A Wee Murder in My Shop (A ScotShop Mystery) (18 page)

Karaline tapped her foot. “How long?”

“I don’t know,” I wailed. “You think I’m an expert at this?”

She reached for the shawl, but I was faster. I grabbed it. Not wanting to jostle Dirk, though, I unfolded it gently and placed it around my shoulders.

Karaline gasped at the same time I saw the swish of his plaid next to the arm of the chair.

“He’s baaack,” she intoned.

“Aye,” said Dirk, not catching the film reference. “That I am.”

“You can still see him, K?”

“Of course I can.”

I wondered about that. “You couldn’t see him at first. Not until you held the shawl. Once you’d seen him the first time, though . . .”

“I didn’t need the shawl anymore. Maybe it’s like looking at one of those hidden-picture things, you know? Once you see the lion in the grass, you can’t ever go back to thinking it’s just a landscape anymore.”

“Have ye seen a
lion
?”

“No, she hasn’t. There are these . . . Good grief, why am I trying to explain this?”

Inspecting our ghostie with a practiced eye, Karaline said, “We could plant him different places around town and get him to report back to us. He could find out who killed Mason!”

“Ye dinna need to talk as if I am no right beside ye.”

“There’s only one problem with that.” I said, and Dirk nodded solemnly. “Anywhere outside this house, he can’t get more than about six feet away from whoever is wearing the shawl.”

“Why not?”

“What do you mean
why not
? How would I know why not? I have a ghost in my house and a shawl that’s almost seven hundred years old.” My voice rose in pitch, speed, and volume. “First you couldn’t see him and now you can; I’m in a neck brace because I ran into a garbage truck, for crying out loud, and you’re asking me to explain the rules?”

She looked at me for a long moment until the echoes died away. I could see her lips moving. She was counting to ten. Or maybe twenty. “Don’t bite my head off,” was all she said.

“Look, you have to get up early to get the Logg Cabin going.” I stood painfully and Karaline put out a hand to help. “I need a good night’s sleep. My bruises are throbbing, and my brain is even worse.”

“You’re right about that.” She rubbed the back of her neck and picked up her purse. “Maybe we’ll think clearer in the morning.”

Dirk followed us to the door.

“Come see me at the shop after you close the Cabin.”

“You’re working tomorrow? Are you sure you’ll be fit?”

“Aye. I mean, yes.”

She grinned. “He’s getting to you, isn’t he?” She leaned back and cocked her arm as if to poke him in the ribs but thought better of it and hugged me instead, way too hard. I groaned, and she let go. “Can you make it up those stairs by yourself?”

I took a quick inventory. All the aches were settling in for what seemed like the long haul. “I think so?”

She set her purse down yet again. “Stay,” she said to Dirk. “I’ll handle this,” and ushered me slowly upstairs. “Hot shower?”

“Nope. Just bed. I don’t think I could stand by myself.”

As we turned into my bedroom, Karaline asked, in a voice a tad too nonchalant, “Where does Dirk sleep?”

“Good grief, K. It’s not like that. He’s a ghost.”

She looked around, probably checking to be sure Dirk wasn’t on our heels. “He’s really hot, and those shoulders—”

“He’s been dead for six hundred and fifty years, Karaline.”

She ignored the steel in my voice. “Wouldn’t you like to maybe—”

“No. I would not.” I patted Shorty as he curled into a feline O beside me. “Now, go away and let me sleep.”

It wasn’t that easy to get rid of her. She fussed around for a while, bringing me a glass of water and handing me my journal. “Write,” she said. “Not that I think you ought to, but I know you’re going to anyway, so just do it, and then turn out the light and get some sleep.” She moved the lamp closer to the edge of the bedside table.

“Good night, K.” I couldn’t wait for her to leave.

“Good night, P,” she said, matching my tone. “Sleep tight.”

I ignored the suggestiveness in those last two words and opened my journal with great deliberation. She giggled and walked out, leaving the bedroom door wide open.

I listened to her walk down the stairs. “Sleep well,” I heard, just before the front door closed.

Soon, Dirk stepped in the room.

“Were you waiting up here the whole time?”

“Nae,” he said with dignity. “She would ha’ seen me. I watched her out the front window until she got in her car. I even waved to her.” He looked like an imp. “Then I came . . . then I just
was
upstairs.” His look turned serious “What she said, about using me to spy on people, might work.”

