“Could she have hired someone to kill him, then?” I shivered at the very idea. A scene from a mob movie flashed in my head. Was there even a Scottish mob?
“I suppose, but who else was seen around the tour bus?”
I knew one person who had been seen at the tour bus: my father.
Presha shook her head. “To hire a hit man would take a lot of planning. Does Kenda strike you as a person who would plan so well a murder in advance?”
When she put it that way, I had no idea. I had no idea what Kenda or any of Barley’s friends or fans were capable of. All I knew was that one of them had committed murder.
Chapter Twenty-One
Even though I still didn’t know exactly where my parents were, Presha’s words comforted me. I knew I had been overreacting to think they were missing. They had gone for a drive. There was nothing illegal in that. I also knew it would be a most welcome break for them. In running the farm, they rarely had a moment to travel, even to downtown Nashville. And downtown Nashville was lovely. The music and foodie scene thrived, with local bars and five-star restaurants. All of which boasted live music. But at the farm, there was always something that needed mending, planting, feeding, or harvesting, which was why I’d known from an early age that it wasn’t the life for me.
Neither Isla nor I wanted the kind of life where we were tethered to the land to such a degree that leaving would cause so much strain. Then I laughed at myself as a thought crossed my mind: wasn’t that the situation I was in now with the garden at Duncreigan?
Part of me wanted to camp out at Thistle House and wait until Mom and Dad returned. But I scrapped that idea. Eugenia would get suspicious, and Barley’s bandmates would wonder why I was there. I didn’t think it was a great idea to reveal to Kenda that the man she’d seen go into Barley’s trailer after her was my father.
Instead, I decided to go back to the scene of the crime.
But when I got to where the tour bus had been parked, the scene of the crime was gone. The bus was missing from the other side of the troll bridge, and I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.
Kenda and the MacNish brothers stood in the spot where the bus had been with their mouths hanging open.
Kenda threw up her hands. “Now what are we supposed to do? Stay here forever?”
“We had gear in there. The cops can’t take our gear,” Jamie complained.
“Who cares about your gear?” Kenda asked. “What about our ride? We need to get out of this village!”
“Call an Uber,” Lester joked.
“No Uber would come all the way to this little village,” Kenda snapped, not picking up on his humor.
That wasn’t entirely true. Kipling was starting a new business of giving people rides. It was a side business he was running with mixed results, considering that his mode of transportation was his motorbike. I had seen a handful of villagers on the back of his bike, but only out of sheer desperation.
“Hey,” Jamie said. “It’s the delivery girl.”
Kenda and Lester spun around to see me standing at the end of the troll bridge. I gave them a little wave.
“We didn’t order any more food,” Lester said.
Kenda shook her head. “She’s not a delivery girl, she’s a detective, and she’s looking into Barley’s murder.”
The brothers’ heads snapped in my direction.
I walked over to them. “I’m not a detective,” I said. The last thing I wanted was for it to reach Chief Inspector Craig’s ears that I was impersonating a police officer.
Kenda flipped her red braids over her shoulder. “You said you have dealt with murder investigations before.”
I shifted back and forth on my feet. “I have.”
“And you need to help me, so I can leave this village and never come back.”
I sighed. The MacNish brothers watched me with renewed interest. I forced a laugh. “Kenda and I spoke earlier, and I told her I’d had my own trouble with the police.”
“What troubles?” Lester asked.
I waved away his question. “It’s not important.” I cleared my throat. “What happened to the tour bus?”
“What does it look like?” Lester frowned. “The cops took it.”
“With all our gear,” Jamie said. “We need that back. Some of those instruments cost more than those cops make in a year.”
“Yeah,” Lester said. “It takes a lifetime to find just the right guitar. We’re going to need everything back.”
“You will have to talk to the chief inspector about that,” I said.
The brothers scowled at me.
Lester shook his head. “It just seems one thing after another goes wrong.”
“Les,” Jamie said.
Lester shook his head and stomped away. Without a word, Jamie went after him.
“What did he mean when he said that?” I asked Kenda, who was still staring at the patch of grass where the tour bus had once been.
“I never know what they’re talking about.” She folded her arms, and fiery braids fell back over her shoulder. “Have you found the man who was talking to Barley after I left the bus?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“You had better find him, because he’s the one who did this. I promise you. When you find him, you tell me, because he single-handedly ruined my life. I mean to ruin his.” She stomped away.
I watched her go as the gas lampposts in the village began to flicker on. It was before six in the evening, but darkness came early to Scotland in November. It wouldn’t be long before the sky was completely dark.
Even though Presha had made me feel more secure about my parents just an hour ago, my confidence evaporated with Kenda’s words. I knew she wasn’t going to let go of the idea that the man she saw, my father, was guilty, and now on top of that, I had to worry about her ruining his life. I wasn’t sure what a fiddler player would do to a farmer, but I didn’t want to find out either. Kenda had made a serious threat.
I removed my phone from my pocket and turned on the flashlight app. The light was weak, but I still shined it on the grass where the tour bus had been. I knew I wouldn’t find anything. Craig and his officers would have combed the area before and after moving the bus.
