The Secret Portrait (A Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery Book 1)

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Jean collapsed into the car, seething with new questions. So what was the big secret about the Lodge? Was that the story the ex-secretary tried to sell The Sunburn, before Rick paid to have it killed? If Kieran and Charlotte were members of Rick’s Lodge, why hadn’t they been at the meeting Tuesday? Surely Charlotte’s craving for social advancement would have overridden Vanessa’s territorial imperative.

  Jean pulled out her paper notebook and starting jotting down notes, quickly. That shape in the front window of the house, lighting a cigarette, was Kieran watching her prove his point about reporters. Not that she didn’t appreciate how much damage a media mill could cause. Ironic, that she was a variety of reporter herself now. . . .

  Cigarette or no cigarette, Kieran was a jogger. Charlotte said yesterday he’d rushed off to Glendessary House when Fiona called about Lovelace so quickly he hardly had time to wash. Had he been out jogging when Lovelace was killed? If so, where? And how did Charlotte know Jean was spending the weekend, anyway?

  Okay, so she had a nasty suspicious mind. That was her cross to bear. Jean pitched her notebook into the other seat, started the car, and headed for the epicenter of it all, Glendessary House.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jean edged cautiously out of the MacSorleys’ driveway—between the stone wall and a curve in the road, she could see maybe ten yards in either direction—and turned toward Glendessary House. It was about three miles away, she estimated, making a mental note of the number on her odometer.

  A conditioned runner could run three miles in what? Fifteen minutes? Less? And Kieran was a conditioned runner, you could tell that from his lean, wiry body. Not that he was a young man. If his father died during the war, he had to be pushing sixty, hard. And despite her touching faith in hair coloring, Charlotte couldn’t be much younger.

  Neil was an only child who had come along later rather than sooner in his parents’ reproductive lives. He’d been a bit over-indulged, it seemed. That would explain his sublime self-assurance. . . . Jean told herself she didn’t need to waste time and energy psychoanalyzing Neil, either, beauty being its own excuse for being and all that.

  Media vans choked the area around Glendessary House’s gates. Jean’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. She knew the drill. When she stopped, she lowered her window just far enough to announce to the officer in attendance who she was and that she was expected. Then she sat staring at her odometer, not meeting the eyes of any of the reporters who surged forward, mini-cams and microphones pressing up against the windows. She felt like a fish in a barrel, the kind that was easy to shoot.

  Impassively the cop outside the gate called up to the house, received confirmation, and opened the wrought-iron portal. Her ankle spasmed, but Jean kept herself from flooring the gas pedal. Once in the shadow of the trees, around the first bend in the drive, she registered what the odometer was reading. She’d come just over three miles from MacSorley Mansion.

  So much for Kieran’s alibi. He had had the opportunity to kill Lovelace. Whether he had a motive. . . . Well, as Cameron said, motives could be slippery. But someone had one. You didn’t garrote and hang a man by accident.

  The row of tall, arched windows above the toothy grin of Glendessary House’s colonnade made Jean think of the sunglasses on a movie star, shiny and impenetrable. Today the garage doors stood open, revealing an SUV and a red sports car. A BMW sat shining like new pound coin on the threshold of the third doorway, the gravel around it wet and slightly sudsy. She doubted if any of those cars belonged to Toby or Neil. Or Fiona, for that matter.

  Several police vehicles clogged the courtyard. Fitting her rental car into a narrow space beneath the eaves of the trees, Jean plucked her suitcase from the back seat and this time remembered to lock the doors. As she turned toward the portico, two husky uniformed officers and D.C. Gunn’s boyish form walked around the end of the house.

  The two uniforms collected piles of electronic equipment from a van and went merrily on their way back around the corner. Gunn lagged behind, carrying a computer monitor so large his knees wobbled perceptibly.

  “Oh, hello,” he said to Jean. His eyes peering over the top of the casing were crinkled pleasantly.

  She returned his smile. “Hello. It looks like you’re setting up the incident room here.”

  “Oh aye, that we are, overmuch media attention in Spean Bridge and Fort William. But we’re obliged to bring in all the IT equipment.” He turned to follow the others. The cord that had been coiled neatly on top of the monitor slithered off the edge and flopped down around his feet.

