When the other customers had made their purchases and gone out, Gemma approached the register and said quietly, “Are you Alison? Alison Grant?”
“What’s it to ye?” The woman gave Gemma a belligerent stare. “Look, if Callum’s sent you, you can tell him—”
“No. I just want a word with you. It’s about Donald Brodie.”
There was a flash of vulnerability in Alison Grant’s face before her expression hardened. “What about him?
And who are you to be asking?”
“My name’s Gemma James.” Gemma had contemplated using her police identification but decided that pretending an official status was unwise as well as unlikely to benefit her. “I was staying at the B&B with Donald this weekend. I was there when you came to see him, and Heather Urquhart told me you and Donald were close—”
“What would she know about it? I canna believe that woman ever had feelings for anybody, the cold bitch. And that still doesna tell me what it has to do with you.” Alison’s accent had grown broader as her voice rose.
In an effort to calm her, Gemma said, “Look, Alison, is there somewhere we could visit? I could buy you a cup of coffee.”
“And I could lose my job,” Alison hissed, a note of hysteria in her voice. “My boss is on her lunch hour; I
canna leave the shop. And if the auld biddy comes back and finds me talking to you, she’ll likely take it out o’ my wages.”
“Okay, okay,” soothed Gemma. “I’ll buy something if she comes in.” She picked up a picture of a Highland sheep that stood near the register and held it ready. “Now can we talk?”
“All right,” Alison said sullenly. “What do ye want to know?”
Gemma hesitated for a moment, then plunged ahead. “I came up for the weekend with my friend Hazel. She had known Donald for a long time—they were engaged once.
You seemed angry with Donald when you came to see him. Had he told you he was seeing Hazel?”
“Sod all, that’s what he told me, the bastard,” said Alison, but her swearing lacked conviction. “A business weekend at Benvulin, he said, and he’d ring me if he had the chance. And there was me sitting by the phone like some gormless idiot, waiting for him to call.”
“But you found out it wasn’t true—did someone tell you, then?”
“It was Callum, the mad bugger. I didna believe him at first, but he kept at me, and so I thought I’d go along to the bed-and-breakfast and prove him wrong. More fool me,”
Alison added bitterly.
“Who’s Callum?” asked Gemma, her pulse quickening. It was the name Alison had mentioned when she first came in.
“Callum MacGillivray. He and his auntie Janet own the stables just down the road from your bed-and-breakfast. He was jealous of Donald. I’d not put anything past him. I told thon police sergeant last night—”
“The police have been to see you?”
“Aye. Munro, that was his name. I told him he should
be asking wee Callum what he was doing yesterday morning.”
“Let me get this straight. Callum fancies you, so he told you Donald had lied to you about his plans for the weekend, thinking it would make you go off Donald.”
Gemma remembered the shadowy figure she’d seen in the drive on Saturday night. “Is he a tall bloke, fair, wears the kilt?”
“Aye.”
“Did you know that he was watching you, when you came to the B&B? I saw him in the drive, half-hidden in the hedge.”
“No.” Alison looked suddenly frightened. “I’m telling ye, he’s daft. I’ve said I want nothing more to do with him, but he won’t hear of it. He claimed he was sorry about Donald, but I didna believe him.”
“He claimed? Alison . . . was it the police who told you about Donald?” Gemma knew that Ross had managed to keep Donald’s name from the media, although she doubted he could hold out much longer.
“Nae, it was Callum.”
“And did he say how he knew?”
Alison shook her head. “No, and I didna think to ask. I didna really believe it until the policeman came to the flat.”
Gemma had to assume that Heather Urquhart had told the police about Alison, but how had Callum MacGillivray known of Donald’s death? She knew rumor traveled fast, and the fact that Callum was the Inneses’
neighbor made it even more likely he’d have heard the news despite Ross’s precautions. But still, it seemed as if the man had motive—and so, she thought, did Alison Grant.
Deciding there was no subtle way to phrase it, Gemma
said, “Alison, did the police ask you if you had an alibi for the time of Donald’s death?”
Alison gave her a look of dislike. “You’ve a lot of bloody cheek. But I’ll tell you the same thing I told them.
I was in my flat, and there’s no one to prove it except my nine-year-old daughter, who was fast asleep in her bed.”
Gemma reached the railway station with a few minutes to spare. She sank onto a bench on the platform and watched as the little steam train to Boat of Garten chugged cheerfully out of the Aviemore station, like the Little Engine That Could. Beyond the tracks, the still-snowcapped peaks of the Cairngorms rose in the distance, and she found it hard to believe that just that morning she had stood in the foothills of those same mountains.
But her mind darted back to her recent interview. She might not have made an ally of Alison Grant, but she had at least gleaned some useful information. She and Duncan could pay a visit to Callum MacGillivray, once they’d finished their business in Aviemore.
Her stomach gave a flutter of nervous anticipation as she thought of seeing Duncan. It had only been a few days, but with everything that had happened, it seemed a lifetime, and she suddenly felt as breathless as a girl awaiting a first date.
Then she heard the distant thrum of the approaching train, and a moment later the diesel locomotive was squealing into the station on a whiff of hot oil and scorched brake linings.
Standing, she watched the passengers spill from the compartment doors. She saw Kincaid step down from the last car, a head taller than his fellows. His unruly chest-nut hair fell across his forehead; he wore his favorite
scuffed, brown leather jacket, and swung a duffel bag from one hand.
His face lit in a grin as he spied her through the crowd, and in a moment he was beside her. Dropping his bag, he gathered her into his arms. Her cheek fit into the familiar hollow of his shoulder.
For a moment, Gemma allowed herself to feel the solidity of his body against hers. She inhaled the mingled scents of his leather jacket and the bay rum lingering from his morning shave.
“Hullo, love,” he said against her hair, his voice gentle.
“I can’t let you out of my sight, can I, without your getting into trouble?”
Chapter Fourteen
One thing in life calls for another; there is a fitness in events and places.
—robert louis stevenson,
“A Gossip on Romance”
I suppose you could say the place has a sort of rakish charm,” Kincaid commented as he and Gemma walked up Aviemore’s main street. His eyes strayed from the ski shops and cafés to the mountains rising beyond the town, formidable even in late spring. He had been to Scotland several times as a child, visiting Kincaid relatives in Strathclyde, and had made one memorable trip to Oban and the Isle of Skye, but he had never been to this part of the Highlands.
“It does grow on you,” agreed Gemma, but her smile seemed to take an effort. Her freckles, he saw, were no-ticeable against the pale background of her skin, always a sign that she was tired, or under stress.