Last Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

  “What do you have to say for yourself, Maggie?” Warwick asked.

  Maggie shook her head. She was all out of explanations. “Do I have the right to remain silent?”

  Warwick frowned, but nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then, yeah, I’m going to do that. Silent. Me. Now.” Then, feeling a little rude, she added, “Thanks.”

  “No, thank you,” Benson replied. “Now we can arrest you.”

  “Arrest me?” Maggie exclaimed. “For what?”

  “We told you,” Benson answered. “Tampering with a crime scene. Maybe trespassing too. And I bet we can think of more before your arraignment tomorrow morning.”

  “Arraignment?” Maggie was stunned. “You’re really arresting me? I’m really going to jail?”

  “I’m afraid so, Maggie,” Warwick answered. “Unless you want to stay here and tell us the truth.”

  Maggie knew that wasn’t really an option. She just looked down at the table and shook her head.

  “Good.” Benson knocked on the door and a large uniformed officer stepped into the room. He fastened handcuffs back onto Maggie and led her out of the room.

  “You better hope your prints aren’t on that pendant, Devereaux,” Benson shouted after her.

  “Don’t worry,” Maggie muttered to herself, the magic seething behind her caramel eyes. “They won’t be.”

  33. Small Time Criminal

  At least she didn’t have to worry about nightmares. She was too scared to sleep.

  They put her in a ‘pod’ with seven other women. They all seemed tough and mean and dirty and scary. But they left her alone. It was after ‘lights out’ when she was brought in and everyone just wanted to sleep. So except for a couple of introductions and a ‘Whattaya in for?’ they pretty much ignored her. Maggie realized they all had their own problems already.

  The next morning, after a breakfast ironically more appealing and satisfying than the one at the hotel, she was taken to court. Sort of. She was taken to a small room in the jail with a video hook-up to the actual courtroom, out there somewhere else. A magistrate in a white wig and black robe was on the screen. Maggie was still in her orange jail pajamas and rubber slip-on shoes. She was guided by the guard to a chair next to remarkably young-looking attorney, also wearing a powdered wig. If it hadn’t been so serious, it would have been ridiculous.

  “Hello,” he said, barely looking up from his large stack of files. He had a neatly trimmed black beard and, just visible beneath the wig, small gauges in his earlobes. “I’m Tim. I’m the public defender this morning.”

  “Oh, okay.” Maggie wasn’t sure what to say. She was still in shock to find herself where she was just then.

  “I have good news,” Tim said. “You’re being bound over.”

  That didn’t sound good. “What does that mean?”

  “I talked with the prosecutor this morning,” Tim replied. “They aren’t really too concerned about a little trespassing, especially in a public graveyard. He said something about their lab having trouble with some fingerprinting they tried to rush through. I convinced them to hold off charging you and to release you on your promise to appear in the future.”

  Maggie felt an ocean of relief wash over her. “That’s it? I can go home?”

  “You can go home,” Tim confirmed, “but that’s not it. You’ll be fingerprinted, and they’ll swab the inside of your cheek for DNA. And you’ll have to surrender your passport. Then you have to come back to court in two weeks, on November first. You may be charged at that time and taken back into custody. And if you try to leave the U.K., you’ll be arrested.”

  Maggie needed a moment for all of that to sink in. “Well, crap. But thanks.”

  Tim shrugged and pulled the next file from his stack. “Glad to have helped.” Then he finally looked directly at her—and winked. “Good luck with whatever the blazes you’re doing.”

  Maggie smiled. If only he knew how right he was.

  34. Canadian Know-Who

  The police had a head start on Maggie back to Aberdeen. It took several hours before she was actually given her clothes back and released from the jail—after they extracted fingerprints and DNA from her. She’d thought having a burly cop grab her hands and press each of her fingers onto an ink pad and print card was humiliating, until they’d shoved a giant Q-tip into her mouth and scraped the inside of her cheeks for her DNA.

