Chapter 14
Being with Maisie last night was pure joy, and Robert decided that this was the end of his bachelorhood if she was agreeable. He had dated enough she-wolves over the years to know when he had found the right one for him. But he wanted to give her the time to decide and not rush things if she wasn’t ready.
He dressed and hurried to join everyone for breakfast, giving Maisie a kiss before they all sat down to eat. William gave him a conspiratorial look as if he knew just what Robert had been thinking. Robert and Maisie’s relationship was easy for all to see because of the affection she and he already shared with each other every time they saw one another.
While they ate, they began talking about the security videos.
“I keep thinking about the way that Ike, at least I figure that’s who that had to be at Heather’s pie shop,” Maisie said, “looked so surprised to see me speak with him like I knew him. I’m wondering if he was in the area because he was looking for his brother. What if Ike was acting so strange because he was trying to learn where his brother had disappeared to?”
“But why wouldn’t he have talked to you about Gus at the pie shop if that were the case? He didn’t talk to me either when he picked up Gus’s license,” Anne said.
“Maybe he’s not very outgoing. Gus was, but maybe his twin is more reserved,” Maisie said. “He hasn’t been answering his phone, but maybe the charge ran out or something else happened to it. We just don’t know. Also, what if Ike suspects that someone had done something to his brother, but he felt confiding in us wouldn’t help because we’re just a couple of women? Or maybe he even suspected Gus had been up to something bad and no way did he want to share that with other wolves.”
“Okay, you could be right on all accounts,” William said. “Anne gave me some of the backstory on all this. How about we inform Stuart, the owner of the male dog that is probably the father of Lady’s pups, that we’re looking for Ike? He lives in Glasgow, and we can tell him we found Gus’s body and we’re trying to locate Gus’s brother or any other family to give them the news. We looked over social media, and Ike isn’t on anything. We looked for Gus, and he wasn’t either. So except for their friends Stuart and Bruce, we don’t have anyone else to contact. Bruce lives in Edinburgh, so I think it would be best to contact Stuart first, since he lives in Glasgow where Gus and Ike lived.”
“I agree,” Robert said.
“I’ll call him,” Maisie said, “since Gus and I went out together that night and I found him in the water.”
Everyone smiled at her.
Maisie sighed. “Yeah, I know how that sounds. But he saw another woman after me, and we do have the man in the hoodie.”
“And the wrist splint,” Edward said.
“Maybe Stuart or Ike knows someone like that.” Then she called Stuart’s number, and when he answered, she said, “Hi, this is Maisie MacTavish from the MacTavish Inn. I’m trying to reach Ike Anderson. His brother, Gus, stayed here with us, and—”
“Ike is trying to locate his brother. He hasn’t heard from him in a few days. He said he got his driver’s license from your place, that Lady had chewed on it, but that Gus’s car wasn’t there. So he has no idea where he went,” Stuart said.
“I’m sorry. We found Gus after Ike picked up Gus’s license. We’re trying to get ahold of Ike to tell him what we discovered, but he’s not answering his phone,” Maisie said.
“Hell, Gus is dead, isn’t he?” Stuart sounded genuinely upset about it.
“We wanted to tell Gus’s next of kin first, but yes. Do they have any other family that we can reach out to?” Maisie asked.
“No.”
“Okay, do you know anyone who knows Gus and is currently wearing a wrist splint for any reason?” she asked.
Stuart didn’t say anything for a minute.
“We’re all wolves, by the way. We’re keeping all of this under wraps. Wolves need to deal with this if the guy who”—Maisie sighed—“if the person who murdered Gus was a wolf. We need to deal with it ourselves if he was. We don’t know if the man we saw wearing a hoodie was the one who harmed Gus, but he was also wearing a wrist splint, so we need to identify who he is and question him.”
“Jack Wolfson. If he’s the one you saw,” Stuart said. “He broke his wrist six weeks ago. For us, it would have healed in three weeks, half the time it takes humans to heal. He and Gus have been having an ongoing fight over a she-wolf. It’s crazy because I don’t think Chelsea Bowers is all that interested in either of them for the long term. It’s like they’re having all these issues with each other and Chelsea’s not even a consideration…or shouldn’t be. A few weeks back, Jack injured his wrist and was wearing a splint.”
“Do you have an address and or phone number for Jack Wolfson?” Maisie asked.
“I’ve got his phone number. He lives in Glasgow. We all met at a party that Ike and Gus had thrown at a club. Chelsea was there. She’d come with a female friend of Ike’s, and Jack and Gus both were interested in her.”
