Bonnie of Evidence

TEN



FOUR HOURS LATER, HAVING departed Urquhart Castle and completed our tour of the Loch Ness Monster Exhibition where, to the accompaniment of laser lights, digital projections, and eerie music, we spent a quick sixty minutes traveling from the dawn of time to the third millennium—we were ready to undertake the next step: venturing onto the loch itself.

“What do you mean, you’re not going on the cruise?”

I’d yet to warn Nana against mentioning her Maccoull ancestry to Bill Gordon, so as the other guests proceeded to hike down the gravel path to the sightseeing boats, I’d pulled her aside to issue my alert, only to be blindsided by her unexpected pronouncement.

She shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t weighed down by her oversized pocketbook. “It’s on account of my memory, dear. I forgot to pack them pills what’s s’posed to keep me from losin’ my cookies all over the person sittin’ next to me on the boat.”

“You don’t get motion sickness.”

She tucked in her lips and regarded me impishly. “No kiddin’?”

“When the decks were awash on our Hawaiian cruise, you were in the ship’s lounge, tossing back Shirley Temples like there was no tomorrow.”

“That don’t mean I won’t get sick today. I got more years on me now. My system’s more delicate. I can’t handle them big waves like I used to.”

I glanced at the loch to find it calm as bath water. I narrowed my eyes at her. “What’s the real reason you’re ditching the cruise?”

“It don’t have nuthin’ to do with you, dear, so don’t you go takin’ it personal. We just decided that old bones and high seas don’t go together real good.”

I rolled my eyes. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“You gotta have names?” She gave me a downtrodden look as she ticked them off on her fingers. “Me, George, Tilly, Margi, Osmond, Ali—”

“The whole gang is staying on shore?”

“We’re not taking no chances. You don’t get to be older than dirt by bein’ stupid.” She paused. “Well, the Dicks did, but they’re the exception.”

“Nana! What is stupid about cruising the most famous lake in the world? And don’t tell me your bones are old because I’m not buying it.”

She twitched her mouth self-consciously before blurting out, “There’s a monster down there, Emily.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“Yes, there is, and your father seen it.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Then what’d he see?”

Damn. She had me there. “I don’t know what he saw, but I’m thinking it might have been one part ocular anomaly and one part figment of his imagination.”

“He don’t got no imagination.”

“Okay, imagination isn’t his strong suit, so maybe what he thought was a sea creature was just a really big floater.” I smiled, hoping to convince myself as much as Nana. “He should probably see an ophthalmologist when he gets home.”

“He don’t need no eye doctor. He needs folks to believe him.”

“I believe him.” I nodded emphatically. “Kinda. I mean, I believe he saw something.” I paused reflectively. “Can floaters appear in the shape of sea serpents?”

“Emily, there wasn’t nuthin’ in that monster exhibit that proves there isn’t no Jurassic Park creature livin’ in this lake.”

I thrust my finger into the air in a “Eureka” kind of gesture. “Mrs. Dalrymple confided to me this very morning that the only reason the legend of Nessie persists is to boost the local economy.”

“No kiddin’?”

“Yup. Her ancestors have lived on the shores of Loch Ness for four hundred years, and not one of them has ever reported seeing a sea creature.”

“Maybe them’s the folks what needed the eye doctor.”

“So what do you say? Will you change your mind and come with us?”

“Can’t. We already voted nine to two to stay on shore instead a goin’ down with the ship.”

I gave her an exasperated look. “The ship is not going down.”

“Tell that to the folks what was on the Titanic.”

“There’s a difference. Loch Ness doesn’t have icebergs.”

“It’s got a monster. That’s worse. You just make sure they got enough life jackets to go around on that boat, Emily. I don’t want nuthin’ happenin’ to you.”

As she shuffled down the path in front of me, I noticed something odd. “Why are you listing thirty degrees to starboard? What’s in your pocketbook? Bricks?”

She stopped short and snorted with impatience. “This is all your mother’s doin’.” Swinging her pocketbook in front of her, she unsnapped the top and opened it wide to show me a jumble of brown plastic bottles with labels that read “Milk Thistle” and “White Willow Bark.”

“Uff-da. Are these the elusive supplements she bought to prevent you from shrinking?” I frowned at the cache. “How many bottles do you have in there anyway?”

“Sixteen.”

“Well, duh? No wonder you’re listing.” I regarded her quizzically. “How come you didn’t leave them in your room?”

“’Cuz Margaret says I gotta take ’em with every meal, and I can’t figure out no way to ditch her at meals, so I gotta haul the dang things around with me. If I’da known I was gonna be tossin’ back a steady diet of weeds ’n trees on this trip, I mighta stayed home!”

