A Circle of Crows

by Kelsey Kingsley

  “I'll need access to her room,” Brodie said, holding out his palm for the key.

  “Aye, of course, ye do,” she said agreeably, hurrying to the rows of hanging keys behind the desk, while needlessly saying, “We make a number of copies fer each of our rooms. Ye never ken when there's gonna be an emergency.” She plucked one from the wall and turned, handing it to Alec. “Good thing, or I wouldnae be in the position to help ye right now.”

  Brodie nodded stiffly and grasped the key in his hand. “Thank ye, miss. I'll be keepin' this until the investigation is over.”

  “Of course, of course!”

  “Ah, and can I just get yer name?” he asked, removing a pad of paper and pen from his pocket.

  “O-oh, yes,” she stammered. “It’s Isla.”

  “Thank ye for yer cooperation, Isla,” he said, putting away the pen and paper.

  Then, before she could reply, we headed toward the grand staircase, situated just beside the door, and I whispered, “What does 'your bum's out the window' mean?” And Brodie just chuckled, before replying, “Welcome to Scotland, lass.”

  ***

  We arrived at Room 12, the Lovers’ Room, and if I had to describe it in a word, standing in front of that door felt surreal. Just the thought of this being the last place my sister had slept brought forth emotions I hadn’t expected, and not knowing what we’d find behind the door left me riddled with bone-chilling anxiety.

  “Ye can wait out here if ye want,” Brodie offered, as he positioned the key at the knob.

  “No, I told you I’m doing this,” I said stubbornly, waiting for him to just rip the bandage off and open the door.

  “All right,” he sighed with resignation, turning the key and pushing the door open.

  Holding an arm out, as if to protect me from the unknown lurking around the corner, Inspector Brodie and I walked into the room, both unsure of what we might find. Would the place be ransacked and destroyed, due to a deadly scuffle? Or would we find it comfortably lived in, as if it were eagerly waiting for her return? Both wouldn’t have surprised me, and both would have broken my heart, but what we did find left us both confused and dumbfounded.

  The four-poster bed was made, with crisp white and pink, floral duvet and sheets and the pillows stacked neatly, fluffed and smooth. The carpet was vacuumed, and the trash cans were empty. Even the wardrobe, standing tall and beautiful with its ornate designs, was left strategically opened, with a ‘Welcome to the Whispering Crow Inn’ sign hanging just so from the rod inside. For all intents and purposes, the room looked as if it were ready and waiting for the next guest to arrive at any minute, except for the stack of Gracie’s luggage. They sat beneath the window, neatly arranged in size order, as if it were now another permanent fixture of the room.

  “What am I fuckin’ lookin’ at here?” Brodie muttered to himself, slowly pulling his hand away from its protective stance and thrusting it into his already unkempt hair. “Someone’s been in here.”

  “And they cleaned it up. All of that evidence, gone,” I said, as he closed the door and locked it.

  “Well, ye dinnae ken if there was any evidence to begin with.”

  I supposed he was right. Maybe there hadn’t been. But we might have at least found a strand of her hair on the floor or the scent of her perfume on the pillows. Anything to remind me that she had once been here, to make me feel closer to her, and it was all gone.

  While I battled with my emotions, Alec stood beside me, hands on his hips and forehead crumpled in thought. Turning his head and surveying the room, he took a deep breath and said, “It wasnae management. This was done by someone else.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head and looked to me, as if in those few seconds he had forgotten I was there. “Sorry. Just thinkin’ out loud.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t the inn’s maid? Maybe whoever did this called housekeeping and—”

  “Look.” He walked to the mini fridge and opened the door, revealing that it was nearly empty of its drinks and snacks. His eyes met mine again and said, “Whoever did this, didn’t want us to know they were here.”

  “Then, why didn’t they stock the fridge?” I asked, startled by his unexplained and impressive intuition.

  “Because they probably didn’t have access to the stockroom, and because they didnae think you would check,” he said, pointing at me, and then, pointing at himself, added, “but they didn’t count on me bein’ here.”

