News flash: Air bags are a lot louder and messier than advertised.
I can also report that, contrary to popular belief, a haystack is not the fluffy, puffy fun time it appears to be in the comics. Considering the alternative, though, I had to admit it was a relatively soft landing. Not soft enough to keep the air bags from deploying, however. White powder went everywhere, and my ears were ringing from the blast of the release mechanism.
I pushed open the car door and hay fell on my head as I stumbled from the car. I leaned against the door and shook the hay out of my hair, then noticed white powder all over my hands and arms. As I brushed the air bag residue away, I glanced back at the highway and sighed in relief. Robin had managed to avoid careening through a traffic circle surrounded by shops and houses by a mere few hundred yards or so.
“Everyone accounted for?” Dad asked as he helped Mom out of the car.
“Uhh,” Helen groaned.
“Helen, are you okay?” Mom said.
“I’m okay.” But she rubbed her temple where her head had probably hit the side window.
“That was quite a ride,” Mom said, and staggered around the car to envelop Robin in a hug. “You did a good job, honey.”
“We could’ve died,” Helen said, patting Robin’s arm. “You saved us.”
Robin sank down on the ground, holding her forehead. “I think I hit my head on the steering wheel.”
I walked to the other side of the car as Mom knelt down next to Robin and flicked bits of powder from her hair. “Must’ve been before the air bag blew up.”
“I guess.”
An older man walked toward us from the barn that stood several field lengths away. He wore worn blue overalls, a flannel shirt and work boots.
“Are you all right?” he shouted from yards away.
“We’re fine.” Dad waved. “Just a little banged up. We lost our brakes.”
“I’ve called the constable. Wasn’t sure if there were injuries.”
“Just to your haystack,” I said in apology, assuming he owned these fields.
Closer now, he waved a hand and chuckled. “Och, don’t you be worrying about such a thing.”
We heard a siren in the distance.
“That’ll be our police now,” he said. “Hope you’re not bank robbers making a getaway.”
We laughed dutifully as the siren stopped.
“I’d better show them over here,” the farmer said, and took off, jogging back to the barn.
“Are we going to be arrested?” Robin asked, then buried her head in her arms.
“Of course not,” I said firmly.
Dad rubbed Robin’s shoulder as we watched the farmer lead two policemen on the long trek across the field.
“You’ve had some trouble,” the taller cop said.
“Our brakes gave out,” Dad said.
“Our driver saved our lives,” Helen said staunchly, “and probably the lives of any number of bystanders, by driving off the highway.”
The shorter cop, a skinny youngster who still had pimples, took notes, while the tall cop knelt down next to the rear driver’s-side tire and poked at the ground. I moved closer to see what he was looking at and caught a glimpse of some drops of liquid seeping into the ground.
“Looks like brake fluid,” he said to his partner. Then he gripped the rim of the fender and handily slid himself under the car, somehow avoiding the slimy puddle of brake fluid altogether. How did he do that? Must’ve been a guy-and-car thing.
A few seconds later, he glided out, hopped up and brushed a few flecks of grit off his perfectly pressed black trousers. “Brake line’s been cut clean through.”
“What the hell?” Dad said.
“Does that happen through normal wear and tear on the car?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
The tall cop looked at me warily. “No, ma’am. That happens through mischief.”
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Derek said, glaring at me through narrowed eyes, as though it were my fault my family and friends were almost killed. Hell, maybe it was.
“Yeah, I get that,” I muttered as I paced the floor of the hotel conference room the police once again had taken over as their temporary headquarters.
It was two hours later, after the Edinburgh CID had shown up to take over the investigation and the farmer had generously ferried us back to the hotel in his vintage Land Rover.
“And you’re sure nobody saw anyone at the parking garage?” I asked for the third time. The hotel valets had parked Robin’s rental van in the parking garage a block away from the hotel when she’d arrived two days ago.
The brakes could’ve been tampered with anytime in the last forty-eight hours, but the police were fairly certain someone had done it that morning. Otherwise, the brake fluid would’ve run out completely and the car wouldn’t have made it all the way to Rosslyn Chapel.
Now I remembered Robin pumping the brakes when we first arrived there.
MacLeod sighed. “The garage is a four-story cavernous place with only one security man who doubles as the parking attendant. All the hotels in this part of the Royal Mile share the space. It’s not well guarded, sad to say.”
“No security cameras?”
“None.” Frustrated, Angus raked his fingers through his unruly mop of hair.
Derek stood with his arms folded across his chest, watching the goings-on. He was dressed in an elegant black pin-striped business suit and deep blue silk tie that brought out the blue in his eyes. He looked almost criminally hot. The whole ensemble probably cost five thousand dollars, and I was reminded again how well the security business paid. Along that same line, I had to wonder just why he’d been here in Edinburgh this week. What was he doing? Besides looking criminally hot, of course?
