Dressed to Kilt (23 page)

As much as I tried, I still couldn't shake the feeling that she was being set up.

What about Patricia Martin? The grieving sister? She didn't have an alibi. No one could confirm that she'd been in her room all afternoon, and she was a tall, strong woman who could easily have managed to set up the murder scene.

I shivered, but not from the cold weather, rather from the cold calculation of Henrietta's killer. To shove a washback over to a cask and drain whisky into it . . .

Patricia didn't have an obvious motive for killing her sister. But why was she at the tasting in the first place? If she'd wanted to visit with Henrietta there would have been better opportunities, ones when Henrietta wasn't busy planning gatherings. Afterward would have been preferable.

Had she felt that she had to hurry to Glenkillen? To put a stop to Henrietta's plan, whatever that plan was?

The plot was thickening with suppositions. I could speculate all I wanted, but without evidence, I couldn't write a proper ending.

As I turned off the Peugeot's engine, I heard the crunch of tires on hard-packed snow. Another car pulled in and parked on the other side of the lot. I got out, thinking that it was windier than I'd expected and that I needed to make this a quick exploratory trip. That was when I glanced up and saw Patricia Martin emerge from the other car. I ducked down, reopened my car door, and slid inside.

It wasn't clear why, but instinct guided me.

She came around the back of the car and opened its trunk, shuffling around inside. Then she removed something that looked about the size of a shoebox, closed the trunk, and walked down a shoveled pathway flanked by pine trees that led to the gravesites.

I recognized the object from its cylinder shape. It was a scattering urn, much like the one in which my mother's ashes had been presented to me for my own task of scattering her ashes. Was the cemetery one of those special places Henrietta had designated? Well, why not. She probably had a family plot here.

I followed discreetly, keeping a distance, the wind stinging my eyes, my hands clutching the collar of my coat tighter against it. Patricia walked wide around a hole that had been freshly dug and came to a stop before one of the tombstones on the far side.

Even though the weather had been cold, I could see that the ground at my feet hadn't been frozen more than a few
inches deep. Beside the hole, a pile of chunks of ground and rocks remained. The mounded dirt was covered with snow, as was the ground and gravestones as far as I could see.

I paused, reminded of my mother's graveside service. And the hole, much like this one. Except that mound of dirt had been removed, as this one was sure to be before the funeral mourners arrived. I noted snow-covered strips of frozen turf lying like jigsaw puzzle pieces on plywood sheets to be used as covering after the coffin was inserted and the dirt returned to fill in the spaces. Planks had been laid along the edges of the hole to ensure firm footing for the pallbearers.

I wondered who had died. Who would be buried soon in this prepared space?

Moving up behind Patricia, I watched her as she bent and brushed away snow with a gloved hand, revealing the inscription.

My eyes swept over the engraving, and I almost gasped aloud in surprise.

Because the grave belonged to my grandfather.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Patricia spoke aloud, after I watched her remove a glove and open the urn. She withdrew a handful of ashes and bent down, patting them into the snow so they wouldn't whirl away with the wind.

Rising, she must have sensed my presence because she turned and faced me.

Her face registered surprise, then anger. “What are
you
doing here?”

“I might ask you the same thing. Are those Henrietta's ashes?”

A dumb question. Who else's would they be? But what meaningful reason would an unrelated dead woman have for requesting that her ashes be spread on an Elliott grave? Why would Henrietta want her ashes here? Why?

Patricia's expression didn't give anything away. She turned back as though my interruption were a tiny bleep in the moment. She stared at the grave. I followed her gaze.

The now all-familiar family crest, with the fist clutching the cutlass, was etched into the stonework. And our motto:

Fortiter et Recte

Then:

I
N
L
OVING
M
EMORY OF

RODERICK JAMES ELLIOT

One
T
rather than the two that I'd always used when spelling my last name. A tiny detail, not unusual really.

Born 29 September 1907, died 10 July 1983
Beloved husband, father, and grandfather

Grandfather to me. My father was his only child, meaning I'd been his only grandchild, at least at the time of his death. I still could be. Who had chosen the words for this stone? My grandmother had already been dead. My father probably decided what should go on the gravestone.

A little below and centered was a short verse.

His Life A Beautiful Memory,
His Absence A Silent Grief.

Until this moment, the Elliott clan had been an abstraction for me.

The wind howled, calling me back, striking sharper and colder.

“Why are you scattering Henrietta's ashes on my grandfather's grave?” I asked.

Patricia remained motionless, still staring at the stone. “She thought of him as family,” she said.

