Page 3 of Death at a Scottish Halloween

My phone buzzed. “Hey Mara, what’s up?” I put her on speaker.

“Could you and Abigail do me a favor?”

“Of course, what do you need,” I said.

“Just double check the rooms as you come downstairs. I need to make certain everyone is out of the house before we lock up.”

“On it,” Abigail said.

We headed across to the Artists room. Van Gogh sat with his back to us facing the frame he usually stood inside. “Hey, Duncan, right? They’re asking that we clear out,” I said.

He didn’t move.

“Duncan?” I walked toward him.

“Do you think he fell asleep? I wish I could sleep like that,” Abigail said.

I walked around the chair he sat in and gasped.

“If this is some kind of joke, it isn’t funny,” I said.

There was a knife in his chest. And his eyes had a strange haze to them.

“Abigail, call Constable Ewan. I’m afraid Duncan isn’t asleep.”

Chapter Two

While we waited for Ewan, who was just down the street at the station, Abigail headed out to my car for my medical and field kits. I’d informed Mara why we were held up. She came upstairs because she thought we were pulling some sort of prank.

I wish it was.

We had brought the med cases up as a precaution for any emergencies.

I didn’t think we’d need it for a murder.

When Abigail came back up, we put on our protective suits, and I attempted to find any vitals while she made notes for me. This was something we’d done many times before, and we worked well as a team.

“He was nice,” she said.

The group of artists had sat at our table while we ate. It had been obvious they’d all known each other well. And they had lovely stories about their art. Like Abigail, I’d found them fun and interesting.

“He was.”

“Do you see what I do?” she stared at his chest where the butcher knife stuck out. It was buried to the hilt and would have taken an enormous amount of pressure and strength to penetrate the chest cavity at that angle.

I swallowed hard. “I do. That is—”

“How did someone get our knife without us seeing it?” she asked.

“I wondered about that, myself. Did you notice it in the fake body when we came back from putting on our makeup?”

“I don’t remember. We were a bit rushed finishing our scary look. We took our places and then the doors opened. It was so busy that I didn’t really notice anything missing. The people going through the house were never close enough to take it, though.”

“You know what that tells us?”

“That it was someone working here and premeditated,” Ewan said as he walked into the room.

“Watch where you step,” I said. I would have known it was him, even if he hadn’t spoken. He smelled like the forest, and it was one of my favorite scents.