I continued down the street past the bakery, which was long closed for the day, a Bank of Scotland branch, and a tiny clothing store that mostly sold clothing suitable for fishermen. In all likelihood, it was the only clothing shop that could make a go of it in such a tiny fishing village. When I walked by the clothing store, I heard the scraping again, and I spun on my heel, determined to catch whoever or whatever was responsible for the sound. As I turned, I could have sworn a shadow disappeared between two of the tightly packed buildings.
Was I being followed? Was it Remy Kenner? I felt a chill run all the way down my back and into my legs. Should I go down the alleyway and see if I was right? Or should I run? I remembered what Craig had told me about Remy, about how dangerous he really was and that he was a drug dealer. He wasn’t someone I wanted to mess with alone.
I ran.
The cat carrier bounced painfully against my leg as I ran, and Ivanhoe yowled all the way down the street. I ran over the troll bridge, like I was being pursued by the bridge troll himself, and into the parking lot.
A boys’ football team, or soccer team as it would be called in the States, were standing in their uniforms and shin guards around two parked vans when I came flying into the lot like my tail was on fire. I pulled up short and stared at them red-faced. I gasped for breath, and Ivanhoe hissed in his carrier.
“Stop looking, children,” one of the adults said. “It’s time to get into the vans so we can head to the match.”
The boys and I continued to gape at each other.
“Into the van with you,” the adult ordered. “She’s an American. She’s going to do all sorts of odd things. It’s not polite to stare.”
The boys broke eye contact with me and piled into the two waiting vans.
I stood by my Astra and caught my breath, holding Ivanhoe’s carrier to my chest. I needed to get a grip.
“Was there a reason that you were running away from me?” a voice asked.
I spun around, and Ivanhoe yowled.
Carver raised his eyebrow. “I assume there is a cat in that box.”
“Were you following me just now?” I asked.
“I was.”
My mouth fell open. I hadn’t expected him to just come right out and say it. “Why?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you, but you ran away from me like your tail was on fire.” He cocked his head, and his thick blond hair fell to one side. “What’s got you spooked, Fiona Knox?”
I ignored his question. “What do you want?”
He smiled. “I was hoping to catch you at your shop this evening. I wanted to talk to you about Duncreigan.”
To buy myself some time, I opened the passenger side door of my car and set Ivanhoe’s cat carrier inside. He yowled as I shut the door after him. “What about Duncreigan?” I walked around to my side of the car, and Carver followed me.
“You and I both know it’s a very special place, and I would very much like to visit it to see what its historical significance is to the area. Raj mentioned to me that there is a standing stone there. In my research of the area, this stone has not been documented.”
I inwardly groaned and wished that Raj hadn’t mentioned anything about Duncreigan or my godfather’s garden to the historian.
“I think I could tell you a lot about the stone, perhaps even date it, if I was allowed to see it.”
“I know that most menhirs can’t be dated exactly. No one really can know who erected them.”
He smiled. “I see you have done a little research into this, so you are curious about it, aren’t you?”
His open curiosity had me on edge. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t need any help.”
“Minister MacCullen didn’t seem to think you were up to the task of caring for the garden. He spoke about it in church.” He tapped his index finger on his cheek. “It was the Sunday that he chased you away from the church. That must had been humiliating for you.”
My face felt hot. “Well, you have probably heard by now that the minister and I didn’t see eye to eye on a great many things. I wouldn’t judge what I was capable of by his low opinion of me.” I swallowed before I lost my courage. “And what’s your opinion of the minister?”
He shrugged. “As long as he funded the chapel project, I didn’t care one way or another about him. Do you still think that I killed him?”
“I never did,” I said, speaking the truth. It seemed to me that the minister’s death would only have been a burden to Carver when it came to funding his research. He wouldn’t put that in jeopardy.
“That makes me happy that you don’t think badly of me, Fiona, because I do want the two of us to be friends.” He leaned in close to me, and I stepped back, bumping into my car. He stared at my throat. “That’s an interesting necklace you have on. A triskele. Just like the ones found at the chapel ruins.”
Instinctively, I reached up and grabbed the pendant hanging from my neck.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
I frowned. “It was a gift. I don’t know what my necklace has to do with anything.”
“I just find it curious that of all the Celtic symbols, it would be this one that you would wear. Must have some significance to you. Am I right?”
I put my hand on the handle of the car door. “I really have to go. My cat is hungry, and I need to get him home to feed him.”
Carver smiled. “We don’t want a hungry cat on our hands, now, do we?”
I started to open the car door, but he blocked me from opening it. “How much do you know about Duncreigan, really?”
“Please just let me go.”
“It seems to me there is much you could learn about the garden.” He lowered his voice. “About yourself, if you would only let me see the standing stone.”
I yanked the car door open at this point, which cause him to stumble away from me.
“Don’t you want to know what you’re up against?”
I was about to duck into the car when his words stopped me. “What I’m up against?”
