Carla Neggers (17 page)

“I’m sorry.” She blanched, picked up another glass. “I don’t know why I said that. What would you like to drink?”

“Just water.”

“We’re all upset. This field station...this woman, Lindsey...” Kitty shook her head as she set down her cloth and filled the glass with water. “Philip should spend time with friends his own age.”

“He needs to tell the gardai everything, Kitty.”

She bristled, stood back. “The gardai? You’re one yourself. And he has nothing to hide. He’s told them what he knows. Which is nothing.” She set the water glass down hard in front of Sean. “Lemon, lime?”

“This is fine, thanks.”

“Do you have to be so blasted calm? I wish Philip didn’t have to be a part of this tragedy.”

Her son emerged from the back room, looking shaken as he stood next to his mother. “I’ll still dive,” he said. “No matter what.”

Kitty moaned and spun into the back room herself, muttering about having work to do.

Sean wished now he hadn’t come, but he drank some of his water and eyed Philip. “Diving’s an expensive hobby. You’ll be wanting to think about what’s next for you.”

“I’m not worried,” he said, stubborn. “You shouldn’t be, either.”

“It’s easy for trouble to find someone looking for it.”

Philip snatched up Kitty’s abandoned polishing cloth. “Maybe you’re the one looking for trouble.”

“You’re bored in Declan’s Cross,” Sean said.

“So are you.”

Getting far with this, he was, Sean thought as he set his glass on the bar. “Are you going to your father’s wedding?”

Philip slapped the cloth into the sink, clearly caught off guard by the question. “I don’t know when it is.”

“How do you like the woman he’s marrying?”

“She’s all right. I’m glad he’s happy. I wish my mother—” He stopped. “Never mind. I’ve work to do, too.”

“Philip, you were up at my cottage on Monday. You helped Paddy clean up, get it ready for Lindsey and her friend from Maine. Did you see her?”

“I answered all the questions the gardai asked—”

“I’m gardai. I’m asking you a question.”

He reddened. “I told you I saw her at the field station.”

“Now I’m asking about the cottage.”

“Why?”

“Because Julianne Maroney found Lindsey down the lane from there and because you just got into a fight for no reason—”

“A woman dying’s no reason?”

“It’s a reason for grief and prayer, perhaps an extra pint. Not for a fight.”

Philip fingered the cloth in the sink, staring at it as if it were the most important thing in the world. “I wasn’t at the cottage when I saw her. I was walking down from your place—from the barn. Lindsey was getting into her car. She left. I didn’t talk to her.”

“Which direction did she go, Philip?”

He looked as if he wanted to vomit. “Out the lane. Toward the old cemetery. I didn’t think a thing of it. Her car was pointed in that direction. I assumed she’d turn around. Even if she didn’t know the lane dead-ends, I figured she’d find out. Sean—”

“What time was this?” he asked, deliberately interrupting.

“After I saw her at the garage—three o’clock, maybe. I got to work cleaning the cottage. I don’t remember her driving back down the lane, but I didn’t think about it.”

“Did she seem to be in a hurry, preoccupied?”

Philip shook his head. “I couldn’t say.”

Sean suddenly had no interest in his water but resisted ordering a pint or a whiskey. “You need to tell the gardai who interviewed you. You know how to reach them?”

He nodded, turning on the water in the sink and soaking the cloth. “I didn’t lie to them. I just didn’t think of seeing Lindsey up at the cottage.”

“If you remember anything else, you let the gardai know immediately. Do you understand?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I understand.”

“And stay away from alcohol. It’ll do you no good at a time like this.”

Philip turned off the tap. The color and adrenaline from his altercation at the pub had leaked out of him. He looked young, ready to cry. He mumbled a good-night and retreated to the back room.

Kitty came out and scowled at Sean. “You’re taking liberties, Sean Murphy. If you’re on the job—”

“I’m always on the job, Kitty.”

