The Murder Hole (15 page)

“No,” said Jean. She turned one way and the
Ducketts turned the other, making their way toward the chairs set
up in front of the stage.

The Ducketts seemed to be nice
salt-of-the-earth people. How sad that crime and mortality had
scratched the glossy coat of their holiday. And how funny an
American accent sounded now. It was flat, almost whiny. Jean’s ears
had adapted to the variety of local lilts. Before long she’d be
talking like Rebecca, the plateaus of her native voice broken by
the hills and valleys of Scotland.

Speaking of the Campbell-Reids, little Linda
provided a dandy excuse to buy a stuffed animal or two. So did
Jean’s nieces and nephews back in the States.

She toured the tables and booths, acquiring a
plush Nessie wearing a tiny tartan tam and a couple of the
appealing woolly sheep. The ratio of quality goods to dreck, she
discovered, was a good one. For every plastic doll dressed in
Day-Glo tartan was a hand knit Aran sweater. For every Nessie
refrigerator magnet was a piece of Rennie Mackintosh design jewelry
or cut-glass whiskey decanter. And one vendor had—oh happy
day!—piles and piles of books.

Hitching her bag of toys up her arm, she
assessed the display. A stack of
Great Scot
magazines sat
beside a selection of history and travel guides, including
Ambrose’s
Pictish Antiquities
. She picked up a book titled
Hidden Treasures of Scotland
and leafed through it, pausing
to admire photos of the Traprain Law hoard. A picture of Bonnie
Prince Charlie headed up a chapter about his missing gold coins.
Been there, done that, worn the T-shirt so many times the logo had
washed away. Jean turned several pages at once.

A photo of Tobermory Bay on Mull illustrated
a chapter about the Armada ship that sank there in 1588. Except for
a cannon, its contents had never been recovered, although not
without repeated efforts. Maybe if and when Roger admitted defeat
at Loch Ness he’d take on the Tobermory galleon. The actual
identification of the sunken ship—which had also mysteriously blown
up—was still a question, and whether there was any treasure to be
found on it was an even bigger one, but there was no doubt it
actually existed.

She put the book back on the table, thinking
that while, traditionally, dragons guarded treasures, here at Loch
Ness the dragon was the treasure. No surprise that most of the
books on offer were Nessie books, ranging from Ambrose’s
The
Water-Horse of Loch Ness
through Whyte’s
More Than a
Legend
to Binns’
The Loch Ness Mystery Solved
, which if
it didn’t solve anything to the high standards of, say, Alasdair,
at least debunked quite a lot.

An old copy of Ambrose’s biography of Crowley
was wedged between two travelogues. She pulled it out and fanned
the pages, catching a faint whiff of mildew and something else,
something sweet. The flyleaf was autographed in flowing script:
To my dear E., remembering the good times, Ambrose
Mackintosh
. The trailing end of the faded sepia “h” coiled into
a serpentine flourish on the yellowed paper. E for Eileen, Jean
supposed, but what an ambiguous sentiment to inscribe to one’s
wife.

The dealer, an elderly man as tall and
straight as a Doric column, scented a live one and came strolling
over. He saw what she held and recoiled, his seamed face
registering distaste verging on disgust. “Och, where did you turn
that up?”

“It was right here,” she told him.

“My assistant brought it along, then. Tis of
local interest, make no mistake, but Crowley, he was a nasty piece
of work. Lived just across the loch, there.” He gestured toward the
southwest, where the clouds were building into gray ramparts. “Mind
you, he raised demons. People would go round, miles and miles, to
avoid passing by his house at Boleskine, and even so, terrible
things happened. His lodge keeper went mad, his butcher
accidentally sliced open an artery and died . . . Well, no need to
go on. Two pound and that book is yours.”

Terrible things happened a long way away from
Crowley, too, but most people didn’t revel in them, like he had
done. Even Ambrose had allowed that the man, while more sham than
evil, was not a healthy influence. Ambrose, though, rationalized
that Crowley had been driven to his excesses by the taunts of an
unappreciative public.

Jean dropped two pound coins into the
dealer’s huge, callused hand. In his youth, he could have picked up
a tree—and probably had, in the Highland sport of caber-tossing.
And she thought Alasdair had large hands. “I see you have Ambrose
Mackintosh’s other books here.”

