Last Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 3) Page 3

  Warwick rolled her eyes. She knew enough about social media to know she didn’t want to know more.

  “Got to go,” muttered the young man as he typed, “Coppers just arrived.”

  He pressed enter and finally looked up at his visitor, his pale blue eyes flashing above his crooked grin. “That ought to get some replies.”

  Warwick begrudged a curt nod. “I’d imagine.” She pulled her coat aside to expose the badge affixed to her belt. “I’m Sergeant Warwick with the Aberdeen Police. I’m here about the grave robbery.”

  “Right, right.” The young man stood up and stepped out from behind his desk. His blue shirt had some sort of stain toward the bottom and his worn khakis bunched atop scuffed brown shoes, dried mud caked to their soles. “Thanks for coming. I’m Douglas Macafie, the night watchman here. Everybody calls me Dougie. I’m the one what discovered the grave this morning.”

  “Have you pulled the file for the grave, Dougie?” Warwick got right to business. “I’d to like to see whatever information you have regarding the person buried there.”

  “Er, no,” Dougie replied. “I was about to. I just hadn’t got to it quite yet is all.”

  Warwick nodded at the laptop. “Well, first thing’s first, eh? Why don’t you pull the file and meet me at the grave.” She gestured vaguely toward the cemetery sprawling out behind the cabin. “Which way is it?”

  Dougie stepped just outside the front door and pointed. “You see that tall oak tree there? Just walk straight for it. The grave is on the right. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  Warwick frowned. “Was it a mausoleum?” She hoped it was a mausoleum.

  “No, ma’am.” Dougie shook his head. “They dug her right up, they did.”

  Warwick thanked the young man and stepped from the cottage. It was a warm afternoon, but a chilling breeze confirmed autumn was at hand. She followed the gravel footpath toward the tree Dougie had pointed out. She did her best to ignore the significance of the graves she passed.

  Whistling through the graveyard, she thought with a wry grin. She saw enough death; she didn’t need a reminder. Especially not one that gave a peaceful facade to the violence she had seen in her career. There was something artificial about the well-manicured lawn resting genteelly atop the worm-ridden bodies filling the earth beneath her feet. As if someone were concealing the evidence of the one thing we all know is certain, and we all pretend isn’t.

  The grave was visible as she crested a small hill. Unmistakable. The lush green carpet of grass was torn open, rich black earth spilling out of the wound like so much coagulated blood. The gray headstone was erect and intact, giving testimony to who had been interred there, but unable to stop the monstrous souls who dared uncover what humanity had worked so hard to conceal.

  Warwick approached the site cautiously, aware that her very presence impacted the crime scene. Although surely spoiled somewhat by the night watchman, she didn’t need to add to the contamination. Careful steps on already trodden grass led her to the gravestone. She crouched down and read the inscription, pretending to ignore the stench from the dank hole at her feet.

  JENNIFER N. BURNS

  Beloved Mother Daughter and Sister

  Born 1861. Died 1917.

  Warwick frowned. The name meant nothing to her. Like all the rest in the cemetery, she supposed. But it meant something to someone.

  “Quite a bit of work, eh?” Dougie had arrived, marching through the mud and grass without a care. He handed her the file before she gently pushed him away from the grave and behind the headstone. He complied, although with a puzzled expression. “In one night they did that,” he went on. “No small task that.”

  Warwick looked again at the hollowed ground. It was nearly the full six feet deep, not to mention six feet long and two or three feet wide. Nearly one hundred cubic feet of heavy, damp earth. Absolutely back-breaking work.

  “How do you know it was more than one person?” she asked.

  Dougie rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I suppose I don’t know for sure,” he admitted, “but that’s a hell of a lot of work for just one man to do overnight, in the dark, with no one noticing. You’d have to be crazy to do that alone. They use heavy equipment to dig the graves now, but even back in the day with shovels, it was a two-man job.”

  Warwick looked down into the grave again. “Doesn’t look big enough for two men.”

  “No, ma’am,” Dougie agreed. “One man dug while the other rested.” He patted his young biceps. “Moving earth is hard work.”

