“You already knew Lovelace gave me the coin. Were you making sure I told you about it?”
“Inconsistencies can be very helpful when investigating a suspicious death,” Cameron said.
“A probable murder,” added Sawyer.
“Murder,” Jean repeated, smoothing her hackles. This interrogation was like a root canal. The more she cooperated, the faster it would be over. “Yes, he was murdered. It wasn’t an accident, that’s for sure, and it wasn’t suicide. He couldn’t have hauled himself up on one of those—those meat hooks, and there wasn’t a stool or bench or anything for him to have kicked over.”
“Very observant,” Sawyer said, unimpressed.
Cameron asked, “Were you thinking it was a suicide, then?”
“Not really. I just didn’t want to think I was stuck in a remote house with a murderer.”
“A murderer might have legged it into the hills before you arrived.”
“Or he could have driven away. I passed a sports car going hell-for-leather a few minutes before I got here.”
“Oh?” One of Cameron’s brows twitched but didn’t actually rise.
“I thought it might be Kieran MacSorley, assuming I heard his name right. And yes, I was eavesdropping, I defy anyone not to, in these circumstances. But I couldn’t swear it was his car, let alone him. If he’d—committed a crime—why turn around and come right back to the scene?”
“Because as a judge he’d have been concerned with a suspicious death.”
“Oh.” That made sense, Jean thought, although precious little else did.
“MacSorley identified Lovelace, but then, MacLyon did do as well. I gather he was a kenspeckle figure in these airts.”
“Conspicuous? Yeah, I can see that. A friend of mine, a musician who played at MacLyon’s Hogmanay party, told me someone fitting Lovelace’s description was here that night. Someone who got into an argument with a man who, again, might have been MacSorley. MacSorley senior, assuming the—the piper, Neil, is his son.”
She’d almost said the dishy Neil. But there was an adjective she’d save for a friendly chat, which this emphatically was not. Jean went on, “When Kieran MacSorley got here a little while ago, I heard him say, ‘Lovelace, that doddering old fool.’ Then MacLyon shut him up.”
“Who was telling you about the argument at Hogmanay?” asked Cameron.
“My neighbor in Edinburgh, Hugh Munro. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”
“Aye, I’ve heard of him, right enough.” His tone didn’t offer an opinion on either Hugh’s music or his politics. Over his shoulder he said, “Interview him about the Hogmanay party here, the row Lovelace had. Which ended. . . .”
Jean picked up on her prompt. “Hugh said Vanessa MacLyon broke it up.”
Sawyer pulled out a notebook and pen and either jotted down his instructions or worked up a couple more insults.
“Who’s your partner at Great Scot?” Cameron asked.
“Miranda Capaldi. The coin’s with Michael Campbell-Reid at the Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street.” Jean reached for her bag and pulled a couple of business cards from the side pocket. “Here, as long as you’re checking my bona fides.”
Cameron took one card and handed the other back to Sawyer without looking at either. The sergeant looked at his, though, long and hard, as though trying to read between the lines. “A PhD, eh?” He couldn’t have said a leper, eh? in surlier tones.
“Carry on, Sawyer,” Cameron told him.
The sergeant turned and walked out the door. For a moment Jean imagined herself walking out of the door, too, and then on into the night and away, free and clear. . . . But no. She wasn’t going anywhere.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cameron scanned the room, taking in the portraits, the paneling, and probably counting the nail holes. Then his x-ray eyes swung back to Jean. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, looking as though he was about to catapult from the chair.
His steady voice and steadier blue-gray eyes were getting to her—exactly as he intended, no doubt. Pretty soon she’d find herself confessing to something, anything, a parking ticket, maybe. But that would hardly deflect his attention. He’d only go on to other prey if she were innocent and/or no longer useful as a witness. And that would be his decision, not hers.
She tried leaning back into the cool embrace of the leather couch, putting a few more inches of space between her and her inquisitor. “Where are you from, Chief Inspector?”
“Sorry?”
