I opened up a new research inquiry and started to search for Heather Buchanan. She was a security guard for Castle Force, as she had said, and she did have an apartment in the center of town – but she rented it rather than Colin having bought it for her. I looked at the street view of the area. Her apartment was on top of a bowling alley, and I thought that might explain the low rent. The apartment itself, however, looked like it was in a safe area. It was good that her rent was so low. Her checking and savings accounts were almost depleted and she owned an old car that apparently needed a lot of work done on it.
As far as social connections, she had been engaged, but the man broke up with her and left her with a pregnancy which she later lost. I suspected that was the primary source of her anger at Colin. I remember talking to her the day before. Her story was preposterous when you knew Colin. However, I thought that Heather actually believed that Colin was her dad. There was a look of hurt in her eyes that we weren't including her in the family functions, that she hadn't been accepted, and there was an element of desperation for Colin to have left her something significant. Judging by the look in her eyes, she wanted the inheritance as a recognition that he was her father rather than for the monetary value.
I also thought that she was mixing in her mind the 'abandonment' of her father with the 'abandonment' of her boyfriend. She was angry, and she was mixing her sources of anger. She was not separating out the anger at her boyfriend but was instead carrying it over to her anger at Colin.
I did additional research and looked into her criminal past. She had been arrested for the harassment of another man, a man that she had been claiming to be her father. However, her mother was still alive and after the paternity test was done, her mother admitted that he wasn't Heather's father. I guessed that, at the time, she said Colin Stewart was and unfortunately, this time her mother was dead and couldn't refute her claims.
Because of her mother, Heather believed that Colin was her father, but there was a little bit of uncertainty about it. This was the second time that she had accused a man of being her father. She didn't want to do the paternity testing because she didn't want to admit that she was wrong, didn't want to admit that the person that she had hated so vehemently all her life was not the person that she thought he was, didn't want to admit that her mother had lied to her. So, she added Colin's failure to trust her word to the reasons that she hated him.
And she did hate Colin, but it was a hate fueled by hurt. You could see it in her eyes, and could see the anger she had towards me and the anger she had towards Lindsay and Angus. She hated Lindsay and Angus and me because we had been accepted. We were not on the outside looking in like Heather had been all her life, and that made her angry. I thought that fury would blow up and spill over when she found out that Colin was not her father. I also thought that we could do the paternity test, and she would still insist that Colin was her father and the paternity test was wrong. She was too angry, and she needed a person to hate, a focus for all that anger.
So, she hated her father for abandoning her and her mother, she saw her own boyfriend as the same as her biological father and that further fanned her hatred. She wanted her father to acknowledge her and, when he didn't acknowledge her in life, she wanted him to acknowledge her in death – which meant that she would be pushing to have a significant inheritance. And that was something that she wasn't going to get. While I hoped that the will reading would chase her away, I knew it wouldn't be that easy. It wasn't the money that she wanted. It was the acknowledgement.
I also knew that she was going to blow up when she found the ten-pound inheritance. She would think that Colin was making fun of her and, in her anger, she would not be able to cope with that. I knew that, whatever happened, she would make sure the next few days would be tough to go through.
I sat back and thought about that, then looked again at the information I had pulled up. I looked into all Colin Stewarts currently in Inverness, and there were only a couple. None really seemed right for her biological father. I pulled up her mother and got an address for forty-three years before. She had lived in Inverness. The two Colin Stewarts that currently lived in Inverness had not done so forty-three years before.
I then did a search for Colin Stewarts that lived in Inverness forty-three years ago – and found out that our Colin had been in London at the time. He had still been working as a spymaster for MI6, and he worked in London for twenty-five years. During that time, he didn't go back to Inverness. Instead, he buried himself in work to help him cope with the death of his fiancée and baby.
I then switched to looking at the Colin Stewarts that had been in the area. There were five that had lived in Inverness the year that Heather had been conceived. One had been eight at the time, so I immediately struck him off the list. I also struck off the man who had been eighty-nine.
