Last Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

  Closing out and returning to the newspaper site, Maggie hoped to find at least a little more information. She found three articles. The first was from the same day as the television report and included no additional information. The last was basically an obituary. It was the middle one—a follow-up article published a few days after the first story—that proved to offer at least some further information:

  ABERDEEN— Additional details have emerged regarding the apparent suicide of Sarah MacKenzie, professor of Celtic studies at the University of Aberdeen.

  Ms. MacKenzie was found deceased in her college district flat three days ago by the police after she failed to appear for work for several days. She had apparently hanged herself over a closet door and had been dead for several days before the discovery of her body.

  Neighbors and colleagues were shocked. Ms. MacKenzie had recently returned from holiday abroad and did not seem depressed.

  “She was a very nice lady,” said one neighbor who asked to remain anonymous. “Always friendly in the hallway. No sign anything was troubling her. Some people can really hide the demons inside them. It’s just a shame, it is.”

  University officials declined to comment.

  Memorial services are yet to be scheduled.

  Maggie frowned at the screen. A little short on information, but then she hadn’t expected much. It confirmed what Ellen had said. Hanging. Yuck. Maggie couldn’t imagine slowly strangling to death. Or rather, she could, which made it even worse. Sarah failed at her quest in Hungary, but could that really have made her so despondent to take her own life? Maggie thought, perhaps a bit callously, that Sarah had been made of sterner stuff than that.

  The one piece of information that Maggie found the most useful was that it had been several days before the body was discovered. That seemed to preclude that the death had somehow been faked—a possibility, given the email apparently from her former advisor. She expected a person could fake death, but figured it would be substantially more difficult to fake decomposition.

  The thought of dead bodies—fresh and rotten—prompted her to move on to her next research topic. Her tea was getting cold anyway. After a quick refill (of both liquids), she sat down again and began topic number two: the murder in Edinburgh.

  She was disheartened to see that there was considerably more news coverage of that event than of poor Sarah MacKenzie’s suicide. Not simply because the murder of an anonymous man had ranked above the tragedy of a vibrant, if misdirected, woman taking her own life, but also because Maggie had, as she feared, failed to completely avoid detection. The incomprehensible woman in the alley must have spoken with the police after all.

  EDINBURGH— Police announced today that they have a person of interest in the recent murder of an unknown man at the Hotel Regency.

  The victim was found in a hotel room bathtub, covered in his own blood. The coroner’s office reported the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Police have confirmed that the body suffered extensive post-mortem injuries, but refused to elaborate.

  The identity of the victim is still unknown. Initial reports suggest he was a foreign tourist, but little else is known at this time.

  The person of interest is a young woman seen hurrying from the hotel as the police were arriving. She was described as average height and weight, with brown hair and glasses. She is believed to be Canadian and police therefore believe she may have been the traveling companion of the murder victim.

  The only clue to the woman’s identity was a pendant left behind at the scene. Police are not releasing details of the pendant at this time in the hope that anyone with special knowledge of such details may be able to shed light on this horrible crime.

  Maggie felt a mix of emotions as she finished the article. She was satisfied and relieved that her ‘Canadian’ ruse had succeeded. But she was disappointed and worried that the police had found her pendant—and a little guilty at having lost it, since it was a gift from her grandmother. She was also amused that the police suspected her to be the victim’s traveling partner. Even though she only got a quick glance at his blood-caked face, she was sure she’d never met him before.

  Or at least she didn’t remember meeting him.

  Damn The Lost Weeks.

  Which led to her last research topic. If there was a foreigner that this fake-Canadian was going to traveling with, it was a certain real-Canadian professor from Vancouver, British Columbia.

  And then she suppressed the flood of memories of traveling the Scottish countryside with a certain dark-haired local. Too soon. Too painful.

  Instead, she clicked to the search engine and typed in her next research topic.

  But much to her chagrin, there were approximately one thousand Philip Harmons, and each one seemed to have his own Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. Even her cybertrip to http://www.ubc.ca proved fruitless. Their faculty page was confusing at best and appeared limited to those professors actually teaching on campus the coming semester. There was no Philip Harmon, but then again, she supposed Philip wasn’t teaching at UBC this coming semester.

  She could have done more searching, but the whisky was trumping the tea and her eyelids were getting heavy. It had been a long day and she was ready to call it a night. She looked again at the email from Sarah’s ghost, then turned off the computer. She was still short on answers but she was glad for one thing: she hadn’t used the magic lately. So she could climb into bed reasonably assured she would sleep through the night without any nightmares of empty graves.

  13. Graveyard Shift

  The shovel made a shkk noise as its blade thrust into the earth. The grass roots tore with the turn of the blade. A crescent moon cast the work in a dim, silvery light. The moonlight was coincidental. The moon cycle didn’t matter. Not this time.

  This time was bigger.

  Another shovelful of dirt passed in front of the gravestone. It was slow work, but not as slow as it might have been. And there was time. Time that night, and time until the end of summer. The time halfway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. The time when the veil between the here and the there was at its thinnest.

  Time until Samhain.

  Time to collect. To prepare. To succeed.

  Shkk. Shkk. Shkk.

