Legacy of the Highlands

by Harriet Schultz

  Alex continued to stare at her husband’s lifeless form. Finally, she gently cradled his face and kissed his forehead, his eyelids and then his lips. She lingered there before she abruptly straightened her shoulders, turned, and resolutely walked away.

  “I thought...I thought...that...that…if I didn’t see it, it couldn’t be real. That’s not so strange, is it?” she stammered before her throat closed again. With a lifetime of Catholic guilt, she assumed that God had taken her thirty-four-year-old husband from her as punishment for some transgression. What mortal sin had she committed to deserve this damnation? Wasn’t it enough that He’d already stolen both of her parents? Now the greedy bastard had to have her husband too? Was her love somehow toxic, carrying with it a sentence of death?

  Chapter 2

  No matter how hard Alex tried to keep her brain enveloped in a shroud of protective mist, investigators continued to mine her memory for potential clues in the days following Will’s murder. “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill Mr. Cameron? Did he have any enemies? Was he having an affair? Money troubles? Was he a gambler? How about his family or business associates?”

  She was tempted to scream, “He’s dead because of me! I wanted some fucking ice cream and he was in a hurry to get back so we could continue to screw our brains out. And I told him about the shortcut through that goddamn alley. That’s why he’s dead.” She wished for a do-over with the same determination she’d had since she’d been a little girl in her attempt to get it, whatever “it” was, right, but death didn’t come with do-overs.

  “Why don’t they just shut up and go away?” she asked Francie’s husband, David, as she stalked out of the living room after yet another round of questions. “They’re never going to find the murderer anyway.”

  No witnesses had come forward, although the attack occurred steps away from a street filled with trendy restaurants, sidewalk cafes and designer shops. The police knew that Will had never reached the store. No ice cream container was found at the scene and the convenience store’s security camera confirmed that he’d never arrived there. “We’ve ruled out robbery as a motive because your husband’s wallet, watch and wedding ring were untouched. Whoever did this either got spooked and ran before he could take anything, or wanted us to know the killing was deliberate,” Detective O’Shea told her. She begged the cop to give her Will’s ring and sobbed in frustration when she was told it was being held as evidence.

  The only clue to what was starting to seem like the perfect crime was the Scottish dagger, a sgian dubh — Gaelic for “black knife,” — found beside Will’s body. Kilted Scots traditionally tuck a sgian dubh in one of their heavy socks. Legend has it that once the knife is drawn, it must taste blood before it’s returned to its sheath, but forensics quickly ruled out this particular knife as the murder weapon. Investigators theorized that the dagger was left as a signature, although a search of international crime databases turned up no murders with the same distinctive marker. The knife itself was the kind that could be found in any shop that sold Scottish souvenirs so there was little chance it could be traced back to its source. But as the only clue, police doggedly pursued it.

  “What was your husband’s connection to Scotland?”

  “We spent a week there as tourists last year,” Alex answered in a monotone as she nervously picked at a hangnail. She’d already bitten her nails to stubs, a habit she’d broken as a teenager. The compulsion to do something with her hands was overwhelming and she’d started to crave cigarettes, another habit she’d fought with Will’s help. But he was gone so what did it matter? Maybe she could bum a smoke from one of the ever-present cops.

  “Why did the two of you go to Scotland? What did you do? Who did you meet? Was it your husband’s idea or yours?”

  She thought they must be really desperate to try to connect Will’s murder to an eventless vacation, but she had no strength to argue and there was that dagger to consider. “We’d spent some time visiting friends in London and on a whim decided to drive up to the Highlands since neither of us had ever been. Will likes — liked — single malt so we stopped at a couple of whiskey distilleries, went to Loch Ness...we didn’t see the monster, “ she added sarcastically, “hiked up to the castle in Edinburgh and spent a few days in Inverness. It rained a lot.”

  “Was there anything, anything at all Mrs. Cameron, that seemed odd or unusual during your visit?”

  “No, nothing. I’ve already told you that Will was excited to discover that Cameron is a Scottish clan name. He bought a few souvenirs. Other than that, it was just a chance for us to get away together.”

