The Burning Glass (27 page)

“I was joking about spraining yourself,”
Alasdair said.

“It’s just, well, you know—I haven’t, in a
long time—kind of out of condition . . .” Dammit, the heat was
rushing to her face, and he was the last person she needed to be
blushing in front of.

But his grimace was contrite, not amused.
“I’m sorry, lass. I should have taken it easy, minded my
manners.”

“Your manners are excellent. Practice makes
perfect and everything.”

His contrition leavened by a chuckle,
Alasdair eased her across the gravel as though she were a soap
bubble that would explode in his hands.

The river burbled along, humping up at and
then spilling around rocks that in the strengthening sunlight
emitted the glister of tarnished silver. The trees on the opposite
bank seemed to stretch and straighten their limbs toward the
warmth. Jean turned and looked up at Ferniebank, even more stern
and forbidding from below, and tried to imagine the place as
Ciara’s healing center, serving up New Age vaporings and Minty’s
fine cuisine. She couldn’t see the future for the past, though,
which in her mind’s eye gathered around the castle like ominous
wreaths of shadow.

Alasdair picked his way over the rocks and
pebbles toward where the end of the perimeter wall emerged from the
trees. Yes, it was undercut by water and age so that its squared
stones lay in disarray, making a rough and ready causeway
half-overgrown by waving weeds and the sort of moss that didn’t
gather on rolling stones. “No one’s come in that way—not a plant’s
been disturbed.”

“Let’s have a look at the opposite end. It’s
closer to the chapel. And to the town, for that matter.”

Together they strolled toward the tumbled
rocks where the chapel terrace had subsided. One of the crime-scene
technicians was braced atop them like a space-suited gargoyle,
scooping a teaspoon of yellowish muck into a plastic bag. “What’s
that?” asked Alasdair.

“Spewins. Someone was leaning over the
railing there like they were spewing over the side of a boat. Last
night, by the looks of it.”

Well, Jean thought, sharing a glance with
Alasdair, heart attack victims will vomit. The tech added that bag
to a bigger one sitting beside him, one that already held bits of
detritus—a cigarette butt stained with red lipstick, a soft-drink
can, a . . . “There’s another one of those little earring stars,”
Jean said. “I saw Ciara at the railing here Friday afternoon.”

Alasdair peered at the bag. “Like Tinkerbelle
and her fairy dust, isn’t she? All right if we walk past here?”

“Around by the water, I’ve done that area.”
The tech stood aside.

“Carry on,” Alasdair told him with a jaunty
salute, and again he helped Jean balance across the rocks and onto
the riverbank. She could have handled herself just fine, but she
might as well give him the satisfaction of being the protective
male—assuming he didn’t step over that fine line between protecting
and patronizing her.

An easy stroll along a wide, flat gravel
terrace, and they reached a belt of trees less dense than the one
behind the castle. Beyond them the stone of the perimeter wall
gleamed in a fitful ray of sun, then faded into leafy shade.
Alasdair plunged ahead, pebbles skittering. “Look at this!” Like
the end of the first wall, this one had collapsed. Unlike the
first, the stones had fallen so that a track as clear and dry as
any garden path ran between wall and water. “The property’s a Swiss
cheese.”

Ducking the twigs that grasped at her hair,
Jean turned and looked toward the chapel. On this side the hillside
was gentler, and the gravel riverbank segued into the field with
the weed-choked worked stone that she had contemplated yesterday
morning, pre inscription and relationship crisis. Several faint
trails coiled around and through the field like preliminary
sketches for an interlace pattern. At its top half a dozen
constables and technicians were forming a line, preparing to leave
no stone or leaf unturned.

At the bottom of the field, just where one
path splayed out onto the gravel, lay a puddle. In the moist black
dirt around it were impressed a mishmash of footprints, one
perfectly preserved dead center. “Look here,” Jean called. “That’s
one big foot. Angus?”

In an instant, Alasdair was crouching over
the muddy patch. “I reckon so. He was wearing shoes with thick
rubber soles in a waffle pattern, caked with mud. I had time to
take notice.”

Alasdair, waiting alone in the tremulous
darkness beside Angus’s body. It hadn’t taken long before Logan got
there. It had taken longer for the next constable to arrive. “Did
you and Logan talk about anything while you were waiting?”