  The coffin was visible at the bottom of the hole. Clumps of moist earth clung to its wooden lid, which was cross-hatched with scars from the grave robbers’ shovel-blades. There were a few half-destroyed boot prints visible in the loose dirt atop the casket.

  Warwick looked at the date on the gravestone. Miss Burns had been in the ground for nearly a century. Warwick supposed whatever decomposition was needed to take place to render a body skeletonized had long since occurred. She confirmed the coffin had a two-part-lid then stepped around to the foot of the grave.

  She gave him the file back and extended an arm. “Can you give me a hand?”

  Dougie offered an unsettling grin. “Are you going in?”

  “Well, I can hardly inspect the remains from up here, can I?” Warwick asked.

  Dougie nodded, still wide-eyed and grinning, but didn’t say anything. He took a hold of Warwick arm and steadied her as she half-jumped onto the casket, careful not to tread on the shoe prints.

  “You didn’t come down here, did you?” She looked up to regard his shoes, but they were out of sight behind the piles of dirt.

  He too looked down toward his shoes. “Er, no, ma’am,” he assured rather unconvincingly.

  Warwick returned her attention to the business beneath her own feet. The smell was stronger within the grave, the sweetness of fresh dirt mixed with the sickening pungency of death. Taking a deep breath of the foul air, she squatted and grabbed the top half of the coffin lid.

  It opened with no resistance. Confirmation that it had last been opened hours—not decades—before, by the grave robbers. Or by a curious Dougie Macafie, Warwick considered. She supposed one had to be at least comfortable around death to work at a cemetery. Dougie seemed beyond comfortable—downright interested.

  The smell was predictably strongest inside the confines of the casket. Warwick gagged despite herself, and felt her eyes water as she fought off the urge to vomit. She managed a quick scan of the contents before having to let the lid slam shut and grabbing Dougie’s hand to pull herself out of the grave.

  She reduced her physiological response to a few dry coughs.

  “Was it empty?” Dougie asked with a bit too much interest.

  Warwick shook her head as she brushed her hands off on each other. “No. The body is still there. It’s a skeleton in half-rotted clothes, but appears mostly undisturbed. Her arms are still crossed across her chest.”

  Dougie peered into the grave. “Mostly?”

  Warwick nodded. “The forensic officers will have to confirm it, but it looked to me like something was missing.”

  Dougie’s eyes widened again. The grin returned. “What?”

  Warwick frowned and glanced down at Jennifer Burns’ coffin. “Her hand.”

  *

  Maggie lifted her hands from the keyboard.

  Missing. Gone. Erased.

  Everything. Every last email, received or sent or drafted or anything, during the period she was starting to think of as ‘The Lost Weeks’ was simply gone. Deleted. As if she hadn’t existed then.

  There wasn’t even any spam.

  She wasn’t the most prolific emailer, but she always got notifications from the university, or notes from friends, or business offers from Nigerian princes. But there was nothing. Everything just stopped after her trip to Hungary. Just like her memory. The similarity was accentuated by the fact that the spam had started up again that morning. She already had one email for chea
p prescriptions and another to make ‘mi11ion$’ from home.

  She leaned back and ran her fingers through her thick brown hair.

  The computer thought she didn’t exist during The Lost Weeks. She wondered if her friends and family agreed.

  6. Why Can’t You Be Traist?

  Maggie looked up at the sign hanging above her aunt and uncle’s shop:

  MacTARY’S WOOLENS, EST. 1897

  Gold letters atop a red plaid, with lines of white, yellow, and light blue criss-crossing the design. The Innes Clan tartan. She recognized it. She remembered it.

  Well, that’s good, she thought.

  She turned and reached for the door handle. Her eyes met the brass door knocker. She recognized its design too. A boar’s head, the lower tusk extending above the snout, and encircled by a leather strap bearing the words, Be Traist, the Innes Clan motto: ‘Be True’ in Middle Scots.

  Not only did she remember the motto, she remembered her grandmother’s last words to her: ‘As long as you stay true to what’s right, I will always be with you.’

