Chapter 18
Paislee reluctantly left Lowe Farm, feeling as if she had unfinished business.
It was half past one—she had two hours until Brody was out of school. She would not be late again if she had to sprout wings and fly. But why had Billy said for Paislee to ask Isla’s boss about the truth of who Isla had been?
Just a quick drive then, to glean what she could from Roderick. Honey, rather than vinegar, as Lydia suggested.
Six minutes later, she arrived at the fancy distribution center, painted white with black trim, large trees and warehouses in back. She’d been pleased for Isla to get a job at Vierra’s. Due to the reputation and size of the business, there would be room for Isla to move up if she worked hard. The samples of wool on Roderick’s desk had been a small selection of the quality they provided.
If Isla had been desperate enough to blackmail Roderick, what else might she have done? Paislee couldn’t think of it without feeling sick.
She recalled Isla’s hint in her email about getting quality wool at a discount. The skein that Detective Inspector Zeffer had brought in for Paislee to identify was fine enough to have come from Vierra’s.
She parked and walked into the black and chrome lobby, as out of place as her grandpa the first day he’d been in Cashmere Crush. She still didn’t care for the sculptures.
The receptionist, company headphones around her head as she waited to answer a call, greeted her with a smile. “Hello again.”
“Hi. Is Roderick Vierra in?”
“He just ducked out back toward the warehouse—if ye hurry, you can catch him.” She pointed down a long hall with metal double doors.
“Thank you!” Paislee rushed down the black marble tile floor, her boots squeaking and her pulse speeding.What would she say when she confronted him?
She pushed on the door and it opened onto a courtyard with shade trees and picnic benches for the employees to eat their lunch or take a break. Roderick was seated at one of the tables, in a cocoa suit jacket and slacks, scanning his phone, a mug of something at his elbow. Coffee? He glanced up when the door shut behind her.
His smile wavered as he placed her. “Paislee Shaw?”
“Hello,” she said, gesturing to the table. “May I join you?”
His manners required that he say yes, so he did, adding, “My brother will be here in just a minute. What can I do for you?”
She got right to the point. “I know that you were having an affair with Isla.”
His dark brown brows rose and he glanced around guiltily. “Naw, I wasnae,” he said.
She didn’t argue. “I also know you were paying her blackmail so that she wouldnae tell your wife.”
“What?” He sounded incredulous, but he didn’t move. An innocent man would act differently. He smoothed his dark brown goatee.
“I want tae know why you fired her. Was she really so depressed about Billy and Tabitha getting together again?” Depressed enough to kill herself . . .
His jaw clenched. “I dinnae ken what yer talking aboot.” His eyes flicked over her shoulder. His brogue deepened. He must not want his brother to know about what he’d done.
Paislee peered behind her toward the row of wool warehouses—she didn’t see a soul. “I need tae know if she was truly broken up by Billy, or was it you that broke her heart?”
Roderick glanced around like a cornered animal, his knee bobbing nervously. “Now isnae a guid time tae talk. Roger—”
“Hurry, then,” Paislee urged. “I dinnae care if anyone else knows, but I’m not leaving until you give me answers.” She wasn’t sure where her bravado was coming from, but she welcomed it.
Roderick’s shoulders bowed in and he picked up his mug of black coffee.
“Me brother discovered us together in the warehouse, in flagrante, so tae speak,” he said, his face flushed beneath his olive skin tone.
Unfortunately, she could easily imagine that. “And?”
“He’s the one who said I had tae fire her.” Shrugging with a half smile, he admitted, “This was not the first time it’s happened. I have a weakness for bonny women. . . .” He stared into his mug.
He was a charming slug of a man. Paislee straightened, her bravado metamorphosing into real courage. He’d preyed upon Isla. Paislee had sent her protégé into the lion’s den. “How did Isla take her dismissal?”
“Not well. Screaming, crying. Cursing.” Roderick shuddered as if appalled by her unseemly behavior.
Paislee asked coldly, “How did the two of you happen?”
“She’d discovered her ex, Billy, texting his girl in Nairn and was overcome with tears. I sought tae comfort her, that’s all, and one thing led tae another.” He waved his hand in the air.
What a pig.
“Does your wife know?”
“God, no. She would divorce me”—he paused—“and take Vierra’s down.” His voice was disengaged, as if he weren’t actually part of the problem.