“He identified Angus is all. When he told me
to get myself back to the castle and I refused, he didn’t go on
about it.”

“I’m just glad you didn’t leave him alone
with the body, especially since he wanted you to.”

“He was just claiming his territory, I
reckon. But you never know, with those drawings missing and all.
There’re several partial prints here as well, more work for the
techs.” Alasdair waved at the officer in charge of the sweep and
then discreetly retired along the riverbank. “Let’s go back the way
we came, so as not to disturb the ground.”

Jean, at his heels, resisted the temptation
to say, “Yes, Kemo Sabe.” This was his show. This was his vocation.
She was the sidekick. The helpmeet . . . Well, he kept saying “we.”
That was a concession of sorts.

She accepted Alasdair’s solicitous if
distracted hand back up the hillside to the courtyard, telling
herself she couldn’t worry about him being out of the loop and then
feel miffed when he got back into it. Or she could, actually, being
all too good at holding two opposing ideas in her mind at the same
time, and quite aware that a foolish consistency was the hobgoblin
of small minds.

A van stood close to the outbuilding, several
people unloading equipment for the incident room. Cords and cables
already curled from its door into that of the shop. Two men
disappeared into the castle with Wallace’s telescope and the rest
of the tools and fishing gear. Derek had vanished. Either Delaney
had taken him back to town, or he had Kallinikos rigging up the
third degree inside. Alasdair sent a constable around the building
to collect the wooden pallet, then headed toward the door of the
incident room, a spring in his step and a glint in his eye,
single-tasking.

No, she was not responsible for his moods,
bright, grim, or indifferent. Jean peeled away from his wake and
unlocked the door of the flat. Coffee. Tea was all well and good,
but when the going got challenging, the challenged needed
coffee.

She started the coffeepot, yawned, and
unlimbered her cell phone. It was late enough to start some
investigations of her own, . . . Ah. She already had a message.

Michael’s voice spoke from the tiny speaker.
“I’m right sorry I said that deaths come in threes. I know I didna
bring poor old Angus down personally, but, well, ring us when you
have the chance.”

Jean had the chance. By the time she wrapped
her chilled fingers around an aromatic cup of caffeinated acids,
she’d already given Rebecca chapter and verse, pausing between each
while Rebecca repeated them to Michael. In the background, water
rushed and cutlery clanged, since it was just past breakfast time
in civilized places like the Reiver’s Rest.

“I don’t even know who to consider as
suspects,” Jean concluded. “The Ferniebank Fourteen, probably—you
know, Ciara, Keith, Minty, Derek, Zoe, and their families and
pets.”

“Keith turned up for breakfast as usual,”
said Rebecca, “and inhaled the lot without even chewing, so far as
I could tell.”

“God knows where he puts his sausages and
bacon,” said Michael. “He’s looking like he’s not had a proper meal
since the millennium.”

“And then,” Rebecca went on, somewhat more
loudly, “he left. As usual again.”

“In the Mystic Scotland van?”

“No, in that brown car he was sharing with
Ciara yesterday.”

“Did he know about Angus?”

“He must have, someone had turned on the TV.
Not that he said anything to us. He put his cell phone down just
next to his plate, waiting for a call, but he didn’t get one.”

“Ciara’s stopping at Glebe House?” asked
Michael faintly. “She’ll be with Minty, then.”

“Minty.” Jean imagined Minty reacting to
Logan’s appearing with the bad news, her alabaster face immobile,
her hands clasping each other because there was no other for them
to clasp. Or was there? Did Angus go home at all yesterday? “I
don’t guess you’ve heard anything about the message in the
clarsach. Sounds like a Nancy Drew title, doesn’t it?”

“Not yet,” said Rebecca. “It’ll be tomorrow,
Monday, a working day, before we get a full analysis. All we’ve
heard is that the paper’s authentic to the time period.”

“Well, thanks anyway. If anyone drops by with
a confession, or even just a coherent explanation, let me know,
okay? I’m still planning to meet Ciara at the pub this afternoon,
so I’ll see you then.”

“Good luck,” said Rebecca, echoed by
Michael’s, “Keep your pecker up.”

Not a problem
, Jean told herself with
a lopsided smile.

A vehicle drove into the courtyard. Cup in
one hand and phone in the other, she used her forearm to shove the
curtain aside. The sentry constable was closing the gate on a surge
of camerapeople. A police car—it might or might not be Logan’s,
they all looked alike—rolled to a stop. To the accompaniment of
clicking lenses, the door opened and Valerie Trotter got out,
escorted by a female constable.

