Kilt Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

recognized Mrs. Norris. “Well, hello
again. I didn’t expect to see you here”
    “Oh, I can never resist coming to take a look around. I
won’t stay long. Too much going on. But I did want to see
how you were doing.” For her jaunt to the fairgrounds,
the retired teacher wore stretch denim and a loose, sleeveless top. The jogging shoes were the same ones she’d had
on the previous day.

    “Things are going just fine, Mrs. Norris.”
    “Had a scone yet?”
    Liss laughed. “Imagine you remembering that!”
    “Oh, I never forget a thing, dear. In fact, I seem to recall something a little naughty about you.”
    “I can’t imagine what”
    “Can’t you?”
    Liss shook her head, truly baffled. “I wasn’t exactly a
wild child.”
    “Well, we all have our little secrets. And I know most
of them”
    “Now that sounds ominous,” Liss teased her. “Should
I be worried about blackmail?”
    “Too risky. That would make you a threat to me, if you
were murderously inclined, that is.” Mrs. Norris lowered
her voice. “I was reading a mystery novel the other day in
which a character is stabbed to death with a little dagger.
I wonder if it could have been one of these?” She indicated another sgian dubh.
    “Was the story set in Scotland?” Amanda Norris loved
to read. Liss had seen her bookshelves. They were lined
with mysteries, although romances ran a close second.
    “Sixteenth-century England, but the victim was a
Scot”
    For once, Liss wasn’t certain of her history. “I’m not
sure they called it a sgian dubh that long ago, but I’d certainly think twice about crossing someone who carried a
knife.”
    “This character should have thought twice about carrying one himself, since it was his own weapon that was
used against him. Still, he got what he deserved. That’s as
it should be” She nodded sagely. “You’ll get your just
desserts, too, Liss MacCrimmon.”
    At Liss’s blank look, Mrs. Norris leaned in, again lowering her voice to a whisper. “That piece of apple pie,
dear. It’s still got your name on it.”

ChapreR ThRee

    ‘or the first time all day, there were no potential customers in sight. Liss sank gratefully down onto a stool
and fished under the counter for the cooler she’d packed
with lunch. It was just after one in the afternoon.
    Her knee ached a bit, but as a dancer she was accustomed to ignoring pain. Just now she was more concerned about easing the hollow feeling in her stomach.
She hadn’t eaten a bite since that quick breakfast at sunrise.
    With a sigh, she pulled a container of strawberry yogurt out of the cooler. “Want one?” she asked Sherri.
    “Yuck”
    Silently agreeing with that assessment, Liss peeled
back the top and dug in. She tried to imagine she was eating a warm scone dripping with butter. It didn’t work.
She couldn’t even pretend the yogurt was one of the flavored scones, best eaten plain. “I have a feeling I’ll be
giving in to temptation before the day is out,” she muttered under her breath.
    Sherri popped the top on a can of soda and squinted
toward the athletic field. The Stone of Strength competition was long over but two other events were in progress
at opposite ends of the field, the caber toss and the sheaf
throw.
    Even without the binoculars, Liss could see the action well enough. Each caber was nineteen feet long and weighed
a hundred and twenty pounds-most people compared them
to telephone poles. The object of the competition wasn’t
distance, but to toss the caber end-over-end so that the
small end fell directly away from the competitor. The sheaf
toss was an event that involved tossing a sixteen-pound
sheaf of hay, encased in a burlap bag, over a bar … using
a three-tined pitchfork.

    “Hammer throw is next,” Sherri said, consulting a program. “Pete’s entered in that one, too”
    “Not my favorite sport,” Liss said. The hammer, a
metal ball attached to a wooden handle, weighed a