Highland Laddie Gone (12 page)

“We’re not, either, that I know of,” said Dr. Carson mildly. “But I did announce your request for information, and there are a few people who came forward and asked to speak with you.”

Lightfoot relaxed. This case might not be such a blister, after all. With a good six hours of daylight left, he might make it back to the war. He enjoyed an occasional outing with the local militia—it gave him a sense of history and a form of recreation that seemed less dandified than golf. Also, it met his need for an element of drama. Most people
might assume that sheriffing would supply all the theatrics one might require in life, but that was an outsider’s view of the job.

To Lightfoot’s mind, being a peace officer was a lot like fishing: ninety per cent psychology and patience, and only ten per cent confrontation. Most of the drama associated with the office of sheriff lay in public appearances: cutting an imposing figure at the county fair, making the occasional speech to a civic group, and generally personifying the law, with a pearl-handled pistol and a shiny brass badge. Lightfoot was good at it. He had the foxlike Cherokee-Scots bone structure to look the part, but he couldn’t call the work exciting, this case included. Likely as not, some drunk would turn out to have done it without meaning to, and the whole sorry mess could be dumped in some lawyer’s lap by morning.

He looked at his notes on the case. The deceased had been an M.D., aged sixty-three; that he had been in fine health was the only good word anybody had to say about him so far. In Lightfoot’s experience, cantankerous old men got themselves avoided, not murdered; he wondered what the wrinkle was in this case.

“Who’s first?” he asked Andy Carson.

Jerry Buchanan, still colorful in his clan tartan, came forward. “I am, sir.” He gave his name, being careful to add that he was a dentist, because the very dullness of his profession added to his credibility.

“And what information do you have about the deceased?” asked Lightfoot politely.

“It was a political killing!” hissed Jerry. “He was assassinated by the S.R.A.!”

Lightfoot looked up. “Spell that.”

“It’s like the I.R.A.,” Jerry explained. “The Scottish Republican Army. They’re planning to pull out of Great Britain, just as America did in 1776.”

“And Dr. Campbell was a member?”

“No, of course not.” Jerry Buchanan began to look uncomfortable. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to appear too knowledgeable about terrorist activities. He certainly hadn’t bargained for
domestic
killings when he’d joined the Cause. Car bombings in Edinburgh were ail very well, but dammit, this was Virginia! “Look, Sheriff,” he said in an undertone, “I think the person you should really be discussing this with is the British secret agent here at the games. He’s probably conducting an investigation of his own.”

“How do you know there’s an agent at the games?” asked Lightfoot reasonably. He didn’t have to deal with too many crackpots in Clay County, but he’d heard that big-city police were ankle-deep in them.

“He’s MI5,” Jerry muttered. “I heard one of the terrorists mention him. And I just saw him a few minutes ago on the practice field.” He gave a brief, but very accurate, description of Cameron Dawson.

“The sheriff wants to see me?” asked Cameron, glancing at Elizabeth. “What about?”

Andy Carson sighed. “About the murder investigation, I presume.” He wanted to ask Cameron about his alibi for last night, but he thought it best not to get involved. “Would you like me to phone the British embassy?”

“I think I can manage this one on my own, thanks,” said Cameron. He looked at Elizabeth. “Do you suppose they’d let you come along?”

“I doubt if it’s very important,” said Elizabeth. “You didn’t know Colin Campbell, did you?”

“Yes, he did,” Dr. Carson put in. “Met him yesterday.”

“Damn!” said Cameron, pronouncing the word as if
Notre
came before it. “The bloke who was on about sea monsters!”

He walked to the hospitality tent, framing a careful explanation of his slight acquaintance with the deceased and trying to decide how best to express a correct, but detached, sense of regret at the gentleman’s passing. He was, therefore, completely unprepared for the sheriff’s line of questioning.

“Am I a
what?”

“Whatever you English call them.” Lightfoot shrugged.

“I’m not English. I’m a Scot,” snapped Cameron. He would answer to British or Scottish, but
not
English, and certainly not Scotch.

“You seem familiar enough with English, though,” the sheriff observed. “However, if you need an interpreter, we can see about finding you one.”

Cameron closed his eyes. What did they bloody think he spoke? “Just ask your questions, please. Or better yet, tell me what this is about.”

