Allegra Fairweather_ Paranormal Investigator - Janni Nell [26]
“My color is natural,” I said.
“Really?” She looked as though she wanted to inspect my roots to make sure. Then she turned to Casper. “How about it? Information for a haircut.”
Casper seemed amused. He glanced at me. “What do you think? Should I get a short back and sides?”
“Nooo.”
Casper’s golden locks were one of his best features.
“I won’t take much off,” promised Anne.
She wasn’t the first hairdresser to make that promise. Usually right before they lopped six inches off your hair. Luckily I no longer had to worry about that. My hair was less than two inches long. Casper, on the other hand, had a lot to lose.
Unfortunately he didn’t see it that way. “I’m happy to get a haircut in exchange for information,” he said.
Really? This seemed suspiciously like helping me. Was he purposely breaking the rules? Surely not.
Anne, grinning with undisguised delight, took us out back to a room she had set up as a little salon. Casper sat in the chair and Anne picked up her scissors.
“Don’t take too much off,” I said anxiously.
She assured me she wouldn’t. As she snipped, she began to talk. I pulled out my notebook.
“Angus McEwen came to the village five years ago. He was recently divorced and couldn’t afford to stay in the city so he bought a wee place here.”
“Why did he choose this village?” I asked, trying not to look at Casper’s golden locks tumbling onto the floor.
“There was plenty of work here,” said Anne. “Sir Alastair was renovating—or do I mean restoring?—Maitland House. Anyway, he needed a carpenter and McEwen was one of the best. Sir Alastair dinnae even mind that McEwen was always late for work.”
“What did McEwen think of Sir Alastair?”
“He never told me in so many words but I dinnae think he liked him.”
“Why not?”
Anne stopped cutting. “I dinnae know.”
“Was it because of Lady Justina?”
“Och no, McEwen disliked him right from the beginning. Long before he fell in—” She broke off abruptly and started cutting again.
“I know he was in love with Lady Justina,” I said gently. “But I believe she didn’t share his feelings.”
“Who knows what Lady Justina feels? She’s a bit of a mystery. McEwen was one of the few people in the village who’d seen her.”
I stared at Anne in surprise. “You haven’t seen her?”
“Dinnae sound so surprised. I’ll bet you haven’t seen her, either.”
This wasn’t the moment to tell her I had. I changed tack. Thinking back to the night McEwen had died, I asked Anne, “Did he often go for walks along the shore of the loch in the middle of the night?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t really know.” She shrugged. “He was probably so pissed he dinnae know where he was. He was like that most nights – stayed at Mac’s until closing time then stumbled home. Sometimes he went in the wrong direction.”
“He didn’t go in the wrong direction on the night he died,” I said. “Douglas and I made sure he got home.”
“Then you know more about it than I do.”
“But would he leave his house and go back out?”
“Who knows? Men do funny things when they’re pissed.” Her voice was thick with disgust.
“On the night we took McEwen home, Malcolm Melville and your husband were at his house. If he went out again they were probably with him.”
“Not necessarily. Stuart was home by two o’clock. I heard him come in. Making such a racket I could’ve strangled him.”
I went over the times in my mind. We had dropped McEwen off at his house around eleven. He had gone inside with Stuart and Malcolm. Had the three of them stayed there drinking until Stuart headed home? Had McEwen then decided to take a walk along the shore of the loch alone? Somehow I didn’t think so. I had a feeling that The Three M’s had gone to the loch together. All for one and one for all. I wrote that in my notebook and underlined it.
I was so busy writing I hadn’t noticed what Anne was doing to Casper’s hair. Now I saw that she had cut it rather shorter than she had promised. It was almost