Kilt Dead Page 3

  “If you’re worried about intrusive questions, don’t be. Just tell them you’re ‘resting.’ Isn’t that what people in show business call it when they’re between gigs?”

  Liss couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know why I care what anyone thinks. I never used to.”

  From an early age, Liss had been totally involved in the peculiar hobbies her family encouraged. She’d taken lessons on the bagpipe instead of the piano. She’d learned the Highland Fling rather than ballet. And in lieu of participating in field hockey or basketball or softball or trying out for cheerleading, she’d entered Scottish dance competitions.

  “Maybe I will go,” she said. “It might be fun to find out what everyone is up to these days.” With what she hoped seemed only casual interest, she asked, “So, who did Dan Ruskin marry?”

  “Dan?” A note of astonishment came into Sherri’s voice. “Unless he’s eloped in the last twenty-four hours, he’s still single.”

  “Really? What’s he want with a house, then?”

  “No idea. Maybe he’s fixing it up to sell.”

  “Whatever happened to that girl he used to date?”

  “Karen? Believe it or not she’s an executive with a software company. She’s also been married and divorced. Two kids.”

  Liss was still trying to imagine Dan as a homeowner and Karen as a mother when Ned arrived, bleary-eyed and grumbling. He didn’t offer to load boxes. When he’d gone upstairs after his mother’s luggage, Liss and Sherri exchanged a look.

  “Same old Ned,” Liss said. “Such a sweetheart. Does he do anything to help out around here?”

  “Oh, sure.” Sherri’s truck was full, so they began stacking merchandise in the back of Liss’s car. “About six months ago, he made an all-out effort to convince your aunt to sell items with higher mark-ups so she’d make bigger profits. He ordered these. Suggested retail price is twelve dollars plus tax.”

  She opened one of the boxes they’d just carried out. Inside were refrigerator magnets with a bagpipe and thistle design. When Liss pushed on the spot marked “press to play,” the first few bars of “Scotland the Brave” sounded in a tinny imitation of a bagpipe.

  “This is just . . . tacky.”

  Sherri shrugged. “Your aunt is betting that a good many of the folks at the games will think it’s a perfect memento of the day. She’s knocked the price down to five bucks apiece in the hope we can get rid of them.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  They’d just loaded the last of the stock earmarked for the Highland Games when Aunt Margaret emerged, purse and passport in one hand and cash box in the other. “Here you go, Liss. Keys to the house are inside, along with plenty of change. Sherri’s name is on the bank accounts so she can pay any bills that come in.”

  “I hate to see you leave so soon,” Liss whispered as they embraced. “We’ve barely had time to catch up.” Dozens of unanswered questions remained, not the least of them concerning her aunt’s surprising involvement in the renovation of “the castle.”

  “You take Amanda Norris up on that offer of a piece of apple pie and gossip,” Aunt Margaret urged, nodding toward the house next door. A flutter of movement at the bay window indicated the retired teacher was awake and keeping an eye on them.

  Aunt Margaret was on her way moments later. Liss watched Ned’s car until it turned the corner, then took a moment to appreciate the beauty of the day before going inside to shower.

  She hadn’t really had the chance to study her surroundings the previous afternoon. Early morning light gave all the old houses around the square a mellow look. Directly across from her aunt’s store, one large brick edifice stood out in a sea of white clapboard: the municipal building. It housed the town office, the police station, the firehouse, and the public library. As for the town square itself, picturesque didn’t begin to describe it. It contained everything people expected of a rural New England town—gazebo-style bandstand, monument to the Civil War dead, flagpole, even a playground with a jungle gym, a slide, a small merry-go-round, and swings big enough for adults.

  When she had time, Liss promised herself, she’d take a stroll through the old neighborhood, but right now she had to get a move on. The Highland Games were scheduled to open in less than two hours.

  “Look quick!” Sherri shoved a pair of binoculars into Liss’s hands and pointed toward the athletic field.

  Liss managed to adjust the focus in time to see Pete Campbell throw the clachneart—the Scottish version of the Olympic shot put.

