“Hi,” she said, butter not melting in her mouth.
With a baleful look he surged on by.
Jean walked on down the stairs. Cameron, minus his jacket and tie, was just opening the outside door. He spun around at the sound of Jean’s steps. “Ah. It’s you, is it?”
“It’s not anyone else,” she replied.
The rolled sleeves of his shirt and the stubble shading his granite jaw made him appear a little less formidable. So did the lines engraved even more deeply at the corners of his mouth. His brows were very serious and straight, like soldiers at attention. Jean thought of the commandos lined up before Glendessary House confronting duty, honor, and country. Confronting the self-control that duty, honor, and country demanded.
Cameron gestured her through the open door. Okay, fine. She’d steeled herself to talk to him. Maybe he’d steeled himself to talk to her. Stepping into the night, Jean inhaled the fresh-chilled air and walked beyond the floodlighted island of the house into the garden. The darkness was less intimidating when she wasn’t alone. From her memory she dredged the prayer of St. Francis: “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.” But right now peace seemed as elusive as truth or justice.
A hint of mist veiled the sky overhead, making the stars shift and blur like eyes filled with tears. Except for the wind in the leaves and an occasional bird call, only the crunch of two sets of steps on the gravel path broke the silence. The softly illuminated walls of the house gleamed an antique gold, each architectural curve and angle deeply etched by shadow. Two windows to the right—the kitchen—were defined by a pale fluorescent gleam. In the center the tall windows of the library glowed brightly. Above them the windows of Rick’s study lightened and darkened as though a small thunderstorm were captive inside. All the computer monitors, no doubt.
Cameron was a shape in the darkness. Jean glanced up at his profile, turned toward the house, unreadable. “I talked to everyone in the house this afternoon. Would you like to hear what they said?”
“Please,” he said, without moving, let alone looking around at her.
Jean outlined all her conversations, editing only the more awkward parts of her encounter with Neil, and drawing no conclusions, about Fiona or anyone else. Cameron responded to Fiona’s name the way he responded to all the others, silently.
She finished with, “I was standing there in the stairwell listening to Kieran stroke you with one hand and stab you with the other. Has he been going on at you ever since he got here?”
“Not a bit of it. I made a phone call or two, and I let Andy Sawyer butt heads with him whilst I had a word with Toby.”
“You mean Kieran and Andy didn’t just cancel each other out?” Jean asked—out of turn, she told herself too late.
But Cameron must have felt as tired as he looked. He laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh, more of a scorched snicker, but still it was one more indication the man was harboring a sense of humor.
Well, Jean thought. “Do you think Toby’s guilty?”
“Of bashing the brakes on the MacSorley’s car? Maybe. Of killing Lovelace? It doesn’t seem likely, does it?”
Jean didn’t delude herself that he was asking her opinion, even though she agreed with him. “Was Kieran telling you that Toby’s motive for damaging the brakes was envy? And that he killed George out of greed, wanting more of his gold coins?”
“Something to that effect, aye.”
“But neither scenario really holds up. Toby respected George. And even though Charlotte drives like a bat out of hell on the road, you’re blind as a bat coming out of that driveway. Surely she would barely have been idling.”
“Quite right. However, Mr. and Mrs. MacSorley had a row, during which Mrs. MacSorley took to drink. She left the house in a rare temper. Neither drink nor temper lending itself to cautious driving.”
“That was my fault,” Jean said. “Kieran bawled her out for talking to a reporter. Me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. There’s enough fault to go round.”
Thanks. “Did anyone tell you how Norman ran out of here like his tail was on fire?”
“Aye, so I’m hearing. I wonder . . .” Cameron didn’t complete his sentence.
“. . . whether the car wreck is only a side-show to the real circus,” Jean ventured, “with all due respect to Norman’s petulant soul?”
The profile turned toward her. “You might could be saying that.”
She faced front and center, avoiding his gaze flickering in the corner of her eyes. Turn-about was fair play. “Anything new in forensics? Threads, pollen, that sort of thing?”
