Page 112 of A Scottish Country Escape

We moved in step together and arrived at the red front door of Linda Carlucci.

Right now, all I could think of was getting this right.

I knocked, hearing yaps and barks from the hallway. Elsa and I swapped a hesitant glance.

The door eased open a sliver. Linda Carlucci’s disapproving face appeared. ‘Can I help you?’ Her expression hardened. ‘Oh, it’s you again.’

‘Please, Mrs Carlucci,’ I began. ‘We really do need to speak to you.’

Elsa took a step forward. ‘I work for Dexter Grayling as his housekeeper. I see every day what a terrible effect this is having on him.’

‘And I can attest to that,’ I broke in, my desperation rising.

Linda Carlucci’s leafy-green eyes flashed like an exploding firework. ‘Driving the way he did is dangerous. He could have killed someone. Or himself.’

I noted her swallowing back a look of pain and bit my lip. Her sentiments rang true with me too. ‘That’s what we want to talk to you about.’

She squinted against the morning light. ‘I don’t understand.’

My heart pumped faster. It was now or never. ‘It’s about Cameron Lomax.’

Linda Carlucci let out an audible gasp. One hand fluttered to her chest and rested there.

‘We know,’ confessed Elsa gently after a beat. ‘We know about you losing Ross that night during that race.’

Linda swallowed and clung to the door, her knuckles growing white.

Sympathy for her swam through me. ‘We’ve been to see Cameron Lomax. We spoke to him.’

Linda’s haunted expression shot past us and out to the thicket of trees that sheltered her cottage.

We waited while what we had just told her sank in.

Her shoulders dropped under her black scoop-neck top. ‘You saw him? You spoke to him?’

‘Yes.’

Her chest rose and fell. She pulled her attention back to us. She hesitated, before opening her front door wider. ‘You had better come in.’

Chapter Seventy

I bent down and patted Brando.

Linda’s expression was strained, preoccupied even, as she showed us the way down her dimly lit hall and into her sitting room of dark swirly carpet and assorted paintings. It was an array of romantic opulence, boasting everything from scenes of Venetian bridges to the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence.

Brando sank down by Linda’s feet while she perched on the edge of an amber-and-gold armchair. The room carried an air of the Italian Renaissance about it. I didn’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t this.

As the exterior of the old farmhouse cottage was more like something from a Highland croft, it was like stepping from one century into another; from one culture to another.

Her voice was filled with incredulity when she finally did speak. Her eyes glittered. ‘How did you track him down?’

‘It was rather accidental,’ confessed Elsa. I nodded, but decided not to elaborate for now. I wanted Linda Carlucci to open up to us, to tell us her side of things, and why she had inflicted the curse on Dexter. There would hopefully be enough time to explain to her about our discoveries and us talking to Cameron Lomax. Right now, all that mattered was Linda being open and honest.

Linda Carlucci was rubbing the knees of her slim grey trousers so much, I thought she might burn a hole in them. ‘You know he killed Ross? My Ross?’

My heart stilled for her. ‘We are so sorry, Mrs Carlucci. It must have been awful.’

Elsa was sympathetic. ‘You and Ross were engaged to be married, is that right?’