by Amy M. Reade
We walked back to my flat hand-in-hand, smiling for all the world to see. Sylvie knew the moment we walked through the front door.
“You decided to stay.” It was a statement, not a question. A huge smile spread across her face.
“Yes,” I said, squeezing James’s hand. “Ellie and I are going to stay in Edinburgh.”
“Does Ellie know?”
“Not yet. We’re going to tell her now.”
“She’s taking a nap. Can I be there when you tell her?”
“Of course!”
She ran into her bedroom and dragged Seamus back into the living room. “What’s going on?” he grumped.
“Tell him,” Sylvie directed me.
“Ellie and I are staying in Edinburgh,” I told him.
A smile to rival Sylvie’s lit up his face. He threw back his head and started laughing. “I knew it! I knew you’d stay!”
“This calls for a dram,” James said.
Seamus went to the cupboard. He took down four whisky glasses, poured a generous measure of the golden liquid into each one, and passed them around. We stood in a small circle in the kitchen, the late afternoon sun streaming through the window and the scent of Seamus’s herb garden perfuming the air.
“A h-uile la sona dhuibh ’s gun la idir dona dhuibh!” Seamus cried.
We all repeated the toast and clinked our glasses together.
It was a wonderful memory to carry with me in the terrifying hours that followed.
CHAPTER 25
I couldn’t wait for Ellie to wake up to share my decision with her. I went into the bedroom and shook her shoulder gently. “Ellie,” I whispered, “James and Seamus and Aunt Sylvie are out in the living room waiting for you. We want to tell you about some exciting news.”
She sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes. She brushed a strand of hair from her eye as she sleepily asked, “What is it?”
“We’ll tell you when you come out to the living room,” I teased.
She took my hand, and we went down the hallway together. James, Sylvie, and Seamus stood facing us, smiling. “Ellie,” I said, kneeling down so I could look her in the eye, “I’ve decided we should live in Edinburgh. What do you think? Should we make this our home?”
She was still groggy, but the fog was lifting and her eyes widened. “We’re staying here? With my friends? And with Aunt Sylvie and Seamus and James?”
I nodded.
“Yay!” she yelled, twirling around the room and hugging everyone. The joy in our living room was palpable. Ellie’s happy shouts echoed off the old walls and through the open windows, announcing her excitement to everyone outside. She had endless questions.
“Can I go to school now?”
“Are we going to live in Bide-A-Wee?”
“Are Aunt Sylvie and Seamus going to keep living with us?”
“Is James going to live with us, too?”
That last question made me blush. James and I hadn’t discussed marriage, but the thought hadn’t been far from my mind lately, and if I knew James, he had given it much thought, too.
“Maybe someday,” I answered, looking at James. He winked.
“This calls for a dinner celebration,” Seamus boomed.
“Let’s go out,” I suggested. “Seamus, I want you to have a night off. We’re going to let someone else do the cooking for once.”
He smiled. “You know I’d be happy to cook on this braw occasion, but it would be nice to enjoy a meal out to celebrate.”
“Then it’s settled.” While Sylvie and Seamus changed their clothes, James, Ellie, and I waited for them in the garden. The light bathed the trees in a golden glow, amplifying our happiness, promising the life we might enjoy together in the near future.
When Sylvie and Seamus joined us, we set out to walk to a restaurant nearby. I was so lost in my own happiness that I didn’t see the person watching us from across the street.
Ellie walked between James and me, holding both our hands. “Mum,” she said, “when I was taking a nap, I thought of the name of the person who visited Daddy in his flat.”
James and I stopped so quickly that Sylvie and Seamus walked right into us. “What’s wrong?” Sylvie asked.
“Nothing,” I said breezily. “Just tripped on a crack in the sidewalk.” I didn’t want to alarm Ellie. “Sorry about that,” I mumbled to her. “What were you saying, Ellie?”
“I said, I remember the name of the lady who visited Daddy at his flat.”
“Oh? What was her name?” I had to fight to keep my voice nonchalant.
“He called her ‘Bee.’ Isn’t that a funny name for a person? Bee?” She laughed.
Beatrice.
Neill told me once, long ago, that he had called his sister “Bee” as a child.
There was no girlfriend. Beatrice had visited Neill.
Over Ellie’s head, James gave me a stunned look. I shook my head slightly, hoping he would realize I didn’t want to discuss Beatrice right now.
“Is Bee who I think it is?” Sylvie whispered, pulling on my arm so I would turn around.
I nodded, my movements tight. I knew my silence would make her stop talking.
“Who’s Bee?” Ellie asked.
“Just a lady I used to know,” I replied. “She’s not very nice.” I squeezed Ellie’s hand. After Neill’s family had sent me to a mental institution, Ellie never saw them again. He hadn’t taken her to see them in the summers, and apparently he hadn’t kept pictures of them on display in his apartment back in the States. Otherwise, Ellie would have realized “Bee” was really her aunt.
Much to my relief and surprise, Ellie dropped the subject. She seemed more interested in getting dessert if she ate a good dinner, asking a hundred questions about chocolate cake and ice cream.
