Murder in Peachtree City

By Walker Chandler

Scotland Yard Inspector Duncan Robertson, a world-class bagpiper who by profession is a detective, is estranged from his young wife. Having agreed to be an instructor at a piping workshop being held in Peachtree City, Georgia, near Atlanta, he arranges to stay with a friend, colleague, and fellow golf enthusiast who is a senior agent in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and lives nearby in rural Fayette County. On the first day of his visit, his overworked friend involves him in the investigation of the murder of a sorcery-practicing housewife whose body is found in a wetland beside one of Peachtree City's several golf courses. For what reason was she slain? Jealousy, robbery, impulse, greed, witchcraft? Take a look into the worlds of piping, Middle Georgia, and crime detection. Meet for the first time the detective who brings a Scottish flair to the lives of those he encounters in the Peach State.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Walker Chandler
• Release date: Jun 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311387059

Walker Chandler

I graduated from Georgia Military Academy in College Park, Georgia, in 1966 and entered the University of Virginia in the fall of that year. I have a B.A. in Foreign Affairs from UVA (’70) and was president of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society and was elected to the student council at the end of my third year. After living and working in San Diego in 1970-71, I traveled in Europe and lived and worked in Atlanta before entering the Walter F. George School of Law of Mercer University in the fall of 1972. In 1975, immediately after obtaining my J.D. degree and passing the State Bar exam, I hung out a shingle in Zebulon, a small town 50 miles due south of Atlanta. For years I had a general practice that included a lot of real estate work. Eventually I was primarily doing domestic relations and criminal law. I semi-retired five years ago. During my years of practice I handled several intellectual property, transactional and corporate matters, most memorably one involving the acquisition of a patent for a client. I also represented the Libertarian Party and other new political parties on a score of cases in federal court. The most notable case was one in which I was the lead plaintiff. Objecting to a Georgia law requiring drug testing of candidates for public office, I filed suit in the Northern District court in Atlanta and personally took the case up to the Eleventh Circuit and then to the Supreme Court. On January 14, 1977, I argued the case (Chandler v. Miller [96-126], 520 U.S. 305 [1997]) before the court. I won it in an 8-1 decision. My other pursuits and interests through the years have included playing and coaching soccer, being a volunteer fireman in Pike County, working with the Boy Scouts, chairing the Zebulon Downtown Development Authority, horseback riding, travel, renovating buildings, bagpiping, and writing. In 1997 I published the novel, "The Evangeline Manuscript." I have also published a book of poetry, "The Gift," in 2007. I have several other books “in the works.” I am a member of the Burns Club of Atlanta and the Pike County Kiwanis. I play soccer and ultimate (Frisbee) regularly, and ski. As a candidate of the Libertarian Party, I ran for lieutenant governor of Georgia in 1990 and ’94 and attorney general in ’98. In July I was granted a patent on a unique multi-purpose small boat assembly. I am now in the stage of getting quotes for production from injection-molding companies. I speak Spanish (but not fluently) as well as some Swedish and what is left of some Russian I began studying at Virginia. My wife, Ruth, is a 1970 graduate of Agnes Scott College in economics. My daughter, Canada Gordon, [See: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0330062/] lives with her architect husband in Eagle Rock, California, and works in the film and TV industry, primarily in art departments/production. My older son, Zebulon, is an entertainment law attorney. He and I practice law together in Atlanta under the name Chandler and Chandler

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

A PLANNED COMMUNITY

Peachtree City, Georgia, is about 20 miles as the crow flies southwest of the Atlanta Airport. To reach it from Atlanta, one drives down the Interstate that runs to Montgomery and Columbus, then turns off onto Georgia Highway 74 and goes south another eight or ten miles.

It should be noted that there are few actual peach trees in that small city. As even the casual visitor to North Georgia knows, both the motif and the name Peachtree is extremely overused throughout the region — particularly in Atlanta which is practically devoid of the peach trees that, if properly cared for, bear such abundant and succulent fruit.

Started by visionary developers in the early 1970s, Peachtree City comprises some twenty-four square miles and is home to about 34,000 people. Having almost no section which might be considered as its core or downtown, it seems not so much a town as a large and well-planned conglomeration of subdivisions, shopping areas, lakes, golf courses, high-tech businesses, and light manufacturing enterprises.

State Highway 74 divides the town east and west; Highway 54 divides it north and south. At their intersection are several restaurants, and an ever-growing assortment of shopping centers, businesses, and offices (fiercely competing, it would seem), to burst with commercial activity in the heart of the (sort of quiet) pleasant place the city was initially designed to be.

