A Wee Murder in My Shop (A ScotShop Mystery) (11 page)

Harper laughed out loud. “Whatever you were intending to say is probably more to the point.” He pushed his coffee mug aside. “Do you have any idea whatsoever, no matter how farfetched it may be, as to why”—he looked around the restaurant, and I turned to follow his gaze. Most of our near neighbors were engaged in animated conversation. He turned back to me and lowered his voice—“any idea why Mason was in your store at night?”

A tiny spider skittered across the table toward Dirk. Did all ghosts attract spiders or just Dirk? Or was it a coincidence? “I’ve thought about it, but I can’t come up with anything. He had no reason to be there.” He used to have plenty of reason, but that time was quite simply dead.

Dirk spoke up. He, too, watched the spider. “Mayhap he was meeting someone, and that person killed him.”

“I doubt it,” I said.

“Doubt what?” Harper was looking at me funny. Again. He scooped the spider onto his napkin and transferred it to a nearby potted plant.

I propped my elbows on the table and leaned my chin into my hands. My head was disconcertingly close to Dirk’s. I pulled back a few inches. Dirk gave me a look I couldn’t identify. I cleared my throat. “Maybe Andrea knows.”

“Who would this Andrea be?”

Harper twirled his coffee mug around. I think he was trying to figure out how much to tell me. “She said she had no idea. She’d just kicked him out that night.”

“She did? That’s the best sense she’s shown in a long time.” I hated to give her credit for anything.

Harper snickered, I’d swear he did, but he covered it well by converting it into a cough.

“I wonder why she threw him out?”

“She said she’d found out he’d been cheating on her.”

“Really? With who?” He didn’t answer me. I guess I understood why. It wasn’t any business of mine. I wished I’d slugged Mason twice.

“Mayhap Andrea killed him.”

“Yeah. I mean, too bad we can’t nab her for the murder, but she doesn’t have enough sense to plan something like that.”

“You’re right,” Harper said. “Mason’s murder looks like it wasn’t planned, though.”

“You can’t dump a heavy bookcase like that over on somebody without planning how to do it. It had to have been moved away from the wall first—”

“Aye, did I not say so?”

“—and that’s not an easy job,” I finished. “Maybe the other woman killed him. She might have found out about Andrea.”
And me, too. Who else?

“No. She has a cast-iron alibi.”

“I thought alibis could be faked.”

“Not this one.” He fiddled with his coffee cup again. “That blow to Mason’s head . . .” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.

I thought back to the scene that morning. When we lifted the bookcase off him, there was a deep indentation right across his chest where the front edge of one of those heavy, immovable hardwood shelves had landed. “My bookcase killed him?” My stomach twisted, and I clenched my teeth to keep the coffee down.

Harper leaned across the table and pried my fingers off my coffee mug. “No. Absolutely not. He was killed by a person, someone who slammed him brutally and then dumped the heaviest thing he could find on top of his victim.”

He was right. Technically. Murder is done by people. Still, it could have been my bookcase. Maybe I could sell it to that store up in Montpelier . . .

“Peggy?” His hand tightened on mine. “Are you okay?”

I focused my eyes with some difficulty and looked down at my hand, where Harper’s fingers gripped hard. Dirk’s hand clutched my arm. Maybe that’s why I felt so cold all of a sudden.

Harper held up his other hand, and Dolly scooted over. “We need a glass of water.”

Between all the fussing, first from Dolly and then from Karaline, I managed to get enough water in me to float a boat. Talk about being
liquefied.
I did feel better, though.

Finally, I was back to normal, or as close to normal as I could get, considering what I’d just learned. “Did you notice that the wallpaper behind the bookcase was damaged?”

“I know. We checked behind the bookcase during our examination of the crime scene. Any guess as to what happened?”

“I’m sorry. All I know is the wallpaper was in fine shape when I installed the bookcase three years ago.”

“And then there were those holes,” Harper said.

“Do they go all the way through into the bathroom on the other side of the wall?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you call it?”