She picked up a fresh white cloth. “I need to hire a bar manager before we get busy in the spring,” she said, more to herself than to him. She looked up, her eyes wide, catching just enough of the dim light to bring out the flecks of pure white. “I didn’t want anything to happen to Lindsey, but I hoped she’d get bored with Declan’s Cross and move on.”

“That’s understandable,” Sean said.

Kitty started cleaning the small sink with her new cloth, scrubbing as if whatever dirt or bit of grime she was after would never come out. “Philip isn’t happy here,” she blurted.

Sean didn’t disagree. “Does he want to go back to Dublin?”

“I don’t know that he’d be happy there, either. His dad would have him live with him. He and his fiancée have been together for years. It’s good they’re getting married.” Kitty took in a deep breath, let go of her cloth and stood straight, her cheeks flushed. “Life is full of change. Philip will get used to it. We all do.”

“He’ll want to live on his own soon.”

“When he’s ready. He’s not yet. He’s so restless. We have family in the States who’d have him. He could work there awhile, then come home. But he needs more education—and he can’t leave his skin behind, can he? That’s the problem. He’s not happy in his own skin.” She rubbed her hands together, her fingers slender, red from her scrubbing. She raised her eyes. “You know what that’s like, don’t you, Sean?”

He wasn’t going there. Not tonight, and not with Kitty O’Byrne Doyle. He stood and grinned at her. “‘I have spread my dreams under your feet,’” he said, quoting William Butler Yeats. “‘Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’”

Kitty gave him another scowl. “Poetry. Just what I need.”

But there was color high in her cheeks and fire in her eyes as Sean left, going out to the terrace. He took the walkway to the back gate, as glad for cool weather as he’d ever been. Emotions were running high, including his own. A young woman’s life cut short. He didn’t like that Lindsey had planned to stay at his cottage—that she’d been to Maine to see Fin Bracken and had brought Julianne Maroney and ultimately two FBI agents, one of them a Sharpe, to Declan’s Cross.

Quoting Yeats to his ex-lover. Flippant or not, what the devil had he been thinking?

He glanced back at the hotel, lit up against the dark sky. It was Kitty O’Byrne’s fondest dream come true.

He was happy for her.

He walked down to the pub but didn’t go in. Through the front window he could see that Brent Corwin had returned and was at the bar with an older man. Lindsey’s father, at a guess. The two men seemed quiet, emotions banked as they nursed glasses of whiskey.

At least David Hargreaves wasn’t mourning his daughter alone.

* * *

When he reached the darkened bookshop, Sean called Ronan Carrick, who was none too thrilled to hear from him. “Blast it, Sean, what’s going on there?”

“You know as much as I do.”

“I doubt that. Eamon’s on his way back to Dublin—”

“I saw him earlier,” Sean said.

“Was he a fool, Sean, getting involved with this marine science nonsense?” Ronan didn’t seem to expect an answer and continued. “I’ve made some calls. In layman’s terms, Lindsey Hargreaves died of a broken neck.”

Sean wasn’t surprised. “Any other injuries?”

“Scrapes and bruises consistent with a high-impact fall onto rocks. With death so quick, they’re poorly formed and will require further examination.” Ronan paused, then added, “That’s all preliminary and not given up to me willingly, I might add.”

Sean considered his friend’s words. “If she’d been knocked unconscious, she’d have died of exposure given the conditions overnight. Blood alcohol?”

“Normal.”

“Then she wasn’t drunk when she broke her neck.”

Ronan sighed heavily. “Was she alone out there, Sean?”

“It’s hard to say. With the rain and then the number of people tramping about...” He grimaced, picturing the scene that morning. “I don’t know that we’ll get a definitive answer.”

“I wasn’t asking for facts.”

“I know you weren’t, Ronan.” Sean could hear a baby crying in the small house behind the bookshop. One of the shop owners’ little ones, no doubt. He debated, then asked the question on his mind. “Are you satisfied Eamon isn’t involved?”