It can be noted that, so far, there are no gasoline stations at the intersection itself. Billboards and garish signage generally are banned throughout the city. Not surprisingly, even without such information and stimuli, the residents seem to know where they are going and commerce is not hampered.

From that main intersection one begins the twenty-five-mile trip to the Atlanta airport by going north on Highway 74. For eight miles it is a divided four-lane that passes through open pasture lands that are constantly giving way each year to developments as the agriculture-only zoning requirements give way to the developers and their lawyers. By the time 74 gets to Interstate 85, the land is hidden beneath the typical and unlovely overburden of commerce.

Gradually losing its former prominence year by year to all the new competition for drivers’ attention is a small sign on the western, southbound side at the city limits. It reads, Welcome Home.

Within the town itself, few driveways are permitted to enter directly upon the major park-ways that curve through the residential areas. Only the streets and entrances of the various villages and developments debouch upon them, most of which are subdivisions having only those simple, single entrances, all of which are pleasantly marked and well maintained.

Peachtree City has the lowest crime rate in the entire metropolitan Atlanta area and is known to be the highest gross income per capita in the state of Georgia. Its police, seemingly bored, are therefore highly visible and active in the suppression of speeding and the indiscretions of the city’s youth. Doors are left unlocked. Burglary is rare. Murder almost nonexistent.

Almost.

To understand what a pleasant place the town can be, perhaps one fact is more important than any other: Winding throughout the city, past its playing fields, schools, and churches, going along the shores of its large, glimmering lakes and down through the woods in the small valleys cut by its many streams run over a hundred miles of paved golf cart trails. There are overpasses and underpasses throughout the town specifically designed to accommodate golf carts. All the carts must be registered, numbered, and have lights for night driving. On any given day, joggers, people on bicycles and skates, walkers with dogs, and families on carts can be seen on those paths — but not as many such users as one might expect.

As seemingly few avail themselves of those pathways during the days, relative, that is, to the large population of the town and the fact that every neighborhood is interconnected by them, still fewer go out on the paths after nightfall. This is true even though there are many who, returning late from work, might profit from getting out so and shaking off the ambiance of the airport and other work places which they left not long before.

Those black asphalt cart arteries twine their way through the community, binding it on the one hand, but offering on the other hand those suggestions which the imagination will always harbor or invent: of silent lurkers and sinister forces drifting in the night fog, coiling in the low places or racing up the pathways.

Other, more benign, uses can be imagined: teenagers riding about on golf carts drinking beer and smoking an occasional joint purloined from their friends’ stashes, jolly kids with good grades and decent futures out for some fun but forced, as it were, to throw their empty cans into the brush alongside the paths in case the police are out.

One can imagine, too, young lovers. High school students. if they can find one another, slipping out into the night to meet at some wooded intersection in the interstices between their neighborhoods. Somehow they have managed to come together in the late hours like a species of fireflies, converging along the labyrinthine trails by the lights of a partial moon, guided by matching pheromones they first encountered among the many others at McIntosh High School.

One can imagine older lovers, too, approaching the homes of their beloveds in adulterous secrecy as well as lovers of the night itself who might be outdoors listening intently for the sounds of birds and life.

There may be others who are out there at night, perhaps, for example, an old man, a veteran of war, a widower sleepless from his dreams of his wife and of the war in which he fought some six decades before; both still wake him to declare their memories.

Out there, too, a young man, a student, home for spring break, bursting with some kind of energy he cannot describe, much less channel or turn off to some effect. He has stayed up until that wee hour reading some book which has inspired him, and he walks through the night, swollen with the paragraphs and tempests that are stirring the writer in him.

A woman also emerges onto this imagined scene. She wears dark clothing and silently closes the basement door from her darkened, empty house so as not to disturb her sleeping neighbors. They might think that she is some prowler who could have thoughts of larceny or worse. As she slips toward the ubiquitous trails, a quick gleam of light off her white skin signals its enigmatic message — a sort of Morse Code as she passes through one last column of light before the woods swallow her also.

Across the thousands of acres of combined back-lot, waterside, and cut-grass fairway resting in the night, there is more activity than one suspects. Out there the raccoons and beavers go about their tasks and make their rounds. Owls, with ears keen enough to detect the scurrying of mice fly silently along bringing death.

Those few scattered people are joining them this night, some to converge, some to avoid converging, some to meditate, and commune.

But most of them — that is to say, that mere handful of those night movers — are to be united in ways none can yet predict, nor quite intend.

One of them, also keen-eared, moves silently, hoping to bring death. That stalker can wait, but not for long.

