A Wee Murder in My Shop (A ScotShop Mystery) (21 page)

We each unwrapped an end of a cardboard carpet-roll tube and withdrew two canes. Drew demonstrated the proper use of his—poking at the middle of the guy who’d given us the gift. Most everything was a gag. When you’re thirty and have your own place, you probably have all the stuff you’re ever going to need. Thank goodness nobody brought us household goods. Just fun things that would most likely end up at Goodwill the next time we headed there. Somebody would need those canes someday, but not me.

As we got down to the bottom of the pile, Gilda handed me an enormous package wrapped in toilet paper, tied up with a string. “Thanks, Gilda.” She giggled. Sam, beside her, laughed. I pulled on the string. It knotted. I pulled harder.

“Don’t do that, sis. You’ll just make it worse.”

Drew reached for it, but I pulled it back. “It’s mine. I can mess it up if I want to.” I picked at the knot, wishing my fingernails were longer, wishing everybody weren’t watching me and hollering suggestions.

A long arm reached in front of Gilda. Harper held a wicked-looking knife, somewhat longer than Dirk’s
sgian-dubh
. The boisterous crowd fell instantly silent, except for one lone voice that called, “Hey, dude, bad knife.” With one flick, Harper severed the string. He looked at me, not smiling, which seemed more devastating than a smile would have been. Those charcoal eyes of his were darker than I’d ever seen them.

“Gee, thanks, Harper,” Gilda said, her voice squeakier than usual. “Open it, Peggy. Open it.”

I should have known. A three-foot UVM teddy bear. My alma mater. Shorty would probably claim it for a cat perch.

The noise was back to its previous level, but Harper didn’t say a word. I know, because I was watching him.

Then there were the cards. Funny, silly, crazy, and stupid. The ones to Drew were considerably more raucous than the ones addressed to me. Some were addressed to both of us together, and some were duplicates—two identical cards, one for each of us. We did have quite a few people who cared about us, and I could see that Drew felt it as much as I did. Through it all, Harper’s eyes were on me.

We set down the last card, and Karaline erupted from the kitchen with an enormous sheet of carrot cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting—she knew us both too well. It held sixty candles, thirty for each of us. We faced each other across the expanse of flames. “Hurry, before the sprinkler system goes off,” Karaline shouted, and we blew like crazy.

Harper bent over my shoulder, and I saw Dirk’s hand clamp on the handle of his dagger, but he did step out of the way. I wondered if contact with live people was as disconcerting to him as it was to us when we ran into him. “Do you need a ride home after this is over?”

Karaline shoved a plate of cake at me. A corner piece with lots of extra icing. “Eat hearty, and happy birthday to you both.” She gave a second corner piece to Drew.

“Thanks, Kari. You know how to please my tum-tum.”

“Thank you, K,” I said. “You got it just right. I love the party.” She grinned at me and looked pointedly at Harper. I waved her away, and she went back to serving cake. “I, uh, I was going to ride with Drew,” I told Harper, “but I don’t think he’d miss me.” I tried to ignore the distinct grumble from my wee ghostie.

Karaline moved in front of me to hand Harper a plate. He reached for it but stiffened. I heard another distinct sound, the buzz of a silenced cell phone. He set the plate down and pulled the phone out of his pocket. “Harper. . . . Yeah. . . . No. . . . Sure, give me five.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it. I could almost see him tensing to throw it across the room, but he simply put it back in the holder on his belt. “I hate to run out on you, but I have to go.”

“Aye. Go far and stay long.” The words were whispered but clear.

I wanted to kick Dirk, but all I did was nod to Harper.

“Some other time,” he said. It wasn’t a question. And he was gone.

The party dragged on for a while, but people gradually came around to wish us each a happy birthday and take their leave. Finally, only Sam, Shoe, and Gilda were left in the kitchen, and Karaline, Drew, and I in the main dining area. And Dirk. Tessa lay curled beside Drew’s wheelchair, her green bow lying limp beneath her throat.

Karaline picked up several wads of wrapping paper and shoved them into a cardboard box. “I meant to keep up with this while the two of you were opening presents, but it got away from me.” She grabbed some empty envelopes and stuffed them on top of the wrapping paper.