“Because it’s you, Sean, I won’t hang up. But I won’t answer you, either. How’re the sheep?”

“Busy. We’re letting the rams back up with the ewes. Have a good night, Ronan. Stay in touch.”

Sean didn’t wait for his friend to respond before disconnecting. He started up the hill toward the farm. He could hear the wind-whipped waves rolling onto the cliffs and twice started to call Finian Bracken in Maine before finally doing it.

Fin answered on the second ring. “Hello, Sean,” he said, his somber tone confirmation that he’d heard about Lindsey’s death.

Sean told him what he knew, chatted with him comfortably. He heard the concern in Fin’s voice for Julianne Maroney, even the FBI agents, a reminder that his friend was living a different life now. Fin was no longer the grieving, raging husband and father, or the uncertain seminarian. Seven years after the unimaginable loss of his wife and daughters, he was forging a new life for himself. Sean reminded himself that they didn’t know each other because Fin was a priest. They knew each other because Sean had investigated the deaths of Sally and little Mary and Kathleen Bracken.

“Are you all right, Sean?” Fin asked.

“Kitty is worried about her son.”

“Does she have good reason?”

“Yes.”

“Then let her worry and figure out what to do. You’ll be the last person she turns to for advice. You know that, don’t you, Sean?”

“Is this how you cheer up your parishioners, Fin? Blasted blinding honesty?”

“It’s not my task to cheer them up,” Fin said, then added with a touch of humor, “Just don’t tell them that.”

“After meeting your FBI friends, I don’t know that I want to visit you in Rock Point.” Sean paused on the dark, quiet lane, but he knew it wouldn’t help and he was still about to lose the call. “Don’t go asking or looking, but if you learn anything else about Lindsey Hargreaves and her visit to Maine, you’ll phone me?”

“At once.”

“Good. Right now it’s time for a
taoscán
of Bracken 15.”

When he reached the farmhouse, Sean poured the whiskey and sat with it in front of the cold fireplace, wondering if he could live out here for decades, alone. Four months was one thing, but forty years?

He’d get himself his own sheepdog, that was one thing for sure.

And no reading Yeats on dark November nights without a woman with him.

Without Kitty.

“Blast.”

He set aside his whiskey and decided to light a fire after all, just so he could stare at the flames and contemplate how Lindsey Hargreaves had broken her neck not a thirty-minute walk from where he sat.

16

COLIN FOUND KITTY
in the bar lounge, drinking whiskey at a small table in the far corner by a window. Above her was a painting of a bright Irish cottage on a lonely hill. On the opposite wall, the fire had died down, its few glowing embers the only light on that side of the room. Dim track lighting was on behind the bar, but he had the feeling Kitty wanted to sit in the dark, alone with her whiskey.

Without waiting to be invited, he pulled out a chair and sat across from her. As good as he was at reading people, he didn’t have a good fix on Kitty O’Byrne Doyle and her ties to her mansion-turned-hotel, or to Declan’s Cross itself.

“Well, Special Agent Donovan, it’s been a day, hasn’t it?”

“It has.”

She touched the distinctive gold Bracken Distillers label on her bottle of whiskey. She had two glasses, as if anticipating company—wanted or unwanted—and pushed one toward Colin. “Join me?”

It was more a request than an offer. He was keeping track of his alcohol consumption. He’d made his beer last at the pub. He nodded. “I will, thanks.”

She reached across the table with the bottle and poured whiskey into the glass. “Fin’s happy as a parish priest, do you think?”

“Seems to be. I didn’t know him before he came to Rock Point. Saint Patrick’s isn’t the easiest parish.”

“Are there any easy parishes? It’s away from Ireland. That’s good. It’s what he needs.” She added more whiskey to her glass, then set the bottle back on the table and picked up a small water pitcher. “You won’t tell him I’ve added water to his best whiskey. He’d be shuddering for sure if he could see me. You must know how he is about water in whiskey.”