I’d rarely seen Nana out of sorts, so her mood worried me a little. Oh, God. I hoped the situation didn’t escalate to the point where she and Mom would be forced to have “words.” What would I do? Whose side would I take?

I scratched a sudden itch at the back of my neck and tried not to think about it.

By the time we reached the waterfront, my guys had already spaced themselves out along the shore like ducks in a shooting gallery, their Smartphones focused on the impossibly calm waters of the loch as if in anticipation of a YouTube-worthy event.

Plink, plink, plink.

Heads and cameras swiveled toward the sound.

“D’you hear that?” shouted Osmond, who’d recently been outfitted with hearing aids so high-tech, he could have heard belching if the Mars rover had developed acid indigestion. “Look! The water’s rippling!”

“It’s Nessie!” cried Margi.

“It is not,” crabbed Bernice. “It’s those moronic Dicks skipping stones.”

The remainder of our traveling twenty-nine were filing onto our waiting boat, the Highland Queen—an ancient-looking tub with paint peeling off its wheelhouse and benches flanking the aft bulwarks to accommodate outside seating. Etienne spurred me on with a “hurry up” gesture as I ran onto the dock.

“I thought I was going to have to send out the bloodhounds,” he chided with good humor. He nodded toward the photographic frenzy taking place on shore. “Do they realize they’re literally in danger of missing the boat?”

“They’re not coming.”

“Why not?”

“Because of the monster. They’re apparently not interested in becoming her mid-afternoon snack.”

“You can’t be serious.”

I cocked my head and gave him the look.

“Merde. You’re serious.”

Cursing held so much more allure when uttered in a foreign language.

I craned my neck to see who was gathered on deck, noting the absence of two critical guests. “Have you seen Mom and Dad?”

“Your mother decided to stay on the bus to tally the geocache results.”

Not a bad idea. At least Nana would get a breather. “Is Dad with her?”

“Your father has staked out a seat in the wheelhouse to be near the new multifunction fish finder with bottom tracking performance, GPS, sonar, and an 83/200 khz transducer.”

I stared at him, deadpan. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Neither do I, but your father does. He plans to videotape the monitor while you’re cruising in case the device picks up the image of a sea serpent.”

I sighed. “But he doesn’t know how to use his camcorder.”

“He does now. He apparently stayed up all night reading the manual.”

“If yer coming with us, lass, yer’d best climb aboard.” From the deck, a lanky man in bib overalls and a skipper’s cap bent over to extend his hand to me. “Up ye go.”

Bridging the significant gap between dock and boat, I hopped aboard then turned to Etienne, who was wearing a resigned expression as he backed away from the vessel. “Hey, where are you going? Aren’t you coming with us?”

“And leave the camera hounds on shore by themselves?” He smiled. “Not on your life. Bring back a picture of Nessie if you run into her.”

The engine revved anemically before sputtering to a deafening roar. As the lines were cast off, Etienne blew me a kiss, then sauntered back to shore, turning to wave as we were enveloped in a smelly cloud of diesel exhaust.

“This reeks!” Dolly fussed as we motored beyond the dock. She regarded me accusingly. “Are we going to have to sit here and inhale toxic fumes the entire trip?”

“Maybe when we’re up to speed, you’d prefer to waterski,” Stella Gordon wisecracked.

Dolly narrowed her eyes, her stare growing frigid. “Don’t get smart with me.”

“Or you’ll what?” challenged Stella.

Oh, God. “You might try sitting in the wheelhouse,” I offered helpfully. “The fumes might not be so bad in there.”

Dolly pursed her perfectly painted lips and raised her perfectly plucked brows a quarter-inch. “I don’t want to sit inside.” She sidled closer to Cameron Dasher on the bench and smiled. “I’m perfectly happy right here. I just don’t want to smell these noxious fumes.”

“What’s the matter?” taunted Stella. “Do they clash with your perfume?”

“Quiet, Stella,” barked her husband. “She’s one of the brave MacDonalds. Leave her alone.”

Stella curled her lip into a sneer as she regarded her husband. “Bite me.”

We were sitting on opposite sides of the deck—the Gordons, Dolly, and Cameron occupying the starboard bench, while Erik, Alex, and I sat to port. Everyone else was in the wheelhouse, where they were probably enjoying a more audible version of the narration that was blaring over the loudspeaker like a soundtrack of angry bees.

“… bzzzzt … thirty-seven … bzz … kilometers long and … bzzzzt … bzzzzt … more fresh water than … bzzzzt … and Wales … bzzzzt … bzzzzt … except Loch Morar …”

Cameron Dasher threw up his hands and laughed. “The speaker system is apparently even older than the boat. Do you suppose we’re missing anything important?”

