The Murder Hole (23 page)

“And is Mrs. Dempsey playing Lady Macbeth?”
he murmured.

“If you’re asking me if she ordered
someone—like Jonathan—killed, I can’t imagine anyone doing that.
But then, killers are your specialty, not mine.”

“You spotted the killer last month.”

“I owed you that much.”

“Oh aye, that you did.” His face turned
toward Tracy. Jean followed his gaze.

Roger wrenched his arm away from Tracy’s
grasp and shouted, “Haven’t you done enough already?” His words
sliced cleanly into Hugh’s brief fiddle solo between verses of the
song. Several people faltered in their clapping and looked
around.

Tracy rose in her shoes, into Roger’s
truculent face. Her red lips hissed “investment.” Jean could fill
in the rest—
in for a penny in for a pound
or some similar
sentiment.

Roger’s right arm was still extended. His
hand clenched, and for a second Jean thought he was going to commit
wife abuse right in front of her. Alasdair stiffened, probably
wondering if he should intervene. Then the song started up again,
Roger dropped his hand to his side, and those people who’d been
attracted by his shout turned away—except for the Ducketts, Jean
saw, who watched from the rim of the crowd with every appearance of
horrified fascination.

Peter Kettering appeared just beyond them,
twisted like an Egyptian wall-painting, both standing still and
retreating. Tracy spotted him. Shooting a commanding glance at
Roger, she marched up to Kettering. Roger’s fierce scowl at her
back deepened the creases on his face to trenches. With an intake
of breath so deep his entire body heaved, he moderated his
expression, flexed his hands, and followed.

Kettering smiled politely, even as his gaze
darted back and forth, scanning the throng. It lit upon Alasdair
and Jean and leaped away again, press plus police equaling doubly
negative publicity.

Roger said his piece to Kettering, punctuated
with the same digging motions he’d used to Charles Bouchard.
Kettering replied, his gestures both soothing and dismissive. Tracy
stood with her hands on her hips, shoulders back, looking first at
one man, then at the other. Her smile had a feral quality to it, as
though she were both the lady and the tiger.

Roger didn’t look at her at all. He offered
his hand. Kettering took it. They shook, then turned abruptly away
from each other. Kettering’s cell phone leaped into his hand and he
was in full conversation before he had walked two paces. Roger
strode purposefully, even grimly, toward the whiskey booth. The
Ducketts subtracted themselves from the scene.

Left alone, Tracy sagged, one manicured hand
pressed to her face. Then Jean caught the gleam of eyes through
Tracy’s fingers. If she hadn’t noticed the peanut gallery of police
and press before, she did now.

She snapped back upright and whipped around
too fast for Jean to register her expression—a snarl, a grimace of
determination, the bared teeth of a cornered animal?—and walked off
after Kettering, moving amazingly fast in her high heels. Then she,
too, was gone, like the others no more than a figment of a fever
dream.

Jean really was feeling a bit feverish. She
could blame that on the whiskey, on the Dempsey drama, on the
friction—physical, emotional, and intellectual—between her and
Alasdair. She looked at him.

He looked at her, great minds still thinking
alike. “They’re seeing their funding from Starr run through their
fingers, I reckon, though I doubt there’s more to it than
that.”

“Roger looks more decisive than he did at the
hotel. Then he was punch-drunk. I would have said it was impossible
to faze him, but having someone killed on his watch would do
it.”

“You saw them just after we told them we
turned up Paisley’s body, then.”

“How’d they react to the news?”

“As you’d expect.”

“So in the restaurant she was telling him
they had to pull their socks up and get on with it. ‘Onward,
onward, half a league onward . . .’”

“‘. . . into the valley of death,’” Alasdair
concluded dourly.

Thanks. “If Roger’s expedition is the
issue—and he was getting on with it just fine earlier today, Tracy
or no Tracy—then Roger himself is the epicenter. I’d like to know
why Iris gave him permission to search Pitclachie. Why they put
together a truce of some sort.”

“Because of a common enemy?”

“Spoken like a policeman. How about a common
interest? You know, capitalism at work. United in greed we
stand.”

Alasdair’s right eyebrow arched upward,
Spock-like. “We’ve not counted out an insurance scam, if that’s
what you’re thinking. I’m not seeing how that would involve Iris,
though.”

