by Nancy Warren
She shrugged. “The police already asked me that. But I don’t know. I was so tired from the day, and knew I’d be up dreadfully early this morning to cook breakfast, that I went to bed early, long before my guests returned home.”
That was unfortunate. “So you didn’t hear anything?”
She looked uncomfortable. “The truth was, I got very interested in some of the earliest Waterford crystal. Remarkable the way they could make crystal three hundred years ago. And what some of that stuff is worth.”
I didn’t have to ask what television program she’d been watching. I strongly suspected she hadn’t been alone. She’d had a witch of a roommate.
“But…” Her gaze shifted down the hall to the front door. “Now you mention it, I woke around one in the morning, it was, and then got up to make sure the front door was locked. Quinn, I’m sure I saw a pair of shoes I didn’t recognize.”
Nothing wonderful there. She did have bed and breakfast visitors. However, I said, “Yes?”
She squinted her eyes and kept staring down towards the front door. “They were trainers. I might not have noticed them particularly except they were rather dirty. Giles would certainly never wear that kind of shoe. Neither would Philip. Chloe only wears designer shoes. Irving, the American, might, but his feet are much larger. Besides, his cowboy boots were sitting on the same mat. It’s rather American, isn’t it, to take off one’s shoes when entering another person’s home?”
“Can be.” I knew someone who had very dirty running shoes. Also, he was young and American.
I’d be very interested to know what Tristan Holt had been doing here last night. Was he visiting a woman who’d slapped his face in public?
If so, why?
The only problem was finding him.
I had a feeling that if the young man was still in town, I had to move fast. Once there was a police manhunt out for a young American, he’d be on the move, guilty or innocent. Whichever he was, I really wanted to talk to him.
I had no idea where to search for a twentysomething who had dirty sneakers, a grubby backpack, and didn’t look like he had a lot of money. “Karen, is there a local hostel?”
“A hostel, Quinn? Why would you want one of those? If you’ve friends coming to visit, I’ll give you mates’ rates on staying here.”
“Thanks,” I said, genuinely touched. “But it’s not for me.”
“Well, there are hostels in Cork City. There might be something in Skibbereen, but I don’t know. Never had occasion to stay in one.”
“Thanks.” I motioned to the closed door of the lounge. “They’re all settled in front of the TV now. I really have to get back. I need to get The Blarney Tome put back together after the event last night.”
I saw a flicker of dismay in her eyes, but she understood the challenges of running a small business. “Of course. Thank you so much for staying this morning. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“Anytime.” I touched her shoulder. “Try not to worry. The police will find who did this, and your business will boom.”
“I do hope so.”
I didn’t even bother saying goodbye to the literary types. I headed out, jumped in my car and started the engine. I drove down to the end of the block, wondering where I was going. I hadn’t exactly lied to Karen. I did need to put the shop back to rights, but it didn’t have to be this minute. The books would all still be there tomorrow, but a potential murderer might not.
I tried to think of who might help me track down Tristan Holt, and the only person who came to mind was Lochlan Balfour. While I hesitated to interrupt vampires in the day when they were getting their beauty sleep, Lochlan never seemed like he needed a great deal of rest. Besides, if he was sleeping, I’d go to the shop and get to work. So, sucking in a breath, I drove to Devil’s Keep.
In truth, it looked more like Devil’s Sleep. There wasn’t a light on in the place, and I saw no signs of activity.
I got out of the car and stood at the entrance, wondering if I should turn around and go away again without bothering them. A voice said, “Are you coming in?” It was cool and slightly ironic. Lochlan.
I glanced around. I had no idea where he was hiding but answered him anyway. “I thought you might be sleeping.”
The door in front of me magically opened, and I realized that he wasn’t in the vicinity. He’d obviously spied me through some complicated security camera.
Well, at least I knew I wasn’t waking him. I walked inside, and the thick, heavy, oak door made a definitive clunk behind me. I walked up the staircase into the big main room where we’d held the gala last night. The posters were still hanging, but all the food had been cleared away and the furniture put back.
While I was wondering where I might find my host, he appeared through a doorway at the back of the room. “Quinn.” His tone was cordial but contained a note of question, as in, “Was I expecting you?”
I stepped closer. “The most terrible thing has happened.” And I quickly told him about Candace’s murder.
He glanced up, and I knew immediately he was looking towards wherever Bartholomew Branson might be tucked away. “Natural causes?” The question was hopeful rather than that he believed any such thing.
I shook my head. “She was strangled.”
“What an unpleasant death.”
He glanced up again. “Branson?” He’d come to the same conclusion as me, then. However, as though continuing on his train of thought, he said, “Not the way we vampires normally go about our business.” Then he looked at me again. “You’re absolutely certain she was strangled? It wasn’t strangulation meant to cover up the real cause of death?”
Gross. “You mean bite marks?” I hadn’t gotten that close to her, but I was pretty sure I’d have noticed if her blood had been drained. “No. I think she was just plain strangled.”
Nothing in his expression changed, but I could tell he was relieved by my answer. “How can I help you?”
I liked that he got straight to the point. “You remember that young guy who was here last night? The one that Candace had thrown out?”
