Three Degrees of Death

by Allen Kent

  “Arrived in Inverness. Anxious to connect. JosiahTwin.”

  The response came immediately from his phone. “Been anticipating your arrival, Josiah. Let’s meet. How would the Clachnaharry Inn in an hour work for you? I’ll be on the bench seat beside the fireplace. Any cab driver will know where it is.”

  I called the desk to ask for a cab in forty minutes, wrapped my bandage in plastic while I took a quick shower, but left my two-day stubble. For the first time since the Parker funeral, I donned a pair of navy pants and a charcoal, quarter-zip pullover with a narrow white stripe. Nothing that said ‘rural America.’

  Five minutes before the appointed time, I ducked out of a cab in front of a whitewashed stone pub with a bright red door and shutters, its chalkboard signs advertising a menu of dishes heavy in meat and potatoes and an award-winning selection of ales.

  The fireplace in my instructions was only a step inside. On the bench beside it sat a man in his mid-thirties. He had done as much as his very average face permitted to look like Outlander’s Jamie Fraser.

  He had the curly, shoulder-length hair tinted a deep auburn and wore a chocolate suede jacket over a light brown shirt that looked for all the world like it had wooden buttons. A white cotton scarf was knotted beneath his chin and tucked into the top of the shirt. All he lacked was the piercing brown eyes, chiseled jaw, and distinctive cleft in the chin of actor Sam Heughan.

  Beside him sat a much closer replica of Claire. Slim and oval faced with alluring brown eyes, full lips, and long, cascading hair, accented by dark ringlets that twisted down in front of her ears. Her outfit was as ‘early Scottish’—a short half-sleeve jacket in natural wool, an unbleached linen blouse that extended through the jacket sleeves to mid-forearm, and a loosely knitted shawl thrown up across one shoulder. I had seen them both before.

  Every ceremony of Gleidhidh Doras had been videoed and was filed away on their website. It was a treasure trove of porn I had quickly learned needed to be viewed in the privacy of my sixteen acres of woods. With the exception of an occasional new participant, the videos were all the same—a processional along a grassy path with members carrying flaming torches. A loose circle where each clansman downed a mug of some brew that immediately relaxed inhibitions. The women throwing back their arms and heads and swirling into the ring like Dervishes, their transparent gowns flowing about them to the strains of The Skye Boat Song while the men, wearing only tartan kilts, swayed in place around the edges of the dance.

  When the woman I recognized as the one seated on the bench in the Clachnaharry Inn decided the time was right, she whirled her way to Jamie who stood at the head of the circle and slipped her dress from her shoulders. Each of the other women then spun her way to a clansman and disrobed, pulling their partner’s kilt to the ground and dragging him down on top of it.

  Most of the rest of the footage focused on Jamie and his coupling with one woman after another, occasionally breaking away to some particularly passionate sideshow. As Julia Blair had told me, there were times when children were part of the processional, but disappeared after the clan formed its ceremonial ring.

  There was an awkward crudeness about the videos that made them more grotesque than erotic. I had thought as I watched the first that it looked like Jamie had recruited participants by camping outside the closest Walmart, taking the first twenty people to walk through the door, and convincing them to be part of his little sex-in-the-wilds romp. Every shape, size, age, and hue of human flesh was on full, unappetizing display. The exception was the woman on the bench. My surprised glance brought them both to their feet.

  “Josiah?” the man asked, extending his hand. “I’m Jamie. This is Claire.” The woman gave me an appreciative smile.

  “I think the women will be pleased to see him,” she said to her companion.

  He ignored her compliment and asked, “Did you travel well?”

  “Yes. Very. But I’m guessing I may not have brought the right outfits with me.”

  They both looked down at their clothing and Claire chuckled. “This is our choice for the day. Some like to dress their parts. Some don’t.”

  Jamie rose from the bench and held a hand out to Claire to follow. “There’s a very nice patio in back that isn’t busy this time of day. We can talk there more privately. Would you like a beer?” I guessed his accent to be an American affectation of a Scottish brogue.