CHAPTER TWO

AVEBURY, ENGLAND

(Two years earlier)

The village of Avebury, set in its circle of standing stones. was unchanged from the first time the man saw it. As he looked to his left to see the cottage where he and his first wife had spent their honeymoon twenty-three years before, Inspector Duncan Robertson of Scotland Yard felt again the old pangs of loss.

So many years ago, he thought. Even from a mile off he could see the formation of large stones and the remains of the moat that in antiquity had been dug around them. In the midst of the stones, for some reason known only to time and English history, lay the twenty or thirty haphazardly scattered buildings of Avebury itself. Just beyond the hillside, he recalled, there was an avenue of other, smaller stones leading off toward nearby Silbury Hill, the tallest chalk-and-dirt megalithic mound in Europe.

In his mind’s eye he could see Fiona again as she raced ahead of him among the menhirs to elude him, as she always and ultimately eluded him.

Could I have but known her better! Could I have but known her longer! He told himself for the thousandth time, driving away from his mind the scene of her death he always imagined, her last moments floundering in the cold waters off Stornaway in the Outer Hebrides, when her little sailboat went down in heavy seas. He could imagine her spirit rising from the waters free from the burden of their sorrow, and now reunited with their little Robbie.

Here again was Death, his old business partner, lifting a blanket off another crime. The call had come that morning, only this time they would meet on the hillside near those famous, ancient standing stones. Here again his work would be taken up — another attempted unraveling of a murder, another search for a reason, or at least some perpetrator.

Maybe it would be easy: an obvious jealousy, fingerprints, and a confession.

Maybe the killer would be some clever lunatic, some enraged fellow, or maybe another cold and heartless man sowing sorrow as if a crop.

On the hill to the right of the road, he could see the crime scene that waited on him, the famous Inspector Robertson! He laughed aloud at himself, but it was not really a laugh — more like a cry or a huff or even a wail. He was glad no one was with him in the old Jaguar to hear. Too much, too often, too grim. This is burnout. I need a rest.

He noted that some of the newer arrivals had driven their vehicles up to the scene, crushing the wheat beneath their wheels and maybe even obliterating some evidence. Well, there’s no help for it. Aye, these English! Good enough in their own ways, but damn lazy sometimes!

When he parked his car on the verge of the road he reached over to get his ever present notebook. He noted with some self-loathing how his belly was not too terribly far from rubbing against the steering wheel. He looked up at his own blue eyes staring at him from the rear-view mirror, realizing that his once-bright red hair was dulling and beginning to gray with age and was surprised how even his fading freckles spoke more of age than of youthful mischief. Fifty-four! Aye, an' you’ll be gettin’ fat already, y’ auld scunner!

He heaved his once-athletic, six-foot-tall body out of the car and closed the door. Acutely aware of the fact that he was huffing and puffing mildly, he walked slowly up the hill toward the place where ten or fifteen men (half of them in uniform) were standing about. Seeing him coming they turned to gaze at him. Only the impossibly skinny Inspector Clement turned away, puffing on his damned pipe.

The thirty-something officer in charge of the scene approached him and put fingers to the brim of his hat in salute. Ex-military.

Afternoon, Inspector Robertson. So good of you to come. Let me show you to the body. It’s lying right over there, behind that lorry, in the center.

Well, you’ve certainly been busy here. I see you’ve surely flattened this farmer’s field wi’ all yer driving about and walking on it.

Oh, no, sir. We were careful not to disturb things. That is, not until the chaps from forensics went over the whole field five hours ago.

Well then, there must have been an army of them, to make this mess.

No, sir! I assure you, we were most careful.

If you’ll just look before you talk, Inspector Robertson, Clement said in a rather loud and acerbic tone from behind him, you’ll notice that you are standing in the middle of one of our famous Wiltshire crop circles.

Several of the men standing about smiled. Two almost laughed.

Well, so I am, Inspector Clement. So I am, he said, embarrassed further as he felt himself blushing. Even if I’m bloody fifty-four years old! And damn my fair skin for giving me away!

He remembered how, not so many years before, the younger lads at the Police Academy had nicknamed him Blushing Bobbie and then teased him unmercifully to watch him redden. He couldn’t help being irritated by his blushing as well as by that envious prat, Clement.

All right,Lads, he admitted in a loud, cheerful voice to all the men gathered about, raising both of his hands as if in surrender. It’s all right to laugh at an auld man. We havna had much of this foolishness up North.

Corporal Jeems, the man who had first addressed him, looked almost embarrassed for Robertson. Over here is the body, sir, if you will, he said, turning to lead him.

The sulking Inspector Clement didn’t move to follow, but offered loudly, I think you’ll find that the wheat-stomping vandal is thoroughly dead. Head a’ beaten in. We’ve taken the farmer in for questioning.