  14. Witch Grave?

  Two weeks later, after a fortnight of much thinking, no magic, and nightmare-less dreams, Maggie found herself drinking her morning coffee and lingering over the enigmatic email and its enumerated directives.

  1. Stop looking for the Book

  2. Don’t use the magic

  3. Find Sinclair

  Working backwards, she couldn’t think of any reason to find Sinclair, other than to help her find the Book. And given that Sinclair was unlikely to be found if he didn’t want to be, she didn’t know how to find him without using the magic.

  So the instructions were self-defeating. Not that she was about to be told what to do about her Book and her magic. If she decided to seek out Sinclair, it would be because she wanted to, not because of some cryptic email. She may not have known where the Book was or where Sinclair was or, as she realized with a tinge of regret, where Iain was. But she knew one thing.

  That email wasn’t from Sarah MacKenzie.

  Maggie had seen a lot in the last year. A lot of things she never would have believed before she’d arrived in Scotland. But even she had her limits. Ghosts may be real, but she was pretty sure they didn’t use email. That meant someone—someone alive—wanted her to think they did. And that gave Maggie a place to start.

  Sarah MacKenzie.

  Or more precisely, Sarah MacKenzie’s flat.

  *

  “I want to see that flat,” Benson declared as she settled into one of the chairs opposite Warwick’s desk. They had agreed to meet first thing that morning to discuss next steps in the investigation. Benson had brought the donuts.

  Warwick considered her day. She’d already overplanned it with follow-up on half a dozen cases. S
he might as well add one more thing. Especially since she’d made some room in her schedule by convincing Cameron to let her dump the grave-robbing case onto Willis now, now that she’d taken on both the assist on Benson’s Edinburgh homicide and the newly reopened investigation of Sarah MacKenzie’s suicide.

  “Good idea,” Warwick replied to Benson as she sipped coffee from a styrofoam cup. That had been her contribution to the breakfast, straight from the precinct’s lunchroom. “I need be back here by two o’clock. I’ll be handing off the grave-robbing case to another sergeant, and he doesn’t come on until then. He’ll need a specific and slow briefing.” She sighed. “With time for questions.”

  Benson offered an intrigued smile and was about to ask for more information when Warwick’s phone rang.

  Warwick picked up the receiver. “Elizabeth Warwick. Yes. No, I hadn’t heard. Yes, it’s still my case, at least for a few more hours. No, no trouble. It’s my job. Yes, I’ll be out right away. Thank you.”

  She hung up. “Change of plan,” she announced. “We’ll have to visit the flat after I meet with Sergeant Willis. There’s been another one.”

  “Another murder?”

  Warwick shook her head. “Another grave robbery.”

  *

  The city of Aberdeen began as two distinct settlements: Old Aberdeen at the mouth of the river Don, and New Aberdeen, a fishing and trading village on the Denburn waterway. The towns merged under a single city charter granted by William the Lion in 1179 and quickly became a trading and commercial center of Northern Scotland. In the ensuing centuries, between booms and busts, ravaged by wars against the English and raids by rival Scottish lords, the city continued to expand in all directions, absorbing suburbs to the north, west, and south, until finally it reached its current borders, covering over seventy square miles of neighborhoods and green spaces sweeping back beautifully from the icy waters of the North Sea.

  At the very outermost reaches of the city, in the western district of Cults, stood a small clapboard church, mostly forgotten except for handful of local faithful who eschewed the larger and more ornate offerings downtown for the simplicity and convenience of somewhat run-down, but Protestantly bare little church.

  The church had been founded after some of the more tumultuous periods of Scottish history and thus had avoided the whiplash-like denominational changes imposed on older houses of worship by succeeding victors. It was small and Presbyterian, always had been, and hosted a matching small and Presbyterian graveyard, notable for no reason save one particular occupant.

  Warwick pulled her car over to the side of the road and parked directly across from the church. It was all white with a simple wooden cross atop a not-terribly-tall steeple.

  “Not much to look at,” Benson commented.

  Warwick just shrugged. She wasn’t going to judge a house of worship. “The cemetery must be around back,” she said as she unfastened her seatbelt and opened the car door. “Let’s see if they’re waiting for us inside the church or in the cemetery.”

  A quick circuit around the building confirmed the callers were out back in the graveyard. The defiled grave was impossible to miss. Even if the two trained detectives hadn’t noticed the enormous pile of dirt next to the gaping, coffin-sized hole in the ground, they would have noticed the two white-haired women standing next to the headstone, wringing their hands and looking relieved to finally have someone official upon whom to unburden their story.

  “Oh, thank God you’ve come,” said the shorter and stouter of the two.

  “Finally come,” added the taller, thinner woman. She wore thick, round glasses.

  “Aye,” agreed the first woman. “Thank God you’ve finally come. It’s a terrible business.”

  “A tragic business.”

  “Aye, a terrible, tragic business.” The shorter woman nodded up to her counterpart. “We discovered it this morning.”

  “Early this morning.”

  “Aye, we discovered it early this morning. We didn’t know what to do, so we called you.”

  “Called you right away.”