  So why did she feel so alone just then? There was a hole inside her. One exacerbated by her location, she could tell. But its cause hid in the recesses of her still inadequately lighted memory.

  She shook off the feeling and, nodding to the motto—her motto—she pushed open the door and walked into the store.

  “Maggie!” her aunt shouted as she appeared.

  Aunt Lucy was behind the register. She had been a second mother to Maggie since her arrival in Scotland the previous fall, and fully looked the part with her gray-tinged curls and oversized sweater. She dropped the handful of postcards she’d been stuffing into a wire add-on rack and hurried across the cluttered shop.

  Maggie felt a wash of relief. Apparently only her computer had forgotten about her.

  “Where have you been, lass?” Lucy complained as she crossed the shop and embraced her niece. “We’ve not heard from you in weeks. We’ve been worried sick.”

  Maggie hugged her aunt tightly. The solidness of another human body was welcome relief from the ethereal dissociation she’d felt since awakening in the Edinburgh hotel room.

  “I know,” Maggie said into her aunt’s neck. “I’m sorry. I’m not really sure what’s going on either.”

  Lucy pulled her niece away and held her by the shoulders. “Are you okay, Maggie? What’s happened?”

  Maggie frowned. She wasn’t sure where to begin. Worse yet, she didn’t know, literally, where to end.

  “I— I’m not sure,” She started. “It’s complicated.”

  Lucy’s expression softened. An empathic glow lit the corner of her eyes. “Aye, lass. Love is always complicated.”

  Maggie cocked her head. “Love?”

  Before Lucy could reply, her husband Alex burst through the curtains from the storeroom. A large, bearded man, dressed in his usual plaid shirt and one-size-too-small pants, he often spoke before assessing the situation. “I heard the door,” he bellowed. “Is Iain here already?”

  Lucy shot an angry glare. Maggie felt her heart jump, then sink.

  Iain.

  Damn.

  She’d forgotten. Again. How could she forget Iain? How could she forget how he’d abandoned her beneath the castle, her hands bleeding and her heart breaking? She looked down at her palms. Pink lines crossed over her natural palm-lines. Nearly healed scars. But then, scars never really healed. That’s why they were scars.

  “Oh, Maggie. It’s you,” Alex stammered. Then he regained himself. “It’s you!”

  He hurried over as Lucy let go of Maggie’s shoulders. “How are you?” he asked. “Where have you been?”

  Maggie grimaced. “It’s complicated,” she repeated.

  “Complicated?” Alex scoffed. “What’s complicated about disappearing off the face of the earth for these past weeks? When Iain got back from your jaunt to Hungary of all places and said you’d run off without him, we were worried sick. You ignored our emails, our voicemails, our—”

  “Wait.” Maggie raised her palm. “Iain said I ran out on him?”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow at Alex; he returned the look and nodded slowly. “Aye,” he said. “Well. Perhaps it’s better if we don’t get in the middle of that. The important thing is that you’re home safe, and no worse for wear.”

  Maggie reflexively rubbed her forehead. She wasn’t so sure about the ‘no worse for wear’ part. She still wasn’t looking forward to trying to sleep that night. She was in no hurry to fall into another open grave.

  She was about to pump her aunt and uncle for more information about what Iain had said when the door jingled again and in walked the horse’s mouth. Or horse’s ass. She wasn’t sure. But either way, it was Iain.

  “Oh,” Lucy said upon seeing him.

  “Oh,” Iain echoed as he stepped in and saw Maggie.

  Alex was finally smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

  Maggie pushed her fists onto her hips. “Well, hello, Mr. Grant. Long time, no see.”

  Iain managed a pained grin. “Aye, well.” He shifted his weight. He had a way of holding his 6′2″ frame, always strong and comfortable regardless of the situation. His thick black hair fell over his blue eyes as he looked down. “I didn’t think we had anything left to say.”

  “Nothing left to say?” Maggie scoffed. “You never said anything. You just walked away.”

  Iain narrowed his eyes at Maggie. He set his jaw. He pursed his lips into a tight knot. Then he turned to Alex. “I’ve just come for my last check. You said I could pick it up today. Is it ready?”