Thank you, Inspector, Duncan said, turning back to him. If you have them back yet, I’d like to see the aerials when I’m through over there an’ before I go see your suspect.

The aerials? the man asked. It was his turn to blush. Robertson could have relented, but after all, he was a Scot, he knew how to twist the sgian-dubh.

Of the crop circle … that this poor devil apparently gave his life trying to create. What did you think I meant? Bring them to me right away, yeah?

Robertson knew from the way Clement looked at him that no one had even thought of aerials. He felt a wonderful little twinge of triumph, but even that wasn’t enough for the big man from Rob Roy country. Be sure to ring me on my mobile when DC Wells arrives wi’ her dogs, yeah? he added. Knowing full well Clement had overlooked that typically Robertsonian aspect of a preliminary investigation, too.

This is burnout. I need a rest.

The papers called it The Avebury Crop Circle Murder. It had not been solved.

CHAPTER THREE

WORKING VACATION

Two years had flown by. He awoke in the soft queen-size bed in his friend’s home in rural Fayette County and lay there reviewing with a strong sense of well-being the events of the previous two days he had spent in Georgia. It seemed like a week since he had left Scotland to come to participate in a piping workshop the coming weekend at the Wyndham Conference Center in nearby Peachtree City. Oh, yes: I needed this break.

He remembered with a sort of silken pleasure how he had flown first class in a Delta jet as it soared smoothly over the Atlantic Ocean. He thought about the differences between life in Scotland and in the States.

You’re sure you’ll be safe in Georgia? his assistant, DC McRae, had asked while driving his chief to the Edinburgh airport for the first stage of the trip to Atlanta. After all, everyone there carries a gun, so I hear. Claim they have the right, they do!

Aye! ’Tis so, he had answered, falling back easily as he did into the broad, lilting Scots accents of his youth which had in recent years become a popular affectation in the Lowlands, but it’s no’ like what y’hear, Lad. At any rate, I’ll be in a wee village south of Atlanta called Peachtree City, and it’s the safest place in the whole state, or so I read from something I found on the Internet.

Perhaps so, the always-pessimistic McRae countered, but there’s the motorways to think of and all the people there who are probably armed to the bloody teeth. You have a care now, sir. The department needs you.

Ach, ya ol’ lady, get over it, Robertson responded, smiling at the young man the whole force had nicknamed Worry McRae. I tell you the place is safe. I’m just going to play golf and go to the piping workshop. Then I may just drive about for the rest of the month. I should not think that I shall be so terribly exposed to any shoot-outs unless there be any on the plane. And, Lad, don’t let you be fooled by all this cowardly English propaganda to which we are subjected and which even the new Scottish parliament will undoubtedly adopt. You know as well as I that it’s no’ the guns that kill people.

With all due respect, sir, tell the poor folk of Dunblaine that.

An’ you’d to well to remember the World Trade Center attacks when the buggers used box-cutters and jet planes, Robertson responded, regretting he had not completed his Air Marshal firearms certification so that he could have brought along his service pistol.

On the plane ride across the Atlantic, luxuriating in the fact that he had a window seat and no one beside him with whom he would have to converse, he thought about McRae’s point, and had arranged a series of neat arguments over the topic of gun control both pro and con which flowed logically from their discussion on the way to the Edinburgh airport.

Forget it, man! he thought. You’re no politician. What are you, then? A what? Ah, yes a policeman, a sometimes husband (ahh Jennifer!), and most important: a piper!

Duncan often tried to ask himself just who or what he was. As a boy in school he had memorized a whole series of Alexander Pope’s couplets. He thought of his favorite:

Presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man.

Aside from his piping, he had devoted most of his adult life to the study of his fellow man in general, and to criminals in particular. Professionally, he had studied those who had strayed from the law’s pathways.

Straying it is, he reminded the seminar classes in criminal investigations which he conducted throughout Britain, and we are the shepherds looking for the lost sheep.

He tried to speak in such terms and so encourage the men and women he instructed to think more logically. His book on detective work, Modern Investigative Techniques, had been a great success throughout Britain and had enjoyed some popularity in the States as well. Unlike other writers, he had tried (often unsuccessfully) to minimize the tendency of the police to demonize those guilty of committing crimes. Of course, some criminals were exactly that — demons, the filthiest, depraved, twisted, and sick, fit only for the bullet, the noose, and the guillotine.

If only for the purposes of investigation, he had written, the assumption that offenders are misfits or ogres might lead investigators to waste precious resources on blind leads and counter-productive emotional hunches. Do as Sherlock Holmes preached: How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? After all, if morality is put out of the picture, most crimes make perfect, if perverted, sense.

