Dorothy Cowling and Marcia, real librarians in Calgary, asked to have their names in this book, but the characters do not resemble either of them in the least—eh?
Finally, I owe an enormous debt to my editor, Ellen Edwards, who helped me make this a far better story; to my agent, Nancy Yost, for wisdom on the bad days and chuckles on the good ones; and to Bob, my husband, encourager, and friend.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
MacLaren Yarbrough:
Georgia magistrate and co-owner of Yarbrough Feed, Seed and Nursery
Joe Riddley Yarbrough:
MacLaren’s husband, co-owner of Yarbrough Feed, Seed and Nursery
Travelers on Gilroy’s Highland Tour
Joyce Underwood:
tour guide
Watty:
bus driver
Laura MacDonald:
MacLaren’s young traveling companion, also from Hopemore
Jim and Brandi Gordon:
business tycoon and his wife from the North Georgia mountains
Ken and Sherry Boyd:
Savannah restaurant owners, musicians, and Scottish enthusiasts
Marcia Inch and Dorothy Cowling:
Calgary librarians with Scottish heritage
Residents of Auchnagar, Scotland
Gavin and Kitty MacGorrie:
Laird of Auchnagar and his American wife
Norwood Hardin:
Kitty’s brother and perpetual guest
Eileen Lamont:
proprietress of Heather Glen guest house
Roddy Lamont:
Eileen’s grown son
Alex Carmichael:
owner of village art gallery
Father Ewan:
village priest
Ian Geddys:
village joiner
Barbara Geddys:
postmistress, Ian’s sister
Morag MacBeth:
child who cares for Barbara’s animals
Sergeant Murray and Constable Roy:
Auchnagar police
1
Roddy Lamont charged into the dining room of the Heather Glen guesthouse, interrupting our midday dinner. “Father? Father! Fit’s to be done wi’ the coffins in the narthex, then?” His petulant face was flushed and beads of perspiration dotted his forehead beneath a mop of ruddy curls. He must have run all the way up the hill.
We’d been in the village of Auchnagar for less than twenty-four hours, but I remembered enough of my morning lesson in broad Scots to know that “fit” meant “what.”
Father Ewan, who ate his Friday midday dinner at Heather Glen on his housekeeper’s day off, was a tall stocky man who enjoyed his food. He rose from the table with obvious reluctance. “Coffins? Whose are they?”
Roddy’s shoulders rose in an eloquent shrug. “I just went in to mop the narthex, and the bl”—a quick look at his mother and he finished smoothly—“oomin’ place is full of coffins. I was workin’ in the back, y’ ken, so I never saw them comin’ in, but you shoulda told me if we’re havin’ a funeral—much less two.” He pulled a blue handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his face. His mother twisted her hands under her apron and glowed with pride at how seriously Roddy was finally taking a job, until he added in indignation, “I’m off to the bike rally at three, and this has put me behind.”
Father Ewan looked with regret at his gooseberries topped with vanilla custard. He’d already said how fond he was of that dessert. But he laid down his napkin and gave those of us around the table a slight bow. “Excuse me, but I’d better go see what this is about. I’ve had no notice of anyone dying hereabouts.” He gave me a courteous nod. “If you’re still interested, I can take you on that wee look ’round the chapel as soon as I sort this out, Mrs. MacLaren. Come along when you’re done with your meal.”
“It’s Yarbrough,” I corrected him. “MacLaren Yarbrough.”
“And it’s Judge Yarbrough,” Laura MacDonald added—unnecessarily, I thought. Since the fact that I’m a magistrate back in Georgia mattered not one whit on a bus tour through the Scottish Highlands, I hadn’t mentioned it before. It makes some folks so nervous to discover I’m a judge that I sometimes wonder what undisclosed crimes lurk in their pasts.
“We’re going for a hill walk after dinner,” Laura reminded me.
Since “a hill walk” in Scotland entails a strenuous climb up narrow mountain trails, I said firmly, “I’ll skip the walk and visit the church.”
