Scottish Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 1)

  SCOTTISH RITE

  Maggie Devereaux Mystery #1

  Stephen Penner

  Published by

  Ring of Fire Publishing

  Scottish Rite

  Maggie Devereaux Mystery #1

  ©2011 Stephen Penner. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity with real persons or events is purely coincidental. Persons, events, and locations are either the product of the author's imagination, or used fictitiously.

  Cover image by Istvan Benedek.

  Cover design by Stephen Penner.

  ALSO BY STEPHEN PENNER

  Maggie Devereaux Paranormal Mysteries

  Scottish Rite

  Blood Rite

  Last Rite

  Highland Fling (Short Story)

  David Brunelle Legal Thrillers

  Presumption of Innocence

  Tribal Court

  By Reason of Insanity

  Case Theory (Short Story)

  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Short Story)

  Other Novels and Short Stories

  Mars Station Alpha

  The Godling Club

  Capital Punishment (Short Story)

  Children's Books

  Katie Carpenter, Fourth Grade Genius

  Professor Barrister's Dinosaur Mysteries

  To everyone who's encouraged me over the years.

  Thank you.

  This one is special.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Preview: Blood Rite

  About the Author

  1. Scottish Rite

  Annette Graham pulled her jacket tight against the chill of the evening fog and quickened her gait. She turned from St. Machar Drive onto High Street and passed the rows of shops, already closed for the night, their merchants long gone home. It was just before nine o'clock. The late September sun had set some time ago and the streets were dark save the circles of light cast by the streetlamps and the faint glow from the dimly lit store windows. Although Annette felt much safer walking the night-darkened streets of Aberdeen than she would have back in Montreal, nevertheless she was uneasy and looked forward to completing her errand and returning to the relative safety of her flat.

  Soon she reached her destination and pulled three envelopes from her coat pocket. After double-checking that she had affixed enough postage, she dropped each into the postbox in turn. The letter back to her parents in Cape Breton. The letter to her friend at MacGill. She held the last letter in her hand, but hesitated.

  "Il faut avoir du sang froid," she reminded herself. 'One must have cold blood.' Then she dropped the envelope into the mailbox.

  Her mission accomplished, Annette turned and walked slowly back up High Street. The entire business was starting to make her a touch paranoid; her eyes darted back and forth, trying to catch a glimpse of someone who might be watching her. Although there were a handful of people milling about nearby, she could see no one who appeared to be surveilling her, and she relaxed a bit. As she continued up High Street, she came to one of the many entrances to the college campus. She had avoided walking through the campus on the way over. She had wanted to appear as any local resident, not necessarily a student, whose comings and goings were inextricably linked with King's College. She paused. It would be considerably shorter to just cut across the campus to her flat on Don Street. And it was getting late. She glanced over her shoulder once more. Then she turned toward the college grounds. She was sure no one had seen her.

  She was wrong.

  Annette quickly reached the large courtyard behind the Edward Wright Building—the one she always cut through on her way home from her classes. She had walked to it out of habit. But rather than the bright, sunny field packed with busy, vibrant students, a recessed vault of blackness stared back at her. With no residential quarters in this area of the campus, the buildings were dark except for a single office window, illuminated by a light either left on by a forgetful member of the faculty or turned on by a diligent member of the cleaning staff. The fog was thicker back away from the street and the only other light in the courtyard was from four widely spaced lampposts along a thin stone walkway. The lamps were at least twenty meters apart by Annette's estimate, leaving vast areas of blackness between their protective oases of light.

  Annette stood at the edge of the path, her heels still illuminated from the street behind her. She looked back the way she had come. It was only a short walk back to the well lit High Street. On the other hand, it was a considerably longer way home and did go by the pub, where someone she knew might see her and ask what she was doing out so late. She might even run into the recipient of her local correspondence. That wasn't something she was ready for just yet. Turning again to the poorly lit pathway through the courtyard, she steeled herself for a very quick walk to the safety of the other side. All she needed to do was hurry from one lamppost to the next and everything would be fine.

  "Remember," she reassured herself, "this is Scotland."

  She took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. Through the patchy fog she could see a few stars, but there was no moon visible and thus no moonlight to help illuminate her way. Shoving her hands into her coat pockets, Annette lowered her head and hurried away from the light of High Street into the darkness of the courtyard. In a minute or so she would be across the black abyss and onto the floodlit sidewalk of St. Machar Drive. In five more minutes she would be safely in her flat, the unpleasant business she was engaged in locked securely outside.