  Most people would have kept their eyes on the twenty-eight-pound granite stone Pete held at shoulder height, wondering if it would break the local record of thirty-five feet. Forewarned by the laughter in Sherri’s voice, Liss watched Pete’s kilt. He spun three times in a circle. Each rotation sent the fabric billowing higher. The final revolution, just before he let go of the stone, lifted the hem above his thighs.

  A traditional Scot wasn’t supposed to wear anything at all beneath the kilt, but this was an American version of the Highland Games and Pete Campbell, though he’d passed on the more usual cut-offs and bicycle shorts, wasn’t about to risk arrest for indecent exposure. Swim trunks patterned in fluorescent purple and chartreuse flowers winked at spectators for a split second before the concealing folds of the Campbell tartan settled back to knee level.

  “Oh, God!” Sherri had watched through a second pair of binoculars. “Did you see that?” Her cheeks were bright pink. “He said he’d wear them but I didn’t think he would.”

  Grinning as much over Sherri’s delight as at Pete’s unconventional choice of attire for the Stone of Strength competition, Liss waited on the next customer. “That will be ten dollars and sixty cents,” she told a middle-aged brunette wearing a MacDougall tartan sash over jeans and a camp shirt.

  While the woman searched her pockets for exact change, Liss shoved a damp lock of hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. For the most part she’d been able to ignore the heat and humidity. The hot, sticky weather wasn’t exactly a surprise, not in late July, but Liss did wish she wasn’t dressed in an ankle-length wool skirt and a long-sleeved blouse.

  Suck it up and keep smiling, she told herself. It was part of the job to be a walking advertisement for the store’s line of Scottish women’s wear. At least the smiles came easily. They’d had a steady stream of paying customers ever since the gates opened.

  Liss wrapped her customer’s purchase, a ceramic mug decorated with a thistle, the symbol of Scotland, in tissue paper, sliding both it and the receipt into one of the small red bags Aunt Margaret special-ordered with “Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium” emblazoned on both sides. She watched the woman trot off, package in hand, toward the clan tents, and felt a sense of satisfaction. Business was brisk. Aunt Margaret would be pleased.

  Both Liss and Sherri were busy for the next half hour. Sherri was still ringing up sales when Liss finally managed a short break. She used it to take in the sounds and smells and sights peculiar to Scottish festivals.

  A very welcome breeze carried a snatch of song in a clear soprano voice above the general hubbub of the crowd. According to the program, a series of performers were scheduled throughout the day.

  The same stirring of fresh air also brought a variety of smells wafting Liss’s way, including one that made her stomach growl. Nothing in the world smelled better than freshly baked scones. They’d always been a weakness of hers.

  The area around the Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium booth was a virtual forest of tents and awnings. Along one side were vendors of goods and food. Clans and societies, together with registration centers for various events, dominated the other. Liss had a good, if distant, view of the athletic field used for sports competitions and the parade field where everything from the performance by the massed bands to the sheepdog trials took place.

  Along with the chatter, laughter, and occasional cheers of the crowds, bagpipes skirled. Now and again Liss picked out a few stray notes of a reel
or strathspey being played by the lone piper assigned to accompany the dancers. She was too far away to see the stage set up for that competition and thought that was probably just as well. Watching young girls do what she no longer could would be difficult.

  Distance didn’t help, however, when she recognized the current tune as “The Battle of the Somme.” She’d danced to it on dozens of stages just like the one at the other end of the fairgrounds. A flash of memory assaulted her with painful clarity. She was nine years old and wearing Arisaidh dress, an outfit that had evolved as a sort of national costume for female dancers after the organizers of the Aboyne Highland Games in Scotland refused to allow women to wear the kilt. Liss’s version of Arisaidh dress consisted of a gathered skirt and a green velvet jacket that laced up the front. A plaid in MacCrimmon colors was attached to the waistband at the back and came up and over her right shoulder to fasten to the jacket with a brooch that displayed her clan crest. She moved gracefully and energetically with the music, feeling no pain, easily beating out the competition in the Scottish lilt.

