The Burning Glass (3 page)

“And then there was the old lady the week
before that,” Bell was saying. “Well, elderly people have a
tendency to keel over, don’t they? Gotta go. See ya. Bye-bye.”

“Bye.” Jean held the telephone at arm’s
length, looking at it as though it had piddled on the rug.

Gavin took it from her hands and replaced it
in the cradle. “What was he on about?”

“Working at Ferniebank. Telling me that the
old caretaker died of a heart attack. No foul play. Nothing
suspect.”

“But you’re suspicious even so.”

“It’s only my free-floating paranoia.
Ferniebank and Stanelaw have three strikes against them—four, if
you’re counting something about an old lady—and I’m not even there
yet.” Again Jean shrugged her bag up onto her shoulder.

Gavin handed over her folder, which had found
its way onto his desk. “You’ll have your fine braw policeman
keeping an eye on things. And on you.”

“Yeah,” Jean said, with a rueful laugh. “I’ll
have my fine braw policeman. Let me try this again. I’ll see you
via e-mail for the next couple of weeks.”

“Aye then, have yourself a grand time,” Gavin
returned with a broad smile, every tooth gleaming so innocently
Jean knew just what he was envisioning. But when it came to privacy
and discretion, she was in the wrong profession to get up on her
high horse. Or even a short pony.

She descended the staircase as carefully as
she’d climbed, the echo of her steps in the cylindrical stairwell
sounding like a distant drum. In the street she heard a drum that
was a lot closer, a jazz quartet noodling tunelessly away across
the narrow channel of the High Street. Or, in tourist-speak, the
Royal Mile.

The heat, exhaust, and aromas of fried fat
trapped between the tall buildings made Jean feel that she could
chew the air. Thinking nostalgic thoughts of the cold, quiet—if
dark—days of January, the month she’d arrived in Edinburgh with her
goods intact and her illusions shattered, she played human pinball
up the street. It tapered before her, squeezing a view of the
Castle Esplanade blocked with bleachers between the last two
buildings as though through the sights of a rifle.

In front of her walked a shaggy person of
indeterminate gender wearing a functioning television screen in a
backpack. “Tonight!” proclaimed the sound and color advertisement.
“Puppetry of the . . .”

Jean took a swift right at Ramsay Lane and
skimmed downhill and around the corner into Ramsay Garden. Home
sweet home was one of a collection of flats in a sprawling building
that gave new meaning to the words “apartment complex,” its Scots
baronial turrets and balconies and its English cottage
half-timbered gables perched on a cliff top beside the
Esplanade.

For someone intending to keep a low profile,
Jean lived in the most conspicuous dwelling in Edinburgh. But as
the realtor who sold her and her ex-husband’s McMansion back in
Dallas had said, in real estate what mattered was location,
location, location. Jean couldn’t have found a better one, and not
just because it was so near her office that its not-inconsiderable
expense would eventually be offset by her savings on
transportation. That the whimsical assortment of facades was tucked
defiantly between the glowering medieval castle and the glum
Victorian university suited her goal of living larger, of pushing
her own plain brown-paper envelope, of breaking free.

Be careful what you ask for, Jean reminded
herself as she unlocked her front door. In breaking free of her old
life, she’d broken the shell of a certain police detective. Now she
was hostage to the vulnerable creature inside. And vice versa. No
surprise they were building a relationship with all the bravado of
wounded soldiers facing renewed fire.

From her living room, she gazed out over the
human tide that surged through the gardens below and broke in waves
on Princes Street. Beyond the rooftops of the city shone the water
of the Firth of Forth. The blue line on the horizon was the coast
of Fife. Here, she no longer felt as claustrophobic as she had in
the university history department, to say nothing of in her
marriage. But here, she was a little too close to the Tattoo.
Massed bands would be performing the musical spectacle only yards
away.

Two weeks ago, she and Alasdair had treated
themselves to dinner in the red velvet gothic excess of the
Witchery Restaurant. He had worn his kilt, knowing full well its
energizing effect on her hormonal system. What was worn under the
kilt? asked the old joke. Nothing is worn, went the answer. It’s
all in fine working order.