“Is it our Miss Sherlock Holmes that’s causing you to pull your hair out, Angus?” Derek asked, coming over and putting his arm around me. I leaned against him. He even smelled expensive.
The detective glanced at me, then Derek. “No, ’tis this case that’s driving me to drink,” he admitted.
“Not much of a drive there,” Derek said with a wry grin.
“You’ve got the right of that, mate,” he said with a rueful chuckle.
Derek tightened his grip on me as the two men talked and more was revealed about our close call with the haystack.
My life had been threatened, my family had almost been killed, and yet I couldn’t seem to concentrate on any of it.
All I could process was the weight of Derek’s arm around my shoulder and the warmth of his solid body against mine. For one insane second or two, I breathed him in, absorbing that all-male, autumn-and-leather scent and reveling in the warm security of his powerful muscles.
Oh, dear God.
Appalled by my pathetically needy reaction, I was nevertheless incapable of moving away from the heat of his touch. In a day or so, they would find my body completely melted in a pool of lust on the floor of this conference room. I hoped they would give me as nice a service as Kyle had received. With better music, please.
“You’d be right about that,” Derek said, his head cocked as he gazed at me with curiosity.
I blinked. “What?”
“Where did you go, love?” he whispered.
I tried to speak, but my throat had dried up.
“Angus was saying you’ve made a formidable enemy,” he said. The breath from his words tickled my ear.
I smiled up at him as I gently pulled away. My heart could no longer handle the spike in blood pressure, and my self-esteem wasn’t doing much better. Sheesh, way to lose my cool in front of the head cop on the case.
“Uh, yeah,” I said, pacing a few steps away until I could finally breathe again.
Derek was watching me with suspicion, and I could feel my cheeks heat up. It just wasn’t fair. I was in a weakened state or I would’ve stared him down.
“ Brooklyn, Angus said you’re no longer a suspect,” Derek said.
I felt my mouth open, then close. Finally, I said, “Oh, is that what you were talking about? Sorry, my brain’s going off in ten different directions.”
“That’s understandable,” Angus said.
I could breathe again-in more ways than one. I was off the hook as a suspect in Kyle’s murder, because after all, why would I cut the brake line in the car I was driving in with my family and friends?
“Did your men interview Perry McDougall about the brake line?” Derek asked.
Angus looked at me briefly before deciding it was all right to discuss the case in front of me. “He left his booth at the fair this morning and hasn’t returned.”
“Really?” I said. “That’s suspicious, isn’t it?”
“Aye, but witnesses say he was on his way to present a three-hour seminar on…” Angus checked his notes. “Appraising rare British ephemera.” He gave me a puzzled look.
“Ephemera are printed items that weren’t supposed to be worth anything but now they are,” I explained. “Like a ticket to a Beatles concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964, for instance.” I mentioned that because my mother still had hers in a scrapbook. The ticket price was five dollars, but she’d paid twelve dollars to a scalper. Those were the days.
“Rare British ephemera usually has to do with the monarchy,” I continued. “Or the Beatles, as I said, or World War Two posters and brochures, baseball cards, that sort of thing.”
“Ah,” Angus said. “Well, he never showed up for the seminar.”
“Any word on his whereabouts?” Derek asked.
“Nothing yet.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If Perry had cut our brake line, then skipped town, he could be anywhere. Or he could be hiding somewhere in the hotel, waiting to attack again.
The chills were back. I rubbed my arms briskly, but it didn’t help.
I suddenly realized it was getting late. “I’ve got to run. I’m supposed to do a three-o’clock workshop.”
“Where?”
I had to think. “It’s on the D level. I don’t know the room number.”
“I’ll drop by,” Derek said.
“Yes, I may do the same,” Angus chimed in.
I would’ve felt warm and fuzzy with all the attention from the cute guys, but I figured their consideration had more to do with my possibly getting another unwelcome visitor than with their wanting to be near me. “Thanks.”
They walked with me down the hall to the elevator.
“Will you be stirring up the crowd again?” Derek asked, his lips pursed in a smirk. I wished I didn’t find that look so damned attractive.
“No, this is a book arts class.”
“Sounds interesting,” Angus said, clearly lying.
“It’s arts and crafts,” I explained. “Everyone gets to make a small, accordion-style album.”
“Are there weapons involved?” Derek asked.
I thought about it. “If you consider X-Acto knives and bone folders weapons, then yes. Oh, and glue sticks.”
“Ah, then I’ll be there,” he said.
I laughed. “Oh, good times for you.”