“Is… Is Jack on social media?”
“He is.”
“Please tell Ike to give us a call.” Maisie gave him her phone number. “We’re the ones who found Lady, and our friend who is a vet delivered her pups. Your dog’s pups too, as far as we know.”
“Aye. Bruce called me about that. That sure was a surprise. I’ll tell Ike to call you as soon as I can reach him,” Stuart said. “I believe he has a new phone number.”
“Thanks. What about the woman? Chelsea? Gus saw a woman the night he disappeared. Do you have a picture of her?” Maisie asked.
“No. But Gus might have or Ike even. I’m not sure.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Anne was already looking up Jack Wolfson of Glasgow on social media sites. “No way.”
“What?” Maisie looked at Anne’s phone and gave a little gasp. “That’s Jude Springer.”
“Well, apparently, he’s also known as Jack Wolfson,” Anne said. “I told you he wasn’t to be trusted.”
“I know.” Maisie shook her head.
Robert friended Bruce and Stuart on Facebook. Once they accepted his friend requests, he friended Jack Wolfson to Anne’s and Maisie’s surprise.
“What are you doing?” Anne asked, sounding alarmed.
“If he accepts the friend request, we can see his pictures and friends’ names, as long as he allows friends to see them. By adding Bruce and Stuart, Jack will know some of his friends are my friends.” It wasn’t long before Robert’s friend request was accepted.
They looked through Jack’s friend list and photographs. “Chelsea Bowers is one of his friends. She’s not listed as his girlfriend though. The same one who Gus and he were fighting over?” Maisie asked.
“Probably,” Anne said.
They saw a photo of Chelsea at a club and one of Bruce and Stuart at the same club. Ike and Gus could be seen in the background, Gus smiling and talking to Chelsea.
“There are no pictures of Jack or mentions of him wearing a splint. These were taken a week before Gus’s death.” Maisie frowned. “If Jude— Jack murdered Gus, he would have smelled that I’d been with Gus that night. Then if Chelsea was the next woman Gus saw—”
“That would give Jack motivation to do something about it,” Robert said. “We need to find Chelsea and make sure Jack isn’t coming after you, since you were also with Gus that night.”
***
After breakfast, Robert and William cleaned up the kitchen, and then Anne and Maisie began taking orders from their guests for breakfast.
When they returned from the main dining room to start preparing breakfast for the guests, Robert said, “If you don’t need our help, we’re going to review the security videos, since I haven’t actually seen them yet.”
“Aye, and if you would like, you can look at the animal photos I took and pick out your favorites so I can order the prints.” Maisie set up her laptop on the coffee table in her and Anne’s living room. “If you need anything else, just let me know. If you want anything from the kitchen, feel free to help yourselves.”
“Thanks,” Robert said.
They started looking at the security videos first. “The guy with the hoodie has one of those drugstore splints on his wrist,” Robert said. “They’re easy to remove and put back on.”
William looked at the video. “You’re right. Go back to where we first see Gus.”
Robert backed up the video. Gus didn’t have a splint on. “Okay, the guy wearing the charcoal-gray hoodie is definitely a different guy. But if he’s our murderer, how could he strangle Gus if he had an injured wrist?”
“What if it was a ruse? Like Ted Bundy, the American serial killer, who wore a cast on his arm, pretending to be hurt,” William said. “He was one of the cases we studied when we were going through the police academy training in Texas.”
“Yeah, he made the news all over the world. So this guy’s wearing a wrist splint and size-ten boots.” Robert paused the security video. “Look, those are Derby black safety boots.”
“Okay, go back and look at Gus’s shoes and we’ll see if we can recognize what he’s wearing.”
“There. Gus is wearing brown hiking boots and blue jeans. The other guy is wearing black trousers.” Of course, Gus could have changed his pants and shoes, but the wrist splint the one man was wearing made Robert believe they were two different individuals.
They looked at the videos several more times but didn’t see anything new. Then Robert pulled up the animal photos Maisie had taken. He laughed when he saw the ones of Mittens trying to catch the toy mouse. Those were his favorites.
William laughed too. “Maisie takes great photos. I love these of Mittens.”
“She does.” Robert and William picked all the ones they liked the best, writing down the numbers.
When they were finished with the photographs, the ladies were clearing the tables, so Robert and William got to work cleaning the dishes, which made Anne and Maisie smile.
“You don’t have to do that,” Maisie said.
“Don’t discourage them. This is really nice,” Anne said. “I’m going to clean up a couple of the rooms.”
