Did You Declare the Corpse? (7 page)

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Authors: Patricia Sprinkle

BOOK: Did You Declare the Corpse?
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She rushed him, but her attack ended in a shriek as he grabbed her hair and yanked.
Again the flight attendants waded into the fray. Again the combatants shook them off.
I have settled a few domestic disputes in my time, so I was fixing to head back there when I saw Joyce heading their way. “Stop!” she commanded.
“It’s okay.” Sherry stopped fighting and stood in the aisle panting. “Kenny just got a little out of hand. He’s going to be fine, now, aren’t you?” She glared at him.
Kenny glared back at her, breathing heavily. “I’ll be fine if you’ll agree to—”
“Don’t you start that again,” she warned, reaching for his arm.
He shoved her hard, and she fell across the armrest into her seat, where she swore at him as she struggled to get up.
When he raised a fist, I ignored the “Fasten Seat Belt” sign and went for real help.
Even first class had heard something going on back in steerage. Jim stood in the aisle peering through the curtain. “Please come,” I told him. “Kenny is drunk and creating a scene.” He shut his computer and followed me to the back.
“Hey, Ken.” He grabbed Kenny by one shoulder. Kenny lunged like an angry bull, but Jim was bigger, and sober. He held Kenny without any trouble. “Calm down, now. Let’s sit down and talk this over.” He looked over the seats and spotted a vacant row in the middle a few rows back. He raised one eyebrow at a flight attendant. “Those seats available?”
She nodded, obviously relieved to have somebody else take charge.
“He doesn’t need to leave. He’s going to be fine!” Gasping for breath, Sherry fumbled in a pocket and retrieved her hair clip. In a smooth, practiced motion she secured her hair and arranged her face simultaneously. Once again she looked remote and in control. “He’s terrified of flying,” she explained, “so he tends to drink too much on flights. I can deal with him.”
She stood and put out one hand to take Kenny’s arm, but he swatted her away. “Don’t you touch me, you—”
“Let him stay with me a while,” Jim advised. “We’ll be right back there.”
Sherry obviously would have preferred to keep him at their seat, but after a short hesitation, she shrugged. “Whatever.” She spoke to Kenny in what sounded like a warning. “Just remember, honey, this is going to be a real good trip. Okay?”
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why that should sound like a threat.
But Kenny, too, caught her warning tone. “Good trip?” he mumbled as he staggered behind Jim to the seats in the back. Before he sat, he turned and shot her a look of pure venom. “A real good trip to hell.”
6
Nine days later, when the police sergeant would interview me about the body in the coffin and our group of travelers, he would ask, “Did anything unusual occur on this trip? Anything out of the ordinary?”
Unusual? Out of the ordinary?
“From the very first day,” I would have to admit.
To begin with, nobody else met us at Prestwick Airport in Glasgow Wednesday morning. How could anybody be making money on this trip? I could tell that Laura was wondering, too.
When we reassembled after collecting our luggage and going through customs, nobody mentioned the fight. The way Kenny and Sherry acted, you’d have thought they’d slept soundly on the trip while the rest of us shared the same nightmare.
Joyce, however, looked strained and peaked, as colorless as the pale blue of her parka, which did nothing to enhance her brown hair and eyes. Still, she managed to stay pleasant while ushering us out into a cold drizzle where a short green bus waited, blazoned with “Gilroy’s Highland Tours” in white and the name “Jeannie” in yellow script by the door. The driver gave Joyce a cheerful wave through the drizzle, looked the group over, then peered around for more of us.
“That’s our bus?” I whispered to Laura.
“Will it
last
two weeks?” she whispered back. “Maybe I could sell them a new one and pay for my trip.”
Seldom had I seen a shabbier vehicle. Did I say it was green? Actually, one fender was red, another black. Large dents decorated both the back bumper and the front, as if somebody had gotten angry and jerked the poor thing back and forth, hitting cars fore and aft.
