Bonnie of Evidence (11 page)

I sucked in my breath, mortified. “My guys would
never
lie. It wouldn’t even
occur
to them!” Well, it might occur to Bernice, but even she was bright enough not to fudge something as critical as her medical history.

“Isobel Kronk suffered from some type of allergy,” Etienne announced as he rejoined us. “There’s an epinephrine pen on the counter in the bathroom.”

Wally eyed me pointedly. “What’d I tell you?”

“Oh, my God. She died from anaphylactic shock?” Wait until I saw Stella Gordon. I’d warned her that something like this could happen if guests weren’t forthcoming on their medical forms. I’d used this very example!

“It was shock, all right.” Morna bobbed her head sagely before ranting in her witch’s voice again, “The shock of having a legion of demons fly out of her mouth ta strangle her.”

I heaved a sigh. Why did I get the feeling this was going to be a very long day?

“Anaphylactic shock is a possibility.” Etienne stood at the foot of the bed, regarding Isobel’s lifeless body. “I just wonder what she was allergic to. Food? Latex? Insect bites?”

Morna’s features bunched together as if cinched by a drawstring. “What kind of insect bites would ye be talking about?”

“Stings, mostly,” said Etienne. “Bees. Wasps. Various types of ants.”

“If it makes any difference, the windows were open earlier, but I closed them.”

Etienne nodded. “I’ll make note of it.”

“I don’t think you’re understanding me,” she continued. “The windows were open. We have no bug screens on our windows at the Crannach Arms.”

Aha
! “So a bee or a wasp could easily have flown in?” I asked.

“Scotsmen have no aversion ta bugs,” she said with a hint of snark, “much ta the dismay of our visitors from North America. Window screens are an American contrivance that you’ll find nowhere in yer travels here.”

Note to self—
Items for immediate purchase: Insect repellent. Fly swatter.

“But it wasn’t a bug that killed the lady,” Morna cautioned us.

“Right,” said Wally as he heaved himself off the ottoman. “It was demons. If I’m no longer needed here, I’ll head back to my room to make a few phone calls. I have a number for her son, so I’ll let him know what’s happening, and maybe he can fill me in on the allergy situation.”

Etienne checked his watch. “Sounds good. I’ll wait here for the emergency services unit. It’ll give me time to jot down some notes.”

“They’re coming all the way from Inverness,” Morna warned him, “so yer in fer a long wait.” She boosted herself to her feet and tightened the belt on her robe with a firm tug. “I’d like ta leave now. Mrs. Miceli and I will be in the library if ye have any more questions.”

“We will?” I straightened so fast, my bones cracked.

“Yes, we will. I’m an old lady. I’ve had a harrowing morning, and I want a cup of tea.”

_____

We entered the library as the sun was peeking over the horizon, its light gilding the loch with streaks of liquid gold. I wandered to the window while Morna called the kitchen with instructions to deliver a breakfast tray to the library.

“My dad swears he saw Nessie last night,” I said when she’d hung up.

“He’s not the first; he won’t be the last.”

“He said she had lovely eyes for a monster.”

Her expression was unreadable. “Did he take a photograph?”

“He tried, but it didn’t come out. Technical difficulties.”

“I never say this too loudly, Mrs. Miceli,” she said as she joined me at the window, “but … it’s all a myth.”

I reeled backward, as if I’d just been sucker-punched. No Nessie? “But—”

“My family has operated an inn on this spot fer over four hundred years. If a sea creature lived in the loch, don’t ye think we would have seen it by now?”

I was hit with the same wrenching disappointment I’d felt when Victoria’s Secret announced the discontinuation of their Click Miracle bras. “But—”

“It’s because of the tourist dollars.” She glanced out the window, raising her hand to shield her eyes against the blinding light that reflected off the loch. “Without Nessie, our local economy would take a tumble ta pre-Nessie days. Do ye have any idea whit that would mean?”

I could take a wild guess. “Goodbye boomtown, hello Greece?”