“Water or ice,” Colin said.

“You being an FBI agent and all that, I’m sure you’re wondering how I know him—an Irish priest from Kerry who ended up in your little town in Maine.” Kitty dribbled a little water into her glass. “I was at a pub here in Declan’s Cross about two years ago. We were working on this place. Fin was having a pint with Sean Murphy. They’d known each other for several years.”

Colin tried some of the whiskey. “Since the deaths of Fin’s wife and daughters.”

She raised her gaze to him. “You’re a direct man, aren’t you—is it Agent Donovan, or Special Agent Donovan?”

“Colin will do. Yes, I tend to be direct.”

“You’ve been here a little more than a day, but you think you already know more about us than we do about ourselves, don’t you?”

“Not by a long shot.” Colin knew she was just trying to get under his skin, if only as a way to keep her own emotions at bay. He set his glass on the polished table. The hotel, he’d noticed, was immaculate. Kitty didn’t strike him as a woman who did anything by half measures. He said, “I gather your son made it home from the village all right.”

Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “I’m not discussing my son with you, Colin.” She leaned back in her chair. “So, let’s change the subject, shall we? When are you going to make an honest woman of Emma?”

Colin matched her bluntness. “You mean marry her?”

“Propose to her. You look the type who could use a little shove. You need to get on with it. Buy her a ring, get down on one knee and ask her to marry you.” Kitty drank more of her whiskey. “Do you need permission from her grandfather?”

“I doubt it.”

“Her parents, then?”

“I haven’t met them yet. They’re in London for the year.”

“Ah. So this is a whirlwind romance. What kicked it off?”

Colin traced the rim of his glass with the tip of his index finger. “We met during an investigation,” he said.

“That’s the short answer, isn’t it?”

He smiled. “The very short answer.”

“I hear her grandfather is semiretired these days. He’s still in Dublin?”

“He still has an apartment in Dublin. He’s in Killarney right now. He’s been on a sort of walkabout.”

“What is he—eighty, at least?”

“At least.”

“He came to talk to me about the theft here. It was six or seven months later. I was in Dublin. At home.” She recorked the Bracken 15. “He’d already talked to my uncle and decided he wanted to talk to me, too. It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years. He wouldn’t tell me what sparked his interest in the theft. I assumed there’d been another.”

“What was life like for you ten years ago?” Colin asked.

“Complicated.” Her smile had a touch of mischief in it. “Quite complicated, in fact.”

“Our garda sheep farmer one of the factors complicating your life then?”

“You’ll ask anything, won’t you? Did you learn that in the FBI, or did you come that way?”

She hadn’t answered the question, and Colin could see she wasn’t going to. He drank more of his whiskey. Emma had gone up to their room. She wouldn’t be asleep. He knew her, knew she’d wait for him. He hoped Julianne was getting some sleep, but he wasn’t about to check on her. If she wanted his help, she’d let him know—as she had that morning when she’d texted him from Shepherd Head.

He focused again on his hostess. “Did your uncle hope Wendell Sharpe would recover the missing art?”

“Of course.”

“What about you and your sister?”

“We still hope the stolen works are recovered. Why, do you think we wouldn’t?”

Colin shrugged. “Just asking. Your uncle never hired anyone to look into the theft?”

She sat back in her chair. “Why would he? The gardai were investigating. He wasn’t a suspect, if that’s what you’re wondering. I wasn’t, either. I’m not. Aoife isn’t. I’ve heard that people steal, or hire others to steal art for insurance purposes, but that wasn’t the case here.”

“But you and your sister and your uncle all got along,” Colin said.

