Heron's Cove (30 page)

No one was there, either.

A pencil sketch lay on the bar, held in place by a half-gallon jug of cider from a local press. Emma recognized Tatiana’s style and saw that the sketch depicted a soaring falcon, with a good-looking man in medieval Russian garb in the background, standing against a gnarled tree.

Emma didn’t remember any falcons among the sketches she’d seen at the cottage yesterday, but Tatiana worked fast.

Still, why the sketch? Was it a peace offering somehow?

She stood straight, felt a cool breeze and heard the distant cry of seagulls.

Not a peace offering.

Two empty glasses stood next to each other on the bar.

Why only two? Had Tatiana not joined in drinking cider? Natalie? Dmitri?

Did it even matter?

Emma left the sketch and the glasses where they were and headed back down to the main deck. She didn’t see Natalie or anyone else.

Where was Dmitri? Why wasn’t he there to see Natalie off?

And where was Ivan?

Tatiana…why the sketch? Why the visit?

Why falcons?

Emma stood in the doorway of the cool, quiet guest stateroom. The Russian fairy tale of Olga was similar to the Western European tale of Snow White, except in the Russian version, instead of seven dwarves, there were twelve falcons that turned into handsome men. Olga still had to contend with the vain, jealous stepmother, the magic mirror and the poisoned apple.

A jealous stepmother…a beautiful stepdaughter…a poisoned apple.

Was Tatiana’s choice of a falcon transforming into a handsome man—of that particular fairy tale—as deliberate as her choices of the fables she had told?

Emma went through the stateroom to the closet and opened the double doors.

Natalie’s hard-sided black case sat at an angle on the floor where she had left it.

Wouldn’t Dmitri want to store a collection potentially worth millions in a vault?

A luxury yacht like the
Nightingale
had to have a vault.

Probably more than one,
Emma thought as she got down on one knee, flipped the latches on the case and opened the lid.

The case was empty.

The Rusakov collection was gone.

23

WENDELL SHARPE THREW off a thick red tarp that he’d had over his lap and climbed out of a small, flat-bottomed wooden boat onto the concrete pier. Lucas waited for him, knowing better than to offer a hand. His grandfather had already ignored help from the boat’s operator. It was just the two of them, a private trip in Lough Leane, the largest of the lakes in the Killarney National Park, a popular tourist destination that was quiet now, so late in October. Even in the light mist, the area was stunningly beautiful, the lakes nestled at the base of forested hills.

Lucas appreciated the energy with which Wendell moved. He had on an open rain jacket over a wool sweater vest and looked pleased with himself, even as he frowned at his only grandson. “Lucas, what’re you doing here? How did you find me?”

“I called Declan Bracken. You mentioned you’d see him and I hoped he’d have an idea of where you’d gotten off to. He told me he dropped you off here this morning.”

“Good, good.”

“I’m glad you decided to let someone know where you are.”

“Yes, I thought about that. If anything happened to me, I’d hate for a hiker to have to stumble across my bones. Best a trained search team find them.” He nodded across the choppy water, toward a small island visible from the shore. “I’ve been to the Innisfallen ruins. Ah, Lucas. They stir the soul.”

Lucas had never visited the ruins of the sixth-century monastery founded by Saint Finian, where monks wrote down tales of pre-Christian Ireland. Emma had been out there during her year working in Dublin. Lucas was relieved to see that his grandfather’s melancholy had lifted. Yet his own worries had gripped him, given his trip to London and the anxiety he’d heard in his sister’s voice when they’d talked earlier.

Wendell frowned. “Why the glum look, Lucas?”

“I’ll tell you back at—where are you staying? Not in a tent, I hope?”

“Declan insisted I stay with him and his family. I’ll meet him at Bracken Distillers. It’s not far from here.”

Lucas felt a ripple of uneasiness. He hadn’t been followed from London. He was sure of it, but he put a hand on his grandfather’s thin shoulders. “I’ve a car, Granddad. Let’s get over to the distillery.”

Wendell Sharpe’s decades of experience showed in his narrowed blue eyes. “Lucas?”

He started up a grassy bank. His grandfather bit off a sigh and followed him. The storied fifteenth-century Ross Castle, stronghold of the O’Donoghue clan, now open to tourists, loomed above them. Lucas wouldn’t mind wandering through a stone castle, losing himself on the hiking trails, heading out for a boat ride on the lakes, but he had Tatiana Pavlova on his mind.