“You did a wonderful job, K,” I said. “Thank you for going to all this trouble.”

“Yeah, Kari. This was better than great. It was mag-ni-fi-cent.” He drew out the syllables, one at a time, punching the air with each one. Tessa opened an eye and watched him.

“For you two—anything.” Karaline used those words like they were for both of us, but she was looking only at Drew. Wait a minute. I thought it was Shoe she was interested in. She and I were due for a long talk. When there wasn’t a ghost around to listen in.

“Dishes are all done. Ready for inspection,” Shoe hollered from the kitchen, and Karaline turned away, winking at Dirk as her face turned out of the line of Drew’s sight. He bowed one more time.

My brother had an unreadable expression as he watched Karaline walk away. Hmmm. Maybe I needed to talk to him, too. I pushed the three stacks of cards to one side. One pile for the two of us, one with cards just for Drew, and one with the cards for me. I placed the first two stacks into an empty cardboard box, empty except for a six-pack of prune juice. I didn’t like to hang on to things, but Drew was something of a pack rat. He was welcome to them. I didn’t want a lot of doodads around.

A tiny spider crawled across Drew’s stack. I picked up one of my cards and transferred the spider into my cardboard box, between my six-pack of prune juice and the teddy bear. I’d take her home and release her in my yard.

I reached for another pile of junk to go in the recycle box, but one of the envelopes didn’t bend. An ivory envelope, thick, the size of half a sheet of paper, with Drew’s name written on it. “We missed one.”

“Huh?”

“This card. You didn’t open it.”

He looked around, as if somehow the donor of the card might show up. It was just the two of us. Plus Dirk, but my brother didn’t know that. He held out his hand. “Let’s see what it is.”

He examined it with more care than it probably deserved. It was thick. I was betting it was one of those cards that played a little tune when you opened it up. Probably the funeral march, I thought.

He drew out an ivory-toned booklet.

The front cover said
1982
, in a fancy font at least three inches tall.
Your Birth Year
it said underneath in smaller but equally flowery letters. I pulled a chair close to Drew’s right side and watched as he thumbed through the pages. The first page, headed
In the News in 1982
, informed us that Israel had returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, seven people died from poisoned Tylenol in Chicago, the first artificial heart was implanted in sixty-one-year-old Barney Clark, Princess Grace died in a car crash.

There was a list of the top ten tunes of 1982, only one of which I recognized.

Cats
opened on Broadway.

Ivory Soap in a Sink-Side Pump
, said the next page. Drew gave a disbelieving snort. “Pump soap is only as old as we are?”

“Looks that way,” I said.

“What would be a pump sope?” What with me on one side of Drew and Tessa on the other, Dirk couldn’t get close enough to see the illustration. He might not have understood it anyway.

“I love being able to pump a little dribble of soap out of a container,” I said, mimicking the motion required. “It’s much more sanitary than a bar of soap.”

Drew laid one hand across the ad. “What was that about?”

“Nothing. Just babbling.”
Just explaining modern conveniences to my ghost.
“It’s been a long day.”

“I think you’re slaphappy,” he said.

Low voices emanated from the kitchen. “Hey, look! The space shuttle Columbia is thirty years old now, too.” He raised his hand and we high-fived. Dirk asked what we were doing, but I just shook my head. Again.

The voices got louder. I tucked the card into Drew’s box. Karaline came back, followed by the other three. “Kitchen is put to bed. Time for the rest of us to follow suit,” she said.

Tessa stood and looked from Drew to the door. Smart dog.

Hugs and thanks and bye-byes and yawns. Drew drove me home. I wished it had been Harper.

As I stepped out of his van carrying a box of prune juice, cards, and one small spider that had already filled in about half of a web between the six-pack and the bear, Drew said, “Did you remember to ask Harper about the paper with the dentists on it?”

A clear vision of Harper’s head next to mine, his arm around my waist, his hand on the small of my back, made it a bit difficult for me to answer. I cleared my throat, but that did nothing to shake the music and the image out of my head. “No. I . . .” I shifted my new cane so it wasn’t pressing directly on that bone that sticks out on my wrist. “No, I didn’t. . . . I forgot.”