During the ten years since the publication of the first edition he had often regretted having written that particular phrase. People had such a peculiar way of insisting upon the universality of their individual morals. Many questioned his choice of words, to the point that he wished he’d left out the sentence altogether.

In the second edition he had compounded the error by discussing the matter in his forward. In it he had quoted Hemingway’s famous line that A thing is moral if you feel good after doing it — which had brought even more would-be moralists out of the closets. Ah, well, it cannot be helped, he thought.

He was tired, though, of what he thought of as English niggling. At least most Scots were not nit-pickers. Scots stormed and insisted and fought, maybe, but only few of them would come up to a man after a presentation and try to change his mind about a few sentences he had written years before. Thank God, then, for piping, he thought.

Reaching into his travel case, he brought out some sheet music and his Swedish-made electronic chanter. Putting on the little earphones and plugging the wire into the top of the chanter, he brought it to life by playing Low A. After upping the volume a bit, he closed his eyes and began to work through a series of exercises of ever-increasing complexities. They were the same exercises that he had been using since he first began piping at the age of eight. He could do them all by memory — first the short, bipping ascents and descents through the G-D-E grace-note scales, then the C-A, C-A, B-G, B-G tachums, then the familiar doublings, taragans, arpeggios, lemluaths and taorluaths that he had repeated hundreds of thousands of times in the forty-six years he had been a student of the bagpipe.

Fingering away on the little clear plastic electronic chanter, he was soon lost in a world of throws, birls, and crunluaths. Then his practice and repetitions gave way to some long-known tunes and then to something different, a reworking of a piobaireachd which he had been developing for some months. He thought that his ground was almost perfect, as was his first variation, but the second was …

Suddenly aware of eyes watching, he opened his to find that the flight attendant was standing in the aisle talking to him. Several other passengers were watching him, their expressions mixtures of curiosity and misgiving. He pulled the headset off.

Yes, Miss? Chief Inspector Robertson asked as he felt himself blushing. He knew that the sight of a portly man silently and blissfully lifting his fingers up and down on a silent, three-quarter-inch-diameter, ten-inch-long clear plastic cylinder, one filled with electrics that had a wire with earplugs coming out of its top end, was an unusual, if not ridiculous, sight.

We just thought you would like to review the dinner menu, sir, the pretty attendant asked him, and were wondering if you would like a drink before dinner.

Aye, and undoubtedly you were curious about this thing, too, he said lifting the chanter. It’s for practicing the bagpipe without bothering all aboard.

He noted the fleeting looks of amusement and relief that flirted across her face and those of the man and his wife who were sitting opposite. And, yes, I should like a gin and tonic with lime.

Of course, Mr. Robertson.

She must have checked me out on the passenger list when she thought I might be some kind of a nut.

My husband and I love pipe music, she added, as if to say, I understand. We are part of The Group, too. We have gone to every one of the Highland Games at Stone Mountain for the past four years.

He smiled at her so that she knew he did not mind the interruption.

Perhaps you can help me, she continued. I’m thinking about buying him a kilt for Christmas this year but can’t decide on which tartan I should get.

He noted from the way she made eye contact that she was telling him that her husband, too, was black. He wondered if many American blacks went to Scottish festivals in the States. Is she asking for advice — or permission? Duncan smiled at her.

I rather think that where one feels as if he has a wide choice, he ought to get that which looks best on him, and family names be damned, he told her. One can always wear something like Black Watch, you know, he added, blushing slightly as he realized that she might have thought him making fun of her. The look in her eyes told him that she had not taken offense.

Now that, Mr. Robertson, is a good idea, she said, a radiant, toothy smile on her face. Black Watch might be just the thing. I’ll look into that.

She and the other Delta attendants would hardly leave him alone after that — particularly when they discovered that he was something of a celebrity in Britain. In addition to the more-recent, but unsolved, Avebury case, during the past ten years he had worked on several matters that had been splashed about by the British press, and he had had a prominent part in the initial investigations of the Lockerbie terrorist downing of a jetliner. The dailies always relished having someone they considered colorful to write about and build up. Inspector Piper and Detective Bagpipe were two of the worst of the headlines that had appeared above a thirty-year-old picture of him in full regimental kit that had decorated the British newsstands.

The mother of his third wife Jennifer had been even more acidic than his coworkers about the papers’ use of that old picture of him back in his Strathclyde Police Band days. My, my, she had said as if accusing him of having provided the picture to the press, aren’t we the strapping lad! His mother-in-law was only two years older than he.

