Mums and Mayhem

by Amanda Flower

  “Thank you so much. That means a lot, coming from you, when you have such a way with flowers. You should come back in the summer when the garden is at its height. I would spend all my time out there if I could.”

  “I can see why.” I cleared my throat. “Do you know which room my parents are in? I wanted to stop by and say hello while I was here.”

  “They are in room ten, but they aren’t there now. They left very early this morning, saying they were going to go for a drive today. I don’t know where they were headed. It’s a lovely fall day for it.”

  “It is.” I said my goodbyes and walked out the door, wondering what to do next.

  I texted my mother, but there was no response. I wondered if she had thought to enable international texting on her phone. I knew her phone could do that, but that didn’t mean my mother knew that too.

  I texted my dad next, with the same results. I scowled at the phone’s screen like it was the device’s fault. I squeezed the phone in my hand. How could my parents go off the grid like this? Didn’t they know there was a murder? And why would they leave the village when my father was connected to it? This wasn’t the time for a trip down memory lane.

  I took a deep breath. My frustration wouldn’t make them come back to the village any more quickly. I started back toward the flower shop and texted Craig. Why didn’t you tell me Dad was a suspect?

  Where did you hear that?

  Does that mean he is a suspect?

  We shouldn’t have this conversation on text.

  Agreed. Can you meet me at Duncreigan?

  That’s a bit out of the way.

  I know, but I have a problem there.

  What?

  Someone vandalized the garden.

  What?!

  They cut the rose. I had to come to the shop, but I think I’ll go back home now and assess the damage.

  I can be there in an hour.

  I put my phone back into my pocket. I knew Craig was going to ask me why I hadn’t reported the crime earlier, but if I had, I would have had police and crime scene techs tramping all over the garden by now. I didn’t think that’s what the garden wanted or needed.

  I jogged the rest of the way back to the flower shop. I had avoided the crisis at Duncreigan way too long. I couldn’t find my parents to ask them about Barley McFee, but maybe I could save my garden before it was too late.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I was relieved when Isla agreed to watch the flower shop for the rest of the day and that Raj was able to spare her. It didn’t take much to convince her when I told her about the state of the garden. Things were different here in Scotland. Back home in Tennessee, if there had been talk of magic gardens or psychic stones, I’d have been laughed out of Nashville. Here the folklore was embraced. People didn’t wholly believe in the magic, but they didn’t dismiss it out of hand, either. Legends had surrounded Duncreigan for many generations.

  On the three-mile drive back to Duncreigan, I played a nervous rhythm on my steering wheel with my fingertips. I didn’t know what condition I would find the garden in, and I was worried about my parents too. It wasn’t like them to go on a drive without telling anyone. If my father was really a suspect, would Craig put a stop on their passports? When I was a murder suspect, he’d taken my passport away.

  I parked my car beside the cottage, and there was no sign of Hamish, squirrel, cat, or fox. I hoped that was good news. Maybe they were all making progress in the garden.

  My heart sank as I drew closer. The ivy tumbled from the stone walls in dry heaps of dead leaves and withered vines. Nothing had changed. It had only grown worse.

  The door to the garden stood wide open. It wasn’t the way we usually did things. Typically, the garden was always under lock and key to keep any intruders out. Apparently that precaution was moot, since someone had been able to break into the garden and cause so much damage.

  I stepped through the garden door and found Hamish sitting in the middle of the dead grass holding a trowel like he had never seen it before.

  “Hamish?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Oh, Miss Fiona, I’m so glad you came back. I almost walked to the village to fetch you. I don’t know what to do. The garden is worse. It needs you to fix it.”

  “Why didn’t you just call me?” I asked.

  “I don’t have a mobile phone, as you know, and it was so far to walk back to my bothy, I thought it would be just as well to walk to the village.”

  His bothy was about a half mile away and the village was three miles away. Between him and Chief Inspector Craig, I didn’t think I would ever understand the logic of Scotsmen.

  I stepped deeper into the garden, and Hamish followed me. The climbing rose on the standing stone was still withered. I wasn’t sure what to do. The rules for being the Keeper that Uncle Ian had left me were vague at best, and none of them said a thing about what happened if the rose was cut from the stone. Perhaps it had never happened before.

  I felt my shoulders droop. “Chief Inspector Craig is on his way here. I’m hoping he can help us.”

  “You can’t let anyone see the garden in this state. It will be a black mark on the MacCallister name.”

  “Hamish, I trust the chief inspector.” I sighed. It was a disagreement I’d had with Hamish many times before.

  He brushed dirt off his hands. “I know you are sweet on each other, but nothing changes the fact that you are the Keeper and he’s not. I don’t see how he can help with bringing the garden back to life.”

  “He can investigate the break-in and might be able to find the person who did this.”

  “I don’t see how,” he grumbled. “Or what good that will do when the damage is done. This garden needs to be healed; placing blame on another will not do that.”

  I suppressed a groan. Hamish wasn’t a fan of Craig. When Craig was a teenager, he and another friend—on a dare—tried to break into the garden to steal the menhir. Hamish caught them and never forgave Craig for it.

