Moon Cursed Page 7

  Although … she wouldn’t put it past the hoaxer to attach the blame for these drownings to the monster. What a perfect way to draw attention to their little lie. And if the deaths were later proved to be caused by something else, the doubt would always be there and the publicity would already have been had. The idea that Nessie had pulled a few unsuspecting folks to their deaths in the depths of the chilly water would only increase the whole “monster” cachet.

  Kris sighed. She was going to be here a lot longer than she’d originally thought. She’d bet the rest of this fabulous coffee that until the drowning hoopla settled down there’d be no Nessie sightings. Luckily she now had enough money, courtesy of Edward, to remain here until the hoaxing started up again—then she’d pounce.

  “Which reminds me.” Kris frowned at her computer, considering what she should Google first, hoping the Internet was in the mood to work right now. Thankfully, it was.

  Edward Mandenauer brought up very little, and none of it referred to an ancient German man who liked guns. Which was disturbing. Most people had something about them somewhere on the Internet. That he didn’t meant someone had removed it. Which leant credence to his claim of being backed by the U.S. government.

  She tried Jäger-Sucher and received half a dozen online translation sites. Hunter-searcher only brought her hunting stores, adventure vacations, search-and-rescue units.

  But she kept at it. Kris never would have gotten anywhere in life if she’d given up at the first hint of trouble.

  She continued to feed words into the search engine. It wasn’t until she typed old German man with sharp, hard clicks of frustration that she actually found something worth reading.

  From the National Enquirer:

  Werewolves Attack Small Town in Northern Maine

  Under siege during a terrible blizzard, the residents of Harper’s Landing watched their numbers dwindle as the number of werewolves increased.

  They were saved when an old man with a heavy German accent walked out of the storm carrying guns and silver ammunition. Within days, every werewolf was dead and the old gentleman disappeared as mysteriously as he’d arrived.

  “Werewolves,” she said. “Great.”

  But she followed the lead, typing werewolf and following the amazing number of bizarre stories from there. In a helluva lot of them an old German man showed up, kicked ass, then disappeared.

  Poof.

  There were also several mentions of a white wolf that fought the sudden influx of freakishly smart, incredibly strong, and really pissed-off wolves, all of which seemed to sport human eyes.

  That was something she never wanted to see. And she wouldn’t, because—

  “It’s all bullshit. They want to sell newspapers.”

  None of the stories appeared in any publications of note. No tales of wolf packs in the New York Times. No white wolf popped up in the Chicago Tribune. There had been a few strange incidents mentioned in the Times-Picayune, but Kris had found that when you were dealing with New Orleans strange happened a lot.

  However, she did notice that whenever the white wolf showed up a beautiful blond American woman did, too. When Kris traced that lead, she found connections to other weird tales—leopard shifters, zombies, Gypsies, and bizarre accounts of eagles and ravens and crows.

  The abundance of scary stories involving Mandenauer and what had to be his Jäger-Sucher cohorts would have been troubling. If Kris believed them.

  “I’m gonna have enough myths to bust for the rest of my hopefully very long life,” she murmured.

  Someone knocked on the door. Kris, who’d been reading a report of a Navajo shape-shifting witch who could take the form of any animal whose skin he wore and had actually taken the shape of a man—the explanation for that was just too disgusting to contemplate, though she had been contemplating it—jumped to her feet at the sound, heart pounding.

  Then she gave a shaky laugh. “Doubt there’s a Navajo shape-shifter anywhere around.” She moved toward the door. “ ’Cause first they’d have to exist.”

  Nevertheless, she glanced out the front window. Dougal Scott stood on the doorstep.

  “Hey,” he greeted. “I heard you found a body last night. You okay?”

  He was dressed in his kilt, and the Scottish outfit combined with his very American way of speaking had Kris fighting back a ridiculous giggle, along with the longing for a man who dressed like an American and spoke like a Scot. She was starting to think that he existed in the same realm as skinwalkers, werewolves, and Nessie.

  “Yes.” Kris opened the door wider so Dougal could come in, then pointed to the couch. She sat on the single chair to the left. “Didn’t get any sleep, but that’s happened before.”

