She sniffs back a tear, clearly finding it difficult to continue. “Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll bring the food over when it’s ready,” she says, ending our conversation.
“Well?” Charlie whispers as I slide into a seat opposite him.
“I feel horrible for doing this,” I whisper back. “She thinks I’m her friend. She has nobody, Charlie. Her parents wanted nothing to do with her after they found out about her circumstances. She can’t easily keep in touch with old friends or make new ones because of all of this business keeping secrets about Flynn and Luke.”
He slips an arm around me and rubs at my shoulder. “I know it’s tough but it is necessary. Think of it this way. Things you might find out from Isla could eventually help us to find out who did this to Garrison.”
Isla appears at our table with plates of food. Charlie smiles up at her. “Thanks, this looks great.”
“This is Charlie,” I say, introducing the two of them.
Charlie offers a hand to shake and beams a smile at her. “Nice to meet you,” he says politely. “We’ve been enjoying visiting the islands. The scenery is stunning. White sand, turquoise seas. It’s spectacular. It must be an amazing place to live.”
She shudders and wraps her arms around herself. “Sometimes it’s the most beautiful place on earth and other times it’s the most horrible. Cold, hostile, lonely. I’m thinking of selling up and heading back to the mainland.”
“I can understand it must be a challenging environment here,” he says softly.
“Enjoy your food,” she says in a much practised way before heading back to the counter.
Charlie finishes his toasted sandwich and ends up eating most of mine too. I’ve lost my appetite. Poor Isla. She’s spent the last five years of her life isolated from family and friends all because of her love for Flynn Garrison.
“Men are such selfish pigs!” I blurt out, thinking of what Flynn had inflicted on Isla. Was this the life she really wanted? Pretending to be a divorced woman. A child who thought his dad was his uncle. A sorry-for-itself-looking café on a remote Scottish island. Of course not. She wanted to be with the man she loved. Properly. As a family.
Charlie looks at me, concern in his eyes. “What brought that on?”
I push thoughts of him and Martha from my mind. “Garrison and the life Isla ended up leading because of him, that’s what brought this on. The poor woman’s life is a mess. All because she met and fell in love with him. Her child doesn’t even know who his real dad was. See? Men. Pigs.”
“That’s a little unfair don’t you think? Tarring us all with the same brush.” He leans back in his chair. “Not all of us are pigs. Some of us are OK guys just trying to do the best we can in the circumstances. Life, relationships, it’s all heavy, complicated stuff. It looks as though he wasn’t just messing around with Isla though. He made an effort to find her, even hired a private detective and that was before he knew about his son. Once he did, he stepped up and tried to do the right by both of them – Isla and the boy. You know things were complicated because of who he was. He was trying to protect Isla and his son from the media hounds.”
“Do you really think that’s what’s behind all of this?” I lean forward and slap the palm of my hand down on the table causing the crockery to jump up from the wooden surface. “He wasn’t just having his cake and eating it? A wife in London and a mistress on Farra.”
“It sounds as though he was planning to make things more permanent here with Isla and Luke,” Charlie replies. “Helping her purchase the café, buying a cottage for himself so he could be here more and more. Giving large chunks of his money to Isla to help provide them with a better lifestyle. His wife said he was always making excuses about starting a family with her, but he’d found out he had a child up here with Isla. A child who he realised he actually wanted to see grow up, to be a father to. Doesn’t that suggest he wanted his life to be here with the two of them?”
“Typical of a guy to take the side of another man,” I retort, knowing that this conversation is about much more than Isla and Flynn.
Charlie reaches for my hands. “I’m not taking anybody’s side. I’m just saying, the circumstances can’t have been easy for anybody involved. There’s two sides to every story.”
“Would he ever have left his wife for Isla do you think?” I say quietly as Isla appears back in the café, presumably after sorting out a DVD for her son to watch.
“Who knows?” Charlie follows my gaze to where Isla is restocking packets of crisps in a display box. “Having just said things must have been difficult for him too I’ve got to admit he’s not exactly looking like the most ethical guy around at the moment is he? Basically he’s been leading a double life for the past few years. That’s always going to lead to somebody, probably everybody, getting badly hurt.”
He leans towards me and places a hand on my arm. “Amber, at the end of the day, this is work. Just a job. You can’t allow yourself to become so emotionally involved. OK?”
I nod and get to my feet, gathering together our plates to take them back to the counter.
“Oh, you didn’t need to do that,” Isla says as she spots me approaching the counter. “It’s not exactly busy in here. Only you and your fella.” She nods across to where Charlie is finishing his coffee. “He seems nice. Been together long?”
“About six months but he works away a lot so we didn’t get to spend all of that time together.”
Isla sighs. “I know what that feels like. He was going to leave her you know? He said Luke and I were the focus of his life. It was us he wanted to be with. He was planning a divorce so we could be together properly. He was going to go through the channels to adopt Luke too so that he would officially be his child.”