“Be careful, Brooklyn,” Angus said as the elevator door opened. “You’ve an enemy here who’s growing more reckless by the hour.”
With that happy thought, Derek and I stepped into the elevator and rode it up to my floor.
Once inside my room, he watched as I gathered my supplies and materials for the twenty participants who’d signed up for the class to make their own small, accordion-style album. I’d packed everything in one satchel: forty four-by-four-inch pieces of neutral book board; the acid-free paper used for the book pages, already scored; twenty sets of decorative Japanese papers for the covers, already cut to size; and ribbon to tie each album closed. In addition, I would supply all the tools necessary to complete the project, including twenty sets of glue sticks, X-Acto knives and bone folders, which were lightweight tools usually shaped like tongue depressors and often made from bone, that were used for folding and scoring paper and to give the fold a sharper, more professional crease. I also had plenty of scrap paper, pencils and rulers.
If the police didn’t know I was teaching a bookbinding class, they would think I was carrying a small arsenal. I supposed a glue stick could be considered a dangerous weapon if you used it to poke somebody’s eye out.
We rode back down to D level and Derek held the door to my workshop conference room open, then left me to my task. Alone in the room, as I set up individual places at the worktables with tools and supplies, I worried about Perry. Where was he hiding? Did he really have a legitimate alibi or had Minka been lying to the police?
And who else besides Perry and Jack had Kyle talked to? The number of experts in British history and Scottish poetry at this book fair probably ran in the hundreds. On a hunch, I pulled out my book fair program and checked the back pages, where the exhibitors were listed by their specialties. A number of names appeared under both categories, including Perry McDougall and Royce McVee.
Royce. It stood to reason that Kyle would’ve asked his own cousin for advice on the Burns book.
Had he killed Kyle to stop him from discussing the book? Had he wanted to gain control of the lucrative McVee businesses? If so, then finding out Kyle had a wife would really put a crimp in his style. And he’d been so angry about Serena, the “lying tart.” I wondered if I should warn Serena that Royce might come after her. But did I honestly think Royce was capable of murder? He was so bland.
What did I know about Royce, really? During the blissful six months Kyle and I were dating, we’d had drinks with Royce a few times. He was a big man, not overbearingly big like Perry, but at least six feet tall. Realistically, he was probably strong enough to bludgeon a grown man with a hammer, but he seemed weak and insubstantial.
I hadn’t seen him in a day or so and wondered if he had indeed stayed in Edinburgh. Had he had more words with Serena? Had he accused her to her face of lying?
And speaking of Serena, was she a lying tart or not? Something about her really bothered me. It probably wasn’t her, specifically, but the simple fact that Kyle had had a wife all this time and I never knew. Either way, I didn’t get a feeling of connection between her and Kyle. That bothered me, too.
I munched on chocolate buttons as I arranged each student’s workspace with decorative papers and book boards. As I laid out tools and supplies on the third table, I had a sudden sick thought: If Kyle had been “promised” to Serena when he was dating me, had she known about me? Had she arrived in town and followed him to the castle? Had she seen him greet me with kisses and hugs, then watched as we popped into the nearest pub?
I stopped in my tracks. Was it hatred and jealousy of me that had driven her to follow me back to my hotel room, sneak in while I was sleeping off jet lag, and steal my tools? Jealousy was a powerful motive. If she was angry enough, she could’ve killed Kyle using my bookbinder’s hammer and pinned the murder on me.
Could Serena be the one who’d called Kyle while we were at the pub together?
I shook myself out of those thoughts. But it creeped me out to think about how friendly Serena and Minka had become. How did they know each other? Maybe Minka had helped her do the deed. Minka would be up for anything that might ruin my life.
I decided I would track down Serena after my workshop and try to schmooze her. I needed to do the same with Royce. Maybe I could get one of them to reveal something. Anything. Just for my own peace of mind. I wasn’t conducting an investigation. Just trying to find answers to a few burning questions.
I looked around the room. The four long worktables were now arranged with five workspaces each.
At the front of the room was a larger worktable with a conference-style tablecloth over it. It was set up on a platform to act as a dais of sorts.
I stepped up on the platform and started to lay out all my own tools and supplies I would need to instruct the students, but almost tripped over something sticking out from underneath the table.
It felt like a heavy pipe. Maybe someone had thought it would be okay to store it here, but I knew I’d break my neck if it stayed there. I tried to kick it back under the table, but it wouldn’t budge. I could see myself tripping and tumbling off the platform in front of the class, so I knelt down to push it out of the way.
But it wasn’t a pipe.
It was a foot, connected to a leg, connected to a dead body.
I scrambled to my feet, jumped off the platform and ran out of the room, screaming bloody murder.