Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series Book 3)

by Marty Wingate

  “Surely Murdo—your nephew—will understand why you left.”

  She rose and straightened a sleeve. “I must talk with him, Pru. It’s time I explained myself. I’ll go to the Botanics this morning. To see him again.” She clasped her hands to her breast and looked down at an imaginary wee boy, her eyes shining. “Och, he had such a curly tangle of hair, the color of a sunset it was. I remember I’d reach down and give it a tousle and come back with bits of twigs and leaves in my hand.”

  Pru smiled. “Well, a few things may have changed. You’ll come and find me if you need to?”

  They moved to the front door. “What brought all this on?” Mrs. Murchie asked. “What made you realize who we were?”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about Murdo…” What could she say? Perhaps your nephew killed someone on orders from— Pru had thought it was Buddyboy Mac, but now it seemed likely Callum Trotter had issued the orders. “There have been a few problems, you see,” Pru said. “But really, I don’t want you to worry about that now. Just you find him. He’s going to need you.”

  “If there’s trouble, I know who’s at the center of it,” Mrs. Murchie said. “If Murdo has done something wrong, it’s because of his father. Callum was always good at intimidating others to get his way. He’s the kind of person who’d tell you what you were to do and what you were not to do, what you believed and what you didn’t believe, why he’d even tell what you saw—”

  “And what you didn’t see? Yes, I know the type.” Pru reached for the latch on the door. “I need to be off now—I’ve got an unscheduled meeting first, and then I must get ready for Saskia this morning.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Murchie said, her eyes gone soft again, lost in some memory. “We must keep our wits about us, Pru, when we encounter such people.”

  —

  As she reached the door to her building, Saskia came rushing up.

  “Pru, you’re early today.”

  “Yes, well, things to do. I don’t expect you until later, though, don’t worry. I need to see Alastair. I just stopped by to make a cup of tea.”

  Saskia followed her into the office. “Well, I’m just in time, then. Wouldn’t you like a good strong coffee instead? You look like you could use one. I’ve brought this for you.” She pulled out a jar of specialty instant roast, about half-full. “Let me make it.” She picked up the kettle and swished it, then added more water at the sink. “Awfully cold out this morning, I can’t seem to warm up.” She kept her coat, hat, and gloves on while the water heated and she spooned coffee into a mug.

  Pru rattled around in her desk until she found the tail end of a packet of digestive biscuits. “Doesn’t quite feel like spring yet, does it?”

  The kettle switched off, and Saskia poured. Pru saw her holding a large spoonful of sugar over the mug. “No sugar, thanks.”

  “Oh sorry,” Saskia said, dropping the sugar in. “I always forget that, don’t I? Well, you won’t mind this morning—I’m afraid I’ve been rather liberal with the coffee.”

  Pru shrugged. “Just as well—I need to stay alert. Lots of milk please.”

  Saskia added milk, gave the coffee a stir, and handed Pru the mug. “I’m off now—see you later this morning?”

  Pru noticed white globules floating on the surface. “We may need fresh milk,” she said.

  “Yes, right. I’ll bring some back. Would you leave your office open, in case you’re in with Alastair when I arrive?”

  —

  Saskia left. Pru took a sip from her mug and coughed. She certainly did get carried away—how many spoonfuls of coffee went in this? Still, nothing like a jolt of sugar and caffeine to get her going. As she took large swallows, chased by biscuit bites, she checked her email, almost choking at the sight of her inbox. A message from Lawlor Dale at Kew, with the subject line “Eureka.”

  “Letter from J. Banks dated 3 September 1810 found in box cataloged as ‘Onagraceae ephemra 1790–1825’ mentions ‘Fuchsia triphylla flore coccinea in full flower on the windowsill behind me—thanks to A. Menzies whose pockets came back full of treasures.’ Talk tomorrow. LD”

  Chapter 35

  Pru could hardly believe her eyes. She blinked rapidly and reread the email three times before she could stand it no longer. Leaping out of her seat, she grabbed the copy of the found journal in both hands and held it high. “It’s you, Mr. Menzies—it’s really you!” Dizzy from the thrill of discovery, she held on to the desk for a moment before grabbing her coat and setting off, desperate to share the news.