“How can you know how to use the garden properly if you don’t know where the magic comes from?” He lowered his voice. “Because the garden does hold magic, correct?”
“I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
“I need to see the stone.”
I jerked back.
“Everything okay here?” A voice asked.
I turned to see Kipling walking toward us with a determined gait. His hair was perfectly styled, and the numerous brass metals and buttons on his uniform had been polished until they sparkled. I had never been so happy to see him.
Carver scowled and took a step back from me. “We’re fine, Officer.”
Kipling glanced at me, and I smiled at him. “I was just leaving.”
Kipling nodded. “It would be good for you to go home, Fiona. I saw Remy at the station just before he was questioned. He’s not too pleased with you right now. I’d give him a wide berth if I were you.”
“I’m planning on it,” I said. I planned to give Carver a wide berth too. “I had better go. My cat is in the car.”
Kipling nodded and stepped away. He was scanning the parking lot for something or someone. Remy? I wondered. I didn’t plan to hang around and find out who it was.
Carver stepped back from the car and let me climb in. Before I shut the door, he said, “Fiona, the stone must be studied. I will get to it eventually.”
“It’s on private property. The stone can’t be researched without my permission,” I shot back.
He smiled and stepped back from the car. “I don’t think you’ve met a researcher as determined as I am before. You may say no now, Fiona Knox, but remember that I won’t give up that easily. I will have a look at that stone with or without your blessing.”
I slammed the car door shut and shifted into gear. I had heard enough.
I drove out of the village before I allowed myself to breathe again.
Chapter Thirty-One
Ivanhoe
and I got home just as dusk was settling. Half of me was wishing that Hamish would be at the cottage when I arrived. The other half of me was not. What could I tell him? The good news was that Seth didn’t appear to have murdered the minister, but we were all about to become family?
I thought I needed to digest this bit of news before I shared it with anyone. That especially was true when I thought about my parents. My mother would hit the roof. She hadn’t been happy when I’d said I planned to stay in Scotland permanently, and now it was possible that both her daughters would live on the other side of the world from her.
I ate a quick dinner of cereal and chocolate milk. Ever since I had been working at the flower shop, my diet had become whatever I could find in the cottage—which wasn’t much—and whatever was the day’s special at the Twisted Fox.
In the last couple of weeks, all I had wanted was the cottage back to myself, but now that Isla wasn’t there, it was too quiet. It was Ivanhoe and me and the twenty-some shipping boxes sent overseas by my mother. I glanced down at the cat. “Just between you and me, I miss her.”
He mewed. He missed Isla too.
“Don’t tell her I said that, okay?”
He wrinkled his little pushed-in nose.
Since I had moved to Scotland, I hadn’t bothered to purchase a television. This was one of those times I wished I had one. I could have used the background noise. Maybe a sitcom would have kept my mind off of my troubles.
Even though I didn’t know what to do about the murder or about my sister’s engagement, I could at least start organizing the cottage. I was tired of tripping over the boxes from back home. It was time to claim the cottage as my own. The best way to do that was to finish going through my godfather’s possessions and decide which of those to keep and which of them to donate to charity.
I went into the small bedroom, where I found my sister’s clothes strewn across the bed and her makeup all over the top of the dresser. Clearly she had discarded four outfits before she settled on what she was wearing that day.
I shook my head and pushed my sister’s clothes aside and dropped her makeup back into her makeup case. It didn’t all fit. Isla should really buy stock in Sephora.
Like most homes in Europe, the cottage didn’t have a closet. Instead, there was a free-standing walnut wardrobe across from the bed. There was only enough room in the small space to open the doors, with an inch to spare between the wardrobe and the end of the double bed.
When I was a child, I had been convinced that the wardrobe would be my ticket to Narnia after I had read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I had even gone so far as to hide in the wardrobe for hours when I was nine. I’d curled up in the back and squeezed my eyes shut. I’d willed myself to wake up in Narnia and ignored the frantic shouts of my parents and Uncle Ian, who were searching all over Duncreigan for me.
It was Uncle Ian who had found me in the end. “What are you doing in there, my love?” he’d asked.
“Narnia business,” I had said.
He had laughed his deep laugh. “You are a treat, my love. You are a treat. I’m so glad that I am your …”
My mother, with baby Isla on her hip, had come in the room then and yelled at me for hiding from them.
I opened the wardrobe again that night and pushed my godfather’s clothes aside until I could see the back of the furniture.
Ivanhoe stood at my feet. “You won’t tell, will you?” I asked the cat.
He mewed.
I knocked on the back of the wardrobe, just in case. It wouldn’t hurt to double-check. Just like when I was a child, a portal to Narnia didn’t open. It was a great disappointment. I had never been readier to run to a magical kingdom far away.
Ivanhoe mewed again, as if he were reprimanding me in some way.
“Hey, I’m the Keeper of a magical garden. It’s not too far a stretch to believe that Narnia might be real, too.”
He cocked his head as if to say, “You’re kidding me, right?”
