Murder Most Scottish (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 11) by Blake Banner

Author:Blake Banner [Banner, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-22T22:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

The door had a big, muddy boot print just below the handle. I could see the mud was wet. Dehan was on her hands and knees, sniffing the muzzle of the revolver. Then she touched it gently with the back of her fingers. She stood and said to me, “You got your cell?”

I nodded and pulled it from my pocket. There was no signal. I looked at Armstrong. “You got any signal?”

He shook his head like I was crazy. “Och, there’s no signal here in a storm! An’ who’re you going t’call, anyhoo?”

“There are no cops on the island?”

“Ut’s a private island. What for, anyway? Nothin’ ever happens here!”

“Just a murder every forty years.”

“Ah didna kill him!”

“I didn’t say you did.”

Dehan said, “What’s 911 here?”

“999.” I picked up the phone on the desk, listened and shook my head. “The line is dead.”

Armstrong curled his lip. “What did yiz uxpect, in a storm like thus?”

“What are you doing here, Armstrong? You said today you wouldn’t come past the gate. Yet this is the second time I’ve seen you in the house since then.”

He snarled at me. “Ah don’t have to answer your feckin’ questions! Yer nay a cop here, see?”

I jerked my head toward the door. “Get out. Go wait in the drawing room with the others.”

He took a step toward me. “Ah don’t have to do what you feckin’ tell me, pal!”

“This is a crime scene, pal! You’re disturbing the evidence. Right now my testimony and Detective Dehan’s is likely to clear you of suspicion. Disturb the scene or leave the house, and you go right to the top. Am I getting through to you, Armstrong?”

He muttered something about “Feckin’ Yanks!” and marched across the hall to push through the door into the drawing room. I watched it close behind me and turned back to Dehan. I jerked my head at the gun.

She said, “It smells like it was fired recently, but the muzzle is cold, so it wasn’t that recent.”

I nodded. “That figures.”

She frowned. “It does?”

“Mm-hm…” I pulled my cell from my pocket again and photographed the door and the muddy prints that led from it across the Wilton carpet to the side of the desk. “Their nice carpet is getting a lot of punishment. I wonder if they deliberately chose red.”

She narrowed her eyes at me and pointed her finger at my chest like a gun. “How did you know?”

I made a face like brain-ache and shook my head. “I didn’t. I told you. It was a feeling.” I shrugged. “They killed the old man, but none of the issues they had were resolved. It felt like they were all bubbling to the surface again.”

She spread her hands. “But why now, almost forty years later?”

I thought about it, chewing my lip. “Maybe for that very reason.”

“What is that supposed to mean, Stone? You’re being cryptic. You know that makes me mad. And besides, this poor sap wasn’t even born when his grandfather was killed.”

I smiled at her. “Miss Scarlet in the study with the dinosaur.

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