeks and chin. “You’re the school mistress taking off her glasses and letting down her hair.”

  “Not the dance-hall girl with the heart of gold?”

  “Heart of something a bit warmer and livelier than gold. But dance-hall girl? No.” His fingertips massaged her heel and circled her ankles, drawing gooseflesh from the skin of her legs.

  “Is it because we both have a taste for history and an allergy to ghosts?”

  “There’s a bit of a likeness, aye.”

  “And you find me as stimulating as you do irritating?”

  “Is that not obvious?” His hands moved up her calves and the gooseflesh became a delightful tingle surging up through her abdomen. Wine was nice. Alasdair was better. “Why go asking why?”

  Instead of telling him, I’m scared I’m going to fail again. I want to make sure, she said simply, “It’s a female thing,” and fell back against the pillow. He was here, proving his commitment, showing not telling. Why ask why?

  Alasdair’s hands slipped smoothly up her thighs beneath her nightgown. Following them, his entire body pressed against her. She drew his T-shirt from his shoulders, good sturdy shoulders, not grotesquely muscled, but solid. Beyond them she noted, from a great distance, the patterned cloth of the canopy, blue and white leaves, tendrils, flowers, a bit fussy for her taste, but of the time period. Lord Dunmore’s embroidered waistcoat was stitched in similar if more colorful patterns. Had he and Charlotte stared up at fabric like this, secure in the possession of wealth, status, and style?

  Secure in the possession of the Witch Box, if not of the charm stone, whether either or both implied anything or not.

  “Alasdair—” Jean began, but he stopped her mouth with his and applied his supple lips and subtle tongue to hers. His facade of stern policeman and severe security chief hid some positively baroque interiors, not to mention a medieval hall or two and dungeons haunted by clanking chains and moaning ghosts.

  Yes, he had an allergy to the paranormal as strong as hers, and he wasn’t any more comfortable with it than she was. Maybe his skepticism verging on impatience with the people he called nutters was his reaction, examining and then rejecting the paranormal, just as she embraced and then examined it.

  Embracing and then examining Alasdair himself, she could do that. She had been doing that for a couple of months now. They had resembled each other before they met. No wonder they’d been compelled toward each other, propelled from past to present to a still uncertain . . .

  Surrendering to the moment, she let the future go and held onto Alasdair instead.

  Chapter Eight

  Jean awoke, pulled from the depths of a dream where she wandered the halls of Blair Castle, each room opening onto another, and another beyond that—she wasn’t at Blair at all, but in a labyrinth of chambers filled with polished furniture, gravestones, empty fireplaces, chicken bones.

  What had waked her? A noise? A car in the street?

  Footsteps. Not someone walking by outside. Someone walking around inside.

  She was either being pressed into the bed or pulled down by it, cold, heavy, like sinking in deep water. Something between a tickle and a prickle teased the skin of her throat and chest. The footsteps didn’t belong to living feet. A ghost was walking through the house, his or her paces slow and ragged, weary, injured, ill. Her nostrils filled with the same scent she’d thought she smelled last night, sweet, rich, faintly smoky.

  She pried open her eyelids and peered around the room. The light of a street lamp leaked through the bars of the blinds, casting a milky glow on bedposts, the chest of drawers, the chair. Through the open door to the living room she saw the front windows similarly glowing, but nothing moved against them.

  Slowly she dragged her heavy limbs and heavier torso the few inches to where Alasdair slept, not exactly snoring but breathing in pronounced breaths. His back was warm, rock-steady. She plastered herself against his living flesh and bone, like putting her own back to the wall. He shifted, snorted, reached behind him, rested his arm in the indentation of her waist.

  “Do you feel it?” she whispered, but he didn’t answer. His breathing resumed its regular pattern and his hand on her flank lay heavy as marble, but not at all cold.

  The unearthly steps stopped. Something slid, crockery on wood, perhaps, and then Jean heard a splat like bread dough hitting the kneading board. She caught the sharp odor of yeast, and aroma of baking bread. And then, with what seemed like a sigh of cold wind, all the scents and sounds were gone.

  Exhaling, she willed her muscles to relax and her body to shape itself against Alasdair’s. The cold, wet supernatural blanket lifted from her shoulders.

  The clock, she saw as she turned her head, read 3:30 a.m. Alasdair had said that the Historic Area would be right uncanny at three in the morning. He was right. Of course he slept right through the proof of his statement.

  Jean dozed off again, and only regained consciousness when she heard Alasdair’s voice. “Mmm?” she asked. “What?”

