Competition Can Be Murder (15 page)

“And you and Richie stayed in touch all that time?”

“Oh, no. Boys don’t write letters all that well. But I’d see him now and again, during the summers. We met again this spring at The Pelican. That’s when the magic happened. We fell in love.” She cast her eyes downward, suddenly shy about having told me all this.

“Did your two families know you were getting this serious?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I didn’t tell mine, anyway.” She glanced at the chunky watch on her wrist. “I really better . . .”

“Sure. Let his family know if you hear from him.”

She strode away, her shapely legs under the short skirt drawing admiring looks from males along the way.

I had a sudden vision of her in five years—alone, with two or three kids from various fathers, struggling to earn a living because she’d never finished high school. The legs would still be shapely but the body would be twenty pounds heavier. I shook off the image, hoping Janie would make better choices than that.

Foot traffic was clearing and I realized that many of the shops were beginning to close. I pulled my cell phone from my bag and punched in the speed-dial number for Air-Sea Helicopters. Meggie answered on the first ring, sounding chipper.

“Oh, hi, Charlie! Yes, things are going great,” she said. “Just about have all the files back in order.”

“What’s Drake up to? Is he in yet?”

“Radioed in his last flight a few minutes ago, so he should be here in about thirty, forty-five minutes.”

“Tell him I’m heading home and will see him there. He doesn’t need to call me unless he’s going to be delayed.” By the time Drake landed, got the aircraft ready for the night, filled out his logbooks, and drove to the cottage, I figured I had close to two hours on my own yet.

I placed a quick call to Dunworthy and learned that there were no new developments. I told Sarah what I had, or rather hadn’t, learned at Waldo Green’s. I didn’t mention running into Janie again. I figured the shit was really going to hit the fan when that little secret came out.

I walked the length of Church Street and circled Inverness Castle. As castles go, it wasn’t a huge one—probably no bigger than Dunworthy, for that matter. An adjacent museum was just closing and I made a mental note to come back to it someday. I stood on the high ground at the edge of the River Ness and let my eyes travel its length. The water reflected the deep blue of the sky, while the sun—now working its way lower in the west—brought the town’s stone buildings into sharp focus.

A bridge crossed the river near me, and another, more ornate, crossed a few blocks down. I walked across the near one. At the other end, on a street lined with stone buildings from various periods, a small kilt shop was still open. I ducked inside.

The walls were lined with bolts of tartan, in the myriad color combinations representing each clan. Mannequins modeled traditional Scottish wear, from everyday to formal. But the thing that drew my eye were the glass display cases of knives. From long broadswords to the tiny dirks that Highland men wore in the tops of their knee-high socks, the array was dazzling. I’d seen Drake admiring them in shop windows. I made a spot decision to get him one as a gift.

The shop’s one clerk was bustling about, getting ready to close for the night so I quickly chose one of the dirks. Its four-inch blade had a delicate thistle pattern engraved on it and was sheathed in black leather that matched the woven leather pattern on the knife’s handle. The girl wrapped my purchase in tissue and bagged it while I admired their display of small jewelry items made from heather wood. I chose a brooch with an intricate heather-wood center and an arrangement of silver thistles circling it. Five minutes later, transactions complete, I was back out on the street, following the river until I came to the second bridge.

Its smooth stone abutments rose, forming a tall square tower at each end. Cables draped in elegant suspension between them, holding the bridge with their strength. A two-lane road, busy with cars, ran down the center of it, with a sidewalk on one side. As I reached the center of it, I felt the entire bridge vibrate slightly with each passing car. I picked up my pace.

By the time I’d retrieved the car and driven back to the cottage, it was nearly time for Drake to be home. I pulled two steaks from the freezer and put the microwave to work defrosting them. He walked in while I was figuring out how to use the small gas grill on the veranda.

“Well, helluva day, huh?” he said. He twisted two knobs on the grill, pressed an igniter button, and a blue flame came to life.

“Did your mechanic get there?”

“First thing in the morning,” he said. “I’ll fly him out to the rig and see if I can lend a hand while he works on the problem. I’ll need you to bring the JetRanger back, once we know we have the Astar running.”

I handed him a glass of wine. “Sure. For now, let’s hope for a few uneventful hours.”

Over dinner, I filled him in on the return of Alasdair and Lewis, my visit to the teen club where Richie’d last been seen, and the little secret Janie was carrying. Drake did the dishes while I took a shower, and we blissfully fell into bed early after watching only a little TV.

The alarm went off much too early. Drake moaned and draped his arm over me. “Five more minutes,” he mumbled into my shoulder. When the snooze timer went off again, he dragged himself away.

“Am I coming with you now?” I asked.

“Let’s wait. You can stay here until we assess the problem and find out long it’ll take to fix it.”

“Um, I love you,” I murmured, burrowing into the covers again.

I heard the shower go on, then off, heard the bee-like buzz of his electric razor. And somehow in the background, a persistent ringing. I raised my head to get my bearings. The telephone downstairs.

A phone ringing before daybreak is never a good thing. I tugged a huge T-shirt on over my head and snatched up a pair of socks I’d worn the day before. The light on the landing nearly blinded me and it took another full ring for me to stumble down the stairs. Another while I sprinted across the living room, jamming my little toe against a table leg, and grabbed for the phone on the kitchen counter.

“What!” Short for what-the-hell-do-you-want-at-this-hour. “Sorry, I meant ‘hello’.”

“Charlie, I’m sorry. This is terribly rude of me, calling so early.” Sarah’s voice sounded genuinely contrite, but a tiny sob quietly escaped.

“No, Sarah, that’s okay.” I pulled the phone off the counter and sat on the floor, squeezing my throbbing toe with my free hand. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve received a ransom note.”

