Read Online The Murder Hole by Lillian Stewart Carl - Free Book Online

firma.
    Roger dropped the gangplank onto the deck
with a crash. “Brendan! Jonathan! Let’s get the boat anchored in
the bay. We don’t want the local fuzz to give us a parking
ticket.”
    The two young men jostled each other like
brothers confined to the back seat of the family car. A moment
later the throb of the engines made the dock vibrate beneath Jean’s
feet and filled the air with exhaust. Water churned and splashed,
and a cold droplet landed on her hand. She turned toward the shore
with a friendly nod at the local fuzz. He glanced at his watch.
Time for him to close down the sentry post and proceed to happy
hour at the pub. Once the boat was anchored in the bay, it would be
protected by a natural moat.
    Funny, she thought as she strolled up the
drive, how she found herself not just tolerating Roger’s ego, but
actually liking his goofy charm and shameless enthusiasm. Exactly
as he’d intended. Several times he’d delivered himself of a
statement and then paused, like a stand-up comic revising his
routine to suit the audience’s reaction.
    Well, if so, then so what? She was probably
the twentieth reporter today to ask him the same questions. Even if
she’d been the first to challenge his assumptions about Nessie,
he’d handled himself well. His agenda was open for inspection.
Nothing shady about Roger and Tracy building on his previous
acquaintance with her. Nothing shady about them sucking up to her.
She’d come here to tell Roger’s story. To promulgate his myth.
Because doing so would entice readers to Great Scot . Scratch
my back, I scratch yours. Right?
    Jean paused at the top of the road, frowning.
So why was her curiosity about the Dempseys and their agenda
leavened with so much skepticism it expanded into suspicion?
Because Roger seemed to have a history with Iris? Because he and
Tracy had checked up on Jean herself? Because of the threatening
letters?
    She looked back, past the pier, to Dempsey’s
boat cutting a white furrow in the surface of Urquhart Bay. Beyond
it, the open water of the loch glimmered like a great teasing eye,
in on the joke . . . No, Jean told herself. She wasn’t going to
assume anything—not Roger Dempsey, not the letters, not Nessie
herself—was only a joke.
     
     

Chapter Six
     
     
    By the time Jean had eaten dinner and whiled
away several hours in the town and at the Festival, the sun had
sunk far enough to cast Pitclachie House and the bay below into
delicate shadow, although light still gleamed on the mountains to
the east, across the loch. The waves close to the far shore emitted
a furtive gleam or two, although not, so far as Jean could see, any
flippers, prehensile necks, or proboscis-sprouting horse heads. She
was disappointed. Considering the power of suggestion, she’d fully
expected to see a corps of Nessies performing water ballet.
    Inside the Lodge, there was enough light to
find the switches without having to grope for them. Who knew what
she might touch, feeling around in the dark? She stowed the food
she’d bought in the village, freshened up, and glanced
inquisitively at the locked door.
    Jean strolled back outside and around the
corner of the main house, brushing at a tickle along her hairline.
Ah, good, the wind on the terrace side was strong enough to keep
the midges at bay. The infuriating biting gnats played a much
larger and less benign part in the Highland psyche than Nessie did,
and there was no controversy at all about their existence.
    The expanse of the terrace was deserted. No
Kirsty, no Iris, no Bouchards. Jean imagined the honeymooners
sitting on a window seat, draped in dressing gowns and Gallic
insouciance, pretending they weren’t looking forward to the
fireworks.
    In a window on the ground floor sat the
calico cat, grooming itself, its eyes glinting eerily. Faint lights
glowed in the tower, shining not only through the arched windows
but also through each of the mock murder holes spaced beneath the
overhang of the topmost story,