A Wee Murder in My Shop (A ScotShop Mystery)

by Fran Stewart

  “I certainly do. What do you think he’s going to do, kidnap me? He’s a lonely old man.”

  Dirk grunted a subterranean growl. “I will accompany you.”

  “Dirk,” I said with a fair amount of exasperation, “I’m fed up with your overprotectiveness. I’ll be fine. I prom—”

  “Fed up? What would that mean?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, let up on the English lessons, will you? I don’t need you hovering over me every single second. He’s been my neighbor for years. When I moved in, he was next door. He was born here in Hamelin—in that house, in fact. He used to head the Board of Selectmen. He and his wife have always been dear people.”

  “Wife? I havena seen a woman there.”

  “She died last year. She used to invite me for dinner once a month; Mr. P’s continuing the tradition.” I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see him pacing. “I’m going. You’re staying. I’ll be back well before nine o’clock.”

  I closed the front door more abruptly than perhaps I should have. I’d apologize later.

  I paused at the top of Mr. P’s front steps, took three deliberate breaths, crossed the somewhat saggy old porch, and knocked on the door. It swung open a bit. I heard a muffled sound that could have been a voice.

  “Mr. P? Are you there?” My words echoed eerily. Oh, good grief, Winn. This is not a gothic novel.

  A dim lamp in the entryway cast an uncertain glow, but I saw a shaft of light from the kitchen down the hall. When Mrs. P was alive, there always were bright lights throughout the house. Poor Mr. P—how had I ever missed seeing how sad he was? I called out again and heard an indistinct moan. Had he fallen? I raced down the hall, reaching for my cell. Crud! I’d left it at home.

  I rounded the kitchen door and barely registered the movement to my right before a blow above my ear took me completely by surprise.

  * * *

  I woke with a throbbing pain in my head and a biting pain in my ankles. Not surprising, considering the sturdy twine that bound my feet. My hands were tied in front of me. That was good. I’d read horror stories of people whose arms had been yanked backward and bound in the most uncomfortable ways possible. Peggy! Quit dithering and pay attention!

  Why would Mr. Pitcairn have hit me like that? What on earth had I gotten myself into? I had a brief vision of Dirk being very angry with me. I’d give anything to have him here with me. I squashed that thought before it could start me crying.

  “She should be waking up soon. I didn’t hit her that hard.”

  The voice wasn’t one I recognized, although it seemed vaguely familiar. I kept my eyes shut.

  “You didn’t have to hit her.” Mr. P’s nasal words came from floor-level behind me. It took all my self-control not to wrench myself around to face him.

  “You’re wrong, Joe. I didn’t want her screaming,” the other man said. “Not that there’s anyone close enough to hear.” I didn’t like that tone of smug self-satisfaction. “It was good of you to invite her over. The last time I checked, her back door was locked.”

  The tiny seed of worry in the pit of my stomach started growing leaves.

  “What are you going to do to her?”

  Whoever he was, he sounded downright cheerful when he said, “I’m not going to do a thing to her. When someone finds the bodies, they’ll see it as a murder-suicide. Her murder. Your suicide, Joe. Too bad you had to kill such a sweet young thing.” I took a quick peek, but all I could see were his legs. And a pistol held at his side. He waved it negligently.

  “I always knew you were rotten, Barney. All the fancy schooling in the world couldn’t change that.”

  “Yeah, I had the schooling, but you’re the one with the fortune. After you sold the patents, you could have shared some of it with me.”

  “Just because our grandfathers were cousins? My great-grandfather was the one who amassed the fortune.”

  “And my great-grandfather was the one who built the building. You didn’t know he built a secret into it, did you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Mr. P sounded genuinely puzzled. I stayed as quiet as I could, hoping they’d forgotten about me.

  “The first sons in my family have always known about the fortune hidden in the wall.”

  “What are you talking about? There’s no fortune there. My father would have told me.”

