He cupped the key in his palm. “Of course, Mrs. Landon. I’d be happy to assist. My mother is about your age, and she also tires easily.”
He carried the suitcase toward the stairs. Ellie frowned, wiped her muddy shoes on the carpet, then followed.
Once they reached the top floor, he handed her the key. “By the way, Mrs. Landon, if you happen to hear a wee knocking in the middle of the night, don’t let it alarm you.”
“Just the pipes?”
“No. It’s not the pipes.”
Without another word, he returned the way they came. Ellie stared at the shining 5 on her door, then leaned her ear toward the wall. Silence. She shuddered, then laughed it off and unlocked the door.
Once in her room, Ellie stripped out of her wet clothes, purposely leaving them in a pile by the bed. David would yell if she left damp clothes on the hardwood floors in their bedroom.
Water spat from the showerhead in fits and starts before the flow evened. She was lining up her own bath gel, shampoo, and conditioners on the soap dish, humming to herself, when her phone chirped. Expecting to see Jilly’s name, she returned to the bedroom. But it wasn’t Jilly. She read the text three times, now reminded of why she’d come all this way.
Oliver
“What about you, Oliver?” Hollis asked. “Did you win a contest, too?”
Of course Hollis would choose him next. Unfortunately for him, Oliver already had his answer ready.
“You think I’d fall for a stupid trick like that? Like I’m that naive?” He turned toward Ellie. “No offense, love.”
“Well, either you were that naive or you knew the plan all along. So which is it?”
It took every ounce of self-control not to pop Hollis one. That would only put more suspicion on him, so instead he finished off his whisky, let it burn all the way down. The others waited, watching. He plopped the glass onto the table.
“Fine. A mate. Said he’d booked the place but something came up and he offered me his reservation.”
“How well do you know this mate?”
“Worked with him once or twice. We have the same local and spot each other for drinks now and then.”
“And would this mate need money?”
“Yeah, suppose so.” Oliver lit a cigarette. “You think someone paid him off?”
“Easiest way to manipulate people, isn’t it?”
“If that’s true, then I’m going to beat Gerald’s ass into the ground.” He propped his feet on a chair.
“Happen to have Gerald’s surname and phone number?”
“Fancy a date?”
“More like evidence.”
“For or against my word?” Oliver met Hollis’s stare, took a long drag of his cigarette, then exhaled. “Sorry, we’re not that close. First-name basis kind of thing.”
“Convenient,” said Hollis.
“Or just the opposite.” He held Hollis’s gaze as he tapped ash into the empty whisky glass, daring Hollis to challenge him.
But Hollis gave in first and shifted his attention to Lorna, who had been pacing slowly since Hollis started his interrogations. Oliver watched the proceedings carefully, wanting to be ready if Hollis tried to catch him out.
“Go on, Lorna. How did you end up here?”
Lorna stopped pacing. Oliver watched her rub a scratch on her hand. “Similar to Oliver, really. A colleague. I needed a last-minute holiday. It’s a long story. But she offered me her stay here. Said I could pay her back.”
“How long have you known her?” Hollis asked.
“About two years.”
“And does your colleague have a full name?” He looked at Oliver as he asked the question.
“Jennifer McAllister.”
Hollis looked back at Lorna, another question on his mind based on the confused expression on his face, the one Oliver remembered from Hollis’s study sessions in the front room, but Hollis shook it off and turned his attention to Maeve.
Lorna caught Oliver staring at her hand and shoved it in her pocket. She toed a piece of broken glass on the carpet with her shoe.
Oliver bit the end of his cigarette to keep from jumping in with a well-timed insult. It had to be a lesbian thing, he thought. A girlfriend, the kind Lorna never admitted to having. She looked more like a dyke than ever, wearing that big black turtleneck that did her chest no favors.
“That leaves you, Maeve,” said Hollis. Oliver swiveled in his seat so he could watch Maeve stammer out a response.
“I thought . . .” She looked away. “I thought I was meeting someone.”
She wiped sweat from her forehead, then chewed the cuff of her jumper, the same way she used to act whenever she and Oliver had been alone in a room together. Out of all of them, she looked the most like her younger self. Almost pretty, if she could ever fix that hair and lose about a stone. When Hollis asked another pointed question about her missing companion, Maeve flinched and stammered out an incoherent response. It clicked then, and Oliver couldn’t stop laughing.
“Something to add?” Hollis asked.
“You haven’t figured it out, Detective? Maeve thought she was meeting a man here. That she was coming for a romantic getaway. You got catfished, didn’t you?”
She hid her hands in her jumper and wrapped her arms around herself, unable to meet his eye. It was too easy with Maeve. Like riding a bike that had hung in a garage for years. She might be a little rusty, but he remembered how to pedal. Twenty-odd years gone, and he remembered how to play them all.
1 hour prior
“God damn piece of . . . god damn!”
The jack lifted the tire, the tire iron cranked the jack, but for some reason the lug nuts refused to budge. Oliver’s fingers slipped on the wet hubcap, and he fell back into the road. Water seeped into his clothes from new angles.
“Fuck cars. Fuck tires. Fuck Scotland!”
Mud clinging to his hands and face, Oliver grabbed his phone and bag from the car, stuffed the pamphlet into an outside pocket, and continued on foot, carrying the tire iron out of spite, the long walk exacerbating his limp. If there was beauty in this barren landscape, he didn’t see it. Even a stupid hired car didn’t want to make this trip. Why should he have come? It was stupid. He’d known that all along. What would this solve? Fuck all, that’s what, he told himself.
By the time he reached the house, he held nothing but contempt for it. A spare parts house, that’s what it looked like. Cobbled together from bits and bobs nobody wanted, and poorly done at that. He was tempted to throw the tire iron through a window but flung it into the hedges instead.
After kicking the door shut behind him, he dropped his wet things and rubbed his hands by the fire. What he needed was a way to warm himself from the inside out. To his surprise, he found his favorite method in a room to his left. A large, Victorian-themed study lined with bookshelves and a long leather chesterfield sofa housed a full bar complete with tin counter and, most importantly, a healthy selection of spirits stacked in front of a mirrored wall.
“They must be having a laugh.”
He dug the damp brochure from his jacket pocket and glanced over it. But this was definitely the right place. He looked around, expecting a trick, but when no one appeared, he helped himself to a fifteen-year-old Glenlivet single malt.