So that left three men. One was thirty-two at the time, one was twenty-two, and the third was forty, which meant that the men were currently seventy-five, sixty-five and eighty-three respectively. They were in the right age range.
I looked into the Colin Stewart who was currently seventy-five. He was married, had two children, and his wife had died five years ago from breast cancer. At the time that Heather was conceived, he was married and expecting his first baby. He did not come from money, nor did he have much currently.
The sixty-five year old Colin Stewart was currently married, his wife was still living, and he had four children. At the time that Heather was conceived, he had been going to university to become a lawyer. I looked at his current tax forms, as well as his tax forms from forty-three years ago. While he currently was well-off, he hadn't been at the time. At the time, he had been living hand-to-mouth.
The eighty-three year old Colin did come from money. He had been married from the age of twenty-five in an arranged marriage, and judging by the number of sexual harassment suits that were brought against him, it would appear that he'd had a number of dalliances, either welcomed or not. I thought he was a strong contender as Heather's biological father. However, then I looked at a picture. That Colin had an Indian heritage with black hair and brown skin. Since Heather was pasty white, it moved him farther down the potential list.
I sat back and thought about that, then looked into Heather's mother, Daisy Buchanan. Over the years, she'd been arrested for solicitation twelve times. She was known as a drug user and an alcoholic. Being her child would be a rough way to grow up, and I suddenly had a greater appreciation for my own mother. Even Val was a better mother than that. She also might be permanently sloshed, but at least she cared about her kids, she didn't do drugs, and although she had thrown herself at many men, she wasn't supporting herself by hopping into bed. Besides, she hadn't had any takers.
Daisy's arrests had started a few years before she had conceived Heather. Chances were most likely that Heather had been a result of a trick rather than a result of a loving relationship between two people. I didn't want to tell her that.
I felt sort of sad for her. Her mother had failed at being a mother, and to make her daughter feel special she had fed her daughter fairy tales of 'her' rich father who had abandoned them. Instead, she had created a problem. Heather had heard that her father had left her mother because of her, and that she wasn't good enough to stick around for. That insecurity resulted in her feeling inferior, and what came out of that was a need for someone to recognize that she was a valuable person. She wanted that person to be her father.
I sighed and wrote it into a formal research report.
"What's wrong, babe?" said Ranger.
"I just feel bad for Heather."
"Don't make this personal, babe. That is not going to help your stress levels."
"I know, but from what I can tell her mother was a hooker addicted to drugs and booze. She didn't know who the father was but filled her daughter's head with fairy tales of the 'rich' man who was her father. Daisy was a shitty mother and Heather is angry about that. Daisy told her that her father abandoned her, and Heather is angry about that. Heather believes that Colin is her father and is just trying to ignore his responsibilities, and Heather is angry about that. She's taking it as Colin saying she isn't good enough, and Heather is angry about that. Heather's boyfriend abandoned her, pregnant, and Heather is angry about that. All together, it is turning into a perfect storm. If Colin had just ignored her in the will, she would be angry. However, by leaving her ten pounds she is going to be hurt and furious. She's going to think that he was making fun of her. I know he did it to force her to take the paternity test. He was an honorable man, and he would not like the fact that she was going around telling people that he had shirked his responsibilities. However, I doubt she is going to believe the paternity test results. Her anger is too great, and she is unable to see that there may be another story that fits the facts better."
"Is there any chance that he fathered her?"
"No. For one, I don't have any evidence that her mother had left Inverness the year that Heather was conceived. Likewise, Colin lived in London for twenty-five years and only came home once, for his father's funeral. Colin was fifty at the time, and Heather was twenty. He had not come home earlier. He grieved Cami heavily, and it took him thirty years before he could come back to Inverness without shattering. It would be impossible for him to be the father, since they literally weren't in the same town for the year that Heather was conceived."
Ranger sighed. "Did you write it up, babe?"
"I did. I'd like to print off a copy each for Lindsay and Angus. I was thinking that I would also print one off for Heather."
"Okay, but hang back on giving it to her. By the sounds of it, she is a powder keg ready to explode, and I don't want you caught in the blast."
I smiled. "Me neither."
