Kisses and Lies (16 page)

I push it. It opens into a wide, stone-paved room which must be the pantry, as it’s lined with shelves stacked with tins and packets of food. I can see another door further along the wall which must lead to the kitchen, and then, across the room, is a big wooden door with a smaller one cut into it. Bingo! In a flash I’m tugging at the latch. It creaks a bit, but I lever it up as gently as possible and prise it open.

Cold air blows through the opening. I’ve found the way out.

“I’M ON FIRE!”

It’s already dark. Night comes early in Scotland when winter’s on its way. The pantry door opens straight onto a wide concrete bridge. I dash over it and, taking a quick inventory of Castle Airlie’s geography, turn left on the grassy bank that borders the moat. There’s a well-trodden path along it and I run round it, keeping a steady pace until the brick wall of the old stables, where the cars are kept, comes into view. Then I slow down until my breath is back to normal again, or close enough that no one could hear me panting and realize someone was coming.

There might be someone else in the stables, someone who isn’t Taylor. After my scare of this afternoon, I’m taking precautions.

I walk through the wide stone arch, careful not to make any sound. It’s completely dark in here. I stand in the center of the stables, looking around me. Faint light gleams off the metal of the cars, but it’s an overcast night, with barely any moon glowing through the clouds, and the shadows are pits of black, completely impenetrable. The cold in here is damp, unheated stone, with a faint odor of mold. It’s very creepy.

“Taylor?” I whisper.

There’s a stir of movement from the far corner of the stables. I turn to look and see Taylor’s face hovering in the shadows in what looks like an optical illusion. As she walks toward me, I see it’s because she’s wearing a black high-neck sweater and black jeans, which make her body invisible against the dark background. She looks like a cat burglar or a ninja. Very cool—and suitable for secret rendezvous after dark. I suppose that’s the exception to the no-black-in-the-country rule.

“Over here!” she whispers back, her face gleaming, pale and eerie. “Come on, let’s go outside.”

“Outside?” I say, baffled, even as I follow her back through the arch.

Taylor tuts her tongue.

“In there someone could sneak up on us,” she explains, leading the way round the back of the stables. “Out here we can see anyone coming from miles off. I figured that out while I was waiting for you.”

“Nice one,” I say respectfully, before I remember that she’s not supposed to be anywhere near Castle Airlie. “But what are you doing here?” I continue. “How did you even get—”

“Flew up to Ayr, got a cab to Airlie village, found a B and B, hired a bike,” Taylor cuts in succinctly. “Told the nice lady at the B and B my mom and dad were joining me and we were going to tour the area for my half-term. Then I said I’d got a call from them and they were stuck on their dig in Turkey because their paperwork wasn’t in order.”

Taylor’s parents have given her a large contingency fund for emergencies—I suppose this counts as one. I admire the cunning way she’s used the truth to make her lie as plausible as possible.

“I figure I have a couple more days before she starts freaking out that my folks aren’t showing up,” Taylor’s saying, “but you’ll be going in a couple of days anyway, right? So we should be covered.”

“But what are you doing here?”

She shrugs. “It was really boring at school without you. Practically everyone’s gone home for half-term. Besides, I thought things over, and I decided that while I  .  .  . maybe  .  .  . overreacted before, I wasn’t going to listen to what you said about needing to come up here alone. What a girl in your situation needs is backup.” She raises her eyebrows. “And, considering what happened this afternoon, I’d say I was right, wouldn’t you?”

“You saw what happened this afternoon?” My voice rises, and Taylor instantly makes a lowering motion with her hand to remind me to keep it down.

“I was bicycling along the drive,” she explains quietly. “I thought if anyone stopped me, I’d just say I was a tourist and got turned around on all these roads to nowhere. I got to this kind of miniforest, and just as I reached it I heard a shot, and I thought I’d better take cover. So I got off my bike and just sort of stuck my head round a few trees to see what was going on. I saw you doing one of your show-offy gymnastic moves over a tree branch. I did think at first you were just trying to impress some guy”—I stick my tongue out at her, which she ignores—“but then I heard another shot, and you know, I sort of began to think that someone might be after you. So I sneaked in a bit—”

“Did you see who it was?” My heart is pounding. What a break it would be if Taylor could identify the shooter.