  Once she was out in the sunlight again, she had to trudge back to the hotel. Ellen had been worried sick all night. Stuart had apparently been the shoulder to cry on. Great. Insult to injury. Maggie explained that it was all a big misunderstanding, but said little more. She just wanted to get home. By the time they checked out and were on the road to Aberdeen, Sgt. Warwick was knocking on the door of Philip Harmon’s flat.

  Warwick was glad to be back in Aberdeen. Sinclair hadn’t been especially helpful. He hadn’t been truthful either, she knew, but that would take time to unravel. The appearance of Maggie Devereaux had been disconcerting. Warwick had no doubt the young American was wrapped up in it all somehow. She also had no doubt Maggie wasn’t the culprit. But Maggie’s appearance in the case made Warwick uncomfortable. She had a file cabinet with a drawer reserved for her unsolved cases. There was only one file in it and it too had Maggie Devereaux wrapped up in it. She didn’t want to add a second file to that drawer.

  Luckily, Maggie had given them a name. Philip Harmon. And unlike Devan Sinclair, Philip Harmon had made no efforts to conceal his whereabouts.

  He opened the door just before Warwick was about to knock again. “Hello?” he greeted her.

  “Hello.” She displayed her badge. “I’m Sergeant Elizabeth Warwick of the Aberdeen Police.” Then to make sure he was uncomfortable, and therefore pliable. “I believe we’ve met before.”

  Philip’s eyes widened just a bit. It was one thing to act brave in front of an attractive young lady you were trying to impress. It was quite another thing when the cop came back and knocked on your door. “Oh. Yes. Right. Of course.” He opened his door all the way. “Please come in.”

  Warwick stepped in and surveyed the small residence. It was decorated sparsely. Just a few photographs on top of some of the flat surfaces. There were some unpacked boxes still in the corner.

  “I haven’t unfinished packing yet,” Philip apologized. “Those boxes just arrived from Canada. I didn’t expect to be staying quite so long. I just found this flat a few weeks ago. I’m talking too much. Sorry. Would you like some tea?”

  Warwick shook her head and smiled slightly. He was a nervous one. “No, thank you.” She sat down in a small chair in the sitting area. Philip followed suit, sitting on the small couch opposite the coffee table. “So,” she followed up, “you didn’t expect to be staying in Aberdeen? What changed?”

  “Ah, yes, well.” Philip was wringing his hands. Warwick supposed he didn’t talk to the police much. Most decent people didn’t. “I was only in Scotland on vacation—‘holiday’ as you call it. A two-week trip. I hadn’t even planned on visiting Aberdeen. No offense, but I was planning on Edinburgh and Glasgow, then Loch Ness, of course.” He smiled weakly.

  “Of course,” Warwick replied. “And none taken. Sounds like a typical tourist trip across Scotland.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what happened?”

  “A phone call. Just as I was leaving Edinburgh, I got a call from my university. Apparently the college up here had been expecting a visiting professor from my same university but he, well, he met an untimely demise—”

  “I think I’m aware,” Warwick interjected.

  Philip seemed surprised, then nodded. “Right. Of course. Why wouldn’t you be? Well, yes, so Aberdeen contacted my university and they knew I was already here. They made a few calls and next thing I know I’m driving up to Aberdeen to take over his assignment. I really couldn’t pass up an opportunity to teach in Scotland for a year.”

  Warwick nodded. “So, in a way, you benefited from his murder.”
>
  Philip raised his eyebrows, then exhaled loudly. “Well, I never really thought of it like that.” He shrugged. “But I suppose that’s right, in a way.”

  “So you were in Edinburgh when the murder occurred?” Warwick confirmed.

  Philip nodded. “I believe so. I learned about it later, of course. As I said, I never made it to Glasgow or Loch Ness. I came straight here from Edinburgh, so I must have been there when it happened.”

  Warwick nodded. She had a few more areas to cover, but she wanted to keep it brief. He’d given her a pretty complicated story. It would be easy enough to see if any part of it didn’t check out, and if didn’t, she’d be back. On to the next subject. She pulled out some photographs from her purse and laid one of them on the coffee table.

  “Do you recognize this woman?”

