“So, he’s the Laird of Moray?”
“No,” Christopher said. “His estate is near a village in Moray. He is the Laird of Dallas.”
“Really?” She laughed. “So that’s the other Dallas—a village in Scotland? How bizarre.” She took up her brandy. “But just because his estate is Dallas, why should he care that I’m from Dallas? How did he even find out about me? Why would he want to pay my wages? What does he expect me to do in return?”
“I have names and a few facts,” Christopher said, “and I got those by going over Blakie’s head—he’s fairly preoccupied with his retirement. Do you remember he mentioned that someone had phoned the day you were taken in for questioning?” Pru nodded. “Blakie was told of it secondhand—the call went into Fettes, police headquarters for Lothian and the Borders. So, I rang one of the detective inspectors there, someone I knew years ago when we were both in Cheltenham. I took the information he gave me and went a bit further, but some of it is speculation.”
He didn’t continue, but watched her as if to gauge her reaction thus far. “Go on,” Pru said.
“Last year, an American businessman visited the Laird. He has Scottish roots, and was drawn to Dallas in Moray, because he’s from Dallas, Texas.”
An unpleasant thought knocked on the door of Pru’s subconscious, but she hesitated to answer. “Still,” she said, “that has nothing to do with me. Except for being from Dallas. How would he even know who I am?”
“Do you recall what you were doing a year ago?”
So much had happened since then, she had to think hard. “Oh.” Restoring a historic garden at Primrose House in Sussex, Pru thought. Involved in an investigation of the murder of Ned, who worked for her. “I was in the news, wasn’t I?”
“This Dallas businessman wants to build a large resort and golf course in Scotland.”
Pru opened the door to her subconscious and there stood Venus de Milo in a sand trap. “Oh God, Buddyboy Mac.” The name propelled her off the sofa. “Earl Stanley MacIntyre?”
Christopher nodded. “Have you met him?”
“No.” She shook her head sharply. “I know of him, of course. Everybody does,” she said in a scoffing tone. “He’s into everything—real estate, he’s got a software company, he owns a minor league baseball team in Lubbock. He works hard to keep himself in the news, pushing his weight around, throwing money at problems, trying to call in favors for his friends. He tried to buy his wife’s way into The Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Of course, there’s always something in it for him.” Pru gasped. “Are you saying he’s the one that bought me this job—not the Laird?”
“Your post has been sponsored by the Laird—that’s not unheard of in charity organizations. But records show that a large donation was made to the Botanics by MacIntyre to be paid only after you complete your three-month post. The donation was brought in by Alastair Campbell.”
Pru began pacing the small space, tapping the heel of one shoe in her palm as she went. “Alastair—I knew he was behind this. Rosemary said it—pulling in a big donation might get him that job in Australia.” Christopher followed her with his eyes. “But what’s in it for the Laird?” she asked.
“The Laird is in financial difficulties—that’s been in the news here. He needs the land deal with MacIntyre to go through. It could be that MacIntyre made you a contingency to that.”
Pru attempted to process all this. “So, Buddyboy Mac gave the garden a donation on the condition that I was given a job, which was paid for by the Laird—or at least had his name on it. What did he think he was doing—polishing his image? I know it sounds crazy that Mac would do something like this for someone he’s never even met—but it’s just the kind of crazy he is.”
Christopher took a deep breath. “You’ll recognize the Laird’s name, too—at least his surname. Trotter. Callum Trotter.”
“Trotter,” Pru repeated in a whisper. She stood squeezing her shoe in both hands.
“Murdo’s father.”
“Murdo must’ve had orders to follow me. But why? To make sure I did my job? I’ve half a mind to go up there right now”—she waved the shoe vaguely behind her—“he lives just up in Saxe Coburg Place, not two minutes from here. I don’t know what number, but I daresay I could sniff him out.”
