A Christmas Tartan Read online

  “Delaney, lass, how are ye feelin’?” Rosie said cheerily as I walked into The Cracked Spine. Her tiny dog, Hector, a red barrette holding up his bangs and a green and red sweater keeping him warm, stood on all fours on the desk and greeted me with a smile and a tail wag. There were currently no customers in the shop, but I knew that would change in about another hour.

  “Fine. Much better,” I said as I noticed the Christmas tree headband around her head. I couldn’t help but watch the tiny trees made of tinsel glimmer. I picked up Hector and kissed his nose, keeping us cheek to cheek for a moment. “I like your headband.”

  “Oh! I forgot all aboot it. T’is cheery. I’m glad tae hear ye’re better.”

  “Thank you for coming with me last night. And I am so sorry about missing dinner.” I moved Hector over my arm and scratched behind his ears. We were all his people, even if he did go home with Rosie every night.

  “Not a problem at all. I’m so relieved ye wernae any more harmed than ye were. Did ye have time tae think about how ye might have come up with the story?”

  “I just don’t know for sure, but everything is less weird after a good night’s sleep.”

  Of course I hadn’t really had a good night’s sleep, but I knew Rosie was worried.

  “Aye,” she said.

  The front door burst open with a slam against the wall. It had been cold outside but not all that windy I thought.

  “Hamlet?” Rosie said.

  Hamlet was a nineteen-year-old college student who looked like a Shakespearean character and carried himself with such a calm intelligence that most people thought he was “extremely mature.” It was rare that he burst into any room.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he made sure the door closed behind him. “I’ve been anxious to talk to Delaney since about midnight when I made some discoveries.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “This sounds interesting,” Rosie said. “Let’s go tae the back.”

  The shop wasn’t big, so moving to the back wasn’t a long journey. A corner nook had been naturally formed by the stairway that led over to the warehouse. A good-sized table, some chairs, more bookshelves, and some file cabinets took up the space where Hamlet did most of his sit-down work. He’d come in holding pieces of paper, which he now spread out on the table.

  “I found all of this,” he said before he zeroed in on one piece of paper and handed it to me. “Start here.”

  I read aloud the copy of the article that he’d printed out. It was dated December 23, 1965.

  “‘Young Woman Still Missing After Three Days. Miss Moira Cruickshank has been unaccounted for since December 20 when she left in the late afternoon to run errands. The police and her grandmother, Mrs. Annabel Cruickshank, have put out a plea for information. Please study the picture of the young woman and report any sighting to the police as soon as possible.’”

  The picture wasn’t the same one I had, but the woman looked so identical to the picture in the box that once again I wondered about the carryover of genetics in her family.

  The weird had come back, but this time there was no layer of something like fog over it. I was fully awake and experiencing this in current time.

  “Oh my,” I said.

  Rosie blinked. “What else did ye find, Hamlet?”

  “This.” He handed me another piece of paper. It was another copy of an article, but it was dated seven months later than the first one—July 20, 1966.

  “‘Missing Woman Presumed to be Dead, the Victim of Probable Foul Play. The police are still searching for information as to the whereabouts of Miss Moira Cruickshank. They have no leads. Tragically, Mrs. Annabel Cruickshank, the missing woman’s grandmother, fell into a coma last week and then succumbed last night. Her niece, Miss Laire Cruickshank of Edinburgh, said that Mrs. Cruickshank hadn’t been the same since Moira went missing, and she was surprised that her aunt lived so long after the heartbreaking tragedy. Foul play is suspected in Moira’s disappearance, but currently the police have no suspects. Please call the police immediately with any information.’”

  I looked up from the article. “Please tell me they found her.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Hamlet said. “At least I couldn’t find any information that they did. I found two more things though. Here.”

  This piece of paper wasn’t an article. It was a name and an address for Laire Cruickshank.

  “Laire is still alive?”