  Philip stared at the picture for several seconds. He rubbed his chin. Warwick wondered where his uncertainty lay: whether he recognized the person, or whether to tell her that he did. Finally, he said, “I believe that’s Sarah MacKenzie. She was a professor here at the college. I was told she committed suicide this summer. I saw some newspaper clippings in the faculty lounge.”

  Warwick nodded again. He’d gotten the ID right. She wondered whether the rest of the story was true. She placed a second photo onto the table. It was Derek Peabody’s driver’s license photo. A photo from the bathtub would have given it away.

  Philip stared at this one too, chin in hand, but he was much quicker to assert, “No, I don’t recognize him at all.”

  The denial seemed a bit swift to Warwick, but not overly so, but if he’d recognized Sarah MacKenzie from a newspaper in the faculty lounge, wouldn’t he know his own colleague from Canada? Then again, Peabody wasn’t in the newspaper for killing himself.

  She laid the third and final photo on the table. They both knew he recognized this one. Warwick wondered if he’d be smart enough to say so.

  Thoughts raced unexpressed behind Philip’s eyes. Then a smile unfolded. “Well, of course I know her. That’s Maggie Devereaux. The woman I rescued from your clutches the other night.”

  Smart man, Warwick thought.

  “Of course,” he added, “I didn’t realize at the time that you were the police, or just how serious a matter this was. I could just see that Maggie was uncomfortable so I came to the rescue.”

  Warwick wasn’t sure she believed that, but she appreciated the effort to explain away his interference with their investigation.

  “Did you know,” Warwick asked as she gathered up the photos, “that we were all standing right in front of Sarah MacKenzie’s former flat?”

  “Were you?” Philip expressed surprise. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “How do you know Maggie?” Warwick asked.

  Again a pause as gears turned behind his eyes. “Well, primarily because she’s a student at the college and I met her on one of my first days. In fact, now that I think about it, she’d come looking for Sarah MacKenzie, and they’d given me her old office.”

  “You know, I was there when a friend of hers told her about Professor MacKenzie. She seemed quite surprised.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Although I don’t know why she would be. I’ve come to learn that it was pretty common knowledge. Pretty shocking news on a university campus.”

  Interesting point, Warwick conceded. But there was another point in his previous answer that she didn’t want to just let go by. “You said ‘primarily.’ How else do you know her?”

  Philip frowned. “Well, now that you’ve asked me all these questions and I’m thinking about it…” but he trailed off.

  “Yes?” Warwick prompted. She handed him Maggie’s photo again.

  “Well, it’s just that—” He stared at the photo, then looked up. “Well, I’m pretty sure I saw her in Edinburgh at the time of the murder.”

  35. Looking Backward

  October was flying by. Samhain had almost arrived. Ellen had hoped to plan some sort of party for the 31st, but when she found out Maggie might be going to Callanish with Philip, she quickly dropped her plans and made an uncomfortable remark about parting the veils.

  Maggie still thought of it as ‘might be going’ even though she had told Philip she would. Something was holding her back from fully committing to it. She told herself it was something to do with her missing book and the mystery she found herself wrapped up in. But she knew it was something else.

  No emails. No voicemails. Nothing.

  Stupid Iain.

  *

  A week before Halloween/Samhain found Maggie at yet another coffee shop near campus. This one was called ‘The Gear Grinder’ and was decorated in a sort of neo-goth, steampunk motif. Maggie wasn’t really sure what steampunk was—other than trendy—but most of the decorations boasted gears, lenses, leather, and/or brass. It all worked somehow and the atmosphere was both edgy and comfortable. The coffee wasn’t bad either. But that’s not why she chose that particular coffee shop. She chose it because it had the most outlets in the walls, and she was going to need to be able to plug her laptop in. She had some research to do and some plans to make.

  She ordered a grandé latte and found a table in the back. She fired up her laptop then began extracting the things she’d brought in her backpack. A print-out of an article about the Greyfriars Kirkyard grave robbery. The genealogy her grandmother had done, connecting Maggie thirteen generations back to Brìghde Innes. And a map of Scotland. She had a hunch, and she’d learned to listen to her hunches.

