“Under the table.”
“Stay here.”
“No problem.”
He walked over to see what the fuss was all about while I stood in the back sniveling like a scaredy-cat.
Derek stared at the foot, then knelt down and stared at the body for a good minute. Then he stood, pulled his cell phone out and made a quick call as he walked back to me.
“Who is it?” I asked. “Whose body is it?”
“You didn’t see?” he asked.
I shook my head vigorously as he pulled me by the hand out of the room and shut the conference room door.
Out in the hall, he held my shoulders as he said, “It’s Perry McDougall.”
I gaped at him. “No way.” I moved away to pace up and down the empty hall, muttering and swearing to myself.
“You do have a proclivity for finding dead bodies,” Derek said. “It’s almost as though somebody knew you’d be here.”
“Damn it,” I said for the tenth time. Was I being set up again?
“My sentiments exactly,” Derek said. “Guess we know where Perry McDougall disappeared to.”
“Yes.” I should’ve felt bad for Perry, but I confess I felt worse for myself. Perry had been the best suspect we had for Kyle’s murder. Now what? Or more precisely, who?
“And why me?” I asked myself for the hundredth time.
Within five minutes Angus was running down the hall toward us like a wild-eyed Highlander, followed by a small phalanx of constables.
Seconds later, inside the conference room, Angus stared down at the body. He pursed his lips, then glanced across at me and Derek and said, “Curiouser and curiouser.”
Without his warm Scottish accent, he never would’ve gotten away with using that silly Alice in Wonderland phrase. He looked around for his second in command and in a much more grim manner said, “Terrence, clear the outer hall area. We’ve got ourselves another crime scene.”
As Terrence took off, Angus muttered, “We’re going to bloody run out of tape.”
The crime scene people made quick work of closing off the doorway to interested passersby and dusting every last surface in the room. Then several men picked up the heavy wood table and moved it to the side of the room.
Perry’s body lay uncovered on the platform, ignored by the technicians who worked the scene, taking photographs and combing the carpet for possible clues.
I stared at Perry’s exposed neck and saw for the first time the knotting awl sticking out of it.
“Oh, shit.” Fumbling for the nearest chair, I slid down and sat with my elbows resting on my thighs, breathing deeply, trying not to look at poor dead Perry. Or the bloody knotting awl.
I knew it was a knotting awl because I used one all the time to pierce holes in paper before sewing them together to make books.
By now I should’ve been used to finding dead bodies, but I wasn’t. And it wasn’t even Perry’s body that freaked me out as much as it was the blood that was pooling beneath his neck and spreading out into a tiny lake-or maybe it was a loch-around his head.
The sight of blood has always been an issue for me. I don’t mind needles. Even spiders don’t freak me out as much as blood. I’m kind of a wimp that way. And hey, that was how Derek and I met, which should’ve made it all touchingly romantic. But not even the fond memory of me fainting and waking up in Derek’s arms as he smacked me back to consciousness could help relieve the wooziness I was feeling.
“What have we here?” MacLeod said, and knelt down next to Perry to study the apparent murder weapon stuck in his neck.
I had a really bad feeling about that knotting awl.
Clearly, so did he. Looking up, he said, “Miss Wainwright, can I ask you to come here?”
I grimaced. “No, thank you.”
Derek sat down next to me. “I’ll help you.”
I looked at him beseechingly. “Please don’t make me go over there. Remember that little issue I have with blood?”
Derek looked across the room at Angus. “She faints at the first sign of blood. You won’t want to deal with that.”
“Thanks a lot,” I muttered.
“I’d like her to identify this weapon.”
I frowned at Derek. “It’s a knotting awl.”
“She says it’s a knotting awl.”
“Can she describe it for me?” Angus asked.
“I can hear you,” I snapped.
“Steady, love,” Derek murmured close to my ear.
“Sorry, Angus,” I said quickly. I was starting to shake but took some deep breaths and managed to stay upright.
“It’s cherrywood,” I began. “Very hard. Pear-shaped, with lines carved in waves. It’s used to pierce holes in the folds of the pages of a book before they’re sewn to linen tapes. It fits nicely in my hand. I’ve had it for years.” My throat was closing up, so I stopped talking.