The Angel (22 page)

lapsed. It must have had help.”

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“Maybe the fairies did it,” Bob interjected. Keira noticed a change in Abigail’s expression. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

Abigail nodded. “I wanted to hear your story first. The barman says he found an old shovel at the ruin—before he ran across the sheep.”

Simon sat forward. “Where?”

“Propped up against a tree where he couldn’t miss it. Harrigan says it wasn’t there this morning, or he’d have seen it.”

“It wasn’t there last night, either,” Simon said. Keira felt the late-day sun hot on the back of her neck. “I didn’t see it. Do the police think someone went out to the ruin after we left this morning, before Eddie got there?”

“Possibly,” Abigail said.

“I’m not going to get worked up over a shovel,” Bob said, then glared at Abigail. “You’re chewing on some

thing else. What is it?”

She settled back in her Adirondack chair and addressed Keira. “Eddie O’Shea also discovered your backpack on a picnic table outside his pub.”

This news got to Keira. “How did it end up at the pub? It was in the ruin—it got caught in the collapse. I don’t know if it was buried in rubble or not. The police tried to look around inside this morning, but they didn’t get far. Too risky.”

“You’d just been through a difficult twenty-four hours,”

Abigail said, “and you were focused on the stone angel and then on the sheep’s blood. Is it possible the backpack was within easy reach of the entrance, even with the collapse?”

“I don’t know.” Keira jumped to her feet, restless, more shaken than she wanted to admit. “The key to my rented cottage was in my backpack.”

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Abigail gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

“It’s not there now.”

Scoop tossed the last of his snap peas in the colander.

“That probably explains the unlocked door and missing note. Our guy lets himself in, finds the note, gets rid of it and forgets to lock up on his way out. He dumps the backpack, and some hiker finds it and leaves it at the pub.”

“Maybe,” Keira said. “But there was no way anyone could have known I wrote that note, and I didn’t notice anything else missing.”

“Harrigan plans to talk to Eddie O’Shea again tomorrow,” Abigail said. “He’ll go back up to the ruin and take another look.”

Bob sighed at Keira. “I can’t believe you went to Ireland chasing a fairy story.”

“It’s a great story, and I went to Ireland to do my work. You investigate homicides. I investigate old stories.” Not investigate, precisely, but she’d made her point. Her uncle stood back from the flames. “When I inves

tigate a homicide, I’m never thinking fairies did it. You’re not a detective, Keira. You don’t think like one. You don’t have the training.”

“I didn’t get trapped because I was trying to be some

thing I’m not.”

“No, I guess not.” When he looked at her this time, his eyes were filled with pain and worry. “How bad was it in that place?”

Her throat caught. “Pretty bad.” She attempted a smile.

“There were slugs.”

Scoop made a face. “I hate slugs.” He nodded to his garden. “I had to go on the warpath against them during a rainy spell earlier this month. They were eating everyth

ing. What kind of slugs were in the ruin with you?”

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“Black ones, about six inches—”

He shuddered. “Stop. I can’t take it.”

Even Abigail managed to grin at the prospect of Scoop Wisdom getting the creeps over slugs. “How did you learn about this story about the brothers and the fairies?”

Bob lifted a package of preformed hamburger patties out of a cooler. “What difference does it make?” He ripped open the package and started laying patties on the grill. “Scoop, you got enough peas for all of us?”

“More than enough,” he said.

Abigail didn’t relent. “The story, Keira?”

“Drop it,” Bob said.

“I’m just asking a question, Bob. It’s not an interrogation.”

But it was, Keira thought with sudden clarity. Abigail was in detective mode, and it was irritating Bob. His reaction struck Keira as out of proportion to the offense, and she suspected it had something to do with her mother’s trip to Ireland thirty years ago.

“Never mind,” Abigail said quietly. “I’m sorry, Keira. You’ve had a long day—”

“A woman who lives on the street where my uncle and mother grew up told me the story. Supposedly my mother looked for the village when she was in Ireland before I was born.”

