A Wee Murder in My Shop (A ScotShop Mystery) (24 page)

I put both hands over my face and growled as loudly as I could. “This is ridiculous! I’ve never been able to touch you, and now all of a sudden I can, and then I can’t.”

“Ye touched my arm once. Dinna ye remember?”

I sank into the wingback chair. “That’s right. I did, but I didn’t really feel anything except . . . water, sort of. This time . . . you were . . . solid.”

“Mayhap there is some rule that we simply dinna ken.”

“Yeah,” I said. “May-hap.”

He stepped back, looking like he suspected sarcasm. Which was not too surprising under the circumstances. This was getting me nowhere. “I’m going in to the shop.”

“Ye said the shop is closed today.”

“That’s a good reason to go. I won’t have customers. I want another look at that safe.” I hauled myself to my feet. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Ye canna move the bookcase by yourself.”

Crudbuckets! Shoe had mentioned he’d be fishing today, and I knew Sam and Gilda were off on a jaunt of some sort, if she wasn’t still sick. How long could migraines last? Who did that leave? Drew could help a little, but I needed muscles. I didn’t want to let anyone else in on the secret, so that excluded Ethan and Mr. P and every other male in town. I deliberately did not even consider Harper. He wasn’t available, anyway. And might not ever be again. Not that I would ever even think of asking him. Ever. Even though those shoulders of his would come in handy on a job like this. But I was absolutely not going to ask him. “You’re right. I can’t think of anybody.” I started up the stairs.

“What about Mistress Caroline? Can she no help ye move it?”

“Karaline?” The Logg Cabin was closed on Mondays, too. “Thanks, Dirk. Be right back.”

In my bathroom, I took off the scarf and probed the lump on my head. It was still tender, and I almost wanted to leave it open to the air, but I still felt uncomfortable going out in public with the left side of my head shaved. I eased my kerchief on and tied it loosely. Not that anybody would see me, but I felt a little better covered up.

Taking Your Measure

I
could see Karaline by the front door when I turned the corner onto Main Street. I tooted the horn at her, just for a chance to try it out. She didn’t recognize my car at first, of course, but when I waved out the window, she waved two-handed, one wave for each of us. I made a U-turn and pulled in right next to the shop. Mondays were always unbearably quiet in Hamelin. Everybody was closed. I saw two other cars, period. I didn’t even consider looking to see whether Harper might be anywhere in sight. He wasn’t.

Karaline opened Dirk’s door.

“I thank ye.”

“How’s it going?”

Before he could spill anything about that man who’d come to my house this morning, the one I was never going to think of again, I said, “Come on inside, K. I have something I want to show you. Drew and I discovered it last night.” I patted my pocket, the one where I’d shoved the papers, and purposefully put Harper out of my mind.

“What is it?”

“You’ll see.”

We paused while I opened the front door. Dirk, always intrigued with my display window, studied the mannequins.

Karaline laid her palm against the window. “They look kinda silly, don’t they?” The same reaction I’d had a few days ago.

“Come on in.” I made sure the sign said
Closed
and locked the door firmly. Karaline, without my even asking her, shut the blinds and curtains.

We went into the back room once the place was secure. I needed to explain what we’d learned about the code before we accessed the safe.

I spread out the paper, and Karaline read it over a couple of times. “See,” I said, pointing to the lines at the top of the paper. “This is what it said on a piece of paper they found in Mason’s sporran. We have no idea why he had it, but it looks like it’s a code to the combination on the safe.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because Harper . . .” My voice faltered a bit. “Harper is something of an expert, and he says our safe has five numbers in the combination. These are the clues to show us what those numbers are and how many times you have to turn the dial before you stop on a number.”

“So why don’t we open it?”

I indicated the two blank lines beside stars. “We don’t know what number goes here. And we can’t figure out what the first line is supposed to mean.

She studied it for a moment. “It was written by two different people.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. See how the handwriting is different in this first line? And the pen has a wider stroke.”

Now that she mentioned it . . .

She read it out loud. “Left side eighteen to wl.” She looked at me and then at Dirk. “That’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?”

“Huh?” I was beginning to sound like an echo.

Dirk looked affronted. “Nae, ’tis not so obvious as all that.”

“No, look,” she said. “It tells where the safe is located. It’s completely hidden, right? No way to tell where it is, right?”

I nodded, not sure where this was headed.

“So, the left side of the safe is eighteen feet from the wall.”

