“Was Trevor Simpson with you the whole time you were in the bar?” Michaelson asked Patrick.
“Yes. I mean, he went to the loo once, but other than that he was around.”
“How long was he gone for?”
Patrick threw his hands up in frustration. “For God’s sake, I didn’t time him.”
“Did Trevor accompany MacInnes to his room when you got back to the hotel?”
“No. Archie got off the lift on two, I got off on three, and Trevor kept going. He was up on five.”
I was sure it wasn’t lost on Michaelson that Trevor could have got off on five and simply walked back down to Archie’s room.
“Any sign of tension between the victim and Trevor Simpson?”
“Last night?” Patrick hedged. “No.”
Michaelson wasn’t going to be manipulated with word games. “What about at other times, like yesterday afternoon in MacInnes’s room?”
Patrick gave an abbreviated version of the conversation he’d witnessed. I could tell he felt he was betraying Trevor with every word.
“Was Trevor Simpson aware of the terms of his brother’s will before this conversation with MacInnes?”
“You’d have to ask Trev.”
“I intend to. Had the truffles been delivered by the time you were in MacInnes’s room?”
Patrick thought for a moment. “It was just after lunch when we were in his room. I didn’t see the box, but then I simply requested that they be there before dinner. They probably came later in the afternoon.”
Michaelson pulled a gift box of truffles from his jacket pocket. It was gold and brown, about six inches square, and wrapped in cellophane. “Were the boxes sealed this way when they were presented?”
Patrick looked at the box in Michaelson’s hand. “They were in a large shipping container when I handed them off to the business concierge for delivery. I’d opened the larger box to check that the order was right, but I didn’t examine every gift box inside to make sure they were all sealed.”
“And you didn’t see them after that?”
“No. I had no need to.”
Michaelson nodded. “That’s all for now, but I’m sure I’ll have other questions for you. Make sure you remain available.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Patrick said glumly. “But if we aren’t careful, the conference guests will be fleeing like rats deserting a sinking ship.”
“No one is going anywhere,” Michaelson said in an icy tone. “This is a murder inquiry. You’ll all just have to put up with the inconvenience. Speaking of which, do you have any objection to me searching your room?”
Patrick acquiesced miserably. We both knew that Michaelson could get a warrant easily enough. It was better just to cooperate, especially since we had nothing to hide. I went and sat on the floor of the bathroom with Liam and stroked his head. He seemed to be feeling better, having relieved himself of the contents of his stomach. I, on the other hand, felt worse. I’d wasted an entire day looking for a careless poisoner when I should have been looking for a cold-blooded murderer.
Chapter 12
Michaelson finished, finding nothing, and decamped to his interrogation room in the hotel’s library. I figured his next step was confronting Trevor Simpson with Patrick’s statement. I didn’t envy Trevor. Patrick had received word while we were being searched that he’d been joined on the judging panel by Oliver Blaire. The other qualified palate with no whiskies in the running for a Quaich. Patrick headed out for a full day of judging duties, looking forlorn.
I was torn now, not knowing which way to go first. I’d convinced myself that someone was trying to silence Richard. Yesterday that made sense, but not today. Had Archie figured out who the killer was? If he had, he wouldn’t have kept it to himself. Had he discovered the competition was being rigged? Again, he would have spilled the beans immediately. He was no hero.
There had to be another connection between the two men that had gotten them both killed. We’d found one business connection; maybe there were others. If there were, Patrick would find them, I was confident of that. His computer skills were legendary. Michaelson would get lab results back soon enough, and then we’d have more to go on. But in the meantime, I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing. I sent Michaelson the photos of Archie’s room and checked my messages.
During the morning’s chaos I’d received a text from Grant giving me the name of the Lodge’s cellar master, Owen Lachlan. According to Grant, Lachlan was in charge of all the whiskies for the competition. Something still seemed fishy about the competition to me. For the moment there was nothing more productive I could do, so I decided to go and pay Mr. Lachlan a visit.
I made my way down the hall to the lift, a revived Liam trotting along at my heels. As we descended, we stopped on the second floor and Mrs. Easton joined us. She gave Liam a quick scratch behind the ears before resuming her no-nonsense professional demeanor. “Where are you two off to?” she asked.
“Trying to interview Mr. Lachlan if I can find him. I had a couple of questions about the whiskies for the contest…for an article I’m writing,” I added.
Mrs. Easton looked at her watch. “He should be in the cellar now, conferring with the chef about wines for the dinner specials.”
I’d hoped to have this conversation right away while I was hanging out, and I must’ve looked disappointed.
“Would you like me to take you down?”
“Can you do that?”
“Of course, my dear. I’d be happy to show you the way.”
We arrived at the lobby level and Mrs. Easton steered me down a long corridor and through a set of double doors into a gleaming stainless-steel kitchen where a line of commis were prepping vegetables for the lunch service. I grabbed Liam’s collar. This was no place for a dog—health and sanitation would go nuts.
