Page 9 of Kirkyards & Kindness
I continue, “I don’t trust you to pay me if I don’t find him, despite the fact that getting that answer will take as much work as if I did find him. So I want answers of my own. About me. My life before. Twenty minutes now. Twenty minutes each day that I report back with my progress. And then everything once I find Bobby—dead or alive.”
“How does it help me if he’s dead?” she says. “I’ll have given you valuable information and gotten nothing in return.”
“Detectives get paid for their work, not their results.”
“You’ll get it all when you bring me the dog. Any dog.”
“And I said I’m not doing that. If you want my help finding the real Bobby, this is the deal.”
She crosses her arms. “If you want my help remembering who you are, that is the deal.”
I shrug. “All right. You have overestimated my curiosity.” I turn to Gray. “Do you require information about my past, sir?”
“I do not.”
“Then have a good day, Davina, and good luck finding?—”
“Scraps,” she spits. “I will give you scraps before you find him.”
“All right. You’ll start by telling me who is a danger to me, and then, when I find what happened to him, you can tell me what I’ve forgotten about my past.”
She snorts. “The reverse. I will keep the valuable information for last.”
I argue, and I do a fine job of it, considering this is actually what I want. A laundry list of enemies doesn’t interest me as much as Catriona’s past, but I knew Davina would believe the opposite.
“Fine,” I say finally.
She tries to hide a smirk, obviously pleased with her negotiating tactics. “We are agreed. Now, where do you wish to start?”
Chapter Four
I’d like to start with tea. And by taking this poor pup home. The dog is in desperate need of a bath and food. I’m just in desperate need of food.
Isla and Gray were gone at lunchtime, and Mrs. Wallace certainly isn’t cooking just for the staff. Having the bosses away meant she got a break, and lunch was whatever the parlormaid—Alice—found in the icebox. I’d expected a proper tea later, so I just grabbed some bread and cheese and spent my lunch hour proofreading a paper Gray is working on.
Taking a break to go back to the town house wouldn’t make sense. So Gray and I launch straight into the investigation, starting with interviewing Davina. If I can hear her over my grumbling stomach.
“I would suggest we do that over a pint,” Gray says. “I believe Catriona could use a meat pie.”
Okay, maybe my stomach is growling loud enough for us both to hear. Or more likely he just knows me well enough to realize that, without the formal break of a meal, I’d done exactly what he would—grabbed a bite for lunch and kept working.
“I believe Davina doesn’t drink, sir,” I say. “Though I would not mind a bite to eat.”
Her shrewd look grants me a point for remembering that from our last encounter. I was a cop—it’s my job to remember details.
“There is a pub over there,” Davina says. “The pies are decent, and they know me well enough to let me have a tea.”
We head up the hill, with the dog following at our heels. The pub is on the next street, and it’s not the sort of place I’d enter after dark, which is what I’d expect from Davina. The Old Town may be considered the wrong side of the tracks, but it has some decent neighborhoods. This isn’t one of them, and as we approach, I catch Davina sneaking smirks at Gray, waiting for him to balk. He strides up as if it’s the finest New Town establishment.
A man immediately appears in the doorway, arms crossed as he looks Gray up and down. He pauses at Gray’s face, and that sets him back as his gaze wavers between that brown skin, the silk top hat, and the fine-cut summer jacket. While Victorian Edinburgh is more diverse than I might have imagined, most of the non-white skin tones belong to either the working class or the service class. Seeing brown skin on an obvious “gentleman” gives this man pause, but it’s only rare, not unheard of, and the bouncer quickly finds his composure, chin rising.
“You’re in the wrong place, sir,” he says.
“They’re with me, John,” Davina says.
His gaze goes to her, and then he sees me, and that frown deepens.
“This lovely couple have come up from Glasgow to see the sights,” Davina says smoothly. “I promised them a pint in a proper pub.”