  “Aye. I did some other research tae confirm that she was still with us. She was fifteen when her cousin went missing. She’s in her late sixties.”

  “Do you think she’ll talk to me?” I asked.

  “You and I have a late morning appointment with her, so we’ll see.”

  “Thank you, Hamlet!”

  “No, nothing to thank, this is an incredible story.”

  “What’s the last piece of paper?”

  “Here you go.” He hesitated. “I don’t know why this one made me sad. This was all a long time ago and I didn’t know these people. Anyway.” He handed me the last piece of paper.

  This article was dated February, 1, 1965. “‘After thirty years in business Dunn’s Silver Shop on Cowgatehead is going out of business. Mr. Graham Dunn began the business in 1930 and had only recently handed it over to his son, Branan. The Dunn family says that though they always did an honest business, suspicions of Mr. Branan Dunn’s involvement in the disappearance of Miss Moira Cruickshank have been bad for the business, and its doors must close. The Dunn family is adamant that Mr. Branan Dunn had nothing to do with Miss Cruickshank’s disappearance or probable demise.’”

  I looked up at Hamlet and Rosie. “Oh no. Either he had something to do with it or not. Either way, a terrible tragedy.”

  I thought back to the way they looked at each other. That had been love, right? Not obsession. I blinked away the memories. How could they be real memories anyway?

  “I don’t suppose Branan Dunn is still alive?” I asked.

  “Not that I could find. He’d be in his seventies or eighties. I even looked through prison records, but couldn’t find him anywhere. I searched for more articles claiming that he was a suspect or cleared as a suspect, but couldn’t find those either. I’ll look again this evening.”

  “Oh, Hamlet, thank you so much!” I said. “I don’t know what this means, but I feel less crazy.”

  “My pleasure. Come along, let’s go talk tae Laire.” Hamlet looked at Rosie as if to ask if it was okay to leave her alone in the shop.

  “Aye, go, and call me as soon as ye learn anything,” Rosie said.

  Laire Cruickshank lived on the bottom floor of a building on Westfield, a street I hadn’t seen yet. The street was made up of a long row of buildings that contained flats, each building the same but for slightly different brown or beige stone architecture. A paved walkway with a short brick wall on its one side went down the middle of the street. Garbage cans lined up along the wall, but like everything else in Scotland, I found even the garbage cans charming.

  Laire’s building was old, but as we knocked on her door, I couldn’t help but notice how pristine the crown moldings along the ceiling and the confetti linoleum in the hallway seemed to be. This building had been well taken care of.

  The door opened and we were greeted by a youthful-looking older person, still tall and straight-backed, dressed a long flowery dress—not a housedress but something more hippielike. Her slim face was barely wrinkled, and her gray hair had been pulled back into a tight bun. Reading glasses hung from a crystal-beaded chain around her neck, and I wondered if I saw a tattoo peeking out from under the neckline of the dress.

  “Are ye the young man who called me earlier? Hamlet?”

  “I am,” Hamlet said as he extended his hand. “And this is my friend, Delaney Nichols.”

  She squinted and cocked her head as she looked at me. “Pleasure.”

  “Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today,” I said.

  “Come in.”
>
  There was no indication that Christmas was two days away inside the messy flat. The furniture was old, seemingly made more of colorful pillows than anything else. There were newspapers spread open in a number of spots, and so many books stacked here and there that I had to grit my teeth and tell my bookish voices that now just wasn’t the time to talk to me, though I’d let them know if I needed them.

  “You wanted tae ask aboot my aunt and cousin?” She signaled us to the couch.

  “Yes,” I said as we sat.

  Laire moved some books off a pincushion ottoman and sat on top of it. “I’m listening.”

  I’d held onto the picture the whole way over on the bus. I’d kept it in its protective sleeve, but I didn’t want to worry that I’d forgotten it.

  “Our boss, the owner of the bookshop where we work, found a box of items outside his front door. This book was inside the box. It’s A Christmas Carol. So was this picture.” I held out the picture.