  “Why were you out wandering near the loch in the night? It can be dangerous.”

  Kris could hardly say she’d been looking for a ghost, then been drawn to the loch by the reflection of the moon off a log and—

  “You know someone by the name of Liam Grant?” she blurted.

  “No,” Dougal said slowly. “There are Grants aplenty, of course, but none named Liam that I recall.” He tilted his head. “I think there might be Grants in Dores, which is nearer to Inverness.”

  “Dores,” she repeated. “Okay.”

  “Does he have something to do with the body?”

  Kris contemplated Dougal. He seemed awfully interested in the body. Of course she’d learned over her years in television that a lot of people were ghouls.

  To be honest … most people were ghouls.

  She shook her head. “I ran into him at the castle, and we had a nice chat.”

  Kris had to struggle to hold back the snort of derision that threatened to erupt from her throat. Since when did a chat involve the exchange of DNA?

  Dougal’s brows lifted. She half-expected him to chant: Liar, liar, pants afire, and she touched her nose to see if it had begun to grow as long as a telephone wire. Her lying skills had not improved.

  “Mmm,” he said in that way the Scottish had, which could indicate disbelief, sarcasm, or the desire of one speaker for the other to move on. “There was a man asking around the village about you.”

  Kris frowned. “Liam?”

  “As I’ve never met him, I don’t know, but I doubt it.”

  “If you’ve never met him, then how can you doubt?”

  “I’d expect Liam Grant to have a Scottish accent.”

  “I’d expect Dougal Scott to have one, too, but there you go.”

  Dougal touched his fingertips to his forehead and flicked them outward in a jaunty salute. “Touché.”

  Kris had a thought. “Was he German?”

  Dougal shook his head. “American. Said he was from…” He paused. “The East Coast.”

  “Oh, that narrows it down,” Kris muttered. “What did he ask?”

  “Where you were staying.”

  Kris started, and Dougal’s expression became concerned. “I didn’t tell him.”

  “Good,” she said, though eventually someone would. “You didn’t wonder why he was asking?”

  “Oh, I wondered. But I was busy. Someone needed directions; someone else wanted to know the weekend hours for the museum. When I turned back, he was gone.”

  That happened a lot around here.

  “Would you like to visit The Clansman?” Dougal asked.

  “Clansman?” Kris repeated, confused at the sudden change of subject.

  “A hotel, near Inverness. They have a wonderful restaurant overlooking the loch, where a great many Nessie sightings are said to occur.”

  “You’re asking me to dinner?”

  Dougal cocked a brow. “It appears that I am.” He seemed as surprised about it as she was.

  Kris hesitated. She liked Dougal. She enjoyed talking to him. It was refreshing to be able to discuss Nessie with someone else who did not believe. But she didn’t want him to think there was any chance for a lasting relationship. Even if she were capable of such a thing, she wasn’t going t
o be here that long.

  “It’s dinner, Kris.” Dougal’s mouth quirked as his gray eyes observed her dilemma with obvious amusement. “I’m not going to start picking out china patterns and flatware.”

  Kris laughed. She really did like him. “People still do that?”

  “I have no idea.” His lips parted in a genuine smile that had her smiling back. “So … dinner? Between friends and fellow anti-Nessie-ites?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “The restaurant is called Cobbs after John Cobb. He was killed on Loch Ness in 1952.”

  “Nessie?” Kris asked dryly.

  “Of course.”

  “Tell me.”

  Dougal’s expression became intent. He appeared to enjoy telling Nessie stories as much as Kris liked hearing them. Probably because he rarely got to share them with someone who agreed that they were hogwash.

  “Cobb held the land speed record at the time—just over three hundred and ninety-four miles per hour—and he was trying to break the world water speed record. His boat disintegrated on its first run.”

  “That’s odd,” Kris said, though she had no idea if it was odd at all. In her opinion, driving a boat at speeds over fifty miles per hour was more stupid than odd.