“Pru—”
She picked up speed. “Keeping track of my every move—and Iain’s, too. But what did he care about Iain? Iain wasn’t part of the deal, was he? Of course, Iain resented me waltzing in and taking a job that should’ve been his, but why…” She stopped so quickly she swayed a bit, and Christopher leapt to her side. “Oh God,” she said, taking hold of his arm. “Did Mac tell Murdo to stop Iain from bothering me? Murdo mentioned him—Mr. Mac, he called him. Murdo said he did what he was told—was he told to get rid of Iain?” She looked up at Christopher, her eyes filling with tears. “Iain was killed because of me. Because they thought he was usurping my glory. It’s all my fault,” she ended in a whisper as Christopher wrapped his arms around her.
“We can’t go quite that far, not yet.”
“Mac is ruthless,” she said. “I remember there were rumors a few years ago, something about a former business partner in a car crash—I don’t think anything ever came of it. But nobody gets in Buddyboy Mac’s line of fire. He always gets his way.” She rested her chin against Christopher’s chest, unable to avoid seeing the awful act that played out in her mind, now with a complete cast. “I’m sorry for Murdo—I know I shouldn’t be. He’s killed Iain, and that’s terrible. But…” She brightened. “Maybe it was an accident. Mac told Murdo to keep Iain from interfering in my work. Maybe Murdo followed Iain to the bridge and they argued—easy enough to do with Iain—and Murdo accidentally pushed him.”
Christopher tried to hide a smile as he kissed her forehead. “It is too early to either accuse or defend.”
“I was getting to quite like Murdo,” she said. “He seems a bit lost and I think his father is overbearing. And Mac, of course, could intimidate anyone.” She took hold of herself. “But you’re right—we need another look at his notebook. I know what to look for now. I’ll figure something out tomorrow—I can distract him and try to get at it.”
“No, you will not,” Christopher said. He had let her wander a zigzag path of emotions, but now she saw him assume his mantle of police authority. “I’ll go to Blakie first thing in the morning, and we’ll arrange to take Murdo in for questioning—you’ll stay here, well away from the garden.”
She took a breath, ready to counter this command, but took another tack. “Yes, you’re right,” she said softly, taking his arm and placing it around her waist, where it slid down to its natural resting place. “I must go in to work, but don’t worry”—she held a finger up—“I won’t approach Murdo. I will stay away from him. I’ll avoid him completely. I’ll turn and run the other way if I see him.” Christopher’s eyes narrowed. “I will go straight to Alastair instead,” she said, “and I won’t leave until he tells me everything he knows. He owes me that.”
“You’ll ring me if there’s a problem?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I see now. You came up here to tell me this news in person because you wanted to make sure I didn’t do anything crazy.”
He pulled her closer. “I came up here because I missed you.”
“Good answer, Inspector.” She nestled her head against his chest and inhaled deeply. “I like your soap,” she said and looked up at him. “Have I ever told you that?”
He laughed. “No, I don’t believe you have.”
“Well, I do. You smell woodsy.” She hooked a finger around his belt buckle. “Come to bed.” She took his hand and led him out the door, but turned at the last minute and grabbed her heels off the table.
Chapter 34
The soothing sound of Christopher’s deep, even breathing beside her could not put Pru to sleep. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, occasionally glancing over at the clock, each time to find that another twenty o
r thirty minutes had passed. Neither awake nor asleep, a film ran in the twilight of her mind, a badly dubbed movie where the audio didn’t match the images. She heard Alastair greeting her on her first evening while she watched the shallow Water of Leith rush under the bridge on Glenogle; Mrs. Murchie spoke about the loss of her first husband while Saskia read a copy of Iain’s book on native plants; Prumper batted at one of Mrs. Murchie’s colorful scarves hanging on the twiggy rack while Murdo’s voice described the life inside a piece of wood.
While one part of her brain worked on the Laird, murder, and wedding puzzles, another part, behind some closed door, had been working on a different puzzle. When the last piece snapped into place, she sat up in bed. “Oh, no.”
Christopher, instantly awake, sat up, too. “What? What is it?”
She turned to him. “Mrs. Murchie is Auntie Aggie. Murdo is her wee boy.”
Christopher looked at her blankly. “Did you have a dream?”
