My heart beat too fast and under my skin it felt mealy, like an old apple.
—Lily King, Writers and Lovers
As Vera had described, the wheel was a multistory contraption made of concrete and steel. The tall central axle, which she told us was modeled after a Celtic axe crossed with a ship’s propellor married to a whale’s ribcage, allowed two boats to rotate at the same time, one up and one down.
“See what I mean?” she asked. “It’s like the kelpie horseheads—amazing design and structure, but a zero as a place of Scottish spirit. At least not the kind of spirit that I find interesting.” She headed for the office to purchase tickets, and soon returned to distribute one to each of us. We met Ainsley in line, waiting to board the boat.
“Where are the others?” asked Vera. “Is Glenda all right? And how about you? Nathan said the medical results showed signs of high levels of digitalis?” She squeezed her friend into a quick hug and then let her go.
Ainsley nodded and pointed down the pier to Gavin, who was taking photographs of the previous boatful of tourists as it descended slowly to the canal. A few steps past him, Glenda waited, watching him work. She looked perfectly healthy from a distance.
“She says she’s fine,” Ainsley said, pressing her hands to her temples. “But Gavin pulled me aside to tell me that she’s all shook up. She fears that someone targeted her directly at the dinner, and she doesn’t know who to trust—especially me. I have no idea how to talk to her about all this. She’s freezing me out.”
We all looked at Vera, who shrugged helplessly.
“Let’s remember, we’re friends first, and we’ve been through a lot together,” Vera said to Ainsley. She kept her voice so low I had to strain to make out the words. “There’s simply no way anyone would blame you for what happened.”
Which made me wonder about what they’d been through. Vera, I knew, had experienced a terrible trauma before moving to Scotland for college. Had more happened after that? I reminded myself to try to corner Ainsley alone. Maybe she’d be willing to talk to me without an audience. I hoped she’d also talk about Grace, her talented chef. Had she had noticed Gavin’s inappropriate contact with the chef or heard about it from someone else? Or could it be that Grace overreacted? Was there any possibility that Grace had intended for Glenda—or Gavin even—to get sick? I hated to think that because I liked her very much. But the question needed to be asked.
As the descending boat reached the concrete pier, workers began to unload the passengers onto the dock, and Gavin and Glenda returned to our queue.
“The light is exactly right this morning,” Gavin said when he arrived. “The photos are going to be amazing—and from a perspective that most people don’t have the opportunity to see. I climbed several meters up the structure before an ignorant and annoying guard insisted I come down.”
Vera glared at him. “Sometimes rules are important.”
At Vera’s suggestion, Miss Gloria, Helen, and I took the three seats that remained open in the front of the boat, while the others headed toward the back. The captain explained the safety features such as where to find life preservers, and the importance of all guests remaining seated during the ride. “The landing area at the back of the craft is not safe and strictly off limits to our guests.” The boat began to move slowly up, almost like a super slow-moving Ferris wheel.
As we were lifted higher, the Scottish flatlands spread out all around us: green fields, industrial buildings, the reedy canals that the Falkirk Wheel had been designed to connect, and way off in the distance the kelpies. Once we had almost reached the top of the ascent, out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something fall. And then several people began to yell, and a woman in a seat toward the back of the craft screamed and then burst into tears. The boat rocked as everyone rushed to that side to see what was happening. The captain’s crackly voice blared out from the speaker.
“Folks, please take your seats instantly,” he said in an urgent tone. “We are going to be returning to the pier.”
As we filed back to our original seats, Vera began to look around the boat, her eyes wild. “Oh my God, where’s Gavin? Has that fool gone missing! The authorities told him not to climb anywhere.”
The wheel rotated in slow motion, the descent feeling twice as slow as our trip up. Off to the left in the canal, I could hear shouts. We watched the captain throw two orange life preserver rings into the water. Maybe there was the sound of splashing? I hoped so because that might mean whoever had fallen could have survived the fall.
“This can’t be happening,” said Vera. “I swear I will kill him if he fell out of this boat.”
My surprise must have shown on my face, as she continued, “You have no idea how hard I’ve worked to get this project off the ground. And then Glenda sweet-talked the publisher into saddling me with her idiot husband. And first she thinks someone’s poisoning her, and now he’s tumbled out of this idiotic boat, which never should’ve been part of the book to begin with.”
