Bonnie of Evidence (18 page)

“No problem. Glad I could whip off my Average Joe shirt to reveal my true identity.”

“Which is?” I asked, grinning.

He pulled the neck of his shirt away from his body and peered down his front, as if studying his undershirt. “It’s supposed to say ‘Aging Superhero,’ but I can’t be too sure since I’m not very good at reading things upside down.”

I leaned over and pressed my lips to his cheek. “Etienne’s right. Thanks for watching out for me.”

“Don’t stop there,” he insisted. “Plant one on the other cheek, too. We’re in Europe. It’s acceptable.”

“Cameron!” Lucille motioned to him from the entrance to the library. “C’mon! The seats are filling up fast. We’re really late.”

He raised his hand in a “Be right there” gesture. “What can I say?” He shrugged. “It’s tough being the tour’s designated hottie, but duty calls. See you in there.”

“Have you recalled where you might have seen Erik Ishmael before?” I asked to his retreating back.

“Hey, I’ve been wracking my brain about that, but nothing’s sticking.” He tapped his fist against the crown of his head as if to jog something loose. “Have you ever seen your postman in the grocery store without his uniform and mail bag? You know you’ve seen him before; you just can’t figure out where. That’s what I’m dealing with.”

Etienne’s phone chimed softly. Fishing it out of his trouser pocket, he checked the caller ID before raising a finger for me to wait for him. “I need to take this, bella. Miceli,” he said as he strolled away from me. He paced for a good five minutes while he conversed, his mood subdued when he returned.

“Not the news you wanted to hear?”

He forced a stream of air between his teeth. “That was the medical examiner. No results on Isobel’s postmortem yet because he’s having to send slides to another facility where the equipment is more high tech. He tells me he’s never run into anything quite like this before, so he’s rather mystified.”

“He’s never run into anything like … what?” I asked uneasily.

“Isobel’s internal organs. Her stomach was so damaged, it looked as if it had simply exploded, and he’s at a loss to explain why.”

“Her organs
exploded
? Are you serious?”

He pressed a finger to his lips. “You’re to tell no one, Emily. Not even your grandmother. Not until we receive the final report.”

“But … Oh, my God. How can anyone’s organs just explode?” I gasped with incredulity. “And if she was flirting with major organ malfunction, how could she
not
fill out her medical history form?”

“A stomach doesn’t normally explode on its own, bella, which is why the medical examiner is having to seek outside assistance with the diagnostic panels. Isobel’s death is apparently far outside the realm of what modern medicine considers normal.”

I looked up at him, not liking the sound of that. “So if organs don’t explode on their own, does that mean some external influence
helped
them explode?”

“Shall we make an effort not to get ahead of ourselves?” he cautioned.

“But—”

He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the hollow of my palm, causing my arm to tingle from fingertips to shoulder. “Your mother has just arrived with her laptop. Shall we continue this discussion later?”

The mood in the library was giddy.

“Is there anyone who hasn’t seen my video of the
Highland Queen
crashing into the dock?” asked Dick Teig as he held his Smartphone in the air. “It’s in high def, with stereo Sensurround.”

“I have a picture of the rescue boat,” offered Osmond.

“I have some nice footage of the paramedics starting the IV drip in the captain’s arm,” tittered Margi. “And a good still shot of the blood pressure cuff they were using.”

The room was so crowded, Etienne and I couldn’t find seats together, so he ended up standing by the windows, while I dragged a chair over to the table where Mom was setting up shop. The only person who wasn’t riding high on emotion was Dad, who sat glumly in an armchair, looking as if the loss of his camcorder had caused him to lose his will to live.

Poor Dad. Maybe I’d have to buy him a new camera in Wick.

“Thank you all for being so prompt,” Mom announced as she powered up her computer. “You did a wonderful job at the castle today, and I know you’re anxious to hear the results.”

All eyes riveted on Mom in anticipation of her next words. Breathing ceased. Fingers crossed.

“But first I’d like to tell you about the new system I devised that uses time as a mathematical function of—”

Groans. Boos. Hissing.

“Just tell us the results,” yelled Bill Gordon.

“Yah,” shouted Dolly. “We trust your math.”

“Cut to the chase,” encouraged Dick Stolee.

Mom looked dumbfounded. “You don’t want to hear how I arrived at my calculations?”

“NO!” came the unanimous reply.

Muttering something under her breath, Mom hit a couple of keys that caused an incomprehensible grid to appear on her screen. She heaved a long-suffering sigh. “But the results won’t make any sense to you unless I explain how I arrived at—”

“WHO WON?” bellowed Stella Gordon.

Lips twitching with irritation, Mom caved. “The winner of today’s leg is”—she ran her finger across the screen as if to double-check—“the same team that is now at the top of the leader board and nosing ever closer to the grand prize of a free trip on Destinations Travel’s next holiday adventure.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Team Yes We Can!”

Team Five leaped off the sofa, shrieking like Justin Bieber groupies. “We won!” they cried, jumping up and down, bear-hugging, high-fiving, and peppering each other with kisses.

“Now we’re cooking!” whooped Cameron as he banded his arms around Bernice, Lucille, and Dolly. “We’re on a roll, ladies! There’s no stopping us now! From last to first. BOO-yah!”

But as I regarded the expressions on the faces before me, it became obvious that not everyone was thrilled to see the emergence of the lowly underdogs as contest leaders.

Erik and Alex observed the celebration stone-faced.

Stella Gordon curled her lip into a menacing smile.

And Bill Gordon eased back stiffly in his chair, his eyes throwing daggers every bit as deadly as the one he’d stolen from the bus.

“I think Team Five deserves a round of applause,” said Mom, clapping loudly, “or better yet, a toast!” She unzipped her fanny pack, retrieving a lime green mini bottle of Thistle brand water. She raised it in the air. “Anyone else?”