  The first man let out a guffaw that echoed in the bleak kitchen. “He didn’t know about it. The first Josiah, the one you’re named for, had a fortune in jewels. My grandfather took the safe and the combination, but he couldn’t get it open, so he built it into the wall, so nobody in the Pitcairn family would ever find it.”

  “That’s nonsense!”

  “No, Joe. It’s not. You may own that great big building, and you may have sold off the patents for a lot of money, but there’s been a treasure under your nose the whole time.”

  “I say again, you’re talking nonsense. If your grandfather had the safe, why didn’t he keep the jewels himself? From everything I’ve heard, he was not a generous man.”

  “No, he wasn’t. I’ll give you that. He was also not a very smart man. The combination was in code. He decided that, if he couldn’t have the jewels, then your family never would either.”

  My left leg, the one I was lying on, was cramping. I took another peek between my lashes. This time I recognized the man who had hit me. I gasped without thinking and could have kicked myself when Dr. Carrin turned and glared at me.

  “How much have you heard, Ms. Winn?”

  “Enough to know the safe I found was stolen by your stupid great-grandfather, so it belongs to Mr. P.” I rolled onto my back and bunched my knees up, trying to alleviate the cramp.

  “Not if nobody knows about it, Ms. Winn. My father and grandfather managed that property for years, and a little company I own manages it now.”

  “You mean I’m paying rent to you?” I invested the word with as much scorn as I could manage, considering that I was lying on the floor and Dr. Carrin stood over me.

  He actually laughed. “No. No, the money goes to your neighbor here, although my company takes a small percentage.”

  “A large percentage,” Mr. P said.

  Good for you; that’s the spirit.

  “You know, Joe, I could kick your brains out right now.” Dr. Carrin sounded singularly calm. “But I won’t.”

  Because it wouldn’t look like a suicide.

  When Mr. P spoke, he sounded equally calm. “Why are you doing this, Barney? What did I ever do to you?”

  “You personally? Nothing. My great-grandfather, Barnaby Carrin, should have inherited half the fortune. Josiah cheated, made Barnaby build the factory, and never gave him anything for it. You owe me. And you”—he turned in my direction, and I saw Mr. P scoot closer toward our tormentor—“are going to give me back the paper I lost.”

  This was beginning to make sense. “The paper with the code on it? How did Mason end up with it?”

  “Mason? He had it?” Barney scowled. “How could he have gotten it? I must have dropped it in the store, but I never gave him a chance to pick up anything.”

  “You killed Mason.” I wasn’t asking a question. Mr. P moved another inch or two.

  “He deserved it, the cheating blackmailer.”

  “Blackmailer? What do you mean?”

  “Two hundred dollars a week, for—”

  But there was no time to waste. I lashed out with both legs aimed straight for the front of his knees. I heard a bone crack. He screamed—and the pistol exploded—as he fell backward over Mr. P. We both hauled ourselves on top of him as quickly as we could to pin down his arms.

  Dirk and Harper charged into the kitchen, armed with dagger and gun.

  “Took you long enough to get here,” I said.

  * * *

  That night, just before turning in
, I thanked Dirk for coming to my rescue. “Even though we’d already pinned him down, it was nice to know you were there . . . to protect me.” Curious, I asked, “Do you think women always need protection?”

  “Nae,” he said. “I dinna believe that, but I believe that it is my purpose to protect the ones I . . .” He lowered those ridiculously long eyelashes. “. . . the ones I love.”

  The only sound was the breeze through the open window. And my beating heart, but I didn’t think he could hear that.

  Eventually, I asked him how he’d gotten out of the house.

  “The constable came looking for ye. When there was no answer to his knock, he tried the handle, and the door opened. He whinged a bit about leaving the door unlocked but stood back enough for me to slip through. I yelled at him to hurry as I rushed past, and something”—Dirk’s face took on a puzzled expression—“made him turn and follow me to the neighboring house.”

  “Did he hear you?” That didn’t seem possible.

  “Nae. I think not. But he heard me, if ye ken what I mean.”