“Oh my god.” Richie’s disappearance suddenly seemed so much more ominous again. “What does it say? How did it arrive?”

“It was placed under our front door,” she said. “I can’t believe it! These evil people have actually come right up to our home.”

“Sarah, hold tight,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

I switched on the kitchen light and examined my little toe, whose severe pain had dulled to merely an aching throb. The nail was split but otherwise the tiny digit looked fine. I limped back up the stairs to find Drake dressed and heading down.

“What was that?” he asked.

“A note about Richie,” I said. “I told Sarah I’d go right over there.”

“Why are you limping?” He nearly smiled, but avoided it judiciously at the last second. My ability to bump, bruise, scrape, or sprain things frequently meets with admonitions from him to slow down.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Um hmm. I’ll make coffee while you get dressed,” he offered.

Determined not to let him make an issue of the toe, I trimmed the nail and bundled my feet into thick cotton socks and walking shoes. Five minutes later, dressed and combed, I poured coffee into a travel mug and kissed my hubby goodbye in the driveway. He promised to call my cell phone when the repairs to the Astar were finished and he needed me to fly the JetRanger back.

Things were aflutter at Dunworthy. As I drove up the lane to the castle I saw Robert and Edward circling the white Range Rover. Edward held a phone up to his ear, looked impatiently at it, then jammed it into his inside pocket.

In the front hall, Sarah paced, a sheet of rumpled paper in her hand. Elizabeth barked an order at Molly, who looked like she was about to cry. She skittered from the room as I turned to close the door. Robert and Edward followed close on my heels.

“Can’t raise anyone at the bank,” Edward grumbled to his wife.

Elizabeth looked at a delicate diamond watch on her wrist. “It’s only going on seven o’clock.”
You twit
seemed to be the unspoken ending.

“Charlie! I’m so glad you’re here,” Sarah said. Her chenille robe covered a utilitarian cotton gown—no lace or ruffles for this sturdy country woman.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, wore a pair of elegant gray slacks--expensive by the cut of them—and a yellow sweater so fluffy it might have been made of baby chicks. Her hair, makeup, nails, and jewelry were all perfect. I was willing to bet she never emerged from her bedroom looking otherwise.

“Is that the note?” I asked, indicating the paper in Sarah’s hand.

“Oh. Yes.” She smoothed the page against her chenilled thigh with both hands.

I cringed as I watched any potential evidence being wiped away. Undoubtedly, Robert and Edward had obliterated any footprints that might have been left near the door, and now Sarah had handled our only other clue until it was probably useless too. Didn’t these people ever watch crime shows on TV?

I took the note. The paper was standard letter size, plain white, probably the stuff that everyone who owns a computer buys by the ream. The lettering was in black ballpoint ink, a deliberate block print, faintly wavy like it was done by a right-handed person with their left hand:
Gather ₤50,000. We will call at 12:00 with delivery instructions. No police or he is dead.

It was signed with a reddish-brown X. Blood? It certainly looked like it.

“This was slipped under your front door?” I asked.

“Yes,” Robert said. “I’d gotten up. Planned to meet our foreman at the dairy barn.”

I noticed for the first time that he wore a quilted, plaid shirt-jacket and brown utilitarian twill pants tucked into rubber boots.

“We were planning to go over the milk production figures.”

Elizabeth shot her father a look that said, how can you think of business when your grandson is missing.

“Don’t you think it’s time to bring the police into it now?” I asked.

“No!” Four voices shouted at me at once.

“You read the note, Charlie.” Sarah’s no-nonsense tone told me there would be no arguing this point. “That X is made in blood, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“I’d say that means someone is very serious about this, then.”

“So, what do you plan to do?” I asked.

Edward spoke up. “As soon as I can reach my banker, we’ll have the money transferred to Robert’s bank here. We’ll get the cash and await instructions. Just as the note says.”

A clock in the hall chimed the half-hour. Seven-thirty.

“Until then, I think we should all have something to eat,” Sarah said. “It’s likely to be a very long day.”

“I couldn’t—” Elizabeth began.

“Molly has something set up in the small dining room.”

We all dutifully followed Sarah. She shot Robert a look, and he shed the rubber outdoor boots and slipped into soft leather house shoes before coming into the dining room.

Molly had laid out covered chafing dishes of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and broiled tomatoes, buffet style. There were racks of toast and crockery pots of jam, plus a couple of large bowls of fruit and assorted pastries. I’d forgotten that when the Scots say breakfast, they mean Breakfast. It was obvious that the people of Dunworthy were accustomed to feeding people on a large scale and on short notice.

Despite my trepidation about the day and its potential outcome, I found myself filling a plate and eating way too well. Everyone else did, too, except Elizabeth who stuck with her original objection and only managed a few pieces of fruit and some dry toast. It was easy to see where her stick-like figure came from.

Edward kept looking at his watch. At eight, he announced that he would try calling the bank again. Apparently he had a private number to an important person’s office because he reached someone and made arrangements for the ₤50,000 transfer to happen precisely at nine o’clock.

“That should give us ample time to collect the money and arrive back here by noon for the telephone call,” he told Robert, once he’d stashed his cell phone.

“Well, it sounds like you have things well in hand,” I said. “Maybe I better—”

“Oh, don’t go, Charlie,” Sarah insisted. “I’d feel so much better if you were here to help us rescue Richie.”

Privately, I thought they were going to do things their own way, no matter what I said. I couldn’t see that they’d taken a bit of my advice yet. I told her I’d stay, unless Drake called and needed me on business. His safety was of more value to me than Richie’s, especially since the family would damn well do what they wanted anyway. I didn’t tell her that part.