We were seated quickly at the restaurant, and I excused myself to go to the restroom.
I was washing my hands when the door opened. I looked up in the mirror and gasped.
Beatrice stood there, just a few feet from me. She stared at me with unmistakable hatred and malice, her mouth in a grim line and her black eyes flashing.
“Come with me,” she said. I considered sprinting past her, but she was holding a razor blade. It gleamed at the end of an artist’s tool in her fist.
“What do you want?”
“Money, you nutter. Money. The thousand wasn’t enough, as if you didn’t know.”
“You have the money I gave to Neill?”
“It was for me anyway. He was just going to give it to me. I need the extra nine thousand pounds.” She gestured at me with the blade.
I glanced in both directions, hoping we weren’t alone in the bathroom, but I didn’t see any feet under the stalls. My mind frantically searched for a way out of the situation. I almost screamed, but when she pushed the blade closer to my face I thought better of it. I tried talking to her instead.
“Were you there the night Neill was killed?”
“Who do you think did it?” she asked, her eyes glittering. She ran her finger along the razor blade almost lovingly. “I forgot this at home, so I hit him with the next best thing, a hunk of cement lying in that alley. Hit him pretty hard.”
Beatrice killed Neill? Had I unknowingly caught a glimpse of her? Had she been the one in my nightmare, the one standing in the alley as Neill breathed his last?
“We’ll be miles from here before your bairn even knows you’re gone.” She jerked her head toward the bathroom door and held the razor blade in front of her.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Wrong. We’re going to the bank. Now get going.”
“How much do you need? I don’t have nine thousand pounds.”
“Should I get your boyfriend?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t drag James into this. “I’ll go with you.”
She opened the bathroom door and propelled me toward the back of the restaurant, out of view of the othe
r patrons. There was a door propped open, and I could see the alley beyond. Looking around furtively, she pushed me into the shadowy alley. I had hoped someone from the restaurant staff would be outside taking a break, but there was no one in sight.
As we turned onto the sidewalk, she got behind me on my left, where she could keep the razor blade centimeters from me while hiding it in her palm.
“Which bank?” I asked.
“Shut up. I’ll tell you when we get there.”
My mind was working furiously. How was I going to get out of this? What would happen when we got to the cash machine and she realized I could only withdraw five hundred pounds? Would she kill me out of pure frustration? My heart was thumping so hard, I was sure she could hear it.
We were walking briskly away from the more populated area of Old Town Edinburgh. The wind had kicked up, and leaves and fallen flower petals swirled around our feet. Lights were coming on behind the blinds in the flats we passed, but those flats were getting fewer and farther between. We were entering a more commercial part of town, a more desolate and empty area. Businesses here had closed for the day, their windows like wide eyes behind bars and padlocks.
We kept walking, Beatrice poking me in the back every few steps so I would keep moving quickly. I had turned my mobile to vibrate before we left the flat, and Beatrice hadn’t thought to take it away from me. I could feel it vibrating incessantly in my pocket—by now, everyone knew that I was gone. I longed to answer the phone, but Beatrice made me keep my hands where she could see them. I didn’t dare risk reaching for the mobile with the razor blade so close to my skin.
Eventually we slowed down. Beatrice seemed to be looking around for something. We turned a corner and started down one street, then Beatrice decided to go back and go another way.
The wind caught at my clothes, making me shiver. Presently we arrived at a store with a money machine beside it. The lights over the cash machine flickered, giving the immediate area a spooky, strobe-like effect. Two shady-looking people loitered across the street. I would have no choice but to punch in my PIN.
Beatrice prodded my back, then moved in even closer, holding the razor blade next to my ear. Her eyes darted from side to side, birdlike.
She grabbed my purse and rifled through it until she found my wallet, which she drew out with a triumphant, thin-lipped smile. “Now get out your card and punch in the PIN,” she hissed.
My mind went blank out of sheer fear and I couldn’t remember the PIN. She jabbed me in the back with the handle of the razor blade.
“Hurry up!”
“I can’t remember the PIN. I’m trying.”
“Liar!” She pushed the handle harder against my ribs, which still hurt.
Finally, the number came to me. I punched in the code, and my account sprang to life on the screen in front of us. I hit the “Get Balance” button, and the full amount of my savings appeared.
“That’s not enough!” Beatrice said through gritted teeth. “Open your boyfriend’s account.”
“I don’t have a card for his account. I don’t know his account number or his PIN or anything. It doesn’t matter anyway, Beatrice. We’re only allowed to withdraw five hundred pounds a day.”
“If you only knew how close you are to bleeding out…” She trailed off. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Call him. I’ll talk to him,” she seethed.
I dialed James’s mobile with clumsy, shaking fingers. He answered before the end of the first ring.
“Greer? Where are you? Are you all right?”
I was about to speak when Beatrice grabbed the phone. She gave him the address of the cash machine and told him to meet us in thirty minutes. She told him she’d kill me if he brought the police. She punched the button to end the call and jerked her head around, looking up and down the block. The two people across the street still stood there, watching us. Beatrice steered me toward a dark doorway not far from the cash machine, out of sight of the only people who had seen us.