I stroked Shorty as I thought about it. I needed to take Dirk to a James Bond movie. What would he think of all those gadgets? “You really want to spy on people?”

“There’s a murderer”—all those rolled
r
’s again—“roaming the streets.”

“You can’t spy on anybody. Not unless I’m there, too. You have to be within six feet of me.”

“Mayhap not. Not if I hold my Peigi’s shawl.”

The silence stretched out. He’d obviously been thinking about it to have answered so quickly. “You think it will work,” I finally said, and it wasn’t a question.

“I dinna need any sleep.”

“Yeah, but the rest of us sleep at night, and even if you could get into people’s houses, you wouldn’t hear anything, except snores.”

“The murder happened at night.”

He had me there.

“I could, mayhap, look around.”

“You can’t open doors,” I reminded him.

“Och, aye. That I canna.” He heaved a sigh that set his plaid to shivering. “’Twas a good idea.”

“While it lasted,” I added.

He leaned forward, and for half an insane second I thought he was going to kiss me. Before I could react, he inhaled loudly. “Are ye wearing a scent?”

“You mean perfume?”

“Aye.”

“Yes. I put some on this morning.” I hadn’t had a shower since the accident. I hoped he wasn’t smelling anything awful. I turned my head as inconspicuously as possible, as far as the neck brace would allow me, and gave a trial sniff. You aren’t supposed to be able to smell your own stink, though, are you? At least not until it gets really bad.

“For a wee moment, I thought I could smell something.” He turned away from me. “Now, ’tis gone.”

He sounded wistful, disappointed, discouraged. I almost wished he’d been able to smell, even if it was stinky. Anything to raise his mood. “Good night, Dirk,” I said as gently as I could. He nodded and kept walking, taking the shawl with him.

Birthday Breakfast

W
hy did I ever choose the back bedroom, the one on the east side of the house? The light was way too bright, and it was way too early to consider getting up, despite what my alarm clock, the fiendish one, said to me. I pulled Shorty closer and snuggled the blankets more tightly around us, surprised that my neck didn’t hurt quite as much as it had yesterday. Maybe the brace was helping.

I had a busy day ahead of me. I needed to catch up with all the store business that probably hadn’t been handled yesterday. Gilda was a good manager. She knew the merchandise well and was great with the customers—when she wasn’t having one of her migraines—but when she was under stress, she tended to forget about things. Like bank deposits. I usually took care of those. The bank was just a block out of my way when I came home in the evenings, but it was a three-block detour for Gilda. She’d probably left the money in the safe.

That thought reminded me of the other safe—the one hidden inside the wall. There had to be a connection between that safe and Mason’s murder. I felt a chill run up my spine, and it had nothing to do with the weather.

I glanced idly at the Bird-of the-Month Audubon calendar hanging across the room. One of the squares was circled in red. Oh crap. The birthday party. How could I have forgotten it was my birthday? I had to show up. Karaline had put a lot of effort into making this the best surprise party I would ever have. I’d seen her to-do list once when she didn’t know I was looking. It was about a mile and a half long. Naturally, I’d told my brother all about it.

“I’m going to cook a private birthday dinner, just for you and Drew,” she’d told me, “Just the three of us old friends. Something simple. At the Logg Cabin.” It was a place Drew could get into easily. His chair was fairly narrow, but he needed a decent turning radius of blank space inside a door so he could maneuver without asking for help.

Private? Just for the three of us? Simple? Yeah, right. She’d invited half the town at fifteen dollars a head to cover the cost of the meal and all the trimmings. The whole group would get there early and be waiting for us with most of the lights out and party streamers everywhere. We’d both act totally surprised, and everybody would clap us on the back, there would be hugs and kisses and mounds of food, cards and maybe some presents, although the invitation said
No Presents, Just Your Presence.

Drew and I had always had our birthday parties together, even when we were school age. You’d think a brother would want only boys there, and a sister would want her girlfriends, but—maybe it was because we were twins—our birthday never seemed complete unless we were together. Even the year he spent in the hospital and the rehab place, I’d baked a carrot cake for the two of us, our favorite kind, and smuggled it into his room an hour before Mom and Dad were scheduled to show up. We stuffed ourselves with cake and the chocolate cream cheese frosting slathered on it, and Drew laughed and laughed and laughed, until he dissolved into tears over his useless legs. I cried with him. What else was there to do?

By the time Mom breezed in with her boring white cake, we were too full to eat any of it. She got so mad at us. She could at least have put chocolate icing on it, but Mom didn’t like chocolate, and she certainly didn’t like carrot cake.