“No, that’s not what I’m thinking. I was
looking at the display case of Ambrose’s artifacts at Pitclachie,
and at Roger and Brendan doing some sort of survey of the hillside,
and it hit me—what if the Nessie search is only part of the story?
Maybe even a full-fledged diversion? What if Roger is really after
more valuable artifacts? There’s an almost undisturbed Pictish
cemetery uphill from the Stone. The Picts aren’t known for their
grave goods, but still, most of Ambrose’s collection was found in
one hoard somewhere around here.” She waved her hand toward the
hillside, although she could just as well have waved it toward the
loch.

“Or so he said.” Alasdair’s eyebrow drifted
back down and assumed a contemplative curl.

“The Bouchards have a shop in Paris, maybe
they’re working with Roger. Or with Iris. Maybe all the hissing and
spitting between Iris and Roger is just for show. Maybe it’s a vast
conspiracy.”

His eyebrows tightened. He wasn’t buying it,
and now that she’d articulated it, she wasn’t either. She started
again. “The bottom line is, why, out of all the ancient sites in
Scotland, did Roger come to Pitclachie? Yeah, supposedly Nessie’s
been spotted crossing the road—to get to the other side, I know, I
know—but she’s an aquatic beast, already. Unless you elaborate some
Pictish Nessie-cult from the pictographs on the Pitclachie Stone,
and then factor in Ambrose’s treasure, there’s no reason for even a
nut like Roger to be looking for her on land.”

Jean knew that Alasdair knew how she could
extrapolate from zero to sixty in five seconds. When she finally
stopped for breath, she could hear the gears grinding in his brain.
Catching up with her, he said, “More than a little depends on
whether Roger or any other folk believe Nessie exists.”

“Do you believe she exists?”

“Do you?”

“If seeing is believing, then believing is
seeing,” she replied. “‘A triumph of hope over experience,’ as
Samuel Johnson said.”

“That’s his definition of a second marriage,”
said Alasdair, so dry dust eddied around him. “As for Nessie, I’m
after keeping my fantasy compartmented.”

And his memories, too. Jean leaned back, if
not deflated at least down some pressure. They’d had similar
discussions before, conducted with less cordiality but also with
fewer undercurrents. Feel as she might about Brad, the one time
Alasdair had spoken of his marriage his bitterness had been sharp
enough to acid-etch the subject of relationships with
No
Trespassing
.

Damn it, she was parsing his every word.
“It’s all your fault. You’re making me look for double and triple
meanings in everything. Pretty soon I’ll start analyzing a baked
potato for means and motives.”

“Right,” he said, with a ghost of smile that
perhaps acknowledged those undercurrents, that perhaps didn’t. “If
Roger’s motive is to find something on land, he’s gone a bit
overboard—no pun intended there, either—stocking the boat with
equipment.”

“True. I’m not saying that’s the entire
picture. Or any of it, for that matter.”

“You were saying Kirsty thinks Jonathan was a
reporter. Or a spy of some sort.” Alasdair didn’t add,
but
that’s redundant
. “There is one thing. Everyone’s background
has checked out, aye, but Jonathan told his mum he was working for
someone else as well as for Roger. Someone here, at Loch Ness. Not
surprising, he was a bit of a hired gun,
electronically-speaking—though I’m never speaking electronics—but
there was something a bit hush-hush about this job. We’ve not yet
found a soul who’s owned up to hiring him, let alone what he was
doing. Our opposite numbers in England are speaking with his bank
manager.”

“Tracking down any paychecks not from
Omnium.” Jean nodded approval, not that Alasdair needed her
approval—it kept her from thinking about Jonathan’s mother. “If he
was into, say, industrial espionage, that might explain his
nervousness. So would his being on to something Roger wanted kept
quiet, a treasure hunt or anything else.”

“Either might could be a motive for
murder.”

“Yeah, but it would have to be a heck of an
either, to drive you to murder.”

“To drive you to murder, aye.”

She shrugged understanding. “If Roger wanted
to kill Jonathan, it would have been easier to just bash him over
the head or poison his tea or something, not rig up an elaborate
plot with anonymous letters and a bomb that would blow up his boat
and all his equipment. At a time Jonathan wasn’t even supposed to
be there.”

