The Blue Hackle Read Online Free PDF Page B

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