She’d wanted answers from Roderick, and as hard as it was to hear them, she’d gotten them. Almost. She had to make sure that it wasn’t possible Isla had been so distraught that she’d taken her own life as the coroner had concluded.
“Did Isla seem in low spirits?” Billy had claimed Isla hadn’t loved him, though she’d seen for herself that Isla had been swept up by the idea of romance. Which left the possibility of her loving Roderick. “After you fired her?”
“She was furious,” he said, his brown eyes melding to almost black as he relived a memory she was grateful not to see. “Isla had such fire, such passion.”
Paislee got to her feet, grabbed his coffee cup, and dumped the contents in Roderick’s lap. “How dare you take advantage of someone like that!”
He jumped up and brushed at the front of his expensive slacks, the damp spreading over his lap like a urine stain. She shook with adrenaline. He’d used Isla and tossed her aside. For a moment, Paislee was glad that Isla had taken money from him.
“What’s going on here?” a male voice shouted from behind her.
She whirled to see a man very similar in appearance to Roderick with dark hair and eyes but without the slick charm or goatee.
Paislee let Roger have it. “Isla Campbell is dead, in case you haven’t heard. Next time your brother ‘misbehaves’ maybe you should fire him, instead of the victim.”
Roger reared back. “Isla was no victim. We’re missing forty cases of our finest merino wool. Roderick, should I phone the police?”
Roderick glared at her with malice in his eyes. “Naw. Ms. Shaw was just leaving.” His jaw tightened. “Dinnae come back.”
“Gladly.” Paislee held her head high as she left the Vierra brothers in the courtyard. Her spine tingled. Their joint fury followed her to the door. She left in fear that they might harm her.
Had they hurt Isla? Roderick certainly had reason to want to keep Isla quiet. And now her.
She rushed past the reception desk, the woman oblivious as she spoke on the phone, and jumped into her Juke, locking the door once inside. Her fingers trembled as she started the engine. Good heavens, but now that the confrontation was over, she couldn’t stop shaking.
Isla had not been depressed—she’d been a fighter, turning the tables on the man who had used her so poorly and demanding her due. Was it the “right” thing to do? Probably not, but Paislee couldn’t blame her.
Looking back at the now ominous white walls of Vierra’s, she had a sinking feeling. Had Roderick, or Roger, or both, killed Isla?
One thing was certain—Isla would not have overdosed on purpose. Paislee knew that now with every fiber of her being, and she would prove it to the detective and the coroner or whoever would listen. She couldn’t change the outcome for Isla, but she could provide the truth.
Paislee checked the time. Oh no. How had it gotten to be quarter till three already?
With one wary eye on the front door of the distribution center, she called Grandpa at the shop.
“Hello,” he said.
“Grandpa—if you answer the phone you have tae say, ‘Cashmere Crush.’ ”
He hung up.
Paislee shook the phone and dialed again.
“Cashmere Crush,” he answered.
“Grandpa!”
He waited a beat. “How may I help ye?”
“I’m running behind—I know I said I wouldnae be gone long, but I need tae pick up Brody before I take you home. I cannae be late tae school.”
“Aye, I know it. And I need a raise.”
“What?”
“Flora Robertson delivered a box of yellow yarn about an hour ago, but I dinnae know how tae pay her, or put the things away, so you’ll have tae do it yerself.”
“Fine—I’ll see her tonight.” She swallowed and her nerves calmed. Nobody exited Vierra’s. “Is it pretty?”
“It’s yellow.”
She sighed.
“She also brought more of the light green ye like so much. I’m not pricing things for ye unless you give me a raise. I’ve had three phone calls from ladies about tonight’s event, and two customers walkin’ in, as well as a yarn delivery. This was not the light work ye implied.”
Paislee braced her shoulders. “Can’t do it?” She made a deliberate poke at his pride. “Or is it too much for ye?”
He roared back, “I can handle it just fine. Take yer time!”
“Thank ye, I will.”
“I want a ten pence an hour raise.”
She scoffed. “Deal. I would have given ye fifty.”
“Wait a minute now, lass—”
“See you in an hour.” Ha! She ended the call, very pleased with getting the last word. Time to leave the parking lot and never return to Vierra’s.
