Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series Book 3) (8 page)

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t live round here, I’m over in…” He backed up a step and into another drinker. “Sorry,” he murmured, and turned back to Pru. “Just happened by and thought I’d…”

“Murdo, my lad,” Bill behind the bar said, “same again?”

“No, thanks, Bill, I…” He glanced at Pru as red crept up his face. “They’re very friendly here, Pru.”

“Aren’t they just?” she said, smiling, and ordered her pint.

“Well, I’ll be on my way now. Cheers, Pru.” Murdo took his coat from the hook under the bar and walked out.

She held up an index finger to Bill. “I’ll be right back for that pint,” she said, and followed Murdo out the door. Once outside, she looked up and down the street, then around the corner of the building where she saw him heading down the road that led across the bridge and toward the Colonies. She followed. He veered off to the right, taking a winding path called the Snakey that led up to Saxe Coburg Place. Not exactly affordable housing on a gardener’s wages, she thought, as she turned back to the pub.

A sense of well-being pervaded Pru’s weekend. She walked into the city center Saturday, through the Royal Circus and Queen Street Gardens, listening to the voices around her, hoping to develop an ear for the various Scottish accents. “I dinna care”; “I wouldna make a hobbit of it”; “No’ bad, and you?” The Scots seemed able to squeeze a few extra vowels into many words. “The poo-er wee thing.” “Fasten your coe-aht now, the wind’s fierce.” At one corner, she found herself straining to understand the words of a conversation between two young women until she realized they were speaking some Eastern European language.

As she neared Princes Street, she looked up and stopped. Edinburgh Castle sat atop a huge black rock—an extinct volcano, she had read—and was silhouetted against the gray sky. Saturday shoppers bumped her as she took up valuable property in the middle of the pavement, so she started walking again, turned a corner, and looked over her shoulder to find the castle still there, like one of those portrait paintings where the eyes follow you wherever you go.

On Sunday, Pru wandering the shops in New Town, and discovered an open-air market in her own Stockbridge neighborhood where she acquired a substantial chicken-and-ham pie; it would carry her through several meals.

Two days of fine weather followed by a
dreich
Monday. Pru had learned the word from Mrs. Murchie—it meant bleak, dreary. The perfect day for indoor research and she worked in earnest, delving into Mr. Menzies’s accounts of plants he collected along the west coast of North America, searching again for discrepancies in his language—anything that might call the unverified journal into question. But she kept losing track of what was before her eyes—the fuchsia-flowered currant of California, a plant he had truly collected, kept reminding her of the fuchsia Iain had referred to. She hadn’t yet located its mention in the found journal. Shaking her head to clear it, Pru walked outside to stretch—and saw the elusive Alastair stepping out of his building.

Pru had begun to wonder if Alastair was avoiding her. She’d seen nothing of him since that first morning, although she’d stopped by his office several times. Not that she needed anything in particular, but didn’t he want to know how it was going? Of course, perhaps he was getting an earful from Iain.

She seized her chance.

“Alastair!” She hurried over to him.

He turned, a wide smile spread over his face. “Pru, so there you are. How’ve you been getting on? The office all right? Your assistant—how is Ms. Bennett?”

The wind taken out of her sail of complaint, she shrugged and said, “Fine, everything’s going fine. Would you like me to write up what I have so far—wouldn’t you like to see a report?”

“I doubt if that’s necessary—I have every confidence that you’re doing a fine job.”

“Alastair, could we talk for a few minutes? I believe I’m missing some information about my job—I don’t even know who found the journal—whom it belongs to,” Pru said. More questions were swirling around in her mind, questions that seemed to be basic to her project—facts that she should have been told at the beginning but that had been glossed over. She shouldn’t let them go; perhaps the answers held a clue to why Iain resented her so.

Alastair smoothed his tie out, buttoned his jacket, and put his hand on her arm. “Well, now, I’m sorry I don’t have time for a chat—I must run, but I will…” He frowned and then smiled again. “Wait now—do you have a moment? Why don’t you come along with me?”

He led her into another doorway. “I’ve a meeting, but just before we start, there’s someone you might want to meet.” He opened the door to the assistant regius keeper’s office and ushered her in. Two men sat on the far side of a table—she thought she’d met them at that first dinner—Victoria at the end, and a third man with his back to her. He had broad shoulders; his black, curly hair, smattered with gray, just reached his collar. “You all remember Pru, don’t you?” Alastair asked. “Now, Pru, here’s a compatriot of yours.” The third man stood and turned. He wasn’t any taller than Pru, but his cowboy boots added two inches to his height. His eyes were dark, almost black. And wide with surprise.