“There’s a toilet in there and a sink.” Of course there also were all those shelves of stuff. I didn’t have a very good inventory system. “So, did the holes go through?”

“No. I wasn’t sure at first. It was hard to see considering all the . . .”

He seemed to be looking for the least offensive word.
Junk
. That was what he was thinking.

“. . . merchandise in there.”

When I’d first opened the ScotShop, there’d been a sink in the back but no hookup for a toilet. I moved in a composting toilet—it worked just fine, although the little separate room walled off around the sink had been awfully crowded already, what with built-in shelves along the wall it shared with the showroom. Still, the toilet didn’t take up too much space.

I’d been meaning to reorganize those shelves for months—years—but never seemed to find the time. I wasn’t about to apologize for it, though.

Harper didn’t seem to expect an apology. “We shifted around some of the stuff so we could get a clear look at the wall from that side, and there weren’t any marks, which isn’t all that surprising. Thin drill bits won’t go through seven or eight inches.”

“What would be thindril bits?” Dirk’s first question in quite a while. I’d almost forgotten about him.

“Why would a . . .” I groped for a way to explain to Dirk without setting off the barm-alarm, but couldn’t think of a thing. “I thought interior walls were only as deep as a two-by-four.”

“A what? What would be a
to-before
?”

“They usually are,” Harper said. “But then again, this building probably has two-by-six studs. It was built a hundred years ago.”

“Is that all?” Dirk sounded incredibly haughty. “The chapel in Edinburgh Castle is nigh on three hundred years old. ’Twas built near the start of the twelfth century.”

I was about to retort, but then I thought about it. A building built in the early twelfth century would have been—I did a quick calculation—a little less than three hundred years old in Dirk’s time, but now it would be nine hundred and something. “A hundred years isn’t really all that ancient, is it? I read once that the difference between Scots and Americans, is that
they
think a hundred miles is a long way, and
we
think a hundred years is a long time.”

Harper just looked at me and couldn’t seem to think of what to say.

“Does it still stand on its verra high hill? Edinburgh Castle?” Dirk sounded wistful.

“Edinburgh Castle has huge, thick walls,” I said. “I’ve visited it several times.”

Dirk sighed with relief. “Ah, ’tis nice to know.”

Harper leaned his elbow on the table and propped his chin in his hand, mirroring my own position. He gazed at me, and I felt lost in those charcoal eyes. Before I could go too limp, he asked, “What are you talking about?”

I sat up straighter. “Thick walls?”

Dolly, bless her heart, chose that moment to refill our cups. “You doing okay now? Do you need more water?”

I shook my head and then smiled at Harper. “You were talking about how thick the back wall of the shop is.”

“Uh-huh.” He eyed me with some concern. “Is that wallpaper something you put up yourself?”

I shuddered. “Not hardly. I inherited it from the last owners. That kind of pattern is awfully old-fashioned. I thought it made the place look . . .” I recalled the dark shop between the rowan trees in Pitlochry, and glanced at Dirk. “. . . look sort of old-world and authentic, so I kept it. I like that kind of store.”
But not that horrible flocked wallpaper.
Would rowan trees grow in Vermont?

“Anyway,” I went on, “it was in pretty good shape. I think it was the original wallpaper, which would make it antique, and I didn’t want to spend any extra money on replacing it. The shop setup was expensive enough as it was.”

Harper turned his mug around and around. “You must have paid a fortune for that bookcase.”

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” I started to smile, but then I remembered what that bookcase had done. Damn. Why had I ever bought it? “I got it at an estate sale. Cheap.”

Dirk was drumming his fingers on the table without making a sound. I laid my hand flat on the table but couldn’t feel a vibration. “What would be a nestate sale?” He sounded peeved.

Poor Dirk, but I was getting tired of trying to answer him without getting myself committed. “It was one of those old houses down in Brattleboro. The owner died and they had to sell everything.”