Joyce gave it one dismayed look and strode over to speak to the driver. We didn’t hear what she said, but we heard him cackle and exclaim, “Och, auld Jeannie here’ll get us there and back nae bother. She’s got a fine engine, has Jeannie.” He smacked her side and turned as if he’d smack Joyce on the bottom, as well. She quickly turned toward Jim and Brandi—probably worrying that they’d quit the tour and go home. Jim directed a porter to stow their bags in the open luggage door with no more visible concern than if the bus had been a limousine.
The driver, who had the name “Watty” embroidered on his flat black cap in yellow script, was as shabby as his bus. His black wool pants sagged. His red shirt had faded to a dull rose. And under a scruffy black jacket he had on the most disreputable argyle sweater I’d ever seen. Joe Riddley would have looked like a fashion plate beside him. The man wasn’t much taller than me, with lines like sunbeams radiating from button-black eyes and grizzled curls springing from the cap, which dripped water in four directions. “Mind yer step, mind yer step,” he muttered as we deposited our bags and climbed up the high steps.
I stretched up and whispered to Laura, “Tip well. He looks like he can use it. But do we just tip at the end, or every time he stows our luggage?” Joe Riddley usually does our tipping.
“At the end, plus if he performs an extraordinary service.”
“Looks to me like it’s going to be an extraordinary service every time he heaves all those bags into the bus, as tottery as he is.”
When he finished, he looked questioningly at Joyce. She gave him her plastic, practiced smile. “That’s all,” she said in her bright tour-guide voice. He shrugged and touched his cap.
When she got closer to Jim, though, her smile turned to another worried frown. “It’s fine,” he said shortly. He climbed aboard and slid into a seat near the front.
“Hey, it’s warm in here!” Brandi bounded up after him. “And we can each have a seat and see out the window.” She took the seat behind Jim.
Joyce climbed on last, consulted with the driver, and announced, “Since none of you had ancestors who came from Glasgow, we’ll only stay here one night before heading north. I suggest you rest this morning. The bus will pick us up at two for a short tour of the city.”
As we rode into town, my energy drained with the drizzle. I propped my head against the window and stared out at bleak trees against a charcoal sky. I nodded as pastures of sodden sheep gave way to slick wet streets of gray houses and Monday morning traffic. My watch showed that Joe Riddley still had hours to sleep. I wished I were lying beside him, reaching out a toe to touch his warm calf. I let out an involuntary yelp as we passed a large thermometer. “Two degrees?” I clutched my trench coat and knew I was going to regret having left the liner at home.
Dorothy laughed. “That’s two Celsius, thirty-four Fahrenheit. Not too bad for early spring, eh? And aren’t the colors marvelous? All those grays and browns! Whistler should have painted this.” That morning, the pink in her cheeks looked more like delight than painful shyness.
“Look at that Scotch broom!” Brandi called, pointing to waterfalls of yellow flowers on bright green stalks beside the road. “We are really in Scotland!”
Nobody answered. My guess was that only Brandi and Dorothy were awake.
Glasgow in the rain is like any big city—slow and dreary. By the time we arrived at the hotel, I was so sleepy that I followed Laura to our room in a blur. I didn’t bother to look for a nightgown, just stripped down to underwear and socks and fell into bed.
A big mistake.
The bed was so icy, I felt like warm ham in a frozen bun. I waited a few minutes for my body heat to thaw the sheets, but my corpuscles began to solidify instead. Finally I faced the inevitable, climbed out of bed, and rummaged in my suitcase for a flannel gown. I topped it with a sweater, climbed back into bed, and lay there mentally reviewing the clothes I’d brought. I concluded that to stay warm, I would need to wear so many layers I would roll through Scotland like a ball.
Why had I let packing in Georgia’s heat lull me into ignoring the average daily temperatures listed in our trip materials? Why hadn’t I remembered that “early spring” is a relative term, depending on your latitude? Even little Cricket knew enough to brag to his friends, “Me-Mama is going to Scotland and it’s way up at the
top of the world!
