Horror in the Highlands (A Reverend Annabelle Dixon Cozy Mystery Book 5)

by Alison Golden

“May I come in? I have something I want to discuss with you.”

  Kirsty stood back to let Annabelle through.

  “I suppose you’re glad I’m not quite as wet as yesterday!” Annabelle joked, chuckling lightly.

  “Perhaps,” Kirsty replied without humor.

  Annabelle followed the small woman, scanning the house briefly as they walked through it. Much as the overgrown yard seemed to indicate, the inside of the house was in dire need of attention. Greying, peeling wallpaper lined the walls, furniture displayed their long and difficult histories by way of chips, scratches, stains and repairs. Even the carpets seemed to have had all the color and life trodden out of them. Worst of all, the fragrance of the house was what Annabelle could best describe as “eau de damp” mixed with a hint of Brussel sprouts. It was a depressing place to live.

  “Cup of tea?” Kirsty asked, putting the kettle on.

  “That would be lovely, thank you,” Annabelle said, as she settled into an uncomfortably hard chair at the two-person table against the wall.

  Kirsty relaxed a little as she busied herself making the tea. “Thank you for finding Felicity last night. I don’t know what gets into her sometimes,” she said gruffly.

  “She’s a child. Impossible to understand.”

  “Some children in particular are a mystery,” Kirsty said, her back still facing Annabelle as she put hot water into the teapot to warm it. “Is that what you wanted to discuss with me? Felicity?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “Oh?” Kirsty said, glancing at Annabelle over her shoulder.

  “There was a burglary at the church yesterday. Between midday and the six o’clock Evensong.” Annabelle gestured at the window, which offered a wide view of the path leading up to the church. “I wanted to ask if you’d seen anything. You have a perfect view.”

  “Naw. I spent most of yesterday staring at a screen, not the window,” Kirsty said, pointing out the open laptop on the side of the counter. “Until, of course, that business with Felicity, and by then there wasn’t a soul around.”

  “What do you do, Kirsty?”

  “I work as an IT technician. Most of my clients are on the island or nearby, but I do all my work from home. So as I can look after Felicity, you know.”

  “Doesn’t it get boring always being at home?” Annabelle said.

  “I go out sometimes. If a local needs their computer fixing, that kind of thing.”

  Annabelle cleared her throat and hastily pulled out her phone as Kirsty brought a tray of tea to the table and sat herself down.

  “Do you recognize any of these pieces of jewelry perhaps?” Annabelle said.

  Kirsty looked at the photos carefully, her expression stiff and unyielding. “How did you get these?” Kirsty’s eyes darted from the phone to Annabelle. “These belonged to my sister, Moira.”

  Annabelle put her teacup down and leaned forward. “Are you sure?”

  “Without a doubt,” Kirsty said, handing the phone back.

  “What do you know about them?” Annabelle asked carefully.

  “They were stolen about a year before she died. She made a big fuss about it, as anyone would,” Kirsty said.

  “From the island?”

  “No. From her home in Edinburgh.”

  Annabelle picked up her tea again and sipped as she added this piece of information to the tangled mass of questions in her mind.

  “Do you actually have the jewelry?” Kirsty asked, her voice calm and firm.

  “They were… hidden on the island. Rather strangely,” Annabelle replied, deciding to tread a fine line between truth and untruth.

  “And you found them?” Kirsty asked.

  “Not exactly, they were given to me for safekeeping,” Annabelle replied.

  “By whom?”

  “I can’t say, sorry.” Annabelle felt awkward, coming between Felicity and her guardian, but she had given her word to the young girl.

  “I see,” Kirsty said, taking a small, quick nip at her tea. “And where are they now?”

  Annabelle sighed. “They were stolen again. I had secured them in the church for safekeeping. Somebody must have found out, because they broke in shortly afterward.”

  Kirsty snorted derisively.

  “That sounds about right,” she said, her voice dripping with bitterness now. “Typical. Anything to do with my sister is cursed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kirsty leaned forward, and Annabelle noticed the tight muscles in the woman’s face.

  “Do you know about my sister?”