Harper didn’t pay attention to that. He looked at my fingers splayed out beside my coffee mug and shook his head ever so slightly. “Was anything missing from the shop?”

“Not that I noticed, but I didn’t even think about it at first. I was just busy getting the bookcase righted. And then Mac kicked me out of there before I had a chance to do any sort of inventory.”

He motioned to Dolly. “We’ll go there now. I want to know if anything was taken.”

A Wee Mess, but Not My Own

A
s Harper ushered me out the door, I paused long enough for Dirk to scoot through the opening. Wouldn’t want him to get stuck behind. Against the bright glare of the sun in my eyes, I could just barely make out a few people looking in the window at the ScotShop. Not that they could see much. Those privacy curtains were still pulled tight shut just behind the display—dammit! I needed my customers to see all the wonderful merchandise inside.

I inhaled sharply. That sounded so crass. He’d been my boyfriend, my fiancé—well, almost fiancé—for way too long, and here I was worried about my bank balance.

Still, Mason might be dead, but I was alive, and I needed the front door wide open. The next rent payment would eat into my savings if the shop stayed closed much longer. The building might be old, but the real estate was considered prime.

I felt like a heartless heel, but I asked anyway. “How long before I can reopen?”

His charcoal eyes widened. “We released the scene this morning.”

“What?” I yelped. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?” I put on a bright smile as I approached the small group of people milling around the crime-scene tape. “Folks, we’ll be opening up this afternoon. I hope you’ll come back.”

“You bet,” said a voice from the other side of a fairly large woman. A kid, maybe her son, stepped out from in back of her. “I wanna see where the guy got creamed.”

“Watch your foul tongue, ye wee gomerel.”

My sentiments exactly.

“Now, Robert, you behave yourself.” His mother didn’t sound like she meant it. The avid gleam in her eye made me certain that she’d come up with the idea first.

I let just the three of us in the door, closing it quickly in the woman’s face, barely managing to miss slamming the end of Dirk’s plaid. Not that anything would have happened—could a ghost plaid catch in a door? Maybe it could. I’d never seen Dirk walk through a wall or anything. It was too much to think about. I leaned back against the window frame, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.

After a few seconds I flipped on some lights and took a long, hard look at my shop, hoping all the blood was gone. The bookcase wasn’t aligned right. The tiered tables near the back were twisted askew. The two circular racks, one of pleat-sewn kilts and the other of full-sleeved shirts that could make any man look like an eighteenth-century poet, had been shifted to one side, probably so the police could move the body—Mason’s body. I’d designed the layout of the shop with my brother’s wheelchair in mind but had never thought a stretcher would need to get through. I swallowed a bitter taste and saw Harper watching me from in front of the tie display. He started toward me, as my ghostie stepped between us, hand on the top of his dirk. “Are ye aright, now? Ye still look a bit peaked.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Harper said. “Seeing a crime scene can be a hair-raising experience, though. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“The bookcase is off-center.” Without thinking, I added, “I’ll get Sam and Shoe to help me move it.”

Harper cleared his throat. “Maybe I could help instead.”

“Damn. I forgot about Shoe.” I hadn’t really forgotten about him. The fact that he was in the town jail—thank goodness they hadn’t carted him off to the state prison—had been in the back of my mind most of the time since he’d been arrested.

“I would help ye if I could.” Dirk paused before a particularly obnoxious plastic Nessie. “What is this?”

I moved his way and shifted the little statue a bit to the right. “The Loch Ness Monster never looked so good, did it?”

“That is no wha’ she looks like.”

When that sank in, I couldn’t help myself. I gaped at him. “Have you seen her?”

“Och, aye. Once. When I was a child and my family went to a gathering at the Loch.” His left hand clamped onto the hilt of that wicked-looking dagger of his. “But once was enough for a lifetime.”

“Seen who?” Harper fingered a shirt. I wondered which clan he was from.

“Nothing. I’m going to call Gilda and Sam. No reason why they can’t help me open up.”

“You were going to check to see if anything was missing.”

