The Blue Hackle (46 page)

The laird and best man had returned from the
hospital late yesterday, Irvine in attendance, in good time to
stage a stag party for Alasdair at one end of the house while Diana
staged a hen party for Jean—and why wasn’t it a doe party?—at the
other. A few drinks, a few jokes, ribald and otherwise, were
sufficient to mark the occasion, considering.

“Well then,” said Miranda with a delicate
arch of her eyebrow. “The butler did it.”

“Rab wasn’t exactly the butler, but yeah, he
did it. Ironic, that if Fergie hadn’t been going on about a big
sale that would save them all . . .”

“Meaning the Coffer, not the Estate,” said
Miranda.

“Yes, but Rab didn’t know that. He thought
Fergie was going to sell Dunasheen. And he knew a clever
businessman like Greg wouldn’t buy the place without evaluating its
contents and auditing the books, at the very least.”

“Rab and Nancy could no longer be creaming
off the goods, then.”

“A new owner would change everything, and if
Rab was afraid of anything, it was change.” Jean shook her head.
“If Fergie hadn’t been so sure he’d had something valuable in
Tormod’s little sarcophagus, then Rab wouldn’t have murdered
Tormod’s descendant.”

“If,” Miranda repeated. “There’s no way of
knowing.”

There was knowing, and there was perceiving.
Jean looked back down into the Hall to see Diana tweaking the
Christmas holly and ivy along the fireplace and brushing away an
invisible speck of ash remaining from the Yule log. No need, the
happy couple had decreed, to bring in fresh, off-season flowers
when the place was already spruced up—literally, when it came to
the Christmas tree.

Ken MacLeod would have approved of that
frugality. But he and Tina had started for Australia this morning.
What happened once they got there—other than the formal disposition
of Greg’s ashes—was beyond Jean’s brief.

So was wallowing in
what-might-have-beens.

She summoned a smile. “It was nice of so many
people from the village to help turn the guest rooms over and fix
things for the wedding.”

“Everyone loves a party.” Miranda did not add
that the party would soon be over, leaving the MacDonalds and their
neighbors to pick up the pieces. But then, there were pieces to
pick up. At least the last of the second wave of reporters had
receded, following the action to the legal edifices of Portree and
beyond.

Brenda O’Donnell bustled into the Hall with
another platter of edibles, this one decorated with sugar doves. In
her polka-dotted best dress she looked like an ambulatory
bedspread. Next to her, Diana in her soft, spring-green wool dress
and jacket appeared even more chic than usual. The Egyptian
necklace would have complemented the color of Jean’s dress, but
Diana wasn’t wearing it. Touching, the way the real beauties dialed
themselves back in honor of the bride.

Bride. That’s me.
Jean forced a deep
breath into her chest and noted that Miranda and Diana wore the
same perfume. Jean had actually remembered to dab some behind her
ears and on the pulse point at her throat, a light floral fragrance
symbolizing the rising of her sap into, among other places, her
cheeks, which were now two little furnaces heating the rims of her
glasses. Prickles of anxiety and delight ran up and down her limbs.
Don’t lock your knees
, she reminded herself, and did a
couple of bends for practice.

“Is living in Scotland what you were
expecting, then?” asked Miranda.

“Didn’t you ask me that mere hours before I
met Alasdair? In the same paragraph as something about romantic
fantasy?”

“All I’m remembering is you claiming to be a
hard-bitten cynic.”

Jean laughed. “Heck, no. It’s merciful
fantasy that keeps you going. Scotland, writing,
The Lord of the
Rings
, marriage. Speaking of marriage . . .”

Miranda’s significant other, Duncan Kerr,
strolled into the Hall. With his sleek silver hair, beautifully
groomed moustache, and striped suit befitting a corporate lawyer,
he looked positively Viennese, too smooth, too refined, to be
Scottish.

“Marriage?” Miranda’s eye tracked Duncan’s
progress around the room. “We’ll be watching how you and Alasdair
make a go of it.”

“Yeah, I know. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix
it.”

And there was Scottish refinement, needing no
fixing whatsoever—Alasdair in his kilt and jacket, a red rose
sweetly blooming in January pinned to his lapel. Beside him walked
his mother, so small her tartan sash fell almost to the hem of her
dress. When she grew up, Jean wanted to be like Rhona Cameron. She
exuded Alasdair’s intelligence and gravity, but had a tart tongue
of her own and a crown of unabashedly red hair that made her almost
look younger than her son.