  “Are they ever going to stop asking me about Scotland?” Alex groaned in frustration to Francie after yet another round of questions. “Millions of people visit the damn country and none of them end up murdered because of a stupid vacation.”

  In a brick townhouse on Beacon Hill’s ultra-exclusive Louisburg Square, Will’s mother, Anne Cameron, raged at her husband, John.

  “You should have warned him! Goddamn it to hell, John, you and your asinine Scottish ancestors. Why didn’t you tell him?” she shrieked, hurling the words like razor-sharp spears. Angry red splotches marred her carefully tended porcelain skin and her voice cracked as her airway tightened with grief.

  “Anne, Anne,” John Cameron whispered, his own tears blending with hers as he tried to console this woman who he loved desperately, to somehow ease his own grief by comforting her. Repulsed, she shoved him away, her delicate features contorted by anguished fury.

  “Please listen to me, Anne. What do I have to do to make you believe me? Tell me and I’ll do it,” he begged with growing exasperation. He turned his back to her as he propped his hands against the wall, leaned into it and lowered his head. When he spoke again, his tone was calmer. “Don’t you know that I would have done anything…anything, if I had the slightest suspicion that there was danger? I would never have left Will defenseless. He was our child, I’ve lost my son too.”

  “You had a choice! But no, you had to continue your cursed father’s quest for Scottish independence and turn a blind eye to the risk of being involved with those blasted tartan terrorists. Tell me, John, how could an intelligent man be so stupid?” Anne couldn’t even look at the man she’d once loved. The moment they’d been told that a Scottish dagger was found next to Will’s body, a white-hot poker tore through her gut. “You have to go to the police and tell them everything.”

  “You know I can’t do that.” John collapsed into a chair, braced his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in his palms. He didn’t look up when his wife said in a voice softer than a whisper, “I’m just as guilty as you. If only I’d been strong enough to stop you or to warn Will to be careful. And now I’m too frightened to turn you in.”

  Only an occasional sob broke the hushed silence as each parent dealt with unfathomable sorrow alone. Anne curled her lean body into a ball on their bed and gazed at the logs that blazed in the marble-framed fireplace of their opulent bedroom. She tugged a thick down comforter around her shoulders, but it did nothing to thaw the block of ice where her heart used to be. Blind fury was a new emotion for Anne, and she aimed it directly at her husband and the blood feuds that Scots continued for centuries.

  She glanced at the man she’d been married to for thirty-five years, her blue eyes hard as the cobalt they resembled. The cold, deadly malice in her voice shook him.

  “You’re a fool, John Cameron. My only comfort is knowing that you will burn in the fires of hell for all eternity and that your black soul and our angel son’s will never meet.”

  Chapter 3

  Hours after Will Cameron’s murder, four men sat around a scarred wooden table in a seedy Gloucester, Massachusetts, bar that reeked of stale beer and cigarettes. No one in this historic seaport at the tip of Cape Ann, north of Boston, would take note of what seemed to be a group of fishermen out to hoist a late-night beer or three. Their clothing and behavior were unremarkable; their faces bore
the weathered complexions of men most at home on the sea.

  “So, Jamie lad, is it done?” the oldest of the four asked as he leaned across the table toward a tall, burly young man a year or two out of his teens whose dark eyes flashed like an excited child’s after braving a roller coaster for the first time.

  “It is, sir.” His pimply face flushed as he made an effort not to smile. He was pleased with himself. After months of training, planning, waiting and several missed opportunities, he’d completed the task and earned the respect of his accomplices. His mind, relieved of anxiety, wandered. At first he thought it odd that the stunning relief he’d felt as he watched the life drain from Will Cameron’s body reminded him of the release of orgasm. But then he’d remembered the phrase taught to him by the French whore who’d ended his innocence, le petit mort — the mindless limbo at the moment of sexual release — and he understood.

  “Well then, that’s good.” The older man’s slow and deliberate words yanked Jamie back to the present. The man’s speech was laced with a slight accent — Irish? Scots? English? Or something else?