“After I call. Gotta get this shop open for business.” I shifted the shawl higher on my shoulder and pulled my cell out of my purse as I walked toward the back, but I stopped dead before I pressed the contact list. “What on earth happened here?”

Harper and Dirk both headed in my direction. A fine, dirty-looking powder covered the display tables, the lamps, the bookcase, the cash register, the counter. “Good lord, I can’t open the shop if it looks like this.”

“Fingerprint powder.”

“What is finger prinpowder?”

“Shh,” I said to Dirk, but they both looked offended.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Harper, hoping that Dirk would guess the apology was meant for him as well. “I guess I’m just feeling the strain.” I swept my arm in an arc that took in the devastation.

Harper opened his mouth, closed it, and ran a finger along the smooth head of one of the less obnoxious Nessie statues. This one sported a sprightly green spray of artificial seaweed dangling from its jaw.

Since he didn’t seem to be planning to say anything, I jumped back in. “I hope you found something worthwhile.”

He paused. “No. Most everything had been wiped clean. The prints we found were what we’d expect to find in a store that most of the townspeople and a lot of tourists visit.”

“Well, they won’t visit unless I can get this cleaned up.” I called Gilda, told her to bring Sam, and turned to inventory my messy store.

As it was, I couldn’t find anything missing. And we didn’t open that afternoon, even with Harper helping us. Fingerprint powder is a bear to remove. So were the dried blood and bodily fluids.

As we worked, I couldn’t help but examine Gilda. She looked like heck. Several times I asked her if she felt okay, but each time she just shrugged me off. “Headache.” Still, she kept doggedly at the cleaning, although I saw Sam and Harper—and Dirk, too—staring at her occasionally. I wasn’t the only one wondering what was going on.

The obnoxious Robert and his mother came back around two o’clock and pounded on the door. I unlocked it and told them we were still cleaning.

“Aw! I wanna see!” Robert pushed his way past me before I could stop him. I blocked his mother and called to Sam to catch him before he did any damage.

I’d forgotten about Dirk, who stood smack-dab in the middle of the aisle.

“Och, no, ye wee feond.” He didn’t sound particularly angry, but he did sound resolute.

I was sure Robert, “fey-ond” or not, couldn’t see or hear my ghost, but he pulled to a sudden stop, and only I could see that he had seemed to collide with Dirk. He shuddered from his head to his feet, made a U-turn, and shoved me aside to get back to his mother. “I wanna go home,” he whimpered.

I closed the door, not even caring how she handled the boy. Dirk stood, openmouthed, as bewildered as I was. “How did I do that?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” I whispered. “Did you feel it when he ran into you?”

“Not feel, precisely. But—ye ken when ye have a bad dream? Someone’s trying his best to kill ye, and ye dinna want it to happen, but ye dinna seem to be able to stop it?”

I nodded, not sure where this was heading.

“I didna like that young brat, and when he pushed ye aside, I wanted to stop him, but didna know how I could, and then . . .”

I waited for him to go on, but he just stood there. “And then . . .” I prompted.

“Who are you talking to?” Harper looked concerned.

“The resident ghost,” I said without thinking. How much had he heard?

“Right.” He shook his head. He reached out, almost as if he were going to touch my arm, and Dirk bristled beside me.

“Keep your hands off her, ye miswenden manny.”

I wondered what “meswinduhn” meant but didn’t ask. After all, Dirk had lived just before the time of Chaucer. I wondered how I could even understand him. Some sort of trans-time auto translation, maybe. Memories of
The
Canterbury Tales
in high school senior English came back:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,/The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,/And bathed every veyne in swich licour,/Of which . . .

Dirk reached in front of me. Harper’s hand hung in midair about three inches from my elbow. He shook his hand, the way someone whose hand has gone to sleep will shake it to get rid of the pins and needles.

I glared at Dirk. “Did you do that?”

He just smiled.

Harper rubbed his hand down the side of his pants. “Do what?”

“Um. Nothing. Did you need me for something?”

