The Orkney Scroll (15 page)

“What business is Robert in?” I said.

“Lots of things,” she said. “He invested in a few businesses with a couple of his army buddies, light manufacturing, textiles and so on, and now I guess he makes most of his money on his investments. I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.”

“It’s a very attractive man’s room, but I like your white wicker in the sunroom better,” I said.

“Me, too,” she said. “That room I got to decorate exactly the way I like it.”

“I think the pieces in this room are genuine, unlike the bedroom,” I said. “Did you know that Trevor Wylie was killed over a piece of reproduction furniture?”

“Trevor Wylie,” she said. “You know I thought that name was familiar when you mentioned it in Glasgow, but I can’t recall who he is, or was. I must have confused him with someone else. Or maybe I did meet him somewhere else. You did mention he was killed, I recall.”

“I’m afraid so. He was a Toronto antique dealer, but born here in Orkney, I understand.”

“Really? Maybe that’s why the name is familiar. My husband can’t recall the name at all, so if we did meet, it can’t have made much of an impression. I expect I’m just confused. I’m having trouble with names these days. I believe it’s common with women my age.”

“It does seem to be,” I said, and we both laughed.

“Robert thinks I must have read about him, about the murder, and just assumed I knew him. Do I recall your saying he was killed over a reproduction?”

“Yes. Apparently he sold a fake Mackintosh writing cabinet to the wrong guy. That man has been charged with Trevor’s murder. I guess he figured it out and wasn’t happy.”

She thought about that for a minute. “Did you not say you were looking for a Mackintosh writing cabinet?”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a client who wants one.” I justified the lie by telling myself that if I found one I could almost certainly sell it. “I’d prefer it to be the real thing, but now that I see the reproductions here, I have to say I’m impressed. No wonder Trevor could pass one off as real if there is workmanship as good as this around here. At least I assume it’s around here, given you have several pieces.”

“I really don’t know. It was here when I got here. Robert hasn’t let me change a thing in this room either. I think he wants it to remain exactly the same forever.”

Actually, I didn’t think that was true. Indentations in the carpet of Robert’s room indicated to me that the furniture had been rearranged at some point in the not too distant past. Maybe Maya knew that, and maybe she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t get into this inner sanctum often, a wild guess on my part that was confirmed when Maya looked out the window and quickly led me from the room. A minute or two later, we heard the front door open. “I’m back, darling,” Robert called out.

“I’m upstairs,” Maya replied. “With a guest.” By the time Robert found us we were sitting in Maya’s dressing room cum den looking at photographs of their condo in Spain.

“You remember Lara McClintoch,” Maya said. “I invited her to visit and here she is. She was just driving down the road and she saw me working in the garden.”

“Wonderful! I saw a mystery car in the driveway, and wondered who was visiting. Will you stay for dinner? Maya would love to have company here, as would I.” He was speaking to me but he was looking at Maya.

“Please do,” Maya said.

“I’d love to, but I am meeting a friend for dinner.” What I meant was that I was planning to do what I’d done unsuccessfully the previous evening after dropping Percy off, which is to say to comb the restaurants of Kirkwall looking for Willow. She was a tourist. She had to eat somewhere.

“Some other time, then,” Robert said.

“Lara is wondering where you got the reproductions in the bedroom,” Maya said. “I couldn’t help her.” Robert turned his full attention to me.

“I think I told you I was looking for a Mackintosh writing cabinet for a customer,” I said. “Which I am, so if you hear of one, and you don’t want it for yourself, of course, I’d love to know about it. But I was just blown away by the reproductions in the master bedroom. It is such a gorgeous room. I do carry some reproductions, plainly marked as such, of course, and given most people can’t afford their own Mackintosh and he’s so popular now, I thought that might be a good line for our shop. Can you tell me who made it for you? It must have been custom work.”

“It was, but I don’t think I can recall, if indeed I ever knew,” Robert said. “I’ve had it for at least fifteen years, got it when I first bought this place. We, I, hired a designer who found it for us.” Maya winced slightly at the “us” and “we” that didn’t include her.

“Local?”