  Someone had dug up one of her ancestors. The news mentioned it was one of a rash of such grave robberies across Scotland. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess there was connection. But it might take a witch to know what the connection was. She took a sip of her coffee and opened her browser.

  There had been seven grave robberies so far; the most recent being Rebecca Adams from Greyfriars. The news reports of the grave robberies varied in quantity and quality of details. They all included the names of the bodies, though. And while they generally only provided the first and last names, Maggie knew they all shared the same middle name: NicInnes, ‘Daughter of Innes.’ Just like her.

  She checked off the names on her genealogy. There was no mistaking it. Someone was digging up her ancestors. That was bad. But they were going in reverse order, and they weren’t done yet. That was good. She knew where they were going to strike next.

  Maggie read the entry aloud. “Catrìona NicInnes Ramsay, daughter of Margaret NicInnes Wilkie.” Margaret the Witch, buried outside the kirkyard fence at the Castle of Park. “Born 1647. Died 1726. Buried at St. James cemetery in Ayrsduff, Cromartyshire.”

  Maggie turned to the map. Cromartyshire was way up on the northwest coast, across The Minch from the Isle of Lewis and Callanish. In addition, it was deep in the Highland Gàidhealtachd where the daily language was still Gaelic. She smiled for that. It had been too long since she’d spoken a little Gàidhlig. But the smile faded as she realized something. If they were working backwards, had they already struck the two most recent generations? Had they somehow already defiled the New World graves of her grandmother and mother?

  She quickly surfed over to the news sites for Seattle. Sites for the TV stations like KING-5 and KIRO, and the newspapers like The Seattle Times and The Post-Intelligencer. She didn’t find anything, but that didn’t convince her nothing had happened. Seattle was a big city; a couple of random grave robberies might not have warranted much of a story. And if the culprits had indeed started there, the crimes would have happened so long ago, those stories would already be archived.

  Indeed, they would have happened during The Lost Weeks. She thought she could have expected at least an email from her dad if something had happened to her mom’s grave. But all the emails from those weeks were gone—or were they deleted? Should she email her dad? What if it hadn’t happened? He didn’t always like to talk about her mom; it hurt too much. What would an email do that started, ‘Hey, has anyone dug up mom’s body recen
tly?’

  She frowned and tapped her lips. The news reports said whoever was doing this was removing body parts from the coffins. So, if someone had done this back in the States, would they have brought some sort of body parts with them? How could they possibly have made it through customs? Did she know anyone who’d just arrived from the U.S.? No. But she knew someone who’d just arrived from next door to the U.S. Next door to Seattle, even.

  Philip.

  But then she remembered how he’d saved her from the police outside Sarah’s flat. No, she decided she could trust him. Somehow, she knew that.

  Which left the other Canadian—the one in the bathtub, covered in blood. The one whose blood was also in Sarah’s flat. Had he brought something? Or had he failed and that had been his punishment?

  She decided several things. First, it didn’t look like her mother’s and grandmother’s graves had been bothered. Second, it didn’t matter if they had, because regardless, the next victim would be Catrìona in Ayrsduff. Third, she needed another ride, and it was not going to involve Stuart Menzies.

  Before she could decide anything else, her ‘new email’ tone rang. It startled, and worried, her enough that she didn’t notice the person who had just walked into the café. She hesitated, but then decided that she had completed enough on her ancestor quest that even if the email was what she feared, and it completely derailed her train of thought, she was in the right depot already. She clicked the email icon and up popped her ‘in’ box.

  Sure enough, it was right at the top. The latest missive from sarah123@scotmail.com. The subject line was ‘Next Steps.’ Maggie found it particularly irritating that Sarah MacKenzie’s ghost was going to tell her what her next steps should be right after she had just decided on them herself. She glared at the email for a few seconds, then opened it.

  The Dark Book is safe as long as you stop looking for it. But I know you and I know what you’re doing. Stop now if you value your own life.