LITMIR.BIZ

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“Um, yeah, I’ll call Fergus MacDonald, the owner.”

      Realization swept the man’s face. “She’s not a servant, Heather.”

      Heather’s face knotted in suspicion. “Who is she, then?”

      Jean bit back a tart, Someone who can hear you just fine, and said only, “I’m Jean Fairbairn, I’m a guest here, but we’ve got kind of a situation so I answered the door. The doorbell doesn’t work, by the way. We found that out this aft—”

      “A situation?” Scott demanded.

      Heather placed her hand protectively on the child’s wool-encased shoulder.

      “Someone’s had a fall down at the old castle. I need to—”

      “I’m sorry to hear that. How about we just let ourselves in, okay?” Scott threw the door open and headed back outside. His hiking boots, so new they squeaked, were already muddy—black smudges traced his path in and out.

      I’ve already let you in. But that didn’t matter. Taking two steps backwards, sweat trickling down her back beneath her shirt, Jean said, “Great. Fergus or his daughter Diana will be along any min—”

      “We booked a suite,” said Heather. “A king-size for us, a single for Dakota here.”

      The child spoke up. “Please tell me the bathroom’s not down the hall. One of my girlfriends stayed in a B and B and said the bathroom was down the hall and you had to share with strangers.”

      “It’s all en suite. That is, the bathroom and toilet’s attached to the bedroom.”

      Two pairs of eyes stared at her.

      “Here, a bathroom can be just that, a room with a bath, it doesn’t automatically come with a toilet.”

      Through the doorway Jean saw Scott pulling bag after bag from the trunk of an SUV. Beyond him, headlights jounced over the ribbon of tarmac that passed for a driveway. Was that the constable from Kinlochroy? It seemed like twenty hours since Alasdair called, but it was probably only twenty minutes.

      Yes, the reflective stripe on the side of a small, square all-terrain vehicle caught the lights of the house as it drove by. Would the local arm of the law reach as far as the old castle? The designation “all-terrain” was more hope than fact when it came to this rough ground.

      “Nice meeting you,” Jean said, “I’ve got to—oh!”

      A woman swanned down the helix of the staircase, her feet in their chaste low-heeled pumps skimming the stone treads, her body swaying like a willow wand in black pants and white Aran sweater, her blonde hair flowing in satin waves away from the red roses blooming in her cheeks. An angel descending Jacob’s ladder would look like a chimpanzee in comparison. “Did I hear… Oh, hello there! You’re the Krum family, I expect. I’m Diana MacDonald. Ceud mille failte!”

      “Say what?” Heather’s lipstick had worn off, leaving only the darker red of the liner tracing her lips, so that her grimace was that of a cartoon character.

      “A thousand million welcomes,” said Dakota. “That’s Gaelic. They speak Gaelic here.”

      “Aren’t you a clever lass!” Diana’s smile cast sunshine throughout the room. “Thank you, Jean, for playing hostess. I apologize for the broken doorbell.”

      “No problem,” Jean said, backpedaling even more rapidly. She hated to miss Diana in action, but she hated even more to leave Alasdair alone in the dark with a—situation.

      “Is that Mr. Krum?” Diana asked.

      Scott tramped in, juggling a matched set of leather-trimmed bags and suitcases. “Oh, hi.”

      “Leave the luggage,” said Diana, “We’ll organize it. Your accommodations are in the William Wallace suite, a double bedroom and a foldaway bed in the sitting room. Drinks are at half-past-six in the library, and dinner at half-past-seven. This way, please.”

      “I could use a drink after those roads. Jeez, our driveway’s wider than the one marked as two-lane.” Scott dumped the luggage and Heather guided Dakota to the stairs.

      “Would you care for tea and biscuits just now?” Diana asked, already several steps up.

      “Biscuits?” repeated Heather.

      “She means cookies,” Dakota said.

      “Tea,” said Scott. “Yeah, whatever.”

      Free at last, Jean skated back down the hall. Would Miss Dakota point out that William Wallace had probably never set foot on Skye? No matter, his name was marketable, and if Diana understood anything, it was her market. How odd, then, that she’d missed the Krums’ arrival, especially when she’d been expecting them.

      Diana’s delicate Scottish complexion was always rose-pink, but now it was positively crimson. She must have been embarrassed at missing her cue or in a rush or both. Maybe she’d been in her office, tied hand and foot with tape the color of her cheeks, the kind spooled out in vast quantities by both heritage watchdogs with their lists of permissible changes and heritage advocates with their lists of grants-in-aid—well no, Diana ran the house, Fergie wrestled with red tape.

      The sound of multiple footsteps on stone treads and Diana’s soothing voice faded into the upper reaches of the house. “The weather’s been dreadful but we’re expecting it to clear tomorrow, just in time for our New Year’s Eve celebration.”

      What the lady of the house hadn’t been expecting was an accident at the old castle. But Fergie could tell her about that. Jean slid to a stop in the cloak room, where she managed to pull on her wellies and button her coat, wrap her wool scarf around her head, and thrust her hands into her gloves, somehow all at the same time.

      A flashlight clutched to her chest, she shut the door and raced across the courtyard. Alasdair, I’m coming! The lights reflecting from the damp-sheened cobblestones created an optical illusion and she stumbled, then righted herself. The crash of the ironwork gate behind her reverberated into the distance. The very silent distance.

      Jean’s light-adapted eyes found the night doubly dark. At the far side of the gravel perimeter, the interior light of a small square car looked like a klieg light illuminating a human shape in a peaked police cap. She homed in on the—well, not the cavalry. Its scout.

      “Hi. I’m Jean Fairbairn. I’ll show you down to the old castle.”

      “P.C. Thomson here,” the constable replied, not at all startled by her appearance. But then, the slam of the gate would have waked the inhabitants of the graves at the old church. Settling his fluorescent yellow jacket over his chest, he turned toward her. As far as she could tell in the gloom, he was about fifteen, and a foot taller than she was. If police work didn’t pan out, he could get a job selling toothpaste—his smile shone with a light of its own. “No worries,” he went on, “I’m a local lad, I’ve visited the old castle many a time. What’s happened?”

      “A guest, Greg MacLeod, walked down to the old castle at sunset. He wanted to go to the ruined church. We—my fiancé, Alasdair Cameron, and me—we told him how to get there by going along the beach. Then we met his wife. She was looking for him. She went down to the castle and we heard her scream. Alasdair went right back down there. That was twenty, maybe even thirty minutes ago.” Jean danced backwards across the gravel, toward the path.

      Thomson seized a bag from his car, slammed the door, fired up his flashlight, and headed out. “The ruins are dangerous, right enough. Kinlochroy Council and Lord Dunasheen have been going at it for years now, who’s responsible for shoring up the place, planting danger signs, and the like. The old laird, he let the place go rather than spend on its upkeep, squeezing his pounds so tight you could hear the Queen’s picture squealing.”

      Good lad. He could walk, talk, and even make jokes simultaneously. Whether she could was another matter—she had to adopt a part jog, part forward stumble to keep up with him. “Entropy tends to outrun

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