08 - The Highland Fling Murders by Jessica Fletcher, Donald Bain Page B

bagpipes?”
    “Ay.”
    “Well, I don’t know. I mean—buy a set of bagpipes? The last thing on my very long shopping list. Buy them? How much?”
    He frowned, mumbled to himself, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the back of his left. “It’s an old set a’ pipes, ma‘am, but in good repair. I’ve fixed ’em good. Like new.”
    “I’m sure you have.”
    Fifteen minutes later, I emerged from the shop carrying the bagpipes wrapped in a sheet provided by the shop owner.
    “You can’t walk around carryin’ that,” Seth said.
    “You’re right,” I said.
    I went back inside the shop and left the pipes with the owner, who sternly warned me that he dosed promptly at four. I assured him I’d return well before that. I also asked him if he knew a fisherman named Evan Lochbuie.
    “Ay. But why would a cultured woman like you want to talk to a dug like that?”
    “Is he a dog?”
    “The worst kind. Gives dugs a bad name to mention him in the same breath.”
    “What’s wrong with him?”
    “He’s daft. A raving maniac, that’s what he is.”
    “But I can find him at the dock?”
    “Ay. But you do it at your peril.”
    “I’ll take your warning seriously. Thank you.”
    “I can’t believe you bought bagpipes,” Jim Shevlin said when I joined them on the street.
    “Should be fun to learn,” I said.
    “Maybe it’s to impress your handsome Scottish inspector,” Maureen Metzger said, giggling.
    “Could be,” Susan Shevlin added. “He can teach you how to play it.”
    “You may be my friends,” I said pleasantly, “but you are incorrigible gossips. You should write soap operas.”
    “He obviously is smitten with you, Jess,” Susan said. “You can see it every time he looks at you.”
    “We’re good friends,” I said. “Nothing more.” His words the previous night as we stood outside the castle ran through my mind, as they had a dozen times since getting up that morning.
    “Where to next?” Seth asked.
    “Let’s just stroll,” I said.
    “Where did you find Daisy’s body?” Jim Shevlin asked.
    “Up there.” I pointed to the other end of Bridge Street. “But you don’t want to see that. Hardly a tourist attraction.”
    “I want to see it,” said Mort Metzger. “There’s been a crime committed on my watch.”
    “ On your watch ?” We said it in unison.
    “Absolutely,” he said. “I may be on vacation, but I still have an obligation as a law enforcement officer to protect you as my friends and fellow citizens, no matter where we are in the world.”
    We looked at each other and suppressed smiles. We all love Mort Metzger, Cabot Cove’s sheriff for many years, and a dear friend to all. He does tend to overstep his authority and responsibility at times, which only makes him even more lovable.
    “Take us there, Jess?” Cabot Cove’s new mayor, Jim Shevlin, said.
    “If you insist.”
    We paused in front of the office building and read the plaque placed there by the Wick Historical Society: “ Site of the murder of Evelyn Gowdie , Feb. 11, 1976, descendant of famed Scottish witch, Isabell Gowdie.”
    “Seems like a silly thing to commemorate.” Tim Shevlin said.
    “Witches seem to be popular here,” Roberta Walters said.
    “This where you found the body, Jess?” Mort asked.
    “In back.”
    We walked down the dirt driveway to the litter-strewn yard behind the building. Wick’s constable, Horace McKay, was standing where Daisy Wemyss’s body had been. He wore wading boots, and held his very long fishing rod. A net hung from a ring on the back of his fishing vest. A creel was on the ground, at his feet.
    “Good morning, Constable McKay,” I said.
    He nodded, but said nothing.
    “I’m Jessica Fletcher. You might remember I discovered Ms. Wemyss’s body.”
    “Ay. 1 remember.”
    “These are my friends. We’re all staying at Sutherland Castle.”
    “Ay. I know that.”
    Silence.
    “Well,” I said, “I just wanted to show my friends where I discovered