Bonnie of Evidence (17 page)

“Lower your right shoulder and lift your chin a little,” Alex instructed as he set up his shot. “Th
aaa
t’s it. Nice one. Now let’s get a shot of that famous profile. Good. Good. Can you manage a little more of a Heathcliff vibe? Less smolder and more anguished brooding?”

“This is as anguished as it gets,” muttered Erik without moving his lips. “Will you just take the damn picture?”

Cameron grinned as he regarded the duo. “Is the guy with the famous profile a celebrity or something?”

“I guess you could say that. He’s a cover model for romance novels. At least, he used to be. I don’t know how long he’s been out of the business.”

“Okay. Maybe that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Why he looks so familiar. I swear I’ve seen him before, but I can’t place his face. You suppose I’ve seen him on the cover of a paperback romance?”

“How many romance novels have you read?”

“None, but my sisters were addicted. It’s all they ever read. So I’ve seen my share of bare-chested hunks over the years.”

“That would be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t it?” I said, laughing. “You, traveling through Scotland with the hero of one of your sisters’ romance novels? Maybe you should snap your own picture of Erik so you can show your siblings what he looks like with his shirt on.”

Cameron threw a wary look crossdeck and nodded. “Yeah. Maybe I should.”

For the next fifteen minutes, as we motored down the loch’s long, narrow finger, I snapped occasional pictures of the hilly shoreline.

There was so much sameness in the scenery, however, that other than taking a few pictures of Alex and Erik and one of Cameron that he thought good enough to make into a Christmas card, I didn’t feel impelled to go hog wild with the photography. By the time the skipper turned the boat around and headed back to shore, I’d seen more than enough of Loch Ness to satisfy my curiosity. I was just a little bummed that Nessie had kept such a low profile. Dad would be so disappoint—

Commotion in the wheelhouse. A loud thump. Shouts. A piercing scream. A high-pitched whine. A grinding of gears. And in the next instant we were careening toward shore like a rocket in hyperdrive.

I was catapulted off the bench and hit the deck hard on my hands and knees.

“Grab the throttle!” came the yell from the wheelhouse.

“Is he dead?”

“It’s stuck!”

“Gimme a hand, someone!”

“Ohmigod! He’s dead!”

“I can’t budge it!”

“Outta the way! Let a real man give it a try.”

Gasps of horror.

“You broke it!”

“It wasn’t my fault!”

“Brace yourselves!”

“You mean, we can’t stop?”

Air
whooshe
d out of my lungs as Cameron heaved his body on top of mine. “Stay down! I’ll try to—”

“We’re all going to die!”

CRRRRRRRRRRRUNNNNNNNNNCH
!

ELEVEN

“
I
T WAS
N
ESSIE,”
D
AD
said breathlessly as we watched the ambulance tear out of the parking lot, siren blaring. “She showed up as a gigantic blip on the monitor. And she was right under the boat! But the skipper was too busy giving his spiel to notice what was happening on the fish finder.”

“So you pointed it out to him?” I questioned.

“Yup.”

“Which explains why we suddenly headed toward shore at warp speed?”

Dad crooked his mouth. “Not exactly. The throttle got pushed forward when the skipper passed out on top of it. And then it jammed, so we couldn’t slow down. And that Gordon fella didn’t help any when the knob came off in his hand.” He glanced toward the waterfront, where boat company personnel were milling around the wreckage of what used to be their main dock. “How many knots do you suppose we were doing when we hit that thing?”

I followed his gaze, a fist clenching in my stomach. “I don’t think I want to know.”

“Guess it’s not such a bad thing that Iowa’s landlocked,” he said upon reflection. “No docks to run into.”

Despite ramming the dock at warp speed, we’d all managed to survive the crash with only minor scrapes and bruises. The only person needing transport to the hospital was the skipper, and this, only as a precautionary measure. His vital signs had been so good that the paramedics had ruled out a heart attack and suggested his sudden fainting spell might have been a vasovagal episode triggered by extreme emotional distress.

I guess this was the first time he’d ever seen a blip the size of Delaware on his fish finder.

“I caught the whole thing on video,” Dad affirmed as he cradled his precious heap of camcorder scraps against his chest. “I could even show you what the blip looked like”—a piece of plastic casing slipped between his fingers and clattered onto the ground, prompting him to peer down at it—“if my camera was still in one piece.”

“But you’re not the only one who saw the anomaly. The captain saw it, too, right? So you can back each other up?”

“Yup. The skipper’d even be able to replay the actual footage for us”—another piece of camera casing fell to the ground—“if his fish finder was still in one piece.”

The captain’s new multifunction fish finder had been the only casualty in the accident, having crashed to the deck upon impact and disintegrated into a thousand slivers and shards.
The
Highland Queen
herself had escaped damage, save for a few more chips gouged out of her already peeling paint. She might be an eyesore, but she was apparently an indestructible eyesore.

“Could I have your attention, please?”

At the sound of Wally’s voice, we glanced toward the bus, where guests had congregated to compare their war scars and one-up each other with exaggerated tales of heroism and survival.

“Considering what many of you have just experienced, I’m not sure you want to proceed with the rest of the day’s schedule.” He stepped up into the well of the bus so we could see him better. “I’d like to see a show of hands to gauge how many of you would prefer to return to the hotel rather than have dinner at Drumnadrochit.”

“What’s for dinner if we go back to the hotel?” asked Bill Gordon.

“Will we have to wait all night for the food to be served again?” Dick Stolee called out.

“Skunk isn’t on the menu at the hotel, is it?” Alice inquired.

“Mrs. Miceli?” a voice urged nearby.

