Bonnie of Evidence

FOUR



DAD WAS FIRST OFF the bus at our hotel, so he made good use of his time by videotaping everyone else getting off, just in case Mom happened to miss it. I paused in front of him, mugging for the camera like a six-year-old, because seeing Dad wield a piece of photographic equipment reminded me of the silly pictures he’d shot of me on the last family vacation we’d taken together, when I was six years old.

Dad loved travel. He just preferred that other people do it so he wouldn’t have to do it himself.

“Hi, Dad.” I waved idiotically.

“Hi, hon.”

“Having a good time?”

“Yup.”

“Are you getting geared up to shoot some jaw-dropping footage of Nessie?”

“Yup.”

Our hotel was perched on a grassy hillock overlooking the shores of Loch Ness—a family-owned-and-operated boutique hotel that was undergoing extensive renovations, which explained why we’d been able to scoop up every room in the place.

With sawdust you got a discount.

The advertisement touted the building’s importance as a historic landmark dating back to the sixteenth century, but we’d been assured the rooms had been upgraded and indoor plumbing installed since then. The stone exterior gleamed chalk white, with an authentic thatched roof overhead and flower-glutted window boxes adding splashes of color. Loch Ness lay at the bottom of the hill, its rock-ribbed shores surrounded by ancient forests and spotty patches of barren earth, its frigid waters slicing through the glen for twenty-two miles, like a long, severed finger.

“Line up at the front desk to receive your room assignments,” announced Wally as we crowded into the lobby with its exposed half-timbers, cozy furniture groupings, and wall plaque claiming that Mary Queen of Scots Slept Here. “Dinner is scheduled to be served in the dining room at seven, so let’s plan to meet in the library at six-forty-five so Margaret can share today’s geocaching results with you. Keeping you in suspense throughout dinner might be hard on your digestive systems. Any questions?”

Cameron Dasher raised his hand. “Does this place rent out watercraft? Canoes? Rowboats? Something that would let us explore the lake on our own?”

“Uhh—” Wally shot a questioning look at the clerk manning the front desk.

“Mrs. Dalrymple considered boat rentals,” the young woman informed us in a lilting burr, “but decided against it. Ye wouldn’t believe the cost.”

“What about inner tubes?” asked Dolly Pinker. “They’re all the rage at indoor water parks. Floating down a concrete canal in a giant inner tube gives you such a wonderful sense of what the great outdoors can be like without insects flying up your nose.”

Isobel Kronk snorted her disdain. “Inner tubes are for sissies. I want horsepower between my legs.” She sidled a provocative look at Cameron. “Jet skis are the only way to go. Vroooom!”

“Pills Etcetera is having an End of Summer Clearance Sale on waterwings,” Margi added helpfully. “Aisle six, if anyone’s interested.”

“The boats weren’t the difficulty,” confessed the clerk. “It was the pier. There’s a drop-off so near the shore that a dock can’t be anchored without using deepwater equipment. Mrs. Dalrymple said if that be the case, they might as well drill fer oil, but of course, she wasn’t wanting ta do that.” She made eye contact with every guest before lowering her voice to a dramatic whisper. “As ye might imagine, she was leery of whit she might be disturbing at the bottom of the loch.”

A hush fell over the lobby. Hearing tales of the Loch Ness monster was one thing; standing near the creature’s legendary domain was something else entirely.

“How deep is that drop-off ?” Dick Teig inquired.

“Around seventy-six meters.”

“What’s that in English?” he asked.

“Approximately two hundred-fifty feet,” said Etienne.

Whistles. Gasps. Eye-widening.

Dick Teig was disbelieving as he glanced out the lobby windows toward the manicured lawn that swept toward the loch. “You’re telling me that a few feet from the end of the lawn down there, the water is two hundred-fifty feet deep?”

The clerk smiled enigmatically. “It’s one of the more shallow spots. Mrs. Dalrymple is fond of telling her guests that Loch Ness is so deep—eight hundred feet in some places—that the entire population of the world could fit into it three times over.”

More gasps. Collective jaw dropping.

Lucille waved her hand in the air. “Does that calculation take into account the population of the United States? It might not be all that obvious to you foreigners, but we Americans tend to be a bit … bigger boned than folks in the rest of the world.”

“She means we’re fatter,” said Bernice.

“It’s not important how many bodies fit into the lake,” Wally interrupted in his tour director’s voice, “as long as none of the bodies belong to any of you. I’ll caution you to heed the warning though. If you wander down to the loch to take pictures, be sure to watch your footing near the water’s edge. The grass can be slippery, and that first step is a doozey.”