  “Because it was ruled an accident,” I muttered, shaking my head and turning to stare at the stack of Gracie’s luggage.

  Brodie was quiet as I walked to the pile of three suitcases, one on top of the other. I moved to put my hands on the first, when Brodie appeared by my side to hand me a pair of latex gloves.

  “Keep yerself from lookin’ like a suspect,” he muttered gruffly, and I nodded, pulling them onto my hands.

  I opened the first, to find her toiletries packed neatly into a number of bags. Her shampoo and conditioner, body wash, toothpaste, and toothbrush, all organized, and I chuckled around the painful prick of heartbreak.

  She had packed these things, as neat as always, and she had no idea she was about to die.

  Tears sprang to my eyes, as I touched her hairbrush and the strands of her brown hair that still clung to the bristles.

  “God, Gracie …,” I whispered, shaking my head.

  I was ready to have a good cry, to just stare at her belongings and weep for the loss of her life, when I noticed a tinge of brownish red in between the bristles. Gracie didn’t have any red in her hair.

  “Brodie.”

  “Hm,” he answered, now on his hands and knees, peering underneath the bed.

  “Come here.”

  He did as he was told, and I pointed at the brush. “Is that blood?”

  From his pocket, he pulled out a small flashlight. When it was turned on, it cast a blacklight glow, and the spaces between the bristles beamed.

  “Oh, God,” I uttered, the words pushing from my lips as my stomach heaved and I had to walk away, afraid I would vomit all over what was now evidence.

  Carefully, Brodie zipped the bag back up and lifted it. And there, lying squarely on top of the second suitcase, was Gracie’s phone.

  Without a word, he picked it up and handed it to me. Knowing my sister’s passcode, I entered it, as my stomach warned with angry lurches and queasy churns. Not wanting to see what was there, I handed it back as soon as the phone was unlocked.

  I watched warily as he tapped through the phone, not knowing what he was looking at or what he might have been reading. But when he froze, when his eyes widened, when his jaw tensed, I stood straighter and the sickening feeling in my gut grew stronger.

  “What is it?” I asked, terrified and teetering on the brink of panic. “Brodie, what the hell are you looking at?!”

  Without a word, he turned the phone toward me, and immediately, I gasped, clapping my hand over my mouth. Because there on the screen, was an unmistakable picture of me, entering the Fort Crow Police Station that morning.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ALEC

  It was a crime scene. And the chilling fact that, what I assumed to be Grace’s blood, was all over her hairbrush, shook me deeply, straight to my very core.

  The bastard had brushed her hair. Before or after she had died, I couldn’t say for sure from the wee bit of evidence I had, but the simple fact that he—or she—wanted her to look better, normal, or even nice left me shivering in a room too hot to be cold.

  What made it all so much worse was that, this cold-blooded killer was aware that Rosie and her son were here. She had been followed, as proven by another picture I found of her sitting inside the crematorium, and when Rosie asked what she was supposed to do, all I could say was, “Ye’re stayin’ with me.” And she didn’t even protest, as I suspected she might. She just nodded and called her son, to let him know we were coming.

  “TJ? TJ, honey, what are you doing?” Her eye
s met mine, wide with fear and panic, as I slid Grace’s mobile into a bag. “Okay, you've just been watching TV? Good. Has anybody …” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Has anybody knocked on the door? No? Good, good. That's good. No, n-no, I'm fine. I'm just … I've just had a really crazy day. Um, so the detective and I are on our way now.”

  She went on, as I quickly scanned the room with my blacklight, looking for any other signs of blood and finding none. It was so tidy and spotless, without a speck of visible evidence, apart from the hairbrush, and I was certain it would've been less bone-chilling had it been painted in the woman's blood.

  “We're going to pick you up, okay? Get your stuff together and—no, TJ, listen to me right now. Don't make this difficult. Just do what I'm telling you—oh, my God, TJ! I don't have the strength for this! Just get your shit together!” On our way back toward the door, she stopped and squeezed her eyes shut, as she groaned and shouted, “Goddammit, TJ! I can't, I can't deal with this bullshit right now! Can you please just do what I'm fucking telling you to do? Please!”