She tried to explain. “Mrs. Murchie—Agnes—left a wee boy behind years ago, and Murdo told me about his Auntie Aggie, who left him behind. They both had black-and-white cats, but it wasn’t two cats, it was the same one. And the tree—when he was young, he made her a scarf rack from a tree branch. I’ve seen it—it’s hanging on her wall right now. She has her scarves on it.”
Christopher didn’t look entirely awake yet. “A tree branch?”
“It’s really much nicer than it sounds—elegant in a rough sort of way. And he made it when he was just a boy.” Pru looked over at Christopher, who stifled a yawn. “But she doesn’t know Murdo is here—I need to tell her. They’ve been apart for so long.”
“But not right now.”
Pru glanced over his shoulder. Four o’clock. “No, not now. But early—I’ll stop by before I go to the Botanics.”
Christopher pulled her back down and covered them up. A shred of her twilight dream floated past, and she said, “Saskia and Iain were at Merrist Wood at the same time.”
“Hmm?”
“Saskia said they weren’t, but they overlapped a term before he took this job—I checked on it.” Pru yawned. “It’s nothing.”
“She didn’t tell the police?” Christopher asked.
“I told Tamsin. Coincidence. But all evidence must be gathered.” She felt Christopher’s breath on her ear as he laughed quietly. She drifted off at last, dreaming of the wedding. She and Christopher stood before Alan; both men dressed in kilts. At Alan’s feet, tiny Tassie happily squeaked away on an organic-rubber sporran chew toy, a memento of the day. Just past seven o’clock, she slipped out of bed.
—
She stood at Mrs. Murchie’s door, grateful to see a light through the window and movement behind the curtains. Christopher had thought her a mite too eager.
“Pru, it’s half seven,” he had said, sitting up in bed to see her buttoning her coat.
She shrugged. “I can’t stay still, I have to see her.” She kissed him, drawn to his warmth and the bed in which she had slept so little, but firm in her resolution. “You’ll ring me when you’ve decided what to do?” she asked.
“Take care,” he said.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I’ll stay away from Murdo.”
But she must at least talk about him—tell Mrs. Murchie that the nephew she had abandoned long ago was so near. Secure in her conviction of their identities, Pru’s insides waffled about how to introduce the subject; she knew only bits of their story and could not even speculate how each would react. She’d done little more than clip her hair, splash some water on her face, and get dressed, and now, with the door knocker in hand, she momentarily lost her nerve. She thought of Christopher sitting down to a pot of tea and a pile of toast, and it was all she could do to let loose the knocker, announcing her presence.
Mrs. Murchie peered out a crack in the curtains before opening the door. “Pru, whatever are you doing here at this hour? Is something wrong?” Mrs. Murchie cinched up the belt on her tartan dressing gown and ushered Pru into the sitting room where Prumper, settled on the armchair with his legs folded out of sight beneath him, eyed her out of two blue slits and murmured a low meow. Pru stopped in front of Murdo’s rack—each of its twisted branches festooned with a scarf of a different color.
Pru glanced at Mrs. Murchie and then back at the piece. “It’s oak.”
Mrs. Murchie’s eyes softened as she looked at the wood. “Yes.”
“He made it, didn’t he—your nephew?”
The old woman’s gaze turned sharply on Pru. “What?”
“The tree blew down in a storm. The two of you went to look at it. He picked that up”—Pru nodded toward the piece of wood—“and said it would make a fine scarf rack, and you said he should finish it for you.”
Mrs. Murchie’s face had lost all color. “What do you want? Did he send you? Did that wicked man put you up to this?”
Pru’s hand went to her heart. Had she got it wrong? “You mean Murdo?”
“No, not my dear boy—that dreadful father of his. Did Callum send you to find me after all these years?” Mrs. Murchie’s voice broke. She took a step back from Pru and hugged herself.
“No, Mrs. Murchie—I don’t know Murdo’s father. I know Murdo because he works at the Botanics.”
The old woman’s eyes widened, lifting the anger off her face. “He became a gardener?” she asked, a note of amazement in her voice. “He’s here, and he’s a gardener?”
“Well, not exactly. Yes. Sort of.” Pru shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
Mrs. Murchie reached over and took Pru’s arm. “How did you find out? Did he tell you about me?”