He often wondered if she was jealous of her daughter or merely resentful of him for having married her. Of course, that was before Jennifer had started up her here today/gone tomorrow sort of lifestyle. Nowadays her mom Winifred felt pity for him most of the time.

After that first introduction on the plane, the flight attendants and particularly the first one, Mrs. Blackmon, tried to ply him with almost as many drinks as questions. Finally he retreated behind a supposed review of paperwork and sheet music he would use for the workshop. He also tried to get some sleep as the plane chased the sun westward.

As she served him a final snack on the approach to Atlanta, Mrs. Blackmon read the brochure lying on the seat beside him and pointed at its title.

You-spa? she intoned by way of asking a question. She was pointing to the letters EUSPBA on the cover of a brochure beside him. It was obvious that her interest in piping was sincere and not just feigned in order to please him.

Eastern United States Pipe Band Association, he explained. It’s holding its annual work-shop at a place called the Wyndham Conference Center in a town called Peachtree City. Do you know where that is?

What chew talkin’ bout, Honey? she said, smiling beautifully as she reached forward and touched the back of his hand as she lapsed over into an intentionally regional mannerism and accent he found most charming, Ev’y body workin’ on this here plane lives in Peachtree City! You’ll be lucky if I don’t come over to the Wyndham every day and make you play for me!

"I’d consider myself lucky if you did come to see me. I’d love to buy you a drink," he added, noting as he did a certain note of mischief in the young woman’s eyes.

"Shoot, Honey! I’m a married woman. I assume you meant both me and my husband."

I most certainly did, he replied with a mischievous smile of his own. How could you have thought otherwise?

She smiled.

Then, Inspecta’, you need to learn how to speak properly when you’re down here among the natives, she lectured him, dropping back into the tone and accent of a well-educated debutant woman. Here in the South, the plural of you is y’all.

I shall bear that in mind. I shouldn’t want your husband to come gunning for me.

You needn’t worry; he’s a big pussycat.

And, he added for gallantry’s sake, a very lucky man.

She knew what he meant, and as she smiled and said, Thank you, then turned away to her other passengers. He felt years younger.

You old fox, you! You still dream of getting into the hen-house. Aye, and did you note how she moved when she walked?

It had been a while for him.

CHAPTER FOUR

CORRIECHOLLIE’S WELCOME

The last thing Inspector Duncan Robertson expected to have greet him as he came up the escalators on the way to Baggage Claim at the Atlanta Airport on a Monday was the sound of a bagpipe playing.

Before and behind him on the escalator were soldiers in gray and tan camouflage uniforms and sand-colored desert boots. Apparently, most of them were just back from Afghanistan and Iraq. One soldier up near the top held up his hand and most of the hundred or more people on the escalators fell silent to hear the music pouring down the long slanting shaft that rose from the long train corridor from which they were ascending.

He recognized the tune: Corriechollie’s Welcome to the Northern Meeting. Judging from the mistakes of notes and timing, as well as the uncertainty of execution, he assumed that it was being played by the rankest of amateurs. Another fifty-year-old American wannabe, he thought as he arrived at the top of the escalator and stepped off into the gate area. But that’s all right. Better a late start in life than no effort a’tall. I wonder why anyone went to the trouble to welcome me like this.

He saw immediately and with only a small sense of disappointment that, indeed, the greeting-party was not for him at all. A group of excited women behind which the piper was playing were meeting the American men and women soldiers as they emerged from the transportation shaft escalators. Behind them whole families were waiting and passers-by waved little American flags and were applauding whenever a new soldier or group of soldiers came up from the subway-type shuttles from the arrival gates.

A large man in uniform right beside him rushed forward into the arms of his family at the rope barrier ahead. They engulfed him with smiles and hugs. There were tears in the eyes of the men. The women were openly crying with relief and joy. All the people waiting and cheering there seemed taken up in the emotion of the moment, and even total strangers and foreigners passing by were beginning to get teary-eyed with emotion as they, their words inaudible, were being washed over by the cheery music.

E’en weak piping is na sa bad if the drones are well tuned, he remembered his father telling him. He noted with satisfaction that the two tenors were set properly, and the bass was only slightly off.

As he came around a column and emerged into the broad central lane of the concourse with the other passengers, he could finally see the piper, but it was no fifty-year-old man. The piper was an eleven- or twelve-year-old boy, neatly dressed in a kilt in which burnt orange dominated the plaid. He was wearing a Glengarry hat and was working away on the final measures of the tune that he ended properly enough with a full shut-off after his last D doubling. There was a brief moment of silence when he finished, and then it began: the applause, not only of those who were of the greeting party, but all up and down the concourse people were clapping where they stood, thanking the boy for his contribution to their day, and encouraging him, even as he had helped them thank the troops for their contributions and their sacrifices on behalf of his country.