  She reached the first lamppost in short order and relaxed slightly. The noises of High Street, such as they were this time of night, had faded and the quiet of the dark courtyard enveloped her. It was surprisingly peaceful, she thought, as she continued on to the next island of light. Her shoes clacked hard against the stone path and almost, but not quite, covered the rustle of bushes to her left.

  Her heart jumped at the noise but her brain decided to argue that it was nothing—probably just a rabbit, or maybe a squirrel. Nevertheless she quickened her stride and did not pause as she passed through the glow of the second lamp.

  The next sound she heard came from behind her and off slightly to one side. She didn't turn to face it, but it was a combination of the rustle of fabric and the pounding of slippery footsteps on wet grass. Any doubts Annette might have had that the noise was from a person runnin
g at her were violently dispelled as the wire wrapped itself around her throat and she was driven to the ground.

  Despite frantic clawing at the cord clamping shut her throat, it was only a matter of some seconds before Annette Graham was dead.

  Waiting several more moments to be sure the wire had done its job, the assailant finally pulled it from the flesh of the young woman's neck and wrapped the bloodied coil in a rag. This rag then neatly tucked away in one overcoat pocket, a gloved hand produced from the other pocket a four-inch long scalpel.

  The light of the third unreached streetlamp reflected off the blade as the killer kneeled over Annette Graham's lifeless body and looked to the sky.

  2. Grandmother's Funeral

  "'Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and come forth,'"

  Reverend Gregory Tilbury's voice strained to fill the sanctuary of Seattle's Trinity Parish Episcopal Church, but the vaulted ceilings rose too high. The stained-glass saints could only gaze down from the corners of their meticulously etched eyes and strain to hear the dying echoes of his sermon.

  "'They that have done good unto the resurrection of life;'"

  The Reverend stared down austerely from his pulpit. Despite his seventy-two years on God's green Earth, his white hair was thick and his shoulders stooped only slightly as his wrinkled, spotted hands held the sides of the lectern in an iron grip. He had been preaching from that same dais for over fifty years, and as his piercing blue eyes gazed out from beneath their bushy white brows onto the congregation he had nurtured and led for the last half-century, he was thankful that the Lord had led him to his true calling. He sincerely loved being a minister.

  "'And they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.'"

  But he hated eulogies.

  "So said our Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel of St. John, Chapter five, Verses twenty-eight and twenty-nine."

  He mopped his wrinkled brow with a starch-scented handkerchief and took a deep, slightly labored breath.

  "And so we can take some small comfort that Kate, having done so much good in her life, shall hear His voice and shall be called forth unto the resurrection of life."

  'Kate.' Catherine NicInnes Ingram. Kate Ingram had been a member of the congregation when the Reverend had first arrived so many years ago. He had liked Kate from the moment he met her. She was a friendly and intelligent woman with a magical smile. He would truly miss seeing her face in church each Sunday. He would even miss their wonderful disagreements—and occasional agreements—over the nature of God's creation. Kate had been a vital member of the congregation and to a large extent, the Reverend Tilbury could mark his tenure there by the events of her life.

  He hadn't presided over her marriage to Joseph—that had happened prior to his arrival at Trinity—but he had had the happy duty of baptizing their daughter and only child, Ellen NicInnes Ingram. He had also presided over Ellen's marriage to David Devereaux, and soon thereafter the baptism of their own daughter. But the Reverend had also had the unhappy responsibility of eulogizing Joseph Ingram at the still vibrant age of 63. And the even unhappier duty of eulogizing his daughter, Ellen Ingram Devereaux, when she passed away at the tragically young age of only 34, leaving behind her husband and daughter. Now he was eulogizing Kate Ingram as well. And the only daughter of the only daughter of Kate Ingram sat next to her father in the front pew of Trinity Parish Church. Entering the last minute of his eulogy, Reverend Tilbury let his gaze fall from the beautifully decorated ceiling of the sanctuary to the beautifully soft face of Kate Ingram's only grandchild, Margaret NicInnes Devereaux. Maggie.

  The eulogy stretched out to the mourners, but it passed by Maggie Devereaux's ear like a warm summer breeze; she was aware of it but paid little notice. Through insurgent tears and her small glasses she stared at the blurred starburst of color high in the stone wall behind the minister. Her gaze drifted softly over the sunlit rainbow above the altar, as her thoughts trudged sluggishly through the dark sadness in her heart. She was genuinely surprised at just how sad and empty she felt. Grandma's death had not been a surprise; she was 81 years old and had had a prolonged bout with colon cancer. Eventually everyone, including Grandma herself, had realized that the battle would soon be lost. The doctors had done everything they could, but despite several surgeries, increasingly longer regimens of radiation and chemotherapy, and increasingly shorter periods of remission, there came to be nothing to do but make her grandmother comfortable and let events run their course.

