Holy Terror in the Hebrides (25 page)

He was back in five minutes. “I’ve found something. Can you get up?”

“I guess so, but what—”

“Over there.” He helped me to my feet, his arm as steady as the top of a fence, and as impersonal.

He had found, a few feet away, what amounted to a little cave. Or hardly that, just a recess in the rock wall, one of the sides of the grassy depression we were in. What made it especially good was that there was a slab of rock, marble quarried years ago, presumably, leaning at a slant in front of it, like a door.

“We’ll be warm in there, with that slab cutting off the wind. Have you got any matches?”

“I don’t think so.” I patted myself down and finally came up with a box in my pants pocket. I must have dropped them in when I lit the lamp. “Yes, I do. There won’t be any dry wood, though, after the storm.”

“Not wood, peat. This whole island is peat, and that stuff’ll smolder, even wet. I’ll be right back.”

And so it was that, an hour or so later, we had a small fire going. It emitted a great deal more smoke than heat, but it showed no signs of going out, and it did help take the chill off the night. I settled down with my back to the stone wall, and when Jake thought the fire no longer required his attention, he joined me.

“Jake, I—there’s nothing I can say to make up for—”

“Sleep,” he said wearily. “It won’t be long till morning. We’ll be warmer if we stay together.” He put that dispassionate arm around me, and I tried to follow his advice.

I didn’t sleep well. My mind was in turmoil, I was cold and in pain, and I kept waking up to wriggle into a new position that might simulate comfort. Every time, Jake was there, cushioning my head, holding me close for warmth.

Toward dawn I fell into a sounder sleep. My last thought was to wonder how I could ever have supposed this man a murderer.

SOMEONE WAS SNORING
, very loudly. I wished they would be quiet so I could sleep. And this was an awfully hard bed, and where were all the covers—

I woke, shivering, sore all over. The snoring noise was getting louder.

It was a helicopter, and it was landing—I craned my neck—surely it was landing just on the other side of the hill. Who? Why?

And where was Jake?

I called, but I couldn’t be heard over the beat of the rotor, so I stood up.

The words do not begin to convey the struggle. I thought at first that I actually would not be able to make my bones and muscles obey me, that I would simply have to sit there until someone picked me up, joints locked into position, and carried me to some place where I could be worked loose, like the Tin Woodman. But eventually, one impossible movement at a time, I got to my feet, ducked out of the little cave, and looked around.

I remembered the place, now that I could see where I was. It was on the edge of the marble quarry proper, just before one got to the horrible rusting hulks of machinery. I had rested here, the day of the pilgrimage. My New Age acquaintance had sat pontificating almost in the very spot where Jake and I had found shelter, such as it was, for the night.

The helicopter had shut itself down, and peace reigned once more. “Jake! Jake, where are you?”

There was only silence, and the soft sigh of the wind, and that crunching noise of sheep feeding. I stamped out what little remained of our pitiful fire, and sat down on the bank to wait for Jake to return. He would tell me what was happening; I was incapable of climbing the hill to find out for myself.

The sun was still low, but it promised warmth soon. The day was going to be beautiful, in fact, the kind of autumn day that seems to relent, to say it was all a mistake, summer isn’t going to be taken away after all. When you’re young, you trust the promises and forget about the winter to come until it is upon you. Even when you’re old enough to recognize autumn as the liar he is, though, you can enjoy the beautiful lies as you enjoy the line fed you by a charmer. He doesn’t mean a word of it, and you know it, but it’s pleasant to pretend you believe.

It’s especially pleasant to weave fantasies when facing reality is pretty painful.

“Jake!”

The crunching sounds were getting louder, and I finally realized they were feet on rocks, not sheep.

“Jake?” Had he gone for help, after all?

“Dorothy!”

And then my muscles, which could barely move at all a few minutes before, were letting me run and climb—

—and throw myself into Alan’s open arms.

There were a few minutes of babbled incoherencies, a lot of hugging, and one extremely proficient kiss before Alan held me away from him at arm’s length and demanded, “Are you all right?”

“Of course I am! Now,” I added, robbing my original reply of all its force. “Except I’m cold.”

“Help is on the way,” Alan said with a broad grin. He hugged me close again and nodded to the path behind him.

