A Wee Murder in My Shop (A ScotShop Mystery) Read Online Free Page A

“I . . . I left my socks by the stream.” I turned and fled, and the man came along with me.
    At the side of the stream I whirled around. “She couldn’t see you.” My stage whisper was indignant, unbelieving, and, I must admit, a trifle terrified.
    “And do ye think,” he practically spat at me, “do ye think I am enjoying this?” He paced a few feet uphill, turned around and paced down. “I woke up . . . I didna know I had been sleeping, but it seemed I awoke . . . thinking my Peigi had somehow been transported from her sickbed, restored to health, and brought here to my lands.” He spread his arms to encompass the hillside. “Instead, I find a brazen woman striding around with . . . with her ankles showing.” He shuddered, but I noticed his eyes drift down the length of me. I missed his next few words. “. . . a tree where no tree stood ever since my grandda’s father cleared this land for our crops and the goats.” His hand strayed to his dirk again. “And these strange clothes ye wear. Where did ye come from? Are ye . . . a spirit?”
    A bird flew across the meadow, and I saw the wings flap as it passed behind him. He seemed so much a part of this place, but his clothes, his attitudes were—
Oh dear, this can’t be happening
—from a very long time ago.
    I took a deep breath. “I don’t think I’m the one who’s the spirit here.” He looked incredulous. “I think you’re . . .” I took another breath. “I think you’re a ghost.”
    “That canna be. I dinna believe in them, despite what the aulde grannies say.”
    “But I can see through you—sort of.”
    He held a hand up in front of his eyes. I could see a shimmer of light through it. He swallowed convulsively; his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “And I can see ye, too, like. Through my—” He sat down abruptly. “I’m deid?”
    I sank down onto the grass beside him. “It sure looks like it.”
    “Why am I here, then?”
    “I don’t know.” I gripped the shawl more tightly.
    He reached out and fingered the edge of it. “This is her shawl, ye know,” he said. “See this wee line of white that disrupts the pattern along this one edge?”
    I doubt I would have noticed it if he hadn’t pointed it out. A thin white line was clearly visible, even though the felting had blended the colors and made the pattern soft and indistinct. I checked the other edges, but no white line was there.
    “It was her love message to me,” he said.
    He had a bad case of five o’clock shadow, about two days’ worth. I almost wanted to reach over and run my fingers along his jaw to see what it would feel like. I restrained myself.
    “She told me that her love for me would last as long as this white line was visible. And that when I was awae from her, she would keep me by her side.” The shawl dropped from his fingers. “Forever,” he added.
    I looked around the hillside, half expecting to see a long-skirted, long-haired, long-dead woman walking our way. “When . . .” I didn’t know how else to ask it. “When are you from?”
    He looked puzzled for a moment until understanding sank in. “This is the year of our Lord 1359.”
    “Thirteen!” I yelped. “Thirteen-fifty-nine? How the heck did you get to the twenty-first century?”
    He gulped again. “Twenty-first, ye say?” His wavering cheeks went a bit pale. He cupped his face in his hands and leaned his elbows on his knees—and very fine knees they were, I had to admit. His kilt was hiked halfway up his thigh. But I didn’t need to be thinking about that. We sat in silence for a minute, maybe two.
    What on earth would my great-grandma have done in a situation like this? Was I going absolutely nuts? “Do you have a name, or do I just call you
ghost
?”
    He bowed in a surprisingly courtly manner. “I have the privilege of carrying the name of Macbeath Donlevy Freusach Finlay Macearachar Macpheidiran of Clan Farquharson. My family call me