Kitty shot him a suspicious look. “Yes, of course. What are you insinuating? His wife—our aunt—died far too young. Peggy, her name was. They never had children. They bought this place thinking they would turn it into their country home. He’d done well in business in Dublin. Money wasn’t a problem, at least not then. Illness was. Peggy had cancer.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She died when Aoife and I were small girls. Aoife barely remembers her.” Kitty looked away, her eyes shining with tears. “Dear Aunt Peggy. They had such plans for the renovations, but after her death, Uncle John didn’t have the heart to change a thing.”

“Did he live here full-time?”

“Eventually, yes. And he loved it. He had many friends.” Kitty sat up straight. “I’ve had more whiskey than I should, and I’ve said more than I should.”

“It wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last,” Colin said with a smile.

She flushed, but she returned his smile. “No doubt at all.” She eyed him again. “Your friend Julianne—she’s not here just because she’s a marine biologist, is she? She strikes me as a woman who’s fleeing a man.”

“My younger brother.”

Kitty looked at him as if this explained a lot. “He’s not an FBI agent, too, is he?”

“Lobsterman.” Colin helped himself to some of the water. “Your sister is quite an artist. Was she in Declan’s Cross the night of the theft?”

“Back to that, are we? No, she was not.”

“She wasn’t as well-known then. Did she and your uncle argue about the paintings and the old cross that were stolen?”

Kitty’s look cooled. “Not once. Why would they?” She leaned across the table. “Just because I’m drinking whiskey doesn’t mean I’m off my guard. Aoife and I didn’t argue with our uncle about anything except the ugliness of the wallpaper in this place. I took her side. He didn’t notice such things. You’ll notice the wallpaper’s all gone now. Anything else, Colin?”

“What were you doing in Declan’s Cross ten years ago?”

“Mourning the death of my marriage.”

“But you didn’t stay here at the house,” Colin said. “Your uncle was in Portugal. Paddy Murphy was here. As big as this place is, he wouldn’t have been in your way. The gardai must have asked you where you spent the night.”

She eased to her feet, not a woman, he thought, to underestimate. “I told the gardai I stayed with a friend in the village. They never asked who. They won’t ask.”

“Wendell Sharpe asked,” Colin said, not making it a question.

She snatched up her whiskey glass. “Night comes so early this time of year. It’s not as late as I’d like to think. I’ve a few things I need to do before I go home.”

“What happened to Sean Murphy? Why is he a farmer these days?”

“He’s not a farmer. He’s garda through his bones. Always has been.”

“So, what happened?”

“You could find out, couldn’t you? You’re the FBI agent.”

“I could make some calls, but no one’s obligated to tell me anything.”

“Or you could look on Google for ‘Garda Sean Murphy,’ and there it would be. He’s with a special detective unit. He was ambushed in June by smugglers he was investigating.”

“Hurt badly?”

“He was in bits.”

An Irish expression, Colin gathered. “Did he get the smugglers?”

“Oh, yes. Always. That’s Sean.”

“And you two—”

“There is no ‘you two.’ There never was.” She nodded to the bottle of Bracken 15. “It’s on the house.”

She went behind the bar and disappeared into the back room. Colin was tempted to move to the fire with his Bracken 15, but he noticed a movement out on the terrace.

Emma.

He left his whiskey on the table and headed outside.

* * *

Emma was sitting on a grayed-wood bench, looking out at the stars, when Colin reached her. “I slipped out the front door,” she said. “I didn’t want to disturb you and Kitty.”

“I found her drinking whiskey alone. She has a lot on her mind. Lindsey’s death has stirred up the past.”

“Maybe it helped for her to talk.”

“Maybe. She could also have been looking for information.”

“In a suspicious mood, are you?”

He sat next to her, the dark, quiet night capturing his mood. “It’s been that kind of day, Emma.”

“Unfortunately, yes, it has.” She placed a hand on the crook of his arm, then leaned back. She had on her thick Irish wool sweater and didn’t seem cold. “David Hargreaves walked into the village a little while ago. Did you see him?”

“No.”

