LITMIR.BIZ

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heels clicking along from the other. With a jingle of tags, the dogs got to their paws and stretched.

      The heels arrived first, and turned out to be Diana’s virtuous pumps. Above them she now wore wide-legged white pants and a basic black top set off by a stunning Egyptian collar necklace of lapis lazuli and turquoise beads, the shades of the sea around Skye. An aura not just of class but of perfume hung around her, something fresh, woodsy, and understated. With her own polished version of the MacDonald smile, she announced. “Dinner will be served in ten minutes. I’ve set out place cards and menus.”

      And had probably calligraphed each one personally, Jean thought with more humor than envy. Still, she couldn’t help a second look at the white, raw silk pants. She’d never owned a pair of even denim white pants, not with all the hazards of tomato sauce, blueberries, and plain old dirt.

      Scott turned toward Diana with a slightly snockered grin. “That’s a great necklace. Have you ever had it appraised?”

      “It’s a family heirloom,” Diana told him, which didn’t answer his question.

      Heather bristled but said nothing. Dakota looked from parental expression to parental expression and rolled her eyes. After a brief pause, the room filled with classically trained voices singing, “Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus, ex Maria virgine…”

      A man appeared in the door behind Diana and Heather deflated into a snockered smile of her own. Even Jean stared. Skin like milk and honey, large, rich, brown eyes, black hair in thick waves, smoothly rounded cheeks and solid jaw topping a tall, slender body…oh. He was wearing a uniform and carried a peaked cap beneath his arm. P.C. Sanjay Thomson, revealed in all his glory.

      “Hullo, Di, Fergus,” he said, white teeth shining in a crescent of a smile that showed not the least trace of self-consciousness. But then, he’d probably been causing hearts to flutter all his life. He aimed the smile at the Krums and said, “Hullo again. Saw you at the pub, didn’t I?”

      “Oh yeah,” said Heather.

      Stepping up beside Thomson, if not exactly basking in reflected glory, Alasdair offered a polite nod to all and sundry. Jean was the sundry, she supposed, since the nod warmed to a half-smile by the time it reached her.

      She ran a quick assessment of Alasdair’s face, its pallor beneath the weather-burnished scarlet and the set of each wrinkle, like crevasses in a glacier. His posture was neither more or less erect than usual. If the investigation had made any headway—finding the murder weapon, for example—she saw no evidence of it in his stern expression. He’d been able to do no more than set Portree to work securing the scene and checking out the vicinity.

      The dogs tail-wagged their way to Sanjay’s black-clad legs. He squatted down, perhaps warming his hands in their fur as much as petting them. “Hullo there, Somerled, Bruce. Good lads, aren’t you now?”

      “P.C. Thomson,” said Diana, with a slight shooing gesture. “We’ve laid on sandwiches and tea in the staff sitting room.”

      “Righty-ho, Di. Come along, lads.” The young man and his furry friends headed off toward the kitchen.

      Alasdair eyed Diana, head tilted, waiting to see if she designated him fish or fowl.

      “Dinner in ten minutes, Mr. Cameron,” she said, and wafted away.

      Fergus rubbed his hands together, only the slightest of edges to his smile. “Dinner! Steak pie!”

      “Say what?” asked Heather.

      “Look at it as a kind of beef Wellington,” Jean said. “Bits of meat beneath a crust.”

      “Yes, yes,” Fergie said. “Nancy’s food is to die for, as you Americans would say. Let’s get on down the hall, shall we? Hospitality being a fine Highland tradition and all.”

      Yeah, Jean thought with a glance at Alasdair, hospitality, and treachery and betrayal.

      A spark in his return glance showed that he was thinking the same thing.

      Chapter Eight

      Jean finally felt warm again. Nothing like a good meal cooked and then served by Nancy Finlay to reset the internal thermostat.

      She folded her napkin and smoothed it down next to her dessert plate, empty except for a strawberry stem. Maybe it was a sign of desensitization, but murder or no grisly murder, child or no put-upon child, she’d consumed the delicious soup, fish, meat and veg, trifle and fruit, with good appetite and moderate sips of a less than sophisticated but good-natured Burgundy.

      So had Alasdair, no doubt needing fuel after his outdoor vigil. Now he, too, lingered at the table, toying not with his napkin but his watch. Surely it was eight-thirty by now. Waiting for Gilnockie was like waiting for Godot.

      Diana’s elegantly lettered cards had placed Fergie at the head of the table—if you defined “head” as the seat closest to the door—and Diana at the foot, with Jean next to Scott, Alasdair next to Heather, and Dakota between, close enough to her mother that Heather could indicate the proper fork and insist on the child eating at least one Brussels sprout.

      Each patch of dining territory was generous enough to make Jean acutely aware two places were missing, one for Tina, one for Greg. But even their chairs had been whisked away, out of sight.

      Alasdair had greeted the Krums with his usual grave courtesy, answered some of Scott’s questions about security issues, and held up his end of mostly Fergie’s conversation about history, language, myth, and culture. In the spirit of soldiering on, Jean had contributed anecdotes along the lines of the past being another country, one that you probably wouldn’t want to visit. But mostly she watched her thoughts playing billiards, clacking from who, to where, to when, to why. Even Fergie’s genial expression occasionally grew vacant and his face turned to the windows, blank sheets of black ice facing the coastline and the man lying cold if not neglected below the even blanker windows of the old castle.

      Now Diana rose from her chair, initiating a general movement upward. “We have a library of films available in the drawing room, and satellite television as well. I’ll be serving coffee or cocoa.”

      “Is the single-malt still on tap?” asked Scott.

      “Yes, it is,” Diana said.

      Heather said, “Scotch isn’t on tap. Beer, that’s on tap.”

      “It’s just an expression,” Scott retorted, adding in an audible mutter, “Jeez.”

      As Diana eased the Krums toward the hall door, the door of the butler’s pantry and back passage to the kitchen swung open. Inside stood a youngish man with a wiry frame who had to be Lionel Pritchard, Dunasheen’s manager. His small head, eyes like buttons, sleek brown hair edging a receding hairline, and sleek brown moustache edging an almost lipless mouth reminded Jean—unjustly, she informed herself—of a snake.

      His beckoning finger drew Fergie from the table to the doorway, where he said in a rasp of a whisper Jean could barely overhear, “The phone’s going again and again, reporters asking questions.”

      Shaking his head, Fergie replied in a hoarse whisper of his own, “Tell them we don’t know anything and refer them to the police.”

      In the front of the room, Scott asked Diana, “Does the satellite feed include football? Not your soccer, American football. It’s that time of year, the college bowls, the pro play-offs…”

      “Only you,” said Heather, “would come all the way to Scotland to watch football. Let it go, already.”

      “This way,” Diana said, her gesture that of a traffic cop—move along, move along.

      In the back of the room, Pritchard hissed, “I’m sure the police are saying what they can. But the reporters are making a meal of it, talking about ‘the stately home murder.’ I expect Dunasheen will be on Page One of The Sunburn tomorrow morning. Although there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Just as long as they spell ‘Dunasheen’ correctly,

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