Bonnie of Evidence - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,67
my arms to myself as I studied the knife, not daring to admit the inconceivable truth surrounding it.
Was it possible the knife really was cursed? I felt like a dimwit buying into such foolishness, but the evidence seemed so overwhelming that—
Damn.
What else could cause the kind of internal damage the women had incurred?
My shoulders slumped as I sank into the chair Wally had vacated. I wasn’t a doctor. How would I know? But the body of evidence before me pointed in only one direction, forcing me to concede, with great reluctance, that there existed a slim possibility that Isobel Kronk and Dolly Pinker … might have been felled by the power of an ancient curse.
There. I said it.
BOOM!
The landscape art suddenly flew off the wall and fell onto the bed, followed by the appearance of a booted foot as it punched a hole through the wood paneling directly above the nightstand.
“Sorry about that!” Erik called out. “Foot slipped.”
I stared at the sole of his hiking boot as he wrenched it out of the wall, unable to drag my eyes away from the gaping hole.
I put my brain on rewind.
Felled by the power of an ancient curse?
Either that … or a roundhouse kick to the abdomen by a man once dubbed the greatest kickboxer in the world.
SIXTEEN
“JOHN O’ GROATS IS the northernmost settlement in Great Britain,” Wally informed us early the next morning as we motored along the narrow A836, bucking crosswinds that caused every rivet in the bus to creak and groan. The terrain was flat as a tabletop, with sweeping vistas of the rockbound, wave-battered coast to our left. A profusion of purple heather blanketed the landscape, adding cheer to the gray rock and dull grass, but when the color faded, I suspected this treeless, wind-torn moor could be the bleakest place on earth. “The town was named for a Dutchman who petitioned King James IV for permission to run a ferry between the mainland and the Orkney Islands. His name was Jan de Groote, and his venture was one of the big success stories of 1496, because the ferry has been in service ever since.”
“And it’s still seaworthy?” Margi called out, stupefied.
“It’s the same operation.” Wally chuckled. “Not the same boat.”
“It better have an engine,” hollered Dick Teig, “because I’m not about to tear my rotator cuff by rowing across that channel in these winds.”
“Then I assume you’re planning to stay on shore,” Alice chided, “because a boat built in 1496 is not going to have an engine.”
“Yes, it will,” argued Dick Stolee. “It just won’t be diesel.”
Oh, God.
I clutched the hand-grip on the seat in front of me as the bus swerved in the battering winds.
The gang was on edge this morning because their cell phone service was still down, so they were having to talk to each other instead of text. I was on edge this morning because I thought I knew what had happened to Isobel and Dolly … but I was at a loss how to prove it.
“The ferry comes fully equipped with an engine, indoor and outdoor seating, a snack bar, and restroom facilities,” Wally assured us, “so no one’s going to have to stay behind. And just to finish my story, Jan is Dutch for John, but the O’ Groats appears to reflect the ferryman’s habit of charging each passenger one groat for the ride.”
I’d stayed up past midnight trying to resolve the “hole in the wall” issue with the hotel’s night manager. Since I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, I’d had to wake up Dad from a sound sleep to translate. And Mom decided to join us since she was awake anyway, worrying about how to prevent news of Nana’s incarceration from leaking to the Legion of Mary’s Newsletter committee. Erik explained the mishap by pleading the Little Miss Muffet defense: he’d spied an enormous black spider halfway up the wall, and he’d tried to kill it.
“With your foot?” I’d asked.
“Of course with my foot. You don’t think I was going to smoosh it with my hand, do you? I mean, euw.”
In the end, the manager apologized profusely for the insect problem and upgraded Erik and Alex to the bridal suite, bought Mom and Dad’s silence about the infestation by upgrading them to the room Mary Queen of Scots would have slept in if the hotel had been around back then, and fixed the unwanted porthole in my wall by taping a piece of cardboard over it and giving