"This is business, Mrs. Talley. And let's get a few things clear. When it comes to the press, all interviews go through me. And I don't want to hear any talk about Nessie being a sturgeon, or your application may just find its way to the bottom of our pile. Capiche?"

Meghan Talley started to say something, but her husband grabbed her arm.

"No more questions? Good. Redistribute your sonar buoys, boys and girls, Nessie hunting season just began."

Aldourie Castle
Northeastern Bank of Loch Ness

Gray skies cast a pall over the Great Glen. The dark water was as smooth as glass, blemished by occasional wisps of fog that rolled across the surface like tumbleweed.

I hiked north along the eastern bank of Loch Ness, continuing my search for clues, my T-shirt soaked from a late afternoon downpour that had scattered many of the tourists. By five-thirty I found myself along the banks of Aldourie Pier and a galley-stance that had once supplied a British garrison more than a century ago. A battered aluminum canoe was beached in the tall grass, its exposed bottom covered in algae. There was no one else around.

I continued on, approaching the grounds of Aldourie Castle. The ancient baronial mansion was set several hundred yards back from the Loch, surrounded by open acres of land. Four-story spires topped the abandoned estate, its silhouette dwarfed by a backdrop of emerald green forested slopes carpeted in pine and larch.

Aldourie Castle had been reconstructed several times since its main tower had been built in 1626. The most recent work completed a cement pad that separated the foundation from the first floor. At the time, its owner, Colonel William Fraser-Tytler, claimed it was done to fireproof the estate. According to locals, the colonel was more concerned about "finally putting to rest the ghost of the lady in gray," a spirit said to be haunting the castle grounds.

If childhood memories were the spirits that haunted me, then Castle Aldourie was certainly a part of them, for this was the site where Angus had seeded in me his superstitions about devils and dragons.

I moved to the edge of the bank where my father had dangled his young son. Had the drunken bastard been clairvoyant, or was he just playing me as he'd always done?

Perhaps as he was doing now …

Staring below into those dark waters, I seriously began to wonder. And then I looked up and saw the object.

It was a pale figure, bobbing along the surface several hundred yards away. Had the water not been so smooth, I'd have never seen it, but its movement was causing ripples along the Loch's otherwise tranquil surface.

Was it a deer?

With visibility poor and the fog thickening, I couldn't be certain, but it looked to me… like a body!

There was no one else around, no boats in sight.

What to do?

I looked back at the canoe, my heart pounding.