“I’m trying to place your accent. It’s not Glasgow.” A Glasgow accent sounded like a cat hacking up something between a hairball and a glottal stop. Cameron’s voice was strewn with thistles, not hairballs.
“I was born and raised in Fort William.”
“Is that why they assigned you to this case, because you know the area? Or did you just come here as part of the—they call it a cascade, don’t they, when everyone’s mobilized to investigate a suspicious death?”
“I’m asking the questions, Miss Fairbairn.”
Her emotional antennae might have detected an edge of hostility, although not nearly as much as she’d detected from Sawyer. She couldn’t allow herself to get punch-drunk. “Sorry. Go on.”
“Trace your steps for me. You came away from Edinburgh this morning?”
“Yes. I stopped in Callander for lunch. Then I stopped in Fort William and tried to call Lovelace. I stopped at the commando memorial and tried again. It was too late to go see him then, but I thought I could set something up for later. No one answered the phone then, either, so I came on out here.”
“You hadn’t told him you’d be phoning him today? You didn’t plan on seeing him?”
Jean ignored the implication, the reminder of the cryptic “Two p.m. Tuesday” on the back of the receipt. “No. When Lovelace left my office yesterday I knew he was telling me only part of the story, but I didn’t know yet that he was using me.”
“And?”
“It wasn’t until my partner suggested I interview Rick MacLyon while I was in the area that I wondered whether Lovelace found the coin on MacLyon’s property. Although how he thought sending me off to the Museum would protect him from the legal implications of that, I have no idea.”
“Did the woman on the telephone mention the coin at all?”
“No. She just said I shouldn’t do whatever Lovelace wanted me to do.”
“Was her voice distinctive at all? Did you hear anything in the background?”
“I thought I heard a man’s voice in the background, very briefly. As for the woman, she had an American accent but spoke in British syntax, saying ‘leave it,’ for example, instead of ‘let it alone.’”
“Why didn’t you leave it, then?” Cameron asked.
“Because, Chief Inspector, all it takes to make me very curious is to tell me not to ask questions.”
He actually did smile at that, a quick crinkle passing from one corner of his mouth along his lips and vanishing off the other corner so quickly she almost missed it. Whether he was smiling with her or at her she was fast ceasing to care.
“You passed a sports car on the road? Where?” he went on.
“Along the Dark Mile, beneath the trees. It went by awfully fast, but I thought it was a light-colored sports car. Then, when Kieran MacSorley turned up in a silver sports car a little while ago I—well, I didn’t actually put two and two together. I made an assumption.”
“Who else was in the house when you arrived?”
“I have no way of knowing. The housekeeper, Fiona Robertson, opened the door. . . .” For just an instant Cameron’s eyes widened and went out of focus. He’d recognized the name. “I take it Fiona didn’t answer the door when you got here?”
With an infinitesimal shake of the head Cameron threw away the distracting thought. “MacLyon’s security guard, Toby Walsh, saw us inside.”
“I didn’t know MacLyon had a security guard. I’m not surprised, though. Is he Scottish?”
/> “That he is. Why?”
“I thought one of the voices I heard was Neil’s, but it could have been Toby Walsh’s. No big deal.”
The set of Cameron’s shoulders indicated his thought: Let me be the judge of that. “Who did you actually see, then?”
“Fiona answered the door, showed me in here, and asked if I wanted some tea. I waited a little while, then went looking for the loo. I found Lovelace. I ran back along the hall toward the entrance. Fiona was coming this way with a tea tray. I told her and she went to tell MacLyon. He was entertaining a private party—I saw their bus in the parking lot. He gave them the bum’s rush, more or less. . . .”
“Sorry?”
“He sent them away in a hurry.”
“Do you know who they were?”
“No. But the way they were fawning over MacLyon and wearing tartan bits and pieces I put them down as tourists rather than local people. I thought maybe they were having a memorial service, I heard them singing what sounded like a hymn. It could have been anything from ‘Will Ye No Come Back Again’ to ‘God Save the Queen,’ actually, but that was right when I found the—when I found Lovelace, so I didn’t really notice. Especially with the piper playing, too.”
