Murder in Edinburgh

Part of a chapter from the Third Culture Kid Mystery series. Available at https://encirclepub.com/ in paperback or as an e-book. There's a serial killer who goes from city to city, country to country, making it almost impossible to catch. Chantal, the wife of one of her victims calls in her friend from school days. Annie has stumbled across other mysteries in the past and Chantal is hoping she'll find out what the police can't about her husband's hit and run.

"He was murdered. It wasn't an accident." Chantal Bosset MacAndrew poured a cup of coffee for Annie Young-Perret, her former Swiss neighbor and then gave herself a second cup. Chantal had never developed the tea-for-every-important discussion typical of Edinburgh dwellers, although she'd lived in Scotland for 15 years. Her French accent had melted into an almost Scottish brogue making both English and French hard for Annie to understand.

Annie's slowness in responding wasn't in understanding the words but following the story behind the words. Her phone call two days ago from Chantal asking her to please, please, please come to Edinburgh to help combined with the "I will explain everything when you get here," made Annie fly out the next day.

The women had been neighbors in Corsier Port, a Geneva, Switzerland suburb, throughout their years at the lycee, but they were never close friends. They had some overlapping courses and they had crammed for exams together. Chantal has a more business, practical bent, where Annie could never take enough history courses to satisfy her curiosity about the past.

Now Chantal was the curator of a still-to-be opened, small Edinburgh museum by the Early Scottish Poets Memorial Foundation dedicated to the preservation of national poetry before the 1600s. She was also a new widow.

One of the reasons they hadn't been better friends in Switzerland was that Annie considered Chantal too predicable. Later she had discovered how wrong she was when Chantal had gone camping and had what the French call a coupe de foudre, love at first sight when she met Duncan MacAndrew. She'd finished her studies at Edinburgh University. Duncan was at nearby Napier University where he studied human resource administration.

...

"A hit and run is murder," Annie tried to concentrate on what her friend was saying.

"The car that hit him was stolen from a car rental agency."

"Kids joy riding? Drunk? Drugged?"

Chantal put down her cup and stared into Annie's eyes. "The car was wiped clean. Spotless. Nothing."

"Smart kids joy riding?" Annie didn't want to appear glib. She was aware that Chantal had lost her ame soeur, her soul mate. Despite the disparities between Roger's world view and her own, she couldn't imagine life without him. She'd gotten a taste of what that might be when he had his almost fatal heart attack that forced his early retirement.

"And he'd nearly been hit before."

Annie looked confused.

"Three times before he was killed, a car tried to run him over. I was with him once about a month ago. We were on a sidewalk and if there hadn't been a driveway that we ducked into, I wouldn't be here talking to you now."