That night they’d forged ahead to “the talk,”
about precautionary measures and previous partners—of whom Jean had
only the one, but then, they weren’t competing. And Alasdair’s
finely honed sensibilities meant he’d never been Caledonia’s answer
to Casanova. They’d strolled home through the August dusk, leaning
together, actually holding hands in public. Tonight was to be The
Night.

And then, just as they’d walked in her door,
pandemonium erupted on the Esplanade. Pipes and drums would only
have heightened the heat of the moment, as would the sounds of Hugh
Munro practicing his fiddle or guitar next door. But this was a
drill team competition, with brass bands playing brassy show tunes
that made the light fixtures and drawer pulls vibrate, and colored
lights flashing like demented fireflies in the bedroom window.

In a sitcom featuring youthful go-for-broke
characters, the moment would have been funny. In real life,
featuring two not-so-youthful terminally cautious characters, it
was no go. Wryly, Alasdair had gone on his way back to Inverness to
continue uncoupling himself from the Northern Constabulary, leaving
their relationship unconsummated.

At least, Jean thought, turning away from the
window with a wry smile of her own, the occasion had made a good
test case. Alasdair Cameron, ex-cop, sensitive New Age guy. Not
that she’d intended to test him. Testing the—significant other,
partner, inamorata—was an adolescent trick.

She paused for one last wash and brush-up,
polishing her glasses, renewing the pink lip gloss she’d chewed
away, running a comb through her short brown hair that, as usual,
stood up in ungovernable waves. There was no way she was going to
lose five pounds in the next few hours, not that Alasdair was
expecting his perfectly presentable, er, intended, to turn into a
glamor girl. Or a girl, period.

Her other significant other was asleep on the
couch with his ball of yarn caught in a proprietary claw. Good.
Maybe she could get the little guy into the cat carrier without
waking him up. Jean collected the pet taxi from behind the bed,
tiptoed back into the living room, and pounced. Before he knew what
was happening, Dougie found himself behind bars. She could read his
expression through the air holes.
Good grief. Not again
.

“You’re coming with me this time,” she told
him. “Although not as a chaperone, mind you.”

Dougie assumed the shape of a gray
pincushion, whiskers bristling. She was just setting his cage by
the front door when Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” trilled from the
living room. Racing back down the hall, she excavated her cell
phone from the depths of her bag and checked the screen. Ah, the
object of her affections! “Hi, Alasdair.”

“Hello, yourself,” said his brushed-velvet
voice. “I’ve arrived at Ferniebank, had me a look at the premises,
and opened for business. How has the mighty Detective Chief
Inspector fallen, to be doling out admission tickets and selling
sweeties like a spotty lad in a cinema.”

“You are joking, right? You’re not regretting
your retirement?”

“I’m joking,” he returned with an indulgent
chuckle. “I haven’t caught you driving, have I?”

“No, I’m packing the car. Is Keith Bell there
yet?”

“Who?”

“I guess not, then. He’s the architect
working for the woman who bought Ferniebank, Ciara Macquarrie. He
called a little while ago and said he’d be out there this
afternoon.”

Silence. Abyssal silence. Silence deeper than
that of the grave.

Jean looked again at the screen. She was
still connected. “Alasdair? Hello?”

“Oh aye, I’m here.” His voice had gone so
cold and hard Jean thought of one of those Siberian mammoths,
flash-frozen by an avalanche.

“What’s wrong? Something about the caretaker
dying in the dungeon?”

“Oh. That. The inquest returned a verdict of
natural causes, though I’m not so sure.” A pause so long Jean felt
frost prickling in her ear. Finally Alasdair concluded, “Nothing’s
wrong. I’ll be seeing you in a few hours. Safe journey.”

The ether rang hollowly. That time he had
disconnected. She switched off her phone, asking herself, What the
heck? Was this another test case? If they were going to make the
running, he couldn’t just dismiss her like that. Something about
the caretaker’s death had him worried. He’d been investigating
criminal cases for so long, his reflexes were set to hair-trigger
sensitivity. . . . She hadn’t mentioned the caretaker until after
he’d frozen her out.

She needed to get down to the Borders and get
him unplugged, unbuttoned, loosened up. Like she wasn’t wired into
a 220-volt socket, buttoned to the chin, and nervous as a
long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs?

