Single Malt Murder

by Melinda Mullet

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Thanks. I think Michaelson was just rattling my cage.”

  “It’s possible. Bill tells me he’s new to the job. Got promoted to inspector quite young because he was willing to leave Glasgow and come out to Stirling. I suspect he’s got a lot to prove.” Grant was silent for a few moments. “So they must think that the saboteur killed Duff then dumped him in the vat.”

  “I think that’s the general idea, although I believe they’re considering anyone connected to the Glen—hence the questions for you. After all, you are one of the ones with the most to lose in this change of ownership,” I blurted out, the whisky quelling my inhibitions.

  I saw the flash of anger in Grant’s eyes and the pulse beating rapidly at the base of his throat. “I may not be thrilled about the way things have worked out with the Glen, but I didn’t kill Duff. I told Michaelson I was with Richard Thomas all evening. He stayed at my place after the funeral, and we were still up talking when Cam called with the news.”

  So Grant did have an alibi for the night Duff died. I felt vindicated and relieved at the same time, but the sensation only lasted for a moment. Grant may not have been at the Glen that night, but it didn’t mean he didn’t have an accomplice who had.

  Almost as if he could read my mind, Grant looked straight into my eyes and said, “I’d never do anything to harm the distillery…or you.”

  I returned the look as steadily as I could. “Then who would? You know the people around here better than I do. If you had to make a guess, who’d be your pick for saboteur? One of the members of the whisky fraternity? One of our competitors?”

  Grant frowned. “If I had to choose, I’d say Maitland. He’s pulled all kinds of garbage pandering for Decons.”

  I hoped Grant was right. “Word must have leaked out that Maitland was sniffing around, because Thomas has been approached by several other interested parties, all making a play for the Glen. A distiller from the Islay region.” I picked my notebook up from the floor and flipped through. “The guy’s name is Rowan Johnson. Also a Japanese group, an Italian group, and two other local distillers, one named Campbell and another named Nakimoto.”

  “Ben’s been gone less than a fortnight and already the vultures are circling.” Grant shook his head in disgust. “I thought I knew these men. Ask me who would go to extremes…I would have said none of them, but frankly, at this rate it could be any of them.”

  For such a dour Scot there was quite the fire bubbling beneath the surface. It was both intriguing and disconcerting. I tried again to grasp at the elusive three words, but the thoughts that sprang to mind were sensual and distracting, and not at all substantive. I found myself being hypnotized by Grant’s elegant fingers restlessly circling the rim of his glass.

  “I’m hosting the monthly distillers’ dinner tomorrow night at my place,” he said. “A dozen or so of our local competitors will be there, including Campbell and Nakimoto. You should come. Then you can judge these guys for yourself.”

  “Not sure I’d be welcome.”

  “It’s not up to them. You’re my guest and you’re welcome in my home.”

  The opportunity was too good to pass up, however uncomfortable it might be. “Thanks, I’ll be there.”

  I leaned over to pour us both another drink. I wanted to learn more about Grant’s relationship with Ben, while he was in a talking mood.

  “How did you come to work for Ben?” I asked.

  “I’ve known him on and off most of my life. He was my father’s investment advisor and friend, and ultimately the executor of his will. You know how passionate Ben was about whisky. When Central put Fletcher’s on the market fifteen years ago, Ben decided to buy it. It was in terrible shape and a lot of small distilleries were going under at the time, but it had always been a dream for Ben. He asked me to come work with him, and I jumped at the chance.”

  I nodded silently, thinking how little of this I knew, and how much I should have.

  “Six years ago, when he decided to retire and spend more time up here, he bought the Haven from me.”

  “You owned the Haven?”

  “There are a number of old crofts on the property, left over from the days when the estate was mainly agricultural. Most of them are abandoned now.”

  “But who owns the estate?”

  “My brother and I.”

