The Murder Hole Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t much more than a commercial for a
remote sensor that can see through walls. Set my teeth on edge, I’m
afraid.”
    “You shot him down, did you?” asked
Miranda.
    “I couldn’t help myself. He was making some
generality about the structure of medieval abbeys that was just
flat wrong. I corrected him. He stared at me, turned around, and
stalked off. I spent the rest of the weekend angling for a chance
to—well, not apologize. To smooth things over. But he avoided me.
Maybe he still is avoiding me. He never answered my e-mail
confirming the interview you set up. I’ll tackle him when I get to
the loch.”
    “He’d not be avoiding you if he’d been the
one to correct you,” Miranda pointed out.
    “You think?” replied Jean. “It’s a shame Brad
was out playing tourist during the conference. He would have loved
to have picked Dempsey’s brains.”
    “At least he attended the conference with
you.”
    “That was the last one. He finally gave up
trying to explain even his consulting work to me, let alone the
academic stuff, just about the same time I gave up trying to
explain mine to him. It was like speaking different languages, he’s
going on about submersibles and electro-magnetic radiation and I’m
going on about the Casket Letters and the Red Book of Westmarch . .
.” There was an echo in here, Jean thought. She’d told Rebecca and
Michael the same anecdote, in almost the same words.
    “Thinking about Brad quite a bit, are you?”
asked Miranda.
    “That’s the first lesson in being Scottish,
nursing old grudges and rehearsing old glories.”
    Miranda nodded, understanding Jean’s
sentiments if not her examples. “The Casket Letters have to do with
Mary Queen of Scots, but the Red Book . . .”
    “ The Lord of the Rings .”
    “Oh aye.” Miranda said politely. Her reading
and movie-viewing leaned toward book-club weepies. Standing up, she
reached for her handbag and produced a folder bearing a yellow
Hertz label. “Here you are. A Focus. Not so posh as Duncan’s
Maserati, but reliable.”
    “That’s all I ask. Thanks.” Jean strolled
beside Miranda toward the front door. “So are you off with Duncan,
or just with his car?”
    “With Duncan, of course. We thought of
popping across to New York, but I’m thinking a quiet weekend—golf,
dinner at the club—would go down a treat.”
    And sex more aesthetic than athletic, Jean
thought. Not that she lusted after Duncan, a silver-haired and
silver-tongued lawyer so polished Miranda must use suction cups to
keep from sliding off him. He was Miranda’s type, not hers. Like
Miranda, Duncan wanted his champagne dry, his facts straight, and
his lovers uncommitted. Although Jean had manifestly never figured
out just what her own type was, she had the awful suspicion that
commitment was too near her center of gravity to encourage a tidy
affair like Miranda’s with Duncan.
    Jean watched Miranda and the Maserati
disappear into the sultry twilight, then locked the door. Just as
she returned to the living room the phone rang. She hurried to the
desk. “Hello?”
    A hale and hearty male voice with an accent
like her own, ranging between a bleat and a quack, boomed into her
ear. She’d heard that voice emanating from the speaker on her
television only minutes earlier. Speak of the devil. “Jean! Roger
Dempsey! Long time no see!”
    And the devil was speaking to her. Go
figure . “Oh, hello, Dr. Demps . . .”
    “It’s Roger, it’s Roger. My go-to guy,
Brendan, tells me we’ve got an interview lined up. Tomorrow
afternoon at five, on the boat at the pier in the loch, tra
la!”
    “Yes, that’s what my colleague Mir . . .”
    “So you’ve gone over to the enemy, you’re a
reporter now! Using your maiden name, huh? Glad to hear you’re out
of the publish and perish rat race, girl! What’s Brad up to here in
the Auld Country? Engineering connectors and breakers in Silicon
Glen? It’ll be great to see you again, hope he can come along