Dirk stepped out. He didn’t say anything. I hoped he hadn’t been able to read my mind.

“What are we going to do with her, Tessa? This here lady’s so old, her short-term memory is shot.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and slammed the door.

Discovery

M
orning came way too early, although I was happy to get out of that dream I’d had about a garbage truck looming over me. I rubbed my eyes and thought about poor Karaline. She always had to get up at three thirty to get the Logg Cabin ready to serve breakfast. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. I stretched and felt more aches where my bruises were. Thirty years and one day old, and what did I have to show for it? I groaned and stumbled into the bathroom. Surely there was life after thirty. The face looking back at me from the mirror didn’t seem to agree. I stuck my tongue out at her, but she took it in stride. She stuck hers out at me. I groaned again, this time at the silliness, and took a long hot shower.

Dirk didn’t turn around when I walked into the kitchen. He kept studying the magnets on my fridge. I waved him out of the way and pulled out the pitcher of orange juice. Mason used to love orange juice. I shivered.

“What would be wrong? Are ye having a chill?” He looked somewhat disapprovingly at my knee-length skirt and short-sleeved tee.

“I’m fine.”
F-I-N-E.
“I’m doing okay,” I amended. I was not neurotic—or insecure, either. At least, not too much. I plopped a pan on the stove, added water, butter, salt, and oatmeal.

“Ah,” he said. “Porridge.”

“We call it oatmeal, but that’s okay. I guess it’s the same thing.”

“What would be this oh-cay you always speak of?”

“We have a lot of words you didn’t have back then, I guess.” I poured myself a big glass and just barely stopped myself in time. I’d been ready to offer him one.

“Would it mean all is well?”

I plugged in the toaster and popped in two slices. Nothing like carbs for breakfast. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I pushed a chair out for him and moved the butter onto the table. “Store opens late today. I’m going to get some paperwork done before I have to go in.” I stirred the oatmeal and covered the pan.

“Ye dinna usually show your legs at the wee shop.”

“Huh? Oh. No, I’ll change before I head out.” I sat and took a big slug of OJ. “You really don’t like to see women’s legs?”

He straightened his back. “I dinna feel it is seemly.” Before I could object, he went on, “But I do understand that times are verra different now.” He wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“What?” I couldn’t be sure. There seemed to be more light passing through him this morning, and it almost looked like he was blushing.

“I could . . . could become . . . accustomed . . .” His voice petered out as I laughed at him.

“You love it,” I cackled. “You love seeing all those legs,” and this time I could see he really was blushing. How on earth could a ghost blush? It made no sense. Of course, nothing about this whole situation made any sense.

I pushed aside the box of cards and presents I’d set on the table last night. The spiderweb was still there, much more elaborate now. I pointed at it. “I think this is yours.” Dirk grinned and held a hand out to the tiny spider. It stuck out one of its eight little legs and seemed to palpate the air at the end of Dirk’s finger. “It sure looks like it can see you,” I said.

“I canna tell for sure. The wee spinner may just be tasting the air.”

I lifted the top card, collapsing the web, and the spider swung from one strand. “I hate to mess up your beautiful web, little lady, but you can’t live in my kitchen.” Outside, I let it drop onto one of the bushes beside the stoop. When I came back in, I threw the card in the box, and the whole stack slipped sideways. Half of them fell onto the floor. One of them said
1982
in large letters. “Damn it! This is Drew’s card. I thought I’d put it in his box, not in mine.”

I piled everything back in the box and moved it to the counter.

Dirk questioned me as I ate, and the questions eventually turned to the meaning of all those advertisements in the 1982 birthday card. “I didna want to question ye there, after I saw ye couldna answer me.”

“That was a good idea, Dirk. Thanks.” I helped as much as I could, pointing him to the little pump bottle of soap beside the sink, telling him about EPCOT Center, explaining that
Cats
was a musical that anthropomorphized felines.

“What would be a musical?”