  “Not really,” Annabelle said, leaning back away from Kirsty.

  “I’m surprised. There were plenty of rumors.”

  “What’s the truth?” Annabelle asked.

  Kirsty snorted again. Her smile was thin and sour.

  “The truth is that Moira had everything – and she didn’t do anything worth a damn with it. Don’t look at me – or this rundown shack of a house – and think she was anything like that. Oh, no. She was cut from a different cloth. Blond, tall, slim, beautiful. She had every boy on the island in the palm of her hand. Of course, she didn’t care for that. She wanted more. Got herself to Edinburgh the first chance she got. Snagged herself a husband. All sharp suits and gold watches. Aye. He looked the part, and he played it too, for a while. Coming over to the island in his private helicopter. Throwing money around like he thought he was Saint Nicholas. Pfft! I could tell he was a sham the second I saw him.”

  Annabelle frowned into her tea. Kirsty’s resentment was thick and palpable.

  “You don’t seem very fond of either of them. What happened?”

  “The inevitable,” Kirsty snorted. “Eventually, it all went wrong. Ben – Moira’s husband – lost everything. Got too big for his boots. I mean, it was all built on sand anyway. ‘Investment banker’ he called himself. Give me a man who works with his hands any day. You see, you’re from down south, you won’t understand this, but we Scots like people with their feet on the ground. Shrewd, yes. Hard-working, of course. But we don’t go in for all that flash and dazzle. Truth is, they were a pair of idiots, both of them. Even when it was all falling apart, Moira was still spending money on designer clothes, jewelry, and shoes. She couldn’t help herself. Tried telling me it was an addiction once – Ha! I wish I could afford an addiction like that, I said.”

  “And then they died? In the helicopter crash?”

  “Aye. Ben was piloting it. Sometimes I wonder if he crashed it deliberately. I wouldn’t put it past him. He was a wily eejit.”

  Annabelle looked down at her tea once again, almost shying away from the angry heat that was emanating from Kirsty.

  “And Felicity?”

  “What do you think? Moira spent so much money on herself, but she never gave me a penny. Never bought me anything nice. All she did was drop by to tell me how wonderful she had it. And then she went and died. And I’m still here, where I’ve always been. Where I’ll always be. Without two pennies to rub together. Only now I’ve got her daughter to look after too.”

  “But what about your job? That must bring in a pretty penny.”

  “It doesn’t make me a lot. I don’t have the gift of the gab with the clients like your brother. I only service the locals on the islands. There aren’t enough of them to make me much money.”

  “Didn’t her parents leave Felicity anything?” Annabelle asked.

  “Ha!” Kirsty grunted, throwing her head back. “No. Felicity’s got nothing but me. Nothing but this,” Kirsty said, gesturing around her at the dilapidated kitchen. “And the worst thing is, every day she grows more like her mother. She has the dark hair of her father, but the rest of her is Moira. Slim, beautiful, graceful.”

  Annabelle looked at her, cautiously, turning over the meaning behind what Kirsty was saying in her mind.

  “Och, I know what yer thinking. You think that’s mean for me to say that of a seven-year-old girl. But I already see it. It’s just like when we were kids. Everyo
ne dotes on Felicity. ‘She’s a princess.’ ‘She’s destined for greatness.’ Aye. Well, I’ll tell you one thing. If she does ever make something of herself, she’ll leave me behind her, just like her mother did. Of that I’m sure.”

  Annabelle gulped the last of her tea quickly. The conversation had taken a rather more hostile turn than she had expected. Felicity’s aunt had plenty of resentment stored up, and Annabelle guessed that Kirsty had few friends to speak about it with. She had obviously touched a nerve.

  “You know,” Annabelle said, placing her cup of tea in the middle of table, making it clear that she was about to leave, “it’s a little unfair to hold Felicity accountable for the hurt her mother might have caused you. She’s only a child, and you’re the only person she has.”

  Kirsty stood up.

  “Life isn’t fair, Reverend. I’m not a monster. I take care of Felicity as best I can. But that doesn’t mean I like it. My sister got everything she wanted. I wanted nothing, and I got nothing; except her daughter, that is. I know it’s not her fault, but it’s not mine either.”