“Of course. That was the most exciting thing that happened all evening.”
I was glad Bartholomew Branson, the thriller writer, wasn’t present to hear those words.
“His name is Tristan Holt. Anyway, I think he might have visited her last night.”
“They were certainly arguing. And she slapped him. You suspect he killed her?”
“I don’t know. But he’s what the cops would call a person of interest.”
“Do you have any idea where he is?”
“No. That’s what I was hoping you would help me with.”
He came a step closer. “You want my help finding a missing person?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I don’t think he is missing. But he might still be in the area. I don’t think he had a car. His shoes were muddy as though he’d been walking across rough ground. His backpack was grubby, and he looked like a backpacker.”
He shook his head. “In any case, there won’t be a bus out until this evening. We could check with Dylan’s taxi and see if he got a ride somewhere.”
“Is there a hostel?”
“It’s thirty miles away. And they usually provide showers. Your young man looked, and smelled, as though he’d not bathed in several days.” He turned to stare at one of Bartholomew Branson’s covers. It featured a picture of the Kremlin and the silhouette of a man holding a pistol. “I wonder if he’s been camping rough.”
“Camping rough?”
“There’s no hostel hereabouts. He wasn’t staying in the bed and breakfast. He didn’t look like he had any kin in the area. My guess is he was sleeping rough. That rucksack of his was big enough for a small tent or a tarp.”
I nodded slowly. “That would explain the muddy shoes and the dirt underneath his fingernails. But he could be anywhere then, couldn’t he?”
“Quinn. He’s an American traveling in Ireland.
He’d be drawn to the Wild Atlantic Way.”
“Okay.” The Wild Atlantic Way was one of the most picturesque drives in the world. But there was quite a lot of it. “Could you be more specific?”
He continued to stare at that book poster as though the young guy with the backpack might walk out of the Kremlin and surrender to the guy with the pistol. “I know a few likely spots.”
He looked at what I was wearing and said, “Go home and put on some sturdier boots. Have you some good walking shoes?”
“Yeah. I’ve got my hiking boots from when I lived in Seattle.”
“Those’ll do. And some rugged clothes you don’t mind getting mucky.”
So not what I’d imagined doing this morning.
But then I hadn’t imagined I’d be interrupted halfway through a full Irish breakfast because of a murder either.
It was turning out to be an unusual day.
Chapter 12
I hadn’t worn hiking pants since before I left Seattle. In fact, now that I came to think of it, it was quite a long time before I left Seattle. However, I dug the hiking pants I’d so proudly bought at REI out of a box at the back of the cupboard, along with my hiking boots, and wondered how wild the Wild Atlantic Way really was. I’d driven it and admired spectacular views along the winding coastline, but I’d never attempted to track a possible murderer on foot. I hoped my old hiking gear was up to the task.
The first dent in the plan happened when my hiking pants got stuck halfway up my hips.
My irritable conviction that they’d somehow shrunk in transit died on the vine. I hopped my way to the full-length mirror in bra, panties, and the hiking trousers that were lodged on my thighs.
For some reason, I hopped in a circle just for the pleasure of getting a glimpse of my back view. It wasn’t pretty.
How had I gained so much weight and not even noticed?
Cerridwen padded by on near-silent feet and paused to look at me. Cerridwen was not normally an unkind cat, but I definitely detected derision in her wide, green eyes.
“All right,” I said. “I’m not getting enough exercise. Working in a bookstore isn’t exactly aerobic.” And the Irish food was so good. Also, much of it seemed to be based around starches. Irish stew, for instance, bursting with doughy dumplings. And what the Irish could do with a potato could make you weep.
Or overeat.
I couldn’t have gained so much weight so fast without even noticing. Could I?
I’d always heard of middle-aged spread and suspected it was a lie put out by women who’d given up. Now, I begged to disagree. Middle age was spreading from my belly to my butt to my thighs, and it didn’t look like it was finished yet.
Determined I was not going to let a pair of pants beat me, I began jumping up and down, yanking on the waistband every time I was in the air. I did manage to get the pants over my hips. Triumphant, I turned to look in the mirror, and the way they gaped and strained at the front, I knew I’d never get the zipper done up. And even if I did, I would not be able to breathe or speak.
Sweaty and bad-tempered, I gave up.
It was almost as much effort to get the trousers off again. I was panting and red in the face when I finally screwed the expensive, technical fabric hiking pants into a ball and threw them in the corner. Okay, I was having a tantrum.
Now what was I going to wear? Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I knew that jeans were the worst thing for hiking or even strenuous walking. The heavy cotton would attract and hold water, making the trouser both heavy and uncomfortably wet.
What else did I have that fit? Too cold for shorts, and I probably couldn’t fit in them anyway. I finally settled on a pair of yoga pants that only fit me because of the stretchy waistband. I put a loose T-shirt over the top and the kind of zip-up hoodie girls wear to exercise class to keep their tiny bodies warm since they have no body fat to do it for them. In my case, I had no intention of taking this thing off. It would have to disguise all the lumpy, bumpy bits.
At least my hiking boots still fit. Though my big toes were pressing against the front of the boot in a way I didn’t remember. Had my feet gotten fatter?