“The designer? No. Edinburgh, I think. It was Bev, that is to say my first wife, who arranged it all.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry, darling.”

“Please, Robert, it’s quite all right. I’m not at all upset about it.” She was, of course, lying.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m the one who is upsetting everyone. I’ve obviously said something quite inappropriate.”

“Please! How could you know?” Robert said. “My first wife died. Drugs. It’s why we support the drop-in center in Glasgow. Maya has been very understanding. I’m sure she has charities she’d like to support, too, but really, I feel responsible in a way for what happened. I didn’t see, I didn’t comprehend what was happening to her. I should have known, but I didn’t and she died of a massive overdose of cocaine. Bev was a wonderful person until she was caught in the grips of that monster. I’m fortunate to have been able to rebuild my life, thanks to Maya. Maya and Bev were friends, and Maya was a rock when Bev died. I don’t know what I would have done without her.” The understanding Maya rested her hand on her husband’s forearm and gave me a beseeching glance. I didn’t know what she was pleading for: my understanding, my sympathy, my hasty exit?

“I’d like to help you, I really would,” Robert said. “We share a passion for Mackintosh, after all. But I can’t recall much about it, I’m afraid. We, I, did bring in a lot of furniture from our home just outside of London, and we purchased furnishings in both England and Glasgow, and presumably here, too. But sorry, I just can’t recall if the craftsman was here or somewhere else. It just wasn’t my bailiwick, you understand, the decorating. I just paid the bills. Now really, can we persuade you to stay for dinner?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said, feeling like a complete jerk. I had lots more questions, like was there any chance the furniture had been made locally, but even I, compulsive seeker for information that would justify my petty existence, could not bring myself to ask them. I could hardly wait to drag my hopelessly shallow self out of their lives. “I must be going. Thank you, though, and thank you for tea, Maya. It was a real pleasure talking to you.”

“It was for me, too. I hope you’ll come again,” she said, and I think she meant it. She stood at the door waving to me as I left, a woman with a ghost looking over her shoulder, a woman who slept with her husband in a bed chosen by her predecessor. My Rob had been a widower when I met him, but he’d been that way for quite a long time. I knew he’d married his high school sweetheart over their parents’ objections, he being Catholic, she a Baptist, and I knew she had died long before the bloom was off the rose where their relationship was concerned. Still, while I might have worried about his ex-girlfriends, particularly one young and perky paragon of virtue by the name of Barbara who immediately preceded me, and I might fret about being a suitable stepmother to Rob’s daughter, Jennifer, I didn’t think for a minute I was sleeping with a ghost. For that I was suddenly exceptionally grateful. I resolved to call Rob that very night to tell him so.

But first I was going back to Kirkwall. Even then I took a little detour, to look at the house I’d seen from the sun-room windows. It was an interesting contrast to that of the Alexanders. Both were that typical gray stone, very large and imposing. There the similarity ended. Where one was in remarkably good nick, to use the British expression, with manicured lawns and exquisitely designed gardens, including the putting green, fresh paint on every wood surface, not a twig out of place, the other, while possibly even grander at one time, almost castlelike with a tower on one end, was a mess. What might once have been a kitchen garden was now all weeds and plants gone to seed. The gate was hanging by a thread, the front porch used for storage, and there was a dry and cracked fountain that would have been at the center of what might have been a geometric garden of some sort. Out back, visible in the distance was a rather dilapidated barn.

As I watched, fortunately from some distance, a van pulled into the driveway, and a man got out. He went around to the back, and pulled something out, which it took me a minute at this distance to realize was a wheelchair. An older man was assisted into it and rolled up the driveway to the house. After a few minutes, the first man headed toward the barn, which like the house was in serious disrepair. I looked back at the Alexander house, and noticed that Drever was watching the place, too. The whole scene rather depressed me.

Where the Alexanders’ home looked across a splendid vista of rolling hills and beautifully tilled fields to the blue waters of Scapa Flow, this one looked across windswept terrain to what appeared to me, as I got closer, to be huge chunks of broken concrete on the shore. I drove along to see what this would be, and after parking my little car and walking along a road found myself on a cliff top overlooking the water. I wandered for a while among these concrete structures before I realized I was looking at bunkers. This could only have been a lookout point during two World Wars. It was desolate, attractive only to a military buff, and somehow very sad. I went down the steps into one of the bunkers and looked across the water. Men must have spent hours, days, months watching for German ships and submarines eager to destroy the British fleet in Scapa Flow from this cold, unpleasant spot. I saw no sign of Percy.