Whingeing aside, Paislee admitted that Grandpa’d been more help than hindrance. She said a prayer to her gran for guidance on what to do about the business. Her small but steady income would be stretched with another mouth to feed.
Paislee knew only knitting and yarn. She took a right to the main road toward Fordythe.
If needed, she’d sell yarn by the skein at the Saturday festival to help fill the coffers. She’d concentrate on finishing the specialty fisherman’s sweater, put together four hundred signature flower keychains, and help her grandfather find Craigh.
Her heart raced at the list before her—but she would get it done.
As she drove, she wondered why Lydia couldn’t find a record of the sale of her building. And whether there was a penalty for Mr. Marcus breaking the lease.
Today’s showing with Lydia had clarified for both of them what Paislee really wanted. She’d take cracks with character over trendy and new without a second thought.
She rounded the curve and slowed for a sheep crossing the road, then continued on her way. She passed Lowe Farm on her left and made her way down the hill toward Nairn.
With a glance in her rearview, she saw the glint of afternoon sunshine glow silver from a car behind her.
An all-too-familiar niggle of apprehension tickled her nape, warning her to take care and mind the sharp cliff on the left. She lightly pressed on the accelerator even as she remained aware of possible sheep in the road.
Paislee looked again and the car was right on her tail, and getting closer.
She took the next curve a wee bit faster than she liked. Did the car not see her? Were they on the phone, or messing with the radio?
Silver dazzled off the fancy sunshade of the car behind her.
Heading out of the turn and down a steep hill, she suddenly jolted forward—out of control—as the car nudged her bumper.
She tried to straighten the Juke, but the car behind her crashed into her bumper, harder this time.
Paislee spun.
The world whipped around her, her senses reeling as things moved fast yet in slow motion.
Until the Juke smashed with a great crack into a guardrail.
Moments later, she came to. Her head throbbed. Her muscles burned where she was secured to her seat by the seat belt’s straps; the deployed airbag pressed her firmly against the backrest.
A feeling of immense gratitude washed over her that Brody had not been in the car. And peering out, at where her car had stopped, the guardrail bent and mangled, that she hadn’t gone over the cliff.
Had it been Roderick Vierra or his brother behind her?
Paislee roused next when medics were attending to her and loading her into the ambulance.
“My phone,” she told a female medic with a broad face and freckles. “I have tae call my son’s school.”
The woman retrieved Paislee’s bag and purse. “Here ye are, but settle down, now. They’ll understand.”
She knew they wouldn’t, but didn’t have the energy to explain. Her head and neck twinged, but she dialed anyway, biting her lip as the school secretary answered.
“Headmaster McCall, please.”
“One moment.”
Time ticked by like a leaded weight. Her body pulsed with waves of heat.
The medic pulled down straps, securing her for the ride to the hospital. “You lost consciousness. We’re taking you to Town and County Hospital.”
Paislee groaned.
“Are ye in pain?” asked the medic.
“Headmaster McCall,” the headmaster said on the phone.
“This is Paislee Shaw. I just wanted tae let you know that Lydia Barron will come for Brody today.”
“Ah. She’s on the form?”
What was with this guy and his forms? “I’m not aware of any form.”
Paislee winced as a stab of cold, a new pain from the heat, pierced her temple.
“Is everything fine?”
“There’s been a small accident,” she said.
He sucked in a breath. “Are you all right?”
“A car accident—I’m okay. Please don’t alarm Brody, but I wanted tae make sure that you understood if he was a bit late being picked up.”
She could feel his emotions spill toward her over the phone. Embarrassment despite him believing himself in the right, and concern.
“Do you need any assistance?”
“That’s all. I have tae go.” She ended the call with her eyes closed. Cold had churned back to heat once more and her stomach twisted with nausea.
“No more now,” the medic said. “I gave ye somethin’ for the pain.”
“I have tae call Lydia, tae pick him up. I’ll be quick. I can’t be late.”
“My two bairns are with me mum until they start primary,” the medic said. “I didnae realize schools were so strict.”
“Fordythe. They like ye tae be on time.”
Rather than call, she texted Lydia, asking her to pick up Brody. She gave a brief rundown of what had happened, and where she was going to be for the next few hours.
Lydia immediately texted back that she would pick up Brody, was Paislee really all right, and what else could she do to help?
Paislee gave her phone to the medic and politely passed out for the ten-minute drive to Town and County Hospital.