I thought about that and still found it strange. If I'd been eternally in love with one man, my wishes would be entirely different. I'd have my ashes spread on the grave of my beloved. If he was dead. Or in a secret place where we once met. But on the grave of one of his family members? I loved my mother, but I'd never consider scattering my ashes with hers.

“Your sister had been in love with my father,” I said, chilled to the bone. It wasn't all because of the temperature of the air, which had been steadily dropping. Or was it the harsh wind that made it seem so?

“She was, but she was a foolish young girl.”

“She never got over him.”

“It was more complicated than a simple infatuation.”

“You know where my father is,” I said, stating rather than questioning. “And you've been hiding that fact, keeping it a secret.”

Patricia gave a little laugh, whether of contempt or disappointment I wasn't sure. “Do ye know how difficult it is living in the public eye all the time, on guard constantly? Of course ye don't. But I love my life; it's all I ever wanted. And if I could have thrown away the rest of my past, I would have. Instead I buried it. But it never goes away, does it?”

“We all have scars,” I said.

Now Patricia turned and faced me, full on. “I loved my sister, would have protected her with my life. I risked everything for her.”

I formed my next thought, verbalizing what I dreaded
learning of, forcing it out, thinking if I could only go back to what I believed yesterday . . . but it was too late for that. “My father is dead, isn't he?”

“Let's get out o' this wind and we will talk.”

Every red alert in my body was sending signals. I fumbled in my pocket for the pepper spray. But I'd carelessly stored my phone in the same pocket on top of the canister. I slipped the phone out, keeping a careful eye on Patricia. As we began walking back the way we'd come, as we passed the recently dug grave, I must have inadvertently pushed one of the keys because it beeped, alerting her.

She stopped and stared at me. I was afraid to make a move to remove the pepper spray. She looked down at the phone.

“My sister killed your father,” Patricia said. Before I had a chance to react, she tossed the urn aside, grabbed the phone from my hands, and forced me backward. She was taller than I. She drove me back like a football defensive player. And before I knew what was happening, I was airborne, flapping my arms, grasping at air.

The earth beneath my feet was gone.

I landed inside the open grave, flat on my back, the wind momentarily knocked out of me. I remained motionless while I did an internal assessment of my body parts, carefully flexing arms and legs until I determined that nothing was broken. I slowly rose.

Patricia stood above, still without expression, my phone in her hand. And well out of range of a shot from my pepper spray. I left it where it was. She didn't know I had it, and I needed that advantage.

“What I told you is true,” she called, her words carrying
on the wind. “Henrietta was impulsive and foolish when she was a girl. She took up with Dennis Elliott. I told her he'd break her heart. He had aspirations and wanderlust. He wanted to leave Scotland, but Henrietta set out tae tie him tae her. It didn't work.”

The grave wasn't more than six feet deep, but the sidewalls were smooth and icy. Standing on my toes, I thought I could reach the top. Whether I had the strength to pull myself up and out was another matter.

“You'll stay where ye are, if ye know what's good for ye,” she warned, anticipating my intention. I could hear the coldness in her voice.

It probably wasn't the smartest move I've ever made, but I must have been in shock. I'd just heard that Henrietta had killed my father, and her sister had thrown me into a grave. I sprang up and made an attempt to gain purchase, to pull myself out. As I'd suspected, getting a good hold was going to be difficult because of the icy surface.

That didn't matter because Patricia stepped hard on my fingers. When she removed her foot, I sank down, cradling my fingers in my hand, wondering if she'd crushed any bones.

“Your father came for his father's funeral. Henrietta saw that as her opportunity to convince him to stay.”

“He was married to my mother. He had me.”

“She didn't care. She had her own leverage. She had a son he didn't know about.”

I stared at her.

“Aye, Gordon was Henrietta's baby, not mine. She was so young, in no position to raise a child, but Connor and I were. She gave him up. Gordon was about seven at the
time that Dennis came fer the funeral. I was his mum fer all intents and purposes, but then she wanted to take a perfect situation and ruin it.”

Patricia went on, as though her secret had been bottled up too long and she had to let it out. I was afraid to move a muscle, wanting to hear all of it, and the best way to make that happen was to stay quiet and listen.

“Henrietta waited for him after the funeral, led him to a secluded spot, told him about his son, told him he had to stay. He refused, said he'd contact her later and that he would take responsibility.

“Henrietta had so much rage inside her. When he turned to go, she picked up a large rock and struck him in the back of the head.”

