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

Macbeath.”
    “Mock-beh-ath? Macbeth? Like Shakespeare?”
    “Shake spear? What is shake spear?”
    “You’ve gotta be kidding. Everybody knows Shakespeare.”
    “I assure you I do not.”
    “Oh, yeah; he was the sixteen hundreds.” I watched a small spider in the grass while I thought.
    He raised his head and looked down the hill toward the loch. “What brought me here?” He laid his hand gently on my shawl, where the corner of it touched the grass. The spider had begun spinning a web beside his soft-booted foot. I was glad he hadn’t stepped on her. I like spiders. “’Twas the shawl brought me here, I am sure of it.”
    I looked away from the spider into his disturbingly alive-looking eyes. “So you’re really a ghost?” The idea was beginning to sink in.
    He nodded slowly. “’Twould appear so, but I’ve not known it till now.”
    “And you’re here because of the shawl.” I fished my socks out of my boots and pulled them on while he thought.
    He shook his head. “No. Not just that. I think I came when Peigi called.”
    “But—but,” I sputtered, “she’s been dead for”—I did a quick calculation—“almost seven hundred years.”
    He heaved a heart-wrenching sigh. “So, it would appear, have I.”
    Without another word, he followed me uphill. When we were almost within sight of the Sinclairs, just before we reached the top of the rise, I turned to him. “Don’t say anything, anything at all, while we’re with the Sinclairs.” I spread my hands in the age-old gesture of helplessness. “They wouldn’t understand.”
    He nodded solemnly. “Nor do I.”
    He trailed disconsolately behind me. I couldn’t make up my mind what to say.
I have a ghost named Macbeth.
No.
My shawl is haunted.
Nope.
You won’t believe what just happened to me.
They certainly wouldn’t.
    He circled behind me and approached the tree. I took a deep breath. “I hope you had a good nap, Mr. Sinclair.” I sat gingerly on Mrs. Sinclair’s left and accepted a cookie. Biscuit. I had to remember to call it a biscuit. If I could remember
a bracing cup of tea
—one of which I could definitely use right about now—I could certainly remember
biscuit
. “The clouds are lovely today, aren’t they?”
    Mrs. Sinclair looked at me as if she thought I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.
    I looked over my right shoulder. The ghost had his hands up, pressing them against the tree’s crenellated bark. He looked up at the lowest branches, which were a good eight feet above his head. I wondered if he could feel the bark or if his hands would pass through it. He looked up, as if he were trying to gauge the larch’s height, and light glinted off the handle of his dirk.
    “Yes, they are lovely, but what are ye looking at, lassie?” Mr. Sinclair’s voice broke into my reverie. “It is no the clouds,” he added.
    “The, uh, the tree?”
    Mrs. Sinclair chuckled. “Is it us ye’re asking, dearie?” She swiveled her neck around to her left, surprisingly flexible, I thought, for a woman her age, and looked up at the larch. She studied the tree longer than I would have expected, and when she turned back to me, her gaze felt laserlike, but all she said was, “The tree, was it?”
    “I wonder how old it is?” I stole a quick look at the ghost. He had turned his head to look at Mrs. Sinclair and then at me. I could feel his gaze, and I shivered.
    “Pull your shawl more tightly round your shoulders, dearie. Ye look like ye’re catching a chill.” She handed me the little tin of cookies. Biscuits. She smiled. “To tell the truth, ye’re acting like ye’ve seen a wee ghostie.”
    Mr. Sinclair laughed. “Not so wee, from the look on her face.”
    The wee ghostie under discussion circled around to my left and knelt in front of me. The light of the setting sun poured through his hair, turning the black to liquid charcoal.
    “Can she see me?” he whispered. “I canna tell.”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “Don’t know