Miranda laughed. “Obliging of Alasdair to caretake the place himself the fortnight, instead of assigning it to someone else. But that’s his privilege as chief of security for P and S, I reckon.”
“He trolled through the properties they manage until he found one that was private but fodder for Great Scot. Plus, Michael and Rebecca Campbell-Reid are spending the month in Stanelaw. Alasdair couldn’t have known Ferniebank was going to interest his crime-solving side, but then, not only can the man see ghosts. I swear he’s got ESP.”
“No one’s needing ESP to see that Ferniebank’s privacy is gone for good,” said Miranda. “Well then. Duncan’s arriving at six for an early dinner and the show. Best get cracking.”
“Cracking your whip over me, you mean? Yep, I need to get going. And get something to eat. I’ll need more than butterflies in my stomach.”
“One can’t live on love, no.”
“Love? It’s way too early to go there, Miranda.” Jean raised her hands, in a gesture partly “I surrender” and partly “back off, unexploded ordnance.”
With one of her patented wise smiles, Miranda backed off. She had never been married, let alone divorced, while both Jean and Alasdair had been there, done that, and bore the scars. Her long-time relationship with silverback lawyer Duncan Kerr had a lot to say for it—their parallel lives regularly intersected and then parted again, as though in the ordered steps of a minuet. What Jean was dancing with Alasdair was a traditional country reel, with lots of stamping, hand-offs, ducks, and twirls, all leading up to some seriously heavy breathing. As for leading up to love-cum-commitment, well, the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley . . . Time to get off the rodent kick.
She swept the newspaper, the invitation, and several printouts referencing Ferniebank’s long history into a folder and thrust the leaflet in after them. A glossy booklet with four-color photos was in the works, she was sure of that.
A siren sounded outside the window. Gavin’s telephone bleated and he answered. A moment later the phone in Miranda’s office beeped. She took a step toward the door, then back, her smile widening into a grin like a salute. Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead! But all she said was, “I’ll RSVP to Minty on your behalf. Give my regards to the Campbell-Reids, and thank Michael for the article on the amen glass. Kiss Alasdair for me. And don’t go borrowing trouble, not about him, not about your articles, not about”—the glistening pink nail on her forefinger tapped the folder in Jean’s hands—“the castle, the clarsach, or either of the Rutherfords. Cheerio.” She clicked off down the hall and into her office.
Jean shut her window, hoisted her bag, squared her shoulders, and headed for the front door. Trouble had recently been finding her. She didn’t need to beg, borrow, or steal it.
Just as she set her hand on the knob of the outer door, Gavin’s phone emitted another double bleat. “Great Scot Magazine,” he answered. “Oh aye, she’s just away, one sec. Jean?”
Chapter Two
Thwarted in her getaway, Jean mouthed, “Who is it?”
“Chap named Keith Bell,” Gavin returned with a shrug.
Jean hadn’t the foggiest idea who Keith Bell was—and couldn’t exactly ask if the man’s middle name was “trouble”—but talking to strangers was part of her job description. She stepped back across the reception area and took the telephone from Gavin’s hand. “Jean Fairbairn.”
“Hello,” said a deep but soft male voice. “This is Keith Bell.”
“Hello,” Jean returned, and when nothing more was forthcoming, “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Bell?”
“Er, ah, well, you don’t know me.”
“I don’t believe so, no.”
“I’m an architect. With Cruickshank and Associates, Glasgow.” Full stop.
“Yes?” Jean prompted. He might work in Glasgow, but his accent was flat as a hamburger bun, his vowels pointing listlessly toward his origins on the western side of the Atlantic.
“I’m, ah, um, I’m designing the conference center conversion and new healing center at Ferniebank.”
Ah! “You’re working with Ms. Macquarrie, then?”
“Yes, I am.” A clock chimed on his end of the line, counting out twelve strokes.
It was midnight that was the witching hour, Jean thought, not noon. Bell can’t have turned into a frog. She’d have heard him croaking. She prodded him again. “How can I help?”
“You’re scheduled for an interview with Ciara tomorrow afternoon.”