Her uncle was seething. “She went to a lot of places when she was in Ireland, and it was thirty years ago. Leave her alone.”

Keira turned to Simon and tried to lighten the mood.

“Now I could use rescuing.”

“Nah.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “You’re three minutes from crawling out of this one on your own, too.”

“Can you sketch this angel for us?” Abigail asked. “The dog, the ruin?”

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Keira didn’t bother to hide her relief at the slight change in subject. “I can try.”

“I’ll see what I can scrounge up for drawing materials.”

Abigail retreated into her apartment, returning in a few moments with a stack of printer paper and a mug of colored pencils, crayons and markers. “I know these aren’t the kind of supplies you’re used to—”

“They’re fine. Thanks.”

“It’ll help us visualize your experience, and it could jog your memory, produce some detail you haven’t thought of.”

Keira picked through the mug, choosing a black finepoint felt-tip pen. “I don’t know if I can capture the moody beauty of that evening. My ancestors are from Ireland,” she said. “My great-great-grandfather O’Reilly came over during the famine years in the late 1840s. My grandmother was born in Ireland.”

“But this wasn’t your first trip?” Abigail asked.

“My fourth. Eddie O’Shea and his brothers have lived on the Beara Peninsula their entire lives. Their family goes back there hundreds of years. Being a basic tumbleweed myself, I’m drawn to that sense of place—that continuity of home.”

Simon leaned forward over the table without crowding her. “Is Patsy McCarthy from the Beara Peninsula?”

“No—another village in West Cork. Her grandfather worked in the copper mines. The copper veins drew ancient settlers—the ruin is up in the hills above a megalithic stone circle. Some people believe that’s fairy ground.”

She stared at the blank page a moment, visualizing the Irish landscape, the hidden ruin, the ivy, the snarling dog.
Had
the dog snarled? Had he meant to harm her? Or was he just reacting to the dead sheep?

“The sheep’s blood wasn’t there,” she whispered. “Not when I arrived.”

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No one spoke, and she let her instincts lead her pen to the right spot on the paper. She drew quickly, but carefully, trying to get the details right without overfocusing on them. She put the pen down. She was aware of the burgers sizzling on the grill. Scoop had gone upstairs with his colander. Abigail was leaned back in her chair, Owen next to her, Bob still at the grill. Simon hadn’t moved.

“I can’t believe I felt safe when someone was smearing the blood of a murdered sheep a few yards from me.” Keira looked at the two detectives and the two search-and-rescue experts. “Someone was there. I didn’t imagine the voice.”

“But you still felt safe,” her uncle said, all the ferocity gone out of his voice now.

“Afterward. Not at first. But afterward—in the dark.”

She appraised her sketch. The basics were there. Dog, stream, gray stone, debris. The dead tree. At least a sense of the moody light. “Yes. I felt safe.”

“What about the angel?” Abigail asked. “Can you draw it?”

“Not as easily. I can draw what I saw—what I remember. It won’t have the kind of detail you’re probably looking for.”

It took several false starts, several different pencils and markers, before she managed to draw an angel that even came close to what she’d seen that night. “I can’t…” She sighed. “It was more beautiful than this. Truly a work of art.”

Bob leaned over her shoulder. “Patsy’s always liked her angels,” he said.

Something in his voice made Keira look up, but he quickly returned to the grill. Scoop came down the back stairs with a bowl of steamed peas, and Abigail and Owen went inside and brought out a platter of paper plates, condi

ments, buns and a bowl overflowing with a green salad—

a well-practiced ritual, Keira realized.

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“Jet-lagged?” Simon asked, close to her. She remembered the feel of his thick thighs against her on the long flight across the Atlantic. “Very. The sheep is disturbing, Simon. Eddie O’Shea didn’t deserve to find such a horror. If I attracted whoever killed that poor animal to the village—”

“You’re not responsible for what someone else does.”

His clear, succinct words helped center her, but they didn’t chase away all her sense of guilt at Eddie’s grisly discovery. “It’s not a coincidence,” she said. “The story, my presence, the dead sheep.”