Below where I’d knocked on the back of the wardrobe, I spotted a square wooden box. When I was a kid, my godfather had said that was where he kept all his favorite things. He’d told me he would show me what was in the box someday, but he never had. I had forgotten about it until now.
I bit the inside of my lip. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face whatever memories the box contained. Perhaps it would just be better to sort through my godfather’s clothing so I could put my own clothes in the wardrobe. However, the strange encounter I had had with Carver in the village parking lot had me on edge. I was curious about the garden and my godfather. I wanted to understand my connection to both, but this was something I was determined to find out on my own. I wasn’t going to go to Carver for help. Ever.
“This day has already been a disaster. I can’t see it getting any worse,” I told the cat. “Let’s go for it.”
He meowed encouragement.
I scratched his head between his folded ears. “I’m glad that you at least are on my side.”
I pulled the box out of its place and set it in the middle of the bed. As I did, a cloud of dust flew up in my face.
Ivanhoe sneezed, and I coughed.
The box was locked, but I found a silver key taped to the bottom of it. The tape was brittle and fell apart in my hand as I removed the key. I brushed the remainder of the tape from the key.
“Now or never, right, Ivanhoe?”
The cat meowed. I took it as encouragement to open the box.
The key fit effortlessly into the lock and turned. I lifted the box’s lid, and another cloud of dust enveloped the cat and me. Ivanhoe shook a dust bunny from his head and then batted it away.
I peered inside and gave a sharp intake of breath. The box was a time capsule. On the very top was my godfather’s degree from St. Andrews and his acceptance letter into the Royal Army. I set those aside. The next item was a framed photo of Uncle Ian holding me when I was a baby. I recognized it because I had the same one packed away in one of the boxes in the main room. I set the photo upright on the narrow nightstand.
I found more old letters and trinkets from my godfather’s early days in the army. Beneath these, I found a manila envelope. I opened it and found a group of yellowing photographs from my godfather’s school days at St. Andrews. I recognized the places in the photographs because my parents would always take Isla and me there when we visited Uncle Ian. It was the place they had met, and they always wanted to go back.
Most of the pictures were of my godfather and other male students, and my father was in many too. They were either fooling around or smiling brightly at the camera, their arms wrapped around each other.
The very last photograph in the bunch was the surprise. It was my godfather and my mother. She was sitting on his lap with her arms around his neck. My father was in the picture, but he was off to the side looking at my mother and Uncle Ian with a frown on his face.
Something was off here. Why was my mother hugging Uncle Ian and not my father? Why was my father the one off to the side in the picture? Shouldn’t my godfather be the one looking in on my parents’ relationship? I flipped over the photo, and the date on the back was the year before I was born. I recognized my mother’s handwriting. It was clear and precise. She had always preached about good penmanship to my sister and me. Beneath the date she had written, “Claire and Ian,” with a heart around the two names. My father wasn’t mentioned at all.
I picked up the manila envelope and blew into it. There was a note crumpled into the bottom of it. I removed the note, which was again written in my mother’s hand on her personal stationery. She didn’t write letters very often any longer, but I knew the stationery from when I was small. Once, when I was no more than five, I had taken half a dozen sheets from her stationery box and drawn tulips and daffodils on them. Mom had scolded me when she found out I had wasted so much paper.
I unfolded the note and read.
I named her Fiona like you asked. She may not be your daughter in name, b
ut she always will be. I know it’s been difficult on all of us, but the solution we agreed upon is the best for the family. We are all family now because of Fiona.
I stared at the words again. She may not be your daughter in name, but she always will be. Countless memories flooded through my mind about my godfather and the garden. How everyone in the village had assumed I was a MacCallister when I’d inherited Duncreigan, how I’d been told I had the MacCallister black hair, and how so many had assumed that Uncle Ian was my father …
“Oh my God,” I whispered as the truth settled into my heart.
I shoved everything back into the box except for the framed photo of my godfather and me. That I left on the nightstand. I put the box back in the wardrobe and hid the key in the nightstand drawer.
“Cleaning is overrated,” I said to the cat.
Ivanhoe meowed in return. I was certain that meant he agreed with me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The storm raged on around me. I counted One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three—
I couldn’t even finish the third Mississippi before the crack of thunder seemed to split the earth in two. I was hiding between the oil barrels on the docks. Rain pelted my back and ran down the sides of my face into my eyes.
Two people, carrying something long and black, came out of the darkness. Whatever it was, it seemed heavy—they were inching down the docks.
“I don’t—” one of the two people began to say.
“That’s the problem. You don’t think, and I have to clean up all of your messes. I wish once, just once, you would think out your actions.”
There was a mumbled response, but I couldn’t make out the words.
The stronger voice came back. “Be quiet. We need to finish here before the storm gets much worse.”
Suddenly, I was no longer in my hidden spot between the oil barrels. I was suspended in air, being swung to and fro wrapped in a canvas tarp.
The two voices were speaking again, but I couldn’t make out the words they said.
“Here,” one voice came in clear.
Death and Daisies Page 20