“Yes.”
“Today’s Friday.”
“So it is.” Jean’s foot started tapping the floor, and not from any innate sense of rhythm.
Gavin leaned over his keyboard, but his ears flicked back toward her like a cat’s.
“I hear you’re staying at the caretaker’s cottage at the site.”
“At Ferniebank, yes.”
“I’m gonna be there this afternoon,” said Bell, “if you’d like to ask me some questions, too.”
“I’d like to do that, yes,” Jean said, noting that he wasn’t promising to actually answer those questions. “I won’t be there until five or so, though.”
“That’s okay. I’ve got to take some pictures and measurements and stuff. But I wanted to check with you first, you know, since you’re the temporary caretaker.”
“I’m not the caretaker, I’m visiting. The actual caretaker should be arriving there just about now. Opening time. He’s, er, he’s . . .” This time she piled up against that full stop. He’s what? Friend? Companion? Significant other? “Security chief for Protect and Survive. Just filling in for the rest of the month.”
“The boss himself? No kidding. I bet he’s having fits finding another caretaker for Ferniebank after what happened to the last one.”
Jean didn’t like the sound of that, although if anything sinister had happened there—recently, not historically, something sinister was always happening historically—then Alasdair would have told her. Wouldn’t he? “What happened to the last caretaker?”
“Oh wow, you haven’t heard? It was on the eleventh, Monday before last. The local cop noticed that the place was still open past closing time, so went to check. And there was the old guy, the caretaker, stone cold dead in the dungeon.”
“Oh,” Jean said faintly. “Any suspicion of foul play?”
Gavin turned around, leaning his chin on his fist and his elbow on his desk.
“Naw. The inquest ruled he died of a heart attack.”
“In the dungeon?”
Bell was speaking quite fluently now, with volume and intonation. All he needed was an echo chamber for effect. “Ciara thinks he was checking the place out before he locked up. He felt the pangs while he was in the dungeon and was too weak to climb the ladder.”
“So he died there, all alone.” Jean’s imagination could be a bit too vivid, especially with a story that had two phobias for the price of one, her dread of enclosed spaces and her dread of the dark. Alasdair hadn’t told her about the man’s death because it didn’t concern her. Or because he knew it would spook her. He couldn’t help being protective, he was trained to protect. What she had to train herself to do was to stop, well, borrowing trouble.
“And then there was the old lady the week before that,” Bell was saying. “Well, elderly people have a tendency to keel over, don’t they? Gotta go. See ya. Bye-bye.”
“Bye.” Jean held the telephone at arm’s length, looking at it as though it had piddled on the rug.
Gavin took it from her hands and replaced it in the cradle. “What was he on about?”
“Working at Ferniebank. Telling me that the old caretaker died of a heart attack. No foul play. Nothing suspect.”
“But you’re suspicious even so.”
“It’s only my free-floating paranoia. Ferniebank and Stanelaw have three strikes against them—four, if you’re counting something about an old lady—and I’m not even there yet.” Again Jean shrugged her bag up onto her shoulder.
&nb
sp; Gavin handed over her folder, which had found its way onto his desk. “You’ll have your fine braw policeman keeping an eye on things. And on you.”
“Yeah,” Jean said, with a rueful laugh. “I’ll have my fine braw policeman. Let me try this again. I’ll see you via e-mail for the next couple of weeks.”
“Aye then, have yourself a grand time,” Gavin returned with a broad smile, every tooth gleaming so innocently Jean knew just what he was envisioning. But when it came to privacy and discretion, she was in the wrong profession to get up on her high horse. Or even a short pony.
She descended the staircase as carefully as she’d climbed, the echo of her steps in the cylindrical stairwell sounding like a distant drum. In the street she heard a drum that was a lot closer, a jazz quartet noodling tunelessly away across the narrow channel of the High Street. Or, in tourist-speak, the Royal Mile.