  “They say the boat bumped several times, then disappeared in a spray of water like no one had ever seen. When it reappeared there were pieces of it all over the place.”

  “And Cobb?”

  “They pulled him out alive, but he died before they could get help. They’ve never been able to prove what happened.”

  “But they’ve theorized,” Kris said.

  “Waves. Mechanical failure. Human error. He could have hit a piece of driftwood.”

  “Named Nessie?”

  “If that were the case, wouldn’t the monster be in pieces, too?”

  “What is there about monster that you don’t understand?” Kris murmured.

  “And we’re back to the concept of a supernatural entity,” Dougal concluded. “In my opinion, if the only way to explain something is by magic, that isn’t an explanation at all.”

  The man made a good point. Probably because it would have been her point. He was handsome, funny, intelligent, rational. They shared an interest and a point of view.

  So why wasn’t she more excited about going out with him?

  *

  Liam shivered despite the warmth of the sun. He had never become acclimated to the temperature here. Considering he’d always been here, every attempt he’d made to leave resulting in disaster, he couldn’t understand why.

  He watched Loch Side Cottage from the shadows, the lap of the water lulling him half to sleep. If he kept this up, sooner or later someone was going to see him, and then what?

  There’d be shouting and pointing and problems. There always were.

  Floating on a river of exhaustion, Liam drifted. He dreamed of walking along the loch, hand in hand with Kris in the sunlight. They’d talk of their lives. He’d tell the truth. She’d kiss him and laugh and say it didn’t matter.

  Talk about a fantasy.

  Liam found his fascination with her strange, which only made him more fascinated. In the past, he had been the one who was stalked. Women were captivated by him to the point of ridiculousness. How many had sworn to give their lives for his love?

  How many had?

  *

  After agreeing to an early dinner with Dougal, Kris had been debating a snack or a nap—deciding on the latter as she remembered she had nothing in the place but coffee, tea, and milk; she’d eaten the small amount of bread and jam already—when another knock came at her door.

  “Forget something?” she asked as she opened it.

  Her gaze, positioned upward to meet Dougal’s eyes, instead met empty air. A Munchkin giggle drew her attention two feet lower.

  Effy didn’t wait to be invited inside. Since she was carrying a plate of something that smelled like raisin bread, Kris didn’t care. The probability of food was worth another visitor so soon after the first.

  “I heard ye had a rough night.” Effy set the plate on the table next to Kris’s computer. “Thought ye could use a bannock.” She motioned Kris closer. “It’ll cure what ails ye.”

  Kris couldn’t resist Effy’s good cheer, nor the scent of the bannocks. She lifted one—a round, flat brown object the size of a dessert plate and filled with raisins—and took a bite.

  “Like a fruitcake,” she said. “Only better.”

  Effy beamed for several seconds before sobering. “Ye should not be out in the dark. Didn’t yer mother ever tell ye that?”

  Kris choked on the bannock. Her mother hadn’t had time to tell her much. Not even good-bye.

  “I’m fine,” she said once she’d recovered, with a little help from Effy’s pounding between her shoulder blades.

  “Ye call finding dead bodies a few feet from yer doorway fine?” Effy tsked. “Americans. So much violence in yer lives, ye dinnae even realize something’s bad when ye trip over it.”

  Did Effy know that Kris had tripped over the body, or was it just a figure of speech? Only Alan Mac, who shouldn’t be blabbing information to anyone, imaginary Liam, and Edward Mandenauer were aware of exactly what had happened on the shores of Loch Ness last night.

  “I’d have ye come into the village,” Effy continued, wringing her pale hands, “but all my rentals in Drumnadrochit are full.”

  “That reminds me,” Kris said. “Can I keep this place for a month?”

  “A month?” Effy’s pale brows lifted. “Truly?”

  “Yes. I…” Kris paused, mind groping for a lie and not finding one. “Hold on.”

  She went into the bedroom, pulling out some of Mandenauer’s cash, stalling for a few minutes while she got all her ducks of deceit in a row. When she returned to the living area, she handed Effy the money before she began her falsehood, hoping the older woman would be too distracted by the multiple images of Benjamin Franklin to hear the lie on Kris’s tongue.

