Heather shrugged. “I remember making sure that he brought it along. He’s always so particular about his kilt and all the rest of the lot.”
“Did he wear it to the party last night?”
“The one here? No. He wore it to the sherry party at Mrs. Hamilton’s, but I’m nearly certain that he wore the other one after that.” She smiled. “I think he felt a bit guilty about wearing it. It was a present from her, you know.”
Elizabeth didn’t want to talk about Marge, and she couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Heather was right: she wasn’t much help, but at least she wasn’t being hysterical. “Well, if you need anything, just let me know,” said Elizabeth. “I was looking for Lachlan Forsyth, actually. Do you know him?”
“The old man from the souvenir stall? I haven’t seen him.” Heather seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. She pulled a set of keys out of her pocket and started up the camper steps. “Thanks for stopping by.”
I must ask this, thought Elizabeth, not wanting to: “Do you want me to send Cameron over to see you?”
“I don’t know,” said Heather. “Perhaps I’ll see him later. Not now.”
Instead of the question she wanted to ask, Elizabeth said, “Heather, do you think Walter did it?”
Heather, who had been turning the key in the lock, turned and frowned at Elizabeth. “What a question to ask a wife,” she said, closing the door.
Elizabeth did not find Lachlan Forsyth at any of the clan tents, nor could she find anyone who remembered seeing him. The pipe bands were giving a performance in the center field, so most of the crowd had congregated around the tents to watch the show. The mix of tartans reminded Elizabeth of the time she had melted all her crayons in her mother’s best saucepan.
The Chattan tent was packed: every folding chair was occupied, and the row of coolers stretched from one tent pole to the other. Cluny was still asleep in his place of honor by the information table, but his baby-sitter, Cameron Dawson, was nowhere in sight.
“Has anybody seen Dr. Dawson?” asked Elizabeth over the whine of “MacPherson’s Lament.”
A man in a chair on the back row tilted his head back and wiggled his nose to keep his glasses from falling off. “Who?”
“The guy who was watching the bobcat.”
“Oh. Had a speech impediment?”
Elizabeth bristled. “That,” she said ominously, “was an Edinburgh prep-school accent as spoken by a Ph.D.!”
“Uh-huh. I thought he sounded funny.” The man took another sip of his drink, nearly toppling his chair in the process.
“Where is he?” said Elizabeth even more loudly.
“Whisky run,” said the woman at the information table. “Jack Gilroy didn’t think we had enough Scotch, so he was headed for the liquor store in Meadow Creek.”
“Didn’t look like he’d even make it to the parking lot,” said the chair-toppler.
“Your friend offered to drive Jack to the store. He thought it would be safer.”
“He hadn’t had nearly as much as Jack,” the man volunteered.
“I’ll bet he’d had enough,” Elizabeth muttered. “He’s never driven on the right side of the road before. How long have they been gone?”
“Half an hour, tops.”
“Okay. I’ll take Cluny with me, and I’ll check back in half an hour. If he comes back, keep him here!”
“Who? Jack?” the man called after her.
“No!” Elizabeth yelled back. Damned bagpipes! “The one with the speech impediment.”
Elizabeth had a bit of a struggle making any progress along the path by the clan tents. For one thing, Cluny was not pleased at having his nap interrupted, and he saw no reason to cooperate during the course of the walk. His foul mood was further offset by the Saturday afternoon tourists who, now that Elizabeth did not want to be bothered with them, insisted on stopping her with questions about the Chattan mascot. Everybody wanted to pet the bobcat.
“Can we just have little Allison’s picture taken with the kitty?” asked a besotted father festooned in cameras.
Little Allison, who looked like a dismemberer of stuffed animals, was gazing at Cluny with a gleam of purpose in her piggy eyes.
“Another time,” said Elizabeth sweetly. “He hasn’t had all his shots.” She steered the bobcat firmly away into the crowd while she tried to decide where to look for Marge. The tent or the practice meadow? She would never have spotted her at all if Somerled hadn’t started to bark.
The border collie, who had been curled up by his mistress’s chair in the MacDonald tent, caught the scent of Strange cat and decided that the immediate world should be notified. He sprang to attention, searching the crowd of manshapes for the interloper, and spotting the bobcat a few yards away, he hunched into a menacing crouch and began to announce his discovery.
Cluny sat down with the dignity of an interrupted bishop and hissed cordially at the source of the disturbance. Fortunately, the bagpipes drowned out most of it. Before the confrontation could degenerate into a donnybrook, Marge Hutcheson sprang between them. A sharp word from her sent Somerled back to wary disapproval; Cluny was still bristling, but he no longer bothered to hiss.
“Were you looking for me?” asked Marge dryly, once peace had been restored.
Elizabeth nodded. “Nothing very important. Just thought I’d tell you how things are going.”
Marge pointed her finger at the border collie. “Somerled, stay until I get back,” she said sternly. She smiled at Elizabeth. “I find dogs much easier to reason with than bobcats. Now, let’s take a walk while we discuss all this.”
“There isn’t very much to tell,” Elizabeth warned her. “Nothing really dramatic. At least I found out what Colin’s meeting was about.”
She explained about Jerry Buchanan’s zeal for a conservative tartan, and how his conversation with Colin had revealed the existence of the S.R.A. scam. By the time she reached the part about Geoffrey’s impromptu initiation into the conspiracy, Marge was laughing.
“Geoffrey has created any amount of havoc,” Elizabeth told her. “He’s told them that Cameron was a spy, and he terrorized that poor dentist a little while ago. But he refuses to believe that any of it ties in with the murder.”
Marge smiled. “What about Lachlan?”
“I can’t find him. Geoffrey insists that Lachlan isn’t capable of violence. Apparently it’s against con-man psychology.”
“And how say you, sociology major?”
“I took criminology in my sophomore year, thinking that it was going to be a fascinating course full of Jack the Ripper and blood and thunder. People always assume that; the class is packed every quarter. Actually, it’s deadly dull. Mostly statistics. I don’t remember a single thing.”
“Well, having known Lachlan from a few seasons of festivals, I must say I don’t think he’s a very likely killer, either. Anyway, I don’t see how he could have got hold of Walter’s skian dubh.” “I wish I could find him. There’s still a chance that one of his merry men did this for some mad reason connected with this crazy terrorist business. And they are certainly capable of a little burglary to steal a murder weapon as well.”
Marge looked up. “As well,” she echoed. “That’s pure Brit. I’ll bet you didn’t say that B.C.”
“B.C.? Oh! Before Cameron. I guess you’re right. I’ve been listening to his accent so hard that I must have picked up a phrase or two. Not enough, though. When Cameron met Heather, they were using a whole dictionary full of words I’d never heard of. And they’d throw in names of places (I guess) which confused me even more.” She sighed. “They knew each other before.”