Thinking that it was about time the police
got in touch with their feminine side, Jean turned back to the
phone and punched Miranda’s number, hoping her partner hadn’t had
such a late night that she was still asleep, whether alone or
accompanied.

“Good morning to you, Jean,” said Miranda, as
chipper as though she’d been up and about for hours, no doubt doing
good works. “I don’t suppose you and Alasdair have solved the
murder just yet. Or is it a murder?”

“We—the cops
et al
.—are assuming it
is,” Jean replied. “Alasdair’s baying along the trail.”

“Talked himself into the case, did he? Well
done, Alasdair!”

“The D.I. in charge is crotchety, but he’s no
idiot. And the sergeant’s a gem. You should see him,
third-generation Scot, a statue by Praxiteles raised
Clydeside.”

“Oooh, lovely. Mind that you don’t overdose
on male pheromones.”

“I’m getting quite enough already, thank you.
So what do you have for me?”

“You’ll never guess where Ciara’s—get this
now—one quarter of a million dollars came from.”

“Dollars, not pounds? What’s she doing,
cornering the international love bead market?”

“Not a bit of it. She’s trafficking in the
same things as you. Stories. What were you on about last night,
sacred geometry? Well, as they say, there’s nothing sacred. Ciara’s
just signed a contract with a New York publisher to write a book.
The Secret Code of the St Clairs
, it’s titled. Tied in to
that
Leonardo Key
business, eh? And it’s a business, an
entire industry, last I looked.”

The neurons in Jean’s brain squealed like
tires trying to keep the road. She felt her knees buckle and drop
her into the desk chair. “Ciara’s got a contract for a book? A
novel or nonfiction?”

“My source didn’t say. Not much difference
between fact and fiction, these days.”

“I don’t think there ever was, not really.”
Jean looked down at Ciara’s press kit, the folder innocuous as the
envelope concealing a letter bomb. “She’s marketing the secret
history of Ferniebank. So what does she think she’s got here that’s
worth such a healthy advance? Can the woman even write, for that
matter? Maybe Wallace was going to do that while Ciara stood behind
the reception desk and counted her pounds and pence.”

“No pence. Pounds only, I’m thinking. And her
investors are thinking as well, according to the one I spoke
with.”

“Money’s a fine motive for murder. One of the
best, Alasdair would say.
Cui bono
—who benefits? Who
benefits from getting rid of Angus? And of Helen and Wallace, for
that matter?” Jean found herself back at the window with no memory
of standing up. There was Derek, slumped on one of the park
benches, a constable hovering nearby. Valerie had disappeared into
the inquisition chamber. The wooden pallet rested against the wall
of the shop.

“No need to be listening in whilst your mills
grind exceedingly fine,” said Miranda. “I’ll leave you to it, shall
I?”

“You’ll have to, I’m afraid. I promise I’ll
report in the minute I figure anything out. We figure anything out.
Thanks. I think.”

“You’re welcome. Rear echelon, over and
out.”

Dazed, still clutching her phone, Jean
wandered toward the bedroom. Through the Lug she could hear people
moving around in the Laigh Hall, maybe searching the boxes after
all. Had Delaney gotten permission from Minty? He had to have
stopped by Glebe House last night—you didn’t just let the widow sit
and, well, chill. Although Logan would have gotten there first.

Delaney. Alasdair.
We
. She was going
to have to poke Alasdair on his Ciara-sized bruise. Just when he
thought he’d finally gotten a grasp of the situation, too. At least
she’d have the courtesy not to start off with
I told you
so
.

Although she had to start off with something.
Back in the kitchen, Jean reached into the cupboard for a second
cup. There were those plastic containers again. She heard
Alasdair’s voice saying, “Everyone dies when their heart stops.
It’s why the heart stops, that’s the question.”

Drug overdose. Poison
.

Did Wallace ever cook for himself? Did anyone
besides Helen bring him food? Did she get these containers from
Minty? Helen couldn’t have brought him what turned out to be his
last meal—by then, she was dead. But then, both Wallace and Helen
could have died of natural causes. So could Angus. But then again,
that would put the sequence of deaths into Valerie and Zoe’s curse
territory.