As the desk clerk began dispensing room keys, I sauntered over to the lobby’s enormous picture windows for a better view of the infamous lake. A brick walkway zigzagged down the hill from the hotel’s patio to the shoreline, where umbrellaed tables and Adirondack chairs awaited guests hoping to catch that once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of Nessie. But I saw no cleverly disguised guardrails, no quaint fences, no neatly clipped hedges to prevent people from tripping over their shoelaces and stumbling headlong into the lake, with its two-hundred-and-fifty-foot plunge to the bottom.

Unh-oh. This wasn’t good.

I guess the hotel felt obliged to keep the view from the Adirondack chairs unobstructed for visiting tourists, just in case Nessie decided to rear her much celebrated head.

My stomach executed a slow roll as I considered the potential for disaster. My only saving grace was that the wind had picked up and the blue sky was being devoured by billowing, soot-gray clouds that threatened an evening of mist and unrelenting rain.

Hallelujah.

_____

I arrived at the library fifteen minutes early to find most of the group already there. Several optimists idled at the windows with binoculars pressed to their eyes, apparently trying to convince themselves that the loch was visible through the fog, while others staked out spots in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, perusing titles whose leather spines looked to have been bound about the time Gutenberg invented the printing press. I didn’t see Mom, but Dad was here with his camcorder, capturing the heart-pounding action of people staring at fog and old books. Nana, George, and the rest of their geocaching team were gathered in a far corner, locked in heated discussion over something that was causing Bill Gordon’s already florid cheeks to grow even redder. Etienne and Wally were still in the lobby, kibitzing with the front desk clerk about where we should go tomorrow should our Loch Ness cruise be canceled due to foul weather.

“Hey, check this out,” Isobel Kronk instructed us, apropos to nothing. She hovered over an over-sized tome that she’d set on one of the room’s many reading tables, her forefinger stabbing a line of text halfway down the page. “According to this History of the Scottish Clans, the chieftain of my family’s clan became the Duke of Argyll. Pretty impressive, huh? Wait ’til my kid hears there’s royalty in the family. He might have to switch from drinking beer to something more snooty, like wine coolers.”

“Is the Duke of Argyll the fella who started that nice line of clothing and accessories for both men and women?” asked Margi. “I love his socks.”

“The Duke of Argyll?” Bill Gordon’s voice boomed out from the corner, prompting all eyes to swivel in his direction.

He was ruggedly built in an “over-the-hill” kind of way, with a bristly red beard, chest as broad as a beer barrel, and a head full of coarse, ginger-colored hair that was shot through with silver. His brows stretched in wild disarray above his eyes, like thorns in an overgrown thicket. His fists were big as mallets. His body language hinted that he was long on pomposity and short on patience, which probably explained why he looked as if he were about to set his hair on fire.

Breaking away from his team, he strode to the center of the room, where he drilled Isobel with a menacing look. “That would mean your clan name is Campbell.”

Stella Gordon plopped onto a settee and tossed her head back, offering the heavens a mournful look. “Here we go.”

Margi gasped. “Are you the soup people, too? Oh, my goodness. I love your new cheeseburger chowder with loaded baked potato flavor.” She squinted thoughtfully. “Or is that the generic brand?”

“My maiden name was Campbell,” Isobel said proudly, her gaze fixed on Bill. “What of it?”

“If you’re a Campbell, you’re no friend of mine.”

Isobel looked him up and down, as if he were an engine that needed crushing. “Gee, pops, I’m devastated. But the feeling’s mutual, I’m sure.”

Bill stood statue-still for a moment before whirling around to address the room in a voice that swelled with righteous anger. “Shall I tell you the tale of the crooked Campbells?”

Unh-oh. I was getting a bad vibe that the tale of the crooked Campbells was going to be a lot more grisly than the tale of say, Benjamin Bunny.

“They’re land-grubbing charlatans,” he spat, “from the first to the last. There was never a good one born, and not nearly enough that’s dead. They instigated. They persecuted. They outright lied. And the highlands ran red with blood because of them.”

Isobel braced her fists on the table, eyes slatted, lips pinched. “I wasn’t alive back then, and neither were you, so here’s a little advice. GET OVER IT.”

“The Gordons will never get over it! Hating Campbells is in our blood. We’ll never forget Glen Coe, or Argyll’s betrayal, or the massacre at Culloden. We know you for what you are, you traitorous, murdering sons of bi—”

“Mom should be here at any minute,” I broke in, glancing desperately toward the door. “So if you’d all please find a seat, we’ll be ready to hear the results when she—”

“Where are you digging this crap up?” Isobel shot back at Bill. “Glen Coe? Culloden? Who’s ever heard of this stuff ?”

Stella tossed her head back, groaning. “You should attend one of their family reunions. It’s all they talk about.”

