Ashes to Ashes (35 page)

She led him up the main staircase. “Someone lit some trash in the garbage can and left it here. The front door was standing open— someone else has a key, right?— and the smoke went all through the house.”

He examined the singed edges of the curtain, and threw the material against the wall. “Idiot,” he said under his breath. The muscle jumped in his jaw. “Not a clue, I suppose, as to who did it?”

“Warren called with the lab report. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.”

Eric stepped into the Hall and inspected the ceiling. “We may have to do some repainting in order to sell the place, but it looks all right. Not as bad as I feared.”

“Sell it?” Rebecca asked. “What about Ohio and its youth hostel?”

“I haven’t had a chance to tell you I tracked the Dennisons, Rachel’s descendants, to California. Only a matter of time until we have some heirs.”

“Oh. I see.” She was surprised that she was disappointed. But that was what James had wanted, she reminded herself. “California, huh? Everyone kept moving on west until they came to the ocean, then they bunched up behind the beach and built freeways.”

Eric looked at her doubtfully. “What?”

“I’m not too coherent this afternoon, sorry. I mean, you’re from California too. Small world.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, California’s a big place. You don’t happen to have any coffee, do you?”

“Sure.” Rebecca led the way back downstairs. It certainly was quiet. Phil and Steve weren’t hammering, Dorothy wasn’t vacuuming, Michael wasn’t— well, the only thing that he did that was noisy was to play the pipes.

She threw out the old coffee, started a fresh pot, got out bread, lunch meat and mayonnaise. There they’d been in the Hall, and she hadn’t shown Eric the letter she’d pieced together. Not that she should. Just because she’d got it in her head that Dorothy had something to do with the repeated threats didn’t mean Eric would follow her reasoning. He might even laugh at her. Dorothy was about as innocuous as they came.

Eric’s chair scraped and he gasped. She spun around. Darnley sat in the pantry door staring at him, front feet primly together, tail twitching from side to side like a cobra fascinated by its master’s flute. Eric stared back, hands clenched, face pale.

Rebecca swooped down on the hapless cat, carried him through the entry and dumped him outside. Darnley flounced away, nose and tail in the air. “Why,” said Rebecca to Eric, “are you so afraid of cats?”

He swallowed, blinking rapidly. “My grandmother hated them. Had hysterics when she saw me playing with a kitten once. But it never seemed like something it was worth paying a shrink to fix.” He smiled sheepishly. The tan returned to his face. “Embarrassing, though. Half the little old ladies wanting wills made out have cats.”

It was some measure of the regard he had for her that he didn’t pull out and dust off that line about allergies. “I’m not too partial to big dogs, myself,” Rebecca said, and laid a sandwich in front of him. “Eat. Good for you. Soothe the nerves.”

“Yes, dear,” he said indulgently, and ate.

There, at last, was a sign of life from elsewhere in the castle: footsteps came down the front staircase and went out the door. It couldn’t be Michael— he’d have come into the kitchen looking for food. Unless he’d heard Eric’s voice. Rebecca plunked Michael’s sandwich into a baggie and put it in the fridge. She joined Eric. “Tell me about Nebraska.”

He told her, making her laugh with an account of a waitress in a steak house in Lincoln who’d solemnly advised him against ordering his meat rare— not cooked properly that way, she’d said. Footsteps went back up the stairs, then another set— or the same one— advanced and retreated again.

“Thank you,” Eric said. “About time you cooked something for me.”

“Definitely.” She picked up the dishes.

“I’m going to go poke around outside,” he said, “especially around the mausoleum, since the key hasn’t turned up. Just to make sure the local punks haven’t decided to use it as a clubhouse.”

“There weren’t any new scratches on the lock last Thursday,” Rebecca told him, piling the dishes in the sink. “But I haven’t looked recently.”

Eric’s voice was stretched just a bit taut. “Thank you for the deposition. I’ll be back in a little while.”

She turned to look at him, but he was already out the door. If he makes one more joke about my being curious, she thought wearily, or noticing something, I’ll lose my temper with him. Not that the care and feeding of Eric’s ego was all that difficult; she simply had to act less intelligent. And she’d had years of practice doing that. At least he didn’t demand decorative idiocy, no matter what Dorothy had said.