Diana asked Rhona, “What have you got
there?”

The foreshortened Mrs. Cameron—the one and
only Mrs. Cameron—lifted a bonnet emblazoned with a silver crest
and blue hackle. “It’s Allan’s. I was thinking Fergie’d enjoy
seeing it, since Fergus Mor’s was destroyed. Or so you were saying,
Alasdair.”

Not mentioning Dougie,
Jean’s
cat,
Alasdair took the bonnet and settled it on his blond hair tipped
with gray. There was the something old, and the something blue, and
the something borrowed. Jean herself must be the something new.

With an open, unconstrained laugh, Alasdair
took off the bonnet and set it on the table. “You’d best be getting
me to the altar, Mum.”

“Oh aye,” replied Rhona, “it’s time Jean was
making an honest man of you.” And they strolled from the room.

Smiling—her face was going to hurt from
smiling before the day was over—Jean and Miranda made their way
down the turnpike stair. Down, not up past the tripping stane,
never mind that Jean hadn’t sensed Seonaid ’s ghost since the two
of them together, the quick and the dead, realized where Dakota had
gone.

Jean missed her little doppelganger. By now
she was back home, surrounded by familiar things, anticipating
returning to her school and her friends. With a tale to tell,
which, unlike many tales, would of necessity shrink in the
telling.

Dakota had left Jean her copy of
Mysterious Castles of Scotland
, inscribing it
To my
friend Jean. Happy wedding. xoxo
, the “i’s” in “friend” and
“wedding” dotted with tiny hearts. In time, Jean hoped, Dakota’s
tiny, cautious handwriting would expand to fill the space it
deserved.

As for Scott and Heather, well, maybe they
had mellowed a bit after their scare. Heather had thanked everyone
politely and rescinded her threat to post one-star reviews of
Dunasheen. Scott had apologized for the episode of the Queen suite
even as he handed out business cards. He’d driven his family away
not into the sunset but into the sunrise, Dakota waving through the
back window until they’d vanished down the drive.

Now the driveway glistened like jet beyond
the open front door, where Fergie and Patrick Gilnockie stood in
quiet conversation. Jean pulled up beside them while Miranda
continued discreetly on around the corner, murmuring about
collecting coats.

Gilnockie said, “I’ve had a word with
Alasdair, but just so you’re knowing, Jean, Rab’s not confessed.
Nancy’s made a statement, though, and Fergus, and we’ve got Dakota
Krum’s statement and yours as well, agreeing as to what he said at
the old castle. We’ve found traces of blood in the stitching of his
raincoat as well, despite Nancy cleaning it.”

Beside the crisp pleats of his kilt Fergie
held a sturdy walking stick, its brass handle shaped like a sea
serpent. His eyes shone as brightly as his polished glasses, and
the white rosebud decorating his lapel had nothing on his
complexion, pale but fresh. “I can’t believe I never suspected Rab
and Nancy of, well, of anything. Alasdair even asked me if any
items had gone missing.”

“They betrayed your trust, Fergie.” Jean set
her hand on his arm. It was rock-steady.

“Nancy admitted to reading your mail and
spying on your guests,” Gilnockie went on. “In her and Rab’s own
best interests, they’re saying.”

“They deserved to participate in the
profits,” said Fergie. “Apparently they felt they weren’t meant to
participate in the risks as well.”

“Quite so,” Gilnockie agreed. “I’m thinking
Rab was seeing his chance to dispose not only of Greg MacLeod but
also, with the coincidence of the texting ‘CU’ on Greg’s card, of
Colin Urquhart. He went accidentally dropping the card in the pub,
when the lass picked it up, but like as not he went dropping it
deliberately in the car park. He was right baffled when it turned
up in Diana’s pocket, but then, Pritchard . . .”

“. . . also wanted to scapegoat Colin. That’s
my own fault.” Fergie shook his head. “Well, I hope I’m making it
up to the lad. I’ve hired him as manager. He repaired the
generator, he’s got a good head for figures, and with Diana, well,
he’ll be all right, in time.”

Maybe there would be another wedding, also in
time, Jean thought. “You’re going to be all right, too, Fergie.
You’ll make a go of Dunasheen.”

He set both his chins and his shoulders as
well. “Yes, I will. We will. Diana’s agreed to sell her Egyptian
necklace, and we’re looking into a loan arrangement for Seonaid’s
portrait. I’ll be donating the Crusader Coffer to Brenda’s
museum—it’s an interesting artifact in its own right, eh,
Jean?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’ll offer the area round the chapel as an
archaeological field school, hoping we can establish the bones as
Tormod’s. The old church deserves an excavation as well.”