  “Liss?”

  Sherri’s voice brought Liss back to the present with a jolt. Feeling as if someone had just doused her with cold water, she shivered and had to take a moment to reorient herself.

  “Do you need to sit?” Sherri’s worried gaze fixed on Liss’s hip-shot stance.

  Liss straightened abruptly. She was not supposed to favor her left leg. Shifting position and gears, she forced a smile. “I’m fine.”

  She was, too. Keeping busy was the best cure for any ailment and the morning’s flood of customers had resumed. Liss sold a cashmere scarf while Sherri rang up a pewter figurine of a bagpiper and two kilt pins.

  “I want that,” said a young man in shorts and a t-shirt decorated with a Scottish lion. He pointed to a small dagger, silver mounted and hand carved, in its own leather sheath.

  “Do you know the traditions associated with the sgian dubh?” Liss asked as she wrapped the knife. “Sgian dubh translates as ‘black dagger’ and in the old days warriors believed it should never be drawn and returned to its scabbard without spilling blood. Later, when the English passed laws prohibiting Scots from carrying weapons, they exempted the sgian dubh from the ban. Their reasoning was that one of these little knives was only big enough for a Scot to slit his own throat with, and that was a good thing.”

  “TMI, lady,” the young man said. “I’m buying it to use as a letter opener.”

  “Too much information,” Liss murmured when he was gone. Granted, not everyone found Scots trivia as fascinating as she did, but why would someone attend a Scottish festival if he didn’t have any interest in Scotland’s history and traditions?

  “Only his opinion,” Sherri said. “Don’t let him get you down.”

  “No, he’s probably right. I do go on. Do me a favor? If I start to babble again, smack me.”

  “I think you should babble all you like. You really know this stuff cold.”

  “That doesn’t mean other people want to hear it.”

  “Hey, when you’re passionate about something, you have to share, right?”

  A new customer arrived and began flipping through a box of Scottish-themed bumper stickers. “You got any more of these?” he asked Sherri, holding up one that read “Old Pipers Never Die. Their Bags Just Dry Up.”

  “Another of Ned’s selections,” Sherri whispered before she dutifully trotted over to help out.

  Liss turned her attention to a woman examining a row of figurines—piper, drummer, soldier—each six-and-a-half inches tall and all in Highland dress. She blinked in surprise when she recognized Mrs. Norris. “Well, hello again. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Oh, I can never resist coming to take a look around. I won’t stay long. Too much going on. But I did want to see how you were doing.” For her jaunt to the fairgrounds, the retired teacher wore stretch denim and a loose, sleeveless top. The jogging shoes were the same ones she’d had on the previous day.

  “Things are going just fine, Mrs. Norris.”

  “Had a scone yet?”

  Liss laughed. “Imagine you remembering that!”

  “Oh, I never forget a thing, dear. In fact, I seem to recall something a little naughty about you.”

  “I can’t imagine what.”

  “Can’t you?”

  Liss shook her head, truly baffled. “I wasn’t exactly a wild child.”

  “Well, we all have our little secrets. And I know most of them.”

  “Now that sounds ominous,” Liss teased her. “Should I be worried about blackmail?”

  “Too risky. That would make you a threat to me, if you were murderously inclined, that is.” Mrs. Norris lowered her voice. “I was reading a mystery novel the other day in which a character is stabbed to death with a little dagger. I wonder if it could have been one of these?” She indicated another sgian dubh.

  “Was the story set in Scotland?” Amanda Norris loved to read. Liss had seen her bookshelves. They were lined with mysteries, although romances ran a close second.

  “Sixteenth-century England, but the victim was a Scot.”

  For once, Liss wasn’t certain of her history. “I’m not sure they called it a sgian dubh that long ago, but I’d certainly think twice about crossing someone who carried a knife.”

  “This character should have thought twice about carrying one himself, since it was his own weapon that was used against him. Still, he got what he deserved. That’s as it should be.” She nodded sagely. “You’ll get your just desserts, too, Liss MacCrimmon.”