I raised my hands over my head and pushed against the headboard, judging my returning strength. Not too shabby. I eased the blankets down a bit and raised the hem of my sleep shirt. The blackish-purple bruises looked awful, but who’d see them? Nobody, that’s who. I pulled myself up with an inward yank. No! I would not let my nonexistent love life get me down. I had a birthday party to get ready for. And work first.

The floor was cold. The fuzzy Winn tartan rug I’d hooked had scooted under the bed again. I fished around for it with one foot while I threw on my bathrobe. I was going to have to put a leash on those slippers of mine. Bending over while wearing a neck brace is not a fun exercise. I reached for my phone. I always call Drew on even-numbered birthdays and he calls me on the odd ones. He answered on the first ring. “Happy b-day, sis!”

“Stop it! I get to say it first. I’m the one who called you.”

He chuckled, and I could hear his super fancy coffee machine gurgling in the background. “Beat you to it this time.”

“When did we start this? Do you remember?”

I listened to him pour his coffee. “I dunno,” he said. “It just happened once we weren’t living in the same house.”

“Gotta run. I’m hungry, but Drew?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we get together and talk sometime? There’s something going on at the ScotShop I want to tell you about, but not over the phone.”

“Anytime. Have to drive to New York next week, but I’ll be around until then.”

“Thanks. In the meantime, we’ve got that b-day party tonight.”

“Oh yeah, the big three-oh surprise. Think we should show up early?”

“Karaline would kill us. Seven thirty sharp.”

“How about letting Tessa and me pick you up? I’ll stop by at seven and we can talk.”

“Great idea. Make it six thirty, though, if you can. There’s a lot to talk about.”

“Sure thing. See ya, sis.”

I sat there for a few minutes, trying to get my head around turning thirty. I wasn’t a millionaire yet. My love life was nonexistent thanks to Andrea. And Mason, too—he was just as responsible. I’d spent a couple of years browbeating my brother for having been silly enough to fall off that dinosaur skeleton—
Couldn’t you have held on to a vertebra or something?
—but now I’d gone and backed out in front of a garbage truck and had the neck brace and bruises to prove it. What kind of messed-up thirty-year-old was I?

But on the other hand, I owned my own store. I was able to travel when I needed or wanted to. I had good friends. I’d gone through the experience of loving somebody, even if it hadn’t turned out the way I’d hoped it would. On top of that, I’d survived the shock of discovering a corpse, I had a hidden safe full of mystery, and I had my very own ghost. What more could I ask?

There was a grapefruit with my name on it in the kitchen, and eggs ready to be scrambled and cooked. I dressed faster than usual, even considering the bruises.

Still a bit groggy, but considerably cheered, I made my way out of my bedroom and saw my ghost sitting on the top stair. I sat down beside him. “What’s up?”

He raised his head and looked toward the ceiling. “Up where?”

“What I meant was, good morning and how are you?”

“Och, aye. I see. I am doing as well as one could hope.”

I waited a second for him to go on, but he just sat there. “What do you mean by that?”

“I have spent a good deal of the night thinking about what your friend said.”

“You mean Harper?” Why was I thinking of him this early in the morning?

Dirk clenched his right fist. I couldn’t see the other one. He might have been clenching it, too. “I didna mean him.”

“Oh. You meant Karaline.”

“Aye, Mistress Caroline.”

“What did she say?”

He stared at his hand for a moment and gradually unclenched his fist. “She asked me what I am doing here.”

“Well, that’s easy. You’re . . . uh . . . well, you’re um . . .” I stuttered to a stop.

“Aye. Ye canna say, either.”

I took a deep breath. “Macbeath.” He raised his head when I called him by his real name. “I would like to invite you to my thirtieth b-day party this evening at half past seven. Would you be kind enough to accompany me?”

“What would be a bee-day party?”

“You never had a b-day party?”

“I dinna ken. If I knew what one was, I might be able to answer ye.”

I reached for the bannister and hauled myself to my feet. “Look, I don’t know why you’re here. All I know is that I’m glad you are. Today’s my thirtieth birthday, and Karaline is putting on a surprise birthday party for me and my brother, and I’d like you to be there.”

“What would that have to do with bees?”

I put my hands over my face and exhaled long and hard. “It’s a contraction, Dirk. Just for the fun of it. That’s what my brother and I call it. B-hyphen-day. Get it?”

