By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс
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groom. They’d been fascinated with his knowledge of Scottish castles, and now Vi was rewarding him with homemade scones and stories about her girls growing up in a castle. He could see why she and Adair were building such a successful business.
So far everything was quiet. In D.C., Glen Loch and here at the castle. Daryl’s tech man hadn’t gotten back to him with any news about the composite photo yet. Patrick Lightman had appeared at the diner for a late breakfast, and then sat on a bench to take in the view of the lake, just as he had the day before. Currently, he was back in his room at the Eagle’s Nest taking a nap. His snores were being recorded by Skinner’s deputy.
Duncan couldn’t have asked for a less eventful morning. But waiting on the sidelines for something to happen had never frustrated him so much. He could only hope that Piper was having more luck with the RPK files. Daryl had fitted her with a wire that was voice activated. Both he and Daryl wore a small earpiece, but so far Piper hadn’t made a sound. Vi and Daryl had each checked in with her, but the news had been the same. Nothing.
He glanced back over his shoulder at the closed library door. She’d be safe enough there until everyone left.
“Mr. Sutherland?”
Duncan turned his attention to Deanna Lewis as she came down the main staircase. She was an attractive woman in her late twenties and she was dressed in the same comfortable jeans and T-shirt she’d worn the day before. “You could do me a big favor.”
“And that would be?”
“There’s a library here.” She raised a hand. “I know Russell was told that it’s closed to the public and not really ready to be photographed. But this is my first freelance assignment with a magazine of Architectural Digest’s prestige. If there’s any way you could make an exception and let me take a few shots, it would really earn me points with my boss.”
“I’m sorry, but the library is off-limits. After the death of the current owner’s wife, it was locked up and unused for years,” Duncan said. “I can’t see why you’d want a shot of it.”
“Because it’s off-limits,” she said. “Forbidden. I don’t always want to be taking pictures for a magazine—I’m more interested in photojournalism.”
Russell Arbogast entered the foyer. “Deanna, I’m going to pay a last visit to the stone arch with Daryl and Vi. Do you need any more shots of it?”
“I’ve got what I need, but why don’t you take Sam and Carl? It will be good practice for them.”
As soon as everyone left, Deanna turned back to Duncan. “How about letting me take a few shots of the library from the outside? I took some pictures of the grounds yesterday, but I’m not even sure where the library is located.”
Duncan studied her. Her curiosity seemed genuine. But it also occurred to him that if she’d been taking outside shots yesterday, she might quite easily have found the library on her own. It wouldn’t be hard to spot a library through the glass doors. If you used the telescopic lens on the camera, you could easily identify it from quite a distance away in the woods.
His own curiosity aroused, Duncan said, “I’ll show you where it’s located, but no shots through the windows.”
She beamed a smile at him. “Deal.”
PIPER CLOSED THE LID ON BOX number five of the RPK files and stretched her arms over her head. A glance at her watch told her that she’d been working on it for more than two hours. Nothing had popped.
Standing, she walked to the sliding glass doors that led to the terrace and swept her gaze around the clearing. She’d decided to work at the desk so that she could keep an eye out in case someone decided to throw rose petals all over the terrace again.
So far, no one had.
There was something, some detail that she was missing. Something important. Her first inkling had been at the diner yesterday when she’d been sitting across from Lightman. And twice later in the day she’d experienced that little mental nudge, but she couldn’t latch onto it.
She needed to talk to Duncan. If he could just take her through the conversation they’d had with Lightman in that methodical way he had, she might remember.
Or she might just be making up an excuse to see Duncan again. He’d left her room before she’d awakened.
And that had hurt. She rubbed the heel of her hand against her chest where it still did.
Just for tonight.
That’s what he’d said to her. He’d never promised her any more. In the beginning, even in the stone arch yesterday, she hadn’t wanted any more.
She certainly hadn’t wanted to fall in love with him. But that’s just what she’d done. She rubbed her hand again over the ache in her chest. Now she would pay the price—the same price her father had paid for loving her mother. Loss.
She wasn’t even aware that her vision had blurred with tears until she saw Duncan walk into the clearing outside the glass. Blinking, she recognized his companion as the photographer who’d been with Russell Arbogast the day before. Deanna Lewis. For one second, she was tempted to punch in the security code and step out to say hello. But they weren’t walking toward her. Then she remembered, Russell had asked to take photos of the library, and Vi had told them it wouldn’t be available. So what were they doing here?
Her mind had barely considered the question when Deanna set her camera down and pulled out her notebook. Duncan took it and put on his reading glasses to study it.
That’s when the memory struck her like a bare-fisted punch.
Reading glasses.
Images flashed into her mind at fast-forward speed. The first pair she’d seen on him had been right here in the library. She recalled him setting them aside on the desk and also handing them to him in the stone arch. If she hadn’t found them on the ledge, he might have left them behind.
Patrick Lightman had said he didn’t need the glasses he’d worn during the trial all the time. But he’d pulled them out yesterday when he’d been looking at the video clip on his cell phone and replaced them later in his pocket.
The memory tugged hard this time. There was something she’d seen in one of the files.
Which one? Whirling away from the glass doors, she strode back to the boxes neatly lined up along the wall and squatted down in front of them. She’d been working on the fourth box yesterday when she’d fallen asleep. Crime scene photos of one of the RPK killer’s earlier victims.
Piper sat down on the floor, located the file, and removed the photos. Then she spread them out, examining each shot before she placed it on the floor. The RPK had staged his scenes so exactly and the details were so similar that it was hard to distinguish one from another.
But something in this particular one had stuck with her. The body lying in the center of the sheet had been shot from different angles, and a zoom lens had effectively captured close-ups of different sections of the scene.
She spotted it in the third photo—a pair of glasses lying just beneath the couch. They rested on the top of the lens frame with the temple wings spread out—just as if someone had set them down for a minute. Yesterday, Duncan had set his on the desk in the same way when she’d ordered him to take them off. And she could see it—just the shadow of a logo on the side. It was the same one she’d seen on the glasses Lightman had used in the diner and on the ones he’d worn during the trial.
In her mind, she tried to picture it the way Duncan would. Lightman working, totally focused on setting up his victim and getting the scene perfect. He slips off his glasses and sets them down and in adjusting the sheet they somehow slip beneath the edge of the couch. Or perhaps he slides them away to allow for a perfect fall of rose petals.
And then, in his focus on the crime, he forgets and leaves them behind.
Those glasses had to be in an evidence bag somewhere.