God, but the British and Scottish soldiers could use a people like this behind them, Duncan thought.

The child smiled broadly as he smartly brought down his pipes and was embraced by the big officer who had gone down to one knee to hug him and was by now himself weeping with joy and with pride.

What a proud family! What a proud welcome! Robertson thought as he stood looking at the family group. The applause died down and the hundreds within earshot turned to resume their various ways, or welcome other troops. He saw people, who had stopped to cheer and listen, hurry on to distant gates or terminals, go back into shops and pubs, and otherwise get on with their day’s business.

Duncan! came a call of his name from behind him. He turned to see a man of nearly his own age, dressed in slacks and a golf shirt, striding toward him. It was his friend and colleague, Atwater Thomas Carroll, of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Thomas! he declared firmly as he took the other’s proffered hand and shook it warmly as they looked each other in the eye in the manner of true friends. It’s been what? Two years? Well, here I am at last.

Well met! Thomas said as he held on to his friend’s hand and added his left one for emphasis. Had one judged them by their minds alone one might have mistaken them for fraternal twins, bound together through similar experiences and mental affinities that belied their physical and national differences. The American was short and dapper, with an air of wealth and charm clinging as effortlessly to him as did his neat clothes. His closely-cropped and carefully combed black hair with touches of gray at the temples and his flashing dark eyes completed the picture of a man who to all outward appearances might seem quite different from the taller, slightly older and heavier man with whom he was talking.

For his part, Robertson’s hair had been a dark solid red when he was young, but its vivid colors had faded to various auburns and grays during his forties, and he didn’t bother himself too much with matters of hair grooming or clothing choices. It showed — so much so that he was more often taken for a university don or an affluent farmer than for the detective investigator he was.

The men looked at each other in silence as they enjoyed the reunion of their hands and minds. It was a game which each understood. Detectives each to the core of his being, they were looking for clues as to what the other might be about. Then they parted hands and laughed.

I ken you’re well, Thomas. No big changes?

No. No big changes, Duncan — not in me at least. But I do believe you are showing the signs of being happily married to a pretty young wife.

An’ why’s that, brother? Just because I’ve added a few pounds since last we met? Is that it?

No reason to tell him just now that she’s living in Glasgow. Doin’ Teddy.

Thomas smiled at him, and spoke to him in the best Scottish accent he could muster. Nay, Mon. It’s only that finally you’re dressed in something that was made since 1990 and the colors are actually coordinated.

Duncan playfully punched at his friend’s shoulder as the two started away together. Coming to the little piper, they paused. Duncan spoke to him.

Well done, lad. At your age – just keep it up and you’ll be fine piper.

The boy looked him in the eye like a man would. Are you a piper, too, sir? he asked politely and nodding to the pipe case Duncan carried.

"Aye, a bit of one. Enough to know Corriechollies Welcome when I hear it."

Then you heard my mistakes.

Well, maybe one or two, he admitted to the boy, but who else would ha’ known? You brought cheer t’ the whole place and ta’ yer family. Be proud of that — I ken they’re proud of you.

The boy was young, but Duncan could see that he already knew the bond. Probably plays in a band where they treat him as an equal.

Behind him the boy’s parents and family beamed with pride as the two pipers prepared to part. Maybe we shall meet again some day, Duncan said.

I should hope so, sir, the boy responded.

Perhaps it’ll be at the Northern Meeting at Inverness when you’ve been at it a wee bit longer.

Oh, yes, Sir! That would be fine! the boy responded enthusiastically, knowing that what the older man really meant was You have enough talent to play some day with the best and to strive for the Clasp. And the boy knew he had talent, too, and that the man wasn’t just talking about something of which he knew little.

Thank you, Sir. Have a great day.

And you, too. But do an auld piper a favor: play another tune for us as we part. It’s always better that way.

As the two men turned and walked down the broad corridor toward Baggage Claim exchanging pleasantries, the boy struck up Scotland the Brave Once again people began to smile as the familiar melody filled the long corridors.

CHAPTER FIVE

FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

Duncan had met Thomas Carroll almost ten years before when the American had been on his first trip to Scotland to play golf at St. Andrews. To American golfers, and particularly those of Scottish descent, a trip to St. Andrews was akin to a Muslim’s pilgrimage to Mecca.