  Alastair’s door stood open, the office empty. He couldn’t be far—she had him at last. Now that she knew he couldn’t escape, her resentment over how she’d been treated came flooding back, overshadowing her great discovery. Did she really want him to be the first to hear? Of course she’d tell him, but she had other business with him first.

  She waited just inside and out of his line of sight. He walked in with a cup of tea in hand, saw her, and jumped, sloshing tea onto his shoes.

  “Good morning, Alastair.”

  “Pru, how lovely. How is the project proceeding? Of course I want you to come to me with any questions you have, especially now that Iain…well.” He mopped his shoes with his handkerchief, which he stuffed back into the breast pocket of his jacket, as his eyes flashed to the door. “But as it happens, I’m expecting someone, you see…”

  “I do have a question for you, Alastair.” Pru held still, her hands at her sides. It took a great effort not to clench them. “How is your job hunt going? Were they impressed in Canberra with your fund-raising talents? How is the Laird? How is Earl Stanley MacIntyre?”

  The name had barely left her lips when a door at the end of the hall opened and Pru heard heavy footfalls. Alastair’s eyes widened.

  A figure stood in the doorway blocking out the light. Pru had never seen him in person, but now remembered that he had been a linebacker for the Cowboys years ago. He pulled off his Stetson, bent his head, and walked in the door.

  “Well if it isn’t Mizz Pru Parke in the flesh.” He reached out a beefy hand and smiled a Texas-size smile. “I’m pleased to meet you at last. Buddyboy Mac, Mizz Parke.”

  Pru’s hand got lost in the vast expanse of his palm, as she attempted two brief, but firm, shakes. She raised an eyebrow. “Mr. MacIntyre.”

  “Aw now, you call me Mac. I’ve been telling Al here”—he patted Alastair on the arm and more tea spilled onto the already baptized shoes—“that it’s just about time to meet you in person.”

  “Mr. MacIntyre,” Pru began, “I understand you were instrumental in getting me this temporary post, and while I appreciate your interest in my career, I do not understand it, and I don’t think that it was appropriate for you to interfere in the workings of the garden.” She swallowed. “But now that you’re here, I have a few questions that perhaps you could answer better than Alastair.” Alastair avoided her eyes and instead looked longingly at his rapidly cooling cup of tea, now half-full. “Just how did this arrangement of mine come about?”

  Mac tossed his hat into the desk chair. “I don’t mind telling you about it. Well, let me see, now. Last year, I was up working through plans with Callum, and I read about all the ruckus at that place in England where you worked and how you were able to reconstruct a garden and solve a murder.” Pru shrugged off the compliment; Mac continued. “Look at that, I said to Callum—that’s what we’re made of in the Lone Star State. And I kept an eye out for what you might do next—just hometown interest, you know. But you disappeared—I couldn’t find a newspaper or blog that mentioned your name. And so I decided to help you out some. Get your name back out there.”

  “That wasn’t necessary.”

  “Aw, now, Pru, I don’t mind helping out a fellow Texan,” Mac said. “I decided to find you a job that would give you that edge, get you into the spotlight. Everyone said this botanic garden is known all around the world, so here I came, found Al right off the bat, and asked him about some project to show off what y
ou could do. Al knew just who to go to, because some fella that specializes in maps and letters had already come to him, offering this antique journal. Perfect for you, because you’re such an expert in the history of plants and gardens. See, I pay attention.” He gave her a wink. “And it didn’t matter that Al thought it was a fake.”

  Anger shot through her veins like hot metal. She forgot that she had just authenticated the journal herself—no thanks to Alastair—and instead was incensed he cared so little for her scholarly effort it didn’t matter to him what he handed her, real or fake.

  She took a step toward Alastair, and he took a step back. “You believed the journal was a forgery?” she asked between clenched teeth.