“When you put it that way, I guess it
is
obvious.” I braced my elbows on the table and leaned my forehead on my clenched hands. “I sure hate to admit how long we worried over that line.”

“Think of all the time you would have saved if you’d asked me right off the bat.”

“What . . . off the . . . ?” Dirk paused and straightened his plaid. “Would ye be referring to the base bawbat?”

“No, Dirk,” I said. “
Off the bat
means right away.”

He crossed his arms and gave me a disgusted look. “This language, as ye use it, doesna make a great deal of sense.”

I seriously considered blasting him with
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
, but decided that might start an argument. “Guess not,” I said.

Karaline had a sort of faraway look. When she came out of it, she asked, “If this was the combination the guy who killed Mason needed to get into the safe, why did he put it in Mason’s sporran?”

“Mayhap Mason took it from him.”

“But the guy didn’t get the safe open. He didn’t even find it, but I’d be willing to bet he hasn’t given up. He still needs the clues. So why wouldn’t he have taken it back after he killed Mason?”

“Maybe he lost it and Mason picked it up.” I thought back to the number of times Mason had made fun of me for picking up stray bits of litter in the street. “Nah, forget that. Mason wouldn’t have cared.”

“So this is getting us nowhere.” Karaline hunched over the paper. With her height, she had to hunch quite a bit. “Blank blank stars. Hmm.” She looked around the room. “It wouldn’t be back here.”

“What wouldna?”

“The clue. This is a nothing room. There’s no character to it. Let’s look out front.”

“For what? What are you talking about?”

She spoke as if I were a three-year-old. “The clue has to be something that somebody could figure out easily, right? So let’s see what’s in the room out front that is part of the structure. Something that wouldn’t have been changed from year to year.”

“Oh! I see. You’re saying it wouldn’t be in, say, the wallpaper, because that could be changed, but it might be in the stone walls or overhead.” I thought about it. “Overhead would make more sense, because that’s where stars are.”

“I’ll grab the big ladder.”

I stuffed the papers into my pocket for safekeeping. “I’ll get a flashlight.”

“I will go look at the ceiling, if one of ye would please to open the door.”

*   *   *

We moved that
ladder from one end of the shop to the other. We felt the surface up there to see if stars might somehow be embedded in the ceiling material. We shone the flashlight across every square foot, looking for something stuck on or in the ceiling. We tried it from different angles. Even the boarded-up hole, where the chimney pipe from an old potbellied stove used to go through the ceiling, yielded nothing.

Karaline stepped down from her turn on the ladder and rolled her shoulders back. I heard something creak. “We need to give up on this,” she said. “Those stars, however many of them, are sure not here.”

“Maybe we should call Drew. He might have an idea.”

“What I would like to ken,” Dirk said, “is why the person who made the holes didna find the safe if the directions in that first line were so clear.”

“Maybe he couldn’t remember the number. If he’d lost the piece of paper.”

“Good grief,” Karaline said. “If he’d read it even once, he’d know that first line said eighteen. That’s a pretty easy number to remember.”

“Why don’t we check?” I suggested. “Let’s see if he was measuring eighteen feet.” I stepped behind the checkout counter and rummaged for the measuring tape.

Karaline reached for the end of it. “I’ll hold this against the wall, and you can measure to where the holes start.”

“Did ye no want to move the bookcase first, so we can see just where the wee holes were?”

K and I looked at each other.
Men
.
Logical
. We laughed, and Dirk squinted at us. “What would be so funny?”

“Never mind, D,” Karaline said and made as if to punch him in the arm, but he stepped quickly back out of range.

“I don’t think you want to do that,” I told her. Between us, Dirk and I explained some of the things that happened when ghosts and people made contact. He and I studiously avoided mentioning those few seconds I had cried in his arms.

We slid the bookcase away from the wall, far enough that we could crouch behind it. Karaline handed me the tape measure, but stopped short when a knock sounded on the front door.

Harper? I squelched the thought. I wasn’t talking to him. I hadn’t forgiven him. It had better not be him. Maybe it was.

“You’d think they could read the sign,” Karaline said and headed toward the door.

I jumped in front of her. “I’ll get it.” She looked at me with one of those
what got into you?
looks. “It might be a customer. I’ll let them know how happy I’ll be to have them come back tomorrow.”
And if it’s Harper, I’ll tell him where to get off.
The knock repeated, three light taps.

I pulled back the side of the little curtain and peeked, but I didn’t see anyone. I opened the door a tiny bit and poked my head out.

