Legends by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

revenge on her with even greater delight.
    She thought for a while longer, then decided upon her plan. She would tell him his family history but avoid explaining why Castle Talrigh, ancient clan seat of the Kincaids, had been destroyed.
    She most definitely would not tell him by whom.
    T. S. Audubon had been twenty-one years old in the summer of 1971, a summer that he’d spent trying to survive in the jungles of Vietnam. He had been one of the toughest, smartest, and most respected sergeants in his battalion, but he wouldn’t be alive now except for the bravery that summer of an eighteen-year-old corporal named Douglas Kincaid.
    The hard-nosed Chicago kid had carried his wounded sergeant to safety through a hail of enemy fire. Blood had been streaming down Kincaid’s face from a shrapnel wound. The fact that Kincaid was belting out an off-key rendition of “God Bless America” at the time always lent the memory a special drama to Audubon.
    Their wartime friendship had grown over the next two decades, as Douglas’s brilliance and ambition shot him to the top of the moneyed world that Audubon had inhabited since birth. They shared a love for the good things in life, a flair for the dramatic, and an innate idealism.
    Within an hour after Douglas was discovered missing, Audubon set the awesome expertise of his fifty-member team to work on finding him.
    They were now a little closer to doing that. As he shook hands with the ruddy-faced little man seated at the table in Druradeen’s pub, Audubon’s sixth sense told him that the village’s mayor would lie at the drop of a tam-o’-shanter. The man was too pleased to see him.
    “State your business, Mr. Audubon,” Duncan MacRoth said, smiling. “The sheriff over in Terkleshire called to say you’d be by. Something about a local woman you’re looking to find.”
    “Yes.” Audubon laid a sheet of paper on the table. “See this emblem? The griffin and the rams? I was told that it’s the crest of the MacRoth clan.”
    “Aye, and a bonnie one it is.”
    “The woman I’m looking for was wearing a piece of jewelry with this emblem on it at a party last week. In America. New York City, to be exact.”
    “Folks here don’t travel too much. They’re lucky to get down to Edinburgh once a year, much less to America. What are you needing this woman for?”
    “I’m a private investigator. She’s involved with a client of mine. She’s a tall woman, and very well built, if you understand my meaning. Early thirties. Very pretty. With blond hair—a wig, I suspect.”
    “Faith! I’d remember if we had such a woman in
this
village! She doesn’t sound familiar.”
    “Oh? I understand that Elgiva MacRoth, who runs a little sweater shop down the street here, fits my description. Except that she has dark reddish-brown hair. Her shop is closed. I was told she was on vacation. Could you tell me where?”
    “Oh! Elgiva! Well, she’s away in … uhmmm, let’s see … Florida. Yes. Perhaps she did go to America. To Disney World. That’s right.” The mayor beamed and nodded. The hard glitter in his eyes told Audubon that he didn’t give a damn if anyone believed him. It was his story, and he was going to stick to it.
    “An interesting choice.”
    Mayor MacRoth shrugged gracefully. “She has unusual interests, that Elgiva. Niece of the laird, you see. And old Angus was an eccentric.”
    “She’s wealthy, then? One of the laird’s heirs?”
    “Oh, she’s not wealthy. Angus was a mean bastard. Treated her and her brother worse than beggars. But she and her husband put a wee bit of money away over the years. They had no children to spend it on, poor folks. He was a fisherman. Drowned in a storm—”
    “She has a brother?” Audubon asked impatiently.
    “Aye. He’s a fisherman too. And a writer, on the side. Not published yet, though. But a fine, fine, man—”
    “Could you tell me where he is?”
    “Disney World,” a feisty voice interjected.
    Audubon looked up to