Bill Gordon swung his bulky torso around and peered over the side of the boat. “It’s probably telling us that Loch Ness has the murkiest water in the world. If the Titanic sank in the middle of this lake, a guy in a deep diving submersible with Hellfighter military spotlights blazing from two feet away wouldn’t be able to see it.”

I flinched. I wish he hadn’t said that.

“bzz … bzzt …”

“Is that true?” asked Dolly.

Bill folded his arms across his chest like an all-powerful genie. “I just told you, didn’t I?”

“He’s full of crap,” droned Stella.

“I don’t think he’s full of crap at all.” Dolly offered Bill an ego-boosting smile. “I think he’s quite intelligent to keep all those facts in his head.”

“Try being married to him,” snorted Stella. “You’d see firsthand how intelligent he is.”

“bzzzzt … low visibil … bzt …”

Dolly gasped. “What a terrible thing to say! Poor Bill, having to sit here and listen to your nastiness.” She hardened her gaze at Stella. “If you can’t treat your man any better than that, you don’t deserve to have one.”

“You hear that, Stella?” crowed Bill. “It’s what I’ve been telling you for years. You don’t deserve me.”

“Feel free to leave.” Stella flashed an acid smile. “I’d welcome the deprivation.”

“Always with the put-downs,” railed Bill. “I should have listened to my mother. She warned me what would happen if I married outside the clan. She knew. She begged me to find a real Scot, someone like Dolly here, a MacDonald. But noo, I had to be stupid and get myself hoodwinked by a gold-digging Hungarian.”

“… peat content … bzzzzt … bzzzzt …”

“She married you for your money?” bristled Dolly.

“Yah,” Stella droned. “The whole twenty-six dollar and fifteen cent fortune he kept in his cookie jar.”

“You were eying my weapons collection,” accused Bill. “You knew it was going to be worth millions even back then.”

“It could have been worth millions,” Stella shot back with no small amount of sarcasm, “if you’d been bright enough to keep the documentation. Duh.”

Dolly regarded Stella with a disapproving sniff. Leaning sideways, she patted Bill’s forearm in a sympathetic gesture. “You’re being such a gentleman about this. Honestly, Bill, if she were my wife, I’d wash her mouth out with a big bar of French-milled soap.”

“Now there’s an idea,” he agreed.

Stella Gordon said nothing. She didn’t have to. The muscle pulsating in her jaw said it all. Popping up from the bench on her five-inch heels, she spun away from Bill, and ’mid a heavy jingling of bracelets, stormed toward the wheelhouse.

“… increasing speed … bzzzzt … change in … bzzt … bzzt … bzz …”

“Something tells me that Stella and I aren’t going to be best friends,” Dolly confided as the boat altered course, “but I just couldn’t sit here and let her talk to you that way, Bill. Where I grew up, a woman learned to show proper respect toward menfolk. And if she didn’t, she ended up an old maid.”

“Would that have been so bad?” I asked, having been exposed to some pretty extraordinary “old maids” when I was growing up. “Is that the absolute worst thing that could have happened to a woman back then?”

“Well, dying was worse, but—” Dolly heaved a sigh. “Actually, I think being an old maid was even worse than dying.”

As we motored down the middle of the lake on a course that paralleled the shoreline, the skipper opened up the throttle, causing the bulwarks to shake with a fierce vibrato, and a strong crosswind to send my hair whipping helter-skelter around my face. Erik and Alex bent over their laps to prevent their kilts from flying up. Cameron raised the collar of his jacket. Bill hunkered lower on the bench. And Dolly let out an ear-piercing shriek as her perfectly coifed hair exploded in the air like a can of number six spaghetti.

“Oh, my God!” Her hands were suddenly all over her head, slapping down the product-laden strands.

“You want to borrow my hat?” asked Cameron, as he pulled a slouch-cap out of his jacket pocket.

“bzzz … bz … bzzzzt …”

“No! I want—” The ends of her intricately tied scarf flew up in an opposing gust, smacking her face like a whip. She turned her head away and caught the tails in her fist, but when she turned back, I noticed her lips were an entirely different color than the cherry-red they’d been two seconds before.

Dolly noticed, too.

“Dammit!” she cried when she spied the smear of cherry-red lip gloss on her petal-pink scarf. “Look at this!” She ripped it off her neck and pouted at the stain. “First time I’ve worn it, and it’s ruined!”

“I have a stain remover pen,” Alex spoke up, adding in a small voice, “back at the hotel.”

“All I have on hand is sanitizer,” I lamented.

“I’ve got water,” said Bill as he dug a lime-green plastic mini bottle out of his fanny pack.

“Water won’t do any good,” she fussed. “It’s silk! Do you know what water does to silk?”

