“Surely somebody would get suspicious sooner or later.”
“Yeah, I guess so. But what could they do about it? Can’t you picture somebody going to the FBI and saying: ‘Excuse me; I contributed money to a terrorist organization, but they haven’t killed anybody yet.’ You may not be aware of it, but it’s illegal to support that kind of thing. They’d be in a lot of trouble. No, it’s foolproof. Once they gave him money, he had them like crabs in a barrel.”
“I suppose so,” Cameron agreed. “But it’s dishonest. He’s a con man, you know. Why didn’t you want to turn him in?”
“Oh, out of sheer admiration, I guess.” Geoffrey shrugged. “What an actor to pull off a scam like that. And he’s a nice old boy, really. Didn’t you ever know that somebody was putting on a colossal bit of phoniness, but you didn’t have the heart to turn them in?”
Cameron nodded. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I guess I have felt exactly like that.”
Lightfoot MacDonald glowered at his deputy. “I have had a bellyful of foolishness,” he warned. “I hope you’re not going to try to sell me on suicide, or some such tomfool notion.”
Merle Fentress shook his head. “Not me, Sheriff. It was homicide. Regular old stabbing, excepting for the fancy knife they done it with. It nicked the lung and punctured the heart. Pretty near instantaneous, we reckon.”
“Time of death?”
“Early this morning. Seven or eight, the coroner thinks.”
“Got the site done?”
“Yep. Photographs and all.”
Lightfoot grunted. “No fingerprints, of course?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Prettiest little set of prints you ever seen on that knife hilt.”
Lightfoot grinned. “Got your print kit in the trunk?”
“You bet. I’ll get it now.” As Merle headed out to the patrol car, he could hear Sheriff MacDonald whistling “Just Before the Battle, Mother.” It was a good sign.
Cluny was sleeping in a wicker dog basket beside the Chattan information table while Elizabeth stapled together more clan brochures. She didn’t want to find Cameron just then, because she wanted to think about Cameron-not an easy thing to do when he was around.
She ought to be checking on Colin Campbell’s activities over the past two days, but it was difficult to take much of an interest in it. Interest, Inn-terrrest, she thought, trying to remember how he would pronounce it. It didn’t come out right, somehow. She hadn’t heard him talk long enough to be able to play it back in her head. Such a pretty accent. She wondered if the magic ever wore off. If, after years of hearing it, someone said to you: “Where’s the bloody sports page?” or “Slow down before you kill us,” would it still sound gentler and more significant than hearing it in American dialect?
“Snap out of it!” she said aloud. “Your brain is turning to haggis!”
She looked up to find Heather McSkye Hutcheson standing on the other side of the table, leafing through a brochure.
“Hello,” stammered Elizabeth, hoping she hadn’t been overheard.
Heather, who was now more conventionally dressed in a pink shorts outfit, smiled at her. “Where’s the Sloane Ranger?”
“Cameron? He’s around somewhere.” Elizabeth wondered how helpful she ought to be, and what a Sloane Ranger was, but Heather wasn’t the sort of person she wanted to get chummy with. Really, Marge was much easier to talk to. Men had no taste, she decided.
“Yes, well, it was nice meeting you at the party and all. Did… Cameron… say aught about it?”
Elizabeth wondered what she meant by that. “Not really,” she said in a puzzled voice. “Why? Did you two know each other back in Scotland?”
Heather laughed at the note of anxiety in Elizabeth’s voice. “I wouldn’t mention it to him if I were you.”
Change the subject, thought Elizabeth. I don’t even want to think about this. What else can we talk about? Oh, yes! “Isn’t it shocking about Colin Campbell’s being murdered?” she said brightly, relieved at having found a safer topic.
Heather shrugged. “I thought murder was pretty routine over here.”
“Not as casual as all that. Did you meet Dr. Campbell?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Yes, of course you did! I saw him going up to you at the party just as we were leaving. Did he say anything significant to you?”
“I don’t remember him. I met so many people last night.”
Betty Carson, who had been getting ice out of the cooler, turned around. “Colin Campbell, Mrs. Hutcheson? He was that short little man with white hair who asked you about your new cousin-the Duke’s child. I was standing right behind you.”
“Oh, yes. Him.”
“And he asked you something about its layette, didn’t he? I thought I heard him say baby sham, or pillow, or something.”
“Did he seem upset about anything?” asked Elizabeth.
“I didn’t notice.”
“Yes, he must have been,” Betty put in. “Because later Walter told my husband Andy that there would be a committee meeting this morning. Colin Campbell had some bee in his bonnet about embezzlement, or some such thing. Didn’t Walter mention it to you?”
“He may have done. I wasn’t paying any attention. Goodbye.” Heather walked away, obviously annoyed at the continual interruptions from Betty Carson.
Elizabeth made a mental note to file baby sham and embezzlement away for further consideration, but her chief concern was the relationship between Cameron and Heather. Just how well did they know each other, and did it matter? Of course it’s none of my business, Elizabeth told herself, so I’ll have to be very subtle indeed when I check up on it. She stapled the rest of the pamphlets to the tune of “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man,” but a small, cold part of her mind refused to believe the lyrics.
She was still stapling ten minutes later when the deputy told her that the sheriff wanted to see her.
Alexander Lightfoot MacDonald wrinkled his nose at the smell of booze in the tent. He didn’t mind a cool brew with the militia boys, but sometimes the smell of it took him back. Six years old… with the Stars and Bars tacked over his bed… and Daddy stumbling in to bid his little corporal good night, reeking of bourbon and Sen-Sen. Little Ellick, as they called him then, would edge away from the fumes and stare at the sepia picture of Stonewall Jackson on the dresser, while Daddy told him war stories.
He must have been twelve before he knew that Guadalcanal wasn’t in the War Between the States, but by then it was too late to take an interest in Daddy’s war-or in Daddy, who finally finished the Japs’ job for them by wrapping himself around a tree in his black Bel-Air. Lightfoot wasn’t there at the time, but since then he’d pulled enough drunks out of wrecks piece by piece to have remarkably realistic nightmares about it.
Now Lightfoot was the county sheriff-maybe a little rougher on drunk drivers than he needed to be-and people laughed at the way he played war with the young bucks of the county; but to Lightfoot’s mind, it was a better way out of this world than most of the other exits he’d seen people try.
He took a swig of hot, un-spiked Pepsi, and picked up his notes on the Campbell case. Glencoe Park was private property, so the alcohol was not his concern-not until one of them tried to turn one of his county roads into the abattoir. Then he’d see. Meanwhile, he had to try to make sense of this three-ring circus: Scotchmen, spies, an old man hell-bent on cussedness… Seemed like none of it was really serious. All these people were on French leave from their real lives, he reckoned. In costumes up on a mountain, they just didn’t seem to count things up here as part of real life-just part of the show, as if they expected the dead man to come back to life on Sunday afternoon, the way the casualties did in his Civil War battles.