“I can only imagine what he’s going through. Julianne’s worn out. We won’t see her until morning.”

“Good. She needs to rest.”

“I’m sorry she was the one to find Lindsey. It’ll help that she didn’t know her that well, but if we’d just kept walking yesterday—”

“I know,” Colin said. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. It would have been us who found Lindsey instead.”

Emma fell silent as a soft, sea-tinged breeze blew back strands of her fair hair that had found their way into her face. “Did you learn anything in the village?”

“Sean Murphy and his uncle Paddy are tight. Kitty’s son picked a fight with Brent Corwin. I think the kid knows something he wishes he didn’t know. The Irish diver, Eamon Carrick, is on his way back to Dublin if not there already.”

“His brother’s a garda diver who helped recover the bodies of Finian Bracken’s family.”

Colin glanced sideways at her. “You’ve been busy.”

She shrugged. “I got to chatting with the waiter after Julianne went up to her room. Maybe Eamon’s the one who mentioned Finian to Lindsey. I’m not sure it even matters now.” She paused, a few raindrops sprinkling the terrace in front of them. “Sean’s something of a legend in Declan’s Cross.”

“He was nearly killed in June.”

Emma nodded. “Smugglers.”

Colin slipped an arm around her. “Easy to forget out here on the Irish coast that you’re a dogged FBI agent.”

“Ha. Funny.”

He could feel her tension and pulled her closer. “Whatever is going on here isn’t about Sean Murphy’s smugglers, or his friendship with Fin Bracken.”

Emma leaned her head against his arm, as if they were talking about the rain and the sea breeze. Then she turned to him, her eyes luminous, intense. “After the Amsterdam theft—six months after the theft here—Granddad received a Celtic cross inscribed in black stone. It’s about three inches by an inch-and-a-half.”

“No note?”

“Just the cross and a leaflet about the Amsterdam museum. They were delivered in a package postmarked from Amsterdam. Impossible to trace. Granddad checked with the garda art squad.”

“That led him to Declan’s Cross.”

She nodded. “He realized the cross he received is a copy—at least a rough copy—of the one John O’Byrne found when he installed the gardens here fifty years ago.”

Colin looked out at the silhouettes and shadows of the gardens now. “Your grandfather gets a similar stone after every theft?”

“Yes.”

“The thief is taunting him?”

Emma stood abruptly, the breeze steadier, colder. “It feels like taunting. Whether or not that’s the thief’s intention, we can’t say. We just don’t know enough, even after all this time.”

“Sounds like you’re stuck.”

She almost smiled. “That sums it up. The Sharpes, the gardai, the FBI, Interpol—we’re all royally stuck.” Her smile faded as she looked back at the draped windows of the bar lounge. “One positive has been that the thief hasn’t turned violent.”

“Now we have a woman dead out by crosses just like the one he sends your grandfather,” Colin said, more to anchor the facts in his own mind than to remind Emma. Every detail about this serial thief was already burned in her mind, and had been for some time. Emma secrets, Sharpe secrets and FBI secrets all rolled into one knotted ball. He put aside the thought and asked, “Does Sean Murphy have access to all the information on this thief? The different heists, the crosses. Theories, suspects.”

“Only Granddad, Lucas, Yank and I know about the crosses. And the thief, of course. And now you, too.” Fatigue had crept into her voice. “Now that I’ve met Sean, I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows as much as any of us about the case. He strikes me as the type who’d find out, just as you would in a similar position.”

“What about the uncle? Kitty? Her artist sister?”

“I don’t think we know everything that happened in Declan’s Cross that night.”

Colin sensed that she was sinking into her thoughts, sorting through all the details of what she knew about her serial thief. He moved closer to her. More hair had blown into her face. He tucked a few strands behind her ear. “We’ll figure this out,” he said. “You’re not responsible for this woman’s death. Neither is your grandfather. We don’t even know she was murdered—”