  It took Alex a stunned moment, but he began nodding. “Oh, aye. Aye, Iain. I’ll go fetch it.” He seemed glad to extricate himself from the situation.

  “Perhaps I should go help him,” Lucy suggested with a step toward the curtain Alex had already disappeared through.

  Iain waved her off. “No need, Lucy. I’ll wait outside.”

  And with that, he slipped out onto the sidewalk.

  “Coward,” Maggie growled after him. Then she turned to her aunt. “What did he mean, his ‘last check’?”

  Lucy frowned. “He gave his notice when he got back from your trip.”

  “His notice?” Maggie repeated. “He quit?”

  “Aye, he quit,” Alex confirmed as he returned from the back of the store. “The best damned store manager any man ever had, and he’s moving to Edinburgh. Whatever happened between you two, I hope it was worth it.”

  “Edinburgh?” Maggie’s heart sank even deeper. It was one thing to have to straighten things out over the next few weeks. She’d always been able to soothe his feelings and bring him around. But how was she supposed to do that if he was a hundred miles away?

  She snatched the check out of Alex’ hand. “I’ll give him his check. And he’ll give me some answers.”

  As Maggie stormed out of the store, Alex turned to his wife. “I don’t envy that lad.”

  “Don’t pity the boy, Alex,” Lucy replied. “It’s her who’s hurting.”

  Iain was standing at the corner, his hands in his pockets and back to the shop. Maggie wished he didn’t look so handsome even from behind.

  “Hey, Grant!” she yelled. “Here’s your check. Come and get it.”

  Iain turned and shook his head. Slowly he walked back to where Maggie stood holding his check over her head. A futile gesture. He was a good half-foot taller than her.

  “Don’t Maggie,” he said. “Just don’t.”

  “Edinburgh?” she demanded. “What’s in Edinburgh?”

  He shrugged. “A fresh start, I suppose.”

  “Why do you need a fresh start?” she demanded. “You’ve got a life here. A job. Friends. But you’re going to run away at the first sign of trouble?”

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Iain replied.

  “No, it’s not. You’re scared, so you’re running away.”

  Iain shook his head and ran a hand through that black hair of his. “You li
ed to me, Maggie.”

  Maggie pulled herself up. “I didn’t lie,” she insisted.

  Iain sighed. “That’s all you did. Everything was a lie. All of the trips, all of the talks, all of the…” He let the thought trail off. “You never told me what was really going on. You still haven’t. You’ve never told me truth.”

  Maggie wasn’t sure how to reply. Her hand holding the check slowly lowered. “Well… I mean… Can you blame me?”

  Iain thought for a moment, then nodded. “Aye. I can blame you.”

  “You wouldn’t have believed me,” Maggie accused.

  Iain shook his head. “You’re wrong. I believed all the lies. I certainly would have believed the truth.”

  Maggie lowered her voice. “So you believe it?”

  “Of course.” Iain managed a mirthless chuckle. “I can believe my own eyes, even if I can’t believe you.”

  Maggie thought for a moment. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

  Iain cocked his head and frowned. “That’s what you care about? Whether I tell someone about your little secret?”

  Maggie felt her heart clench. “No. Well, yes. I mean, not just that.”

  Iain raised his palm to interrupt her. “Well, don’t worry yourself, Miss Devereaux. Your secret is safe with me.”

  A horn honked and Maggie noticed for the first time the mini convertible idling a few cars down from the front of the shop. The driver was a young woman with wispy blond hair and a floral scarf. She pulled off her oversized sunglasses, revealing large, cat-like eyes. “Iain? Are you coming finally?”

  The vice around Maggie’s heart tightened. “Who’s that?” she demanded. She recalled her own question: ‘What’s in Edinburgh?’

  “A friend,” Iain said in a way that left no doubt the woman was more than a friend. “I have to go.”

  Maggie stood numbly as Iain extracted the check from her grip. She turned and pointed at the door knocker behind her. “What about this?” she asked. “What about ‘Be Traist’?”