Page 25 of Death at a Scottish Halloween

She smiled. “I keep clothes in my backpack, I’m good.”

The doorbell rang. “That must be our bodyguard,” I said. “I bet it’s Henry.”

She smiled shyly. “I’ll get it.”

I shut and locked the autopsy room. Then I checked the back door. We’d lost a body before. It had been stolen while I slept. I would never allow that to happen again. We had a state-of-the-art security system now, and the only people who could get into the autopsy suite were myself, Abigail, and Ewan. A lot had changed since I arrived a little over a year ago.

“Hey, Henry, thanks for helping out tonight,” I said when they walked into the kitchen.

“No problem. I’m glad to be here.” He and Abigail had been dating for a year, but they were still incredibly shy with one another.

“I’m going to make him something to eat and a coffee, if that’s OK?” she asked.

“It’s been a busy night,” he said. “No time to eat since this morning.”

“Whatever you need. Our place is your place. I tried to tell Ewan that we’d be fine.”

He shrugged. “With everything that’s going on, it’s best to be safe.”

“You two make yourselves at home. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

I climbed the stairs slowly. By the time I’d changed into my PJs I was half asleep.

The vampire mask flashed through my brain.

Something told me our second Mr. Duncan had been hiding his face.

But why?

Chapter Seven

Iwas up earlier than usual the next morning. Knowing I had an autopsy to do, meant no hanging out in bed as usual. Not that I’d slept much. The case of the two Duncans spun around in my dreams like an F5 tornado. I was surprised there wasn’t a witch with ruby slippers when I woke up. Two men with the same name. This was not a coincidence.

Two families, who obviously cared and adored their loved ones, had suffered. It made me even more determined to find out what happened to them. Two children would be growing up without their father. It wasn’t fair, and no one understood that better than I did.

I’d adored my dad, but he’d died when I was quite young. My poor mom couldn’t handle it. We were estranged for years, and I spent much of that time with my grandmother, until she also died. Then I was raised by a lovely couple of professionals, who helped guide me to my chosen profession.

My husband had also died suddenly, leaving me a widow. He was the reason I had trust issues. Though I’d come a long way over the past few years.

One thing I’d learned as the head of the ER was that death was a part of our existence. Still, it didn’t make it any easier to explain that loss to the people who had loved the deceased. The very least I could do now was find clues to help us find out what had happened to the victims.

What if the same person had killed them?

That was the one thing that I couldn’t get out of my mind. Even though the deaths were quite different, and from my training I understood that killers didn’t shake things up. But these could have been murders of opportunity. That knife from our display had been there when we went to dinner. Either someone snuck into the haunted house before things started, or they picked it up when we hadn’t been looking during the tours.

They couldn’t have known it was there until they saw it.

And there would have only been a few minutes between the time his friend and sister had left and when we found him. Maybe a half hour.

It could have been one of them. But they’d been so surprised and hurt. I didn’t think anyone was that good of an actor.

Like Ewan always said, supposing didn’t get a good detective anywhere. We needed evidence.

Do the job. To do that, I had to be objective and look for anything that could be a clue.

The scent of coffee pulled me from my thoughts. Abigail was up.

I headed downstairs.