“Worse.”

My jaw dropped. “Worse than Greece?”
Wow
. I didn’t think that was possible.

“Ye should talk ta the pensioners in the area. Before the Nessie craze, we couldn’t give camera film away. Now we charge a thousand percent markup on four gigabyte memory cards, and everyone’s clamoring fer them. Do ye know how much revenue we can earn by raising our profit margins on photographic accessories alone?”

“But … my dad saw
something
last night. He’s a practical, no-nonsense, salt of the earth conservative who believes in less government and more tax cuts. He could never be mistaken for someone with a functioning imagination. So if he didn’t see Nessie, what
did
he see?”

“It’s a myth, Mrs. Miceli. If he claims he saw Nessie, I would encourage him ta spread the word ta the rest of yer tour group. And then perhaps ye would direct them ta the hotel’s gift shop, where we’re currently running a shoppers’ special on six gigabyte memory cards … and bottled beverages.”

A rattling
clink
of china drew our attention to the door, where a kilted waiter bounded into the room balancing an oversized breakfast tray above one shoulder. “I hope we’ve not kept ye waiting too long, Mrs. Dalrymple.” He set the tray on the library table, removed a cover from a plate of morning pastries, tidied the linens, then nodded his satisfaction. “Enjoy.”

Morna Dalrymple swept her hand toward the table. “Would ye pour, Mrs. Miceli? My hands aren’t as steady as I’d like.”

While I poured tea, Morna circled around me, pausing in front of Isobel’s abandoned metal box. “
Wheesht
. Manky thing. I don’t know where it came from, but it belongs somewhere other than my library.”

“It came from a tree trunk in Braemar,” I said as she removed it from the table.

“Is it yers?” She shook it, raising a clatter like pebbles in a tin cup.

“It belonged to Isobel Kronk. Kind of. Until she realized it wasn’t what she thought it was.”

“Whit is it?”

“A dagger. Open it. Maybe you can suggest what I should do with it.”

She pried off the lid, grimacing at the rust flaking onto her fingers. “She should have left it in the tree trunk.” She studied the knife for a long moment before lifting it from the box and turning it in her hand, like a museum curator assessing her latest acquisition.

“The handle is pretty remarkable, isn’t it?” I said as I sipped my tea. “The Chinese are doing such innovative things with high polymer plastics.”

Morna smoothed her fingertip along the carved spirals of the grip. “It’s not plastic. It’s wood. Fine-grained wood. Maybe boxwood.” She angled it toward the natural light spilling in from the window, her brows winging upward in surprise. “And there are markings.”

I nodded. “My guess is, someone attacked it with a penknife. My nephews do stuff like that when they’re bored.”

She removed a pair of glasses from the pocket of her robe and settled them on her face before crossing to the nearest floor lamp to study the dagger in brighter wattage. “A quick and terrible death … ta any foe … who would possess what is mine.”

I peered at her over my teacup. “Excuse me?”

“The inscription below the hilt. ’Tis whit it reads. ‘A quick and terrible death ta any foe who would possess what is mine.’”

“There’s an inscription?” I stared at her, nonplussed. “Seriously?”

“The letters are a bit blurred, but not so much as ta make the words unreadable.”

I set my teacup down and hurried over to her. “So what’s wrong with my eyes that I only saw scratches?”

“It’s not yer eyes that’s the problem. It’s yer upbringing. Ye had no one to teach ye the old tongue.” She glided her index finger over the marks with a respect bordering on religious awe. “The words aren’t in English, Mrs. Miceli. They’re in Gaelic.”

Well, duh. “So it actually looks authentic to you?” Why did that possibility fill me with such dread? Oh, yeah. Because Bernice and Dolly would probably be at each other’s throats trying to claim a piece of it.

“It’s more than authentic. Do ye see the owner’s name here?” Morna tapped her finger beneath a series of vertical squiggles. “This dagger belonged ta none other than Hamish Maccoull.”