“Well, come along when you’re done, then.” The priest was already heading for the door. “This shouldna take long—there’s obviously been some kind of mistake. It’ll soon be sorted.”
I put down my napkin. “Why don’t I come with you now? I can be looking at the grounds while you’re occupied.” That was a perfect excuse for me to skip the gooseberries, which lay in my bowl like pale green eyeballs. I’d been wondering how to get out of eating them.
I trotted after the two men as they strode out the back door and down the hill. Roddy was still full of grievance. “I saved cleanin’ the narthex ’til the last, y’ ken, so I could mop the flair and front steps, then leave them to dry while I came up for my dinner. I must have been Hooverin’ at the back when Ian brought them in, but you’d think he’d have the sense to give me a shout. He shouldna just dump people like that and go away.”
Seeing that I was panting from trying to keep up with Roddy’s long legs, Father Ewan waved for him to stop opposite the schoolhouse halfway down the hill—or “brae”—and reached into the pocket of his black suit for a cell phone.
“Stop a wee whiley and let me give Ian a ring. Ian Geddys is our local joiner,” he added to me as he punched in a number.
As he sidled away to talk, I asked Roddy, “What’s a joiner?”
Roddy—who never stood if he could lean—propped himself against a house that abutted the sidewalk across from the school and gave me the look that folks from central Georgia, back in the States, would give somebody who asked, “What’s a bird dog?”
“Y’ dinna have joiners in America?” Clearly, he wondered how we managed to survive.
I shook my head.
He reached down the neck of his gray pullover and brought up a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. The way the sweater sagged, that must be a frequent habit. He held the pack out to me, and when I refused, he took time to light up and exhale slowly. The way his brow was furrowed, he was trying to figure out how best to explain something obvious to an ignoramus. “He’s a sort of builder, y’ ken? He makes cupboards, lays carpet, puts up wallpaper—he joins things.” He flapped one hand to conclude the explanation.
Father Ewan snapped his phone shut, stowed it in a pocket, and came back to us with a broad smile. “False alarm, lad. The coffins are stage props. Ian is out, but Barbara was home for her dinner, and she said the coffins are for that play the Americans are putting on tomorrow night.” He nodded my way.
Guilt by association made me say quickly, “I don’t know anything about coffins, and we aren’t putting on the play. It’s just being put on while we’re here. Our tour guide wrote it.”
“That must be the way of it, then.” Roddy nodded with enlightenment. “The lass said to take them to the chapel, and that dunce Ian didn’t ask what she meant by that.” He squinted down at me through another cloud of smoke. “Folk not from here look at the sign that says St. Catherine’s Chapel and think it’s called ‘the chapel’—never knowin’ our lot’s got the chapel and St. Catherine’s is just St. Catherine’s—not the chapel a-tall. Used to be Church of England, but nowadays it’s just a meeting hall.”
“I’m Presbyterian.” I felt a continuing need to distance myself as far as possible from those “folk not from here” he was ridiculing.
“Och, then ye’ll be wantin’ the kirk, down by the manse woods.” He pointed to a steeple off to our right, obviously glad to get all that cleared up for my benefit. Then he added to the priest, “Shall I shift them to one side, just, until Ian can fetch them? I’ve still got that flair to mop.”
Roddy might not be good at working, but he was a master at complaint.
The priest hesitated, looking back up the brae toward Heather Glen. I suspected he was debating the possibility of returning for his gooseberries. Instead, he turned on his heel and said in the tone of one successfully resisting temptation, “That’s the way, lad. I’ll just give you a hand.”
At the bottom of the hill, we turned left onto the walk that led to the small Roman Catholic church. I don’t know when I’ve seen a prettier approach to a place of worship. The chapel itself was built of granite, like everything else in the village, but someone had rounded the outer edges of the stones just enough to replace severity with gentleness. A simple tower rose in the center and ended in a stone cross. A small rose window was set above arched front doors. Tall dark yews stood in an arc on the soft emerald lawn, arms reaching out to draw us down the walk, while welcoming masses of daffodils nodded on each side of the steps.