And his sister, he thought. Emma’s troubles back in
Heron’s Cove.

He glanced at his grandfather as he caught up with him. “I need to know what’s not in the files about your work with Dmitri Rusakov twenty years ago.”

“What’s going on?”

As they walked to where he had parked his rented car, Lucas handed his grandfather his iPhone. “I took several photos in London. Have a look at them while I navigate the Irish roads.”

Once belted into his seat in the tiny car, Wendell thumbed through the photos, at eighty-plus having no trouble with the iPhone.

“Do you remember the woman and the little girl?” Lucas asked as he drove back out to the main road.

His grandfather folded his hand around the iPhone and sighed out his window. “The woman said she was a curator at the Tretyakov but I always believed there was more to it. She was frequently at Dmitri’s Moscow house.”

“Where he discovered the collection?”

“Yes. He wasn’t living there yet. She had an infectious passion for Russian folk traditions. I only knew her as Katya.”

“And the girl?”

“Her daughter.”

“Did you meet her?”

“Oh, yes. A little charmer. Feisty.”

Lucas navigated a curve. The pensiveness he had observed in his grandfather in Dublin had returned. He stared out the window as they wound their way away from the main town of Killarney, toward the Iveragh Peninsula.

When Wendell didn’t go on, Lucas prodded him. “Granddad? Did something happen to this Katya and her daughter?”

“I only heard rumors after I left Moscow.”

“What rumors?”

He sighed heavily. “Katya is the reason I sent Emma to London instead of going myself. I thought it would be interesting for Emma to go, easier for me if I didn’t. I’ve seen it all, Lucas, but Katya was a special woman.” He turned from the window, his skin gray as he added, his voice barely audible, “She was killed in a car crash a few weeks after I left Moscow.”

“That’s a tough one. I’m sorry.” Lucas concentrated on a tight, rather harrowing turn even by Irish standards. He would prefer to look at the scenery than to drive—or consider what went on in Moscow twenty years ago. “The crash wasn’t a rumor? It happened?”

“Unfortunately, no, it wasn’t a rumor. It happened. It’s the circumstances…” Wendell turned away from Lucas and gazed back out the passenger window. “My Russian has never been terribly good and I was focused on my work, not Dmitri Rusakov’s personal life, but I always felt that there was something between him and Katya.”

“An affair? Was he married then?”

“I don’t know, Lucas. I never asked. I had no reason to. I was only in Moscow a short time. When I heard about Katya’s death, I tried to contact Dmitri to ask him to give my condolences to her family. And to ask about her daughter. He never responded, and I left it at that.”

Lucas slowed for another curve. “What were the rumors about the circumstances?”

“That the car crash that killed Katya wasn’t an accident.”

“She was murdered?”

His grandfather didn’t answer at once. “It was just talk, or so I thought at the time. Dmitri Rusakov was already wealthy, and he was still on the rise. He’s a tough businessman, and he has his share of enemies. If Katya was in his way somehow…or if his enemies believed eliminating her could be to their advantage…” Wendell sank back against his seat and stared straight out the windshield at the mist and Irish green. “The rumors never took hold. I always assumed it was because they were false and the crash was in fact an accident. Now…it’s as if Katya never existed.”

Lucas slowed, turned onto a paved lane that would take them to Bracken Distillers. “Did you look into the rumors?” he asked his grandfather.

He shook his head. “They just faded away and I was in Heron’s Cove, not Moscow.”

“And we’re not homicide detectives,” Lucas added.

“I don’t believe Dmitri Rusakov is a killer, Lucas. I never would have sent Emma to London if I did.” Wendell sighed again, making it almost a moan. “That doesn’t mean I’m right. I’ve been wrong many times.”

“Don’t worry about that right now, Granddad. It’s not our job to conduct death investigations. Do you think this Tatiana Pavlova could be Katya’s daughter?”

“I suppose it’s possible. She could have created a new identity for herself and left Russia. I’m sure you’ve discovered by now that the toughest aspect of our work is when we see how its limitations can touch the innocent.”

“Do you think Tatiana blames Rusakov for her mother’s death, assuming for the moment Katya was her mother?”