Almost equally depressing was the time I spent roaming the streets of Kirkwall for an hour or so. No Willow, and no Percy either, but at least I had another fine seafood dinner. It capped off a spectacularly unsuccessful day.

I’d wandered the streets of St. Margaret’s Hope, a picturesque little village to be sure, and it was soon clear to me that neither the dealer who sold the real writing cabinet, and the craftsman who made the fake one, were in St. Margaret’s Hope. I’d stopped in at the antique store, and had asked at the artists’ cooperative in the harbor area, and while there was some very beautiful work on display, silver jewelry, fabulous knits and pottery, for me there was no joy. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion there had been not one but two fake invoices, one for an antique dealer in Glasgow who didn’t exist, and another for a dealer in St. Margaret’s Hope who didn’t either. I wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but maybe in some way it was good news. It could mean that this was one enormous scam involving two writing cabinets, which of course was exactly what I wanted to hear.

Finally I went back to Stromness and my lovely little attic room and called Rob. I caught him just as he was leaving for the restaurant where I suppose he saw to it that the Chicken Kiev was placed promptly in front of the Ukrainian gangsters who were counting on him to launder their funds, while Rob and his fellow law enforcement pals were trying to figure out from which revolting activity these funds had come.

“How’s it going?” I asked. “The restaurant business and all?”

“Oh, all right, I guess,” he said. “The joke around here is how good I am at money laundering. I’m making a fortune for the taxpayers. As one of them, you should be grateful.”

“I am. I’d like you to get out of this, though.”

“Not until I reel in the big fish. It’s drugs, you know, that and people smuggling. The substantive crime, that is, the one that is generating all this money they need me to take care of for them. I’d like this to be over, too. I am ceasing to enjoy being a restaurateur. Once this is over, I may never cook again, and I’m sure not doing dishes.”

“I hope you’re not counting on me to do all the cooking and the cleanup, because it’s not going to happen,” I said.

He laughed. “We’ll have to order in and eat off paper plates.”

“Any developments in Blair Bazillionaire’s case?”

“It’s working its way through the system. The big news is that he fired his lawyer.”

“Don’t tell me he’s going to try to defend himself! I know he thinks he’s the best lawyer there is anywhere on the planet, but what is it they say about lawyers who defend themselves?”

“They have fools for clients. Baldwin isn’t a fool whatever else you might say about him. No, he’s retained Desmond Crane.”

“I thought they disliked each other. No, stronger than that, I thought they loathed each other.”

“Maybe some of that was for show in court, part of the performance. Really, though, isn’t that exactly the kind of person you want to have in your corner, the opposing lawyer who gave you the most trouble? I think it’s smart of him. It’s bought him some time, too, which may also have some thing to do with it. Crane has petitioned the court for more time so he can prepare the case. As a result, you will have a longer wait before you’re called as a witness.”

“What would he want to buy time for, given he’s going to spend it in jail? I could understand it if he were still free and wanted to prolong that. I wish I were completely convinced he did it, given I’ll have to testify about both finding the body and the little dustup at his party. On a happier subject, at least I think it is, have I ever mentioned how happy I am not to be sleeping with a ghost?” I told him briefly about the fund-raiser at the Alexanders, and my visit to their home in Hoxa.

He chuckled. “No, you haven’t mentioned it, and I sup pose this is where I’m supposed to confess that I’ve had a few bad moments about your still being in business with your ex. I’m getting over it, though, and I never figured I was sleeping with him.”

“Good,” I said.

“Where are you and these people you’ve met exactly?”

“Orkney. It’s the most wonderful place. I’m quite infatuated. I want us to come here for a real holiday next spring. It has all these Neolithic sites to visit, tombs and houses and there were Vikings here, too. It’s beautiful, and the people are really, really nice.”