And so it went. I finally gave up and shooed him away so I could go brush my teeth and get to my computer.

In the downstairs bathroom, I looked at the wallpaper, remembering how Mason had helped me put it up, and burst into tears. Why? Why? I didn’t even like him anymore. Anyway, he was dead. Why was I crying?

I’d been a coward, not going to his funeral. I hadn’t wanted to see Andrea, but that was no excuse. I should have gone, for his mother if for no other reason. The card I’d sent her hadn’t been enough. If I’d gone to his funeral, it would have given me some closure. I would have seen Harper there. Maybe I could have sat with him.

I took a good long look at myself, frowned, and stuck out my tongue one more time.

After my teeth were scrubbed hard enough to wear off two layers of enamel, I exited to find Dirk, arms folded, leaning against the bannister. He didn’t say a word about the crying, although I was sure he had heard me.

I motioned him to follow me and went back to my office. “Here.” I moved a stack of folders off the narrow chair. “You can sit while I work on my spreadsheet.”

He opened his mouth, but I kept talking. “It’s like a ledger for keeping my accounts, but it’s on a computer.”

“Och, aye?”

The pile of envelopes that I knew contained my four months’ worth of bank statements looked like it was about ready to fall over. Why hadn’t I thrown out the junk mail as it came in instead of piling it up like that? Did I think it would disappear on its own? I would work on the spreadsheet first, then toss the junk, then reconcile the bank statements.

I pulled out my purse and rummaged in a pocket where I knew I’d placed receipts from the Scotland trip. I was so behind on all this. As I pulled out the handful of receipts, something fell, and Dirk bent automatically to pick it up for me. Our heads connected somehow, and I felt that woozy, cold, dizzy, out-of-body feeling again. No wonder Tessa had shaken her head when she’d tried to lick Dirk. I drew back quickly, and Dirk leapt to his feet. “Peigi,” he cried, and his voice was filled with anguish.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

His eyes seemed out of focus. He put a hand to his head. “I smelt her. My Peigi. When our heads touched, I could feel her presence, and could smell the . . . smell her hair. It always smelled like the herbs she grew.”

“It must have been a shampoo she made.”

“Aye? Think ye so?” He cocked his head, as if he were listening to something beyond the reach of sound. “Aye. She would wash her hair and pour a kettle full of one of her brews over it.” He rubbed his hand over his chin and along his jaw. “I smelt her. How could that be?”

“Just a trick of the memory,” I suggested. “Have you been thinking about her a lot lately?”

“I think about her always. She is ever in my . . .” He dropped his eyes. “Except when I am with . . .”

He looked so stricken, I put my hand out without thinking and touched his arm. The dizziness was there but not as bad as before. I knew my hand was on his arm. I could see it there, but the feeling was more like I’d put my hand into a bowl of warm water or—no, into a flowing stream.

He looked at my hand. I withdrew it slowly. “I had known her all my life,” he said.

I’m normally a compassionate person, but the raw pain in his eyes was more than I could take. I backed away from him. Spreadsheets and bank balances—and Dirk—were just going to have to wait for another time, maybe this evening. “Dirk, I need to go get changed. Will you be okay?”

“Och, aye. That I will.”

“Do you want to come to the shop with me, or would you rather stay here?”

He pushed his hair back from his face. It looked as soft and silky as Tessa’s ears. “I dinna know. I will think on it, aye?” He turned away from me and fled down the hall into the living room.

I looked at the desk. Jeesh, what a mess. I turned over the card that had fallen on the floor. Harper’s business card. I sat back down and sent a quick text asking him to send me a scan of the wrinkled paper they’d found in Mason’s sporran so I could show it to my brother. I didn’t even flinch as I typed Mason’s name.

*   *   *

Upstairs, I threw
on a pair of black slacks and a burgundy blouse and added a Winn tartan scarf around my waist. I looked about as inviting as a cardboard box. A cardboard box in a neck brace.

I changed the slacks for long, soft, wide-legged culottes, and put on a peasant blouse. Now I looked pregnant. Pregnant in a neck brace.