I found a ball cap that would at least protect me a little bit from the weather and threw a few essentials into a small day pack I used when I would go hiking for the day.
I had come to Ireland so certain I would be tramping the hills and admiring every wild corner of the Emerald Isle. Instead, all I ever seemed to see was the inside of the bookshop, the pub, and my cottage.
I was really going to have to make some time for exercise.
Very soon.
I was going to have to start matching my fantasy self closer to the middle-aged woman I was rapidly becoming. Not that I minded being middle-aged. There was a lot that was good about knowing who I was and not being driven so much by my hormones.
Lochlan picked me up and drove. Dierdre had happily agreed to tend the bookshop, which gave me a day to track a murderer. Not my favorite pursuit on a day off, but I was the one who’d wanted to find this guy. The sun was shining, making the ocean sparkle. Even though this was a serious enterprise, I enjoyed the view as he drove, with the rugged coastline on one side and green fields dotted with sheep on the other. “Isn’t there a lot of Wild Atlantic Way?” I finally asked.
“Mmm. Sixteen hundred miles of it. It’s one of the longest coastal drives in the world.”
“Sixteen hundred miles?” I turned in my seat to stare at his handsome profile. “But how will we find Tristan Holt?”
“I can’t guarantee that we will. But if he’s camping in the wild, which I suspect he is, it’s the logical place to start.”
“But there must be all sorts of thickets of trees and hidden coves. It’ll be like a needle in a haystack.”
He sent me a funny look. “Not quite. Needles in haystacks don’t have beating hearts.”
My own heart kicked up its beat at that. I turned to stare at him. “You can hear a human’s beating heart?”
He raised his nose like a dog catching a particularly good scent. “It’s more like we can smell them.”
I was sort of horrified, but the practical side of me was relieved. “But can you differentiate one heartbeat from another?”
“Not really. You get to know certain patterns. Yours, I’d recognize anywhere.”
He must really hear it thundering now. “You would?” I asked, and my voice came out a little higher than I’d meant it to.
He turned at me with barely suppressed humor in his eyes. “You’re safe with me, you know.”
Knowing he could hear my insanely rapid heartbeat didn’t make it any easier to slow it down. So I didn’t even bother. “It’s kind of creepy, you know, from where I sit.”
“I can imagine it would be. But, as I said, you’re in no danger from me.”
My attention slipped away from Tristan Holt to the dead woman. “What about Candace Branson? If Bartholomew had been married to her, he must have known her heartbeat intimately.”
“Likely he did. Though, to be fair, he wasn’t a vampire when they were together.”
“So you don’t think he’d recognize her heartbeat?”
“No. I think he would. And if he didn’t recognize her heartbeat, he could easily track her by her scent.”
Oh man, this drive was just getting worse and worse. My underarms grew unpleasantly warm. I wanted to wipe my brow except it would look so obvious.
Change the subject, change the subject. “Can you think of a reason why Tristan Holt would kill Bartholomew Branson’s ex-wife?”
Lochlan sent me a glance that was almost chiding. “Of course I can. And so can you.”
How was he so smart? He hadn’t had a long conversation with Tristan Holt, who had made me test his knowledge of the latest Bartholomew Branson novel and boasted about how well he knew the material.
I let out a breath. “I think he was Candace Branson’s ghostwriter for All Fall Down.”
“Yes. I think
so too.”
It was so unfair. “How did you know that?”
“Process of elimination. He was far younger than most of Branson’s fans. He’d clearly come a long way knowing the author was dead. Based on the very public squabble, it was the author’s widow he wished to see, and the visit didn’t go well.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Do you call it a widow when they’ve been divorced?”
He shook his head. “In my day, divorce was exceedingly rare. I have no idea.”
“Anyway, go on.”
“It was evident he didn’t have much money, and he had an argument with Candace Branson, who had him thrown out. I cannot find another explanation than that he was the ghostwriter of the book and was either pitifully paid or wished to increase his fee when he saw the success of the latest book.”
“Or she stiffed him.”
He glanced at me and then back at the road. “Stiffed him?”
“You don’t know everything, do you? Candace Branson is one of those people who can knock you over with overpowering friendliness. We know she lied about Bartholomew’s manuscript. She seems like someone who might go back on a promise.”
“You didn’t warm to her, I fear.”
“Laugh at me if you want to, but her behavior hasn’t exactly been admirable.”
“True. But she didn’t know that Bartholomew was still in existence to be upset by her fake discovery. If he hadn’t been turned, she’d have got away with it.”
“And as his beneficiary, she’d make a nice chunk of change.”
“But if we’re to speak of behavior that’s not admirable, don’t forget your young friend likely murdered his employer.”
I hadn’t forgotten that. “I’m trying not to judge him before we’ve heard his side of the story.”
“It all depends on whether he’s in possession of the manuscript.”
I nodded. I’d thought the same thing. And the fact that Karen had seen those mud-covered running shoes in her front hallway did suggest that Tristan Holt might have been with Candace. I told Lochlan about the shoes and that Giles Montague claimed to have overheard Candace speaking with a young American sometime in the night.