“You have the nerve to stand there and tell me you’ve never heard of Glen Coe?” Bill accused. “You’ve never heard how Campbell foot-soldiers repaid the hospitality of the MacDonalds by slaughtering every man jack of them? Not on the battlefield, mind you. They didn’t fight like real men. They slew them as they rose from their beds, unaware and unarmed. And when they were done with the men, they punished the womenfolk and their babes by burning every house in the glen, leaving them with no food or shelter, in the middle of winter. Leaving them to die in the ice and snow. But the Campbells didn’t care about innocent children, the bloody savages. They couldn’t stop boasting about what they’d done.” His tone grew ominous, his eyes threatening. “There’s a special place in Hell for you and your kin.”

“My mother was a MacDonald,” Dolly Pinker announced with a stunned expression that deteriorated into utter contempt as she regarded Isobel. “Are you telling me that her relatives murdered my relatives?”

“Judaaas priest,” snapped Isobel. “Does anyone else want to crawl out of the woodwork to pile on?”

“Did this happen this past year?” asked Helen, shock in her voice. “Because I don’t recall seeing it on cable news, unless Dick was flipping through the channels so fast I missed it.”

“February twelfth,” droned Stella as she stared mindlessly at the ceiling. “Sixteen ninety-two.”

“Three hundred years ago?” cried Isobel.

“Don’t try to spin your way out of it,” raged Dolly. “You’re guilty. All you Campbells are guilty. Ruthless lowlifes. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like you.”

A muscle bunched in Isobel’s jaw—kind of like the thing that happens to the Incredible Hulk just before he explodes out of his shirt and turns green. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she seethed, looking Dolly straight in the eye, “but if my relatives knocked off your relatives, they probably had good reason.”

Dolly’s mouth fell open. Her eyes bulged. She began to wheeze. I didn’t know if she was expressing indignation or having an asthma attack, but I didn’t dare wait to find out.

“Okey-dokey,” I jumped in. “How are we doing finding those seats?” I hurried toward the library table, directing people toward nearby chairs and sofas as I ran interference between Isobel and Bill.

“Would this be a good time to remind folks of an old French proverb?” asked Cameron Dasher as he joined Isobel at the table. He gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. “‘He who boasts of his descent is like the potato; the best part of him is under ground.’”

Stella Gordon’s laugh ricocheted through the room like a misfired bullet. “Did you hear that, Bill? He just compared you to an Irish root crop. Sounds like he infiltrated one of your family reunions.”

“No, no,” Cameron corrected, brushing off the accusation. “I’m merely suggesting how pointless it is to use one’s relatives as bludgeons to beat up on perfectly wonderful people like Isobel. It’s pretty counterproductive, don’t you think? What does it accomplish?”

Bill speared Dasher with a hostile look, his gaze settling on the name tag pinned to Dasher’s shirt. “Your name’s Cameron? Well, aren’t you a sorry excuse for a Cameron—siding with the likes of a crooked Campbell against a gallant Gordon and a brave MacDonald. We have a name for traitors like you.”

Cameron remained so cool and unflappable, he reminded me of a talking version of my dad. “Hate to disappoint you, but I don’t have an ounce of Scottish blood in me. My parents were both photographers. Camera? Cameron? Get the connection?”

“Of course, he does,” I quipped as I locked my hand around Bill’s arm and steered him across the floor to safer territory. “Sit,” I insisted, plunking him down on the sofa between Nana and Tilly.

“So are the Campbells the soup people or not?” asked Margi. “Doesn’t anyone besides me want to know?”

“Well, would you look at that,” Nana marveled as she glanced toward the doorway.

Erik and Alex marched into the library like the color guard at a sports event, jaws set, eyes forward, shoulders squared, looking as comfortable wearing their kilts as my ex-husband had been wearing my undies. They’d selected matching white oxford shirts to complement their tartans, and finished off the look with furry sporrans to hold their personal effects, spotless hiking boots, and short-bladed knives stuffed down their calf-high socks. When they reached the center of the room, they posed straight-faced for several seconds before Erik broke out of character and winked. “Gentlemen, you would not believe how liberating it is not having to adjust the ‘boys’ all the time to get them back in alignment. This is what I call real comfort. Shame on you ladies for keeping it a secret for so long. A guy would have to be crazy to squeeze into flat-front pants again after enjoying this kind of freedom.”

“Right,” scoffed Bernice. “Let us know how your ‘boys’ fare after you give ’em a taste of support hose with tummy control.”

“Campbell tartan?” Bill roared as he leaped off the sofa, spittle flying from his mouth like water from a garden sprinkler. “I’d rather pluck out my eyes than look at Campbell plaid!”

Stunned silence ensued, followed by quiet reflection. “I’d rather eat dirt than watch another one of Helen’s stupid chick flicks,” mused Dick Teig.

“I’d rather die than let Grace wax my chest again,” confessed Dick Stolee.

Note to self: expand present portfolio by investing heavily in men’s health service.

“Get out of my sight. The two you!” Bill raved, his ears turning as red as cooked beets. “If you don’t, I swear I’ll come over there and rip those tartans off your bodies so fast, you won’t know what hit you.”