I fought tears, feeling a pain deeper than any I'd ever experienced when I thought my father had abandoned me. “She killed him?”

Patricia nodded. “And I had tae help her cover it up. All these years went by with our secret safe and sound. Then she was diagnosed with cancer, given a life sentence, and then she decided she was going to confess her crime to Dennis's daughter.

“I couldn't let that happen. She promised to protect me and never divulge my role, but a new investigation would have been launched, and it would have come out, would have not only ruined my life but also destroyed my husband's career. And Gordon? What would it have done to Gordon?”

“You tried to talk her out of it,” I said, thinking back to Janet's account of Patricia and her sister at the inn. Arguing and upset, according to the American woman.

“She refused to listen tae reason. She didn't care what her confession would do tae the rest o' the family.”

“So you drowned her in a vat of whisky!” In that moment, I understood how dangerous this woman could be. She'd already cut off my ability to use my cell phone to call for help and had thrown me into a deep hole without any regard for my personal safety. What if I'd broken bones? I was certain if I had, she'd have left me out here to die from hypothermia and shock without a moment of remorse.

“Henrietta was dying anyway. I only sped up the process.”

So that was how she was justifying what she'd done? The woman was mad.

“What about the attack on Katie? On me?”

“I didn't intend to kill the girl, but I didn't want to risk the two o' ye putting your heads together and connecting Henrietta tae Dennis. I had tae stop ye at all cost. And if the girl suffered some memory loss and forgot about some o' that history she kept accumulating like a nosy nelly, all the better.”

“But I figured out the link between them anyway.” She didn't need to know that Katie and I had indeed put our heads together. “It was only a matter of time before I would.”

“The attack on yerself, I would have gladly bashed yer brains in. None of this would have happened if not fer yer family.”

Patricia had undergone a transformation during the telling of the story. She'd been calm and unreadable throughout most of it, until a few minutes ago. Now she was highly agitated, her face an angry mask, her eyes flashing dangerously.

The only positive thing about this whole situation was
that Patricia most likely didn't have a weapon, or she would have used it by now. She didn't have a gun, since they were hard to come by in Scotland, or a convenient barrel of whisky to drown me in. And if she had a knife, she'd have to come within striking range and then I'd hit her with a blast of pepper spray.

I still had a chance to get out of this mess and figure out how to climb out of this hole, but I'd have to keep my cool. Not try anything foolish. Patricia was taller but she also was older. But if it came to a fistfight or wrestling match, I'm not sure which of us would come out on top. I needed to think of a way to give myself an advantage.

Patricia could have been reading my mind because she said, “I'm sure ye can figure out how tae get out o' there, so I'm going tae disable your car fer good measure. Nobody else is going to come out to the cemetery with the weather forecast calling for severe gale conditions. I wouldn't have risked it myself, only I needed tae get this over and done with, then back tae Glenkillen before the real weather hits. This one is going tae be a red weather alert.”

She smiled as she gazed down at me. “Ye didn't listen tae the reports, did ye? The schools and nurseries have been canceled fer the rest o' the day. Everybody is goin' tae be inside fer the remainder o' the storm. Except you.

“It's not the best plan I've ever made,” she admitted, “but it'll have tae do temporarily. We're a good distance from the main road. With luck you'll freeze attempting tae make it. Or maybe you'll get run over somewhere along this isolated stretch.”

The implication was perfectly clear. Patricia would be watching for me down that road.

“I have one more question,” I said, with a dozen on my mind. “What did you do with my father's body?”

Patricia relaxed her features and became less emotional, more matter-of-fact. “Why, he's buried in with yer grandfather. It wasn't hard tae do a little digging so soon after the funeral. The ground had been disturbed already, making it easy.”

Then she turned away and disappeared from my sight. But I heard her parting words.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she said.

There is something powerful about appropriately placed rage. For a good portion of my life I'd resented my father, believing that he'd gone off and abandoned us. His disappearance had affected my mother deeply at a time when she desperately needed his love and support. It had affected my relationships with men, had most likely been the reason I'd chosen a husband so poorly and why I've never been able to manage a lasting relationship. Growing up thinking your father didn't love you wreaks havoc on your soul.

Now I had a new target for all that anger.

I lunged for the wall of the grave and attempted to scale it. But again I slid down. I made several more attempts until I finally jumped high enough that my hands reached the roughness of the wood planks edging the grave and found purchase. I'd never considered myself particularly athletic, but through sheer will I managed to pull my body weight up and rolled out onto the snowy ground.