  I nodded. “A local lager of some kind. Do you have a recommendation?”

  “I’m partial to Innis and Gunn,” he said, waving over a young waiter and ordering three to be delivered to the patio.

  “The only downside here,” Jamie observed as we stepped through the rear double doors and down a set of steps onto a stone terrace, “is that a rail line runs just below. So every thirty minutes, we’ll have to pause and wave at the passengers until we can hear each other again.”

  He guided Claire to a table overlooking the strip of lawn that separated the porch from the tracks and waved me to a seat opposite him as the waiter brought our beers. The man’s deference to the woman made me wonder if he was truly gallant, was playing his role to the hilt, or was acting exactly as she directed.

  “As I’m sure you have learned, we call ourselves a clan,” he said, raising his beer and clinking it against ours in a silent toast. “We don’t worry much about the other-world names of members, and think it better that way. Are you comfortable with that, Josiah?”

  I shrugged my lack of concern. “Perfectly fine with me. My real-world life isn’t that interesting anyway.”

  “Other-world,” Claire corrected sharply. “We see them both as being real. In fact, our hope during our ceremony this week is to bridge the two—to open the portal to the Outlander world.”

  I gave them what I hoped would be taken as a look of rapt anticipation, wondering as I did how anyone could actually swallow this load of tripe. “Do you think you can do it?” I asked.

  Claire took Jamie’s hand in both of hers and answered for the pair. “There is a way. A special ritual. Jamie passed through when he first came here. You will see it when we meet day after tomorrow.” She smiled a smile that under other circumstances might have been temptingly inviting, making me wonder again who the charismatic driving force behind this duo actually was.

  “Anything you can share?” I asked.

  Her smile became secretive and she playfully shook her burgundy locks. “Something to anticipate. And by the way, do you have a kilt? I know you’ve seen our videos. The men all wear kilts and are bare-chested.” My thoughts turned to Julia and her warning that they tracked every access to their website.

  “I’ll have to get one,” I confessed. “I know I only have a day, but I wanted to get something authentic.”

  This time, the smile was seductive. “You know, of course, how kilts are worn. Nothing beneath them.”

  “Yes. I know that.”

  “And since you haven’t purchased one yet, I need to remind you that only Jamie can wear a Fraser tartan.”

  I nodded as if this made perfect sense to an underling such as Josiah Beardsley. Jamie leaned back in his chair, hand wrapped around his beer on the table, and studied me critically enough to send a shiver across my shoulders. The man’s face was much narrower than the Jamie of Outlander—thin-lipped with bright, intense eyes. There was something riveting in his gaze, and I could imagine how he could be seen by his followers as a holder of deep secrets.

  “The one thing we do like to know,” he said, “is what our clan members do in their other lives. It sometimes helps when we run into a problem of some sort to know where we have expertise.”

  During my hurried days of inserting myself into the clan, I had spent every moment my mind wasn’t on something else working on a new identity. “Sheriff of a town with two missing kids” wasn’t going to cut it.

  “Again,” I said sheepishly. “It’s a pretty dull existence and one that probably won’t be especially useful. I’m a teacher.”

  “
That isn’t always dull,” Claire murmured. “So am I. I’d occasionally like it to be a little less trying.” She paused as if trying to guess, then asked, “What do you teach?”

  I gave her an embarrassed smile. “Language. Mideastern languages, to be exact.”

  Both sets of eyes widened. “Like Arabic?”

  “Yes. In fact, mainly Arabic.”

  “Might I ask where. . .” Jamie began, but was cut short by a nudge from the woman. I read it as a warning that he was stepping into forbidden territory for clan members. Though the two set the rules, she apparently did not want him to break this one.

  He asked instead, “How did you happen to learn Arabic?”

  I had decided that I could best remember my new persona if I based it on something real. I’d chosen Adeena’s family. “My mother was a Palestinian immigrant,” I explained. “She insisted we grow up speaking her native language.”

  “Then you’re fluent?” Claire asked, arching a brow.