  She slipped on her glasses and looked at it.

  “I haven’t seen this one,” she said. “Moira.”

  “The back of the picture says ‘Annabel Cruickshank,’” I said.

  She took it from me and flipped it over. “It does. No, wait, leuk here, something’s faded. ‘For.’ At one tiem it must have said ‘For Annabel Cruickshank.’”

  I took the picture and held it close to my eyes, angled toward the light from a side table lamp.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t notice that before. That makes more sense, if there’s anything to make sense of . . .” I put the two women’s lives’ timelines together in my mind, and wondered if they had truly looked similar. I’d assumed the picture was of Annabel, but it had been of Moira all along.

  “Lass?” Laire said.

  “Delaney?” Hamlet said.

  Most of the time when people have to regain my attention, it’s because the bookish voices are talking to me. This time it was all just me. I’d have to further ponder timelines later.

  “I’m sorry. I’m . . .” I looked at Laire. “So they never figured out what happened to your cousin?”

  “No, never. It was all such a sad story. Tragic from her beginning tae her end, whatever that might have been.” Laire shook her head. “It was around Christmas way back in 1965. I havenae celebrated the holiday since. It’s only a sad time for me. Just seeing her picture breaks my heart all over again.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Other than her disappearance, why was Moira’s life so tragic?”

  “She lost her parents when she was a wee girl of only three. Annabel, our grandmother, raised her. Moira was such a sweet thing, always happy and pleasant no matter what. Whatever happened . . . weel, let’s just say there’s a special place in hell for whoever hurt sweet Moira.”

  “There’s no chance she just ran off?” I asked.

  “Och, no, not at all. She was a happy person. It isn’t something she would have done.”

  “What about the man at the silver shop? I read briefly that he was a suspect.”

  “How do ye ken so much? Why did ye read about my family? Just because of the box?”

  “Yes, mostly,” I said.

  “Are ye a writer? With a newspaper?”

  “No. There was just something . . . may I tell you what else was in the box?”

  “Please.”

  As I ticked off each item, Laire’s eyes grew wider and she leaned closer to me.

  “Lass, I’m certain that was her tartan and the button from her coat. Grannie said Moira went out shopping, but she didn’t know for what. That man from the silver shop, Branan Dunn, was a suspect. Ye need tae ring the police right away.” She stood from the ottoman. “Should I ring them from here?”

  I looked at Hamlet and then back at Laire. “If you want me to I will do that, but I do have a friend who is a police officer. I could talk to him later this morning. I’d like to tell you more though, before we do either.”

  Laire looked confused for a second, but then her eyes locked onto me. Again, she cocked her head and her gaze became full of intent. She moved back to the ottoman and sat.

  “I’m listening,” she said again.

  Without sharing the secret of the existence of Edwin’s warehouse by just telling her I’d been in the bookshop when I hit my head on an item on a shelf, I told her the story of the previous evening, or of my dream, whichever it had been. If she thought I was crazy, then so be it. And, I was pretty sure that’s what she thought at first, but as my story continued tears began to fall down her cheeks. When I mentioned the tinsel trees, her hands came up to her mouth and she gasped slightly, but she didn’t say anything. I told her how obvious it had been to me that Moira and Branan were at least attracted to each other, maybe even in love, at least a little bit.

  “That’s it. That’s what happened,” I said when I finished. “I’ve thought a lot about it, and Hamlet and I have talked about it. We think that maybe I must have read something about Moira’s disappearance at one time. Annabel’s name might have been mentioned. Perhaps the items in the box aren’t Moira’s or what she went shopping for, and I just put the pieces together that way.”

  “But ye ken where they lived!”

  “I know.” I nodded. “But, though I don’t remember ever being there, maybe I have been and maybe I saw the C-R-U-I next to the where the buzzers on the building once were, and the pieces came together that way,” I said.

