“Carlton, don’t bother to humor him,” June Brodie said.
“No, dear, I think it’s better if we get it said,” Mr. Brodie told her. “Say it once, then refuse to speak of it again. We’ll only prolong the story if we don’t cooperate.” He turned to Betterton. “We were going through a difficult time with our marriage.”
Betterton nodded.
“Things were bad,” Mr. Brodie went on. “Then June’s employer died in a fire and she lost her job with Longitude Pharmaceuticals when the company went bankrupt. She was at her wit’s end, half crazy. She had to get away — away from everything. And so did I. It was a foolish thing for her to do, staging a suicide, but at the time there seemed like no other choice. Later I went to her. We decided to travel. Stopped at a B and B, loved it at first sight, found it was up for sale, bought it and ran it for years. But… well, we’re older and wiser now, and things are less raw, so we decided to come home. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Betterton repeated, hollowly.
“If you read the police report, you know that already. There was an investigation, naturally. Everything happened a long time ago; no fraud was involved; there was no escape from debt, no insurance scam, no laws broken. So the matter was dropped. And now we just want to live here, in peace and quiet.”
Betterton considered this for a moment. The police report had mentioned the B&B but included no details. “Where was this B and B?”
“Mexico.”
“Where in Mexico?”
A brief hesitation. “San Miguel de Allende. We fell in love with the place at first sight. It’s a city of artists in the mountains of Central Mexico.”
“What was the name of the B and B?”
“Casa Magnolia. A beautiful place. Within walking distance of the Mercado de Artesanias.”
Betterton took a deep breath. He could think of no other questions. And the man’s frank ingenuousness left him with nothing to follow up on. “Well, I thank you for being candid.”
In reply, Brodie nodded, picked up the dish and the dish towel.
“May I call you? If I have any further questions, that is?”
“You may not,” June Brodie said crisply. “Good morning.”
Outside, walking to his car, Betterton’s step grew jauntier. It was still a good story. All right, not the scoop of a lifetime, but it would make people sit up and take notice and it would look good among his clips. A woman who faked her suicide, got her husband to join her in exile, then returned home after a dozen years: a human interest story with a twist. With a little bit of luck, the wire services might get wind of it.
“Ned, you rascal,” he said as he opened the car door. “Okay, so it isn’t Watergate, but it just might get your sorry ass out of Ezerville.”
June Brodie watched through the window, face impassive, cold blue eyes unblinking, until the car receded into the distance. Then she turned toward her husband. “Do you think he bought it?”
Carlton Brodie was polishing the china plate. “The police bought it — didn’t they?”
“We had no choice about that. But now it’s public.”
“It was already public.”
“Not
Brodie chuckled. “You’re giving the
“Don’t you remember what Charles said? How frightened he always was? ‘We must stay hidden,’ he’d insist. ‘Stay secret.
“So?”
“So what if ‘they’ read the paper?”
Brodie chuckled again. “June, please. There is no ‘they.’ Slade was old. Old, sick, mentally ill, and paranoid as hell. Trust me, this is for the better. Get it said, and said our way — without a lot of rumor and speculation. Nip it in the bud.” And he walked back toward the kitchen, still wiping the plate.
CHAPTER 15
D’AGOSTA SAT IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT of the rented Ford, looking disconsolately out at the endless gray- green moorlands. From the height of land on which he’d parked, they seemed to stretch into a misty infinity. And for all the luck he’d had, they might as well go on forever, cloaking their dark secrets for all time to come.
He was wearier than he’d ever been in his life. Even now, seven months later, the gunshot wound was still kicking his ass: here he was, winded by something as simple as climbing a set of stairs or walking through an airport terminal. These last three days in Scotland had driven it home with a vengeance. Thanks to a solicitous and competent Chief Inspector Balfour, he’d seen everything there was to see. He’d read all the official transcripts, depositions, evidence reports. He’d been to the scene of the shooting. He’d spoken to the employees of Kilchurn Lodge. He’d visited all the houses, farms, barns, stone huts, mires, tors, dingles, dells, and every other damn thing within a twenty-mile radius of this godforsaken place — all without success. It had proven exhausting. Beyond exhausting.
And the cold, drizzly Scottish environment hadn’t exactly helped. He knew the British Isles could be damp, but he hadn’t seen the sun since he left New York. The food was lousy, not a plate of pasta within a hundred miles. He’d been persuaded to eat a dish called haggis the evening he’d arrived and his digestive system hadn’t been the same since. Kilchurn Lodge itself was elegant enough, but it was drafty, and the cold worked its way into his bones and caused his old wound to ache.
He took another glance out the window, fetched a sigh. The last thing he felt like doing was going out onto that moor again. But in the pub the evening before, he’d heard by chance of an old couple — mad, or just a little touched, depending on whom you talked to — who lived in a stone house out in the Mire, not far from the Inish Marshes; they raised their own sheep and grew much of their own food, and almost never came into town. There was no road to their place, he was told, only a small footpath marked by rock cairns. It was in the middle of nowhere, well off the road and twelve miles from where the shooting had taken place. It was impossible, D’Agosta knew, that a gravely wounded Pendergast could have reached it across all that distance. But nevertheless he owed it to both himself and his old friend to check this one last lead before heading back to New York.
He took a last look at the topographic map he had bought, folded it up, and shoved it in his pocket. He’d better get started — the sky was lowering, and threatening clouds were gathering in the west. He hesitated a moment longer. Then, with a grunt of effort, he opened the door and heaved himself out of the car. He pulled the waterproof tight around himself and started out.
The trail was clear enough: a gravelly path that wound among tussocks of grass and patches of heather. He spied the first cairn — not the usual pile of rocks but a tall, narrow slab of granite sunk into the ground. As he approached, he noticed that something had been carved into its face:
That was it, the name of the cottage they’d mentioned in the pub. He grunted with satisfaction.
For the first mile or so, the trail remained on solid ground, following a faint elevation that extended into the Mire. D’Agosta breathed deeply, surprised and more than a little pleased that all his traipsing around these past few days seemed to have left him a bit stronger, despite his weariness and the ache of his injury. The trail was well marked, with long, narrow pieces of granite stuck into the ground like pikes to guide the way.