Lightfoot MacDonald flipped again through Cameron’s passport, looking for some indication of his status with the government—a telltale 007 stamped beside his name, for example. He said carefully, “According to my information, Mr. Dawson—”

“Dr. Dawson.”

“Whatever. According to my information, this was a
political killing, and as an agent for the English government—”

“British!” muttered Cameron under his breath.

“You would have some knowledge of the circumstances.”

“Right. This dotty old man who had a thing about sea monsters gets killed with a
skian dubh,
and you think the British government is responsible?”

“No, sir. According to my information, the Scottish Republican Army killed him.”

Cameron stared. “Nonsense! You have us mixed up with Ireland. There is no Republican Army in Scotland. And I am not a secret agent for anybody! I’m a marine biologist. I do
seals
and
porpoises.”

“Do you know the Earl of Strathclyde?”

“I’m practically sure there isn’t one. I mean, I haven’t got Debrett memorized, but I’ve certainly never heard of an Earl of Strathclyde.”

“One …” Lightfoot consulted his notes. “Geoffrey Chandler.”

“Ah,” said Cameron, with an arctic light in his eyes. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“I’ve sent someone to fetch Mr. Chandler,” said Andy Carson. “Meanwhile, Sheriff, perhaps you’d like to interview somebody else. I promised her I’d mention it to you.”

“Why waste time?” Lightfoot shrugged. “I’ll talk to everybody, and sort it all out later.”

“Are you sure you want me to stay, Sheriff?” asked Cameron.

The sheriff nodded. “If you are a secret agent, you certainly can’t admit it. Everybody knows that. And even
if you aren’t, why, you might be helpful to me in the investigation, because I don’t know much about this Scotch business.”

Cameron cringed.
Scotch.
But there might be a diplomatic limit to the number of times one should correct a policeman, so he said nothing. He didn’t think he was going to be much help, though.

The next witness was a sturdy little woman in her mid-forties, dressed in what Lightfoot considered the preppy golfing costume: tan canvas skirt, knit shirt, green espadrilles. Only the tartan scarf pinned to her shoulder indicated that she was a festival participant.

“Hello, Sheriff,” she said in her board-of-directors voice. “I’m Lacy Campbell.”

“Any relation to the deceased?” asked the sheriff, making a note of the name.

Lacy Campbell stopped, open-mouthed. Was this a trick question? “Well,” she said, “I suppose back in Argyll, if you assume that the Ian Campbell of Glenlyon was the same Ian Campbell who in 1787—”

“So you weren’t his wife or his daughter or anything?” the sheriff put in.

She smiled. “Oh, no. In the sense you mean, we weren’t connected at all. He was just the president of our clan society, and of course quite a lot of us are named Campbell.”

“How come you’re not wearing a kilt?”

“Oh, Colin Campbell would have had a conniption, Sheriff. It is not traditional for women to wear kilts, and no matter what the other clans do, Colin was not about to permit it in ours.”

The sheriff looked at Cameron for confirmation, and received a barely perceptible nod in return.

“Now, as to what I wanted to report in connection with Colin’s murder”—Lacy Campbell permitted herself the briefest of smiles—“I suppose you think it odd that I should be so composed—and, really, it has been quite a shock hearing about the poor man; but to tell you the truth, he wasn’t as popular as he might have been. Several people dropped out of the group altogether because Colin was such an overbearing old … Anyway, he had arguments with everybody, but I did happen to know of one quite recent one that might be important.”

“Not the sea monsters!” cried Cameron. Seeing the others’ look of astonishment, he scrunched down in his seat. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Carry on.”

“We’ll get to that one directly,” Lightfoot promised him. “Now, what were you referring to, ma’am?”

“The first part I only heard about, but I witnessed the second one. Have you heard of Dr. Walter Hutcheson? No? He’s the president of the MacDonalds this year, and he and Colin are both physicians at the community hospital. Myra Logan told me that she heard Colin and Walter Hutcheson arguing yesterday. Myra’s girl is in the country-dancing competition with my Fiona. Myra said that they were actually shouting—something about real estate, she thought. Well, I didn’t think too much of it at the time, because somebody is always shouting at Colin Campbell, but then today at the herding fiasco—”

“Fiasco?”