“Sort of,” she whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I didn’t see their face! Whoever it was had on a deerstalker hat and a checked jacket. And the person was definitely not that tall.”

“Ugh!” I sag in disappointment. “Well, it couldn’t have been Mr. McAndrew, because he was driving up the road and found me. And it can’t be Callum, because he’s even taller than”—I clear my throat—“Dan.”

“Damn, I really wish I had seen the person’s profile at least.”

I realize there’s a piece of information about Callum that she is still unaware of. “Oh my God, Taylor. You’re not going to believe this, but  .  .  . Callum is actually Dan’s twin brother. I fainted when I saw him. And it’s their birthday the day after tomorrow.”

“What?”

I give Taylor a brief summary of recent events. She’s dumbfounded.

“Wow. Well, we’ve narrowed the field down a bit, right?” she asks. “We know now it was probably a woman shooting at you.”

I shake my head. “There are loads more women than men at the castle.” I count off on my fingers. “Catriona: she was in the shower when I got back, but I suppose she could have dashed back before Mr. McAndrew turned up, though it’d be tight. Moira came out of the kitchen, but again, she could have sneaked in through the back entrance and just dusted some flour on her hair to make it look like she was hard at work making bread. (I really don’t want it to be Moira—she’s been so nice to me.) Then there’s Mrs. McAndrew—she came down from upstairs but she could easily have just gone up and come back down again. And Lucy.” I pause. “Lucy wasn’t anywhere around, but she couldn’t have taken a rifle from the gun room, because then it would be missing and Mr. McAndrew would notice. Perhaps she could have brought one from her house.”

Taylor’s looking at me expectantly. I give her a quick rundown of who everyone is, how they’ve been acting since I’ve come here, and the Polaroids I found in Dan’s room. She nods at the end.

“So Lucy’s the most likely suspect on all fronts,” she hypothesizes.

“I guess. She seems pretty angry at me and despises Dan, not surprisingly.”

“Boys can be so gross,” Taylor says disgustedly. “And girls can be so stupid.”

Speaking of which, Taylor blows up at me when I tell her that I burned most of the photos.

“I leave you alone for two seconds and you pull something that dumb!” she exclaims. “You should’ve kept them all, just in case.”

I grin. “I knew you’d say that, evil genius. But I couldn’t. I felt really sorry for them.” I touch my back jeans pocket, feeling the photos safely buttoned in there. “I kept one each of Plum and Lucy, though.”

Taylor rolls her eyes. Even in the evening gloom, I see the whites of her eyes gleaming.

“You’re such a softie,” she says in frustration.

I can’t help laughing. “I really missed you,” I admit. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Taylor shuffles her feet. “Cool,” she says gruffly. “ ’Cause I thought you might be really pissed at me showing up like this. You know, sticking my nose in where I wasn’t wanted.”

I start to say something, but she cuts me off.

“And I want to say, I get that this is really important to you, okay? I’m sorry that I took over a bit. I can be bossy sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

Taylor fakes a punch at my stomach.

“I mean it, though. I’m so glad you’re here,” I say sincerely.

“Me too,” she says, smiling. “Scotland is pretty fierce, and so is this castle.”

“Oh God!” Taylor has reminded me of another piece to the puzzle. I fill her in on Moira’s comments about Callum being a much better inheritor of Castle Airlie than Dan. Now Lucy has a rival, or maybe a coconspirator, in the most-likely-suspect category.

“Did everyone in the family think that?” Taylor asks.

“It sounds like it, from what Moira said.”

“Huh. So someone could have killed him to make sure it went to Callum, because he’d look after the place while Dan would run it into the ground?” Taylor suggests. “This Moira person, maybe? I mean, a castle must cost a ton of money to run, and keep up.  .  .  . Most people don’t live in theirs anymore, do they? They make them into hotels or something. So you’d have to really love this place not to sell it and make a fortune and then just go party. What if someone was scared that was what Dan would do if he inherited?”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t inherit till his dad dies, does he?” I say. “It always works like that.”

“But didn’t you say it’s their eighteenth birthday in a couple of days? Maybe when the heir turns eighteen, he gets a whole bunch of cash to spend, or something, and that’d mean the estate would be bankrupted? Or maybe he gets to be a coowner, and he could sell part of it?”

