Everyone joined the game. Everyone knew an aptly named cat: a tom named Catsanova; a shrimp addict called Stir Fry; a pair of Burmese known as Ping and Pong.
"Send postcards!" Qwilleran reminded them.
Polly said to him, "You've opened a Pandora's box. Is it going to be a blessing or a curse?"
When the piper swung into a strathspey, it was a signal that the newlyweds were leaving. Qwilleran, who was driving the getaway car, fished the car keys from his sporran and asked Riker to bring his van to the clubhouse door.
En route to Boulder House Inn, the couple in the backseat raved about the gift from the couple in the front seat, little knowing how close they had come to getting a schnauzer. Carter Lee said they would schedule a sitting with the portraitist as soon as they returned. Polly hoped they would have good weather in New Orleans. Lynette hoped not to gain any weight.
As for the driver, his moustache was giving him some uneasiness. Champagne had flowed freely at the reception, and he was probably the only one who was totally sober. He kept thinking about the X-rated kiss that Danielle had bestowed on the groom... and about the hints that they were not really cousins... and about the hasty marriage that was a topic of local gossip.
The Boulder House Inn perched on a cliff overlooking the frozen lake and was indeed built of boulders, some as big as bathtubs, piled one on top of another. Snow accented every ledge, lintel, sill, and crevice. Indoors, some of the floors were chiseled from the huge flat rock that made the foundation of the building. Four-foot split logs blazed in the cavernous fireplace, around which guests gathered after dinner to listen to the innkeeper's stories.
Silas Dingwall was like the innkeeper in a medieval woodcut: short, rotund, leather-aproned, and jolly. Smiling and flinging his arms wide in welcome, he ushered the wedding party to the best table in the dining room. The centerpiece was a profusion of red carnations, white ribbons, and white wedding bells of plastic foam. A wine cooler stood ready, chilling a bottle of champagne, courtesy of the house.
"May I open it?" he asked.
The cork escaped from the bottleneck with a gentle pfffl! and he poured with a flourish, while lavishing felicitations on the bridal pair. He ended by saying, "I'll be your wine steward tonight, and Tracy will be your server."
Involuntarily Qwilleran's hand went to his upper lip as he saw the innkeeper speak to a pretty young blond woman. He saw Dingwall gesture toward their table. He saw her nod.
Lynette and Carter Lee were drinking an intimate toast to each other, with arms linked and eyes shining, when the blond server approached the table. She took a few brisk steps, wearing a hospitable smile, then slowed to a sleepwalker's pace as her smile turned to shock. "Oh, my God!" she cried and ran blindly from the dining room, bumping into chairs and lurching through the swinging doors to the kitchen.
There was silence among the diners. Then hysterical screams came from the kitchen, and the innkeeper rushed through the swinging doors.
"Well!" Polly said. "What was that all about?"
Lynette was bewildered. Carter Lee seemed poised. Qwilleran looked wise. He thought he knew what it was all about.
The innkeeper, red-faced, bustled up to the table. "I'm sorry," he said. "Tracy is not well. Barbara will be your server."
After the wedding dinner, Qwilleran and Polly chose to drive back to Pickax without waiting for the storytelling hour around the fireplace. She had to work the next day, and he was less than comfortable with the situation as he perceived it. But he was "best man," and he had made the best of it.
While the two sisters-in-law embraced with tears of joy, the two men shook hands, and Carter Lee thanked his best man for being witness to the ceremony.
"It's the third time I've performed this role," Qwilleran said, "and it's the first time I've done it without dropping the ring, so that bodes well!"
Before leaving, he told Silas Dingwall about Short and Tall Tales and made an appointment for the next day to record "something hair-raising, mysterious, or otherwise sensational." The innkeeper promised him a good one.
On the way home, no mention was made of the waitress's outburst. Polly told him he was the handsomest man at the wedding; he told her she looked younger than the bride. Both agreed that Lynette looked beatific.
"So you see, you were wrong about her jilting him, Qwill."
"First time in my life I've ever been wrong," he said with a facetious nonchalance that he did not really feel.
On the way to Boulder House Inn, the day after the wedding, Qwilleran reviewed the incident of the previous evening. The server's name was Tracy; she was a pretty blond; she was obviously Ernie Kemple's daughter, who had been wined and dined by Carter Lee James. Her father knew she was gullible; he feared she would be hurt again. Now Qwilleran was wondering what kind of husband Lynette had acquired. He was a suave young man who was enchanting local women, including Polly. She remarked about his engaging ways. He was being called charming, gallant, gentlemanly. What else was he?
Arriving at the inn, Qwilleran was greeted effusively by Silas Dingwall, who was excited about being "in a book." He said, "We'll go in the office, where it's quiet."
"And first tell me something about yourself," Qwilleran said.
Over coffee he learned that Dingwall was descended from the survivors of a shipwreck more than a century before. All his life he had been fascinated by tales handed down through the generations.
"There were ghost stories, murder mysteries, rumrunning thrillers and you-name-it. My favorite is the Mystery of Dank Hollow, a true story about a young fisherman who was also a new bridegroom. It happened, maybe, a hundred and thirty years ago when Trawnto was a little fishing village. Want to hear it?"
"I certainly do. Just tell it straight through. I won't interrupt."
As eventually transcribed, the story went like this:
One day a young fisherman by the name of Wallace Reekie, who lived in the village here, went to his brother's funeral in a town twenty miles away. He didn't have a horse, so he set out on foot at daybreak and told his new bride he'd be home at nightfall. Folks didn't like to travel that road after dark because there was a dangerous dip in it. Mists rose up and hid the path, you see, and it was easy to make a wrong turn and walk into the bog. They called it Dank Hollow. At the funeral, Wallace helped carry his brother's casket to the burial place in the woods, and on the way he tripped over a tree root. There was an old Scottish superstition: Stumble while carrying a corpse, and you'll be the next to go into the grave. It must have troubled Wallace, because he drank too much at the wake and was late in leaving for home. His relatives wanted him to stay over, but he was afraid his young wife would worry. He took a nap before leaving, though, and got a late start. It was a five-hour trek, and when he didn't show up by nightfall, like he'd said, his wife sat up all night, praying. It was just turning daylight when she was horrified to see her husband staggering into the dooryard of their little hut. Before he could say a word, he collapsed on the ground. She screamed for help, and a neighbor's boy ran for the doctor. He came galloping on horseback and did what he could. They also called the pastor of the church. He put his ear to the dying man's lips and listened to his last babbling words, but for some reason he never told what he heard. From then on, folks dreaded the Dank Hollow after dark. It was not only because of the mists and the bog but because of Wallace's mysterious death. That happened way back, of course. By 1930, when a paved road bypassed the Hollow, the incident was mostly forgotten. And then, in 1970, the pastor's descendants gave his diary to the Trawnto Historical Society. That's when the whole story came to light: Wallace had reached the Dank Hollow after dark and was feeling his way cautiously along the path, when he was terrified to see a line of shadowy beings coming toward him out of the bog. One of them was his brother, who had just been buried. They beckoned Wallace to join their ghostly procession, and that was the last thing the poor man remembered. How he had found his way home in his delirium was hard to explain. The pastor had written in his diary: "Only the prayers of his wife and his great love for her could have guided him." And then he added a strange thing: "When Wallace collapsed in his dooryard, all his clothes were inside out."