  I grinned. “At least very proficient.”

  Jamie drained the last of his beer. “How recently have you eaten?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “I have a grand idea. There’s a restaurant here in the city I’ve wanted to try. Let’s go get some supper. Our treat.”

  I began to protest, but Claire had taken my hand and pulled me to my feet.

  “A wonderful idea,” she said with a little too much enthusiasm. The thought flitted through my mind that I was setting myself up for a video that might include me with this woman—one Grace could very well see. But I had committed to the role. For everyone’s sake, I’d better play the part.

  Jamie dropped a ten-pound note on the table. Claire steered me back through the pub to the street where two of Britain’s famous black cabs waited.

  “Aspendo’s on Queensgate,” Jamie told the first driver.

  Twenty minutes later we were seated at a table with a neatly-pressed white cloth, the walls around us covered from wainscoting to ceiling with paintings of Mediterranean scenes and photos of crumbling ruins, peasants raking hay into domed stacks, and houses cut into the sides of chalky white stone formations. A belly dancer with a pretty, round face and loose, fleshy belly jiggled her way between tables in a halter and skirt that looked like they belonged on Carmen Miranda.

  At Claire’s direction, Jamie ordered an expensive bottle of a South African cabernet, then grinned across the table at me expectantly.

  “We thought it would be fun to come here and have you order for us in Arabic. We’ve heard this is an authentic Middle Eastern restaurant, run by a family from the old country. Are you game? We’ll tell you what we want, and you can do the ordering.”

  “One little problem,” I said hesitantly.

  My hosts exchanged a suspicious glance.

  “I can hear them talking in the kitchen. They’re speaking Turkish.”

  “Turkish, Arabic,” Jamie said with a tilt of his head. “They’ve got to be related. Like American English and Scottish English.”

  “Completely different linguistic families,” I explained. “Turkish has pulled in a lot of Arabic words because of the influence of Islam and the Koran. But otherwise, they are completely different.”

  “Do you speak Turkish?”

  “Not at all, I’m afraid.”

  Jamie frowned over at Claire. “Surely there must be someone here who speaks Arabic.” Both his tone and the glance he gave his partner suggested this spontaneous evening was intended to be much more than a culinary adventure.

  Claire waved a stout woman in black pants and a white shirt over to the table. “My friend here speaks Arabic,” she said brightly. “We thought it would be fun to order in Arabic. Do any of you speak it, by chance?”

  The woman looked at me skeptically. “My sister-in-law is Lebanese. She is in the back. I can ask her to come out and take your order.”

  Jamie threw up his hands. “That would be perfect! We will choose what we want, and he can order for us.”

  I glanced over the menu. “Most of these are Turkish or western Mediterranean dishes,” I protested. “I’m not sure there is an Arabic name for them.”

  Claire laid her hand on mine. “You just explain what we want and use the Turkish name. It will still be fun.”

  A slimmer woman in the same black and white outfit wound her way through the tables, wiping her hands on a towel as she approached ours. She looked first to Jamie who pointed across at me.

  “May I help you?” she asked in an Arabic distinctly flavored by the North Levantine accent of Lebanon.

  “I am very sorry for this inconvenience,” I replied apologetically in the Palestinian Arabic spoken by Adeena’s family. “But my friends here thought it would be clever to have me order in Arabic.”

  She gave me an understanding nod. “They come in here often—and usually with some interesting request. Are they actors of some kind?”

  I shrugged and gave her a friendly smile—nothing to suggest how revealing her question was. She shifted to stand behind me, looking at the menu over my shoulder. “Tell me what you would like. I will pass it along to one of the wait staff.”

  I worked my way through the order, speaking in Arabic but using the Turkish names listed on the menu.

  She repeated them back without having to write anything down, then turned to Claire. “Your friend speaks like a native,” she said with a light laugh. “But like a Palestinian.”

  Claire gave me a tight, satisfied smile. I had apparently successfully survived the induction ritual.

