Kilt Dead (37 page)

The two women who accompanied him-Zara and
Sandy, Dan assumed-had changed into regular clothing.
One, a redhead of the carrot-top variety, wore a short knit
dress and high boots that emphasized her long legs. The
other had on a more conservative outfit but had topped
her plain pants suit with a colorful tartan shawl. Both had
an air of sophistication about them.

Liss hurried toward her friends, leaving Dan to follow
in her wake. For a moment, as they exchanged air kisses,
he had the opportunity to make comparisons. The two
dancers were too skinny for his taste, as Liss had been
when she’d first come home. She’d filled out in all the
right places since she’d been back in Moosetookalook. As
far as Dan was concerned, she was just perfect now.

Then she hugged the guy in the kilt.

Dan walked faster. Bracing himself for a couple of
hours of chatter on topics he knew almost nothing about,
he joined the little group just as Liss broke free of the embrace and turned around to look for him.

“Dan!” She looked flushed, but not with embarrass ment. “This is Dan Ruskin, everyone. Dan, this is Fiona
Carlson.” She indicated the older of the two women. He
wasn’t good at guessing ages, but Fiona had a strand or
two of gray in her light brown hair.

“Hello, Dan,” she said in a soft, husky voice.

“We’d be lost without Fiona,” Liss went on. “And this
is Zara Lowery, one of my house guests”

The redhead startled him by going up on her toes to
give him a peck on the cheek. “We’ve heard a lot about
you,” she whispered.

“And this is Sandy,” Liss said, indicating the man in
the kilt.

Dan blinked.

“Alexander Kalishnakof,” Sandy said, holding out a
hand. His grip was firm, friendly, and brief. “And in case
you’re wondering about the name, my father was born in
Russia but my mother can trace her roots back to Angus
the Hammer.”

If he noticed that Dan was taken aback by the introduction-to put it mildly he did not let on.

This was Sandy? The “best pal” Liss had talked so
much about? One of the two people staying at her house
for the next two nights? Until this moment, Dan had assumed “Sandy” was a woman.

Suddenly all the stories Liss had told him about the
two of them took on an entirely new meaning and he felt
as if the world had spun off its axis. The conversation
around him turned to white noise as Dan tried to tell himself it was ridiculous to feel jealous. If there had been
anything more than friendship between Liss and Sandy, it
was in the past. Besides, Sandy would be leaving Monday
morning and Liss would not. She’d stay in Moosetookalook, with him.

He willed himself to relax. Maybe Sandy was gay.
That would be good. But even if he was, Dan heartily wished Sandy wasn’t going home with Liss tonight. Zara
and Fiona as her house guests would have pleased him
much better.

“Dan?” Liss’s tone suggested this was not the first
time she’d spoken his name.

Belatedly, he realized that Sherri and Pete had joined
the group and been introduced, as had a second man wearing a kilt. The stranger toasted him with a nearly empty
beer glass. “A pleasure to meet you, my dear chap” He
spoke in a British accent so plummy Dan had to wonder if
it was real.

“This is Stewart Graham,” Liss said. “He’s a dancer
with the company but he also played that lovely bagpipe
solo.”

“Lovely” and “bagpipe” were not words that went together naturally in Dan’s mind, but he shook hands and
mumbled a vague compliment. Stewart was a bit older
and a little shorter than Sandy, with a florid complexion and
watery blue eyes. Otherwise they were built along similar
lines. Dan wondered if there were height and weight requirements to join dance companies. The members of
Strathspey all seemed to fit the same two sets of specifications, one for males and one for females.

“Go tell Victor how talented I am, there’s a good lass,”
Stewart said when Liss added a few more favorable comments about his musical performance. “According to him
I wasn’t `up to par’ tonight. If I wasn’t such a refined
gent, I’d show him a birdie!” He sent a glare toward three
men, plates heaped high with food, who were standing by
the refreshment table on the other side of the room.

Liss groaned at the awful pun and, in an aside to Dan,
Sherri, and Pete, identified Victor as Victor Owens, the
company manager. “He’s the one in the middle, the one
gesturing with a half-eaten scone” This portly gentleman,
clearly not a dancer, seemed to be lecturing the other two, who just as clearly were performers. “He’s talking to
Charlie Danielstone and Jock O’Brien,” Liss continued.
“Probably offering a critique of their performance tonight.”