  “I’ve sold my book. My—uh—publisher loved the idea so much they want me to write it immediately. And since it’s quiet here—” when there aren’t dead bodies washing up on the shores—“I thought I’d just stay until I finished. Did you want me to get that changed into pounds?”

  Effy shook her head, still staring at the bills in her hand. “They sent you cash?” Doubt colored in her voice.

  “Uh—no. I had that with me.”

  “And ye weren’t stopped at Customs?” Now Effy was eyeing Kris as if she were a Colombian drug lord.

  “I didn’t have that much.” Kris laughed, and it must have been convincing, because the other woman relaxed, folding the bills over and pulling her dress outward so she could tuck them into her bra.

  Kris couldn’t help but see the edge of a tattoo on her breast. Effy didn’t seem the type.

  The woman saw where Kris was looking and let her neckline fall back into place before heading for the door. “Ye just be careful out here, ye ken?”

  “I’ve lived in Chicago for years,” Kris said. “I’m aware of the dangers that come with the night.” In certain areas of the Windy City, they came with the daylight, too.

  “I dinnae think the dangers there are anything like the dangers here.”

  Kris tilted her head, peering into the woman’s emerald eyes. She had the feeling that Effy was trying to tell her something. So why didn’t the woman just tell her?

  Before she could ask, Effy slipped out the door and headed toward Drumnadrochit at an impressive clip for a woman of her age and size.

  Kris went inside and shot a quick note to Lola, asking if anyone had called, or even come by, looking for her. She doubted it, but as Lola was the only person Kris had told where she was going, she didn’t understand how anyone could be asking for her by name in Drumnadrochit. She didn’t like it.

  That accomplished, she began to make notes about her show—where she’d film and what she’d say. But her mind wandered to Edward, and when s
he pulled it back she saw she’d sketched the tattoo she’d seen on Effy’s breast.

  Just a half circle. Could be anything. That it was there at all was more interesting than imagining what the tattoo could be. Although—

  Effy could easily have come of age in the hippie-time sixties. Had there been a hippie-time sixties in Scotland?

  Kris doubted they’d been protesting Vietnam, although who knew? And the Beatles, who’d been born down the road about four hundred miles, had been pretty hippie time. Weren’t they blamed for the whole long-hair craze that swept the United States? Kris didn’t think they’d had any tattoos, but that didn’t mean folks who really got into the counterculture hadn’t. Maybe Effy was a closet flower child. Stranger things had happened.

  Kris glanced at her computer, thrilled to see that the Internet was still cooperating. She Googled tattoos in the sixties. Sure enough, before that time tattoos were mostly found in the military or on those who’d been in prison. But later in that decade tattoos had begun to appear in the younger population. What better way to prove you were a rebel than to ink something rebellious on your body forever?

  Kris had to wonder how many sagging peace signs graced aging flesh. She frowned at the drawing she’d made of Effy’s tattoo. Could it be a peace sign?

  Hell, it could be anything.

  CHAPTER 8

  Dougal arrived to pick up Kris right on time. The contrast of charcoal slacks, soft gray cashmere sweater, and shiny black shoes with his usual kilt was so sharp Kris might not have recognized him in a crowd.

  Two different men in one easy-on-the-eyes package, she thought. Not bad.

  Kris had had to search high and low to come up with something that wasn’t jeans and a sweatshirt. Luckily, she had tossed a black skirt and clingy red sweater in her suitcase at the last minute. Combined with her least clunky pair of shoes, that would do. Although, right now, Dougal certainly cleaned up better than she did.

  “I know it’s early,” he said, “but I thought after dinner we could head out to the loch and watch for Nessie as the sun sets. It’s always good for a laugh when she doesn’t show up.”

  Except, someone was perpetrating the lake monster hoax, and according to Dougal, they perpetrated it often in the water near The Clansman. With the current upheaval around Drumnadrochit, perhaps the hoaxers would feel more comfortable north of all the trouble. She would catch them in the act, and the rest would be history.