Struggling up the rocky trail, their arms laden, were a uniformed man, probably the helicopter pilot, and—I rubbed my eyes and looked again—Lynn Anderson, dressed for London in a very smart pants suit, a silk shirt and neat little designer boots that were at the moment scarred and filthy with mud.

“Lynn! What on earth . . . ?”

“We’ll save explanations for later, shall we?” said Alan. “I brought hot coffee and blankets. Here.”

He took the thermos the pilot handed him, unscrewed the top, and poured me some. I took it gratefully, wrapped my hands around it, and sipped. It was a little sweeter than I like my coffee, but boiling hot, and—I looked at Alan doubtfully.

“Brandy? At this hour of the morning?”

He draped a blanket around my shoulders and grinned again. “You are leading a dissipated life, aren’t you, my dear? Out all night, drinking before the sun is well up—tsk, tsk. Finish that, and then we’ll see how we’re going to get you to the bird.”

“Get
us
to the bird,” I amended. “Jake should come with us. His heart isn’t really up to all this climbing.”

“Ah, yes, who is Jake? You were calling for him when I first came up the path.”

“You said we’d save explanations for later. He’s—a friend, and he probably saved my life last night. But he was gone when I woke up. I think he started back to the village for help, but it’s dangerous alone; there are bogs and cliffs and things, not to mention his heart. You must have seen him from the helicopter.”

“We didn’t see anyone until we spotted you—and we wouldn’t have done that if it hadn’t been for your fire.”

“But—he couldn’t have been gone very long! Oh, Alan, he must have fallen, or . . .” I trailed off. I didn’t want to say aloud any of the other possibilities. I didn’t even want to think them. “Can’t you send the helicopter to look again?”

Alan looked at me a little oddly, and then at the pilot, who nodded.

“Piece of cake. But we ought to get the lady back home first, right?”

“No, Alan, please, I’m worried about Jake. I’ll be fine. Please!”

A
FTER THE PILOT
had left, there was an awkward little pause. Lynn poured me some more coffee, which I sipped absently. The sun was living up to its promise; I was almost warm.

Alan paced back and forth, avoiding my eyes. Lynn, on the other hand, was watching me closely, looking away only when I happened to glance up.

“Oh, all right!” I burst out finally. “I’m here because I was an idiot! I was on a wild goose chase, only I was the goose. And I’m tired and sore and I was never so glad to see anyone in my life as I was to see Alan—to see both of you this morning, but that’s absolutely all I’m going to say until we find Jake and this is over!”

“Will you at least tell us who Jake is?” asked Alan with heavy patience.

I knew what was the matter with him, of course, but I wasn’t about to go into a full explanation until we were alone. If he was going to stew, he’d just have to stew.

I did what I could.

“Jake is a rabbi. Jacob Goldstein. And if I told you his life story—well, he’s had more trouble in his life than most twenty people.

“He’s from Chicago. He’s on Iona with a bunch of other Americans. One of them fell and drowned in Fingal’s Cave on Tuesday. Well, I guess you know about that, somehow. And not to be inquisitive, but what
are
you doing here, anyway?”

That did it. Alan had relaxed, his face gentler. And Lynn collapsed into giggles. “What are we doing here, she asks!” said Lynn, rolling her eyes skyward. “She wants to know why we came!”

Alan sat down and put his arm around me, muttering, “You and your lame ducks,” in my ear. To Lynn he said mildly, “Why don’t you tell her?”

“My
dear
! After making about fifteen desperate phone calls, and leaving dire messages left and right, and then getting caught in a hurricane and not being reachable, you wonder why your friends were worried about you! When Tom and I got your messages, we tried to call you back, but your phone was out of order. So we called Jane, and she told us about the storm, and
she
called Alan, and he told her what he had learned—”

“What do you mean, what he had learned?” I asked, more relaxed myself, but thoroughly confused by now. I turned to him. “What
had
you learned?”

“Well, my dear, Jane and I had been talking. She was rather concerned about you, and intimated that you’d managed to entangle yourself with a body. Again.”

I felt that the “again” was unnecessary, and said so.