“Quite bonnie, aren’t they?” Roddy nodded toward the daffodils as he reached for the giant ring that opened the dark wooden door. “Mum planted them a few years back, in memory of m’ dad.”
Father Ewan motioned for me to precede him up the stone steps. “Come along in. It won’t take us but a minute to stack the boxes for Ian so Roddy can get on with his work.”
When I followed them in, I shivered in the accumulated chill of three hundred winters. The small foyer (narthex, in church language) was unheated and the floor was stone—what I could see of it. One third was covered by a long table holding pamphlets and various offering boxes. The remaining space was almost filled by two wooden boxes, one long and one short, and there was no mistaking that shape.
The narthex was dim, lit only by sunlight that filtered into the sanctuary through dark stained-glass windows and found its way through the open double doors. I inhaled that scent of holiness that fills empty places of worship and tiptoed around the boxes toward the sanctuary while Roddy and the priest shoved one box over close to the table. Behind me, I heard them cross the narthex for the other, then heard Roddy exclaim, “Hold on! There’s something in this one!”
“There can’t be,” Father Ewan protested. “Barbara said . . .”
Hinges creaked. Then Roddy exclaimed, “Who the devil is that?”
“I dinna ken,” the priest replied soberly, “but whoever it is is very dead.”
Father Ewan raised his voice and called to me—as if he hoped I hadn’t heard what they’d been saying. “You’d best go on back up to Heather Glen. I’ll show you around another time.”
He obviously wanted to spare me the sight of whoever was in that coffin, but I had to pass it to get to the front door and Roddy was too slow in lowering the lid.
I saw enough.
What was it my husband had said just before I left home? Wanting him to come along, I’d reminded him, “You promised to go everywhere with me.”
He’d replied, “I didn’t
promise
I’d go everywhere with you, Little Bit. That was a threat, and it only applies around here. I figure you can’t get into too much trouble in a country where you don’t know a soul. Presumably you won’t feel obligated to endanger your life trying to solve the problems of everybody in Scotland, and you aren’t likely to be stumbling over dead bodies on a bus tour.”
And now here I stood, in a chilly church in the heart of the eastern Highlands, with a member of our tour group lying dead at my feet.
2
Ten days before, I’d stared down at two suitcases lying on our guest-room bed ready for vacation. The trouble was, they weren’t heading on the same vacation.
“You promised to go everywhere with me,” I reminded my husband as he came in with a stack of clothes.
He didn’t say a word.
Seeing that he only carried one pair of jeans and two polo shirts, I added, “You’re gonna need more clothes than that for five days, and those shirts are blue. You packed green socks.”
Joe Riddley shoved his clothes into the smaller bag with no concern whatsoever about wrinkles. “Fashion consultants will be left on shore. Where are my old sneakers?”
“Moldering in the back of your closet. But don’t pretend you didn’t hear what I said at first. And don’t think I’ll forget what I’m talking about if you don’t answer me.”
“Hope springs eternal.” He headed back to our room.
I listened to make sure he was still rummaging in his closet, then fetched a small first-aid kit from a drawer and tucked it into his bag where he’d find it the first time he changed his shirt. I also sent up a quick prayer that they’d need nothing stronger than Band-Aids and antiseptic cream before the week was out.
In a minute he returned with another pair of jeans and two yellow shirts, scruffy sneakers tucked under one arm. Not for an instant did he hint that the extra jeans and shirts were my idea—just dumped them into his suitcase like he’d planned to add them all along.
“I didn’t
promise
to go everywhere with you.” Finally he gave the answer I would remember so clearly. “That was a threat, and it only applies around here. I figure you can’t get into much trouble in a country where you don’t know a soul. Presumably you won’t feel obligated to endanger your life trying to solve the problems of everybody in Scotland, and you aren’t likely to be stumbling over dead bodies on a bus tour. Besides, Laura’s levelheaded, and she’s promised to keep an eye on you.”