  “Stop right there,” Jean called, “you’re going to trip yourself up. Here, rest your chin on it.” She picked up the end of the cord, cold and smooth as a snake, and wedged the plug beneath his jaw.

  “Thank you kindly,” he said between his teeth, and staggered away.

  All right! She wasn’t going to be out here alone with a killer after all. She’d have Cameron and Sawyer and crew, underfoot, yes, but maybe she could think of them as chemotherapy. You just hoped you survived the treatment long enough to survive the disease.

  Speaking of political rather than physical survival, she had kind of sort of made a deal, hadn’t she? And she had something she needed to return. Pulling her suitcase around the puddles from yesterday’s rain, she followed Gunn through an open door and into the house, finding herself in the hallway opposite the one leading to the game larder.

  The first door opened into a billiards room. The table in its center was covered with plywood and loaded with computers, scanners, faxes—all the technology of twenty-first-century business, be it manufacturing widgets or solving crime. Wires were gathered together in bundles and plugged into power strips along the walls. The hum of processors and fans hung in the air.

  Shaded lights hung low over the table, hiding the faces of the people behind it, although Jean recognized Sawyer’s barrel chest. She parked her suitcase and picked her way past a wet bar holding a hot plate and kettle on the boil. There was Gunn, waggling his arms in relief. When a uniform headed her off, Gunn intervened. “Can we help you, Miss Fairbairn?”

  “I’d like to see D.C.I. Cameron. Is he here?”

  “Oh aye, just there.” Gunn pointed toward a second door.

  “Thank you.” Jean walked into what must have been the original smoking room. The gentleman’s hangout, in other words, where they could smoke, drink, curse, and utter implications about the ladies that wouldn’t warm the shell-pink ear of a grandmother nowadays. Unlike the sitting room, with its aroma of cigar smoke and whiskey, this room smelled of contemporary stale beer, popcorn, and WD-40.

  Cameron sat at a small desk, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and inspecting the receipt she’d given Lovelace. Behind him an antique gun rack was filled with paintball guns and related equipment. The mantel of a handsome stone fireplace held a stack of paperback science fiction novels. Old hunting photos ranged along the walls. . . . No, not all those photos were Victorian-era. Several were of Kieran MacSorley and his cronies, posing with dead grouse and dead deer and probably dead ducks as well, their faces fixed with self-satisfied smirks.

  “Miss Fairbairn.” Cameron took off his glasses and came out from behind the barricade of the desk, polite if cool.

  Funny, she hadn’t noticed that he was only five or six inches taller than she was, not quite five-nine. Nothing like a commanding presence. Drawing herself up, she launched into her recital. “Charlotte MacSorley asked me to tea this afternoon, but when Kieran came in, he threw me out. He’d been out jogging. I’m wondering if he was out jogging Tuesday afternoon. We’re only three miles from the MacSorleys’ house. Kieran could have killed Lovelace and been back home by the time Fiona called with the news.”

  “Aye?” Cameron may well have known all about it, but damned if she could read his expression. If he wasn’t a poker player, he ought to be.

  “When Kieran got here on Tuesday I heard him say, ‘Lovelace, that doddering old fool.’ With the Hogman
ay argument, I’d say there was no love lost between them.”

  “We’ve got no evidence MacSorley was here at the time Lovelace was killed,” Cameron told her, and conceded, “but then, we’ve got no evidence he wasn’t.”

  “Well, unless Charlotte’s figured out some means of teleportation, she didn’t kill Lovelace. As for why she rushed out to his house at the very time someone else was, your guess is as good as mine.”

  “I prefer not making guesses, Miss Fairbairn.”

  “So do I, Chief Inspector Cameron. But I’m not able to question all these people and review the evidence, like you are.”

  That quick sine wave of a smile passed along Cameron’s lips and vanished into the ether, as though it occurred to him that most deals ran two ways. “Well then, what are you wanting to know? Mrs. MacSorley’s excuse for visiting Corpach Tuesday? Rick MacLyon sent her to fetch a book.”