Enough of this. I ripped the Velcro on the neck brace and tossed it toward my bed, narrowly missing Shorty, who stopped his grooming with an indignant yawp. I gingerly moved my neck from side to side, tilting it this way and that. A little stiff, but it would have to do. Good riddance to the stupid brace. I went back to my closet.

I ended up, three tries later, with my old standby, a long tartan skirt and an off-white blouse with the Winn scarf around my neck. Thank goodness our hours were extra short on Sundays.

Dirk waited for me by the front door. “I’ll go wi’ ye. ’Twill keep me from brooding.”

“Okay. Let’s go.” I grabbed the shawl on my way out and remembered at the last second to lock the door behind me.

Mr. P waited beside my new car on the driver’s side. “Good morning, Miss Peggy,” he said in an old-fashioned, gentlemanly manner. “I’m glad to see you getting about so well after your accident.”

I gestured to my covered-up bandage. “My head must be pretty hard. Took a few stitches, though.”

“Oh? May I ask who did the honors of sewing you up?”

“Dr. Carrin.”

Mr. P’s face went through a funny contortion. I wondered if he had a cramp or something. Before I could ask if he was okay, he said, “May I invite you to dinner this evening?”

“Nae,” Dirk said.

“I’d be very happy to have dinner with you, but it will have to be tomorrow. I’ve missed our monthly tradition.”

Mrs. P had always kept the conversation going. Talking with
him
over soup and sandwiches was rather awkward.

I opened the passenger door for Dirk and went through the ridiculous charade, placing my purse ostentatiously on the floor as Dirk moved his feet out of the way. I closed the door and walked around the back of the car. Mr. P opened my door for me. I thanked him but didn’t linger. I shouldn’t have agreed. I needed to spend time with Karaline. If she had her eyes on my brother, I wanted to know about it.

“You’ll need to stay home tomorrow night, Dirk. I’ll leave some books out for you to read.”

“I dinna want to stay inside again and wait for ye to be hit by another truck of garbage.”

I slowed down as Hamelin’s one and only traffic light turned yellow. “I’ll be walking next door, not driving.”

He muttered something, but I chose to ignore him. I put on my Scarlett O’Hara persona and decided I’d deal with it tomorrow.

*   *   *

Gilda didn’t show
up for work. Sam called half an hour later, spouting excuses for both of them. Gilda had another migraine, apparently, and Sam said he needed to stay there with her for a while. There was already a crowd of customers. An early morning tour bus had stopped and most of the tourists came to the ScotShop before heading for brunch at the Logg Cabin. Fine with me, but I was swamped. “Call Shoe,” I told Sam with a sharpness I tried to disguise from the nearby customers. “See if he’ll fill in for Gilda. I need him here twenty minutes ago.” I hung up without waiting for an answer.

Two boys, supposedly attached to the tour bus but unsupervised by parents, headed straight for the Loch Ness Monster statues. I was fairly sure something was going to get broken. Before I could intervene, Dirk stalked that way and laid a hand on each boy’s shoulder. They both jumped, shivered, looked wide-eyed at each other, and darted out the front door.

“Where are you boys going?” Their mother’s voice was sharp.

“We’re hungry,” came the reply drifting back as they ran toward the Logg Cabin. In less than a minute, I saw Karaline usher them out into the courtyard. I could almost read her lips.
You can wait here until your parents are ready to eat
. She handed each of them a biscuit.

“’Twas well done, Mistress Caroline.” Dirk stood beside me looking out the window.

“Thanks, Dirk. You just got hired as my bouncer.”

“What would be a—”

“You’re in charge of getting rid of the obnoxious ones, bouncing them out of the store, so to speak.”

“Och. I see.”

A quiet voice behind me said, “Excuse me? Would you happen to have a Forbes tartan tie?”

I led her to the
F
section of the tie display and pointed out a bright blue-and-green plaid. “Oh no,” she said. “That’s the wrong one altogether. The one I’m looking for is mostly brown, with only a little bit of green.”

I double-checked the label on the package. Forbes. Before I could speak, Dirk stepped up beside me. “That would be Forbes of Druinnor she’s needing.”