Perching on a tall stool on her side of the café’s counter she rubs at her eyes then adds, “That was another reason we had to keep things secret including not admitting he was Luke’s father. His wife’s solicitor would have been looking for reasons to cause trouble, get more for his client and we could have lost everything if she’d have found out about us.”
I feel another surge of guilt. His wife does know, but it’s too late now.
“People think he was loaded but he wasn’t. His lifestyle was expensive before and even when he opted out his wife was still spending money like crazy. A divorce would have released some funds for us though if we’d got through it with our secret intact. We were going to sell the café here and his house on Farra and move to the mainland for a fresh start as a married couple. The chance to be a proper family. He said things would change soon. That he had a Plan B for us and we’d soon have decent money and everything would all work out.”
Getting to her feet she says, “Look at me, I’m rambling on to you again. You’re probably thinking I’m some silly lonely woman but I’m not honestly. Well,” she lets out a sad laugh. “OK, lonely yes but silly, no. I knew what I was getting into and why. We loved each other. He was my soul-mate.”
I cover her hands with mine. “I’m so sorry, Isla.”
“I’m with you on this one,” Martha says.
We’re back at the rental cottage and looking over our notes on the case and figuring out what to do next.
“I feel sorry for this Isla woman too,” Martha continues. “They loved each other. Had a family together and it all had to be kept a secret. Now it’s too late for them to be properly together, like they both wanted. What a waste. Makes you question relationships and whether sometimes you make the right choices.”
Charlie and I exchange glances behind Martha’s back.
“I’m off to bed,” she announces and heads to her room.
I stare at her closed bedroom door for a moment. “You don’t think she’s talking about herself as well do you? When she says about questioning relationship choices I mean. Maybe referring to this secret relationship it sounds as though she might be having with somebody at the agency. What if this guy she’s involved with is married? Their relat
ionship might not just be a secret because of possible complications at work. It might be even more than that.”
Charlie shrugs. “Amber it’s none of our business. Now, I’m going to do some online research on this café name thing. It’s still bugging me.”
“OK.” I get to my feet, ready to head off to bed. I’m still trying to avoid alone time with Charlie as much as possible. I don’t know what to say to him about Edinburgh. How to broach the subject. I’m scared if I raise the issue again then we both might end up saying stuff we don’t want to and that could mean the end of our relationship. “What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?”
“I think we’ll head out and try to locate this land where Garrison was carrying out the secret research about its suitability for a hydroelectric scheme.”
I nod and move to the sink to wash up my coffee mug. “Think I’ll head off to bed too then.”
Charlie places his elbows on the table and rubs at his face then leans back in his chair with a sigh.
“You all right?” I ask.
“Yeah, fine.” He sits forward again and starts tapping away on the computer. “You go and get some sleep.”
In bed I reach for my e-reader hoping I’ll be able to stay awake long enough to read another chapter. I can still hear Charlie tapping away on the keyboard in the kitchen.
“Amber, wake up, honey.”
I open my eyes. Charlie is perched on the edge of the bed, trying to get me into a coherent state.
“What?” I say, my eyes struggling to adjust to the light from my bedside lamp. “Is something wrong?”
“I think I’ve found something which could help us figure out what happened to Garrison. Who murdered him and why.”
Instantly I’m wide awake. “And?”
Chapter Seventeen
“You know I said something about how the café’s name was ringing a bell?”
I nod.
“According to records the café changed ownership not that long ago. That’s when Isla purchased it. Shortly after, they renamed it The Little Gem. I think Garrison chose that name because that’s what he’d found here on Farra. Gems.”
I sit up, dragging the duvet with me. “As in valuable gemstones? I thought those were found in places like South Africa. Exotic locations not remote Scottish islands.”
“No, back when we first arrived on Farra we spoke to Hillary at the shop and she mentioned how Farra had got into the news twice. Once because of Garrison living here. The other time she said was in the nineties when sapphires were found on the island. Also, at the party at the Big House, Rhona was wearing the sapphire necklace and you commented on how lovely it was. Rhona said it was fake but based on one of the pieces of jewellery which was created from the real sapphires discovered on Farra. I’ve just done some research to check out what happened when the gemstones were found. It was back in nineteen ninety seven a handful of sapphires were found on this very island. Several of them were sold but one went to a local museum. There’s apparently a display about all of this. It’s only a little place and has limited opening hours but it’s open tomorrow morning. I just checked online. We can head over there tomorrow and see if we can get any more information when we’re on the way to visiting the site Garrison was checking out for GeoComm Scotia. If my hunch is right and Garrison did find sapphires or even some other type of gemstone on Farra then it makes sense he could have found them on the site he was working on for GeoComm Scotia.”
“But if he found valuable gemstones why does it seem as though money was still something of an issue for him and Isla?” I frown.
“Maybe he had just found bits of negligible value so far but thought he’d find something more substantial. When you filled me in on what Isla had told you about after our trip to her café you mentioned she’d said Garrison had a Plan B for them. He’d told Isla that soon all their money worries could be over. That would fit with him finding the gemstones.”
