“Sort of touristy,” I said. “It’s back toward the castle a few blocks.”
She turned to look up the street. “Do you want to go there?”
I shook my head and winced. “I made the mistake of reading about it. Brodie was this upstanding citizen-a deacon, as you might’ve figured-who took up burglary at night. So they hanged him-or maybe he escaped. Since this is Scotland, the legends go both ways, depending on the day of the week. But he was supposedly Robert Louis Stevenson’s inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“You know way too much history for someone who never liked high school.”
“It’s a curse.”
“Maybe I’ll take your parents there tomorrow.”
“Don’t tell them about the icky Mr. Hyde part.”
“I think they might like that aspect.”
I chuckled. “You’re probably right.”
We passed through the long shadow of the Tron Kirk spire and crossed the High Street.
I’d heard that many people in Scotland considered Glasgow, not Edinburgh, to be the garden spot to visit, because Edinburgh was rife with counterculture, drugs,
AIDS and crime. But the public perception outside Britain was that Edinburgh was the jewel in the crown of the British Isles. In that regard, it reminded me a lot of San Francisco, and maybe that was why I loved it so much. It was the scruffiness around the edges that appealed to me, as well as the fact that, to my mind, the view from every direction was picture-perfect.
I pointed out a cheery, wide-windowed pub with flowerpots hanging from the tops of each of the tall columns. “That’s where we’re going.”
“The Mitre. Looks nice, but what about that place?” She pointed to another pub two doors down.
“Do you really want to eat at a place called Clever Dick’s?”
“Depends,” she said with a grin.
Do I know how to pick a best friend or what?
“I’m stuffed,” Robin groaned as we walked out of the Mitre. “Let’s walk for a while.”
“You didn’t have to order dessert,” I said, as we walked east along the Royal Mile, in the opposite direction of the hotel. It was cold, but the air felt good. The sky was studded with stars and the sidewalks were crowded with people out looking for a good time.
“It’s not every day you get to eat spotted dick.”
“You can say that again,” I said, as we passed the aged, turreted Tolbooth. It had been a wretched prison in the sixteenth century, with public hangings and all that fun stuff, but now it was a museum, with its ten-foot-high fancy clock hanging five stories up above the street. “And I guess you could say the same for tatties and neeps.”
“Oh, my God, don’t remind me. That waitress was trying to terrify me on purpose.”
I laughed at the memory of Robin’s expression when the waitress suggested tatties and neeps on the side, then gave her a break and explained that it was the local name for potatoes and parsnips. We figured she did that to all the tourists. At the end of the meal, Robin asked for the recipe and the chef himself came out to recite it, basically mashed root veggies with a touch of this and that-and tarragon, the secret ingredient.
When Robin invited him to move to San Francisco to cook for her, I knew it was time to leave.
“Look, puppets!” Robin cried, and hurried over to a storefront display of numerous stringed puppets in intricate costumes, all standing and ready to perform. There was a bagpiper, a ballerina, a golfer, three soldiers, all in different uniforms, a harlequin clown and a pirate. Their oversize faces were carved from wood and their cheeks were splotched with bits of red paint-to make them appear happy and healthy, I supposed.
“Kind of creepy, huh?” I said, struggling to keep a steady foot on the wily cobblestones after having shared a bottle of wine with Robin.
“I think they’re pretty,” Robin said.
“Oh, sure, until they come alive in the middle of the night and try to kill you.”
She frowned. “I hate when that happens.”
“Should we start back?”
“Do you want to walk up to the castle?” Robin asked as we headed west. “I still need to walk off dinner.”
“Sure.” It was a beautiful night, cold but not unbearable, and I didn’t want to go back to the hotel just yet.
“We can stop at a few pubs for a nightcap or two,” she added.
“That’s why I love you,” I said, weaving our arms together and pulling us to a stop at the red light.
“Well, we are in Scotland, after all,” Robin said. “Home of the best pubs in the world, filled with hardy, handsome hunks in kilts who drink Scotch all night and play rugby all day. That takes balls, you know. Big ones, made of leather.”
“And we’re back to our theme of the night,” I said with a laugh, then shivered from a cold waft of air that swept up South Bridge.
Robin continued singing the praises of hunky Scotsmen, but I tuned out as a sudden stinging awareness told me that someone was watching us. I’d felt that same eerie sensation once before, in San Francisco after Abraham was murdered. I’d brushed it off then, to my detriment. Now, after another murder and a day of near misses, I wasn’t quite ready to dismiss it.
I glanced around but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. People walked the streets, going from here to there, minding their own business. A group of college boys whooped it up outside a record store across the street. None of them cast a menacing scowl my way.
But there were shadows and dark alleyways everywhere along the Royal Mile. Was someone hiding, waiting, planning?
Beside me, Robin was humming and swaying to some internal groove, daydreaming of men in kilts, oblivious to any danger lurking nearby.
So okay, maybe it was my imagination. Let’s face it, I was slightly tanked and still on edge from the attack at the library earlier. And these narrow, cobbled streets of Old Town naturally conjured up ghosts and spirits and evildoers where there was really nothing, nothing but the whispers and sighs of the soft winds that wafted up the myriad lanes and passageways leading to the High Street.
Uh-oh. I was waxing poetic, and that was never a good sign. I shivered again, grabbed my gloves and put them on, then rubbed my hands together to warm up.
When the light turned green, I breathed a sigh of relief and stepped off the curb. A black car came screeching toward me.
“No!” Robin screamed, and yanked my arm. I fell backward and landed right on my ass. Again. Pain shot up my spine and I groaned as I lay back on the sidewalk.
The car roared away down North Bridge toward the New Town and disappeared. He never even slowed down.
“Damn, that hurt,” I muttered, staring up at the sky, trying to figure out why this kind of thing kept happening to me.
“ Brooklyn?” Robin called out. Seconds later, her face appeared in my line of vision. “Are you okay? Did you see that? The guy didn’t even stop. Are you hurt? Can you talk? Oh, my God, please say something.”
“I’ll live,” I managed to say. But my butt was going to be bruised.
I heard footsteps running toward me. “Are ye all right, miss?”
I tried to focus as another pair of eyes stared down at me.
“Tommy?”
“Aye, it’s me,” said my cute, would-be kidnapper from this afternoon. “And the slightest bit too late coming, I see.”
“Excuse me, but who’re you?” Robin demanded, then looked back at me. “Who is he?”
“Long story,” I muttered.
“Are ye all right then, love?” Tommy repeated.
“Have you been following us?”
He ignored my question as he crouched down and slipped his warm hand behind my neck. “Let me help you up, miss.”
“We haven’t met,” Robin interrupted, holding out her hand to the handsome gunman.
Tommy, always polite, pulled his hand out from under my neck and stood to shake Robin’s. That was okay; my head barely bounced more than once on the hard cobbled surface.