  “She almost ran me off the road because of that? Well, she did make some snide remark yesterday about Vanessa rejecting her help, maybe she was driving that fast because she was mad. Angry,” amended Jean, reserving “mad” meaning “crazy” until she needed it.

  “None of the MacSorleys is known for discreet driving.”

  Or for modesty, she suspected. “Have you learned anything about the break-in at Lovelace’s house?”

  “Loads of fingerprints, but you’d expect that. Like as not the burglar was wearing gloves.”

  “What about the forensic reports on the murder?”

  “Some threads and plant particles look to be significant.”

  “Fingerprint results?”

  “Nothing conclusive, no.”

  “What about my receipt there?”

  “Your prints and Lovelace’s.”

  “And the ‘Two p.m. Tuesday’ on the back is in his handwriting?”

  “That it is.”

  Jean had had more luck getting something edible out of a hard-shell pecan. But Cameron was probably being as forthcoming as he could. “Lovelace must have written on the receipt because it was handy when he made an appointment with someone. Probably someone from the house or from the Jacobite Lodge—their meeting was here then.”

  “Did Mrs. MacSorley tell you anything about the Lodge?” Cameron asked, his left eyebrow registering interest in the new topic.

  “She clammed up real fast when I asked her about it, only said something about ‘when the time comes,’ like there’s going to be a launch party. That’s when Kieran came in and said they don’t talk to reporters.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. MacLyon aren’t so keen on telling us about the Lodge, either. They’re insisting it’s not relevant to the murder.”

  “Which makes you think that it is.”

  “Oh aye,” he stated. “Do you know anyone who’s a member?”

  “I just heard about the Lodge myself yesterday, from Miranda. She says that it’s open only to people whose names are the same as Charlie’s supporters in the Forty-five, although whether you have to actually be descended from one of those people I don’t know.”

  “I’d not be a viable candidate for membership, name or no name.”

  “Well no.” Inspiration buzzed in Jean’s brain like a mosquito in her ear. “What if you got someone else to sign up and report back to you? Don’t look at me, they’ve already got my number around here. Literally, with that anonymous phone call. But Lovelace’s next door neighbor is a retired naval officer named Ogilvy. A Lord and Lady Ogilvy raised the Forfarshire regiment for Charlie. Maybe he could join up. MacLyon asked him to, once, and he said he’d like to help solve Lovelace’s murder.”

  “I see,” said Cameron, with a slow nod that made Jean think he did see, every last shade and sign, including the yellow triangle warning of danger ahead. “Easier—and safer—simply to have a word with the man, ask what Lovelace told him about the Lodge.”

  “Yes,” Jean conceded in turn.

  “I’ll have Sawyer interview the neighbor again.”

  “No, not Sawyer, he and Ogilvy didn’t exactly hit it off. Send Gunn, he’s a nice . . .” Jean cut herself off. He’d given her an inch and she’d taken a mile.

  This time Cameron smiled, in a flare of slightly uneven white teeth like the quick burst of a flashbulb. She hadn’t intended to be the comic relief today. . . . Suddenly she wondered again if he were being appreciative rather than critical.

  “All right then,” he said, “I’ll have Gunn see to it. But you didn’t come all the way out here to hound me with questions and tell me my own business, did you now?”

  “You asked me to let you know if I learned anything. Besides, I have an interview with Rick MacLyon—which is why I was here Tuesday, you may remember. I’ve even been asked to stay the weekend.”

  He didn’t come back with no accounting for tastes but with, “The MacLyons have a use for you after all, do they?”

  “I figure MacLyon wants to do some promotion for his games. And do some damage control, too, a murder being a little inconvenient.”

  “You’ll be telling me what you hear, then. And overhear, come to that. They’ll be talking more freely to you than to me, I reckon.”

  “You expect me to spy for you? No way. . . .”

  “Spying’s all right for this Ogilvy chap but not for you, is that it?”

  “You want to protect Ogilvy from danger but not me, is that it?”

  “You’re the one with all the questions,” he retorted without the least hint of a smile. “Here I was thinking we were on the same side.”

  “Touché.” Jean was beginning to think Cameron had ESP, the way he could pick up on her thoughts and use them to bend her to his will. Not that his will was exactly opposed to her own. “All right, I’ll see what I can do for you. Within reason.”