They pulled them out of shoulder bags, pockets, sporrans, purses, and tote bags and lifted them grudgingly into the air. Lime green mini bottles of Thistle brand water.

At least two dozen of them.

Nuts
.

TWELVE

“
T
HEY WAS HAVING A
shoppers’ special on bottled water in the hotel gift shop,” Nana told me as we approached Wick the next day. “Buy one, get two free.”

I frowned. “But why did you pay for water when you can get it free on the bus?”

“’Cuz the water in the hotel was on
sale,
dear. Gettin’ somethin’ for free don’t got the same buzz as gettin’ it dirt cheap.”

We’d followed the coastline as we headed northeast on the A9. We visited the home of the Earls and Dukes of Sutherland at Dunrobin Castle, geocached at an obscure site near Hill o’ Many Stanes, and spent the rest of the day crossing a flurry of firths and being wowed by sweeping views of the North Sea, which appeared to be stuck at permanent low tide despite our many hours on the road. I’d switched seats with George at our last comfort station, so this was the first time I’d been able to talk to Nana today.

“The clerk give us fair warnin’ that the farther north we drove, the fewer shops we was gonna find, so we loaded up. I got three bottles, Tilly got six, and your mother got about a dozen.” She gave me a hard look. “She probably wants to make sure I don’t got no excuse for not takin’ them dang pills she give me.”

I hefted Nana’s stubby bottle of Thistle brand water in my palm. Just my luck that Mrs. Dalrymple had stocked the same brand of water in her gift shop that Calum had stocked in his cooler. Talk about muddying the evidentiary waters. “Did you happen to see anyone other than the Iowa gang buying up the inventory?”

“Nope. But that don’t mean they didn’t get in on the deal. I wasn’t in there too long ’cuz I wanted to run the bottles up to my room before the bus started loadin’.”

“So when did you make your big purchase?”

“Yesterday mornin’, after breakfast. Them two hunky fellas was in there tryin’ on sweaters, so they probably seen the sale sign too.” She glanced over her shoulder, then said in a low voice, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, dear, but them two young men aren’t like the other fellas on the trip.”

“No kidding?” I feigned surprise. “How so?”

She dropped her voice to a deathbed whisper. “They got real good fashion sense. I never seen nuthin’ like it. I’m hopin’ George’ll pick up a few pointers. I don’t got the heart to tell him what he looks like when he wears his plaid shirt with them checkered pants a his.”

Signs for a hospital and railway station welcomed us to Wick. We crossed the stone bridge into the town, passing over a coastal river whose exposed bottom was a swill of black tidal mud cluttered with rocks, seaweed, and a blanket of neon green algae that was crawling up the support walls like a flesh-eating virus. Beyond the bridge was the town’s business district, comprised of an orderly assemblage of tidy stone buildings that housed the offices of local government. A giant sundial sat in a grassy recess in front of the largest building—a floral creation fashioned from so many flowers, it might have been the prize-winning float in the Rose Bowl parade. Farther down the street sat a slew of banks, real estate agencies, medical offices, vacant storefronts, boarded-up storefronts, painted-over storefronts, and Indian takeaway restaurants whose specialties were listed as curries, kebabs, and pizza.

Wick looked like a sleepy little town, but as we navigated to our hotel, I realized it wasn’t actually sleepy.

It was deserted.

“You s’pose anyone lives here?” Nana asked, sounding a little creeped out.

“Maybe stores close early on Wednesdays.” I regarded the empty sidewalks, the darkened storefronts, the absence of pedestrian traffic.

“But it’s only three o’clock.”

I felt a tingle of unease. “Maybe that’s late in Wick.” Dragging my eyes away from a butcher shop that was offering unbeatable prices on fresh haggis, I began gathering up my belongings. “Did you ever get a chance to skim Mrs. Dalrymple’s Hamish Maccoull book?” I asked as we hung a left just past a fish and chips place.

“Finished it.”

“You finished it?” I stared at her, bug-eyed. “It was like … four hundred pages long.”

“Five hundred twelve.”

“Oh, my God. Were you up all night?”

“Nope. Only took me a couple of hours.”

My amazement increased. “How?” It had taken me three months to read the first Harry Potter book, and that had only been three hundred and twenty pages long.

“It’s on account of the course they was offering at the Senior Center.
Speed Readin’ for Geezers
. It targeted us old folks who wanna get to the bottom of our To-Be-Read piles before we die.”

Five hundred pages in two hours? Man, at that rate, I could speed-read my way through the whole Windsor City Public Library in less than a week. I could become the human equivalent of Google! “
Uh
, will they be offering a course for say, younger adults?”

“Don’t think so, but if they do, run the other way.”

“Run? Why?”

She gave a little suck on her uppers. “’Cuz bein’ able to read stuff at lightnin’ speed isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You just end up gettin’ the bad news twice as fast.”

“What bad news?”

“Don’t really wanna talk about it, dear. It’s too disturbin’.”

“Are we still talking about the Hamish Maccoull book?”

“You bet. And all’s I gotta say on the subject is, if them folks in that book are s’posed to be my relatives, I hope it turns out I’m adopted.”

“We’ve got an emergency here,” yelled Bernice as she waved her arm frantically to alert the entire bus. “There’s no cell service!”

I heard horrified gasps as they went for their phones.

“How come my phone isn’t working?” cried Margi.

“It’s down,” wailed Dick Teig in a near panic. “The whole system’s down!”

“Does that mean we can’t text?” asked Alice.

“How can we take pictures if our phones won’t work?” fretted Lucille. “I knew buying these off-brand models was a mistake.”

“How are we supposed to communicate with each other?” demanded Dick Stolee.

I guess engaging someone in conversation face-to-face wasn’t an option.