Cameron watched her, waiting.
She was trying to help, darn it. “The bus—the coach—was one of those purple ones with the heather design on the side. Highland Holidays.”
“We’ll find them. A pity MacLyon saw them off so quickly.”
“Yes, I thought so, too.”
“Did you, now?”
“I can’t help thinking over the situation, Chief Inspector.”
She expected him to ask, Just as you can’t help eavesdropping? but he said only, “Did you talk to MacLyon at all?”
“He came in here and talked about genealogy for a couple of minutes. Then his cell phone rang. It was his wife, I gathered, she’d just heard about Lovelace. So he left.”
“She was away, was she?”
“No, I think she was upstairs. At least, a little while later I heard an American woman’s voice upstairs.”
“The one who phoned you and told you to cry off?”
“It could have been. I don’t know.”
“If Lovelace died at two, he was killed just as you arrived. An hour early. Unexpectedly. But you didn’t see or hear a thing.” His voice was edged with either disappointment or criticism.
Well, she’d sensed a ghost. But Cameron was already skeptical without her telling him that. Jean clenched her hands in her lap. “I came close to walking in on a murder in progress, yes. But I didn’t. I didn’t even see anyone in the back hall. Maybe I heard footsteps, although that doesn’t prove anything.”
“No, it doesn’t. Did you take notice of anything else?”
“Well, the first thing MacLyon said to me when he got everybody out the door was, ‘What’s this about a body in the game larder?’ even though I don’t think I said anything to Fiona about the game larder.”
Cameron’s eyes flicked away, then flicked back again. She’d thought that was an important point but he seemed to dismiss it. “And you’ve been sitting here ‘til now?”
“I walked across the entry hall and glanced into the drawing room. That’s when I overheard the woman’s voice upstairs. And I ran into Neil MacSorley in the back hall. I didn’t see the guard, Toby, at all. I’ve been in here the rest of the time, yes.”
“Right,” said Cameron.
Jean concluded, “I don’t know why anyone would kill Lovelace.”
“Gold, there’s a motive for you. One of the best.”
“It sure is.” She leaned forward. “So just how prime a suspect am I, Chief Inspector?”
“If you’d killed the man yourself you’d hardly have called attention to it, would you? On the other hand. . . .” Ducking her gaze, he looked down at his hands clasped between his knees, hands that looked just as capable of laying bricks as writing up reports. “. . . well, we’ll be making further inquiries.”
“While you’re checking up on me, ask yourself why I’d kill Lovelace before I’d talked to him. Before he told me anything more about the gold coin. Before I could find out why he was jerking me around.”
“Who said you hadn’t yet talked to him?” Cameron asked, very mildly, but there was no mistaking the menace in his voice. Before Jean could respond with an emphatic I did! he looked back up at her. The look was a slap across the face, like a duelist issuing a challenge. But all he said was, “Where are you stopping for the night?”
Getting her feelings hurt would just make things worse. She didn’t feel as though she were entitled to feelings, not under either the circumstances or Cameron’s eyes. “I have a room booked in Fort William, at the Mountain View Hotel.”
“Good. Then you’ll be calling in at the police station tomorrow for another interview. Two o’clock.”
Again, he wasn’t asking. “Two o’clock. I’ll be there.”
“Gunn?”
Oh yeah, Gunn. Jean had forgotten he was sitting behind her, playing court reporter.
Appearing in her peripheral vision, he flipped back a few pages in his notebook and in a mild tenor voice started reading off what she’d said. If it wasn’t word for word, it was darn close. She was impressed. “Yeah, that’s just about the size of it.”
“Sign this, please.” He offered her the notebook and a pen.
Judging by the indecipherable handwriting that filled the last page, he’d developed his own method of shorthand. She’d always heard that most of a policeman’s job was paperwork, but then, she’d never had intimate contact with a policeman before. She couldn’t say she was enjoying the experience.
Jean signed her name and turned to Cameron, “If you’re—if we’re finished here. . . .”