I turned the phone off and walked over the troll bridge. When I was halfway across the bridge, I heard a scrapping under my feet. Maybe I had been right all along and there was a troll under that bridge. I bolted to the other side and peered under it. I couldn’t see a thing in the dark.
When I straightened up again, I saw a figure walk under one of the lampposts on the main village street. It was Carver Finley. My breath caught when I saw him. I hadn’t expected to run into him so soon.
He moved at a brisk pace down the street. I hesitated for half a second before I followed him. As I walked a few paces behind him, I wondered if I should just make myself known and ask him what he’d done to the garden. I held myself back. My best guess was he was headed to the Twisted Fox for dinner, and that would be a good place to confront him because I would have backup there.
To my surprise, he walked by the Twisted Fox without as much as a backward glance. He did the same going by my flower shop, and at the end of the road he turned left in the direction of the harbor.
I frowned. What interest could Carver have in the harbor? Of course I followed him.
I’d expected the harbor to be deserted at this time of night, but I was wrong. Several fishing vessels had just pulled into the dock and were unloading the fish they had caught in the North Sea with giant nets into giant holding tanks. From there the fish would be divided and shipped all over the country, if not the world.
The air smelled of salt and fish. My skin was instantly dewy the moment I stepped onto the dock. In the commotion of the fishermen and boats, I lost sight of Carver. There were so many places to hide in and around the harbor, I didn’t know how I could find him.
“Are you looking for your pip of a sister, lass?” a scratchy voice called
from the dock.
On the other side of the diving gear shed were two overturned oil barrels. An old man sat on each barrel, and a third elderly man, who had only one leg, sat in a wheelchair. The one-legged man was the one who spoke to me.
I walked over to the three men. The old gents were a constant fixture at the docks. It seemed that day or night, rain or shine, I would see them sitting in the same spot swapping stories about the good old days when they were at sea.
“Hello, Old Milton.” I nodded to the one-legged man.
“Your sister and that string bean of a lad, Seth MacGregor, were just here a moment ago. Is that who you’re looking for?”
It wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell the men that.
“Isla told me she was meeting Seth at the harbor,” I said.
Old Milton patted his stump of a leg. He told visitors to the village that he’d lost the leg to a great white shark. In truth, he’d lost it in a car accident, but there was silent agreement among the villagers to let Old Milton have his fish story.
“Aye, they were here. They had a right long conversation with Ferris Brown.”
My eyebrows went up. I knew Ferris from the Merchant Society of Bellewick, of course, but I had no idea why my sister and Seth would have a chat with him.
Ewan, one of the men on the oil barrels, spoke up. “They were having a long conversation with Ferris. It seemed to me that everyone was happy at the end of it. They were too far off to hear what they were saying,” he said with a sigh. “Had we known you’d be coming alone, we would have been sure to tell you. We know that you like a good snoop.”
I knew that to be true. The fishermen were as bad as the ladies back in my home church in Tennessee when it came to gossip.
“I would never ask you to spy on my sister.”
Ewan laughed. “Sure you wouldn’t, lass. If you were worried about her enough, you would.”
I frowned and then proved them right by asking, “Was it just chitchat?”
“Looked to me like they were hatching a plan,” Old Milton said.
“Aye,” Ewan said. “They had their heads together.”
“Seeing your sister at the harbor is unusual, that’s for certain,” Old Milton said. “Seth comes around now and again.”
“He’s looking for something to complain about. Always trying to see it the boats are leaking oil. That sort of thing,” Ewan agreed. “’Course Ferris is down here each and every day. He owns half the fleet.”
“He’s working on getting the other half too,” the one-eyed man grumped.
“Is that a problem?” I asked. I couldn’t help but be curious. I didn’t know Ferris well, but he was always pleasant to be around during out Merchant Society meetings, meetings that had the tendency to drag on painfully long.
“If you ask me,” Old Milton said, “I never think it’s a good thing for one man to own all the businesses, but I can’t fault Ferris. He pays a fair wage and his sailors always speak highly of him. Whoever comes after him might not be as good. That’s the trouble with one man ruling all. The man who rose to power might be grand, but the men that come after him, who inherit his power by right or birth, they might be a horror.”
“Sounds to me that you are preaching against the monarchy,” Ewan said.
“Nay, the British monarchy is all show now,” Old Milton replied. “The rich businessmen hungry for power, those are the ones to keep both eyes on.” He nodded. “Or just one, if that’s all you have.”
The one-eyed man grunted.
“He won’t be working on buying any more boats, if you ask me,” Ewan said. “Nay, all his money now is going into the manor. That will be a money pit and could destroy his fortune. I hope he doesn’t take it too far in the restoration.”
I frowned. The manor? “What manor are you talking about?”
Old Milton’s mouth fell open. “You have been in Aberdeenshire all this time and don’t know about Winthrope Manor? I’m not sure you can call yourself a Scotswoman. The manor is one of the most famous landmarks in County Aberdeen.”