“It does that.” Gilnockie turned to Jean.
“Again, my best wishes to you and Alasdair on your marriage.”

“Thank you. And good wishes to you on your
retirement. I guess you’ll be limbering up a fishing pole or
chasing golf balls, not criminals.”

The peaceful depths of his smile, the sort
that passed all understanding, made Miranda’s look agitated. “No.
I’ll be joining the community at Moray Abbey, to try my vocation as
a Benedictine.”

Jean stared. D.C.I. Gilnockie was going to
enter a monastery? Well if that didn’t—explain a lot. Again she
stammered her good wishes.

“I’ll be praying for the souls of Tormod,
Rory, and Seonaid,” he said to her and Fergie both. “Perhaps all
they’ve ever wanted was acknowledgment. That’s what most folk are
wanting, acknowledgment. And I’ll be praying for the Finlays as
well.” Still smiling, he walked away into the sunlight that had
transformed Skye's Calvinist gray to ecumenical color.

“Here I thought Alasdair and I were making a
commitment,” Jean said as Gilnockie’s attenuated shape dwindled
down the driveway.

“It takes all kinds, and thank goodness for
that.” Fergie cocked his head to the side. “Was he implying he
believed in our local ghosts and spirits?”

“If you believe in the Holy Ghost, then . .
.”

Miranda swept down the hall, Diana and Brenda
just behind. “It’s time, Jean.”

If impending execution concentrated the mind,
then impending marriage concentrated the heart. Jean’s shimmied up
and down her chest—
ooooh
—and again she flexed her knees.

Fergie set off into the cold if brilliant
day. Miranda draped Jean’s coat over her shoulders. Brenda handed
her a nosegay of roses wrapped with tartan ribbon, slightly larger
than the one Miranda already held. Adjusting her diamond ring so
that it caught the sunlight and sent flashes of rainbow across the
old stone walls, Jean began her last journey as a single,
independent, lonely entity.

She glanced back at the house to see the two
dogs, brushed to within an inch of their lives, sitting in the
drawing room window. In the beetling window of the Charlie suite
sat Dougie, ears pricked like the famous Egyptian statue of
Bastet.

Fergie walked along, swinging his walking
stick rather than leaning on it, every inch the dapper laird. “The
family cradle’s all right for the Campbell-Reids’ bairn, is it
now?”

“Rebecca and Michael said she slept all
night. Good vibes, I’m sure.”

Beyond the garden wall, the chapel bell rang
merrily. Diana opened the gate. Brenda closed it. Funny, Jean
wasn’t cold at all. In fact, she was contemplating grabbing a bit
of ice from a nearby birdbath and rubbing it over her face—or even
dropping it down the back of her neck—when they emerged from the
woods to see the chapel in all its intricate glory rising before
them.

A few people moved through the porch into the
building. The open door emitted the sound of a jig or reel played
on a harp, happy, resilient music.

Michael stood to one side, his bagpipes
beneath his arm, the drones lying against his shoulder sporting
tartan ribbons on the ends. He, too, made a handsome picture in
kilt and jacket, and his Alasdair-blue eyes danced. “Here she is,”
he called to his other half.

Rebecca strolled across the grass, her long
tartan skirt flowing behind her, reminding Jean of Seonaid’s ghost.
She’d been happy here, if guilty as well. Maybe now, after all
these years, she’d found peace. Maybe Gilnockie was right, and
recognition had eased the ghosts of Dunasheen into eternal
rest.

“Look what I found by the little gravestone
beneath the tree. Alasdair’s impressed.” Rebecca crossed Fergie’s
palm with a gold coin. There was no need, and no time, for her to
explain how she, too, had paranormal abilities, her small mind
connecting with the larger one . . .

Oh
. Jean, Brenda, Miranda, and Diana
all bent forward as Fergie brushed a few remaining grains of dirt
from the coin. One gleaming side read “Sydney Mint, Australia, One
Sovereign.” The other displayed the sober, proper profile of Queen
Victoria. “It’s been working its way through the soil all these
years,” Jean said.

“If the bones aren’t Tormod’s,” said Fergie,
“then how . . . well, later, eh? When we’re not hastening to the
wedding.” He tucked the coin away in his sporran and hurried to the
vestry door.