“I don’t think so, either.”

And the man who’d drowned, she thought. Was his death not a coincidence, either?

“I’m going to see Patsy in the morning,” she said abruptly. Her uncle’s eyes were half-closed. “She’s an old woman, Keira.”

“I know. I’ll be careful what I tell her. I don’t want to upset her. I just want to know if there’s some part of this story—some tidbit her grandfather told her that she hasn’t thought about in years—that could help make sense of things. Then I’ll talk to Colm Dermott.”

“Are you planning to go back to Ireland?” Abigail asked.

“I certainly hope to, but I’m not wild about staying in my cottage alone until I have a better fix on what’s going on. Maybe the Irish police will trace the dead sheep back to some hiker who has nothing to do with me.”

Her comment was met with silence, which Keira took as skepticism—they all believed the poor mutilated sheep had everything to do with her own ordeal. With a sudden burst of energy, she reached for a bright green marker and drew a cheeky leprechaun on one of her discarded sheets.

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Scoop Wisdom gave a mock shudder. “I don’t know, Keira. I think I’d rather run into a mean black dog coming out of the Irish mist than that little sucker.”

Everyone laughed, but when dinner was served, Keira didn’t eat a bite.

Beacon Hill

Boston, Massachusetts

9:00 p.m., EDT

June 23

As soon as Owen pulled in front of the Garrison house on Beacon Street, Keira grabbed her brocade bag from next to her on the backseat and leaped out, shutting the door behind her. Simon watched her charge for the front door.

“She’s got a lot of energy for someone who’s been through what she has in the past few days.”

“She could just be anxious to put some distance between you and her,” Owen said.

“True enough.”

“Simon—” Owen sighed, threw the car into Park.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“I wish I knew.”

Simon kept his eyes on Keira as she set her bag on the step and dug out her keys. If she locked him out, he could always ask Owen to let him in. It had been a torturous 208

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flight. He’d done one damn Sudoku puzzle after another to stay awake. Whenever he’d dozed off, he’d ended up dreaming about making love to the woman next to him. He acknowledged he was restless. He was accustomed to search-and-rescue missions and changing time zones—

to long flights, as well.

So it had to be Keira. The mess she was in. Kissing her out in the windswept Irish countryside.

“What about John March?” Owen asked.

An image of the FBI director’s face wasn’t exactly how Simon wanted his memory of kissing Keira interrupted, but nothing he could do now. “What about him?”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“I left a message for him before I left London. Said I was off to rescue a damsel in distress.” Simon shrugged.

“He hasn’t called back. The less you know about my business with March, Owen, the better. It hasn’t followed me back here, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I don’t know if I should have called you in London after all.”

Simon summoned his sense of humor from deep inside.

“And spared me a night in an Irish cottage with our flaxenhaired fairy princess?”

“Simon…I swear…” Owen sighed again. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“I’m about to carry my bag upstairs. How many flights up to the attic apartment with no phone?”

“Three. The last one’s steep and narrow.” Owen added dryly, “Don’t trip.”

Simon grabbed his own bag from the backseat, thanked Owen for the ride and, with a fresh burst of energy, headed for the elegant brick house, running up the steps and catching the front door just before it could shut tight.

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Keira had a decent jump on him. He started after her, taking the stairs two and three at a time, but dropped his pace down to one. Owen hadn’t been kidding. The last flight of stairs in particular was steep and narrow, clearly not built for someone Simon’s size.

When he reached the attic, he noted that Keira had left the front door slightly ajar. He took that as a positive sign.

“You can come in,” she said, “but watch your head.”

He had to duck to get through the door. The apartment had low, slanted ceilings, its open floor plan easing any sense of claustrophobia. A pine table doubled as a work space, an ar

rangement she’d duplicated at her Irish cottage. One edge of the table was lined with art supplies. Open shelves held books and additional supplies, and a desktop computer with a massive flat screen sat on a rickety-looking cart. A couch, a chair and a coffee table formed a small seating area in front of three windows that looked out on Boston Common.