Again the constable at the door stepped aside, this time admitting Rick MacLyon. Cameron rose to his feet. “Mr. MacLyon. . . .”
“Your guy Sawyer, he says your name is Cameron.”
“Detective Chief Inspector Alasdair Cameron.” He extended his hand.
MacLyon shook it heartily, with both of his. His voice ranged upward an octave. “Camerons are always welcome here at Glendessary House. Are you descended from the Lochiel, do you know? From his brother, the martyr Dr Archie? From Jenny’s first marriage?”
Jean could almost hear Cameron’s mind skidding. He extracted his hand from MacLyon’s eager paws. “Sorry?”
“Vanessa!” MacLyon called over his shoulder. “In here!”
The constable reeled back. Into the room stepped a woman who might just as well have been making her entrance onto a Hollywood sound stage. Her platinum-blond hair was meticulously arranged to give the impression she’d just rolled out of bed. Her green eyes—contacts, no doubt—matched the green blocks of her tartan skirt. While Jean had interpreted MacLyon’s and Neil’s kilts as business attire, Vanessa’s tartan skirt and the velvet jacket framing the bulge of her breasts were very much a costume. She wore it well, shoulders thrown back, one black pump thrust forward.
“May I present my wife, Vanessa MacLyon, nee MacDonald.” Her husband made a sweeping ta-da! gesture.
“Welcome to Glendessary House,” Vanessa said to Cameron, Gunn, and Jean. “I’m sorry we had to meet under such difficult circumstances.”
“Mrs. MacLyon,” said Cameron, stone-faced.
Jean forced a pinched smile. “Nice to meet you.”
Gunn stared.
“I assume your people will want to interview the staff?” Yes, Vanessa’s was the voice Jean had heard upstairs, now pitched low and polished for polite company. Whether it was the voice she’d heard on the telephone last night she couldn’t say.
“Oh aye,” Cameron said. “Everyone who’s been in the house today needs interviewing.”
“I’ll have Fiona send everyone in here in turn. Would you care for tea? Sandwiches? The cook is off today, but Fiona does nicely.”
“Thank you, Mrs. MacLyon. Tea would be lovely.”
> Vanessa turned and swept out of the room, all but pulling her skirts aside as she passed the constable. Jean felt as though she should applaud. Miranda could put on enough airs to inflate a balloon and still be her endearing self, but what Vanessa was putting on was an act. Maybe because airs came naturally to Miranda but Vanessa had to learn them?
When push came to shove, Jean told herself, I don’t care. Her curiosity had taken a hit. She felt disconnected from what passed for time and space and her usual mental processes, and wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole. “May I go now?” she asked Cameron.
His head turned toward her. She could get frostbite from those eyes. No, she hadn’t given him a single answer that he’d wanted. And she wasn’t going to. But that was his problem, not hers.
“Oh aye, away you go. Don’t forget, two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. The station’s on the High Street.”
“I’ll be there.” Jean gathered up her bag and her laptop and told MacLyon, “I’ll make another appointment for that interview.”
“Check with Fiona on the way out,” he said, and sat down in the chair, every bit laird of the castle and CEO. “Now, Inspector. As far as I can tell Lovelace sneaked into the house right before two this afternoon.”
“He did, did he?” asked Cameron. Gunn flipped to a new page in his notebook and flexed his writing hand.
“My security guard saw him walking up the driveway about ten ‘til,” MacLyon went on, “but no one admits to having let him into the house.”
He sneaked into the house? At ten before two? Sawyer was right, they did have a very small window for the murder. But why, but who. . . . Reminding herself that her curiosity was down for the count, Jean headed for the door. Where she shot one last glance back that intersected Cameron’s curious glance at her, one that asked, are you for real?
I think so, she thought, more weary than resentful, and walked headlong into something rubbery that reeked of aftershave. Kieran MacSorley. “Excuse me,” she said.
He nodded brusquely. “My fault, Madame.” His beady black eyes and bristling moustache said otherwise.
The Secret Portrait (A Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery Book 1) Page 7