The Burning Glass Read Online Free PDF

proved to be a jokester, but then, she and Alasdair
had more than once proved to be fighters.
    In the back seat, Dougie was sound asleep,
his tail wrapped around his paws. The contents of the ice chest
beside him were presumably still chilled. As Jean had hoped, the
air here was cooler and fresher than that in the city—if scented
faintly with aroma of cow. She’d leave the windows cracked and make
her visit a quick one, she assured herself, and climbed out of the
car.
    Stanelaw was an attractive town. Its main
street was lined with one- and two-story buildings, some covered in
white-painted stucco, others revealing walls of local gray stone. A
shop, a tea room, a hardware store, and other commercial
establishments proclaimed the viability of the community. Down the
occasional side street, Jean glimpsed modern houses. Beyond them,
the countryside was tamed into farm plots of green and gold,
bunched around the steep-sided hill, or law, that had probably
given the place its name. Above, the vault of the sky shone clear
and blue as Alasdair’s eyes.
    This was a much gentler land geologically
than the crag, moor, and loch of the Highlands. But the Borders
were no gentler historically. For centuries the region had been
macerated between the jaws of Scotland and England, debatable lands
supporting debatable folk, hardy souls who lived as much by
plundering as by farming and herding. The myth of the miserly
Scotsman had begun here, where no possession and no person was free
of threat. Jean took a second look at the house across the street
from the pub, obviously one of the oldest in town, its thick walls
and small windows proclaiming it as much fortress as home.
    Several steps led up to its front door and a
sign reading, “Stanelaw Museum, Home of the Ferniebank Clarsach.”
On the door itself, a notice added, “Closed. Please Call Again.”
Was it coincidence that a police car was parked half on the
sidewalk in front of the building, or was the local plod dusting
for fingerprints? Again, Jean assumed, since the theft was old news
by now.
    She turned toward the pub. Hanging baskets of
flowers softened its stern stone facade. A signboard read “The
Granite Cross,” the words arching above a painted knight bearing a
black shield with, sure enough, the white engrailed, or
scallop-edged, cross of the Sinclairs. That family had ridden the
storm of centuries of Scottish history, but were popularly known
today for building Rosslyn Chapel just outside Edinburgh in Roslin
village, confusingly enough.
    A burst of pipe music diverted Jean to a side
entrance, a gate in a stone wall. A woman was just leaving. She was
even shorter than Jean was, with short, almost crew-cut blond hair
and a sleeveless blouse that revealed a Celtic-interlace tattoo on
her bony shoulder. The long red fingernails of her right hand
pressed a cell phone to her ear and those of the other hand held a
lit cigarette. “Derek,” she was saying, every crow’s foot in her
face clenched, “Derek, you’re not listening. I’m your mum, Derek,
listen to me.” She strode off up the street.
    Derek must be a teenager, Jean thought, with
a sympathetic glance at the woman’s retreating back, and entered
the gate to discover a beer garden. An open doorway in the back of
the pub overlooked an assortment of tables, some shaded by an arbor
covered with leafy vines, some in the sun. A dozen people sat
around drinking and snacking, getting a head start on happy hour.
If they’d planned on having a quiet conversation, though, they were
out of luck. Michael Campbell-Reid was playing his bagpipes in the
far corner, the sun glinting auburn off the waving locks of his
rock-star haircut, the musical tidal wave crashing against the
surrounding walls.
    Jean grinned. Nothing like a set of
well-tempered pipes, played by a loving hand, to stir the heart and
rile the soul of the Scot. A few more minutes and the pub’s
clientele would take up their butter knives and rush the