“Killing two birds with one scone,” Stewart quipped.

“The three of them are pretty much guaranteed to be
first in line to get at any refreshments,” Liss continued. “Free
food is a big draw for anyone in show business, since it’s
not exactly a profession that lends itself to steady employment or regular meals. Charlie and Jock are living
proof of that cliche and they give new meaning to the
stereotype of the penny-pinching Scot, too”

“Think Scrooge McDuck,” Stewart said, sotto voce.

Liss patted the sleeve of Stewart’s green velvet jacket.
“Anyway, getting back to your solo you sounded great
to me. I can’t imagine why Victor would make such a
rude remark”

“Why does Victor do anything?” Stewart gulped down
the rest of his beer and excused himself to revisit the cash
bar.

Not a bad idea, Dan thought, but he was driving. He
settled for offering to get Liss a glass of the white wine
she favored.

As the reception wore on and Dan, Sherri, and Pete
drifted off to speak with local people they knew, Liss finally relaxed and began to enjoy herself. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the easy comradery of the
Strathspey company. Working together, traveling together,
they’d had their share of rough spots, but there had also
been plenty of good times. Most of all, these people understood what it meant to be a performer.

The troupe numbered thirty in all, including the backstage crew and Victor Owens. Liss wanted to say a word
or two to every one of them and chat longer with those she’d been closest to over the years. She hesitated only
when it came to approaching Victor. That he’d gone out of
his way to insult the company’s only piper disturbed her
in a way she could not quite define.

In all the years Liss had known him, Victor had usually had a good reason for his actions, even the ones that
at first seemed inexplicable. That was why they kept him
on as manager. He could find them bookings no one else
would have thought of and had kept them solvent-and
housed, fed, and paid through some pretty dicey dry
spells.

When she finally took the plunge, Victor was deep in
conversation with Emily Townsend. That is, Emily was
talking. Victor was making new inroads into the offerings
on the refreshment table. Liss planted herself between
him and the platters of food to make sure she got his attention.

“Hello, Victor.”

“Well, if it isn’t our little angel.” Victor dabbed at his
lips with a napkin before he took a sip from the glass of
whiskey Emily had been holding for him. Liss assumed
he meant “angel” in the theatrical sense and his next words
confirmed it. “Felt sorry for us, did you? Thought we
needed you to convince the local yokels to invite us to
this dinky little burg?”

“Victor! Mind your manners!” Emily gave him a playful little slap on the forearm and … tittered.

There was no other word for the sound she made. Giggle would have been too dignified. In all other respects,
however, Emily Townsend seemed a mature young
woman-several years younger than Liss, but exuding the
self-confidence of a seasoned performer.

“This is Emily Townsend,” Victor said, taking another
sip of the whiskey. “Best thing that’s happened to this
company in a long time. Well, you saw her dance” He
reached around Liss to grab another spinach puff.

The implication that Emily was better in her role than
Liss had been took Liss aback. Victor had always been a
bit irascible, and prone to sarcastic comments when someone screwed up on stage, but he didn’t usually go out of
his way to be insulting.

Since she’d always found that the best technique for
dealing with unwarranted criticism was to ignore it, Liss
pretended not to understand the cutting remark. Keeping
a smile on her face, she complimented Emily on her performance.

“I’m thinking of giving her Zara’s role.” Victor smirked
at Liss and spoke loudly enough that Zara would be sure
to overhear, even with all the crowd noise. Over his shoulder, Liss saw Zara open her mouth, then close it again.
She knew as well as Liss did that she was being baited
and that if she refused to react, Victor would eventually
grow tired of the game.

“Goodness, Victor,” Liss said in a mildly reproving
tone, “you are on a tear tonight. Did someone eat all the
mini-quiches before you got to them? I ordered them special, you know. I remember how much you liked them”
Liss turned to inspect the refreshment table. In fact, there
weren’t any quiches left, but she suspected that was because Victor had already devoured them all. “Try a cocktail scone” She plucked one up and offered it to him. “It
will sweeten your temper.”