  Alastair’s head shook, more of a vibration than a denial. “No, no, not a forgery—that is, we weren’t sure. If it is a fake it’s quite a good one. And we did acquire it from a fellow in Aberfeldy, the Menzies family home. Fascinating, don’t you think?” Beads of sweat had popped out on his forehead.

  “Busywork!” Pru’s voice bounced off the walls. “You handed off busywork, and expected me to be grateful?” she shouted in Alastair’s face. “Well, I’ve some surprising news for you, Alastair.”

  “Don’t be so hard on him,” Mac said. “He was just doing what I asked.”

  She whirled on him. “And you.” She stepped up and stuck a finger in his face, disregarding the fact that he was as big as a refrigerator. “How was meddling supposed to help my career?”

  “Now, you look here,” Mac said, “I had no intention of interfering. I only wanted you to get the respect you deserve. You’re a fine ambassador for our great state. You know how easy it is for people to think that anyone from Texas is a self-centered know-it-all.”

  “How ever would they get that idea?” she asked.

  Mac looked down at her for a moment, his small eyes hard and shiny and his face flushed. Then he broke into a grin and, with a playful punch, sent Alastair caroming off his desk. “You see, Al, I knew she could give as good as she got. I like your spunk,” he said to her. “You remind me of my little girl Roylene.”

  Pru’s brain executed a quick background search. “Little girl Roylene,” Mac’s daughter, in her thirties. That’s right—he’d bought her an art gallery.

  “No one would care if this journal was true or a fake. They’d see your research skills and you’d write a paper on the process and get it published and be speaking all over the United Kingdom. That’s what’s important—people knowing who you are.”

  Pru sucked in her breath. How dare he use her own thoughts against her? That had been a part of her dream to begin with, one of the reasons she took the temporary job—respect in the horticultural community, a published account of the project. But now, even though she knew the journal to be real, that dream had ceased to appeal to her. She just wanted to go outside and plant something.

  She shifted her eyes to Alastair. “No wonder Iain could barely stand me.” Her voice shook. “I waltz in here dangling the promise of a huge donation to the garden and rob him of a project that should’ve been his.”

  “He may not have liked it to begin with,” Alastair said, “but he was coming round. He rather enjoyed your sparring sessions, so to speak. Intellectually.”

  Pru felt queasy at the thought of it all. She pressed three fingers on the edge of the desk to prop herself up. “Mr.”—she held her hand up to stop him before he could correct her—“I mean, Mac. Did you send Murdo here?”

  Mac chuckled. “We told the boy we’d set him up down here to make sure you got along all right. At least that’s what Callum thought—seemed to me that Murdo needed to put some space between him and his daddy.”

  “What did you tell Murdo to do?”

  “Keep an eye on you. Stay in the background.”

  “Did Murdo believe that Iain was in my way? That he was keeping me from doing my job? Did you tell him to stop Iain?”

  “Pru,” Alastair cut in, “how can you even think—”

  “Murdo wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Mac said, and the way he said it, it didn’t sound like much of a compliment. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened to that Blackwell fella, but don’t you think for a minute that it had anything to do with me or Callum. Or Murdo.”

  This couldn’t be all. “Why?”

  Mac’s face shone with innocence. “Why—what?”

  “Why did you do this?” she demanded.

  “I just told you, Pru, I wanted to see you get your name back out there in lights,” he said.

  The silence in the room weighed her down, but she would not break it. She kept her eyes on Mac, waiting.

  “Well,” he said, blushing and showing the dimples he usually reserved for television cameras, “there’s no getting something past you, now is there? You see, Al, I told you she was a sharp one.” Alastair flinched, as if waiting for another friendly blow, but Mac continued. “It’s just this one little thing, you see. We’re having some trouble getting planning permission for ESM Ranch and Resort up there in Moray—my other Dallas, I like to say.”

  “I’m not a builder, Mr. MacIntyre,” Pru said evenly. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “I read up on you, Pru, and I know you’ve had experience dealing with environmental reviews—there was that cement factory they wanted to put in down on the Brazos—and we sure could use a big-name expert from Texas over here to help us out.”