  “I dinnae think so,” Laire said. “The trees? How else would ye ken about the trees?”

  “I have no idea. You’re sure that Annabel had them?”

  “Aye.” She paused and took a deep breath, let it out. “And, there’s a wee bit more.”

  “More?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” Hamlet said.

  Tears welled up in Laire’s eyes again, but she blinked them away. “Before Annabel fell into a coma, she told me something. She told me that someday I’d learn the truth about Moira. She said that a lovely red-haired lass would have the answers.”

  Hamlet and I were speechless.

  “I thought she was daft,” Laire continued. “Or fanciful. A redheaded fairy or witch tae come save the day. She had red hair when she was younger. I dinnae think she was daft now. I think she meant it as truth.”

  “But I don’t have any answers, Laire. I wish I did,” I said. “I just have a crazy story.”

  “Meebe.” Laire smiled. I realized it was the first time she’d smiled since opening the door. “But it’s a wee bit more than we had before. Meebe the police can work with what ye’ve found.”

  “I hope so. Do you want to call them, or is it okay if I go talk to my friend?”

  “Yer friend is fine, but please let me know what happens.”

  “Of course.” I nodded. “I’ll bring back the picture, or make sure the police bring it back to you.”

  I looked at the picture in my hand, and the world fell away for an instant.

  The eye should learn to listen before it looks.

  I knew immediately where that male voice had come from. Recently, someone had brought The Americans, an old Robert Frank photography book into the bookshop. I thought it would be a fun gift to send to my parents in Kansas for Christmas. The words I heard came from the photographer himself, a quote from him. I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least if Laire had a copy of the book by the bohemian-like photographer in her flat somewhere.

  I remembered thinking how ironic the words were for me because it seemed that’s exactly what my eyes did, they listened to all the words they read.

  “Delaney?” Hamlet said as he put his hand on my arm.

  “Just a second,” I answered. I looked hard at the picture of Moira, and I listened too. And suddenly, many things became very clear. I looked up at Laire and Hamlet a moment later. “I think I know what happened to Moira.”

  Chapter Six

  Officer Winters had been leaning back in his chair, with his arms crossed in front of his che
st. Though our friendship had made him slightly dubious and always a little suspicious of me, he didn’t mean to look like he wasn’t listening closely to what I said. He was just comfortable sitting that way.

  “Delaney, that’s quite a story,” he said when I finished.

  I felt much more foolish telling an officer of the law my story than I had anyone else. Fortunately, I hadn’t even been born in 1965, so the details I knew couldn’t have anything to do with my possible involvement in any crime. Although, there was always the chance that Officer Winters thought Edwin might have been involved. I was beginning to think that he suspected Edwin of many illegal activities. I hoped my conclusions would clear Edwin, as well as any others who might have been innocent. I’d told him the same version I’d told Laire, careful to keep the warehouse’s existence a secret.

  “I know it’s weird, but that’s what’s happened. What would it hurt to check it out?” I looked at my watch.

  “It’s a very cold case, Delaney, and your conclusions are based upon a bizarre dream or imagination or something,” Officer Winters said. “Do you have tae be somewhere?”

  “No, Hamlet is doing some research. He’s meeting me here.”

  “Research?”

  “He’s checking on the butcher shop on Cowgate. It’s not there now, we know that. Hamlet’s confirming it was there, and seeing what’s in that space now.”

  “Aye?”

  “Yes. Will you please just take a small look at everything?”

  It took him a long moment of contemplation before he said, “Aye.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So, you’ve based your conclusion on just that one little detail in the photograph?”

  “No, not really. It’s a combination of things. The stark back wall, and that thin strip of what seems metallic reminds me of the butcher shop counter. Moira said . . . well, let’s just say that I think she went to the butcher shop again after the silver shop. So, the butcher would have been the last person to see her alive. Isn’t that what the police look for, the last person who has seen someone alive?”