For a moment he looked almost apologetic. “I have a
lot on my mind,” he muttered, and took the scone.

“Then it must have been a relief that the show went so
well. I thought Stewart’s solo was particularly moving.”

“Swan song” Victor munched on the scone, devouring
it in record time. “He’s on his way out. Unreliable. Drinks
too much”

Liss couldn’t deny the last charge. She’d seen for herself how much beer Stewart had put away in the course of
the reception.

“Can’t afford to keep anyone around who doesn’t pull
his weight.” Victor took a second scone and bit into it. He
gestured at Liss with the remaining portion. “That’s your
fault.”

“Mine? How do you figure that?”

“After your knee surgery our insurance premiums went
up”

The experience hadn’t exactly been cheap for her either, not with all the co-pays, but there was no point in
telling Victor that. “I lost my career,” she reminded him
instead.

“You seem to have landed on your feet. I heard about
your inheritance.”

Liss repressed a sudden temptation to pick up an entire plate of hors d’oeuvres and dump them over his head.
Apparently there was no winning with Victor. Not tonight.
He might not have had as much to drink as Stewart, but
he’d imbibed enough to make him both belligerent and
unreasonable. Perhaps having an open bar at the reception had not been one of her better ideas!

“Nice meeting you, Emily,” Liss said.

Without another word to Victor, she left the two of
them and resumed circulating. It did not take long to find
more agreeable companions among the cast and crew. She
accepted a bear hug from Ray Adams with good grace.
He was a big man in his forties. His nose was big, too
his most prominent feature. His hair was gray at the temples and he had deeply incised laugh lines around his
mouth. He’d always been one of Liss’s favorite people.

“So, how you doin’, Liss?” Ray’s voice was a bit on
the nasal side, a raspy baritone straight out of New York
City. He couldn’t speak more than a dozen words without
throwing in a rhetorical “y’know?” and his hands automatically went into motion the moment he started talking. “Never figured you for a country girl.” His gesture
seemed to indicate all of Fallstown.

“If you think a big town like this is the boondocks, you
should see Moosetookalook!”

Too late, Liss realized Dan had come up beside her in
time to overhear her flippant remark. He was not smiling.
He probably didn’t appreciate the criticism of their home
town, but it was too late now to take back what she’d said.

“Dan, this is Ray. He’s our stage manager and one-third
of our backstage crew. He specializes in running lights on
all kinds of systems, some extremely antiquated. He was
also the one to provide emergency first aid-ice packs
the night I injured my knee”

Waving off the praise, nodding a greeting to Dan, Ray
returned to the one subject Liss wanted to avoid. “You
call this a big town? I dunno, Liss. You should pardon the
expression, but two days in the back of beyond and I
could die of boredom already.”

“City boy,” she teased him. “Think of it as a chance to
catch up on sleep.”

Dan, community pride piqued, jumped in with suggestions. The Fallstown movie theater offered six screens.
There was a pot-luck supper tomorrow at one of the local
churches. And the motel where Ray was staying had cable
with NESN.

“NESN?” Ray asked, straight faced. “Never heard of
it.”

“New England Sports Network”

Liss kept mum. She knew Ray was just stringing Dan
along. He knew perfectly well what NESN was. But he
had a point. Not everyone in the company was happy
about spending a quiet weekend in rural Maine. Still,
they didn’t have another booking until Monday evening
and it was far less expensive to stay in Fallstown than to
arrive early and pay exorbitant sums for an extra night in
the Boston area, near their next gig. Victor, almost as frugal as Charlie and Jock, had jumped at the chance for two
nights at cheaper rates.

Sandy and Zara joined them just as Dan mentioned
that the Boston Bruins hockey game would be televised
the next afternoon. Liss headed off Ray’s response he
was not a fan of any New England sports team-and
turned the conversation back to what had been happening
among the members of Strathspey since she’d last seen
them.

Ray recounted a particularly hilarious encounter with
a group of locals during a road trip-what was it that
made some men think a guy in a skirt must be a sissy?
Then Sandy chimed in to tell her about another incident
with a similar outcome, except that he’d ended up with a
black eye.