  My proof of that was what he said next. “How do we know Chief Inspector Craig wasn’t the one who cut the rose? He has tried to break into the garden before.”

  “That was a long time ago, and he was just a kid. He’s changed,” I said.

  “I don’t think I believe in change, not really. You are who you are, and you can fight it for as long as you have the strength to do it, but you won’t change your core.”

  I bit my tongue to stop from asking him about his grandnephew Seth. Seth, who had been given every chance to turn his life around, could change, but Craig could not?

  “How do you know he is interested in you for the right reasons?” Hamish asked.

  “What do you mean?” I gasped.

  “He tried to steal the stone before. What if he’s just trying to cozy up to you so he can get closer to the magic? It would not be the first time. Master Ian’s great-grandfather had the same problem with a fisherwoman.”

  “That’s not what’s happening.” But even as I said it, just the tiniest kernel of doubt crept into my heart.

  I wished I could unhear what Hamish had said. The Craig I knew wouldn’t do that, but Hamish was right—he had tried to steal the stone before, and because of what I had told him about my gift from the stone, he might be intrigued by it.

  But no, he cared about me, not the stone. He never asked me about it. Was it a calculated move that he didn’t? Was I having doubts because of bad luck with men in the past? That wasn’t fair to Craig or to me.

  I stepped around the hedgerow just in time to see Craig come through the garden gate. I was relieved he hadn’t arrived two minutes before. If he had, he would have heard our conversation.

  “Fiona, the garden,” Craig said. He looked absolutely shocked, and all my worries about him using me to get close to the garden faded away.

  He hurried over to me and wrapped his arms around me. “Are you all right?”

  It was a fair question. Craig knew how important the garden was to me, but I coul
dn’t answer because he pressed my face into his thick chest.

  “What happened?” Craig asked as he released me and held me at arm’s length.

  “The rose,” I said. “Someone cut it from the menhir, and the rest of the garden died.”

  He followed me around the hedgerow. “Can you fix it?”

  I stared at the withered vines and leaves around us. “I don’t know how.”

  “There has to be way. This can’t be the end of your garden.”

  I wished I could believe he was right. However, this very much felt like the end of the garden. I felt worse about that now than I had when I’d first made my discovery. Perhaps it was because the reality of what happened had finally settled in.

  “Who could have done this?” Craig asked.

  “I was hoping you would help with that part.”

  “We need the techs to process the scene,” Craig said.

  I frowned. I saw his point, but the fewer the people who knew about the condition of the garden, the better. I didn’t want the village to know the garden was in jeopardy. It would be proof to them that Ian MacCallister had picked the wrong person to inherit the garden when he died. The villagers didn’t know about my personal connection to Uncle Ian. They only thought he’d left a Scottish treasure to an upstart American. There were some who would like to take that treasure away from me and some who would have gloated in its death as proof of my shortcomings.

  Craig sighed. “Do you have any idea who could have done this? Have you seen anyone around Duncreigan? The cottage and garden are out of the way from any main roads. I don’t think you often have visitors.”

  I nodded. “We don’t. The only people we see way out here are an occasional hiker. Now that it’s getting colder and the weather grows more unpredictable, we’ve seen fewer of those than we did in the summer.”

  “That reminds me,” Hamish said. “There was a hiker here a couple of days ago. He said he heard there was a beautiful garden at Duncreigan and he wanted to see it.”

  I spun around and looked at Hamish. “Why didn’t you mention that before?”

  “I didn’t remember it until just now when you told the chief inspector about the hikers that come through Duncreigan.” He frowned. “He said he was a hiker, but he didn’t look the part, and his backpack and boots were all wrong for a long day traveling up and down mountain trails. I pegged him as a tourist because of his poor gear.”

  “He spoke to you?” Craig asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Hamish said. “We had a nice long chat. He said he was visiting the area and had spent some time here in the summer. He mentioned that he met you then, Miss Fiona, and that the two of you have many of the same interests.”

  I frowned. “What interests are those?”

  “Celtic symbols and history? He said he knew of your legacy. I thought it was odd and asked him what legacy he meant, but he would not answer that.”

  “Does this nonhiker have a name?” Craig asked.

  Hamish frowned and moved Duncan from his pocket to his shoulder. “He said his name was Carver.” Hamish looked at me. “He said you knew him.”

  I did indeed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Carver Finley. I hadn’t wanted to place the blame on him right when I saw the garden in disarray, but that was because I felt biased in thinking it was him. However, what Hamish said made it clear to me that I was giving the historian too much benefit of the doubt.

  Craig knew my history with Carver. Carver and I had been at odds with one another since the murder of local village minister who had been spearheading the historic chapel ruins project last summer. At the time, I had even thought Carver was the killer. It turned out he was innocent.

  “Carver Finley is back in Bellewick. I thought he was done with the village when he finished assessing the chapel ruins,” Craig said.

  “He might be done with the village, but I don’t think he’s done with me. He’s been interested in the garden since we met at the chapel ruins last summer.”