  “And the camera? You remembered to use it lad? You weren’t tempted to take some of his valuables as a souvenir, were you? This must not look like some ordinary robbery,” one of the other men whispered in a voice made hoarse by years of smoke. He nervously stubbed out another cigarette in the overloaded ashtray.

  “I did as I was instructed,” Jamie said through clenched teeth as he shoved his empty beer bottle into those crowding the middle of the table with enough force to topple half of them. “As for the camera, see for yourselves.” He removed a tiny digital camera from his pocket and slid it across the table.

  Business concluded, the men relaxed and clinked their bottles in a final toast to a job well done. They’d be paid handsomely for helping this young man lose his virginity, in a manner of speaking. The gory photos of Will Cameron lying in a pool of blood provided all the proof the others would demand. They lingered for a few minutes more, chatting quietly, before setting out into the inky darkness to disperse like wraiths into the chill, foggy night. To anyone watching, it would seem that they were headed for their individual homes and their beds.

  The older man’s footsteps echoed as he made his way from the bar toward the end of a nearby deserted wharf, satisfied that from there he’d be able to see or hear anyone approach. He stuck his hand in his pocket once more to reassure himself that the camera’s proof of Jamie’s success was still there. Then he flipped open his cell phone. He hoped that the pea-soup fog that rendered him virtually invisible wouldn’t distort the phone’s signal. When the connection was made to another phone a continent away, he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

  “Tell me,” said the faraway voice. It was a command, not a request.

  “’Tis done, and done well.” He’d never doubted that they would be successful. Betrayal always came with a price, after all, and John Cameron’s treachery carried with it a sentence of death. Not his, mind, but that of his blood so that his time on earth would be a living hell. First his son, and then…

  “And the woman? What of her?” the far-off voice interrupted the man’s momentary reverie. “Cameron’s punishment is to see the death of his line. If this son of his planted his seed before you got to him, the woman must die too.”

  “Agreed, but we have to be sure she is with child before we act. We don’t want more blood, especially a woman’s, on our...” He didn’t complete the sentence. “Someone’s coming,” he muttered as his heart began to pound. He quickly stuffed the phone in the pocket of his yellow slicker and wrapped his damp fingers around the handle of a razor-sharp dagger. He pasted the merry expression of the truly drunk on his face and staggered toward the sound of approaching footsteps, his path illuminated by the beam of a flashlight that blinded him as it was raised to his face.

  “Evening,” said a uniformed cop. “Not exactly a great night for a stroll, eh?”

  “Good evening to you, officer. Ah, Christ, I had a bit too much and wanted to walk it off before heading home.” He slurred his words and smiled engagingly, showing teeth that would make a dentist grimace. “Wouldn’t want the old lady to take a frying pan to me head now, would I?”

  “Ah,” said the officer with understanding as he returned the smile. “No, we wouldn’t want that. Can I give you a lift?” The bars wouldn’t close for an hour yet and the area around the docks was quiet. He didn’t want the man to topple into the frigid water or be tempted to get behind the wheel of a car.

  “That’s kind of you officer, but there’s no need. It’s an easy walk.” He wished that the cop would stop blathering and leave him alone. Why do Americans have to be so damn friendly, he thought with disgust, as he struggled to maintain a foolish grin when he really wanted to snarl. Was he going to have to kill this cop who seemed to be memorizing his features? It would be easy enough to slash the whoreson’s throat, but such an act would bring on a world of troubles. Besides, he was certain that a dim-witted, small town cop in Gloucester would never connect a boozed up fisherman to a murder in Boston.

  “Well, take it easy on the drink,” the cop finally responded. “I hope your wife doesn’t give you too much trouble.”

  “It won’t be the first time. And a good night to you, sir,” he said and began to walk back toward the town. As he increased the distance between himself and the law, he gradually relaxed his grip on the knife.

  Chapter 4

  The day of Will Cameron’s funeral should have been bleak, complete with lightning, thunder and howling wind, but it was one of those impossibly brilliant, early spring days that are greeted with joy after a long, dreary New England winter. The bright sun, however, provided little warmth and Alex shivered, as much from frayed nerves as the air’s chill. She shaded her eyes to gaze with disgust at the news helicopter that whirred overhead. They were like buzzards circling a carcass, but she knew that the media loves tragedy, especially when it involves high-profile pillars of Boston society like the Camerons.