  Then, she hung up and angrily thrust her phone into her jacket pocket. She looked to me, apology and pain written in her eyes. “Do yourself a favor and don't have kids,” she said, mustering a laugh and a smile.

  “Highly doubt they're in the cards for me at this point,” I muttered, pulling the door shut behind me and locking it. Then, I turned to her and said, “I'm gonna come back later and check things out some more. But you won't ever come back into this room.”

  “Why not?” she asked, quiet and timid, as her hands picked aggressively at her fingernail polish.

  I was a bastard for involving her in this. She never should've been allowed to come, and I never should've asked for her help in moving the body. I shouldn’t have used her the way I had, in lieu of the help from my team, and I was an arsehole for all of it. I wanted to make up for it by solving the case and finding her sister's murderer. I just hoped that would be enough.

  “Because ye're bein' targeted,” I told her point blank. “And I'm scared that, if ye came back, there would be more for ye to find.”

  “Why would they target me at all, if they just want this to look like an accident?” she asked, shaking her head and narrowing her eyes. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  She has a point. Why? Why would the bastard do that? Why would they make anybody question anything, if they just wanted it to be dropped?

  “Because …” I stared unblinking down the hallway, as the gears inside my head turned tirelessly. “They didnae want anybody questionin’ … they didn’t expect it …” I turned to her, as the pieces clicked slowly into place. “And both of us did.”

  Rosie swallowed and looked back to the door. “So, you think they’re warning me? To shut me up?”

  “I do,” I replied, nodding slowly. “And I think they wanna shut me up, too.”

  ***

  “Who the hell are you?” TJ asked me, the moment his mother opened the door of their hotel room.

  He was a scraggly thing with a wimpy-looking mohawk that any self-respecting punk would've scoffed at, and he was doing his damnedest to insult me. He wanted to shake me and scare me away from spending time with his mother, as if I was a suitor looking for her hand. But I wasn't afraid of him. If anything, I just felt a great deal of pity for him, seeing the hurt and worry behind his angry gaze, and I wasn't going to crumble beneath the weight of his pain.

  “Inspector Alec Brodie,” I introduced myself, pulling out my badge for him. He studied it closely, as if it could be a fake, but he wouldn't accept it from me. “Ye can take it,” I told him, urging him to look as close and long as he'd like.

  “No, it's okay,” he muttered, slinking away as quickly as he came. “I believe you.”

  “Good,” I said, putting the badge away. “It'd be a shite job to pretend to have.”

  Rosie hurried around the room, throwing his things into an open bag. “Didn't I tell you to get your stuff together?” she asked breathlessly. “TJ, we need to go.”

  “Ye don’t have to worry,” I told her gently. “I'm guardin' the door. Nobody's comin' in without gettin' through me.”

  TJ turned to me abruptly, then looked at his mother, eyes instantly wide and bewildered. Scared. “What? What's going on?”

  “We don't have time to talk about this now,” she answered, thrusting his shoes into his hands. “Put these on. Hurry. We have to--”

  “Mom, what the fuck is going on?!” TJ shouted over his mother’s panicked demands.

  She stopped her bustling to face him, as tears collected in her eyes. “Your aunt was murdered,” she answered in a voice too calm and controlled, and I could sense the inevitable storm brewing. “We think that whoever killed her is now following me, so—”

  “Wait, murdered?! But you, you, you said—”

  “I know what I said. It’s what I was told. But I was wrong,” she said, before erratically shaking her head. “They. They were wrong.”

  TJ played a stark contrast to his mother’s cool and calm demeanor by clenching his hands into fists and thrusting them violently to his temples. “No!” he shouted, and I worried someone might hear. Particularly someone that might have followed. Someone who might have Grace Allan’s blood on his or her hands. “No, no, no! Nobody would do that to her! Why?!”