  “No one’s expecting you to be unreasonable, Miss Fairbairn.”

  “I don’t know what anyone expects of me, Chief Inspector Cameron. Oh. Here.” She pulled his handkerchief out of her bag and held it out.

  “Thank you.” He took the cloth from her hand.

  While he avoided actually touching her, still his energy field sent pins and needles up her arm. That was supposedly what people felt like just before they were struck by lightning—a frisson of fear, or disgust, or maybe awe. She stepped quickly back and collided with the chill stone of the fireplace.

  “Good stone, that, old masonry, probably original to the house,” Cameron commented blandly, and folded the handkerchief into his pocket.

  “Yeah.” She could go on about the restoration, or MacLyon’s games, or anything, but there was no need to keep up a conversation. The meeting had been concluded, and the chairman was no longer entertaining motions from the floor.

  A stir in the doorway was a female constable, very pert in her epaulets and dark stockings. “Sir?”

  “Later, then, Miss Fairbairn.” He dismissed her with a curt nod.

  “Later,” Jean returned with foreboding, but Cameron was already following the constable into the other room.

  Jean followed in turn, stopping while they went on toward a group of police people ranged in front of a chart propped on an easel. Across the chart were printed several words of which she could make out “Time” and “Place.” Down its left-hand side ran a column of names. The cast of characters, starting with “Jean Fairbairn” and running through the two MacLyons and the three MacSorleys, Walsh, and Robertson. Jean glanced at Cameron, but his expression was impenetrable. She must have imagined that grin.

  Below Fiona’s name was written Ronald Ogilvy’s. Cameron had to have recognized it. The list continued on with Meg Parkinson-Fraser and Norman Hawley—oh, the cook—and a block of names grouped after “Angus Lockhart, driver.” Murray, Mackintosh, Nairn, three Stewarts . . . the Lodge members.

  Hugh, Miranda, Michael, and Rebecca’s names anchored the chart. Jean was rather surprised Cameron hadn’t included little Linda Campbell-Reid, although even he couldn’t get answers from an unborn child.

  “Uncle Tom Cobl
eigh and all,” Sawyer proclaimed. He stood to attention beside the chart, his thick forefinger bludgeoning each name. “Every last one’s been interviewed. Some want a second go-round. Some want bringing in. Co-ordinate times, who was here, there, everywhere. Cleaners come on the Monday, landscape service on the Wednesday. . . .”

  Jean edged away, thinking what Charlotte had said about the army of servants. Having a cleaning service and professional gardeners to do the heavy lifting made sense. But what about other services? No names that could be a valet, a maid, or a butler were listed. Since Neil had given himself several job descriptions, Jean assumed that the MacLyons had a casual attitude toward the social graces, the Lodge members notwithstanding.

  On one end of the billiard table sat a computer monitor glowing with another list. Jean glanced at it, recognizing an inventory of garments, each attached to a name: Kilts, shirts, jackets, kilt-skirts. The words “wool, MacLyon tartan” occurred over and over.

  Some threads look to be significant, Cameron had said. Had they found threads of MacLyon tartan on Lovelace’s body? Great, that eliminated nobody except Kieran, unless he’d been out jogging in a kilt or plaid.

  Sawyer’s serrated voice made her jump. “Do you mind, Miss Fairbairn?”

  She looked around to see a sneer escape his beard. Every other face was turned toward her except Cameron’s. “Not at all, Detective Sergeant Sawyer,” she called.

  Stepping over the wires, Jean made her way to the door and retrieved her suitcase. She didn’t outrun the hectoring voice until she’d walked out the door, around the corner of the house, and into the chill breeze of the courtyard. There she was confronted with the scenic vista of Neil waxing the BMW.

  His right arm was braced on a fender. His left hand made meticulous circles with a soft cloth. The posture and the motion set off his T-shirt- and jeans-clad body to perfection. His face and body were sculpted by youth, clean, lean, and flexible.

  While he might have his lean body from his father, Kieran’s face seemed to be the product of an acid attack. Of his own bile, Jean supposed. And Neil might have his blue eyes from his mother, although Charlotte’s were pale and watery, exhausted by her vigil over propriety.