“I wouldn’t assume it was him,” said Ainsley softly. “He’s a brilliant man who occasionally manages to make himself look like a clumsy fool. And he looks out only for himself, but he does that nimbly. He’s not likely to take a dive from a high place.”
Which sounded like an odd and unattractive description of a close colleague.
Vera was practically shaking with fury—or was it fear?—by the time we reached the bottom of the curve. Three men dressed in black, wearing train conductor hats with black and white checked bands, met us at the exit door and began directing the tourists off the boat and away from the figure that was splayed on the cement next to the boat. Scottish policemen, I realized, my horrified mind slow to grasp what I was seeing.
I glanced again at the shape on the pier, wishing desperately that this person could have landed in the water rather than on concrete. Hadn’t the captain thrown out life preservers? Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I feared. My head knew that no one could have survived plummeting from that distance onto an unforgiving surface, but my heart was having trouble computing that fact.
“Please wait over here next to the entrance,” said one of the policemen. He pointed to the visitors’ center where we’d planned to have lunch. “We will need to speak to passengers regarding what they might have seen prior to this individual’s descent. Do not discuss this incident with the other passengers.” He herded us past the motionless form. I couldn’t help looking, but I could not see enough to tell me who it might have been. Besides, everyone I knew in this country was right here with me. Almost everyone.
The next thought landed with a jolt. Did all this police concern mean the fall might not have been accidental?
“Did you notice anything out of order before the captain began shouting?” I whispered to Miss Gloria as we were herded toward the cafeteria building. The cop surely hadn’t meant I couldn’t talk to my friend.
She shook her head. “I started to feel like I was getting a migraine on that thing,” she said, gesturing at the wheel. “I don’t like heights, and you know I’m a little claustrophobic. And I definitely didn’t like the looks of that tunnel we were going to travel through once we got to the top. My whole head felt like it was squeezing into my brain, getting ready to explode.
“But I hope no one pushed him,” she added, raising her eyebrows and tipping her chin in Vera’s direction. “Is that what you’re thinking? Like Vera?”
“Stop it,” I hissed. “She would never hurt someone. She’s Nathan’s sister.”
“She couldn’t stand that Gavin,” Miss Gloria said. “Didn’t you notice what a buffoon he was at the party? And this morning too. He thinks he’s too good for the rules that apply to everyone else in the world.”
“Who didn’t notice?” I asked, falling silent under the glare of the nearest policeman. Was the victim Gavin? Hadn’t Vera been sitting cattycorner in the seats behind us when the ruckus began? Miss Gloria’s comment was making me doubt what I’d seen or not seen, and what I thought was even possible.
As our turn with the police approached, Helen and Vera were the first in our group to be interviewed. Helen put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder while they answered the authorities’ questions. Helen seemed to be doing most of the talking, as Vera was visibly weeping. We shuffled a little closer to listen in.
“We didn’t see anything,” Nathan’s mother insisted. “I’m a visitor from America, and we were looking at the amazing scenery. We have no idea who that person is or how he came to fall.” She gestured at the figure on the cement pier, now draped with a silver space blanket.
Just then I noticed a man break through the police barrier, snapping photos of the police and the gawking spectators and finally even the figure on the cement pier.
“Sir, stop that this instant!” shouted one of the cops.
“It’s Gavin!” said Miss Gloria. “He’s alive and well. And still an idiot,” she added under her breath.
Our turn came with the police. Miss Gloria explained that her headache and claustrophobia had kept her from noticing anything. I tried to report any details I could think of—how I’d hoped the person had fallen in the canal and how the only odd detail prior to the incident had been Gavin trying to climb the structure before we boarded the boat. “Honestly, I doubt that had anything to do with this. And we were sitting too far away to have noticed what happened before the fall.”
By the time we had all completed the interviews and given our contact information to the police, Vera was barely holding herself together. Her teeth chattered, even though the temperature had to be near sixty degrees, and she took great gasps of air.
“Are you okay?” I asked. She waved her hand as if to flick my concern away.
“I’d like to ride in the back seat with her,” said Helen once we reached the car. “Can one of you possibly drive?”
I thought of Miss Gloria lurching around Key West in her Oldsmobile, almost clipping gawking tourists and other cars with her big fenders while she warbled along with songs on her radio. Plus, this car was a stick shift, and it would require driving on the wrong side of the road.
“I can do it,” I said, “as long as we put the directions in my phone.”