Once, years ago, when Pru was at a Texas Rangers baseball game, she had run into her dentist. Out of his white smock and without the green mask that covered his mouth, it took her a moment to figure out who he was, even though she’d been going to him her whole adult life. He’d been out of context. Context is everything. And that’s why, for just a moment, when the man with his back to her stood up and turned round, she didn’t recognize Marcus.

They stood without speaking—Pru felt like the breath had been knocked out of her—until Marcus said, “Pru?”

Alastair paid no attention to them and went on with introductions, finishing with, “and Marcus is here for six months from the Dallas Arboretum as part of an administrator exchange program we have in the International Association of Botanic Gardens.”

Both Pru and Marcus laughed, and Alastair cottoned on. “Do you already know each other?”

That caught Pru up short. Alastair had hired her—he knew her work history. “Yes,” she said, “we both worked at the arboretum.”

Alastair threw his arms up in the air. “Of course, yes. Well, I’m sure you two have some catching up to do—perhaps a little later. We’re just about to give Marcus an overview of the garden.” Alastair swept Pru from the room, and as he closed the door, she heard him say, “Marcus, are you sure you wouldn’t like a cup of tea?”

Oblivious to the cold, she walked slowly back to her office, her mind three thousand miles away, and almost ran into Murdo, carrying a box of supplies.

“Pru.” He nodded to her and then to the contents. “Just replenishing everyone’s tea things.” Pru saw boxes of tea bags, containers of sugar, jars of Waitrose instant coffee, and one jar of a specialty brand. Murdo’s eyes followed hers. “Mr. Blackwell’s. He’s a finicky one.”

“Well…” She shrugged. “Perhaps he’s used to getting his own way.”

“Oh aye,” Murdo said, glancing behind him as if Iain hovered there, “I’m sure he is.”

With small smiles of goodbye, they parted, and Pru’s mind picked up where it had left off. In her office, she sat, tapping her fingers on the desk, staring at but not seeing the latest notes she’d made. Marcus in Edinburgh. Why hadn’t she been told? At last, she took a sharp breath, reached for her mobile, and made an expensive international call.

“Hello?” a groggy voice said after six rings.

“Lydia, it’s Pru.”

“Pru?” Lydia’s voice came to life. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“Where?” The indignation that had been building in Pru as she puzzled why Lydia hadn’t told her about Marcus began to subside. That’s right—she hadn’t told Lydia about her temporary post. “I’m in Edinburgh working at the botanic garden.”

“Edinburgh? Really? That’s weird because…oh, did you see Marcus?”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was coming over?”

“Because he didn’t want me to—and I didn’t know you’d be in the same city, at the same garden. I thought you were in London with Christopher. Has something happened?”

Pru covered her eyes with her hand. “No, everything’s fine. I’m sorry I hadn’t told you I would be here. I’ve taken a three-month position, and we’re getting married as soon as I’m finished. In fact”—wait, thought Pru, this might work out better than she anticipated—“I think we’re going to get married here in Edinburgh. Another reason for you all to come over.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Marcus,” Lydia said, her voice still thick with sleep. “Did you talk to him?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure I will. I’ll let you know—and send you the wedding date so you can start making plans.”

“You don’t mind?”

“We won’t be working together, Lydia. I’ll hardly see him.”

“My God,” Lydia said, “it’s five o’clock in the morning.”

“Go back to sleep,” Pru replied. “I’ll email you later.”

Pru turned her attention to her work, reading passages from the legitimate document—the “real” journal, as she’d come to call it—and after a few minutes felt the muscles in her shoulders relax as she let Mr. Menzies’s even temper and positive outlook win her over.

“The evening was spent with hilarity, mirth & mutual good humour between us and the Spaniards.”

He may have enjoyed his time around the Monterey Peninsula in California, but that couldn’t make up for the continual annoyances when it came to the captain.

“As Captain Vancouver had already obtained leave for some of the officers to go on shore on pleasure & even exceed the limits of the restriction, I was in hopes he would be equally inclined to favour my pursuits & therefore asked his leave to go on shore…which he refused.”

More than an hour had passed when she heard a sound at once both foreign and familiar—the sharp, solid footfalls of cowboy boots on concrete.

“Hi.” He stood in the doorway, hands stuck in the pockets of his jeans.