“So you think there’s a connection?” Martha says looking thoughtful.
It’s the next morning and we’re filling Martha in on the news of the great sapphire discovery.
“You think the café’s name The Little Gem refers to this sapphire find from years ago?”
“I think there might be more to it than that,” Charlie replies. “The past might be repeating itself.”
“He thinks Garrison found more sapphires when he was on the island doing his GeoComm Scotia research,” I chip in. “Maybe nothing of major value up to now but it looks as though he was planning on a significant find to help fund a new life for him, Isla and his son.”
“This is the place?” I peer through the rain hammering down the car’s windscreen. Outside is another one of those grey boring-looking buildings which are dotted all over the island. It looks more like a public toilet block than a museum.
“Farra Historic Society,” Charlie reads from the board outside and then turns off the car ignition. “Yep, this is it.”
I pull on my jacket ready to make the dash from car to museum.
“Is that some kind of stain on the driver’s seat?” Charlie says, staring at the patch of upholstery on the edge of the seat where I dropped some custard from my cake the other day. Brilliant. Trust Charlie to notice, albeit belatedly.
I pretend to inspect the section of the seat he’s pointing at. “No, I don’t think so. I can’t see anything.”
We sprint the short distance from the car to the building. Thankfully the opening times on the computer were right and as we push at the heavy door it opens and we step into the surprisingly warm and colourful museum.
The walls are painted in white and orange. Various tables contain items in wood and glass display boxes and the walls are covered in interpretation panels with huge photos of parts of the island and what I assume are sapphires in various raw states.
As I shake the water from my coat a door opens and a young woman enters. She’s dressed in jeans and a jumper, her red hair pulled back in a ribbon.
“Dreadful weather today isn’t it?” she says.
“Hi,” I lift a hand in greeting. “Yes. It’s absolutely tipping it down out there again.”
“Give it a minute or two and the sun will be out,” she smiles. “One thing you can bet on with the weather on Farra is that it’s changeable. Were you just wanting a look around the museum?”
“Yes, please, is that OK?” I reply, noticing Charlie has already wandered off and is reading the information on a display about the sapphire find. I leave him to it and decide to chat with the museum curator instead for a few minutes.
“Of course.” She nods towards Charlie. “Your husband looks interested in our claim to fame story.”
“Sorry?” I frown. “Oh he’s not my husband. We’re…”
She waves a hand in dismissal. “Sorry, none of my business. Anyway, our claim to fame is the discovery of some valuable sapphires on the island in the late nineties. I wasn’t even born then but we’re taught about it in the local schools. As soon as they’re old enough the local kids start nagging their parents to take them to the site in the hope they will find a sapphire themselves. Of course it’s a million to one probability but still, it’s a fun few hours out if the sun is shining.”
I pull my coat off and lean against a table. I’m sure I can hear voices and the sound of plates and cutlery scraping together through the door behind her. Is there a coffee shop here as well as the museum?
“The adults don’t believe there’s any chance of finding more sapphires on Farra then?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Anything is possible I suppose but it’s highly unlikely.”
Charlie turns slightly so I can see his face but the curator can’t. He gives me an encouraging carry-on look which I take to mean I should continue my little chat.
“I’m Amber by the way.”
The woman smiles. “Iona. I help out at the community centre a few days a week and the duties include keeping an eye on the museum as well.”
“Nice
to meet you, Iona. Did you ever visit this sapphire site when you were a child?”
“Yes, plenty of times. Never found anything and, truth be told, I only know of one person who ever did find some stones and they were so tiny you needed a magnifying glass to see them.” She leans towards me conspiratorially. “I shouldn’t really be saying this. We’re encouraged to play up Farra’s sapphire legend to visitors to the island.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” I laugh.
“So are you and your fella thinking of going up to the site to look for gemstones while you’re on the island then?”
I nod. “We are yes. Thought it might be worth a shot. We were originally planning to go straight on to the site after visiting here but to be honest I’m hoping for better weather for that particular expedition!”
“Want to warm up with a drink and a sustaining slice of chocolate cake before you head off?” she asks temptingly. “We have a café here. It’s mainly the locals who use it as a place to meet up for a good gossip but visitors are most welcome too.”
I glance over at Charlie who is still walking around the museum displays with an intent expression on his face.
“I’ll leave the two of you to finish up in here then come through to the café when you’re ready.” She turns and heads off back through the door she appeared from earlier.
At the sound of the door closing behind the woman Charlie looks over and walks towards me.
“Find out anything interesting?” I ask.
“Yeah. There’s even a how-to guide for searching for sapphires. Shall we head off to this GeoComm Scotia site then and see what we can find?”
“How about coffee and cake first?” I suggest. “Iona, who I was just talking to, invited us to go through to the café before we head off.”
Charlie nods his approval and gestures with an arm towards the door. “Coffee. Cake. Lead the way.”
Precious: A Humorous Romantic Cozy Mystery (Amber Reed Celebrity Crimes Investigation Agency Mystery Book 2) Page 15