  “Cement factory?” Pru couldn’t believe her ears. “I was in grad school. I got two credits for sitting in on the meetings and they let me put my name on the report. That was almost thirty years ago. And we lost—the cement factory went in. How was that supposed to help?”

  “Win, lose—that doesn’t matter. It’s your name—don’t you see? You’ve got experience in the field and your name’s been in the news in this country. And you’re from my hometown. That’s rock solid as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Rock solid because people do what you tell them to do—if it involves a large enough sum of money?” she asked, glaring at Alastair. “Just what was my role to be in your project?”

  “There’s this flower, you see,” Mac said. “They’re saying that the ESM ranch would wipe it out—now I can’t understand how one little bitty flower”—he held up his thumb and index finger about a half inch apart—“can stop a construction project that would employ hundreds of locals and—”

  “In Moray?” Alastair cut in. “An endangered species? Surely not Moneses uniflora—the one-flowered wintergreen?”

  “One flower,” Mac said, pointing at Alastair as if he’d explained it all. “How can they stop me over just one flower? Now, Pru, all you would need to do is explain that the ESM complex wouldn’t harm one little flower—”

  Alastair slammed his tea down onto the desk. “The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is a leader in conservation around the globe, and we will not be party to such a sham.”

  “Look here, Al, all I’m asking the girl to do, is to say—”

  “You’ve misled me, Mr. MacIntyre,” Alastair said, seizing command. “Your altruistic motives were only a cover for your own interests, and I certainly want nothing more to do with this. Pru?”

  She shook her head, but the movement jarred her vision, and so she stopped. She watched as Mac stepped up to tower over Alastair, but Alastair held his ground. She should tell Alastair her good news, but her face was hot, and she thought it might be nice to sit outside for a minute in the cold, misty air and consider what to do next. Her thoughts, moving as if through treacle, had circled back round to Iain’s death. That was the point of the morning. The police would come for Murdo—should she tell Mac or phone Christopher first?

  “I have to go,” she said, her voice barely audible over the men’s spiraling debate as she took her leave. She stood outside the building and leaned against the wall, unable to cut through the morass in her mind. She would take a walk to clear her head.

  She took the path to the city viewpoint, but the mist had grown heavy an
d obscured the castle, so she circled around to her secret spot, the small grassy space near Inverleith House, surrounded by Mr. Menzies’s southern beech and a host of house-high rhododendrons. She sat on the wet bench and sank her face in her hands, fingertips pressed against her eyes, barely noticing the mist growing into mizzle.

  She’d been made a fool of—a pawn in Buddyboy Mac’s plan to flaunt her as Texas talent for his own purposes. Mac couldn’t be trusted; his denial only reinforced her idea that Murdo had botched his assignment, accidentally killing Iain during an argument, and Mac had swooped into Edinburgh to cover it all up.

  Transparent layers of images superimposed themselves one on top of another in her mind—she couldn’t seem to separate them. Mac and Alastair, Murdo and his aunt Aggie, Iain and Saskia, Iain and the woman in the old photo, the lovely young woman whose smile curled up at the corners, just like…

  Just like Saskia’s mother.

  Chapter 36

  A voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “You shouldn’t be here alone.”

  Pru leapt up. Murdo stood on the path to the main walk. She moved around the bench, but stumbled. The ground tilted and swayed, as if she were standing at the top of the Scott Monument. She blinked rapidly, and the horizon leveled out.

  “I’m not alone,” she said, gripping the back of the bench.

  He stepped toward her. “Are you all right, Pru?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. What do you want?”

  “Where is she?” Murdo asked.

  Pru’s fear disappeared as she remembered the reunion between Murdo and Mrs. Murchie. “Have you seen her?”

  “I thought she might be here with you.”

  “I saw her earlier,” Pru said. “Did she explain everything to you?”

  Murdo frowned. “Why would she do that, now?”

  “Well, you know, don’t you, that it wasn’t her fault?”

  “Of course it was her fault, what are you saying?” Murdo asked. “That detective sergeant woman rang, and I told her what happened—again. She said that your neighbor had just been in.”