Unfortunately her tension headache had abated only a little. Ignoring it, Rebecca started up the stairs. This was turning into yet another day when nothing got done. Nothing constructive, anyway. The faint creakings and hammerings from the back staircase must be Phil and Steve. The vacuum cleaner roared into life on one of the upper stories. She wondered what book Michael had been wanting to show her, the one he’d thought more important than keeping his emotional drawbridge pulled up.

As she walked past the door of his room something flashed multi-colored light. She stopped. There were the two crystal perfume bottles, sitting on the desk beneath the window. She went to get them.

The desk wasn’t as messy as it usually was. Papers, envelopes and books were stacked in orderly shoals around the bottles. Odd— why did Michael arrange the papers like that instead of simply putting the bottles away?

Leaning against the bottles were the two snapshots he’d received in the mail the other day. He’d already showed them to her, it was all right for her to look at them again. She considered Michael in a kilt— nice, in spite of everything— and Colin and him on the icy mountainside. On the back of that photo was scrawled “Buchaille Etive Mor, February”. No one climbed that mountain without some expertise, especially in the winter.

Rebecca wondered suddenly if Michael was afraid of her. Or, not of her specifically, of becoming involved. He’d just been burned, damn Sheila-bluidy-Fitzgerald anyway. Rebecca emitted a sound partway between a laugh and a snort. Maybe she should be thanking Sheila. The last thing she needed was to get involved with Michael.

Beside the snapshots was Michael’s passport, open to the page with his photograph. Unlike the others, that one wasn’t flattering; he looked like a cat burglar caught in the sudden beam of a searchlight, surprised and resentful. Rebecca turned the page. He’d been through New York Customs only once, on October 11. He’d arrived in this country just when he’d said he had.

The light refracted by the bottles made prisms across half a dozen newspaper clippings lined up across the desk. Rebecca had seen that one, about a firebombing in the Western Highlands, sticking out of an envelope on Michael’s bedside table last month. The dates on two of the others were just a couple of weeks ago; one of his correspondents was keeping him supplied… .

The word “arson” jumped out at her. She read that clipping, then the next and the next, faster and faster as though the letters were evaporating before her eyes. The noise of hammering and the roar of the vacuum faded behind the rush of blood in her ears.

A house in Aberfeldy had burned down. It was owned by an Englishman and used for only a month or so in the summer. Arson was suspected. A burning Saint Andrews cross had been planted on the lawn of a shooting lodge near Meggernie owned by an English company. Like one in Onich, a house near Largs had been bombed; the police found bits of a Molotov cocktail. There had recently developed in Wales a pattern of firebombings of properties owned by “incomers”. Police suspected that a similar group of Scottish nationalists were committing terrorist acts.

Come on now, Rebecca said to herself. No way.

The letters that had just come lay unfolded in a tidy row behind the bottles. Rebecca hesitated, looked around guiltily, then picked up the first. Michael’s sister— domestic commentary. His mother— ditto. Colin. Something about the Buchaille Etive Mor. Something about Ben Nevis. Something about Bruce Springsteen. And the sentence, “When you bring home the lolly, I know an agent in London who deals with some of the Arab groups.”

Lolly, Rebecca translated. Money. An agent who deals with— no, Colin hadn’t said “who sells arms to terrorists” in so many words. She closed her eyes a moment, keeping herself from hyperventilating. Her hands shook so hard the thin paper of the letters rustled. No, it couldn’t be.

Like a battleaxe through her mind she heard Michael’s words to Mrs. West: “It makes you want tae pluck up sword and gun and fight it a’ ower again! A’ we’re askin’ is justice!”

Isn’t poor tattered justice, she shouted silently, usually dragged in to rationalize bloody-mindedness?

The bottles blazed like cold bonfires in her eyes. In a chill sick sweat Rebecca saw, to one side of the desk, a photostat of a letter in John Forbes’s copperplate hand.

Her knees folded and dumped her onto the desk chair. The words scattered, ran, and coalesced before her eyes. 1924. Dun Iain Estate. Director of the Scottish National Museum. Having been fortunate enough to acquire one of the greatest treasures of Scottish history— yes, I am asking a high price, but I have provided a reliquary made of jewels that were once my unfortunate wife’s— please let me know if you accept my offer. At the bottom of the page was a sentence in someone else’s handwriting, “Reluctantly refused, funding limited.”

