Legacy of Secrets (10 page)

There was a friendly silence between them as J.K. drove Shannon back home for the last time. She knew he was right. Tomorrow she would put her past behind her and begin a new life as a new person.

“I
WAS ON THE FERRY,
on my way to Nantucket,” Shannon said. “I was leaning against the rail staring into the green waves, thinking about my father. And then I realized I’d been so caught up in trying to convince myself and everybody else that he hadn’t committed suicide, that I’d never even thought about who
had
killed him. Someone had cold-bloodedly shot him at close range and placed the gun where it would look as though it had fallen from his hand.
Someone had murdered my father. And I made up my mind to find out who.”

Her voice trembled as she spoke the terrible words, and her face was so pale that her freckles stood out like confetti on a church porch after a wedding. I took her hand in mine, comfortingly. “You’re a brave girl,” I said quietly.

Brigid’s heart was in her eyes as she stared solemnly at her. “I’ll be getting some fresh tea,” she murmured. “Aye, and maybe with a little touch of the whiskey in it, poor girleen, to bring the color back into your cheeks.”

The dogs shifted their position, leaning against Shannon’s knees under the table, and she bent to pet them. “I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before,” she said quietly. “I guess I just hadn’t allowed myself to. It was all too horrible, too frightening. I was so shaken that I don’t really remember the journey to Sea Mist Cottage, but once
I got there, I felt comforted. Somehow, it felt like coming home.”

I
T WAS JUST A TINY
gray-shingled cottage, foursquare and neat, like a dollhouse. There was a painted quarter board over the rickety porch with the name and the date, 1790, painted on it, and a straggling overgrown little garden, choked with roses and nasturtiums. And right next door, half hidden by the shrubbery, was a big white house with a veranda running all the way around its upper story, sort of topsy-turvy-looking.

But Shannon’s mind wasn’t on exploring. She unpacked her laptop and typed the word
Suspects
in bold. Then she remembered reading somewhere that most homicides were crimes of passion and that cops always looked closest to home for their suspects, so under it she typed
Joanna Belmont
and
Buffy Keeffe.
And next to their names she wrote
Motive
—
Jealousy.

She thought about who else and then she added J.
K. Brennan, Jack Wexler,
and
Brad Jeffries
to the list, because they were the three men closest to her father and they were supposed to know what was going on in his business. Then she remembered someone telling her that men like her father didn’t get where they were without making a thousand enemies for every friend, and her heart sank. Keeffe Tower had been plagued by strikes and walkouts and disputes, and any one of the hundreds of workmen, or the contractors or suppliers, involved might have had a grudge against him.

Or it might just have been a stranger; someone at the party, a barman, or maybe an intruder, a thief, a psychopath. It could have been almost anybody, she thought despairingly, and that was the trouble. She couldn’t go to the police and say she “just knew” her father had been murdered. Cops would want reasons, motives, evidence, and she had none of those things. And she didn’t know where to begin to find them.

S
HE GOT HERSELF A JOB
as a waitress at Harriet’s Fish Cafe in Nantucket. “Twenty bucks a night plus tips,” Harriet told her, “and it’s hard work.”

It was, but at least it took her mind off her worries. Organizing Sea Mist Cottage filled her days, and her job at Harriet’s took care of the evenings, but night was the time she dreaded most, when she was alone with just her thoughts. Even when she slept the terrible memories crowded her subconscious and she would wake crying, with tears in her ears and in her hair, soaking her pillow. And she hated her day off, when she was all alone with nothing to fill the long hours in front of her.

She walked the empty beach, hurling pebbles into the waves, thinking about her problem. The air was scented with salt and sea pinks and the only sound was the breeze rippling through the grasses and the purr of the waves along the shore, and she felt lonelier than ever, and she just wished she could turn back the clock and return to the past where everything was all right again.

Rain clouds were bunching overhead as she walked back to the cottage. She stared for a long time at her list of suspects on the computer, and then switched it off with a sigh of frustration, prowling the cottage restlessly, staring out at the rain and at the empty house next door.

Loneliness mingled with boredom, and she put a chair underneath the trapdoor leading to the attic and gave it a push. It hadn’t been opened in years and it was stuck. She pushed harder. It creaked open and she hauled herself through the opening and stared around, disappointed.

She had hoped to find the attic piled with junk she could rummage through. She didn’t know what she was searching for. Just some evidence that her parents had once been there, she supposed. But there was only a dresser against the wall and a few boxes of old kitchen stuff, chipped cups and saucers and old pots and pans.

On the gable end was a little round window and she stared out through the rain at the white house. She didn’t know why, but the house intrigued her. It was different
from the usual Nantucket saltbox. All shuttered up and silent, it was sort of exotic, mysterious almost.

Suddenly the silence was all around her. It was odd, scary, as though time had stopped and with it all sounds. There was a rustling noise. The hair bristled on the back of her neck and goose bumps popped up on her arms and she almost jumped out of her skin as something fell from a niche where two beams crossed.

She picked it up quickly. It was an old manila envelope and inside it was a bunch of letters tied with pink ribbon. The notepaper was fragile with age, crumbling at the edges; the ink had faded and the childish scrawl was almost indecipherable.