  Kirsty escorted Annabelle to the cottage entrance and held the door open for her. Annabelle put on her coat, stepped across the threshold and turned back to face the tired-looking, scruffy woman on the doorstep.

  “Your sister might have hurt and disappointed you, Kirsty, but Felicity never will. I know I might be too much of an outsider to say that, but sometimes it takes a fresh perspective to see things as they really are. You might never forgive your sister, but please don’t punish Felicity for Moira’s sins,” she said. Annabelle turned around and walked away down the weed-ridden path.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  AS SHE WAS leaving Kirsty’s cottage, Bruce called to tell Annabelle that the metal rod they’d found on Harry’s body did indeed match up with the marks on the church door. As Annabelle’s thoughts turned to Harry’s murder, she decided to stretch her legs in the direction of the beach and revisit the site where the body was found.

  As she neared the slope that led down to the sand, she pondered the sighting of Pip Craven at the beach the evening before. What had he been doing there? Why had he run off when she saw him? She was about to clamber onto the mound of rocks to make her way down to the beach when suddenly the man himself sprang up, startled from behind a large rock below. Without a word of greeting, Pip scuttled up the wet boulders with the speed and single-minded purpose of a crustacean, and shoved past Annabelle so hard he nearly knocked her off her feet. She stepped back onto the grass just in time.

  When he’d taken a few steps past her, Pip stopped. He turned and fixed his eyes dramatically on Annabelle. She took a step back, alarmed by his sudden appearance. “Vicar,” was all he said in a low growl, and with that, he spun around and ran off in the direction of his house. Annabelle watched as the long-haired man sprinted off into the misty distance. Seconds later, the two fishermen whom she had met the night before emerged from behind the rocky outcrop.

  “Did he go past here?” Fraser, the bearded one asked.

  “Pip?” Annabelle responded.

  “Forget it,” his companion said. Davy Blair’s hood was drawn so low this time he could barely see where he was going, “no point in running.”

  “What’s going on?” Annabelle asked, utterly perplexed.

  “We just caught that Craven idiot trying to get to Harry’s body,” Fraser said, puffing.

  “No!”

  “We were just going down to the fishing boat,” Davy explained, “to check the moorings after the storm, and to make sure Harry’s body was fine – I mean, as fine as a dead body can be – and we saw Pip trying to climb onto the boat. We shouted out to him, asked him what the hell he was playing at, and all he said was, ‘I’m only looking!’”

  “Then he ran off,” Fraser added.

  “Aye. Then he ran off.”

  “Well, that’s incredibly odd!” Annabelle said.

  “Not for Pip.”

  “There’s your prime suspect right there, I reckon,” Fraser said.

  “No,” Davy replied, “don’t you watch TV? The murderer never returns to the scene of the crime.”

  “Well, what’s he doing then?”

  “Pip’s just like that,” Davy said, “Weirdo. He’s into voodoo, witchery, bats. He probably wanted to do some… I dunno… magic with the body. Summon up spirits.”

  “Maybe he killed Harry as a sacrifice,” Fraser said, “and now he’s come back to drink his blood.”

  “Aye. Could be that.”

  “Stop it!” Annabelle exclaimed. “To hear two grown men talking like this is ridiculous. You can’t really believe in that nonsense.”

  “The question isn’t whether we believe it,” Davy said, “it’s whether Pip does.”

  “Pip’s all about the devil, magic, that kind of thing. It’s all in his music. You should give it a listen sometime. Sounds like a big din to some people, but me and my missus love it.” Fraser started playing some heavy air guitar.

  “Poppycock!” Annabelle said.

  “Have you spoken to him?” Davy asked her.

  “Yes, I have, actually,” Annabelle said.

  “And what did you talk about?”

  Annabelle blushed, remembering the strange exchange she had had with Pip outside the alleyway the previous day.

  “Well… Nothing really strange…” she muttered. “Just…something about vampires, crows… that sort of thing.”

  “There you go,” Fraser said triumphantly, his silent rendition of a Craven Idols’ chart topper over. “Suspect number one.”