“Why are you yelling at me?” huffed Bill. “I’m only trying to help.”

“Well, you can’t help. No one can help! My hair … my scarf …” Imploding in a fit of pique, she flung her scarf over the side, and shielding her head from the wind, ran across the deck to the wheelhouse.

“Damn females,” groused Bill. “Just when you think you’ve found a sane one, she goes postal on you. I’m lowering my opinion of the MacDonald women. Ill-tempered shrew.”

Cameron blew a long stream of air out of his mouth as he regarded the wheelhouse. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for Dolly and Stella to be anywhere within sight of each other right now, Bill. How about you track down your wife and make nice with her so we can avoid a repeat performance.”

“Me? Apologize?” Bill guffawed. “Ain’t gonna happen.”

Cameron’s voice deepened with frustration. “Hey, I’ve got skin in this game, too, and I’m already down one team member. I don’t want to lose another one to unintended injury.”

“Survival of the fittest,” boomed Bill.

“How chivalrous of you,” quipped Erik. He splayed his hand over his heart. “It’s what makes you sensitive types so endearing.”

Bill Gordon threw a squinty look across the deck at him. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Wouldn’t think of it, buttercup.”

Bill’s face morphed into an angry red knot. “You are making fun of me.”

“Settle down, Bill,” soothed Cameron. “He’s just needling you a little.”

“The hell he is!”

“Would you please lighten up?” chafed Alex as he directed a

tart look at Bill. “Have you tried yoga? Maybe some relaxation techniques? How about anger management courses? I hear you can even find them online these days. Or here’s a thought. Maybe you could just put a cork in it so the rest of us could be spared your ugly American routine.”

Yup. I’m sure that helped.

Bill leaned forward, face florid, teeth bared, voice rabid. “Looking at the two of you makes my eyes hurt.”

Erik grinned. “So look at something else, buttercup.”

“So help me God, if you call me that one more time, I’ll—”

“So what do you think of the scenery?” I jumped in, yelling to be heard over the static hiss of the loudspeaker. “Is this how you imagined Loch Ness would look? Hills? Rocks? Water? Would anyone like me to take their picture?”

Bill drilled me with a hostile look. “The scenery sucks,” he spat as he heaved himself off the bench and lumbered toward the wheelhouse.

Cameron shrugged good-naturedly. “I guess he’s not into having his picture taken.”

“Pictures!” whooped Alex as he dug his camera out of his sporran. “Should have thought of it sooner.” He turned to Erik. “If you can get that wild mop of yours under control, I might even take one of you.”

While the two men fussed with hair and camera settings, I shot across the deck to kibitz with Cameron. “I’ll cut right to the chase,” I said while we enjoyed a lull in the action. “Are Bernice, Dolly, and Lucille driving you crazy?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “Have I given you the impression that they’re driving me crazy?”

“No. But there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight. They haven’t let you alone for a minute. Aren’t you feeling … smothered?”

“Are you kidding? Ask me the last time I had three women hanging on my every word. Look at this face, Emily.” He angled his head to profile his bulbous nose and disappearing chin. “Guys who look like me don’t turn women’s heads. Guys who look like them”—he nodded at Alex and Erik—“are the ones with the wow factor. So I’m not feeling smothered by any means. In fact, I’m practically giddy with all the attention.”

“You’re sure they’re not bothering you? Because I could try to have you switched to another team.”

He bowed his head toward mine. “I’ll tell you a secret. I grew up with five older sisters, so finding myself in a harem feels pretty normal to me.”

“Five sisters? Wow. That’s a lot of PMS under one roof.”

“My friends thought I was the unluckiest kid in town to live in a house with so many females, but the truth is, I really liked my sisters. Still do. Girls are okay.”

“My brother has five sons.”

Cameron cringed. “Boys can be savages. Girls are so much more …

civil. It’s a real selling point.”

I sighed. “I wish Isobel had been a little more civil. Talk about stirring up a hornet’s nest.”

“She mellowed a bit at dinner last night. She admitted she was wrong to take the cache, and she apologized for jeopardizing our chances at the grand prize, which was a lot of crow for her to eat, but she made the effort. She even volunteered to resign from the team, but I don’t know if she was serious or just floating the idea to prove how sorry she was about what she’d done. We were actually pretty cohesive again when we left the dining room, even though Dolly and Bernice were still making noises under their breath. But my whole point is, if my team had been made up of five men, there would have been no apology, no compromise, and no good will. It’d be like dealing with five Bill Gordons in a never-ending pissing contest. So I’ll keep my ladies. They’re a lot nicer to hang out with.”

“Lower your right shoulder and lift your chin a little,” Alex instructed as he set up his shot. “Thaaat’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 whooshed 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!