“Ah well, Ambrose was a fine scholar. Daft,
mind you, and perhaps wicked, but Scripture tells us to judge not,
lest we ourselves be judged. In any event, folk hereabouts didna
trust him. Keeping bad company disna help your reputation, does
it?”

“No, it doesn’t.” Jean tucked the book into
her bag beside the toys. Maybe they would sap some of what the
dealer obviously felt was its evil aura. “I bet the disappearance
of Ambrose’s wife didn’t help his reputation any, either.”

“No, that it didna. Too much like Crowley he
was, with the women and all. Poor wee Iris, my mum always said, no
mother and her father off his head, perhaps a murderer forbye. No
wonder she’s a bit of a loony herself.”

“How much do you want for this?” asked a man
at the end of the table. Jean recognized the scrawny form of Martin
Hall, without child, and smiled a greeting, which Martin returned
distantly, as if he wasn’t quite sure who she was. Or as if he’d
seen her looking up at Tracy’s bedroom window a little while
earlier. Although, now that Jean thought about it, it could just as
well have been Peter Kettering in that room, discussing promotional
fees, perhaps.

The dealer turned toward Martin. Jean,
scenting a source, picked up a business card from the pile on the
table. It read
Gordon Fraser, Highland Books and Maps, Fort
Augustus
.

An arm like a side of beef landed around her
shoulders. She jerked away and spun around, ready to do battle.

D.S. Andy Sawyer was looking down at her with
small squinting eyes set close together beneath a forehead like a
cinder block wall. Broad lips smirked at her below a lank blond
moustache. So he’d shaved off his beard since last month. Bad move.
His receding chin was now exposed to innocent eyes. “Well then,
lassie,” he said, his sarcastic voice relishing the diminutive,
“avoiding us, are you now? Strange, how you keep turning up, like a
bad penny, eh? Cut along now, D.C.I. Cameron’s waiting on your
pleasure.”

Oh, for the love of
. . . And she
thought she’d been able to read Alasdair. She’d thought they were
on the same side. But he’d sent his henchman to get her. And she
hadn’t had time to fortify herself with a sandwich, or a lousy cup
of tea, even, although straight whiskey might have improved her own
temper. Or loosened her tongue, which wouldn’t have helped a
bit.

She spun away from Sawyer, stumbling and
adding embarrassment to anger.
Damn!
He had a police car
waiting at the edge of the field. People were staring. At least it
was D.C. Gunn who was holding open the door of the back seat for
her, his mouth set in a wobbly line a la Charlie Brown, chagrin and
nausea combined.

Head up, back straight, Jean walked over to
the car, offered Gunn a version of his own expression, and climbed
inside.

In the five minutes it took to drive to
Drumnadrochit’s miniature police station and ease through the scrum
of reporters outside its gate, Jean’s head of steam began to
dissipate. Her encounter with Alasdair on top of the tower had been
cordial. Comradely. They’d understood each other, albeit in a
duck-and-cover sort of way. He hadn’t sent Sawyer to get her.

Sawyer, unimproved temper and all, sat beside
her, not twirling the ends of his moustache. And not razzing her
any more, either, which meant he had some minimal level of
perception.

When the car stopped. Jean piled out and beat
Sawyer to the door of the office—if he opened it for her, he’d
imply she was a prisoner, not a free agent. She stepped into the
tiny room with its informational posters, filing cabinets, and
computer-topped desk, and looked around, poised for action. But no
one, least of all Alasdair, was there.

A door on the far side of the room stood open
on a narrow slice of domesticity, now filled with all the
computerized paraphernalia of an incident room. Even as she headed
toward it, propelled by Sawyer’s battering-ram entrance, Alasdair
stepped through the opening and shut the door behind him. In his
left hand a plastic tray held one complete half of a tomato and
cheese sandwich and a bite of the other half. Turning toward Jean,
he scooped that up and inserted it between his elegantly curved
lips.

“Here I am to make that statement,” Jean
said, and, with a glance behind her, “The sergeant decided he just
couldn’t wait to see me again.”

Cameron chewed. His gaze moved from Jean’s
truculent expression to Sawyer’s scowl. He swallowed. His eyebrows
lifted and then tightened, minimally. His lips thinned. Without
having blinked once, he looked back at Jean.