Lacy Campbell digressed to explain about the mysterious appearance of rookie ducks in the herding box, and the resulting chaos. “I was standing right beside Walter
Hutcheson watching the whole thing, and I distinctly heard him say ‘Colin Campbell’ as he stalked off looking like thunder. Now, the reason I think that’s important is that the exhibitor in the sheep trials was Walter’s wife. Well, his ex-wife, actually, but they’re still friends, I believe. They’d been married for
decades,
you know,”

“So you think he might have killed Colin Campbell over some ducks?” asked the sheriff carefully.

“No. But I think he might have gone to argue with him about it, and one thing may have led to another,” said Lacy Campbell, proud of her powers of detection.

Lightfoot MacDonald considered it. “Cantankerous old body, wasn’t he?” he mused. “So he put rookie ducks in the dog trials?”

“No, he didn’t!” Cameron blurted out. “We did. The Earl of Strathclyde and I.”

After collecting a few more particulars about her testimony, the sheriff shooed Lacy Campbell politely out of the tent and took a long look at the uncomfortable Cameron Dawson. He flipped again through the blue British passport, reading the visa, the description, and making a face at the passport picture.

“You’ve been here … I make it three days.”

“Just about,” Cameron agreed.

“Uh-huh. Three days. And you’ve already made contact with a terrorist organization, had an argument about sea monsters with a man who promptly gets murdered, and now you tell me you’re responsible for this herding duck business?”

Cameron sighed. He didn’t believe it, either. In Scotland he’d been pretty average, studied a lot—the word
dull
came to mind. It’s the American insanity, he thought ruefully; I’m infected already.

“Haven’t established a time of death yet, but suppose you tell me where you’ve been for the past twelve hours or so.”

“Since midnight? Well, last night I went to the HillSing with a girl and a bobcat, and—this morning about eight, I—”

“Whoa! Back up. I ain’t even going to
speculate
about the bobcat, but are you telling me in an understated English way that you spent the night with her?”

One did not, Cameron presumed, lie to law-enforcement persons. “Yes.”

Lightfoot gave him a look of open admiration. “Boy, you limey spies are something else, man! And I thought James Bond was all hog wash! You are something else!”

   M
ARGE
H
UTCHESON
sat in the refreshment tent, brooding over a cup of coffee and an ashtray full of cigarettes. Across the table, Elizabeth tapped her can of Irn Bru and looked again toward the hospitality tent.

“He’s been in there a long time,” she murmured.

Marge smiled briefly. “Stop being such a mother hen. He’s fine. I’m sure the sheriff has sense enough to realize that no one who just arrived in this country could have anything to do with all this.”

“I guess not.”

“Poor Colin.”

Elizabeth frowned. She had been shocked that anyone should be murdered at a Highland festival, but his being Colin Campbell was not particularly surprising. She wondered what to say to Marge without having to lie about her own reaction to the death. “Did you know him well?” she finally asked.

“Oh, the way people do. We’ve all belonged to the Scottish society for donkey’s years, and I never found Colin particularly hard to get along with. I think he was lonely, but he couldn’t be bothered with meek or unintelligent people.” Marge grinned. “Fortunately, I am neither.”

“I wonder why he was killed?”

“I wonder if we’ll ever know. So many crimes seem to go unsolved these days. And this certainly can’t be the sort of case or the class of people that the sheriff is used to dealing with.”

Elizabeth looked thoughtful. “Maybe he needs some help,” she murmured.

“I suppose it would be useful to know whom Colin annoyed in the past two days,” Marge remarked. “There’s your cousin Geoffrey with that Carson man. Now if
he
ever gets murdered, you can put me down as chief suspect.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “There’s a waiting list of people wanting to kill Geoffrey,” she sighed. “But I am sorry about the dog trials.”

“It is kind of you to take an interest in this, Sheriff,” said Geoffrey Chandler grandly, before anyone could speak. “However, I do not wish to press charges against my assailant.
What’s done is done and cannot be undone.”

The sheriff looked at Cameron for clarification. “The bagpipe,” said Cameron. “You remember. This is His Lordship, the Earl.”

Geoffrey frowned. More improvisational theatre, he thought. “Is this not about my little contretemps this morning?” he purred.