“Several bits of garden plants were found on Lovelace’s body, also threads in the same tartan pattern, the MacLyon sett.”
“Do you think he was killed in the garden?”
“No, there were quite a few people in the drawing room overlooking the garden at the time.”
Jean glanced toward the French doors of the drawing room, now dark. “And none of them saw anything?”
“The problem is that they all saw something, but no one’s agreeing on what, whether it was Neil with his pipes or Toby cutting a bouquet of flowers, or MacLyon himself preparing to make his entrance. Or one of the women—they were both dressed in tartan skirts.”
“I see. Why they didn’t see, that is. The rose bushes and the hedge are enough of a screen that you could tell someone was there but not who.”
“The killer then went on round the corner of the house to the game larder and met Lovelace. It could have been a chance meeting, but then we’d have to explain the ‘Two p.m. Tuesday’ note on your receipt.”
“You don’t think the killer was anyone from the Lodge?”
“No, they’re all vouching for each other’s whereabouts at the time of the murder. More than one of them could be working together, but as yet we’ve got no evidence of that.”
Lack of evidence, Jean told herself. What else was new? “For what it’s worth, Rick’s going to announce something to me at ten tomorrow morning. I overheard Vanessa goading him to it. A new game, maybe, although I hope it’s something about the Lodge. Everyone’s being so damnably coy about that, I’m ready to pinch Rick’s fingers in my laptop.”
“That’s not the most efficient of torture devices.”
Jean laughed hollowly. “When I went up to my room—my locked room—after dinner, I noticed that it had been searched. Or at least my notebook and laptop had been moved around. Someone was reading the notes I’ve been making.” Bracing herself, she went eyeball to eyeball with Cameron. “Do you think I’m in danger?”
His slate-blue eyes didn’t blink. “It’s possible.”
“At least you don’t seem to think I’m the killer any more.”
“I not so sure I ever did do, Miss Fairbairn.”
“Oh really?”
“Just doing my job is all.” Cameron looked toward the mountains, a looming black mass edging the star-dusted charcoal of the sky.
A sarcastic Thanks wouldn’t be appropriate, so Jean said nothing. The skin on her arms and legs was breaking out in goose bumps—her tweed jacket was little protection from a chill spring night in Scotland. Not that the temperature was bothering Cameron. He was a native, with veins full of anti-freeze. Or in his case, ice water. Neither of them, she suspected, wanted to be there. Not there in the nighttime garden, not involved in the case at all. But crime-solving was his job, just as asking questions was hers.
Suddenly she asked herself if he were on the verge of burning out. He didn’t have the most stress-free of occupations. And she knew only too well that when you feel the candle flickering you focus on it, blow on it, fan it, force it to throw out a brighter light—and burn it out all the faster. If he gave her any clue, she’d offer cautious understanding. But he remained only a shape beside her, impersonal as a marble column. Don’t get curious about his personal life, she reminded herself.
“I’ll tell you what another side-show is,” Jean went on. “George’s coin. Ric
k, Vanessa, Neil—they all knew he had it, and they all agree he had it for a long time. With the pollen evidence, he probably found it when he was in commando training here.”
With a hiss like a ruptured pipe—oh, it was a sigh, she could see his breath, ghost-like, swirling from his lips—Cameron said, “He came to see you for some reason that led him to lie to you.”
“And yet both Vanessa and Fiona talked about George being very honorable and ethical. Look at the way he was helping out Toby’s family. Or do you know about that?”
“I know about that.”
Of course you do. “Anyway, that makes me doubt George was cooking the books, whether he needed money enough to sell the coin or not.”
“A man can convince himself of all manner of things and call it ‘honor.’ Even so, I’ll be having a look at the accounts.”
Jean wrapped her arms around her chest. Cameron’s wintry aura felt like snowflakes against her upturned face, so cold they were hot. The small light-storm in Rick’s study went dark. A vulture-like shape appeared in one of the library windows, a tiny point of fire at its hairy lips.
“MacSorley,” said Cameron. “Like a bad penny, he keeps turning up.”