“Hi, Marcus. Come in.” Pru got up and moved a stack of papers from one of the chairs and added it to a pile in the other—Saskia could deal with it tomorrow. Pru sat down again behind her desk.

They dispensed with formalities. “I didn’t know you were here,” he explained, rubbing his hands on the arms of the wooden chair. “I thought you were in London.”

She shook her head. “I hadn’t told Lydia. I’ve taken on a project—just until June. After that”—she tried to catch his eye, but he was looking at the floor—“Christopher and I are getting married, and I’ll move to London.”

He glanced up at her. “Yeah, yeah. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” she said brightly, as if he had meant it. “Lydia didn’t tell me you were coming to Edinburgh.”

He jerked his head. “So, for once my sister kept her mouth shut.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she shot back.

“It means she should keep her nose out of other people’s business. I would’ve taken care of things.” He grabbed the stapler off her desk and turned it over and over in his hands.

Pru put her palms on the desk and leaned forward. “So, by that, do you mean
you
were going to tell me that you were sleeping with Celia while we were still together?”

Marcus stood up, the chair squeaking against the floor as he pushed it back. He looked at Pru, then at the wall, and sat back down again. “She shouldn’t have said anything.” His voice was tight but low.

Pru gave a mirthless laugh. “Lydia didn’t tell me. It was Celia.”

“What?”

It wasn’t a memory Pru relished, but it came back to her in vivid detail. She sat in the Yellow Rose Bar at the end of a workday and held a cold bottle of beer up to her forehead—it had been an exceptionally hot and humid August. When Celia walked in, Pru waved her over. They’d met a few times—Celia was a friend of one of the women on her arboretum crew.

“She was so pleased with herself,” Pru said, her eyes unfocused, looking back. “Although, she did seem a bit disappointed I was the only one there—I think she’d much rather have had an audience to hear her announcement.” She arched an eyebrow. “Don’t you think?”

“She never told me that she talked to you,” Marcus said in a rush. “She wasn’t supposed to—we were…”

“But how could she resist?” Pru pushed on. “ ‘Oh, Pru, you haven’t taken care of Marcus, he needs attention, and it’s no wonder that he looked elsewhere. You see, Pru,’ she said to me, ‘I know what he needs. He needs me.’ ”

Marcus seemed to choke on a response. He took a breath. “Well, it’s partly true. You weren’t interested in us—in a…relationship.” He cleared his throat. “You had this”—he flung his arm wide, taking in Mr. Menzies’s journal, the garden, Great Britain in general—“on your mind, and you didn’t have any room for me. For us.”

Pru narrowed her eyes at him. “And what a good reason to start sleeping with someone without telling me. What a fine way to go about breaking up.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen that way,” he said, his face flushed. “But Celia listened to me. She understood. She knew that it was important for two people to…to make a commitment.”

From some unknown depth inside Pru, a poisonous bubble of resentment rose to the surface and burst. “Celia,” she said quietly. “And how did that work out for you?”

Marcus shot up, slammed the stapler on her desk, and walked out.

Pru sank down in her chair, her spirits sinking with her. She’d gotten that off her chest—why didn’t she feel any better? In her mind, she played out the weeks after Celia’s confession at the Rose. Pru refused to talk with Marcus—not that he actually pushed for a conversation. When she returned everything he had left at her house—Miami Vice DVD set, Springsteen CDs—along with his key, and had taken what belonged to her—the latest P. D. James book, the complete set of Upstairs, Downstairs—she had refused to talk with him, only holding out her hand for her own key back. “Goodbye, Marcus.”

Within weeks her house was up for sale, she’d been accepted into an internship at Wisley garden, and a friend of a friend had put her in touch with a property manager in London. Not even Marcus showing up at her front door for a last-minute confrontation could dissuade her. If Celia hadn’t sought her out to gloat about Marcus, Pru might not be where she was today. Now that she thought about it, she owed Celia a lot.

And yet she felt weighed down with guilt over how their relationship had ended—guilt that shouldn’t be hers. Pru looked at her phone lying on the desk, ran her finger around its rim, and then made a call.

“Pearse. Leave a message.”

She didn’t, but just hearing his terse announcement eased the heaviness on her heart. She sighed, pushed her shoulders back, pulled the journal over, and got back to work. Not two minutes later, she heard the “ping” that announced a text.

“Heading into court. I love you.”

Her eyes filled with tears that rolled down her cheeks and splashed onto her notes as a laugh got stuck in her throat. She rested the phone over her heart.