  “So you’re the local landed gentry as well as a glass tycoon.” There was no doubt Grant could afford to buy the Glen if he chose. Whatever was holding him back, it wasn’t money.

  Grant gave a mirthless laugh. “There’s no money in farming now, just taxes. Most of the young people leave here and head for the cities to look for work. Place was pretty much a ghost town until Ben came along. He understood that the only way to support a business here was to invest in the local infrastructure. Give people a reason to come home. He renovated the school and the library, and connected the village to the outside world. I’m lucky to be able to do something I love and still meet my responsibilities to the estate. I’m the Nose at the Glen, and I’m here for the estate. It gives me the best of both worlds. But enough about me. What about you? We’ve all heard about your exploits. Ben always bragged about his world-famous niece…”

  “World-famous? Yet another reason folks hate me.” I cringed.

  “I wouldn’t say hate…”

  I waved off Grant’s protests with an overly broad gesture. “My fan mail is pretty clear, and Siobhán Morgan certainly has no love lost for me. She’s already given me an earful about not being around when I should have been.”

  “Siobhán has a bad habit of speaking her mind, even when she shouldn’t.”

  “Then that’s one thing we have in common. She’s a strong woman and she runs her own business—you’d think folks around here would be more comfortable with a woman at the helm of the Glen.”

  Grant’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t rise to the bait. “I was raised by strong women. I don’t have a problem with women in charge, only people taking charge of things that are beyond their ken.”

  “Fair enough,” I conceded.

  “You didn’t know he named the distillery for you, did you?” It was Grant’s turn to study my face.

  I flushed slightly. “Best I can remember, he never said, but I should have come to visit anyway.”

  “Why didn’t you?” The whisky was cutting through Grant’s inhibitions as well.

  “It was hard for me in the early days, and then Ben came to London so often after he became ill,” I said. “I meant to come up several times, but time slipped away just like that.” I tried unsuccessfully to punctuate my remarks with a snap of the fingers.

  “He was very proud of you. Your photographs are everywhere.” Grant pointed to the wall before squinting at the blank space. “Where’d they go?”

  “I took them down.”

  “Why?”

  “They don’t belong here. This place is too idyllic, insulated from that world of filth and pain. The walls here deserve something better.”

  “Not so idyllic right now,” Grant said. “Ben would be devastated.”

  I nodded, watching the fire dying down in the grate. When I looked at Grant again, I saw that he’d finished his drink and nodded off in the big leather chair. I slipped the empty glass from his fingers and studied his face in the half-light. A week ago, we’d never met. Yesterday, I would gladly have cast him as the villain in this game. Now I was fighting a foolish urge to stroke his hair back from his forehead. He looked younger in his sleep, and more vulnerable. He trusted me enough to sleep, but I still couldn’t trust him. Not yet.

  Chapter 11

  I woke with a start to the sound of sirens. It took me a second to realize I wasn’t in the city and the shrill warning was not a normal part of the night’s rhythm. I dragged myself off the bed and staggered downstairs in time to see Grant throwing the front door open. The first light of dawn was competing with a livid orange glow coming from the direction of
the distillery.

  A sick feeling welled up from the pit of my stomach, a percolating mixture of dread and overindulgence. Grant swore, grabbed his jacket, and tore off down the drive toward the Glen.

  I wasn’t about to be ditched, even though my head was pounding and I was being forced to debate the relative merits of holding on to the contents of my stomach. In the end, I decided to gamble on the restorative power of fresh air. I slid into my boots and ran after Grant, stopping only for Liam on my way out the door.

  He galloped along ahead of me without a care in the world. At least one of us was thrilled to be out for a predawn run. I was treated to a piercing pain in my head each time my feet hit the dirt, but rounding the tree line I caught sight of flames licking at the roof of the Malt Barn and my personal discomfort faded. The only thing I could think of was stopping Ben’s legacy from being reduced to ashes.