  That was good enough for me.

  30

  Gathering

  The next morning, we tore down the wall and found the skeleton of the man whom Barnaby must have hired to help him carry away the safe.

  We searched my lost-and-found basket for the compartment key, the one Dr. Barney Carrin had dropped. There would undoubtedly be legal wrangling over the leather bag of jewels for some time, but it looked as if my poor, sad, lonely neighbor would be a very rich man.

  That evening, we gathered in the back room of the ScotShop—Karaline, Mr. P, Sam, Shoe, Harper, and myself. And Dirk. Gilda wasn’t there. Once everyone was seated, I asked where Gilda was. Shoe and Sam looked at each other. “She, uh, had to be somewhere,” Sam said.

  I knew something was going on, but Sam obviously didn’t want to talk about it, so I let it ride. I’d corner him later and get the story out of him.

  “I don’t quite understand what happened,” Mr. P said. He looked even more forlorn than usual.

  Shoe started to talk, but Karaline drowned him out. “I’ll tell what I know, and each of you add in your part as we go along.”

  After the story was told, we dissected it.

  “Why,” Sam asked, “would Mason put all that money in your bank account?”

  “I can’t imagine,” I said, “but I could hazard a guess. I think he felt guilty about cheating on me. He used to give me roses, which I came to hate. I think he just added money to his misguided intentions.”

  “What I’d like to know,” Karaline said, “is what Mason was blackmailing Dr. Carrin over?”

  “He clammed up on us,” Harper said. “We’re looking into his background, but we may never know.”

  “So,” I asked, “did Dr. Carrin kill him for the blackmailing or because Mason stumbled on his midnight search?”

  “No way to know. Carrin tried to plead innocent, but we have a perfect fingerprint at the twenty-one-foot mark on the measuring tape. The first Barnaby Carrin was clever,” Harper said. “That whole shelving system and the enclosed storage room masked the fact that he’d hidden a body—and the safe—in the wall.”

  “Didn’t the body stink?” Shoe had been so quiet, I’d almost forgotten him.

  Surprisingly, Mr. P answered. “The men in my family have a decided inability to smell anything. If the body stank, he wouldn’t have known, and nobody working for him would ever have mentioned it.”

  Harper and Karaline both raised eyebrows at this.

  “Anyway,” Mr. P went on, “the manufacturing process used a lot of products I’m told were quite smelly, so maybe nobody noticed.”

  * * *

  Harper walked me home. We didn’t say a lot in words, but our hands spoke quite a conversation.

  Without preamble, he said, “I have to leave.”

  “Leave?” I opened the front door and surreptitiously motioned to Dirk to precede me. As soon as he was inside, I set my purse on the living room floor and closed the door.

  Fortunately, Harper couldn’t hear Dirk’s indignant yelp.

  I stepped back out onto the front porch.

  “Leaving Hamelin? For how long?”

  “My dad is . . .” He gripped my hand more tightly. “I’m flying . . . overseas . . . tonight. I’ll be gone a few weeks. Maybe longer.” He cupped his right hand around the back of my neck. With a voice full of possibilities he said, “I’d rather stay here.”

  I nodded. I didn’t trust my voice.

  Hand in hand, we walked down the ramp to his waiting car.

  I leaned against his chest for just a moment, and then I stepped away from him.

  “I will be back.” His voice was husky. He opened the door and slid behind the wheel. “After all,” he said, “I really want to see how the poodle cut grows out.”

  Before I could kick the car, he was gone.

  Author’s Note

  If you, dear reader, wonder why Dirk isn’t always consistent with certain ghostly rules, I can only say, in Peggy’s words to Karaline: “What do you mean why not? How would I know why not? I have a ghost in my house and a shawl that’s almost seven hundred years old. First you couldn’t see him and now you can; I’m in a neck brace because I ran into a garbage truck for crying out loud, and you’re asking me to explain the rules?”

  Looking for more?

  Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.

  Discover your next great read!