“So I felt that I should do a little checking,” said Alan smoothly, ignoring me. “Your telephone was still working at that point, but you were at neither the cottage nor the hotel. And the more I considered the situation, the less I liked it. Fortunately, I had other resources at my command. I rang Derek—you remember Derek Morrison, don’t you, from the Town Hall mess—and he got in touch with Glasgow.”

“Glasgow! Do you mean to tell me you were talking about me—I mean, Inspector Morrison was talking about me—to the police in
Glasgow
?”

He had the grace to look embarrassed. “Derek assured me that he mentioned your name only tangentially, as a witness to a death, so that they could find it in the computer. However, when he was told that the case remained open, and that no determination had yet been made about whether a crime was committed, he became uneasy, and I had to admit he had reason, given your—”

“Alan . . .” My voice rose, warningly.

“—your predilection for looking into anything that seems peculiar. But of course by the time Derek had gathered all this information, and passed it along to me, you were in the midst of a world-class gale, and incommunicado. So the best thing seemed to be to come and see for myself.”

“Well, the police have decided now. There was no crime.” My tone of voice had changed, and they looked at me with concern. Time to change the subject; this conversation was getting too near the bone. “But how did you get a police helicopter? I thought they’d all be out there rescuing people, and anyway, you don’t have any jurisdiction here, do you?”

“Not officially, no, though all the police forces in the kingdom are supposed to cooperate with one another. But I thought it would take a great deal of time to convince Glasgow of the need for urgency. So I rang Lynn back and told her what I proposed to do, and Tom put one of his company’s helicopters at my disposal. When I flew back to England, they met me at Gatwick, and here we are. Simple.”

Simple, indeed. Combine English authority with American efficiency and the clout wielded by the wealthy executive of a multinational corporation, and you can get several people to a remote island in the Hebrides in no time at all.

“Well,” I said with elaborate nonchalance, “of course I’m delighted to see you all—where’s Tom, by the way?”

“Back at the cottage,” said Lynn. “He wanted to come along, but the doctor has absolutely forbidden strenuous exercise for a while, and we already knew how far away you were—we flew over the whole island as soon as we found out you weren’t at the cottage or the hotel, and nobody had seen you for a while. So I made him stay back there and rest. He was
wild
!”

“And he’s probably having himself something totally inappropriate for breakfast. Well, as I said, I’m so glad you’re finally here, but as you can see, I’m fine. I wasn’t in need of rescue after all. It’s Jake who—”

I stopped. I had heard the beat of the helicopter’s rotors.

We waited, silently, while the sound grew louder and nearer and finally stopped. It seemed a long time before we heard the crunch of gravel on the path, and longer still until the pilot appeared, with Jake trailing behind him.

His shoulders were bowed, his steps labored. He looked like an old man.

But he was alive. I released my breath; I hadn’t realized until then that I had been holding it.

“Alan,” said Lynn, “don’t you think you and I and Scott, here, had better go back to the chopper and radio for a boat? There’s a little harbor just down there”—she pointed—”and it would be easier for Jake and Dorothy than having to climb over that hill again.”

I shot her a glance of appreciation. It didn’t take three of them to operate the radio. Lynn can be very intuitive.

So Jake and I were left alone, sitting side by side in the sun to wait for transportation.

“Where did you go?” I asked when I dared.

“Away. To think.” He raised his head and looked at me over the tops of his glasses. “It was almost morning. I figured you’d be okay.”

“Oh, Jake!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “When I woke up and saw you were gone, I was so worried about you. I was afraid—where did the helicopter find you?”

He waved vaguely. “Over there. Not far. There are cliffs . . .”

I sucked in my breath sharply, and tried to cover it with a cough. “Cliffs, Jake?”

“Yeah.” He looked at me directly for the first time. “Yeah. Why not?”

“Because people would miss you, for one thing.”

“Like who?”

“Your friends. Me, for one.”

He grunted. “Sure. You’re such a good friend you thought I was a murderer.”

I put a hand on his arm. “Jake, listen. You have to understand. Nothing I can say will make up for my utter stupidity. I know that. But back before I lost my mind, I knew you were one of the most decent, really good people I’d ever met. Even after I—came to my dumb conclusion, I kept trying to justify what I thought you did. You don’t deserve any of the awful things that’ve happened to you and you certainly didn’t deserve my—my asinine accusations.”