LITMIR.BIZ

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screen. “I can see the caption now, ‘Peace in the eye of the storm,’ or maybe ‘Scottish Sleeping Beauty.’”

      I laughed. “More like, ‘Too tired to dance with the metalheads.’”

      “Is that a hint? I was just coming to see if you were waiting for someone to ask you to dance.” He waved an arm at the small crowd gyrating in front of the bandstand.

      I loved dancing with McCarthy, who threw himself into the activity with such gusto that he always made me feel like I could fly. But right now I felt more like flopping than flying. “Maybe we should save this dance for the ceilidh tomorrow night.”

      McCarthy nodded, his attention focused on the band. “Aileen hasn’t come back from the police station yet?”

      “Nope.” I found myself twisting my hands in my skirt and smoothed the flowing fabric quickly. “I hope they don’t pick her as their prime suspect.”

      “God help them if they do.” He tore his eyes away from the band. “Does that mean you’re stranded?”

      “Yeah. I was going to go home with Pete, but he hasn’t come back yet either. I’m taking that as a good sign—if anyone can keep the lid on Aileen, it’s Pete.” I leaned over and knocked on a wooden fence post beside me. “Knock on wood.”

      McCarthy snapped a few pictures of the Twisted Armpits, who were clearly struggling without the guiding influence of Aileen. Another good reason to pass on the dancing.

      “Want me to spin you home, then?” he said. “I’ve got all the photos I need.”

      “Yes, please.” I flung my bag over one shoulder and followed him to the exit. We ran into a slight delay as several police officers checked out each person who was leaving the park. They took our names and consulted a list they were compiling of everyone who had been at the event. Luckily, both McCarthy and I had been questioned already, so we were free to leave.

      We hopped into McCarthy’s bright yellow Mustang and he peeled out of the parking lot. I double-checked my seat belt and leaned my head back on the headrest. “It’s been a long day.”

      “Murder to the tune of bagpipes, with a chest of tartan bow ties on the side.” He straightened the yellow bow tie he still wore. “I made it through the entire day with this one.” He flung an arm over the seat to rummage in the backseat. He pulled out a white paper bag and handed it to me. “I got you that signed copy of Over the Sea to Skye, like I said I would. If you’re really tired, don’t start it tonight. It’ll keep you up to the wee hours.”

      “Thanks.” I pulled the book out of the bag and flipped it open to admire the autograph on the title page. Morris Hart had signed his name with a flourish worthy of the bestselling author he was. “I know I won’t be able to sleep until Pete and Aileen get home. This will be just the thing to pass the time.”

      McCarthy dropped me off at the curb with a kiss and a cheery wave goodbye. He waited until I walked up the porch steps and unlocked the door before zooming off down the street. I watched his Mustang disappear around the corner and then went inside and locked the door behind me.

      My house seemed so quiet after the persistent noise of the skirling bagpipes and blaring guitars I’d been hearing all day. I dropped onto the window bench beside the front door and soaked in the peaceful silence. The high-ceilinged rooms of my nineteenth-century house exuded a bit of the grace and charm of a bygone era. I tried to encourage that illusion with the comfortable furnishings in the more public areas of the first floor, with an antique dresser here or a working spinning wheel there. A classy silhouette of my muse, Betsy Ross, hung on the wall in my fitting room, which would have been the formal dining room if Pete, Aileen, and I had felt the need for such an extravagance. For the three of us, the stenciled white table in the homey kitchen was all we needed.

      My orange cat, Mohair, pulled me out of my reverie with her plaintive meows. She stropped against my ankles to convince me that I had abandoned her for all time, instead of just the one day. I scooped her up and carried her into the kitchen, where I filled her bowls and then settled down with some peanut butter crackers and orange slices for a light supper. Too tired to think about either sewing or murder, I put all thoughts of Aileen out of my head, pulled out my new autographed thriller, and started in on page one.

      I was soon immersed in the palace intrigue that filled the opening pages of Over the Sea to Skye. The novel opened with a dramatization of the true events surrounding the overthrow of James II of England, aka James VII of Scotland, who was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and fled to France. His grandson, Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, gathered the Scottish clans in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and challenged King George II of Great Britain for the throne. I had just gotten to their crushing defeat at the Battle of Culloden, which dashed Bonnie Prince Charlie’s chances of restoring the Stuart line to the throne, when I heard the front door closing.

      It was Pete. He was alone. He dragged into the kitchen and dropped into a chair at the table. He ran both hands through his long brown hair and then looked at me. “They’re holding Aileen at the jail. I tried to post bail, but they wouldn’t let me.”

      I filled a glass at the sink and plunked it down on the table in front of him. “What are they holding her for? You stopped her from swinging her guitar at the cops. She went quietly in the end.”

      He sighed and reached for the glass of water. “Yeah, she went quietly, all right. She completely clammed up at the station when they started asking about her relationship with Ladd. Wouldn’t say a single word. When the officer told her she’d be arrested if she didn’t start talking, she started quoting Ecclesiastes: ‘For everything there is a season.’ Who would have guessed that she knew the whole passage? I would have busted out laughing if it weren’t for the seriousness of the issue. After fifteen minutes or so of ‘…a time to keep silence, and a time to speak,’ the officer got fed up and told her she was being detained on suspicion of murder.”

      I sat down next to him at the table. “What’s gotten into her?”

      “I dunno, she feels like her privacy is being violated or something? She’s choosing to go to jail rather than talk about this Ladd Foster dude. What’s up with that?”

      What indeed? I filled Pete in on Aileen’s reaction to seeing Ladd at the Highland Games. “She obviously has some history with him. I thought she was going to kill him with her bare hands when he was playing her guitar.”

      “Well, anyone fool enough to touch Aileen’s gear without permission deserves what he’s got coming to him.” The short-lived grin faded from his face. “You don’t think she really did kill him, do you?”

      I didn’t even want to go there. “What do the police think? That’s what matters.”

      Pete got up to place his glass in the sink. He turned back to face me. “Since when does the opinion of the Laurel Springs Police Department make the slightest bit of difference to you? If you think she’s innocent, you’ll move heaven and earth in your quest for proof. Right?”

      I could have laughed at the plaintive note in his final word, but this wasn’t a laughing matter. Pete obviously wanted Aileen to be proven innocent, and he was counting on me to do it. I hoped I could live up to his faith in me.

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