  The fire department’s arrival must have been responsible for waking us, and they were already engaged in trying to quell the flames that shot into the air from the roof of the barn. As best I could see through the dense smoke, the barn was the only building involved, but the wind was complicating matters. Cam was on the far side of the yard with another man, trying to hose down the adjacent building in an attempt to keep the flames from spreading.

  Grant had set to work rolling empty wooden casks away from the sparks being thrown off by the main blaze. If the flames couldn’t be contained, they would spread through the stacked barrels like wildfire. Cam ran to join Grant, and I grabbed a hose and began soaking whatever I could reach.

  The heat was intense, and the smoke was making it impossible to see what was happening. Liam had been pacing back and forth on the far side of the yard, but when a series of popping noises came from the direction of the barn, he began barking frantically. A wooden crossbeam from the roof of the Malt Barn was burning strongly when it caught in the wind and fractured, sending sparks and large chunks of lit wood exploding out from the inferno that was raging beneath. One minute I was watching in horror as the debris fell toward Cam, who was standing with his back to the fire, the next I saw Grant take a flying leap in Cam’s direction, slamming into him and sending him reeling sideways. The spot where he’d been standing now blazed from the burning beam that had narrowly missed his head.

  Together we dragged a protesting Cam away from the furnace and the billowing smoke and forced him to sit down out of harm’s way. The explosion had caused the roof to collapse in on the floor of the Malt Barn, but the fire was now largely contained within the brick walls of the structure and the fire department was making some headway at last. The flames were dying down, but a thick cloud of smoke continued to hang heavy in the air.

  Liam clung to my side, tail well down. He didn’t like the acrid smell and he continued to voice a low rumbling growl at the firemen and their hoses. I patted him absentmindedly, waiting for the firemen to pull back, before edging in closer to try to assess the damage. The stone walls of the barn were scorched, but in a testament to the sturdiness of their construction, they remained largely intact. Yesterday’s rains had left everything saturated, and I found it hard to believe that a blaze of this magnitude could’ve just spontaneously ignited.

  The fire department would be able to tell soon enough, but my money was on arson.

  The grain Hunter and I had been admiring was now a soggy mess, an oatmeal-like sludge oozing out between the charred remains of the roof that had collapsed in on it. The traditional pagoda-shaped fixture that had adorned the top lay in pieces in the center of the whole dismal heap. At least I’d managed to get some pictures over the past few days. Now it was gone.

  “You need to come away,” said one of the firemen. He steered me back toward the low wall where Cam sat wrapped in a blanket talking to Grant. I looked up as Kristen Ramsey’s blue Mini Cooper pulled in to the yard, followed by the police cruiser.

  “Nothing like a bit of excitement first thing in the morning,” Kristen said as she approached the wall.

  “Not my idea of excitement,” Grant snarled before heading across the yard to greet Rothes.

  Kristen sighed. “Come on, Cam. Let’s get a look at you. You’ve had a rough go of it.”

  “Give o’er, woman. Donnae fuss,” Cam said, his vehemence undermined by a fit of coughing. Kristen gave Cam a thorough going-over before dismissing him and turning to me. “That’s our Cam. You can always count on him to be right in the thick of things. He’s going to do himself a mischief one of these days. What about you, Abi? You in one piece?”

  “Just about.”

  “What a mess.” Kristen looked across at the smoldering rubble. “Any idea how it started?”

  I shook my head. “We heard the sirens and came running.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Liam,” I hedged.

  Sgt. Rothes finished his conversation with the firemen and crossed the yard toward us. “Kristen, can you take a look at Frank Monroe? He took on a lot of smoke.”

  Kristen gathered her things and headed off. Rothes turned back to me.

  “Once again, I need to ask you a few questions.” He met my gaze without amusement.

  “Of course,” I replied, standing to face him.

  “Were you at home last night, Ms. Logan?”

  “Yes. In fact, I was home all day.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Until the evening, when Grant MacEwen stopped by.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No, just Grant. We were discussing some distillery business,” I added, hoping to head off any erroneous assumptions Rothes might be making.