I gape at Taylor, even though I can barely make out her features.

“That’s a really, really good theory, Taylor,” I say in awe.

She makes a smirking noise. “I’m on fire!” she says smugly.

“I need to look at a copy of the will, or the deed, or whatever it is that would explain how the inheritance thing works,” I say slowly. “I’ll have to find out where they keep it.”

“How are you going to do that?” Taylor asks curiously.

I pull a face. “I don’t know, and I don’t have much time to figure it out either. There’s no way they’ll let me stay longer than Tuesday, not with Callum and Dan’s birthday coming up.”

“Whatever it takes, Scarlett,” Taylor says grimly. “You’ve gotten this far.”

I nod, and duck a look at my watch.

“Oops, I should be getting back—it’s close to dinnertime, and I don’t want anyone coming to look for me.” I swallow hard. “Taylor, thank you so much for coming. You know, I didn’t realize how alone I felt here until you turned up—it means so much to me to have someone here who’s on my—”

I break off as Taylor pretends to gag and throw up in the bushes.

“I’m trying to be nice,” I say coldly.

“Well, don’t. It’s making me want to puke. I’ve got your back, okay? We’re good.”

We look at each other for a moment. I want to give her a big hug, but Taylor’s not touchy-feely at all: she’d hate that. Instead, I slap her on the shoulder and she slaps me back. It’s tragic—we’re like a couple of boys.

“See you round,” she says.

“Will you be okay getting back?”

“Sure. I should get going too—Mrs. Drummond will yell at me if I’m late for dinner.”

“Sounds like school.”

Taylor grins. “The food’s a lot better,” she says happily.

She heads off to retrieve her bike from where she’s hidden it behind the stables, and I jog back to the main drawbridge. Moira might well be going in and out of the pantry while she’s cooking dinner, and I don’t want to rouse her suspicions by having her spot me coming back in when I’d said I was going for a nap. I cross the moat and push open the door cut into the huge wooden gates, heavily decorated with wrought iron to make them near-impossible to break down, even with a battering ram. The latch lifts easily—this is deep countryside, where people don’t lock up till they go to bed at night. But as I push the door open, it unexpectedly bumps into something, and I hear an “Ow!” as it makes contact.

Then it’s pulled open from inside, and Callum McAndrew appears in the doorway, glowering at me.

I guess the shock of him looking like Dan is wearing off, because the first thought in my head here is, God, doesn’t he have any other facial expressions?

“You hit me,” he says unfairly.

“I didn’t mean to. I was just opening the door.”

“Well, I was walking down the corridor. I wasn’t expecting anyone this time of night.”

“It’s not that late.”

“What were you doing outside, anyway?” he demands.

I think about telling him to mind his own bloody business, but somehow I feel we’ve antagonized each other enough.

“I wanted some fresh air,” I say. “I’ve had a bit of a weird day, so I thought I’d go outside and look at the stars.”

To my surprise, his face softens, and I briefly glimpse a familiar grin.

“I do that sometimes, too,” he says. “I’ve got to say, you’re no coward, are you? Going back out in the dark after saying you got shot at this afternoon.”

“I didn’t say I got shot at,” I correct him. “I just said someone was shooting in the wood, and I was scared I’d be hit.”

I look him right in the eyes, though I have to tilt my head back to do it. When I met Dan at that party, I was in high heels, practically at eye level with him. Now I’m in my trainers, and Callum’s towering over me. But I hold his gaze even though he makes me nervous—and not in a good Jase Barnes way.

“Come on,” he beckons. “I’ll show you where you can look at the stars without traipsing around outside in the dark. The last thing we want is you falling in the moat. You seem fairly accident-prone.”

Callum turns and walks down the corridor, clearly expecting me to follow. While part of me feels like he’s trying to be nice, another part of me wonders if Callum McAndrew may be tricking me into falling into a dungeon under the floor. (I’ve heard some Scottish castles have those—the lairds would listen to the screams of their enemies starving to death while they ate their dinner.) But I doubt it. From what I’ve seen of Callum, he’s not afraid of face-to-face confrontation. He’d be much more likely to throw me into the moat himself than do anything sneaky or underhanded.