Anne and Maisie didn’t offer daily cleaning service unless guests paid extra for it. Guests usually only stayed the night or two and then were off to another spot, exploring their surroundings from another lodging.
“I’ll be at the reservation desk,” Maisie said, “and after lunch, I have a photo shoot with Heather at the castle gardens.”
“For her maternity shoot?” Anne asked.
“Yeah.”
Anne said, “When I need a maternity photo shoot, I want you to do them too.”
Maisie laughed. “Oh, and I was thinking we should order our medieval Christmas gowns so that Edeen has time to make them.”
“Yeah, sure. You know which one I want. Just order two of them.”
Maisie smiled. “I’ll do that.”
When Anne went out to the guest rooms, Robert asked Maisie, “Do you often dress alike?”
“Sometimes. It’s not because we want to look like twins. We just really like the same things. But I might select something else because I really like everything that Edeen makes.” Maisie glanced at her laptop. “Oh, you already picked out the pictures you wanted?”
“Yeah. I wrote down the numbers here.”
“Okay, I’ll order the prints, and they should be here tomorrow through their expedited service.”
“Great.”
After Maisie ordered the prints, she began taking guest reservations, while Robert and William went back over the video.
“What about the vehicles? Let’s look at the earlier ones and see if we can locate anyone leaving in a vehicle who is wearing a wrist splint,” Robert said. As they were looking them over, he thought back to seeing the man they thought was Gus in the pie shop. He had been wearing a jacket, not a hoodie, gray trousers, and black boots. He couldn’t remember what kind. Maybe Heather would have security video that would show more of the man’s details than he recalled.
He got on his phone and called the shop. Heather answered. “Hey, it’s Robert. We’re looking into this matter with—” He wondered if she even knew about the dead body.
“I know about it. Enrick told me. What do you need to know?”
“When Maisie and I had lunch at your place, a man came in and ordered a pie. Maisie went to tell him that he’d left his driver’s license at the inn, and then after lunch we saw the man she thought she’d spoken to dead in the ocean.”
“Okay. So you want me to pull up security video to see what we can of him?” Heather asked.
“I’ll do it,” Callum said, butting in on Heather’s conversation.
“Do you see what I have to put up with?” Heather asked Robert.
Robert smiled. “Okay, Callum, if you can find any footage of the man Maisie had spoken to, send it to me, will you?”
“Is he the one who murdered the guy you found in the water?” Callum asked.
“We believe he’s Gus’s twin brother, Ike, but we need to know what he was wearing and if he had a wrist splint on his left arm.” They had to discount his own brother if they could. What if he had only said he was looking for his brother, but in truth, he had been the one who had murdered him? Or what if they were mistaken about Gus’s identity, the body was Ike’s, and Gus had been the murderer?
“I’ll send what I can find on it,” Callum said.
“Thanks.”
Heather said, “Okay, that keeps Callum out of my hair for a bit.”
Robert laughed. “Thanks for helping us with this.”
“Of course.”
“Maisie is eager to do your maternity photo shoot this afternoon.”
“Oh, me too, before it’s too late,” Heather said.
Robert frowned. “Are you going into labor?”
“Nay. I mean, I’m experiencing the same as Colleen has been. Intermittent contractions, nothing lasting any time at all. I keep hoping this is it, and then they stop.”
“Okay, well, keep me posted.”
“I will. Believe me.”
After a while, Callum sent the video of the man in the shop. He wasn’t wearing a wrist splint, and he was wearing blue jeans and sneakers. So no match there.
Then Iverson called. “I found Gus’s car. It was left near a petrol station about ten miles from here.”
“What are you doing with it?” Robert asked.
“Hauling it to the castle and going over it with a fine-tooth comb for forensics. I’ll swap out with one of the brothers so William, Edward, and I can all look over it. Since we’re all former homicide detectives, it would be good if all three of us look for clues. I did check with the petrol station to see their security videos. They showed Gus dropping off that woman he was with at the inn. Then he left. The car smells like it’s been wiped down with a bleach cleaner. It’s really pungent. I think it was to get rid of any fingerprints but maybe also to disguise the murderer’s scent in the event a wolf was investigating this.”
“Can you tell if Gus’s scent was there?”
“Aye. And another male wolf’s, but I don’t know who it is. Also, a female’s scent, which might be Chelsea’s. The bleach couldn’t cover all the scents.”
“Okay, good job. Let us know what else you discover.”
“I sure will.”
Robert sure wished they could get somewhere with this faster than they were. He thought of himself as patient, but when it came to Maisie’s and Anne’s safety, he realized he was really impatient, and for good reason.