  “Mebbe,” Davy replied. “He’s made some cracking tunes though.”

  “Aye, that he has.”

  “What’s the situation regarding the weather?” Annabelle said. “Can the boats come in tonight?”

  “No. The storm just hit the inner islands this morning. Waves still choppy. Probably there’ll be a thick mist tonight too, so there won’t be any planes coming through. Tomorrow morning it should clear, I reckon.” Davy looked out over the waves.

  “Aye,” Fraser agreed.

  “Let’s hope so,” Annabelle replied, nodding at the two men before turning away and walking off. Her head was so full of thoughts that she had completely forgotten why she had gone to the beach in the first place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ROGER WAS ENGROSSED in his work and didn’t hear Annabelle come in. When she walked into his office and gave a cry of surprise, he almost jumped out of his office chair.

  “Oh! Bumble, what are you doing creeping up on me like that? You frightened the life out of me.”

  “Sorry, Roger,” Annabelle chuckled. “I was just a little taken aback. This room has changed so much.”

  Roger smiled and pulled a chair over for Annabelle to sit beside him. Indeed, the room was quite unlike the rest of the house – and the rest of the island, for that matter. Where all around them could be found rustic charm, weather-beaten rocks, and earthy colors, Roger’s workroom was a technological paradise. Against the wall, a long, flat, light wood desk with chrome legs held three large monitors, each displaying complicated swathes of text, graphs, and flashing lights. Beneath them were keyboards, and to the side, speakers. Even one of those furry microphones TV cameramen use hung overhead.

  Above the monitors on the wall were shelves of reference books, and below the desk, several computer towers hummed and whirred. Set at a right angle to the end of the desk, another tabletop housed a printer, multiple gadgets and cables, and a phone. On the walls, Arsenal posters and framed pictures of Bonnie and Roger smiling against the dramatic backdrops of the Scottish island added a sense of color and personality to the gadget geek wonderland, but there could be no mistaking the room as anything other than one entirely dedicated to Roger’s work.

  “The last time I was here you only had a single laptop,” Annabelle said, as she tried, and immediately gave up on understanding the numbers and symbols on the screen nearest her.

  “I rememb
er!” Roger said, cheerfully. “That little thing was a real pain to work with – but then again, without it I wouldn’t have been able to afford all this.”

  “What is this thing?” she said, pointing to the furry oblong that sat on a stand above one of the computer screens. “I’ve seen them on TV when they do outside broadcasts. I’ve often wondered what they are.”

  “That’s what’s fondly known in the industry as a ‘dead cat’ or a ‘wind muff.’ It’s used when you want to deaden the noise of any wind hitting the microphone. I use it on outside shoots, but I can’t be bothered to take it on and off so I just stick it on a stand as it is when I’m indoors.”

  Annabelle smiled. “It’s great to see you doing so well. I have to be honest, I never thought you could make a living programming software and teaching people about it all over the world. Not from here. I don’t know how you do it. I can barely use a computer. I have no idea how they work.”

  Roger laughed and slapped his sister on the shoulder. “Well, the English language is just twenty-six shapes arranged in different ways, but it’s done us alright so far! You don’t need to understand how computers work, just know that they run the world now. You can do anything with them. Meet people from all around the world, know whatever’s going on the second it happens, read about anything you care to think of, buy things, sell things, learn how to make things. Whatever you want.”

  Annabelle frowned.

  “What?” Roger said.

  “Sell things? What about selling jewelry?”

  Roger nodded and smiled, seeing his sister’s train of logic.

  “For something like that,” he said, tapping away at the keyboard then clicking a couple of times, “you’d use an online auction site. It’s a—”

  “I know what they are!” Annabelle said.

  “Have you ever used one?” Roger asked.

  “No,” Annabelle conceded, “but Philippa bought a wonderful plant pot for my garden using one once. She said it was thrilling, placing all those bids and such.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet. I hope she didn’t get carried away. People can end up paying way over the odds in the heat of the moment. Okay,” Roger said, turning back to the screen, “let’s see.”