“Hey!” Nana grabbed his belt and yanked him back onto the sofa. “You’re blockin’ my view.”

Erik wagged a cautioning finger at Bill. “You better watch out what you pray for, buttercup. I bet you wouldn’t be so anxious to rip off our togs if you knew our undercarriages were”—he paused for maximum effect—“X-rated.”

Gasping from the ladies. Eye rolling from the men.

A half-dozen snack-size bottles of hand sanitizer flew through the air at them. “You’ll probably need those,” said Margi.

“They’re not wearin’ no undershorts?” spluttered Nana.

“They’re being historically accurate,” Tilly asserted as she craned her neck for a better look. “It wasn’t uncommon for highlanders to go about their daily business with their undercarriages fully vented. In fact, trousers might have been considered too confining, especially if one believes certain rumors that have been passed down through the centuries.”

“What kind of rumors?” I asked.

“Typical testosterone-driven hype. The early Scots were reputed

to have equipment under their hoods that was so excessively …

manly, some of the more impressive fixtures might have ended up as exhibits in scientific museums if someone had thought to preserve them.”

“No kiddin’?” Offering Bill Gordon a contrite look, Nana seized a fistful of his shirt and propelled him back to his feet. “Sorry about the misunderstandin’. You go right ahead and rip them kilts off those young fellas. Just give me a sec to turn on my camera.”

“I’m here at last!” Mom dashed into the room all aflutter, armed with her laptop, her notebook, and a file folder full of papers. “The suspense must be killing you, so I’ll get right to it.” Dumping everything on the nearest reading table, she cleared a space for her laptop, powered it up, consulted her notebook, then took a deep breath in preparation for—

Her eyes strayed to the sudden clutter. Unable to stop herself, she trailed a finger across one of the glossy magazines she’d shoved out of the way. “Ew,” she cooed, “current periodicals.” She did a quick scan, smiling beatifically. “And they’re not in order.”

I could hear her heart go pittypat all the way across the room.

“Dinner’s in twelve minutes,” carped Isobel Kronk. “Could we get this show on the road before they start serving?”

“You bet,” said Mom, forcing her attention back to the computer. “Here we are. The results are as follows, and I’ll ask you to please withhold your applause until the very end. Team Yes We Can, formerly known as Team Five, went first. I’m thrilled to report they redeemed themselves admirably after their disappointing first try and found the cache in an astounding six minutes and thirty-five seconds.”

Isobel pumped her fist as relief and satisfaction played across her face, making her harsh features almost attractive. “What’d I tell you?” Cameron encouraged his teammates. “Aren’t you happy we didn’t give up?”

Dolly and Bernice didn’t look too happy, but I figured their sullenness had little to do with cache results and everything to do with where Cameron had chosen to sit—shoulder to shoulder with Isobel at the library table.

Mom continued her tally. “Team One, still known as Team One until further notice, went second, and they found the cache in seven minutes flat.” She offered a heartfelt smile to the group. “For those of you who are unaware, my mother is on Team One. Wave to everyone so they can see who you are, Mom.”

Oh, God.

“Nepotism!” yelled Bernice. “Blatant nepotism!”

Mom inched her gaze back to the magazines, her internal struggle between duty and desire playing out on her face until she looked as if she were about to implode. “I’m sorry. Would anyone mind if I alphabetize these periodicals before we continue? It should only take a few minutes. They’re just so … out of order.”

“Everyone minds,” shouted Dolly Pinker. “Just get on with it, would you?”

“Nepotism!” Bernice accused more emphatically. “Blatant nepotism!”

Dick Teig shot her “the look.” “We heard you the first time, Bernice. We’re ignoring you.”

Ignore Bernice? Damn. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

Returning reluctantly to the business at hand, Mom picked up where she’d left off, at warp speed, in one long breath. “Teams-TwoThreeandFourfoundthethingtoo. Goodjob. We’redonehere.” She slammed down the cover of her laptop and scooped up the magazines, cradling them in her arms while she shuffled through them.

Mumbling. Confused looks. Blank expressions.

“What’d she say?” asked Stella Gordon.

“She said everyone found the cache,” Dad explained from behind the viewfinder of his camcorder.

“She’s lying!” Isobel Kronk hammered her fists on the table as she sprang from her chair, frothing with outrage. “None of you found it. You couldn’t have!”

“My team sure found it,” argued Dick Stolee.

“Did not,” countered Isobel.

“Did so,” challenged Dick Teig.

Boos. Shouting. Cat calls.

I let out my signature whistle, sending hands flying upward to muffle distressed ears. When the room was quiet again, I nodded. “Thank you.” I leveled a look at Isobel. “Would you mind telling us why you think no team other than yours found the cache?”

“Sure,” Isobel said without apology. “Because I took it.”