“Rick called him on his cell phone right after y’all left the dining room, said for him to come see him as soon he’d ‘handled the cops,’ that they needed to make plans. For tomorrow’s announcement? To hide the truth about George’s death? To solve global warming?”
She sensed rather than saw Cameron’s subtle curve of a smile. “MacSorley doesn’t think MacLyon could get on without him. And he may be right. He hired both Lovelace and Hawley.”
“Maybe Norman knew George before he came to work here. Vanessa says George was spending a lot of time at the Inverness Public Library, which is close to the restaurant. Not that George liked that kind of ‘let’s see what weird ingredients we can mix together’ cuisine. . . .”
Cameron turned on her. “That’s interesting.”
“What?” she blurted. “I finally told you something you don’t already know?”
“There might could have been a prior connection between Lovelace and Hawley. And now they’re both dead.”
“Well yeah, but Norman wasn’t murdered.”
“That’s as may be.”
Wheels were turning in Cameron’s head. Jean hoped they were grinding more finely than hers. “Vanessa’s resentful of Kieran, which isn’t surprising. He’s encouraging Rick’s Brigadoon mania, but I get the feeling she’s only going along for the bennies.”
“Bennies?”
“Benefits. Money, clothes. She’s bored, though, and getting impatient. I don’t know how killing George would get her a social life, though.” Her goose bumps stretched her skin so tight she shivered.
“It’s a wee bit nippy the night. We should be going in.” Cameron’s firm hand in the back of her jacket urged her toward the door.
She slipped on the gravel path. The hand tightened briefly on her waist, then released her the second she’d regained her balance. “Thank you,” she said. Cameron’s strong, steady grip could have pulled Norman’s car out of the loch single-handedly.
He held the door open for Jean and shut it behind them. A few electronic clicks and cheeps filtered into the hall from the billiards room, but if anyone was inside they were working quietly. The air seemed close and still, scented with the odors of cooking food, coffee, various cleaning products, and smoke richer and sweeter than the acrid stench of Kieran’s cigarettes. Rick must’ve broken out the cigars.
What was that in the hallway, a moving shadow, an elusive shape . . . Oh. It was Clarinda, slipping in true feline fashion, sinuously and soundlessly, down the stairs and away up the corridor. Jean told her nerves to stand down.
Kieran, too, was hanging in there for the bennies. And unlike Vanessa, he was quite happy with the status quo. Or the status quo as it had been before George’s death. Jean turned on Cameron. “Maybe George wasn’t embezzling. Maybe George knew someone who was embezzling.”
“MacSorley. I was wondering if you’d think of that.”
She should have known he’d be quick on the uptake. And quick to rub it in. “I’ve heard three different versions of how Rick and Kieran first got in contact. Maybe Kieran went looking for Rick, maybe it was the other way around. But the bottom line is that Rick is a real cash cow for the MacSorleys. You should see their house—new furniture, Venetian glass, the works. Before Rick came along, though, they’d been having financial problems ever since Archie, Rick’s father, was killed in the war. Killed here, in training.”
Cameron leaned so close she wondered if he could smell the blackberry and whiskey on her breath. A tiny flame like a pilot light was thawing his eyes. “A peculiar millionaire must have seemed a gift from God.”
“Oh yeah. Especially when he’s a little gullible—Vanessa said that—and he’s spending a fortune and a half—she said that, too—on books and memorabilia and architectural elements for the house.”
“MacSorley could well be creaming off a commission from dealers in everything from books to bricks. Though it was George who was actually buying the books.”
“Which is how he found out about Kieran’s scheme. Being the honorable person he was, he confronted Kieran with his knowledge and gave him the chance to straighten up and fly right. Except Kieran found another option.” The prickle of her skin warned Jean that she was within Cameron’s personal space, but this time she didn’t back off.
His breath was scented with whiskey, straight. “Another option. Just that.”
“Kieran may have been the only person not wearing tartan at the time of the murder, but does that really matter? With all the tartan carpets and everything, George could have picked up any number of threads all by himself.”