  She was alone in the bed,
his pillow squashed and hollowed beside her, the covers tucked well around her—he’d done that when he got up. Sunlight filtered through the bedroom shutters and gleamed brightly in the living room. She smelled coffee. That was promising.

  Alasdair was saying, “. . . Hagedorn, Christian name Wesley. No, I’ve got no idea, save the date of death was yesterday, October the thirtieth. Aye, ring me when you’ve traced him. Mind the time difference, it’s hours earlier here.”

  Silence, while Ian, his minion at Protect and Survive, responded. At least, Jean deduced he was talking to his minion at P and S.

  “She has, has she? Ah, that’s the way of it, is it then? Well then, Ian, cheers.”

  Yawning, Jean stretched. She didn’t have to hit the cold, rainy streets of Edinburgh. She could lie around, have breakfast, read the guidebook.

  And hit the cold if sunny streets of Williamsburg for her appointment with the Dingwalls, reminding herself not to mention their escapade in the churchyard last night.

  Alasdair looked through the doorway. He was fully dressed in chinos, white shirt, and the green sweater she’d knitted for him, the one giving his eyes the blue-green depths of the sea off the Western Isles. “There you are. Did I wake you?”

  “Not really.”

  “I used the phone here to ring P and S. Add the call to my chit.”

  “Miranda’s picking up the tab for this house. It’s all going down on the Great Scot expense account, just like her room at the Inn. She’s even writing off our passes and event tickets and everything, you know, research. Business expenses. You should have used my cell phone, it’s set up to work on both sides of the Atlantic.”

  “I’ve got my own expenses with P and S,” he said. “I phoned for breakfast as well, and made the coffee.” He disappeared from the doorway. His footsteps beat a tattoo across the floor, sounding not even remotely like the ghostly steps she’d heard in the wee hours of the morning.

  Breakfast. Hard to believe she could be hungry after the sumptuous meal last night, but then, she’d been rather active afterwards. Rousing herself, Jean finished her washing and dressing routine and exited the bathroom just in time for a knock on the front door.

  A youth about Dylan’s age and height, but with considerably more gravity in his expression and melanin in his skin, carried in a covered tray and set it on a drop-leaf table. “Good morning. My name’s Eric. Can I get you folks anything else?”

  Alasdair was holding the door open. Just past his hand braced on the knob, Jean glimpsed two black-and-white shapes prowling along the fence. She replied, “You can answer a couple of questions. First of all, who do the cats belong to?”

  Eric glanced over his shoulder. “One of the Foundation officials lives next door.”

  “Do you know their names? The cats, that is, not the official.”

  “Fine old Virginia names,” he replied with a flash of white teeth. “Bushrod’s the one with the white neckcloth. The one with the white stockings is Bucktrout.”

  “Bushrod and Bucktrout?” Alasdair laughed.

  “There was a Washington named Bushrod,” Jean told him, and asked Eric, “When was this house built? It really was a kitchen, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it sure was. It was originally on the grounds of the Palace, then got moved over here when they were doing renovations for Governor Dinwiddie in 1752.”

  “Hence the name, the Dinwiddie Kitchen,” offered Alasdair.

  “I did get that far,” Jean told him, wading in before he pointed out that kitchens were once separated from the main house, the better to isolate heat and the dangers of fire. “So the building was moved in the eighteenth century, then, not during the 1930s reconstruction.”

  “Yes, ma’am. This little house is old, early 1700s. There’s a photo of it all leaning to one side and falling down, but the Foundation and Mr. Rockefeller, they rebuilt it back in the thirties to use as an office, and then fixed it up as a guest house just last year.”

  “Are there any ghost stories about it?”

  This time it was the whites of Eric’s eyes that glinted. The black pupils swiveled toward Alasdair. Alasdair shrugged. “She’s a journalist. She writes about ghost stories.”

  Eric looked back at Jean. “Ma’am, there’s ghost stories about most every building in Williamsburg. The bookstore at the Visitor Center and the college bookstore, they’ve got racks of ghost books. Me, I don’t have much truck with such as ghosts and witches. The real world, archaeology, architecture, that’s enough for me.” He sidled toward the door, obviously not wanting to talk any more about the paranormal or else expected to hurry back to the modern kitchen at the Inn—or, most likely, both.

  Alasdair really should have offered the lad a high-five for his commendable attitude, Jean thought, and concluded, “I write about archaeology and architecture, too. Thanks for the information.”

  “Yes, ma’am, any time,” Eric said, grin restored. “Call room service when you’re finished and I’ll collect the dishes. Thank you, sir,” he added as Alasdair handed him a couple of green bills. He paused by the gate in the fence to pet the cats and then loped away toward the Inn, his shoe buckles gleaming as brightly as his smile.

