08 - The Highland Fling Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

vacation.”
    “I’ll try not to, Jess. It’s just that I keep seeing eyes like his everywhere I look. The bus driver. His eyes are orange, too.”
    “Alicia, I really think that—”
    The boarding announcement for our flight to Inverness came through the loudspeaker. I smiled and squeezed her arm. “Come on,” I said. “We’re flying away from madmen with orange eyes. No one in Scotland has orange eyes. Trust me.”
    The flight was uneventful, landing in Inverness right on schedule. I would have enjoyed spending some time in the city, but our bus was waiting, a handsome vehicle staffed by an attendant who served coffee, cocktails, and soft drinks along with a variety of sandwiches. The driver was a portly gentleman with a ready smile and a brogue that sounded like a foreign language.
    We headed north, crossing a bridge that spanned the waters of Beauly Firth, continued across Black Isle until reaching another bridge above Cromarty Firth, took various roads until getting on to the A9 Highway that ran along the eastern coast of Scotland, passing through towns called Golspie and Brora, Helmsdale and Blackness, until eventually coming to the outer limits of Wick.
    “Here we are,” I said, my heart beating a little faster at the contemplation of having reached our destination. Of course, there was additional glee for me. After years of invitations from George Sutherland to visit the castle in which he’d been brought up, I would finally be there.
    Dusk had started to fall as we proceeded in the direction of Sutherland Castle, hugging the most spectacular coastline I’d ever seen—and Maine’s coast is among the most beautiful in the world.
    But this was different. The cliffs soared high above the swirling sea, rugged, sheer drops of hundreds of feet. A stiff wind whipped the trees into a frenzied dance, and flocks of birds erupted into the air from their nesting grounds in the rocks—great northern divers, redshanks, snipes, and skylarks.
    Our driver went slowly along the very edge of the bluffs, creating a sensation that we might topple over at any moment. Then, as a fast-moving black cloud passed what was left of the orange sun, allowing its copper rays to burst forth, Sutherland Castle was in my view, standing starkly alone on the highest cliff, the angry sky its imposing scrim. An involuntary gasp came from everyone on the bus. It was a sight none of us would forget for the rest of our lives.
    Dominating the stone structure was a tower house rising three or four stories, with a pair of corbeled two-story angle turrets. Additions to the tower house jutted out in all directions, some two stories high, some only one story. Windows appeared to have been included haphazardly, although the narrow slits in the tower house had symmetry to them.
    As the bus came closer to the castle, some of the exterior perimeter grounds came into view—chestnut trees, rowans and hollies, lilacs and rhododendrons.
    We entered between two huge stone lions and beneath a masonry arch, and were inside the compound : a broad, grassy area with a gravel drive. I peered through the window and saw George standing on stone steps that led up to a pair of massive wooden front doors, each six feet wide. I blinked and looked again. He was wearing a kilt, and waist-length black formal jacket over a white shirt.
    The sound of bagpipes filled the courtyard, and a kilted piper emerged from behind a column, the unwieldy instrument cradled in his arms.
    It had been a happy journey on the bus. But now the excitement level surged as we prepared to exit the vehicle. I held back, and was the last of our group to descend the stairs and plant my feet on Sutherland Castle’s turf. Others in the party had greeted George and surrounded him. When he saw me, he left them, extended his arms to me, and said, “Welcome, fair lassie.”
    I grinned, looked left and right, and said, “You were born and raised in this?”
    “Afraid so.”
    “You certainly weren’t