  “Did either of you see or hear anything unusual last night?” he said, turning to include Grant and Cam, who were approaching across the gravel yard.

  “I didn’t, but we were going over papers most of the time,” I said pointedly.

  “Did you come over to the distillery last night?” Rothes asked.

  “No,” we answered in unison.

  “And what time did you head home, Grant?”

  Damn. I’d hoped we could avoid that one. Grant glanced my way, and I searched for a diplomatic response. “It was late when we finished our business. Grant and Cam have been taking turns staying at the distillery since the troubles began, so I offered my couch. More comfortable than the office cot. The sirens woke us both.”

  Rothes showed a commendable lack of interest in our nocturnal arrangements, and moved on to another line of questioning. “Was the barn kept locked?”

  “Didn’t used to be, but we’ve been locking it down lately,” Grant said.

  “Who had keys?”

  “Cam and I did, and of course Duff used to, but…”

  Rothes cut Grant off. “What about Frank?”

  Cam shook his head. “Nae, Frank only helps out on his days off from the DIY when we’re loadin’ barrels or scrubbin’ vats. Thank God he was here today. Could easily have lost control if he hadnae helped with the hoses.”

  “Who else comes round regular these days?”

  “Evan Ross and his cousin Walter Bell are about the only other ones,” Cam said. “Evan brings in the raw grain and Walter hauls away the mash residue to feed his pigs.”

  “Either of them been around lately?”

  “Walter was due to pick up a load this morning, but I dinnae see him.”

  “What about Hunter, has he been charring any barrels?”

  “Not lately.”

  “When was the last time you were in the barn?”

  “Last night, about seven-thirty,” Cam replied.

  “And what time did you arrive this morning?”

  “Just gone half five.”

  “Why so early?”

  “I’d asked Frank to come early to help get the Still House ready to go again. It was a right mess after the crew from Stirling finished pokin’ around.”

  “Where’s your governor?” I asked, noticing the inspector’s absence.

  “Michaelson will be here shortly.”
>
  “Will they be looking to see if the fire was set on purpose?”

  “Given everything that’s happened, they’ll be going over the scene with a fine-tooth comb,” Rothes replied.

  “Would’ve been nice if someone was checkin’ on things before now,” Grant snapped. I could hear the suppressed anger in his voice. “I thought you said you had an officer patrollin’ the Glen. Ye ken we could’ve lost the whole bloody place.”

  I noticed Grant’s brogue became more pronounced when he was upset.

  “We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got.” Rothes sighed. “We were between shifts when the fire started. I’ll see if we can get some extra manpower from the boys in Stirling.”

  “Bit late now. The horse has left the barn,” Grant growled as he strode away to the far side of the courtyard.

  —

  Returning to the Haven, Liam and I collapsed on the bed and dozed for a couple of hours until Hunter’s banging became too loud to ignore any longer. I texted Patrick and relayed the latest news, before stumbling downstairs to fix myself some coffee and eggs.

  I retrieved my computer from the library and looked sadly at the photos I’d taken of the Malt Barn on Monday. A tranquil sea of golden grain spread across the floor like a Zen garden. The neatly raked swirls were drying in the sunlight that streamed through the windows along both sides. I stared at the images, willing them to tell me what had happened in the early hours of this morning, but they were silent. The fire department report would come soon enough, but I had no doubt the fire was arson. The question was why would someone take such a risk?

  As I reached for my coffee a shadow on the floor beneath one of the windows caught my eye. I zoomed in on the section and enlarged the photo to the maximum resolution. There along the wall was a black metal bolt half buried in the drying barley. Was it one of the missing hinge pins from the washback lid? Had someone needed to get rid of it quickly and pitched it through the open window of the Malt Barn as they fled? Could the fire have been set to cover a killer’s tracks? It was probably too late to tell, but I would have to share the photo with Rothes and Michaelson.