No wonder I hadn’t seen him. Harper stood well back from the door and off to one side, his neck craned skyward.

“Checking out aircraft in the vicinity?”

He kept looking up. “Nope.”

“Then what are you looking at?”

“Come here and I’ll show you.”

Karaline reached a hand over my head and pulled the door back, almost knocking me off balance, but she grabbed me as I tottered. “You’re really going to have to work on your stability, Peg.” Before I could think of a good retort, she and Dirk joined Harper on the sidewalk. “What’s up?”

He pointed overhead, to something above the door of the ScotShop. “I think I found our stars,” he said.

I walked to his left side and peered upward. “What are you talking about?”

“Och, aye! The wee flags, like the ones in the history book.”

I stared at Dirk. “Have you been studying American history?”

“Aye,” he said rather smugly.

Harper, once again, looked at me funny. “Why would I need to do that?”

Karaline guffawed. “I see what you mean.”

Dirk looked offended. Harper raised a hand, like a traffic cop. “Would someone like to clue me in?”

“I was, uh, just thinking about the flags up there on the sign, like you said.”

“I didn’t say anything about flags. All I did was point.”

“Aye. I would be the one who mentioned the wee flags.”

“I know that,” I said to both of them at the same time. “We were just looking for stars inside, and here they were all the time out here, right in plain view.”

“I wonder how many stars the American flag had in 1915,” Karaline said.

“Forty-eight,” Harper and I answered at the same time.

“But the number might be twenty-four,” I added. “That’s how many stars are on each flag up there.”

Harper studied me. “How could you possibly know that?”

“My dad counted them when he installed the ScotShop sign.”

Harper opened the door for us all, and I had to pause right beside him to give Dirk the room and the time to get inside. Harper must have misinterpreted. “Am I forgiven, then?” His breath made a faint stirring just above my left ear.

“I haven’t decided yet.” I stalked after Karaline, leaving him to lock the door.

“We figured out the first line, Harper.” Karaline stood in front of the bookcase facing us, like a teacher before a whiteboard and raised her voice, although that wasn’t really necessary. “It’s eighteen feet from that wall”—she gestured to her right across the cash register—“to the edge of the safe.”

“No,” I said. “It’s eighteen feet from
that
wall.” I pointed the other way, indicating the opposite wall, the one closer to the street. I pulled the paper out of my pocket. “See?”

Karaline came up to my right side. Harper was on my left. Dirk stood in front of me and peered upside down at the code. “Look,” Karaline said, pointing to the original list. “Left side eighteen to wall. That means you measure from the left side of the safe to the wall.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what it says.”

“So, where’s the problem?”

“Why dinna ye use the metal marker to show what ye mean?” Dirk pointed at the measuring tape in Karaline’s hand.

She pulled out the end of the tape and thrust it at Harper. “Hold this up against that wall, will you?”

He shrugged and headed to his left, holding his end of the tape high so it would clear the various displays in the way. “Ready.”

Karaline shoved the bookcase farther away from the wall—I didn’t know she was that strong—and extended the tape to the eighteen-foot mark. It fell about two inches short of the leftmost drill hole. “See? The paper was wrong. No wonder he couldn’t find the safe.” She pressed her index finger to the wall and motioned Harper to come see. The tape reeled in as he walked closer.

“You’re right, Karaline.” He frowned. “The code must be wrong. I wonder why?”

She nodded. “Does this mean we can’t trust the combination numbers, either?”

I thought back to the scene in the hospital room, when Harper had held up my kerchief and told me there was blood on the right side of it. Thank goodness I’d worn this thing. I slipped it off my head, still tied, the way it had been at the hospital. I lined Harper and Karaline up side by side in front of the bookcase with their backs to the wall. “Show and tell time,” I said, and stood in front of them, facing them. I held the kerchief in front of me as if it were still on my head. “Please point to the left side of this kerchief.”

Their hands shot out in unison, pointing to the side of the kerchief I held in my right hand. “Bingo,” I said. “Neither one of you has good spatial orientation.”

Needless to say, they looked at me as if I’d gone bonkers. I took the tape measure from Karaline and gave the end to Harper. “Would you please walk to
that
wall?”

Once he held it steady, I pulled it to the eighteen-foot mark, which lined up exactly one inch inside the doorway that had been cut out to allow access to the safe, a good three feet away from the drilled holes. I held my finger there until Harper joined us. “I rest my case.”