  I had tried to keep my distance, to separate myself from a mother’s need to break this horrible news to her son. But now, with the potential threat of his shouting and the possibility of him drawing attention where none of us wanted it, I stepped in and offered my unsolicited help.

  “Laddie,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder and gripping firmly. “I’m sorry for everythin’ ye’re goin’ through. Truly. And if ye need to scream or cry or whatever ye need to do to feel better, I won’t stop ye. But I cannae allow ye to do it here.”

  “Fuck you,” he spat bitterly into my face. “Who the fuck are you, anyway? Why the fuck should we even trust you, when you assholes told us she fucking fell?”

  “For what it’s worth,” I replied, unfazed by his belligerence, “I never thought yer aunt fell. And I’d like to think I’m the man who’s gonna prove it.”

  TJ studied me with an intensity that left me feeling vulnerable and naked. It was like he had the ability to see my secrets and the reasons I was here now and not in Edinburgh. I watched as the truth that his aunt’s life had been stolen, seeped into the skin, and I saw his angry resolve crumble under the weight of his unimaginable sorrow.

  “I wanna call Dad,” he said abruptly, in a voice threatening to break, as he turned from me to look at his mother.

  Rosie nodded. “Put on your shoes and you can call him in the car—”

  “I need to call him now,” TJ interrupted, but his voice lacked the snide attitude it held before. Now, he was a young boy in a teenager’s body who desperately the comfort of his father.

  “We can’t—”

  “Go ahead,” I gently interrupted, patting his shoulder, before he ran off to the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

  Rosie turned a stern look on me, as if to scold me for stepping into the middle of her business, a place I knew I didn’t belong. So, before she had the chance to speak, I said, “I’m sorry. But I know all too well what it’s like to need a talk with yer father, and I know all too well how much it aches when ye can’t.”

  She didn’t reply after that. She just nodded and continued to collect various items strewn about, while TJ cried on the phone to his father, and I guarded the door.

  As I stood there, with my back against the peephole and my eyes on Rosie’s frantic bustle, I prayed I could give them peace, so that they could bury their sister and aunt, knowing that nothing was left undone.

  And even more than that, I hoped I could keep them safe.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ROSIE

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me sooner,” TJ said from the backseat of Brodie’s car. “You knew fo
r hours. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Because that’s not the type of thing you tell someone over the phone,” I muttered exhaustedly, wishing for a glass of something strong. Or the whole bottle.

  “Yeah, I guess telling me while you were in the middle of a total meltdown was better,” he mumbled sardonically, and I bit my tongue to avoid engaging any further.

  I wasn’t sure he would ever forgive me for not telling him as soon as I found out, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever forgive myself for that either. But after the week I’d had, I was emotionally drained and tired of feeling anything altogether. So, instead, I chose to be distant and closed off until we reached Brodie’s house, where Rick was waiting with his findings.

  As we drove, I noticed Brodie repeatedly checking in his rear-view mirror. The face he wore was one of concern and aggression, with his brow furrowed and jaw locked tight, and when I asked what he was looking for, he grunted a surly, “Nothin’.” But I knew it wasn’t nothing. I knew he feared we were being followed. Yet, whenever I looked behind my seat and through the rear window, I saw nothing but a stretch of road and the expansive, natural beauty of the Highlands. I hated that I couldn’t spend even a moment to just enjoy it.

  We turned onto a dirt road and drove for another minute or two before the house came into view and stole the breath from my lungs. With its brick structure, tall peaks, arched windows, and grand front entrance, I had never seen such a beautiful house before in my life.

  “Oh, my God,” I muttered under my breath. “This is where you live?”

  “Don’t get excited,” Brodie laughed. “It’s not mine. Rick lets me rent one of his eleven bedrooms.”

  “Is Rick a freakin’ Lord?”

  “A Laird,” he corrected. “Not a Lord.”

  “What’s the difference?” TJ spoke up from the backseat.

  Brodie glanced behind him, after parking the car behind what I presumed to be Rick’s SUV. “A Lord is someone important. A Laird is just someone with a lot of house and land.”