  What surprised Maggie the most was that given all of the time she had had to think about Grandma's death and how she would feel about it—all the talks she and her grandmother had had about what was happening—none of that seemed to make it any less painful. She had actually believed that she had prepared herself emotionally for this day, but sitting in the church and hearing her grandmother being eulogized had destroyed any pretence to somber resignation. Sadness filled her heart and ran down her cheeks. She had thought this time would be different. Different from that unjustifiably sunny afternoon when Maggie was eight wonderful years old and she sat in this same pew and listened to a younger Reverend Tilbury tell the congregation of the virtues of her dearly departed mother.

  Maggie had known, of course, that Grandma's funeral would bring back memories of her own mother's death. As she stared at the flaming colors behind the preacher, her thoughts slid painfully back to the evening her father had told her the news she had feared with every cell of her young body. Maggie's mother had also had a protracted illness before she died. Heart failure was the official cause. Heart failure at the age of 34. She had spent her last month in bed, and the last few days at the hospital. And although Maggie had known that her mother was sick, and had known it was serious, she had not really been able to conceive of her mother actually dying. She had encountered death before, but from a safe distance. Death on television or in a book isn't real. Even the death of a pet is insulated by the gulf of species. But when her father had come home from the hospital that night, his eyes as red as blood and the flesh hanging gray from his cheekbones, Maggie had known—and had jumped from her grandmother's lap and run up to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. When her father finally came up to her room, she screamed and cried at his words, and she hated him for telling her what her eight year old heart simply couldn't bear.

  And then she just cried. For days. She was inconsolable. She cried until her eyes couldn't cry anymore, and then her heart cried alone. And eventually, when her eyes had stopped crying, and her heart had stopped crying, and her soul had stopped crying, she was left with the far too real fact that her mother was still gone and she was still there. As her young mind struggled to understand the not-understandable, she blamed everyone she could find in turn. Except her mother. Because even as she blamed herself and her father and the doctors, one thought lurked in the darkest recesses of her mind. And young Maggie Devereaux refused to allow it to escape those dark recesses to step foot into the light of conscious thought. But it was there nonetheless and it colored her other thoughts and stalked her dreams. And even from the dimmest nooks of her unconscious, it racked her with guilt. For try as she might, Maggie had not been able completely to fight off the horrible, hateful, intolerable conclusion that her mother had simply not loved her enough to stay alive.

  Maggie wiped a tear out from under her glasses. The Reverend was saying something else about her grandmother, but she wasn't listening. She glanced down at the silver pendant her grandmother had left her and which hung now, shining and silent, atop her black sweater. It was in the shape of a circle, designed to look like a leather strap, buckled on itself at the bottom. Inside the leather circle was the head of a boar, its lower tusk jutting up above its snout. Written on the strap, arched across the top of the pendant, were the words, 'Be Traist.' Middle Scots for 'Be true.' The crest of the Clan Innes. She closed her eyes and succumbed to a sad smile.

  Maggie had half-exp
ected her grandmother to fade from her life once her mom had died. Instead, however, Grandma had become even more involved in her life. When Maggie was eleven, she went through a phase where she wanted to know everything she could about her ancestry. Obviously an attempt to connect with her dead mother. But rather than counsel Maggie against opening old wounds, or lash out at her for the wounds it must have opened in her as well, Grandma had seized the task with zeal. She helped Maggie trace the family back for generations. Maggie would later learn that Grandma had already done the genealogy and knew at least some of their ancestors back to the 1600s. But rather than simply give her the family tree, she had let Maggie research it, providing information only after Maggie had found most of it herself, or occasionally when discouragement threatened to end the project for good. When they had finished, Maggie could not have told you even who her father's grandfather was, but she knew thirteen generations of mothers and daughters across two continents whose middle name was 'NicInnes'—'daughter of Innes'—and in some small way, being part of this larger, centuries-old family helped to ease at least some of the pain of her loss.

  Of course, the interest in genealogy would fade, others rising to take its place, but eventually her interest in her Scottish ancestry would return. When she started high school she had known she wanted to study languages, but she had been unsure which to take. Her choices were Spanish, French, German or Latin; but she knew which language she truly wanted to learn. So just before her freshman year, Maggie had found her grandmother out in the back yard, painting the sunset, and had said simply, "Teach me Gaelic."

  Grandma had smiled, then set down her paintbrush and crossed the lawn to the patio table where she had placed, earlier that evening, the Gaelic reader she had first used to teach her own daughter the language. She picked it up and handed it to Maggie.