“Dmitri Rusakov is one of the most thorough people I’ve ever encountered, and you know I’ve encountered many thorough people. If he’s in Heron’s Cove and Tatiana Pavlova is in Heron’s Cove, trust me, Lucas, he knows whatever there is to know about her.”

“He could have his own reasons for wanting to keep Tatiana’s identity a secret,” Lucas said, noticing a discreet sign for Bracken Distillers. What he wouldn’t give for an evening in an Irish pub, nursing a glass of Irish whiskey and listening to traditional Irish music. Instead, here he was, talking about a potential twenty-year-old murder. “What if Tatiana is a threat? What if she’s after revenge, or wants the Rusakov collection for herself?”

“She could blame Dmitri for her mother’s death.”

Lucas thought of Tatiana’s messy apartment, its cheerful, whimsical atmosphere and couldn’t believe she would hurt anyone. “I was followed in London. I’d be surprised if it was Tatiana’s doing.”

“Dmitri’s?”

“Could he think you have more information about Katya’s death than you’ve said?”

“He must know that I would never cover up a murder.”

“Maybe it’s just having met Katya and her daughter all those years ago.”

“There are so many possibilities,” Wendell said, sounding tired now. “When I was in Moscow with Dmitri Rusakov, I was thinking about Russian Art Nouveau and this fascinating, newly discovered collection. There wasn’t even a whisper of any criminal activity involving its discovery. It was just as Dmitri said. He swung a crowbar, and there it was.”

Lucas drove along a hedgerow, sheep feeding on the rock-strewn hillside. “But he’s never publicized the collection or done anything with it.”

“Until London four years ago,” Wendell said. “And look what it got him.”

“He didn’t go to the authorities when he realized the collection was missing. He called you. He had to know you wouldn’t cover up a theft. Do you think he really didn’t believe Emma when she told him it was Renee?”

“It’s hard to say. He pulled us off the case once Emma told him. Our work was done, anyway. The disappearance of the collection was a personal matter.”

“Why did he have it in London in the first place?”

“At the time he said he was considering talking to a Russian art expert in London about his options for what he could do with it—whether he should put it on display or loan it to a museum. Renee had found out about it a few months earlier and wanted him to introduce it to the public in a big, splashy way.”

Lucas slowed as the narrow, snaking road rose into the hills overlooking some body of water—a lake, a bay—in the distant mist. He wanted nothing more than to park the car, get out and walk until nightfall. For the first time, he could understand his grandfather’s desire to be here.

“We need to find out what’s going on in Heron’s Cove,” Wendell said. “This is one of those times I hate not being there to help. I’m worried about Emma.”

“She carries a semiautomatic pistol, Granddad.”

He grunted. “Don’t remind me.”

But Lucas could see his grandfather’s worry, his fear for Emma. Never mind that she had been an FBI agent for three years and had worked with him in Dublin for a year, he still on some level thought of her as a nun, locking herself away in a convent. Lucas understood, because he had to fight the same impulse himself. She had explained dozens of times that her life as a religious sister hadn’t removed her from the world, but it was drastically different from being an FBI agent.

He wondered if being Sister Brigid and now Special Agent Sharpe had prepared Emma at all for falling for a guy like Colin Donovan.

Probably not, Lucas thought as Bracken Distillers finally came into view. Declan Bracken had gone into the whiskey business with his twin brother, now the temporary parish priest in Rock Point, Maine. Lucas had met Finian Bracken briefly in Heron’s Cove but hadn’t yet met Declan, who lived with his wife and three children not far from the distillery.

Lucas turned in at an iron gate, which he suspected was there more to keep local sheep out of the landscaped grounds than intruders. The stone buildings were visible down a curving drive with a lush border of late-autumn flowers and shrubs glistening in a sudden ray of sunlight.

“I’ll get the gate,” Wendell said.

But Lucas noticed it was unlatched, and he shook his head at his grandfather. “No, wait.”

“I’m not so old I can’t—”

“That’s not it.” Then he saw a small black van parked among the trees just up the road. “Granddad.”

“I see. It could be a delivery.” He held up the phone. “I’ll call the police just in case.”

Lucas nodded. “Do it.”

A man stepped out from behind a thick palm tree.

Shaved head…dark sweater…