I did my utmost to look impressed before asking, “Should I know who that is?”

“Ye should, but ye probably don’t. Hamish Maccoull was only the most feared chieftain of all the highland clans. He’s lacked the name recognition of yer Hollywood favorites like William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, but—”

“Did you say Maccoull?” I suddenly broke in. “Maccoull spelled M-A-C-C-O-U-L-L?”

“How else would ye spell it?”

“My grandmother is a Maccoull. Well, her married name is Sippel, but her mother’s maiden name was Maccoull. Could she be related to this Hamish Maccoull and his clan?”

“Every Maccoull, the world over, can trace his ancestry back ta Hamish Maccoull. If yer gramma’s a Maccoull, she can claim Hamish as kin.”

I clasped my hands with excitement. “This is so awesome! She was just saying today how little she knows about her family tree. You know how that goes. One member of a family emigrates to America to begin a new life, and over time, he loses contact with everything and everyone he left behind.”

“Then she’s not familiar with Hamish’s story?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s never heard his name before.”

“I have a book.” Handing the dagger over to me, she contemplated her floor-to-ceiling bookshelves before crossing the room to the rolling ladder and sliding it halfway across the wall. “She’s welcome ta borrow it while she’s here.” Hitching her robe to her knees, she climbed onto the first rung of the ladder and pulled a hefty tome from its slot before stepping back down. “It’s an oral history of his life, handed down from family member ta family member, until it was finally put down on paper … a hundred years after he died.”

I regarded the dagger with new eyes and greater appreciation. “Does it mention how his dirk might have ended up in a tree trunk?”

She set the book on the library table, splaying her hand over its faded leather cover. “If memory serves, the dirk was used ta kill him.”

My eyeballs froze in their sockets. My breath froze in my throat.
Unh-oh
. “So the stains on the blade could possibly be—?”

“Hamish Maccoull’s blood.”

“Oh.” I deposited the dirk gently onto the table and fluttered my fingers in the air. “You don’t happen to have any hand sanitizer, do you?”

“It was his enemies who slew him,” she said fiercely. “In his later years, Hamish tired of bloodshed. He married off his daughter ta the son of a rival chieftain, hoping ta secure the peace, but the son used the girl like no honorable man should use a wife, so she ran away, only ta be tracked down and punished like no new bride should ever be punished.”

A chill crawled up the back of my neck. “What happened to her?”

“Her husband bound her ta a rock at low tide and left her. When the tide rose, she drowned.”

My mouth fell open. “He killed her?”

“Highlanders have never been known fer their temperate responses ta imagined wrongs.”

“But to kill her? For running away?”

“At least she died in one piece.”

My eyelids flapped up like broken window shades. “Excuse me?”

“The preferred method of punishment at the time was ta have the offender drawn and quartered.”

Euw
!

“’Tis said Hamish’s grief knew no bounds, his wrath no limits. He gathered a raiding party ta avenge the girl’s death, but they were cut down on the road by the husband’s clan, and Hamish stabbed in the heart with his own dirk. The whole raiding party was slaughtered but fer one man, who made it back ta the compound, and lived long enough ta give witness ta whit he’d seen. When the Maccoulls showed up ta bury their dead, they found Hamish’s claymore by his side, but his dirk had gone missing, and was never seen again.”

“Until now?” I asked in a tentative voice.

Morna opened the book, causing the spine to crackle as if it hadn’t been opened in centuries. She turned to the last page. “The dirk disappeared, but the Maccoulls hoped not forever.” She trailed her finger below the spidery text and read aloud. “‘Remember well the look of the blade, fer it will come back into our hands one day, when they who dared steal it realize, too late, that their villainy sealed their doom. Those who ignore the admonition will pay with their blood.’”

“Admonition. Is he talking about the inscription on the handle?”

Morna nodded, reciting the words from memory. “‘A quick and terrible death ta any foe who would possess what is mine.’”