I turned around to find our coach driver standing behind me with a sheepish look on his face. He was pleasantly rotund with a shaved head, amiable personality, and narrow necktie that was splattered with what looked like tomato soup stains. His name was Calum, but I had yet to figure out if that was his first or last name. “Could I speak ta ye privately fer a minute?”

“You bet.” Leaving Dad to puzzle over the voting procedures on his own, I followed Calum to a more secluded area of the parking lot, where he took a deep breath before blurting out, “It’s gone.”

I guess I was supposed to know what that meant. “It?”

“The thing that was inside the tin box ye wanted me ta stow on the bus fer ye. It’s not there anymore.”

“The dirk?” I gasped. “The dirk is gone?”

“Is that what was inside?”

“Yes! A dirk. A really
old
dirk.”

“Sorry. I put the tin in the cooler I keep up front, and when I went ta get a bottle of water a few minutes ago, the lid was off and the tin was empty.”

I waited a beat, staring at him dumbstruck. “You stored the box in a cooler that can be accessed by everyone?”

He shrugged. “Seemed as good a place as any. Ye told me ta ‘stow’ the thing, so I did. Hey, it’s a coach, not a passenger train. Space is at a premium. If ye’d wanted it kept totally out of sight, I assume ye would have asked me ta
hide
it instead of stow it. There’s a world of difference in the meaning of those two words.”

All the coach drivers on the tour circuit, and we had to hire the one with superior knowledge of four-letter transitive verbs.

“Nuts.” I trained a look across the parking lot. One of the guests had obviously made off with the knife, but the question was, which one? “Did you happen to see any of the guests open the cooler?”

He shook his head. “We’re down a few bottles of water, but I haven’t noticed who’s been taking it. Since it’s free fer the taking, there’s no reason ta keep track. But I have ta tell ye, Mrs. Miceli, I rarely have theft on my coach, so this surprises me.”

I’d like to say it surprised me, but after what Isobel had pulled, I felt as if the floodgates had been thrown wide open. “Our thief certainly worked quickly.”

“Probably happened this morning when guests were boarding. The thief opens the cooler thinking ta stock up on water ta wash down some pills and ends up taking yer dirk as well. Do ye know why any of yer guests might want the thing?”

I thought back to the scene in the library last night, when Bernice and Dolly nearly came to blows over which one of them should take ownership of it. “There are a couple of people who might like to prove it’s worth something, but I’m not about to accuse either one of them of stealing without some evidence to back it up.”

“How do ye feel about circumstantial evidence?” He pulled a plastic bottle out of his jacket pocket. “Keep yer eyes out fer a guest who’s carrying a 23-milliliter bottle of our Thistle brand water, and ye might find yerself a thief.”

The bottle was an ergonomically shaped mini in a bilious shade of lime green.

Exactly like the one Bill Gordon had yanked out of his fanny pack less than an hour ago.

_____

“What do you suggest we do, bella? Strip search the man?”

“No! I don’t want to see him naked. I just want to apply enough pressure to make him cough up the knife.”

Etienne and I were headed down the staircase to the library, where, at any moment, Mom would be announcing the day’s highly anticipated geocaching results. We’d arrived back from Drumnadrochit only a half-hour ago, so we were in something of a mad dash. We were thrilled that the majority had voted to stick with the schedule, however, because between the cuisine, the bagpipers, and the steady flow of Scotch whiskey, most of us had found a way to cope with the fright of our disastrous boat cruise.

Etienne slowed his steps as we approached the ground floor. “Have you any idea if Mr. Gordon is familiar with the history attached to the dirk?”

“Don’t know, but he apparently collects ancient Scottish weaponry, so he might be more knowledgeable than any of us realize. I’m betting that if the knife stays missing, it’ll eventually show up as the centerpiece of Bill Gordon’s collection.”

“Even with the dreaded curse looming over it?”

I rolled my eyes. “Trust me. Bill Gordon is the kind of guy who’s a lot more interested in the monetary value of an artifact than in a dubious curse invoked by a man who’s been dead for three hundred years.” I flashed a toothy smile. “You can quote me on that.”

He opened the stairwell door. “I might warn you against being too cavalier about the world of metaphysics, bella. Mysterious things can happen, many of which we’re never able to explain.”

I stepped into the lobby area and threw a long look toward the library. “Well, if you ask me, the only mysterious thing about Hamish Maccoull’s dirk going missing is where Bill Gordon has hidden it.”

“I should think you’d be happy to be rid of the thing.”

That brought me up short. “Why would I be happy to be rid of an historic relic that belonged to Nana’s most notorious relative?”

“Because, my darling”—he gave my chin a little pinch—“it’s cursed.”

“Comin’ through!” shouted Bernice from the far end of the corridor. She was charging toward us with arms pumping, a body length ahead of her fellow team members. “Look lively, you slackers. It’s wind sprints that’ll keep us competitive.”

Etienne and I jumped out of the way as they barreled past us—Cameron, red-faced from exertion, Lucille, huffing and puffing, and Dolly, swiveling her shapely hips in a speeded-up version of a beauty pageant walk.

“Mr. Dasher!” Etienne called when they’d passed.

Without breaking stride, Cameron U-turned back in our direction, followed by Lucille and Dolly, who U-turned with him. “You don’t need to follow me, ladies,” he gasped out as he paused beside us, head bent and hands braced on his thighs. “Catch up with Bernice. Save me a seat.”

The women hesitated for only a heartbeat before sprinting toward the library as if they were a couple of crazed Bridezillas participating in the “Running of the Brides” wedding dress sale in Filene’s Basement.

“I haven’t had time to thank you for what you did for Emily today,” Etienne said as he cupped his hand around the back of my neck and drew me close. “I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to her. So, thank you. I’m in your debt.” He extended his hand to Cameron who appeared to have to muster all the energy he had to shake it.