Cameron returned her gaze, his hands braced on his hips, his mouth set in a tight smile. “And MacSorley’s right keen on implicating Toby, isn’t he? Just one problem with that.”
Over and beyond the fact that Kieran was Neil’s father. Jean said, “Would Kieran damage his own brakes?”
Cameron’s smile lost any vestige of amusement and defaulted to grim. Yes, the wheels were turning in his head, she could almost see the sparks flying and hear the gears meshing.
What she was hearing was footsteps. Nothing paranormal though, just Fiona’s soft-soled shoes climbing the upper stairs to her bedroom. Fiona. Jean hated to burst the not uncomfortable little bubble of mutual respect, but. . . . But she couldn’t respect Cameron fully until he stopped dismissing her questions about Fiona. “Vanessa said something interesting when she was talking about George and Fiona. That, the book collecting aside, Fiona was ‘into everything else around here.’”
Cameron said, “Aye?”
“You remember the woman who called me before I left Edinburgh? The one who warned me in an American accent, using British syntax, that George was trouble and I shouldn’t do whatever it was he wanted me to do?”
“Aye?” This time the word was much more cautious.
He saw where she was going. She plunged on. “I think it was Fi. . . .”
“It was her, like as not,” said Cameron.
Jean deflated so completely she almost sagged against the wall. “What?”
His face was lined with fatigue, his voice so low she could hardly hear it. “I’m thinking I know why she phoned you. She meant no harm.”
“So you did know her before you came here. You just didn’t know she was here, did you?”
“No. That was a bit of a surprise.”
“Fate, she’d probably say.”
“Aye, she would do.”
He was stonewalling her, damn him. Jean took a step closer into that fiery cold energy field. “She meant no harm? Fiona may have known George was in the game larder without my telling her!”
“Aye, she would do,” he repeated, but now his expression was locked down, revealing nothing.
“We may have built a case against Kieran, but some of the ar
guments we used against him can be used against Fiona—maybe she’s the embezzler.”
“Trust me, Miss Fairbairn, Fiona had nothing to do with the murder.”
Jean hissed, “Don’t patronize me, Detective Chief Inspector Cameron. I can make my own decisions about whom to trust!”
“And you, don’t get your knickers in a twist. . . .” His growl trailed away. His eyes darted to and fixed on something behind Jean’s back.
She spun around. A shadow moved at the bottom of the staircase. Great, someone had been standing there, listening.
But no one was standing on the steps to cast a shadow, and the shadow wasn’t on the staircase after all, but beside it, and it wasn’t a shadow but a pale man-shape in the gloom of the alcove, ash on black. The cat, Jean told herself, but she knew it wasn’t the cat.
The hair rose first on the back of her neck and then all over her body, each follicle tightening not in fear but in recognition. Her cheeks tingled to a feather-stroke of something more tenuous than even a spider’s web. She’d always wondered if that’s what ectoplasm was, the nerve endings in the skin firing just as the optic nerves in her eyes fired, in response to a stimulus from another dimension.
She sensed Cameron’s physical presence just behind her, motionless, steady, cool, just as she sensed the air itself. A large, strong hand closed on her upper arm as though preventing her from going in for the tackle. Good God. He couldn’t, he didn’t. . . . Her own voice was a gossamer thread. “Do you see something beside the stairs?”
“Oh aye,” said Cameron’s husky whisper. “It’s a ghost.”
Jean blinked, less amazed at the apparition than at his admission. Either she or reality was definitely losing it. She tried, “Vanessa thinks George Lovelace is haunting the house.”
“That’s never George Lovelace.”
Cameron could see it. He really could see—not it, but him. “No. That’s Archie MacSorley.”
The ghost stood beside the staircase, about six inches to the left of the treads. In mid-air. Jean could see every wrinkle in his uniform, every insignia, every button, sketched with shadow upon darkness. He wasn’t wearing a beret on his head but a bandage, which hid nothing of his craggy face with its arched nose. His small dark eyes stared imperiously into the distance, as though he was very put out to find himself dead. . . . No, his eyes were utterly empty.
The Secret Portrait (A Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery Book 1) Page 21