  Craig raised his brow. “You never told me that.”

  “I didn’t think it mattered. I hoped he would leave the village and never come back after he was done assessing the stability of the chapel.”

  “Is this the first you’ve heard of him being back?” Craig asked me.

  I shook my head. “I saw him too,” I said.

  “Near the garden?” Craig asked.

  I shook my head. “No, I saw him yesterday at the concert.”

  “You didn’t mention that to me either.” Craig squinted at me.

  “I didn’t think to. There were a lot of people in the village for the concert. There was no reason Carver couldn’t have been there for the concert too.”

  He nodded. “True,” he said, but he didn’t sound happy that I hadn’t told him about Carver being in the village.

  “And honestly, when I found Barley in the tour bus, Carver slipped my mind.”

  “Do you think he could have a connection to the vandalism in the garden and to Barley’s murder?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. He could be involved in Barley’s murder, I supposed. They were both from the area and might know each other, but Carver was at least twenty years Barley’s junior. What could Carver gain from Barley’s death? However, he could have something to do with the state of the garden. No one else has shown the same kind of interest in the garden as he has. Most of the villagers just accept the garden’s magical properties as fact and don’t think much more about it. Or they don’t say anything to me about it. Carver told me he wants to understand it and study the menhir.”

  “We need to find Carver, then, and find out what he knows,” Craig said.

  Hamish patted Duncan on his shoulder. “If you don’t need anything else from me, Miss Fiona, I’m going to head back to my bothy for my midday meal. I’ve been here all morning and into the afternoon and have made no progress on bringing the garden back. It’s enough to drive poor Duncan to tears.” Tears gathered in Hamish’s eyes as he looked up at the squirrel.

  I patted Hamish on his other shoulder. “Go home and relax, Hamish. There is no more that you can do here.”

  He nodded. “We can’t lose the garden, Miss Fiona. It’s the only constant in my life.”

  “We won’t,” I promised him. “I’ll find a way to bring it back.”

  His wrinkled face cleared. “I know you will. That I do. Master Ian would not have left this garden to you if he didn’t think you could care for it just as well as he could. I have all my confidence in you.”

  As he walked out of the garden, I prayed his confidence wasn’t misplaced.

  After Hamish was gone, Craig turned back to me. “Are you sure you don’t want my crime scene techs in here?”

  I nodded. “I’m sure. Maybe it’s the wrong decision, but I don’t think the techs would find anything more than what we see here.”

  “I should get back to the station. I’m not sure what more I can do for you here.”

  “Before you go, there is something I found that I want to show you,” I said.

  He raised his brow.

  I walked around the hedgerow and pointed to the boot print I found near the stone. “Proof that someone was in here and did this.”

  Craig bent over and stared at the print. “Someone with a larger foot than you or Hamish, too.” He removed his phone from the pocket of his jacket and took a picture just like I had. “Even if you don’t want crime scene techs in the garden, we need to preserve this print. It’s our best hope of finding its owner. I have plaster of Paris in my car. Let me make a cast of it.”

  “You can do that?” I asked.

  He eyed me. “I’m more than just a chief inspector, Fiona.”

  I nodded and waited while he went back to his SUV to collect the supplies he needed. He wasn’t gone long, and I watched with fascination as he made the cast.

  While the cast dried, I asked Craig, “Why didn’t you tell me my father was a suspect in Barley McFee’s m
urder?”

  “I was hoping you would forget that.”

  I made a face. “Like I could.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Does it matter, if it’s true?”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “You should focus on whatever has happened to your garden, not on my murder investigation.”

  “Neil, you know I can’t leave it alone now that I know my dad is involved.”

  He sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that. I knew you’d be upset.”

  “So you didn’t tell me because you were afraid I would be upset? Of course I’m upset. I’m more upset that you didn’t tell me.”

  “No. I mean, yes, I knew you would be upset and I wasn’t looking forward to that, but I didn’t tell you yet because I didn’t have all the facts. I wanted to hear your father’s side of the story before I told you.”

  “And what’s his side of the story?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to talk to your father about it yet. It seems he and your mother left Thistle House very early this morning and haven’t been back.” He frowned.

  “I can tell from your face that you think that’s a bad sign and you wonder if he’s running away from the scene of the crime.”

  Craig smiled down at me. “You can read all that in my face.”

  “Most of it,” I said.

  He laughed.

  “I’m worried about them. Eugenia mentioned to me that they went for a drive, and I know it’s nothing more than that. They are on vacation, after all, but I’ve tried to text them both. Both messages said they were undelivered.” I paused. “And to answer your question from before, Kenda told me that Dad was a suspect. She didn’t know he was my father when she told me.”

  “You spoke to Kenda?”

  I shrugged. “I was helping Raj by delivering food to the band.”

  “I didn’t know the Twisted Fox did takeaway.”

  “It doesn’t, but Raj is looking to expand in that direction.”

  He frowned as if he found this all very suspect. “Why did he ask you to deliver it and not someone who worked at the pub?”