Frowning, Jean strode into the kitchen, where
she forced some crackers and peanut butter through her dry mouth.
Then she filled a cooler with the perishables she’d accumulated
after a painful bout with a cookbook and notepad. Meal-planning was
a skill she’d let lapse ages ago.

Alasdair claimed he could cook. . . . She
reminded herself that it was reverse sexism to expect a man to be
domestically incompetent. Between them, they wouldn’t starve. And
they didn’t have to spend the entire week isolated at Ferniebank.
The Stanelaw pub was not only notoriously music-friendly, it was
near the B&B that Michael and Rebecca Campbell-Reid were
minding for the month.

She packed the car with food, clothes, her
bag of knitting—it behooved her to have something to do on her
own—and her laptop. She strapped Dougie’s pet carrier into the back
seat to the accompaniment of a not-so-distant trumpet playing “When
the Saints Go Marching In.” Everything was accounted for except her
wits, and she devoutly hoped they’d turn up along the way.

Just as Jean was locking her front door, the
next one opened and emitted a stocky man armed with a guitar case
in one hand and a fiddle case in the other. “Away to the south, are
you now?” Hugh Munro called.

“I’m away. I was just going to bring you the
key.” Jean met his grin with one of her own.

Never one to skip a neighborly blether, Hugh
joined her beside her car and set the instrument cases down at his
feet. His T-shirt was the size of a pup tent, the printed logo of
June’s Midsummer Monster Madness Festival barely contained by the
suspenders that held up his canvas pants. The top of his head
gleamed pink and smooth as a baby’s bottom, as did his cheeks,
making the white hair and white beard seem incongruous. His blue
eyes were as adult as any Jean had ever seen, flashing with a
wisdom and a humor that indicated his preference as much for the
milk of human kindness as for the whiskey of human perception.

“Good job I’ve caught you, then,” Hugh said.
“I’m off to rehearsal. The band’s playing tonight at the Assembly
Rooms. You’re making your getaway in the nick of time. Not to
worry, I’ll keep an eye on the actors renting your place, mind that
they carry away the rubbish and water the plants.”

“For what they’re paying, they can redecorate
it. Just as long as they put everything back before they
leave.”

“Are you quite certain wee Dougie’ll get on
at Ferniebank? He can stop with me, if you like.” Leaning into the
car, Hugh offered his forefinger to one of the air holes in the pet
carrier. Dougie honored it with a delicate sniff. He had much
better taste than to bite the fingertip that played such fine
music. After all, he was named for piper extraordinary Dougie
Pincock.

“Thanks, but he’ll be okay in the caretaker’s
cottage,” Jean said, and, thinking of music, “Have you ever played
at the pub in Stanelaw? The Granite Cross, isn’t it? Odd name for a
pub. Unless it used to be the Engrailed Cross, the coat of arms of
the Sinclairs of Rosslyn.”

“Like as not the original owner got shot of
the local gentry—Sinclair, Douglas, Kerr, petty tyrants the lot of
them—and then turned about and named his establishment after them.
Sucking in to the high and mighty in return for their patronage.
We’re never free of it, are we? The little guys always get the
short end.”

Jean smiled. Hugh had once been a little guy
himself—he had been bequeathed the Ramsay Garden apartment by an
admirer with an exquisite sense of irony.

“Aye,” Hugh went on. “I’ve played there. Fine
place for a Saturday night session, come one, come all. The local
councillor had me in to the local museum in April to play the
Ferniebank Clarsach as well, though I’m not so dab a hand at the
harp as some. Still, a musical instrument unplayed is like a woman
unloved, or so I’m thinking.”

That brought new innuendo to the expression
“let’s make beautiful music together.” “Was that when the harp—the
clarsach—was put on display?”

“Oh aye. And a bonny thing it is, carved from
stem to stern, with hollows for jewelry—that’s long gone, no
surprise there. Unusual to see an artifact so valuable on display
in its own home. Small museums the length and breadth of the UK
have no more than photos of their own heirlooms. The big museums
take the most expensive items, all the better to attract the
punters.”

“Michael and Rebecca Campbell-Reid would say
the artifacts are better protected in the big national museums. And
they made their point with the clarsach. I was going to write about
it, too. You know, all things Ferniebank.”