The heat, exhaust, and aromas of fried fat trapped between the tall buildings made Jean feel that she could chew the air. Thinking nostalgic thoughts of the cold, quiet—if dark—days of January, the month she’d arrived in Edinburgh with her goods intact and her illusions shattered, she played human pinball up the street. It tapered before her, squeezing a view of the Castle Esplanade blocked with bleachers between the last two buildings as though through the sights of a rifle.
In front of her walked a shaggy person of indeterminate gender wearing a functioning television screen in a backpack. “Tonight!” proclaimed the sound and color advertisement. “Puppetry of the . . .”
Jean took a swift right at Ramsay Lane and skimmed downhill and around the corner into Ramsay Garden. Home sweet home was one of a collection of flats in a sprawling building that gave new meaning to the words “apartment complex,” its Scots baronial turrets and balconies and its English cottage half-timbered gables perched on a cliff top beside the Esplanade.
For someone intending to keep a low profile, Jean lived in the most conspicuous dwelling in Edinburgh. But as the realtor who sold her and her ex-husband’s McMansion back in Dallas had said, in real estate what mattered was location, location, location. Jean couldn’t have found a better one, and not just because it was so near her office that its not-inconsiderable expense would eventually be offset by her savings on transportation. That the whimsical assortment of facades was tucked defiantly between the glowering medieval castle and the glum Victorian university suited her goal of living larger, of pushing her own plain brown-paper envelope, of breaking free.
Be careful what you ask for, Jean reminded herself as she unlocked her front door. In breaking free of her old life, she’d broken the shell of a certain police detective. Now she was hostage to the vulnerable creature inside. And vice versa. No surprise they were building a relationship with all the bravado of wounded soldiers facing renewed fire.
From her living room, she gazed out over the human tide that surged through the gardens below and broke in waves on Princes Street. Beyond the rooftops of the city shone the water of the Firth of Forth. The blue line on the horizon was the coast of Fife. Here, she no longer felt as claustrophobic as she had in the university history department, to say nothing of in her marriage. But here, she was a little too close to the Tattoo. Massed bands would be performing the musical spectacle only yards away.
Two weeks ago, she and Alasdair had treated themselves to dinner in the red velvet gothic excess of the Witchery Restaurant. He had worn his kilt, knowing full well its energizing effect on her hormonal system. What was worn under the kilt? asked the old joke. Nothing is worn, went the answer. It’s all in fine working order.
That night they’d forged ahead to “the talk,” about precautionary measures and previous partners—of whom Jean had only the one, but then, they weren’t competing. And Alasdair’s finely honed sensibilities meant he’d never been Caledonia’s answer to Casanova. They’d strolled home through the August dusk, leaning together, actually holding hands in public. Tonight was to be The Night.
And then, just as they’d walked in her door, pandemonium erupted on the Esplanade. Pipes and drums would only have heightened the heat of the moment, as would the sounds of Hugh Munro practicing his fiddle or guitar next door. But this was a drill team competition, with brass bands playing brassy show tunes that made the light fixtures and drawer pulls vibrate, and colored lights flashing like demented fireflies in the bedroom window.
In a sitcom featuring youthful go-for-broke characters, the moment would have been funny. In real life, featuring two not-so-youthful terminally cautious characters, it was no go. Wryly, Alasdair had gone on his way back to Inverness to continue uncoupling himself from the Northern Constabulary, leaving their relationship unconsummated.
At least, Jean thought, turning away from the window with a wry smile of her own, the occasion had made a good test case. Alasdair Cameron, ex-cop, sensitive New Age guy. Not that she’d intended to test him. Testing the—significant other, partner, inamorata—was an adolescent trick.
She paused for one last wash and brush-up, polishing her glasses, renewing the pink lip gloss she’d chewed away, running a comb through her short brown hair that, as usual, stood up in ungovernable waves. There was no way she was going to lose five pounds in the next few hours, not that Alasdair was expecting his perfectly presentable, er, intended, to turn into a glamor girl. Or a girl, period.
Her other significant other was asleep on the couch with his ball of yarn caught in a proprietary claw. Good. Maybe she could get the little guy into the cat carrier without waking him up. Jean collected the pet taxi from behind the bed, tiptoed back into the living room, and pounced. Before he knew what was happening, Dougie found himself behind bars. She could read his expression through the air holes. Good grief. Not again.