“I’ve been kind of busy,” I said. Since coming to Scotland, I had opened a new business, learned how to deal with my magical gift, and gotten a new boyfriend, not to mention solved a couple of murders. There wasn’t much time to wander around the remote manors of Scotland.
“Aye, you will want to see the Winthrope Manor, lass,” Ewan said. “It’s a grand, crumbling place. Ferris hopes to bring it back to its former glory.”
“He has more money than God, so if anyone can do it, it is he,” Old Milton said.
“Has he been working on it for a long time?” I asked.
“Nay,” Ewan said. “He’s wanted it for a long time, that’s for certain. My, I can remember him talking about wanting to buy that old crumbling place when he was just a boat hand. I think he worked so hard to build his company just so he would have the money to buy the manor. It took him decades, and he just settled on buying it last week. There seemed to be another claim to it, but like Old Milton here said, Ferris has the money to make problems like that go away.”
I raised my brow and wondered what Ferris could have to say to my sister or Seth. Neither, as far as I knew, was interested in fishing or in old buildings. I couldn’t help but think that Seth was up to yet another scheme. I prayed he didn’t drag Isla into it this time.
“I’ll check the manor out,” I promised. “Did you happen to see which direction my sister went?”
“Aye,” Old Milton said. “They went in the direction of the stony beach. Watch your step while on the beach, lass. You don’t want to take a tumble into the sea.”
I took the old sailor’s warning to heart.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I walked back down to the dock and turned north. Fifty yards in front of me, the dock ended abruptly at the edge of the stony beach. There was no soft white sand on the shores of County Aberdeen. Instead, rocks that ranged from the size of my fist to pebbles made up a wobbly beach.
I stopped for a moment at the end of the dock. In the middle of the beach, Seth and Ferris were shaking hands, and then Ferris walked to a waiting scooter on the water. He climbed on and waved to Isla and Seth as the small boat pulled away. It headed for one of the fishing boats anchored just outside the harbor.
I waited for a moment and wondered if I should just leave and give my sister and her boyfriend a private moment. However, my curiosity won yet again, and I carefully stepped onto the beach.
When I was about thirty feet away, Seth picked my sister up and twirled her in the air like they were in the middle of a movie dance number. He set her on the rocks again, and she laughed. When she saw me, she gripped Seth’s arm. “Fi, what are you doing down here?”
I pressed my lips together. “I was out for a walk, and Ewan and the others told me you were here.”
Isla shook her head. “Those old coots need to mind their own business. All they do all day is sit and talk about people.” She sniffed.
Seth wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders. “It’s all right, babe. They don’t mean any harm.”
She looked up at him adoringly. “You’re just the sweetest man who ever took a breath of life.”
Seth beamed back down at her.
Isla shook her head. “I’m glad you’re here, because you’re the first one that we want to tell our big news!”
I braced myself. The last time she’d made an announcement like this, it was to tell me she and Seth were engaged after knowing each other only two weeks. Thankfully, they’d changed their minds and decided to be promised to be engaged instead of actually engaged. If she wanted to marry Seth, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her, but I was relieved they’d decided to wait. I didn’t think anyone could or should make a decision about marriage after just two weeks.
What surprised me most was that their feelings for each other hadn’t changed. Isla had been with Seth for several months now, and she was living with him full-time and still got a dreamy look i
n her eyes anytime she spoke of him. I no longer saw their relationship as a passing fling. All evidence pointed to a real engagement right around the corner.
“Is this about the two of you?” I asked, trying to sound as upbeat as I could.
She twirled, and Seth had to grab her by the waist before she fell over in the rocks.
“Please be careful. You don’t want to twist an ankle,” I warned.
“You worry too much, Fi.” She beamed up at her beloved. “Can I tell her?”
He nodded.
“Seth got a new job!” she practically shouted.
I raised my eyebrows at Seth. “But I thought you liked being the janitor at the village school.” I liked it for him because it was full-time and the position paid well. All I really wanted for Isla was happiness and stability. Was that too much for a big sister to ask?
“He likes working at the school,” Isla answered for him. “But he’s always looking for a new path. He was going to be a doctor, you know.”
Was being the operative work in that sentence. I didn’t doubt for a minute that Seth was smart enough to be a doctor. He’d gotten into medical school, after all, but he didn’t have the motivation to be a doctor. I steeled myself to hear what his latest life plan was. In the time I had known him, there had been many.
“Are you going back into medicine?” I asked.
Seth shook his head. “That life isn’t meant for me.”
Isla nodded. “He can’t. It’s just too much for him emotionally. There is so much pain in medicine.”
I felt proud of myself for not making a smart remark.
“I would do it if you wanted me too, babe,” Seth said. “I’d do anything for you. Even work a job I loathed. You’re that important to me.”
This babe stuff was starting to get on my nerves.
She wrapped her arms around his side. “No, I don’t want to ever be the kind of wife who pushes her husband into a job he doesn’t like. I think that’s just wrong. Everyone should choose his or her own path.”
I felt an eye twitch coming on. If Seth didn’t want to be a doctor, that was fine. I only wished he had discovered that before wasting thousands of dollars of Hamish’s money on an education, then throwing it away without a second thought.
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