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

items certainly did seem a bit mysterious. No price tags, for one thing. I touched as I went—I do love the feel of wool, particularly fabrics that are handwoven.
    A pile of plaids called to me, and I stepped closer. There’s a certain look to beautifully handwoven and hand-felted cloth that can’t be reproduced by anything machine made. I reached for them, and then I turned back to the proprietor. “May I rummage a bit?”
    “Of course ye may,” she said with a nod of her grizzled head.
    I set the top few pieces to one side and stopped when I reached a dark plaid with blocks of blue, wide stripes of green, and thin crosshatchings of red and what looked like yellow, although in this low light I couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was white. I didn’t recognize the pattern. I knew quite a few clan tartans by name, but this one was unfamiliar to me. That wasn’t surprising, since nowadays there were dress tartans, hunting tartans, ancient tartans, and something called a modern tartan for every clan. I’d long ago given up trying to recall even the names of all the clans, much less their various plaids.
    I lifted it, expecting a square or rectangle of material, but the felted fabric, surprisingly lightweight and supple, was shaped to drape around the shoulders. “A shawl,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else, and clutched it to my chest. A wave of warmth, coziness, and comfort spread through me.
    “Och, lassie, don’t go picking up that aulde thing.” The nasal voice came from the third woman, the one who hadn’t spoken before. She turned to the plaid-skirted woman. “I surely don’t know why ye keep it around.”
    The woman murmured something, but I paid little attention. The shawl felt so warm in my arms, so enveloping.
    “. . . from my great-grandmother.”
    I fingered the edge of the shawl. I couldn’t imagine anyone having something that old. It didn’t look like it could be—what would it have to be? A hundred years old? The woman in plaid looked like she was in her late seventies, so the shawl, if it had belonged to her great-grandmother, would have to be 120 years old maybe? It certainly looked in good shape for something so ancient. “Did you say your great-grandmother made it?”
    “Och, no,” the woman whispered. Her skirt matched the pattern of the shawl I held, and it swished as she swayed from side to side. “Her great-grandmother’s great-grandmother was the one who saved it from the fire that took the village.”
    The other women nodded knowingly. There was always a story of some devastating fire that had swept through a village, claiming not only the houses but lives as well. That was why, I was sure, this town was built of stone.
    “It was her great-grandmother’s before her, and that woman’s great-grandmother even before, and another nine great-grandmothers before that. It always passed to the eldest great-granddaughter, but now”—her voice quavered with what sounded like regret—“I’m the first to have no daughter of my own. ’Twill have to go to my sister’s branch in Nefyn.”
    I couldn’t imagine that many great-grandmothers. I often wished I could have known my great-grandmother. She sounded like such a hoot. My grandmother—my mother’s mother—had told me often that her ma always claimed to be able to see ghosts. It was something of a family joke, but there was an undertone of chagrin that there could have been someone so crazy in the family. When my brother and I turned ten, though, I blew out my half of the birthday candles secretly wishing I could see a ghost someday.
    My ancestors, the ones I knew of, went back almost to the 1700s, when Hamelin was founded, but the records before then were destroyed when half the town burned down. That was well close to three hundred years ago.
    But how many hundreds of years was this woman talking about?
    I looked at the shawl I still held. Ridiculous. It couldn’t be that old. Anyway, would anyone sell something that