He leaned to one side and looked around in back of me, shook his head, rubbed his hands together, and motioned me toward where Sam stood in the back. “We had a question about where you want the bookcase.”

I followed him, with Dirk on my heels. “The bookcase has to be placed exactly, with its center twenty feet from that wall.”

Dirk asked me why, and Sam snorted. “Picky, picky, picky.”

“Can it, Sam.”

Harper waited for the inanity to stop. “Why?” he asked.

“Why what?”

“Why does it have to be centered?”

“If it’s not, it looks unbalanced from the front door.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but Harper—and Dirk—turned and walked back to the front of the store. They stood side by side. “Aye, ye are right.”

“I see what you mean.”

I put my hands over my face. Stereo. This was ridiculous.

“Are you okay?”

I spread my fingers apart to see Harper looking at me yet again with some concern. “Yeah. Sure. Let’s get busy here.” I started to reach under the counter but pulled back. “Don’t need the measuring tape. I’d almost forgotten—I marked the baseboard at seventeen feet. That’s where this edge of the bookcase goes.”

*   *   *

After the Logg
Cabin closed at three, Karaline came to help, bearing gifts.

“Good grief,” she hollered as she breezed in. “Looks like a funeral home in here.” She carried a large tray of doughnuts—I could smell them even from across the room. Or maybe I only imagined that I could. She balanced the tray on a rack of tartan skirts and opened the vertical blinds a bit. The light did make it brighter. Not happier but definitely brighter.

Even with her help and lots of coffee from the oversized pot in the back room, we didn’t finish the cleanup until well after closing time and into the wee hours. Opening time at nine o’clock was going to come way too soon.

Still, late as it was, we gathered at the table in the back room. Karaline’s edible gift had been almost decimated over the course of the afternoon and evening, but there were enough doughnuts left to lure us into sitting down. Dirk watched Harper take a seat across the table from me before he leaned against the edge of my desk. I could see him directly between Harper’s right shoulder and Gilda’s left. Gilda looked marginally better. Maybe hard work dissipated migraines?

Sam snatched a jelly-filled. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the station interviewing somebody or canvassing door to door or testing blood samples or investigating something?”

“What would be kanvasing?”

Harper looked back over his shoulder. Surely he couldn’t have heard Dirk’s question?

He said, “I
am
investigating,” but he looked just a wee bit uncomfortable as he said it, and I could have sworn he glanced at me. Was he . . . no, he couldn’t be here just because of me . . . but he
had
spent the major portion of the day here—I shook myself. He was not interested in me. He was not. He couldn’t help it if those charcoal eyes of his drew me into them.

“I think we can assume,” Karaline said, waving a long arm around the table and grabbing a doughnut as her hand passed over it, “that nobody in this room is the murderer, right?”

“Are ye sure of that?”

“Yes,” I said in the general direction of the desk before I remembered. “I’m sure it wasn’t one of ”—I waved around the table. Harper cocked his head at me but didn’t say anything—“so I don’t know why you’re investigating us . . .”

“Maybe he just wants to get to know us all better.”

Karaline crossed her eyes at Gilda’s comment.

I continued despite the interruption. “. . . and we know Shoe didn’t murder . . . Mason.” His name caught in my throat, but only Harper and Dirk seemed to notice.

Gilda reached for a maple-glazed. “What I want to know is why Mason stood still long enough to get a bookcase dumped on him.”

I looked at Harper. Was he going to answer her? Apparently not. “He was knocked out first, Gilda. With Shoe’s baseball bat, remember?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t want to think about it.” Her voice was even breathier than usual.

“But why, can ye tell me, was yon case for books moved in the first place?”

“I don’t have a clue,” I said.

“About what, cuz?” Sam asked between chocolate-covered bites.

“Why the bookcase was moved.”

“Maybe it was an accident,” Gilda offered.

“Nay.”

“No.” The stereo effect again. Dirk quieted down, but Harper pointed out that the bookcase was too heavy to have moved or fallen on its own.