Pepper, the Highlander & the Dead Guy

Thinking of him dressed like a Viking got my juices flowing and they hadn’t flowed in a while.

“As long as you don’t pillage and plunder,” I teased.

“No plunder without permission, though you might find me stealing a kiss, leannan. See you at eight.”

The phone went dead, and I stared at it. No plunder without permission. Did he realize that plunder meant booty—like in sex? Was he saying if you want sex, I’m game?

Leannan.

Before the name he called me rushed out of my head, I hurried to search the Internet for it, in what I assumed was Scottish Gaelic. I searched for pronunciation as well as meaning since I wasn’t sure of the spelling.

Sweetheart. He had called me sweetheart.

A tingle rippled through me from head to toe.

The theme song to the movie The Titanic, My Heart Will Go On, erupted from my phone. It was Amy, the die-hard romantic. She picked the song, not me.

“So did you hear from him yet?”

“Do you have some kind of romance radar?” I asked with a laugh. “I just got off the phone with him. He’s coming over at eight with a bottle of wine so we can talk more about the dead guy.”

“So romantic.” Amy chuckled. “But at least he wants to see you again.”

“Yeah, and maybe keep up on what I’m learning about the murder to protect himself.”

“No way. Ian Macgregor is no murderer.”

“He hopes to marry someday and have kids,” I blurted out.

“Oh my God, he told you that he wanted kids?”

“It sort of came up in a roundabout way and I told him I wanted four.”

“Shut up, you didn’t. You never told anyone but me that.”

“I know, I think I’m losing it,” I confessed.

“Or you’re falling in love,” Amy said with a sigh.

“I’ve just met him. Be reasonable,” I argued.

“Love at first sight,” Amy said with another sigh.

“You’re a hopeless romantic,” I accused and not in a nice way.

She laughed. “It doesn’t matter what’s between Ian and you right now. Have a good time with him and enjoy. Whatever will be will be.”

“Do not start singing that Que Sera, Sera song.” When the first note left her mouth, I hung up. I blame my mom for Amy breaking out into old songs, though Amy does have a decent voice. My mom is an old movie buff and when Amy slept over, which had been more often than not, Mom would have us watching old movies. Amy grew to love them as much as I did, and I have tons of good memories of my friend to go with them.

I forced my attention on my computer and was pulling up the folder for my new book when the phone rang again, another standard ring. I grabbed it, thinking it was Ian. I was definitely going to have to give him a special ring tone.

My stomach flip-flopped again when I said hello, though it calmed at the sound of Madge Newell’s pleasant voice.

“Pepper, dear, it’s Madge at the Birds’ View Nest,” she said as if I didn’t know her when she’d been around forever. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

I rolled my eyes. I needed to write so how did I get out of helping her.

Be neighborly, dear, my mom’s voice reminded me, making me feel guilty for even thinking of not helping her.

“What can I do for you, Madge?” I asked, thinking my good deed for the day was about to get done.

“I tried to get in touch with your father, but Claire—that new female police officer—refused to put me through to him when I told her it was about a lost key. She said she’d make a note of it and let him know I’d lost my keys. She wasn’t listening at all to me. I didn’t lose my keys, I found a key, an old key. It was wrapped in with the sheets I took off Mr. Stevenson’s bed the day before he went missing. Your father wouldn’t have found it when they searched his room. And I delayed doing the wash from that day since he had been my only occupant and you know how wasteful it is for the environment to do a light load of wash, so I waited until I had a full load. Could you come pick the key up and take it to your father for me, then I don’t have to worry about getting it to him?”

“I’ll be right there, Madge,” I said and bolted out of the chair.

10

Madge had been right. It was an old key, a skeleton key to be exact. It wasn’t the big clunky skeleton key but rather a slim one maybe four inches in length, and I was burning with curiosity. Whatever did it open?

I placed it on a sheet of white paper on the passenger seat and snapped several pictures with my phone. I held it up, not worrying about fingerprints since Madge and her husband Ben’s prints were probably already all over it and snapped a few more pics. I stared at it as I placed it on the white sheet of paper once again.