The address at the top of each one was
Ardnavarna Castle, Connemara,
and they began,
“Dearest Lily,”
and they were signed,
“from your loving sister, Ciel.”

“Papa has changed so …”
Ciel wrote.
“He becomes red-faced with anger every time he sees me. Mama says it’s because I remind him of you, though we do not look the least alike…. Darling Mama mourns so, and I worry she will drive herself to her own grave…. I am so lonely without you, and so is your favorite dog, Fergal, who has sired a new litter of pups, seven, and all as black-and-white spotted as can be, with the sweetest little pink noses. How I wish you could see them….”

Shannon replaced the sad little letters in the envelope, wondering what they were doing in the attic of Sea Mist Cottage.

There was nothing of interest in the dresser drawers, just old linens, but as she slammed them shut she noticed a large rectangular object wedged behind, as though someone had tried to hide it. She tugged the dresser away and lifted it carefully out. It was a painting in an ornate gilt frame, a portrait of a young girl. She was a beauty. Her skin was creamy, her lips were red, and her glossy black curls tumbled prettily over her bare shoulders. There was an arrogant tilt to her chin and an imperious look in her deep-blue eyes.
And around her neck was the pretty diamond
love-knot necklace that right that minute was in Shannon’s own jewelry box.

Shannon stared at it, stunned, as she read the name on the tarnished brass plate on the frame out loud. “Lily Molyneux, 1883.”

“It’s the same Lily from the letters,” she exclaimed excitedly. “From Ardnavarna.” She lugged the portrait carefully back downstairs, and dusted it off and propped it against the kitchen wall.
Who
exactly was Lily Molyneux? she wondered. And what was her portrait doing in
Shannon’s
attic?
And why was Lily Molyneux wearing her necklace?

First thing the next morning she hurried over to the village post office. “Any mail for me?” she asked hopefully, leaning her elbows on the counter and smiling at the gray-haired postmistress. But the mail wasn’t the only reason she was there; she knew Mrs. Conrad’s family had lived on the island for generations, since the old whaling days, and she was related to just about everyone on Nantucket. If anyone knew about Lily, Mrs. Conrad would.

“Two letters for you today,” Mrs. Conrad said, beaming. “And from New York.”

“New York?” Surprised, Shannon stuffed them in her pocket to read later.

“Mrs. Conrad,” she said, “I was wondering if you know anything about Lily Molyneux?”

Mrs. Conrad always told people she never pried; she was just naturally curious. Had been since she was a child, and that’s how she happened to know everybody’s business, as well as their history.

“Lily?” she said thoughtfully. “Why, she was Ned Sheridan’s ladylove, or so they said. The story goes that he built his house right next to Sea Mist Cottage so he could be near her. And that she darned near ruined him.”

“But who was she?”

“She was a foreigner. She came to the island as a girl and was befriended by the Sheridans. She lived here for a little while, alone in her cottage, and then she just disappeared. No one seems to remember much about her, except
how beautiful she was. It’s like a legend, her beauty, and no one who saw her ever forgot. Their memories were passed on to their children and then to their children, until it all became the stuff dreams are made of. Or ghosts.”

She laughed as Shannon stared skeptically at her. “Nantucket’s always been a haunted island,” she added mischievously. “I guess some folks who lived here liked it so much they just never wanted to leave.”

Shannon shivered, thinking of the eerie silence in the attic. She leaned eagerly on the counter, her chin in her hands, listening.

“The Sheridans lived on this island for close to a century,” Mrs. Conrad said. “Ned’s father used to be a whaler, but with the coming of kerosene all that finished, and he set himself up in a ships’ chandlery business on Steamboat Wharf. They had always been a seafaring family and good chapel-going Methodists, and it must have come as a shock when their only son, Ned, told them he wanted to be an actor.

“You can only imagine the consternation it caused; aye, and the trouble. Ned finished his studies all right, but he refused to take up a respectable profession the way they wanted him to, and he ran off to be an actor. Anyhow, he became famous. A star, you might call him.

“In those days theaters had no air-conditioning and in the hot summer months all the actors would take a rest at the shore. There was quite a famous actors’ colony here at ’Sconset in the early part of the century, and Ned Sheridan came home and built his upside-down house, just like one he had seen on his travels to Hawaii, with the living room and veranda upstairs to catch the view.

“They said it was always full of friends—other actors and their children, and they’d often put on a show for the locals. Apparently they were genial, friendly folk, having a good time, and they were well liked. But later, with the coming of air-conditioning, when theaters began to stay open in the summer, they drifted away. I believe Ned
would bring his children here occasionally, but after a while that stopped too.

“Anyhow, my dear, that’s all I can tell you. The Sheridan daughters left the island, and none of them ever came back to Nantucket, so I don’t know what happened to him. Only the story that Lily Molyneux was the true love of his life.” She laughed. “And maybe that should have been his epitaph.”

S
HANNON WALKED SLOWLY
back to the cottage, thinking about Ned Sheridan. She stared at the white house, imagining it filled with a noisy, cheerful bunch of actors, with children running in and out, and Ned gazing longingly next door, wishing he could be with his ladylove, Lily Molyneux.

On an impulse, she walked to the door and tried it. To her surprise, it was unlocked.