We quickly exited through a second door and down a flight of stairs into the hotel’s cavernous wine cellar. A man in a chef’s toque and a gray-haired gentleman in a tweed jacket stood conferring at a high table in a glass-enclosed room. Radiating out from the glass cocoon was what looked like miles of wine racks filled with bottles stretching as far as the eye could see. No wonder the tour lasted so long on the first night of the contest.
“This is amazing,” I said.
“If you’re a wine drinker, it’s heaven,” Mrs. Easton agreed. “I’m partial to the odd sherry myself, but I can’t really appreciate some of these expensive bottles. Seems a waste of money when the Sainsbury’s own wine does the trick just as well and for a fraction of the price.”
I couldn’t help smiling at Mrs. Easton’s summary dismissal of a wine cellar that must be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. But at least someone was still drinking sherry. We needed those casks.
I was saved from having to frame an appropriate response by the opening of the glass door. The man in the toque swept past with a convivial nod of the head. The other man, presumably Owen Lachlan, poked his head out and greeted Mrs. Easton by name.
“Mabel, what brings you down to the dungeons?”
“I have a guest here who’d like to talk to you about the whiskies for the Golden Quaich.”
“Of course, Ms.…?”
“Logan, but call me Abi.” I extended a hand.
“Come in, all of you.”
Mrs. Easton blushed faintly and said, “I must get back to work, Mr. Lachlan. Can you show Ms. Logan out when you’re finished?”
Mrs. Easton shut the door behind her and I turned back to the cellar master.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
I decided to stick to the story I’d given Mrs. Easton and rely on my journalist creds to justify this conversation. “I’m doing a bit of a freelance piece on the competition, and I was wondering about some of the procedural aspects. Like where are the whiskies kept while
they’re waiting to be judged? In a secret vault somewhere under lock and key?”
“Not quite, but I do have the pleasure of watching over them,” Lachlan said with a smile. “They’re all being stored in a side room here in the cellar. Would you care to see?”
“I’d love to.” I followed him past a dozen racks of Bordeaux sleeping quietly on their shelves. The cellar master pulled a key ring from his pocket, selected a key, and opened the solid wooden door. Dozens of boxes were stacked up at the far end of the room, each labeled with the name of a distillery nominated for an award. I saw Abbey Glen’s crates near the bottom of the stack. Along the right wall was a long, narrow table covered in small glasses stacked on trays and dozens of glass carafes.
“Here’s where we’re keeping the nominated whiskies. At the appointed time the bottles in each division will be opened and poured into one of these glass carafes. A permanent marker is then used to write a unique number on the carafe and the collection will be escorted to the salon upstairs for the judging.”
“Who opens the bottles and transfers them to the carafes?”
“One of my sommeliers and I will do the decanting and then the representative selected by the Malt Whisky Society will number the carafes.”
“So the Society rep’s responsible for assigning numbers.”
“Yes, I believe it’s done by a random drawing.”
“Does anyone else have access to this room?”
“Other than myself and the Malt Whisky Society representative, no.”
“Who is the rep from the Society?”
“The Society president, Jude MacNamara. He’s also a member of the Order of the Quaich and was given the responsibility of coordinating with me.”
So the fox had been charged with guarding the henhouse. “And you feel the nominees are safe from being tampered with?” I asked.
Lachlan’s spine visibly stiffened. “Absolutely. The contest and this establishment have a reputation to uphold. We take our responsibilities very seriously.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said hastily. “I wasn’t suggesting otherwise, I’d simply been asked about the possibility of rigging the results.”
“These bottles will be opened and presented in the ideal condition on Friday. If anything goes wrong, it won’t be anything to do with the storage or delivery,” Lachlan said firmly.
“I am sure that’s true,” I said. Lachlan appeared to have decided the interview was at an end. He led me back out of the cellar through a side door and into the lobby adjacent to the main dining room. I shook his hand and thanked him for showing me around.
Lachlan was right; the bottles would be presented for judging in pristine condition. I had no doubt about that. It was the numbering system that gave me pause. When I asked Patrick how you’d rig a contest like this, he’d suggested telling the judges in advance which numbers to vote for and against. With MacNamara in charge of the numbering system, I could see how that might be possible. There was certainly room for a little sleight of hand.
MacNamara had already been seen at lunch with Findley and Craig. Were they a part of his scheme? What about Hugh Ashworth-Jones? If he had all three in his pocket, he could already have control of the outcome of the voting. Patrick admitted to having an odd exchange with MacNamara, but no one had approached him about skewing his vote. I was sure that was because he was too tied to the Simpsons and to me. I doubted any of the nationalists would be foolish enough to try to nobble Patrick. I needed to know more, but I couldn’t have Patrick asking questions of MacNamara or the other judges. That could place him in real danger. I needed someone else on the inside who was perceived as neutral. And I knew just the man.
I searched the main floor for Oliver Blaire and found him in the business center sending a fax. I pulled him aside for a private chat.
“Can I ask you an odd question?”
He smiled. “The odder the better.”
“Has Jude MacNamara approached you at all during the competition?”
“We spoke briefly this morning when I was appointed as a judge. He’s the Malt Whisky Society representative in charge of the competition.”
“I know. Did he say anything that struck you as odd?”