“Och, aye.” He didn’t look convinced.

I started on down the stairs, and he trailed after me. “It’s a surprise party. That means Drew and I aren’t supposed to know about it, so we’ll have to act astonished when we get there.”

“If ’tis supposed to be a surprise, why do the two of ye know of it?”

I drummed my fingers on the island in the middle of the kitchen for a moment. “I, uh, read some of her mail.”

“Ye what?”

“Don’t get so self-righteous.” I pulled a grapefruit out of the fridge. “It was just lying on her counter.”

Dirk was awfully silent. I looked up at him. He was staring at the grapefruit like he thought it might bite him. “What would that be?”

“This?” I cut it in half. “It’s called a grapefruit. Why?”

“I travelled to Edinburgh once.”

“Yeah?” I ran my knife around the first little wedge.

“I saw a fruit verra much like that, only it was smaller and of a different color. It was called an or-ange.” His voice was hushed as he said those two distinct syllables, and filled with awe. “Only the nobles could afford them.”

I set the knife down. “Dirk, you’ve got to get used to the idea that a whole lot of things, like books and fruit like this, are pretty common around here. Around now. I eat grapefruit all the time, and I ain’t rich.”

He frowned. “And crimes? Murders? Are those common, too?”

“Of course not!” I picked the knife back up and went to work on the hapless grapefruit.

“Yet ye have a number of constables who appear to do only that work. They are not farmers or blacksmiths or coopers. Their only employment seems to be finding people who have done wrong. Am I correct?”

I scooped the loosened sections out into a bowl. “Well, when you put it that way, I guess the answer would have to be yes.”

“I lived my entire thirty years and didna encounter a single instance of anyone killing another human being. There might be brawls between men at the pub occasionally, but little more than that. Reoch Macdonald did bear false witness against his neighbor Tawse Macleod for supposedly taking a pig from Reoch’s sty, but the village knew the truth of it and wouldna allow Reoch to speak so.”

“You mean to tell me everybody in your village was perfect except the brawling men and this Ree-guy.”

“Nae, nae. Just that we didna solve our problems by murdering anyone.”

“So why did you tell me you knew all about fighting?”

“Och, aye, I did, but that was to settle clan quarrels.”

“Oh, big difference.”

“We didna go out to murder.”

“Well, we don’t, either.” I slurped the rest of the juice out of the bowl. “Not usually.”

“So I must get used to books and grape fruits often and killing occasionally?”

“You had a war just before you were born.” Sorry as I am to admit it, I sounded a little nasty.

He sighed. “Aye. There were wars and clan fights.” He sat down across from me. “Are ye saying there are none now?”

He had me there. I pushed away from the table. “I, uh, have to go brush my teeth.” I was going to be hungry by ten, but my scrambled eggs would have to wait for another day when the Inquisition wasn’t going on at my kitchen table. “We have to walk this morning,” I told him. “I haven’t gotten a rental car yet.”

“Could we no use the wee carriage out front?”

“What are you talking about?”

“This morning, before ye awakened, a verra big truck of garbage stopped in front of this dwelling. Behind it, a wee car drove into the . . .”

“The driveway?”

“Och, is that what ’tis called? Aye. Weel, a man got out of the car, climbed into the truck of garbage, and left.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“This has nothing to do with goats.”

I had to think about that one. I was halfway to the front door before I got it.

Sure enough, just as he had said, a wee carriage, a chocolate brown Volvo, stood in my driveway. “You didn’t tell me he put a bow on it.”

“I supposed it was meant to be a surprise. Mayhap ’tis for your bee-day.”

It was a surprise all right. I pulled an envelope from under the bright red bow adorning the hood and read the note aloud.

Dear Miss Winn,

I hope you will forgive my running into you. The accident helped me make a decision I’ve been agonizing over for some time. Please accept this gift as my way of thanking you for your part in this drama. It’s an older car, but it is in prime condition and quite trustworthy. The keys, bill of sale, and the registration papers are in the glove compartment. You’ll see that I’ve sold the car to you for one dollar.

Sincerely,

Martin Cameron
Former Owner
Cameron Garbage
Arkane, Vermont

p.s. I feel a great deal happier than I have in a very long time. That alone is worth far more than the price of a used car.

p.p.s. I don’t expect to receive that dollar. Let’s call us even?

I ran my hand over the hood.

“Yon Master Cameron sounds like a courtly gentleman. I wouldna expect him to carry refuse.”