  “Aye, right away we called you. Right away. And now here you are.”

  “Finally,” finished the taller woman.

  It seemed like a pause, so Warwick jumped in, even if only to stop what the two had likely long ago failed to realize was an astonishingly annoying speech pattern. “Yes, here we are.”

  First she introduced herself and Benson. Then she got their names: Miriam and Muriel. Miriam was the stout chatterer; Muriel the lanky corrector. Then, having ascertained their identities, Warwick separated them. Muriel was sent inside to pull the records on the grave. Miriam remained outside to tell the full story, uninterrupted.

  “We came in early this morning,” Miriam started. “Like every morning. Not especially early. Not earlier than normal, I mean. Just regular early.”

  Warwick began to appreciate the value of a Muriel to keep Miriam focused. She nodded to show she’d gotten the point. “Go on.”

  “Aye, well, it’s not like we walk the grounds every morning. In fact, we rarely do. There’s more than enough to do inside the church, there is. But Muriel came out onto the back porch to shake out the rugs—that’s her job, you see. I’m allergic to dust. Always have been. Pollen too. Which you’d think would always be the case—being allergic to both that is, since they would seem so similar—but actually it’s quite common to be allergic to only one and not the other. It’s two entirely different types of allergies, it is. Pollen is plant matter, but if you’re allergic to dust, then really you’re allergic to the dust mites in the dust, and of course they’re animals. Small animals, to be sure, but—”

  “Miriam?” Benson interrupted just before Warwick did. “What did Muriel see when she shook out the rugs?”

  Miriam nodded. “Oh, aye, right. Well, of course, she saw this.”

  Miriam waved at the open grave and its attendant pile of earth. A quick glance to the church confirmed it would have been quite visible, and conspicuous, from the back door.

  “Then what happened?” Warwick asked.

  “Aye, well, Muriel screamed, didn’t she? I came running from where I’d been cleaning the altar. You’ve no idea how dirty the inside of a church can get, even during the week. Oh, sure, you’d expect it on a Sunday, what with everyone rushing in and kicking everything up and leaving again, but just a random Thursday can leave an unbelievable amount of dust behind. Did I mention I’m allergic to dust? Actually, I’m allergic to the dust mites in the du—”

  “Miriam?” Warwick interrupted. “What did you do when you heard Muriel scream?”

  Miriam nodded again. She seemed accustomed to being interrupted and put back on task. Muriel was seeming considerably less rude than she had at first blush.

  “Well,” said Miriam, “I ran over to see what the matter was. And when I saw—well, you can hardly miss it, can you?—when I saw, well then, I screamed too, didn’t I?”

  Warwick suppressed a frown at the thought of these two women screaming at a pile of dirt. She considered that the two detectives investigating were also women, and decided to chalk it up to the church-ladies’ generation rather than gender. She peered into the grave herself. It looked much the same as the one at the Aberdeen Municipal Cemetery. The coffin was a darker wood, and it didn’t appear to have the two-part lid, but otherwise it was covered in the same pattern of loose dirt and criss-crossed shovel marks.

  “Did either of you go down into the grave?” Benson asked.

  Miriam gasped and clutched her throat. “Oh, dear Lord, no! Oh, no, of course not. No, no. We hurried over and took a quick look, didn’t we? But then it was straight back inside to call you folk.”

  Warwick frowned into the grave. “Why were you waiting for us out here then?”

  Warwick didn’t suspect them. She needed to know what they might have done to contaminate the scene.

  Miriam looked puzzled. Well, more puzzled than usual. “This is where the grave is,” she e
xplained simply.

  Warwick shrugged. That was the right answer, she supposed. Before she could delve into where exactly she and her fellow caretaker had trod, Muriel came shuffling back out of the church, a raft of papers in her hand. Too many papers, it seemed to Warwick.

  “I’ve found the records,” Muriel announced as she reached them, “but the grave is too old and the handwriting is too small. I can’t tell what goes to what, so I brought all the cemetery records for you. Here.”

  She shoved the papers at the detectives. After a moment of hesitation, occasioned by the largesse of the records, Benson accepted them.

  “Thank you,” Warwick said. “We’ll review them back at the station.” She didn’t want to pour over them just then, especially if they were, as they appeared, well out of order and filled with small script from centuries earlier. She pointed at the headstone. “Do you know anything about the person who was buried here?”

  They all looked at the headstone. Muriel read it aloud. “Eileen NicInnes Jenkins. Born 1798. Died 1844.”

  “Does that name ring any bells?” Warwick asked.

  The women just looked at the name etched into the stone, both their faces twisted into expressions of consideration.

  “Can you think of any reason,” Benson added, “why this particular grave was disturbed?”

  Muriel shrugged, but Miriam’s face slowly lit with recognition. “I know the name,” she said. “I think. I mean, I couldn’t be sure without looking at the records. But yes…” She glanced around at the small graveyard and nodded. “Yes, I think that’s right.”

  “What is?” Warwick asked. “What’s right?”

  Miriam nodded some more. She gestured to the area they were standing in. “Do you see where we are now? This is the section closest to the church. This was the original cemetery for the founders of the church and their families.”