“I see we’ll be having another go at Roger,”
said Alasdair, with a set to his mouth that made Jean glad she
wouldn’t be the one he would be going at. “Brendan, now, he’s not
changed his story, told us everything he told Kirsty and is dead
certain there was a submersible on board. He’s had experience of
marine biology, mind, he knows the difference. Roger keeps going on
about his ROVs, but judging by the bits we’ve been bringing up from
the loch, a small sub went up and then down with the boat.”

“And you knew all this before I lectured you
on submersibles and ROVs at the police station this afternoon,
right?”

“Right.”

“Alasdair,” Jean said, “you’d make a great
poker player.”

“Well now, there’s a valuable skill for a
detective.” He almost managed a poker face at that, but a crinkle
at the corners of mouth and eyes gave him away.

Either he was giving a lot away this evening,
or she had learned to read him too damned well. But then, she was
someone he could trust, wasn’t he? Maybe he was running, too.

Jean skipped around that thought. “Roger told
me submersibles were old-hat. If Jonathan was a spy, wouldn’t he be
after the newest technology? Maybe some hush-hush project of
Roger’s that just resembles a submersible?”

“We’re looking out an expert, but being
Saturday and all, we’ve not found one yet.”

“Oh.” Jean’s glow, strained to its utmost,
burst. The damp chill of the evening closed in around her. The
lights were ringed with haloes, mist choking the air the way unshed
tears choked the throat. But she couldn’t back off from her
inspiration, not when circumstances transcended her own
sensitivities. “I know a mechanical engineer you could probably get
hold of right away. My ex-husband, Brad Inglis.”

Alasdair didn’t move a muscle, but still Jean
could sense him withdrawing, mind and body, from the demilitarized
zone where they’d been parlaying. She hadn’t realized how warm his
voice had become until it chilled back into cool, correct
formality. “He’s back in the States, is he?”

“He should be, not that I keep track of his
movements. It’s afternoon there. I’ll give him a call. I mean, no
time like the present. If nothing else maybe you could e-mail him
some photos of the debris or something . . .” Clamping her teeth on
her babbling, she reached for her bag and pulled her cell phone
from its pocket.

Damn it, she was trying so hard to satisfy
both her curiosity and Alasdair’s directive she’d just hoisted
herself with her own petard. She hadn’t really wanted to know that
she felt uncomfortable talking to Alasdair about Brad.

“I’ll just have a word with the constable on
duty, shall I?” Alasdair picked up her empty glass and his and
walked determinedly toward the police van, leaving Jean in her own
little island of solitude. Not that any woman was an island.

With similar determination, she scrolled down
her phone’s menu. She and Brad had had to touch bases a time or two
about the sale of the house. Investing in a cell phone that worked
world-wide meant she could get those calls over with as fast as
possible . . . There. She punched Talk and put the phone to her
ear. A good thing Hugh was spinning another tale, not playing. She
had an even chance of being able to hear.

Static. A phone on the other side of the
world rang. An answering machine picked up. She heard Brad’s voice,
the bland accent, tones that were calm and correct without at all
resembling Alasdair’s, whose calmness and correctness concealed
nuclear fires, magma pools, lightning bolts.

“Hi,” she said at the beep. “It’s me, Jean.
I’m at Loch Ness. Roger Dempsey’s here searching for the monster,
but someone blew up his boat last night, and, um, the police are
asking questions about submersibles and ROVs. I figured you could
help. It’s, um, a matter of telling the difference between the two
by looking at some wreckage. Sort of. Anyway, call me back when you
get the chance. Oh, and it’s six hours later here. Thanks.”

She punched
End
, hoping she’d given
him enough information that he’d have his act together when he did
call back, so that she wouldn’t have to listen to the slow
unspooling of his thought . . . Heck, she could have given
Alasdair’s number to Brad and she wouldn’t have had to talk to him
at all. Although she wasn’t sure whether putting the two men into
direct contact would be a good thing. There might be a matter and
anti-matter effect.

Jamming the phone back into her bag, she
stood up. Here came D.C. Gunn, reporting in from the burdensome
duty of walking around the Festival. “Good evening, Miss
Fairbairn.”