Did You Declare the Corpse? by Patricia Sprinkle

time to visit a few shops. I invited Marcia to join me, but she claimed she didn’t feel well enough. “Maybe tomorrow,” she promised with another slight cough.

    I didn’t think she had a cold, though. I hadn’t heard her sneeze once, and never saw her lift a tissue to her nose. Still, something was dreadfully wrong. Her eyes were huge in her face, her skin drawn so tightly over her bones it looked like it would crack any minute.

    Finding myself alone with Dorothy briefly in a wool shop, I asked her privately, “Do you know if something’s the matter with Marcia besides her cold? I mean, is she really ill and should we know it in case we need to get her to a doctor?”

    Dorothy’s eyes grew sad. “No, she’s grieving. Her husband—a wonderful man, eh?—died right after Christmas, and it was a dreadful shock. He had cancer, but they never knew until three weeks before he died. Poor Marcia, they were very close, and she is wasting away with grief.”

    She reached out and stroked a plaid wool blanket. “Nice rug, isn’t it?” the clerk asked.

    Dorothy nodded with satisfaction. “This will be just the thing for my mum and dad.”

    I bought one for each of my daughters-in-law, as well, choosing Martha’s because it was her family plaid and Cindy’s because it would match her color scheme. Gradually, I am getting to know what they prefer.

    When we got back to the bus, I stowed mine in my new suitcase, but Dorothy shook hers out and handed it to Marcia. “There. Wrap up in that and keep warm when you stay on the bus, eh?” I wished I’d thought of that.

    Marcia thanked her and wrapped up in the blanket right away, then turned her head toward the window to avoid further conversation. As we headed north, I watched her reflection. She stared at the hills and sky with greedy eyes, like she could not get enough of looking.

8

    After the murder, the Auchnagar police sergeant would ask me, “Do ye ken if the victim had any enemies among your group? Did you feel any tensions, like?”

    “We had lots of tensions,” I would admit, “but I didn’t expect any of them to end in murder.”

    From Loch Lomond, we drove north to Glen Coe. Watty seemed to know a lot more about the region than Joyce did, so he kept up a running commentary. When we reached a stretch where mountains rose above bogs, hummocks, boulders and water that stretched to the mountain’s very roots, he called with obvious pride, “R-r-rannoch Moor-r-r.” A sweep of his arm sent the bus lurching over the center line toward an oncoming car. He righted it just in time.

    “ ‘As waste as the sea: only the moorfowl and the peewees cryin’ upon it,’ ” he called, “ ‘and far over to the east, a herd of deer, moving like dots.’ ” When most of us immediately jumped up to look out the right windows, he cackled. “R-r-robert Louis Stevenson wr-r-rote that in Kidnapped. It hasna changed much, as ye can see. If you dinnae spot deer noo, ye’ll see some soon enough. Next stop, Glen Coe.”

    As soon as we climbed down from the bus at Glen Coe, Dorothy set off alone down a narrow track like she was being drawn by an invisible beam, with the same spring in her step she’d had in Glasgow. Brandi said what the rest of us were thinking: “She looks like she’s going to meet somebody.”

    Kenny wasn’t watching Dorothy. He was too busy taking Laura’s arm.

    When he turned toward the glen, Sherry frowned at him and objected, “I want us to check out the shops.”

    “Go on. I’ll be there after a while.” He gave Laura what I could only call a fatuous smile, and pulled her closer to him. “I don’t want Laura, here, wandering around alone and running into a Campbell.”

    Sherry glared at her husband. “There is nothing funny about a massacre.” Her voice was sharp.

    “Besides,” Laura added, “I doubt there are any Campbells around.” She removed Kenny’s hand from her arm and stepped away from him.

    I was just irritated