  Alasdair shut the door on the two bewhiskered faces. “What was that about ghost stories? He didn’t properly answer your question, but then, not everyone’s picking up ghosts like you and me.”

  “And you’ll notice he said ghosts and witches, even though I only asked about the one.” Jean said, pouring coffee and helping herself to a croissant and a muffin. “Speaking of which, or whom, you slept right through the ghost who dropped in about three-thirty this morning. He or she was cooking something. Smelled pretty good, a lot better than that wet-dog moldy smell you get sometimes.”

  Alasdair sent her his best feline gaze over the rim of his cup. “I was dreaming is all, criminals breaking into the Museum and making off with that portrait of Dunmore.”

  “You work even in your sleep. And first thing in the morning. Why call the mother ship about Wesley Hagedorn?”

  “He was an interpreter-cabinetmaker, Miranda was saying. One of the folk who build replica furniture and the like. Here’s me, thinking . . .”

  “. . . that he made the replica Witch Box. He had to have some hand in that, or Lockhart wouldn’t have thanked him last night. Did he go to Blair Castle to study the original?”

  “That’s what Ian’s looking out for me. Who visited Blair, when, how long did he stay in the U.K.? The facts.” Alasdair considered a yogurt, fruit, and granola parfait. If he’d had a straw, he could have taken a core sample of it.

  Jean smeared strawberry jam on the croissant and gave herself a moment for the warmth and caffeine of the coffee to flow down into her stomach and up into her brain. There were facts, weren’t there? It wasn’t all history gone to legend and myth gone to conspiracy theory. “We don’t know whether there’s anything suspicious about Wesley’s death.”

  “Not yet.” With a sage nod, Alasdair bent to the parfait. “Ah, you Yanks, having sweets for breakfast.”

  “At least we have a variety of breakfast foods, not the same greasy stuff day after day.”

  Ignoring that, he went on, “The sausages we ate yesterday were a bit too spicy.”

  “Yeah, there wasn’t enough sawdust in them to make them proper British sausages.”

  His response was an earnest look cut with pity that mimicked Sharon and Tim’s habitual expressions.

  Jean made a face at him. “You may be straining at a gnat here, about Wesley, I mean, not breakfast. But it’s worth pursuing.”

  “What’s strained is my credulity—it cannot be coincidence that Wesley died and the Box he likely made was stolen.”

  “Sure it could, but . . .” But. Several months of dabbling in crime solving, side-by-side with a professional crime solver, and her curious nature was turning into a suspicious one. One that made accurate suppositions.

  “Ian was telling me that Kelly Dingwall’s left the U.K. an
d returned here. Here to the U.S., though I’d not be surprised at her turning up here in Williamsburg, with Tim and Sharon at work. Perthshire Constabulary had no reason to be detaining her.”

  Jean started in on her own parfait. Yes, the granola was a bit too sweet, but the slightly acid taste of the yogurt kept it from cloying too badly. “And they haven’t located the Box or the thief.”

  “No, more’s the pity. There’s no saying, yet, whether Kelly and the thief were confederates or whether it’s coincidence her brother’s fixed on the charm stone and all.” He grimaced.

  “So if you come up with any information, are you going to share it with Detective Venegas?”

  His grimace contracted. “What would I be playing at, withholding information that could be assisting her with her case? If she can be bothered to listen what I’ve got to say, that is. If either Hagedorn’s death or the theft of the Box is her case. Could be she was just standing on ceremony at the reception last night, reminding Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all that the police are present and accounted for.” He pushed away from the table, picked up a folded paper from the coffee table, and opened it up to reveal a color-coded schedule of events. A moment later, muttering beneath his breath, he darted into the bedroom and returned wearing his reading glasses.

  Jean didn’t say anything about bifocals. Taking the long view, his vision was right up there with an eagle’s.

  “The town looks like opening at nine or thereabouts. I’m thinking I’ll have me a wee dauner to the cabinetmaker’s.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Jean told him. “The shop’s on Nicholson Street, sort of behind Chowning’s. It’s in a little valley, partly over a stream—maybe that provides power for the lathes, I don’t know. And there are a lot of little paths into the trees there, back to the brickyard and some other sites. Dark hollows, spooky little corners. Rachel and Dylan might have been heading that way last night.”

  “Ah. Tough customers, kids that age.” Alasdair turned the pillowcase-sized sheet of paper over and considered the map, with its colored buildings looking a bit like a Monopoly game.