“He was with Hugh Ashworth-Jones. They were waffling on about the unity of the judging panel. Not being ‘the odd one out.’ I had the sense they were hoping for more agreement amongst the judges on the winners. In the last few years the rankings have been all over the place apparently.”
“He said much the same thing to Patrick, and I’m concerned there’s a method to their madness. I hate to ask, but would you be willing to go undercover for me?”
Oliver looked amused. “I’ve always fancied myself in a James Bond role. The suave, debonair spy. What would you like me to do?”
“Well, for starters, be careful, 007. I don’t want you to put yourself at risk. But see if you can lead MacNamara into a conversation about the judging. Suggest that you are unhappy about the number of non-Scottish entries and give him the opportunity to present you with some suggestions for ensuring that the ‘right’ whiskies win. If he feels you are amenable, he may be willing to talk.”
“Your wish is my command, M.”
* * *
—
Having set that ball in motion, Liam and I retreated to the room. My head was whirling and I needed some time to think. Liam stretched out in his favorite spot in front of the fire. I grabbed one of Patrick’s dry erase markers from the desk and commandeered his large white board.
There were any number of people who might have tried to make Sir Richard sick with the tainted Japanese whisky, but cold-blooded murder, times two? I was sure that was a different question.
Two days, two murders. I propped the white board in my lap and on the left side I wrote Richard, on the right side, Archie. Two victims. Between them three crucial connections. The competition, their business interests, and Trevor. One of these held the key to the murders. A key that didn’t include Patrick.
I contemplated the word competition. As heated as the debate was between the nationalists and the globalists, I had to question whether it could actually be a motive for murder, even if someone had taken the disagreement a step further and attempted to fix the outcome of the competition. If the killer decided to dispose of Richard and Archie because they were threatening to expose the judging scam, surely he’d have dispatched them both on the same night. They were close friends, and if one knew the other would. Why risk leaving Archie alive to talk?
It just didn’t make sense. Not intellectually and not practically. MacNamara had the most at risk in this scenario, but he was with us at the Aerie all evening on the night Richard died, and with Patrick and company the night Archie died. I couldn’t rule out some shenanigans on the judging front, but I was sure it wasn’t where we would find our killer.
Trevor’s case was appealing in his simplicity. Greed plain and simple was a tried-and-true motive, and one I knew Michaelson was comfortable with. As a practical matter, Trevor would’ve been welcomed into either man’s room, even late at night, and he knew when each of them had returned to their rooms the nights they died. I could see the appeal for Michaelson, but he needed hard evidence that hadn’t come yet. I felt sure he wouldn’t find it, but he’d keep trying.
Last but by no means least, the two victims had business interests in common. Had something from their past business dealings come back to haunt them? I put down a general question mark, then below added Edenburn/Hugh Ashworth-Jones to the board. Having a third judge here that was a part of that particular transaction was just too much coincidence for me.
I stood looking at my handiwork. The missing piece was the name of someone specific who’d been significantly injured by one of Richard and Archie’s business deals. And of course once we had who, we needed how he’d killed not once but twice. Was he workin
g alone or had he had help to plant the poison? I added whisky, glass, and truffles, along with accomplice?
Finally, I drew a picture of a key at the bottom. The brass keys had been weighing heavy on my mind, although Michaelson seemed indifferent to them. As far as I was concerned, they were the wild card. Trevor might have been let in late at night to either man’s room by the men themselves, but I doubted anyone else would have been. With no sign of a key card entry to Richard’s room during the critical time frame, there had to have been another option. With a brass key, anyone could have entered the victims’ rooms at any time and there would be no record at all. How would the killer get a key? A member of the staff? Sophie or Ethel. Could the killer have helped himself to a key from the manager’s office when it was unattended? Worth checking.
Michaelson would be relentless pursuing Trevor. My plan of attack was brass keys and business deeds.
I grabbed my computer with renewed purpose and logged on to the Gazette’s internal archive site and began searching for stories relating to Central Spirit’s purchase of Edenburn. Richard, Archie, and Hugh all popped up in connection with the sale. I also went back and searched the list of Quaich judges for the seven years since the sale went through and confirmed that this was the first year all three men had been on the judging panel together.
I returned to the initial search results. Patrick would tap into the financial side of the transaction—it was his specialty. I wanted to look at the personalities involved. The coverage of the sale was perfunctory, but stories increased after the sale went through when Central started firing the existing staff. A contentious labor dispute followed that had more appeal from the paper’s standpoint. There was definitely some bad blood circulating at the time, especially as Archie MacInnes made a huge profit on the deal at the expense of his employees, according to Edenburn’s former manager, Bruce Keenan. I searched Keenan’s name and came up with a lawsuit filed against Richard, Archie, and Central. I shot Patrick a text requesting a copy.
Liam came and put his head in my lap, looking up at me with pleading eyes. I sighed, grabbed my coat, and headed out the back door. The fresh air seemed to revive him, and he was soon running around in the rapidly melting snow where the rabbits and other wild animals had left tracks in the slush as they foraged for food. He suddenly picked up pace, following a scent, and I was left to trot along behind, trying to process the tumult of thoughts in my head.
Deadly Dram Page 14