“James can’t take out that much money, either,” I said.
“Shut up.”
“Why do you need money?”
“Do you ever stop talking?”
“You might as well tell me.”
“Neill owed me money for some work I did for him.”
“What kind of work?”
“You’re the nosiest person I ever knew. No wonder Mum can’t stand you.”
I ignored that. “What kind of work?” I repeated.
“Just shut up, will you?”
We stood in silence. I was afraid to ask any more questions for fear Beatrice would use the razor blade on me. After almost thirty minutes, we left our hiding place in the doorway and walked back to the cash machine. There were three people across the street now, all smoking and talking quietly, and I debated whether I should call out to them for help. But I dared not. The blade was pushing into my back, and it would only take a flick of Beatrice’s wrist to slice me to ribbons.
A cab drove by and stopped a few meters beyond the cash machine. James jumped out of the back and hurried over to us.
“Put your card in the machine and withdraw everything in your account,” Beatrice ordered.
“I can only give you five hundred pounds,” he said, looking at me.
“Quit looking at her and do what I said!” Beatrice hissed. James inserted his card, and the screen appeared prompting him to enter his PIN. He pushed four buttons, and his account opened on the screen. Beatrice leaned over to look at the balance.
“Take out all you can. Now.”
She looked around frantically while James pushed the necessary buttons. James took the money from the bottom of the machine and reached out to hand it to Beatrice. When she tried to grab it from him, though, he let the money go, launching it into the wind that howled around us. Beatrice let out a primal scream. She dropped the razor blade and lunged for the bills that floated around our heads.
James knelt down on the sidewalk, as if he were trying to help her retrieve the money. I was incredulous.
“James, let’s get out of here!” I yelled. Beatrice looked up and grabbed at her blade, but James had retrieved it.
Steps pounded from across the street. I looked up to see one of the strangers running full tilt toward us. He dashed up to Beatrice with his long strides, reaching down and yanking her up to a standing position. In the pulsing light from the cash machine, I could see his police badge. Beatrice squirmed in his grip for a moment, but then seemed to change her mind. She hung her head and stood sullenly still.
Other police officers spilled out of the shadows and converged on Beatrice. James had called them, he said, right after he talked to Beatrice on the phone.
“She didn’t strike me as particularly bright,” he told me with a wan smile, “so I took a chance that she wouldn’t even realize I had called the police. I hope you don’t mind, seeing that she threatened to kill you if I called them.”
“How could I possibly mind? You’re the reason I’m still alive,” I said as he put his arms around me and smoothed my hair. I was shaking. He held me until I could breathe again.
After we gave our statements to the police, one of the constables drove us back to the flat. Sylvie and Seamus had, once again, come to the rescue and looked after Ellie while I was missing. She had gone to bed, they said, after they told her I had to help a student who needed me.
They wanted all the details, but they would have to wait. I did tell them, though, that Beatrice was the one who killed Neill, so they wouldn’t worry about a killer running loose on the streets of Edinburgh.
What I needed was a shower and a long night’s sleep. I promised to tell them the story the next day. Before crawling into bed, I checked on Ellie, who was fast asleep. As I stroked her face, it hit me that all the dangers that had plagued us for months were gone. Really, truly gone now. Neill was dead. Beatrice, Gerard, and Arnie would never bother us again, I was
sure of that. It was now time to start living again in the open, not worrying about who might be following us or whether Neill’s killer had been caught. I could take Ellie to St. Giles and show her the magnificent kirk without fear of being attacked.
I slept well that night.
The next morning, the phone woke me up. It was one of the police officers who had been at the scene last night. He told me that Beatrice had confessed to everything. It was quite a story.
That night, James came over for dinner. After Ellie went to bed, we took turns telling Sylvie and Seamus everything that had happened. Was it only yesterday? It felt like a year had passed since then.
“So why did Beatrice need the money?” Seamus asked.
“That’s where it gets interesting,” I replied. “It turns out Neill owed money to Arnie and Beatrice.”
“Why did he owe money to Beatrice?”
“He owed her money for artwork she had done for him.”
“Artwork?” Sylvie sounded surprised.
“Yes. She had copied a painting for him. The McTaggart hanging in her parents’ house. She was faking artwork, and her paintings would be sold as originals.”
“She was forging artwork?” James was incredulous.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard,” I said. “But then it all clicked. When I was in the Gramercys’ house, the McTaggart was hanging over the mantel. It had always been in the room on the third floor because Janet and Alistair thought someone would steal it. The painting was in pristine condition, but the frame was covered in dust and had fresh fingerprints on it.”
“So the forged painting was hanging over the mantel?” James asked.
“Right. Neill had somehow convinced Janet and Alistair to move the real painting to its spot above the mantel. Once it was there, he was easily able to switch the real painting for Beatrice’s fake. Apparently Janet and Alistair never even realized their painting had been switched.”
“So Neill was going to sell the real McTaggart?” Sylvie asked.
“Yes. He already had a potential buyer. He was going to use the money from the sale to pay his gambling debts, but then he owed money to Beatrice, too, for the fake she painted.”