“You’re coming with me this time,” she told him. “Although not as a chaperone, mind you.”
Dougie assumed the shape of a gray pincushion, whiskers bristling. She was just setting his cage by the front door when Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” trilled from the living room. Racing back down the hall, she excavated her cell phone from the depths of her bag and checked the screen. Ah, the object of her affections! “Hi, Alasdair.”
“Hello, yourself,” said his brushed-velvet voice. “I’ve arrived at Ferniebank, had me a look at the premises, and opened for business. How has the mighty Detective Chief Inspector fallen, to be doling out admission tickets and selling sweeties like a spotty lad in a cinema.”
“You are joking, right? You’re not regretting your retirement?”
“I’m joking,” he returned with an indulgent chuckle. “I haven’t caught you driving, have I?”
“No, I’m packing the car. Is Keith Bell there yet?”
“Who?”
“I guess not, then. He’s the architect working for the woman who bought Ferniebank, Ciara Macquarrie. He called a little while ago and said he’d be out there this afternoon.”
Silence. Abyssal silence. Silence deeper than that of the grave.
Jean looked again at the screen. She was still connected. “Alasdair? Hello?”
“Oh aye, I’m here.” His voice had gone so cold and hard Jean thought of one of those Siberian mammoths, flash-frozen by an avalanche.
“What’s wrong? Something about the caretaker dying in the dungeon?”
“Oh. That. The inquest returned a verdict of natural causes, though I’m not so sure.” A pause so long Jean felt frost prickling in her ear. Finally Alasdair concluded, “Nothing’s wrong. I’ll be seeing you in a few hours. Safe journey.”
The ether rang hollowly. That time he had disconnected. She switched off her phone, asking herself, What the heck? Was this another test case? If they were going to make the running, he couldn’t just dismiss her like that. Something about the caretaker’s death had him worried. He’d been investigating criminal cases for so long, his reflexes were set to hair-trigger sensitivity. . . . She hadn’t mentioned the caretaker until after he’d frozen her out.
She needed to get down to the Bord
ers and get him unplugged, unbuttoned, loosened up. Like she wasn’t wired into a 220-volt socket, buttoned to the chin, and nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs?
Frowning, Jean strode into the kitchen, where she forced some crackers and peanut butter through her dry mouth. Then she filled a cooler with the perishables she’d accumulated after a painful bout with a cookbook and notepad. Meal-planning was a skill she’d let lapse ages ago.
Alasdair claimed he could cook. . . . She reminded herself that it was reverse sexism to expect a man to be domestically incompetent. Between them, they wouldn’t starve. And they didn’t have to spend the entire week isolated at Ferniebank. The Stanelaw pub was not only notoriously music-friendly, it was near the B&B that Michael and Rebecca Campbell-Reid were minding for the month.
She packed the car with food, clothes, her bag of knitting—it behooved her to have something to do on her own—and her laptop. She strapped Dougie’s pet carrier into the back seat to the accompaniment of a not-so-distant trumpet playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Everything was accounted for except her wits, and she devoutly hoped they’d turn up along the way.
Just as Jean was locking her front door, the next one opened and emitted a stocky man armed with a guitar case in one hand and a fiddle case in the other. “Away to the south, are you now?” Hugh Munro called.
“I’m away. I was just going to bring you the key.” Jean met his grin with one of her own.
Never one to skip a neighborly blether, Hugh joined her beside her car and set the instrument cases down at his feet. His T-shirt was the size of a pup tent, the printed logo of June’s Midsummer Monster Madness Festival barely contained by the suspenders that held up his canvas pants. The top of his head gleamed pink and smooth as a baby’s bottom, as did his cheeks, making the white hair and white beard seem incongruous. His blue eyes were as adult as any Jean had ever seen, flashing with a wisdom and a humor that indicated his preference as much for the milk of human kindness as for the whiskey of human perception.
The Burning Glass Page 2