Pru covered the hand on her arm with her own. “He told me a story about his Auntie Aggie. And you told me a story about the wee boy you’d left behind. It wasn’t until now that I realized you were talking about each other.”
Mrs. Murchie drew her hand back and stuck it in the pocket of her dressing gown. She looked down at the floor and asked, “Does he know I’m here?”
“No, I don’t think he does. He saw you once, though, at the garden.” Mrs. Murchie’s eyes jumped to Pru. “From a distance,” Pru said. “I remember he asked me who you were. I told him, but he didn’t say anything else.”
“He doesn’t remember me,” Mrs. Murchie said, shaking her head slowly. “Or if he does, he won’t want to know me now. Not after I deserted him so many years ago.”
Pru put her hands on the old woman’s arms and bent her head down to catch her gaze. “He does remember you, Mrs. Murchie. And I can hear it in his voice—he still misses you.”
A small smile appeared at the same moment a sob rose in her throat. Pru felt a tremor move through Mrs. Murchie and saw that behind the blue-framed glasses, her eyes flooded with tears that quickly overflowed their banks. As she cried, Pru held her, crying along with her for all those lost years.
Prumper hopped down from the armchair and began a pattern of figure eights around Mrs. Murchie’s legs. She lifted him into her arms and he draped himself over her shoulder.
The tears subsided. With her free hand, Mrs. Murchie drew several wadded-up tissues out of her pocket and handed what looked like the cleanest one to Pru. They both sat on the sofa. Prumper walked from lap to lap before choosing to sit on the coffee table and face the women.
Pru said, “Murdo didn’t recognize your name—did he not know Mr. Murchie?”
“No one knew Mr. Murchie,” she said after blowing her nose and straightening her glasses. “I made him up.”
Pru’s eyes went to the photo on the mantel—a mustached man in a tam and thick sweater with a big smile on his face. “Who’s that, then?”
A big smile answered. “That’s my Murdo—my husband, Callum’s brother. Our nephew was named for him—the only decent thing Callum Trotter ever did,” she said in a brittle voice. “Callum’s Jean died when their son was a baby, and it was left to me to raise him. It was my joy—we had no children of our own.” She gazed at the photo, her eyes focused on the
past. “But I lost my Murdo in a boating accident on the estate. There was a sudden storm while he was out on the loch. I was upstairs in our room, and I watched it happen.” She lapsed into silence.
Pru touched her hand. “How terrible for you.”
Mrs. Murchie glanced at her. “He wasted no time, Callum. He made it clear to me that there were other ways I could pay my keep apart from bringing up his only child.” Her eyes darkened. “What did he think the title ‘Laird’ gave him the power to do? Were we living in the Dark Ages and he could take his dead brother’s wife—and he thought I’d go along with it?”
“Did he force you to leave?” Or worse, Pru thought.
“I left on my own. I had no one to defend me against the brute. Was it a cowardly thing to do?” Pru could tell from the weariness in the old woman’s voice that she’d asked herself the question countless times. “It seemed my only way out at the time. I left our Jess to comfort my wee boy. I wrote him a note and hid it in his toy chest. I walked out after dark with one case and carrying my scarf rack—I walked as far as I could to get away from Callum’s influence. I got on a bus—the rack needed its own seat,” she said with a sad smile. “I was afraid Callum would come after me, and so when I got here to the city, I changed my name by deed poll.”
And Pru had thought herself brave for moving from Texas to England. “Didn’t you have any money—from your husband?”
“Murdo was the second son,” Mrs. Murchie said, as if that explained it all. “I had two hundred pounds I’d ferreted away in my brogues. I’d no family of my own left. I stayed with a sister of one of the estate workers, and I got a job.”
“And ended up owning your own newsagent.”
Mrs. Murchie lifted her chin slightly. “Aye,” she said. “No’ bad.” She frowned slightly. “What I first told you, Pru, about my parents—that was true. My dad did go down the mines. When I married my Murdo, it was a bit of a shock to his family, as I was not exactly from the right class. Another reason Callum thought he could own me.”
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series Book 3) Page 22