There it was, the Forbes treasure. But Forbes hadn’t had the decency to say what it was. The Stone of Scone? Malcolm Canmore’s crown?

Rebecca laid the page down on the desk blotter and stacked the letters, the clippings, the passport and the photos neatly on top of it. All this time, and Michael had known positively there was a treasure. Only one explanation fit all the evidence. He was after it for his cause— whatever that cause was.

Her mind leaped from its track and spun briskly away like a hoop bouncing downhill. She’d been snooping— she’d asked for a shock. But she needed to know… . There must be some other interpretation. Michael was her friend. He’d come too damn close to being more.

He’d lied to her. She’d defended him and he’d stabbed her in the back. He could’ve taken some of the items missing from the inventories. He’d been here alone for a week. He’d been here alone while she’d been out indulging herself. No telling what he’d found, what he’d hidden. What better cover, to conscientiously finish his job here, conceal the stolen items in the shipment and unpack them himself back in Edinburgh?

He could’ve set the fire after all. He could’ve caused the trouble with Ray. He could’ve done any damn thing… . But she had no proof he’d done anything other than lie to her.

Rebecca touched the icy side of one of the crystal bottles. Hell of a crook he was, to arrange the clippings so tidily, to leave the letters unfolded, to put Forbes’s missive right out in the open. It was as if he’d wanted her to find them.

Or, she thought suddenly, as if Elspeth had wanted her to find them, just as James had wanted her to find the rest of his letter to Katie. Both of them, working to protect Dun Iain. Not that she’d expect Elspeth to have much of a proprietary interest in the place.

Her shoulder blades contracted. She stood up, the chair falling with a crash, and spun around. Michael was standing in the door, his face askew with puzzlement. “I came in here to get the bottles,” Rebecca said. “The papers were already spread out like this.”

“Aye?” His eye moved to the desk. Puzzlement clotted into horror.

“I just found the letter from John Forbes to— whom? Some retired director of the museum? Did you dig that letter out of the files, was that what made you volunteer to accept this job?” She bent, picked up the chair and replaced it. Still her hands were shaking.

Michael’s face went blank, like a chalkboard wiped clean.

“I’m sorry, but I had to, to read Colin’s letter. And look at the clippings. I bet you think you’re a modern Robert the Bruce, don’t you?” The hammering and the vacuum stopped. Her voice echoed loudly in the silence.

He actually seemed to be turning that over in his mind. Come on, she urged him silently, her hands knotted on the back of the chair, come on, answer me, produce some logical explanation for it all!

His eyes fell. “Aye, that’s what it looks like, right enough.”

She jerked as if he’d hit her. “Talk about self-delusion and gilded weeds!” she spat, and started for the door.

That statement was hitting below the belt, but he deserved it. Michael didn’t move aside. His eyes snapped back up and fixed her face, his brows tightened. She turned toward the other exit, the bathroom door. “Rebecca,” he said. Just one word, her name, cracking like a whip.

She glanced back. “Yes? I’m listening. Please, explain.”

His face twitched and then went blank again. The hand he had raised toward her, the one that was red and swollen, fell back to his side. He not only hoisted his “Do Not Disturb” sign, he dug ditches, threw up a rampart, and lined it with cannon like the half-moon battery at Edinburgh Castle.

She wanted to scream at him, I would’ve believed anything, you fool. Why start telling the truth now? And she answered herself, because Michael Campbell gives no quarter, and expects none.

She stumbled through the bathroom and into the large bedroom. The green plaid still lay at the foot of the bed. There was something decent in him, there had to be— she’d glimpsed it last night. But where?

Eric was calling from downstairs, “Rebecca?”

No, she thought, looking at the plaid. No, I won’t tell Eric. Eric would love to have Michael arrested, deported, returned to Scotland in disgrace. For the sake of that half hour when we held each other, when nothing else mattered and everything else mattered, I’ll give him a chance to straighten up and fly right. But I’ll watch him, I’ll search the boxes, he won’t leave a whisker in the sink but that I’ll know it, and if he makes one more shady move then he’ll have forced me to turn him in.

“Rebecca?” Eric’s footsteps came up the stairs.

“Coming!” She hurried past the bedroom door. Michael stood by the desk, his back to her as she passed in the hall, cold and still. The bottles glistened in his hands. Elspeth had certainly made her point.