He might be at his most inscrutable, but she
knew that he was irritated with Sawyer’s presumption. He wasn’t
going to show it in front of anyone, though, least of all her. She
went on. “I was going to have lunch and then come in, you know,
blood sugar and stuff like that.”

Alasdair extended his remaining sandwich half
toward her.

No way was she going to do something as
personal as share his food in front of—well, in front of anyone.
“No, no thank you. I’m okay.” She’d told the teacher on the bully.
It was time to shut up before she sounded so lame they sent out for
crutches. Jean plopped down in the hard wooden chair beside the
desk and tucked her shopping bag beneath it, hoping no one would
notice the cutesy stuffed animals.

Sawyer leaned against the outside door,
ostentatiously blocking her escape. Gunn settled across the room,
hunched defensively over his notebook. That was odd. Jean
remembered him being deferential to his superiors, not afraid of
them.

“Right,” Alasdair said, although his frosty
glance at Sawyer suggested otherwise. He sat down behind the desk,
wiped his hands on a napkin, then pulled a small plastic bag from
inside his jacket and held it out to Jean. “This is yours, I
reckon.”

With a queasy feeling of deja vu, Jean took
the bag. It contained one of her business cards, the cardboard
puffy and the ink blurred but legible. She felt its cold dampness
through the plastic. “Where did you . . ? Oh. It was in Jonathan’s
pocket, wasn’t it?”

“Got it in one,” said Sawyer from the
door.

So that was why he’d taken it upon himself to
come after her. Reasonable enough, on the surface. It was what was
below the surface, some sort of strain not in the plot but in the
cast of characters, that made her feel there wasn’t enough oxygen
in the room. And it wasn’t just the tension she always felt in
Alasdair’s presence, either.

Jean handed the card back to him. “I gave
this to Jonathan when I arrived at the Water Horse boat and he
challenged me. I had an appointment for an interview.”

“You’re a chum of Dempsey’s, then,” said
Sawyer.

“No, I’m not,” she told him over her
shoulder. “We met briefly several years ago is all. I hadn’t heard
from him until his press release landed on my desk last week, and
he must have sent one, little Nessie and all, to every reporter in
the UK.”

“Nessie?” Alasdair asked.

“The toy Nessie that came with the press
release.”

“None of the other reporters we’ve
interviewed said anything about a toy.”

“Why should they? They—we—get that sort of
promotional gimmick all the time.”

“Aye.” Alasdair laid the plastic bag out on
the desk blotter, his sturdy fingertips smoothing it down as
delicately as a fortune teller laying out Tarot cards. “The
preliminary report is that Paisley has no wounds other than cuts,
bruises, and burns from the explosion, and that he drowned. Just
now we’re thinking that he was killed by accident. Even so, we’re
looking into his background.”

Jean didn’t want to know whether Jonathan had
been conscious when he went into the water. Setting her jaw, she
met Alasdair’s cool, correct expression with one of her own.

“The bomber might could have meant to kill
Dempsey,” he continued. “Mrs. Dempsey tells us he has a habit of
working late and losing track of time. This is assuming the
explosion was meant to kill anyone at all, not merely to stop the
expedition. Just now we’ve got no evidence the one way or the
other.”

“Tracy was insisting he get to that dinner on
time,” Jean agreed. “What about Brendan and Jonathan trading
places? Could someone have wanted to kill Brendan?”

“It’s possible.”

“Hugh Munro said he saw Brendan with Iris’s
niece Kirsty at the Tourist Authority dinner last night.” A snort
from behind her back wasn’t exactly that of a bull, but still she
felt like a matador. She didn’t turn around. “Maybe what Jonathan
traded with Brendan was his place at the dinner. Brendan could have
thought he’d make points with Kirsty by taking her to a posh
function.”

“That’s likely.” Alasdair allowed her
reasoning a slow nod. “Or he might could have been setting himself
up an alibi.”

“Using Kirsty. Yes.”

“You overheard Iris telling Kirsty she
shouldn’t be seeing any more of Brendan, did you?”

“More or less, yes. There’s a real Romeo and
Juliet scenario going on, with Iris playing the old money, the
Capulets, and Roger playing the brash new Montagues.”

Another snort indicated Sawyer’s impatience
with literary similes. Alasdair didn’t rise to the bait. If
anything, a blizzard blew across his expression. “You were asking
about the anonymous letters. Despite fingerprint and saliva
evidence being inconclusive, we may have found the person who sent
them.”