Royally Dead. Greta McKennan
was committing sacrilege, of course. Possibly suicide as well. No one played Aileen’s guitar without permission and survived to tell the tale. I held my breath, waiting for the explosion. I didn’t have to wait long.
Chapter 2
“Get your paws off my stuff,” Aileen hollered, and flung her canvas bag at Ladd’s head. He ducked, laughing, as it hit the ground and sent cords flying in all directions like a sackful of snakes.
She hefted a mic stand and started for him, but her bandmate Pinker grabbed her by the arm. “Hold on a sec, Aileen. He’s good!” He held Aileen back, and watched in open admiration as Ladd continued to play. “He’s playing that bit you wrote for ‘Frankie’s Fury.’ He’s got the chord changes down and everything.”
Aileen growled and wrenched her arm free of his grasp. She picked up the mic stand again, and then slammed it back down as a crowd formed around Ladd. I cringed when I saw Gillian King front and center in the crowd, gazing at Ladd as if he were some kind of movie star. But Aileen wasn’t concerned about the hero worship of a fifteen-year-old girl.
Aileen strode down the steps of the stage and snatched her guitar out of Ladd’s hands. For an instant he held on, but she glared him down until he loosened his grip. She hefted the guitar over her shoulder like a baseball bat, and several people in the crowd, including Gillian, screamed. Ladd ducked again, but Aileen didn’t swing. “You’re not worth the price of a new guitar,” she spat out. “But if you ever touch my gear again…” Leaving her threat unspecified, she swung on her heel and stomped back onto the stage. “Got any sanitizer wipes?” she demanded of Pinker.
He started to laugh, but then thought better of it. He took his shirttail and wiped down Aileen’s guitar, taking extra care to go over each metal string. She stood and watched him, her back to the crowd and Ladd, her arms folded across her chest.
Her stillness scared me more than her raised guitar had. I could tell how furious she was by the intensity of her immobility. If Ladd made the slightest move toward her, she would kill him.
He must have realized that, because when I tore my eyes away from Aileen, I saw Ladd had turned away. Surrounded by the loyal crowd, he headed off in the direction of the food court with Gillian following close behind. She called out to him, and he turned to flash her a huge smile, and then the two of them walked side by side up to the funnel cakes booth. Aileen stood silent and unmoving on the stage.
I let out a sigh, surprised to find I had been holding my breath.
Letty slipped back into the booth. She held a hardcover book in her hands. “Wasn’t that Aileen? She’ll get herself thrown out of the Games, carrying on like that.”
“God help the person who tries to throw Aileen out of anywhere,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to see her going up against your Incredible Hulk, though. Between the two of them, they’d probably wreck the whole place.”
“Yeah, she’d better stay out of the way when he’s throwing cabers around. But forget about them. Did you see who else is here?” Letty held out the book she carried. “Morris Hart! He’s on a book tour and he’s spending a few days in Laurel Springs, if you can believe it. Have you read his latest thriller, Over the Sea to Skye?”
I shook my head and took the book from her hands to skim the blurb on the back cover. “I’ve heard of it, of course. Everyone’s reading it this summer. Something about the descendants of Scottish kings taking over Britain in the present day, right?”
She nodded. “There’s a real-life treasure hunt too, to find Bonnie Prince Charlie’s ring, which was lost in the seventeen hundreds. Hart is smart to set up at the Highland Games, where people have actually heard of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Battle of Culloden.” Letty pointed to the author’s photo on the back of the book, showing a handsome man with an aristocratic nose and dark, glossy hair. “This picture is a few years old, but he’s still got it. He could be the descendant of royalty in my book.”
I laughed and handed the book back to her. “Letty, you’re incorrigible.”
She dropped a curtsy like a diva basking in well-earned applause, then turned to wait on a young couple with a baby asleep in a stroller.
I sat down and pulled out the basketful of bow-tie supplies I’d prepared to keep my hands busy while waiting for customers. It was a simple process of folding and pinching rectangles of tartan fabric into the shape of a bow, but it looked impressive to watch. I felt like an artist displaying her techniques for the crowd. I didn’t even mind if people learned my secrets to make their own ties at home. Tartan bow ties were only a sideline for me, an excuse to be a part of this Scottish festival. They were also surprisingly popular with the teenagers. For every girl who walked away sporting a bow-tie headband, three more came to pick over my collection. It was a trend in the making.
Gillian arrived with the next wave of girls. She was dressed in her Highland costume of kilt, lace blouse, and green velvet vest, and was taking a break before dancing the Highland fling. Her friends wore denim cutoffs and sleeveless tops, and plenty of mascara and lipstick. They jostled one another and carried on an endless string of friendly abuse while two or three of them tried on bow ties.
Gillian scrabbled through the chest, spilling most of the ties onto the table. “Do you have any green ones, to match my kilt?”
I stood up to look at her kilt, a dark green and blue plaid with alternating pairs of black and white lines running both lengthwise and crosswise. I flipped through my guide booklet to show her. “You’re wearing the Oliphant tartan. I made a bunch of Oliphant ones because of the connection to the university.” I sifted through the bow ties and pulled out a couple for her to look at.
She held one up to her hair, tucking it into the plaits of her French braid. The contrast between the green plaid and her strawberry blond hair was beautiful. She knew it, too.
“I’ll take two, in the same tartan,” she said. “Can you give me a discount for two?”
I shook my head as I bagged up the bow ties. “Sorry. They go for fifteen dollars each. I don’t have any bulk discounts today.”
She grumbled a bit but handed over the money. As she turned away, she nudged the girl closest to her. “I’m going to give one to Ladd. We’ll be matching.”
“Ladd? The dude who’s going to throw the tree trunk? He’s as old as your dad.”
Gillian pushed her. “He’s nothing like my dad. He’s gorgeous.”
They walked away, giggling, while I sat down slowly, aghast. The last thing I wanted to see was my own matching bow ties adorning both Gillian King and Ladd Foster. The ties were hers now, and she could do whatever she wanted with them. Still, I felt like she was using me as an accomplice in her misguided attempt to chase after the man.
Letty clicked her tongue. “That Ladd does get around, doesn’t he? I hope he’s not planning to prove to a fifteen-year-old girl that he’s going ‘true Scot.’”
“Yeah, me too. He might not know she’s fifteen, though. He’s not very observant.” I waved to her ring finger, which was literally laden down by a dazzling diamond ring paired with her thick gold wedding ring.
Letty and I didn’t have to wonder long. It was only a matter of minutes before we saw Ladd hovering over a leatherworking booth, with Gillian snuggled under his powerful arm. We couldn’t hear their words, but we could see him joking with the craftsman while Gillian laughed and smacked him on the chest appreciatively. He wasn’t wearing the bow tie around his neck, but only because his peasant shirt was laced up to his breastbone, exposing his neck and chest hairs. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I saw the Oliphant tartan tie twined around his right wrist, matching the bow Gillian wore in her hair.
She was no responsibility of mine, but still, I could hardly sit by and let her get into trouble with a fortysomething flirt in a kilt. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and that goes double for a teenager. I liked to think people watched out for each other in our small town, and it looked