  As the woman left the table with our order, Jamie looked at Claire, got an approving nod, then said, “We’ll be posting instructions for gathering for the ceremony on the website.” The man’s intense eyes hardened. “Be sure to guard them with your life.”

  As I waited for my kalamar tava, a fried squid appetizer, I wondered where I would be the following night, what I might find myself doing, and what other lives were riding on my not screwing this up.

  29

  When I asked the receptionist at the Lachardil House Hotel where she would recommend I shop for a kilt, she pursed her lips, gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling, then slid a pad of paper in front of her and scribbled two addresses.

  “There are a lot of places,” she said as she wrote, “but the two I would recommend are Ben Wyvis on Church Street and the Highland House of Fraser. It’s on Bridge Street. I am assuming you wish to buy and not rent.”

  The thought of renting hadn’t occurred to me but did make a certain amount of sense. I was having enough trouble with the realization that I would be stepping out in public in a knee-length skirt made of wool plaid. Wearing it again back in Crayton was out of the question. I couldn’t think of another time when having a kilt would come in handy.

  “I haven’t really decided,” I admitted. “I have a function tomorrow evening that requires one. After that, I’m not sure what I’d do with it.”

  “Some of us find them very appealing,” she said, her smile as much a tease as an encouragement. “But I know House of Fraser rents. A nice one will probably cost you forty or fifty pounds. You may be able to rent for a third of that amount.”

  Church Street. If I remembered right, that’s where Grace’s hotel was. It might be smart to steer away from Ben Wyvis. And getting a kilt for an Outlander wannabe romp in the glen from a place called Highlander House of Fraser seemed fitting.

  I sent a lengthy text to Marti, checked the website for instructions for the next night and, finding nothing posted, took a taxi into the city center to Bridge Street. The driver dropped me at a turn in the road where Bridge turns into a pedestrian walkway called High Street. As I stepped from the cab and it pulled away, I found myself facing the wide picture window of an Italian restaurant across the busy one-way boulevard. Seated at a quiet table for two gazing intently at her lunch partner was the striking profile of chief deputy Grace Torres.

  Instinctively, I spun and ducked behind the metal brace of a bus shelter. Immediately in
front of me, the sign above the door of a long, white-fronted shop announced it to be Hector Russell—Kilt Maker. The symbolism of House of Fraser lost all importance, and I bolted into the dark interior, surprised and irritated with myself at how strongly I was reacting. Finding the clerks occupied with other customers, I stared back across Bridge Street through a slit in an ad-covered window.

  Grace leaned on her elbows, deep in animated conversation with a man in a gray tweed jacket. He was a few years older with a straight nose and square jaw—just as I had imagined Detective Inspector Conall MacKay. Thinning curly brown hair left a high forehead and a polished open spot at the crown. He looked at her with the engrossed admiration I had felt every time I gazed into that face, a slight smile shaping the side of his lips.

  She smiled back, then shook her head uncertainly, turning to the window and looking directly across at the “Harris Jackets, 75 £” sign that hid all but my eyes. I stepped quickly back, stumbling inadvertently into someone. I turned to find a young, dark-haired woman in a red plaid skirt and white blouse with a wide white bow at the collar. I reached out to steady her.

  “I am so sorry,” I stammered. “I thought I recognized that couple across the way and . . .” I couldn’t think of any sensible way to end the sentence. She peered curiously at the inch-wide space between ad posters, then back at me in amusement.

  “May I help you with something, or would you like to step outside and have a clearer look?”

  I tried a disarming grin. “Actually, I’m looking for a kilt for a function I’m attending tomorrow. Do you rent, by any chance?”

  She shook her head but kept the same pleasant smile. “I’m afraid we don’t. But House of Fraser down the street does rentals.” She moved toward the door and gestured off to her right.

  If I stepped onto the walk, I was certain Grace’s eyes would be drawn to me like homing beacons. “Well, then I think I’ll see if you have something here I would like to buy—and I know absolutely nothing about kilts. Can you show me what you have and tell me how to wear the thing?”