On that occasion and several since, he and Thomas had played golf, imbibed, dined, and exchanged police stories and ideas with each other. Four years previously, the two of them along with Thomas’ wife, Linda, had spent three days together, in New York, while the men were attending a white-collar-crime and money-laundering conference.

In the interim, they frequently exchanged cards, stories. and phone calls. Neither had visited in the other’s home, nor had the Carrolls met either Duncan’s second wife, Doris or, for that matter, his current one, Jennifer.

To the best of Duncan’s recollection, neither of the Carrolls had ever heard him play his pipes. To them he was a fairly well-known celebrity-detective in the Edinburgh area, as well as the author of Modern Investigative Techniques.

As they went to Baggage Claim to fetch his luggage, Duncan realized for the first time that the Carrolls might assume he was going to be attending the EUSPBA workshop not as an instructor but as a student. Naturally enough, he thought it would be boastful or unseemly of him to say anything to them to the contrary. After all, he thought as he lovingly shifted his pipe-case to his left hand to grab his checked bag off the carousel, in many ways the world of piping is somewhat closed. That boy and I, we’re all of a piece, I suppose.

When he had called, back in December, to tell Thomas that he would be attending the EUSPBA Spring Workshop in a place called Peachtree City and to ask how he could get there from the Atlanta Airport, the Carrolls had insisted not only that he stay with them, but also that he bring his wife and come early or stay over so that he could see some sights in Georgia and play golf with Thomas and his friends.

He had rung up Jennifer hoping that she might decide to go with him but, as usual, she had declined his offer. She said she had her teaching obligations and some other things to do in Glasgow. At any rate, she had not been particularly keen on going to Georgia during March. That had been about four months after she had moved to Glasgow, supposedly to be near her work.

Duncan had been relieved that she had declined the Carrolls' invitation, as he often felt uncomfortable having her go with him when he visited couples of his own age, so much did such visits show up the contrasts in their ages. It was obvious, too, that the wives, particularly those who had gotten heavy and out of shape, very often felt threatened by the kind of possibilities that the exceptionally tall, slender, and perhaps slightly younger, Jennifer represented. Aye and what they don’t think about is the other side of the coin: younger wives going out for last flings during their late thirties, he had said to himself as he drank alone in the Edinburgh flat.

From the Atlanta airport they rode in Thomas’ official work car, a black Ford Crown Victoria equipped with a radio, concealed emergency lights, and a car telephone. Although it was not identified as being a police vehicle, it might as well have been for all its drabness and black wall tires, Duncan observed. But it was heavy and well-built and certainly moved as vigorously and surely as Duncan’s own ten-year-old Jaguar. He noted that it was somewhat quieter than British police vehicles.

They soon got off of the expressway. After clearing an intersection that was garishly built up in the typically American fashion, they began driving through an area of large homes on lovely, large plots of land, some on as much as five- or six-acre lots. When he remarked upon the opulence of the homes he was seeing, Thomas took him on a little side trip so that he could get a glimpse of Evander Holyfield’s property with its huge house. Duncan was suitably impressed even though he had himself often visited at or had work assignments that took him to Scottish estates whose lands were measured in the thousands of acres and whose venerable old estates were even larger.

He had a fleeting thought that before Friday morning he would have to turn his attentions to the piping classes he would be teaching on Saturday and Sunday morning, and make a final decision about which tunes he would play at Saturday night’s cèilidh. But that’s tomorrow — and tomorrow’s another day, he thought as he rode through the land that was once the setting for Gone with the Wind.

As they rode along, Thomas spoke of the plans he had made for them: steak dinners, the Cyclorama, Stone Mountain, and Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime lab tour. During the first week of the month Duncan would be in the United States, he had arranged to spend two days at the Communicable Disease Center attending a bioterrorism seminar. He also had a tentative plan of driving by himself to spend two or three days in Savannah or Charleston. And, interspersed throughout the visit, there would be – most importantly –golf!

He had never seen the Carroll home before, and was not prepared for how expensive and grand it was. Standing on what he could easily tell was some fifty acres of rolling pasture land surrounded by new subdivisions and other large estates, he thought it must have a land value alone of millions of dollars, and that the house might be worth as much as another million. Four beautiful horses galloped alongside their car as they drove between white board fences that lined the drive.

He would never have guessed from their previous meetings that Thomas and his wife were so wealthy. He said as much, almost as if implying that his friend had never been completely honest with him. Thomas, I would never …

Look, this is all just stuff, Thomas replied, heading him off. My wife’s parents were … well, Linda’s just flat-out rich, O.K.? I hope you won’t hold it against her, he concluded in a half-kidding tone.

No, it’s just that … well, I had no idea. Duncan knew it sounded foolish when he said it, for