  Will’s flower-covered mahogany coffin rested above the grave after its slow trip in the hearse from church. As it was lowered into the ground, Alex had a clear vision of her heart being ripped from her chest. She felt the urge to scream at the top of her lungs, but stifled the impulse by focusing on the aching finger she was deliberately strangling with her rosary beads.

  Francie’s husband kept his arm wrapped around Alex’s waist as if he expected her body to slump to the ground. She was oblivious to the sea of black-clad friends, family, colleagues and curiosity seekers who crowded around the grave until she noticed the strikingly handsome man standing some distance from the throng. Diego Navarro. He was dressed in perfectly tailored black, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, his body somehow tightly coiled and lithe at the same time. He has some nerve to show up here, Alex thought, as he raised one finger to lower the dark-tinted barrier between them and her eyes met his for an instant.

  The gaze of the man who had once been Will’s dearest friend never strayed from the young widow. He’d expected Alex to be devastated, but her pallor and weight loss alarmed him. Every protective instinct he had prodded him to pull her into his arms and shield her from further hurt, but he knew that was impossible. After his fight with Will, they’d severed all ties to each other except for a few business interests. That was why Will had been examining the plans for Diego’s latest project the day of his death. He wasn’t even sure if he should be here now, but how could he stay away? Will was his brother. And Alex? He’d acknowledged long ago that his feelings for her had never been brotherly.

  “Did you see Diego? He’s over there,” Alex whispered to Francie as she tilted her head in his direction.

  “My fault. I thought you would want him here…for old time’s sake, so I called him. He’s pretty broken up…”

  “I can see that,” Alex murmured, then turned her attention back to Will’s open grave as the priest intoned, “Oh God, we commend to you the soul
of your servant William Matthew Cameron, that he be received by your holy angels in Paradise and have joy everlasting through Christ our Lord. Amen.” A final sprinkle of holy water and it was over. Alex bent to pick up a handful of loose earth and held it tightly for a few moments then brought it to her lips before tossing it into the deep hole where Will would rest for eternity.

  “My child,” the priest began as he walked toward her, his outstretched hands pale and trembling, milky blue eyes gentle with concern, but she turned her back to him and walked away. She had nothing to say to the priest. Why should she be on good terms with the God he represented, a cruel deity who’d abruptly snatched Will away from his future, their future? She didn’t want to hear that it was God’s will or that her husband had gone home to be with Jesus. Bullshit! It was all bullshit. They could all go to hell and take their greedy God with them. She had no use for Him. He’d taken her parents and now Will. She felt abandoned, alone and very afraid.

  Anne and John Cameron were stunned by their daughter-in-law’s snub of the family priest and quickly placed themselves between her and Father Scanlon. “Screw them,” Alex whispered to Francie and David as she glared at the senior Camerons. “ I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore, especially those two uptight people. They have as little use for me as I do for them.” Over the years they’d made Alex very aware that they’d expected Will to marry some slack-jawed, prep-schooled debutante, not the daughter of an electrician. It was a relief that she wouldn’t have to try to win their affection ever again.

  Although their grief should have matched or exceeded hers, Alex saw no outward sign of it. Not a hair was out of place on the blonde head that Anne Cameron leaned toward the priest. Her eyes were dry, of course. Tears would ruin her perfect makeup. The only crack in Anne’s serene façade was the chalk-white color of the elegant fingers that held her Chanel bag in a death grip. Will’s father stood straight and silent beside her, his strongly boned face tanned as always, his expression vacant. His black hair was stippled with white near the temples, which only enhanced his good looks. He glanced toward Alex and allowed her to see a fleeting glimmer of excruciating pain in the gold-flecked hazel eyes that were so like Will’s before he abruptly looked away. Alex watched him reach for his wife’s hand, but Anne pushed his arm away and put more distance between them.