“Thank you for the information.” He peered at the object, then pointed to something he saw near the edge. “There seems to be a design here on the end. Or are those initials? BW? Ach.”
Now he was just showing off. He knew they were mine. Spots began to circle and fade in and out of my field of vision. I took a huge gulp of air and let it go. I refused to further disgrace myself by fainting.
“Ms. Wainwright, have you ever seen this hammer before?”
“Yes, of course. It’s mine. It was a gift from my teacher. Part of a set.”
He nodded sagely. “I see.”
“What do you see?” I shook my head, still not believing any of it. “What are you saying? That Kyle was killed with my hammer? Who would do that? I wouldn’t do that! What am I, stupid? Do you think I had anything to do with it?”
“We’re still determining that,” he said calmly, and slipped the bloody hammer carefully back into the envelope.
Great, they were still determining how stupid I was. Watch me burst with pride.
“Did you loan your tools to someone recently?”
“No, absolutely not,” I said.
“They’ve been in your possession all along?”
“Yes, they’ve been in my hotel room since I arrived yesterday.” So I was the only one with access to my tools. Could somebody lend me a shovel so I could dig a deeper hole around me?
He started to make a note.
“Wait,” I said. “Sorry. I’ve got my days a little wrong. I just arrived this morning. Around noon.” I shook my head, a bit dazed. Had it been only ten hours since I’d checked into the hotel? It felt like I’d been here a month.
So in the space of a few short hours, someone had entered my room, stolen my hammer, then lured Kyle deep into that dark, bleak tenement and killed him in cold blood without anyone noticing?
And they’d used my hammer?
Why?
Was it in incredibly bad taste to feel almost as sorry for myself as I did for Kyle?
Obviously, I was being set up. Obvious to me, anyway. Detective Inspector MacLeod didn’t seem to be seeing it my way. No, he was eyeing me with barely concealed glee, as though he were picturing me inside my very own jail cell while he received the thanks of a grateful nation for saving them from a homicidal maniac who looked a lot like me.
Who would kill Kyle like that? And who would want to frame me? Of course, the first person who leaped to mind was Minka. She would love to see me framed. But Kyle would never have gone anyplace dark with that woman. He had taste, after all.
So who else was there?
I thought of Perry McDougall. Would he go to all that trouble to implicate me just because I’d waved his paper around earlier? Had I infuriated him so much that he broke into my room to steal my hammer? Was he that nutso?
And then there was Martin, who didn’t like me very much at all. Martin had the perfect motive for killing the man, but Helen had already filed for divorce, so it wasn’t like she’d go crawling back to Martin if Kyle were out of the picture. But for some men, it wasn’t enough that they couldn’t have a woman; they didn’t want anyone else to have her, either. Still, Helen had sworn that Martin didn’t know about her affair with Kyle. Of course, she wasn’t the best person to judge whether Martin knew or not.
But then, why would Martin frame me? He was basically a lazy rich boy. I couldn’t see him going to all that trouble to break into my room and steal my stuff.
Did Martin know about the Robert Burns book? He was a bookseller. Would Kyle have consulted him? I couldn’t imagine him going anywhere near the man whose wife he was pursuing. He wasn’t that foolish. Or was I being naive?
I had to figure out the other two people Kyle had confided in. It was more than likely that one of them, or Perry, had killed him.
I couldn’t believe it was possible that Kyle had been killed over Robert Burns’s illicit connection to the English throne. The story might be considered scandalous to some die-hard Anglophile, but would it really drive someone to murder?
Who in the world was so afraid of something that happened three hundred years ago that they’d actually kill another human being? And why had they taken the time and the risk involved to sneak into my hotel room and set me up to take the fall? Whose toes had I stepped on so badly that I’d earned the rage of a cold-blooded killer?
“Do you always travel with a hammer, Ms. Wainwright?”
I flinched as his voice brought me back to my present predicament. “Of course.”
“Really?”
His withering sarcasm made me mad, and I had to wrestle with myself to keep my anger from gushing forth like a geyser. I seriously needed a good night’s sleep.
But of course I traveled with hammers and other tools of my trade. What if I found a book in need of repair? It was my job to fix it. Was I supposed to feel guilty about it? Just because some evil creep had stolen one of my tools?
But I did feel horribly guilty. And I wasn’t even Catholic, so it wasn’t like I’d be going to hell or anything. I wasn’t Jewish either. From what I’d heard, they had to deal with a lot of guilt. No, I’d been raised in the guilt-free environment of a new-age spiritual commune where we were free to worship any number of gods and goddesses, take your pick. And none of them spouted eternal damnation, so there was never any reason to feel guilty, right? But here I was, riddled with guilt over way too many things. Abraham’s death. Kyle’s death. Helen’s pain. My tools.
Maybe I needed to see an exorcist or something.
“Ms. Wainwright?”
“What? Sorry.” Jet lag was turning me into a zombie. “Yes, when I travel on business, I bring my tools with me.”
“Including a hammer?”
“Yes. I usually teach a workshop on bookbinding, so I always need my entire set of tools with me.”
Didn’t everyone? I was willing to bet Detective Inspector MacLeod didn’t go anywhere without his claymore or his.45 Magnum or whatever his weapon of choice was.
“And by the entire set, you mean…”
I pictured my portable tool set and named off the contents. “I’ve got my hammer, files, knives, a couple of awls, nippers, brushes, bone folders, some polishing irons, needles and thread, of course, and glue, linen tape, binder clips, rubber bands. Oh, and more tools and supplies for the students.”
“Rubber bands?”
“Sometimes the best way to hold a book together is the simplest.”
“Ah. And all these tools are in your hotel room?”
I frowned at the incriminating manila envelope still lying conspicuously between us on the desktop. “I thought they were.”
He followed my gaze. “Perhaps we should check your room.”
“Absolutely. Let’s go.”
“Please stay seated, Ms. Wainwright. I’ll send two of my men to your room to take a look around.”
“Oh, right. Okay. Great.” Yeah, just great. They’d be looking for more bloody evidence, I supposed. And what if there was some? If someone had sneaked in before, they could probably do it again to plant more evidence and set me up even further. This was so unfair.
There was another knock on the door and I groaned inwardly. Bad things seemed to happen whenever someone knocked at that door.
Derek Stone stuck his head inside the doorway. “You haven’t arrested this lady yet, have you, Angus?”
“No, no, just asking a few questions,” Angus said, then added reluctantly, “Come in, Commander. We still have some details to hash out.”
Derek walked in and closed the door. He looked around at the small space, then leaned his hip against the two-drawer filing cabinet and smirked. “She makes a damn fine suspect, doesn’t she?”
“Aye, she does, if you must know,” Angus said in a more serious tone than I was comfortable with.
“I was afraid you might think so,” Derek said, eyeing MacLeod. “That’s why I’m here to spring her.”
“Is that so?” Angus sat back in his chair. “We’re not quite finished.”