”
I didn’t get warm until about the time Joyce called to say the bus was ready to leave. That’s why I elected, while others looked at Glasgow, to visit that great tourist attraction Marks and Spencer. I roved the department store filling bag after bag with sweaters, slacks, socks, a hat and gloves. While clerks rang up my purchases, I checked my watch to figure out where Joe Riddley and the boys might be.
They must be loading the car. Now they are heading west. They must have gotten to I-75 already.
Before I knew it, I had bought so many clothes, I had to buy a big new suitcase to put them in.
In the cab on my way back to the hotel, I tried to convert pounds into dollars to see how much I’d spent, but the figure soon reached an altitude that made it hard for me to breathe, so I gave up and concentrated on excuses I could give Joyce for exceeding our one-bag limit.
I found her standing on the sidewalk outside the hotel in too much of a dither to care.
Dorothy had disappeared.
“She went on the bus as far as the first stop, then left without saying a word. Nobody remembers even seeing her after we got off. We looked and looked, but never did find her.” Joyce peered up and down the street, clutching her coat to her throat.
The wind was sharp and fierce, carrying that raw blend of dampness, diesel and industry that is Glasgow’s peculiar odor. I shivered beside her, more than ready to go inside and find a cup of hot tea, but I hated to leave her standing there alone, worrying. “Sherry finally insisted that we go on without her. She said Dorothy is a grown woman and knows where we are staying, so she can find her way back to the hotel. But—”
But Dorothy didn’t look like a woman with much experience in taking care of herself in strange cities. “What did Marcia say?”
“Marcia decided to stay here and rest this afternoon.” Joyce peered up and down the street again. “I haven’t bothered her yet.” She took a few steps one way, then the other, balled her fists and shook them. “Drat! I don’t know what to do. Do you think I ought to call the police?” Were her teeth chattering from fear, cold, or both?
“Not yet,” I advised. “Come on inside and get something hot to drink. It’s still light out, and surely she’ll get a cab back to the hotel.” I tried not to think about women abducted in broad daylight from city malls.
Joyce looked prepared to stand there all night if necessary. “I really want people to stick to the program. I’m not going to be able to manage this tour if people keep charging off on their own.” Her voice was grim, and she glanced down at my new suitcase.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “I simply had to have some warmer clothes. I’ll stay right with you the rest of the way.” I headed upstairs with my purchases. She remained on the sidewalk.
I tried out Walker’s cell phone before tea, to see if Cricket’s mother had heard from the men. “Haven’t heard a word yet,” Martha said cheerfully, “but they will have barely gotten to the Gulf by now. Don’t you waste your trip worrying about them, Mac. They’ll be fine.”
“Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?”
She laughed. “Both. But let’s make a deal. I’ll worry and you have fun. You hear me?” I went down to tea thinking that the only thing better than raising two good sons is having both of them marry women you can love.
Laura had gone down before me and was waiting in the lobby.
“Sorry,” I told her. “I was calling home. The store is fine, but there’s no word from the sailors yet.”
“MacDonald Motors is limping along tolerably well without me, too. Downright humbling, isn’t it, how well they can do without us?”
“And Ben?”
“Him, too.” She tried to sound casual, but she was rosy and had a smile on her lips. “Let’s eat.”
Joyce, still watching for Dorothy, declined to join us. “Marcia is having dinner sent to her room,” she told us. “Go on in and find yourselves a table.”
The hotel was old but very comfortable, and the dining room was large, dark and elegant. If the food lived up to the decor, Joyce hadn’t lied about our future meals being better than our first. Brandi, looking chic and expensive in a black sweater and slacks with her hair piled on her head, sat with Kenny and Sherry at a table for six. Since Sherry also wore black, the table looked ready for a funeral—an unfortunate thought with Dorothy still missing. I was glad to see a red jacket over the chair next to Brandi, where she must be saving Jim a seat.
I was about to head their way when Laura pointed out, “If we sit there, Dorothy and Joyce will have to sit together, and that could be awkward. Why don’t we take that table for four near the window, where we can watch for Dorothy, too?” Laura has always been nicer than me. My strongest reason for agreeing with her was, I didn’t think I could stand another Sherry-and-Kenny duet about Scotland that night.

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