  At Liss’s blank look, Mrs. Norris leaned in, again lowering her voice to a whisper. “That piece of apple pie, dear. It’s still got your name on it.”

  Chapter Three

  For the first time all day, there were no potential customers in sight. Liss sank gratefully down onto a stool and fished under the counter for the cooler she’d packed with lunch. It was just after one in the afternoon.

  Her knee ached a bit, but as a dancer she was accustomed to ignoring pain. Just now she was more concerned about easing the hollow feeling in her stomach. She hadn’t eaten a bite since that quick breakfast at sunrise.

  With a sigh, she pulled a container of strawberry yogurt out of the cooler. “Want one?” she asked Sherri.

  “Yuck.”

  Silently agreeing with that assessment, Liss peeled back the top and dug in. She tried to imagine she was eating a warm scone dripping with butter. It didn’t work. She couldn’t even pretend the yogurt was one of the flavored scones, best eaten plain. “I have a feeling I’ll be giving in to temptation before the day is out,” she muttered under her breath.

  Sherri popped the top on a can of soda and squinted toward the athletic field. The Stone of Strength competition was long over but two other events were in progress at opposite ends of the field, the caber toss and the sheaf throw.

  Even without the binoculars, Liss could see the action well enough. Each caber was nineteen feet long and weighed a hundred and twenty pounds—most people compared them to telephone poles. The object of the competition wasn’t distance, but to toss the caber end-over-end so that the small end fell directly away from the competitor. The sheaf toss was an event that involved tossing a sixteen-pound sheaf of hay, encased in a burlap bag, over a bar . . . using a three-tined pitchfork.

  “Hammer throw is next,” Sherri said, consulting a program. “Pete’s entered in that one, too.”

  “Not my favorite sport,” Liss said. The hammer, a metal ball attached to a wooden handle, weighed a little over twenty pounds and had been known to fly more than a hundred yards when well thrown. “One year I stood too close to the field. A contestant lost his grip on the hammer and I swear it was coming straight at me. I let out a shriek and threw myself flat on the ground.”

  “Were you hit?”

  Liss shook her head, a rueful expression on her face. “The only thing damaged was my dignity. The hammer didn’t land anywhere near me.”


  She could smile about it now. At the time she’d been mortified.

  “So,” she said, scooping out the last of the yogurt, “do you have a special interest in Pete Campbell?” Liss remembered him slightly. He’d been a couple of years ahead of them in school.

  A haunted expression came over Sherri’s face. “What would be the point? I come with too much baggage.”

  Frowning thoughtfully, Liss tossed the now empty container toward the trash can. “Because you have a child?”

  “That’s part of it. The other’s my job. And his. It’s complicated.”

  “I’m a good listener,” Liss offered. “What does working in a shop that sells Scottish imports have to do with anything?”

  “Oh, not that job. I only work part time for your aunt. My full-time job is as a corrections officer for the sheriff’s department.” Before Liss could ask for further explanation, Sherri’s gaze shifted, moving to a spot over Liss’s shoulder. Her eyes widened. “Oh-oh.”

  “What?” Liss turned her head to look but saw nothing that alarmed her.

  “Jason Graye is coming this way. He’s got to be the most obnoxious man in Moosetookalook.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He only turned up in this area a couple of years ago. One of those move-in-and-take-over types. Lives in Moosetookalook but owns a real estate company here in Fallstown. Got himself elected president of the Rotary Club and a selectman.”

  “Ah, an entrepreneur!”

  Sherri grinned. “Yup.”

  Liss fixed her salesperson smile in place and reached her side of the counter just as a man and woman came abreast of the booth. Graye looked to be forty at most, with a hawk nose and strong jaw. His companion was younger, but not by much. Of medium height and slender, she’d styled her strawberry blonde hair into an elaborate twist that kept it away from an oval face dominated by pouty lips and rather pretty hazel eyes. Liss glanced at her hand, looking for a wedding ring, but didn’t see one.