Carla Neggers (6 page)

6

THAT THE UNRELIABLE,
cheerful Lindsey Hargreaves had failed to pick up Julianne Maroney in Shannon was enough to distract Sean Murphy from farm work but not enough for him to raise the alarm. These days it didn’t take much to distract him from farm work.

He’d changed into a clean jacket and hiking boots after deciding against returning to the barn to finish up the antifungal spraying he’d started that morning, one sheep hoof at a time. He hated the spraying, but it had to be done to prevent “foot rot.”

He started down the lane toward the village, feeling the residual ache of injuries he’d sustained in June. Broken ribs, a punctured lung, a messed-up rotator cuff.

Sean took in a deep breath and told himself that any physical pain was in his head at this point. Fin Bracken had brought a bottle of rare, dear Bracken 15-year-old whiskey on his last visit to Declan’s Cross earlier that year. Sean hadn’t opened it until September. During the worst days of his recovery, he hadn’t touched so much as a pint. He stayed away from alcohol when it was all he wanted.

He’d taken time to heal before he’d opened the Bracken 15, and even then, he hadn’t drunk alone. He’d invited his uncle in for a
taoscán
. A few days later, he’d been able to walk into the village for a pint at his favorite pub.

Now it was early November, and what had changed? The Bracken 15 was still on the top shelf in the farmhouse kitchen. He was still walking into the village for the occasional pint.

Still working on the farm.

Sean didn’t known what Fin had told Julianne Maroney about him, but it had obviously been very little. She struck Sean as feisty and yet uncertain, perhaps not fully trusting her motives for coming to Ireland. He wondered if her FBI agent friends had picked up on that ambivalence and that’s why they were in Declan’s Cross checking on her.

Interesting that the main offices of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery were in Heron’s Cove, just down the coast from Rock Point where Fin was. Fin had mentioned Emma Sharpe. She was the granddaughter of Wendell Sharpe, who, last Sean had heard, was on the verge of retiring in Dublin.

Had Julianne’s choice of Declan’s Cross for her Irish sojourn piqued Emma’s interest, given the theft at the O’Byrne place ten years ago and her grandfather’s interest in the unsolved case?

It had Sean’s.

He hadn’t been a farmer ten years ago.

Then again, he wasn’t much of one now. He noticed his uncle puttering toward him on the tractor, an ancient John Deere with mud permanently encrusted on its green exterior. Paddy kept it in working order. Sean had given up. In his seventies now, his uncle liked to take the tractor out to the fields and was happy to leave the more tedious farm work to his nephew.

The wind had subsided. Sean recognized his own restlessness. He wanted to know what had happened to Lindsey Hargreaves, but he didn’t trust the foreboding that was starting to gnaw at him. He attributed it to the last of what his doctors had described as a normal process of post-trauma stress recovery—or, more likely at this point, boredom.

He had no business thinking of himself as bored. There was always work to do on the farm, and it was most often work he enjoyed, or at least appreciated. But that was different from loving it, wasn’t it?

And it was different from being part of an elite garda investigative unit in Dublin.

An Garda Síochána
. Guardians of the Peace.

The guards.

The Irish police.

Sean had joined the gardai at twenty-two. He’d never wanted to be anything else. He’d help out at the farm—it was home as no place else ever would be—but he’d never imagined being a farmer.

Technically he was still a member of his unit. He was on leave, recovering from the thrashing he’d taken during the messy arrest of smugglers back in June. He’d won the day and broken open the smuggling ring, but he’d paid the price with a long recovery.

Being back in proximity to the proprietor of the O’Byrne House Hotel probably wasn’t helping.

“Ah, Kitty.”

Was she suspicious of her FBI guests’ motives for checking into her hotel?

She’d at least be curious.

Sean waved to Paddy and then started down the lane to the village. Walking meant he could stop for a pint or two without having to worry about his blood-alcohol level. He wasn’t one to over-imbibe, but better to fall over a stone wall than drive over it. Fin Bracken liked to say that walking was soul work. Sean didn’t know about that, but walking had helped him these past few months. At first he could only manage to the barn and back to the couch, but gradually his stamina had improved and, with it, his distances. He’d told Fin that farm work kept him busy, but walking kept him sane.

At the bottom of the hill, instead of going past the bookshop into the village, he turned down a narrow street to the waterfront and the present and future site of Lindsey Hargreaves’ marine science research field station. At the moment it was an abandoned garage she’d rented with an American friend, a professional diver. It was located just up from the small Declan’s Cross pier and so far looked more like a convenient place to store diving equipment and camp out between dives. It would take vision, enthusiasm, determination and a substantial financial commitment to create a proper research facility. Even with Lindsey’s family connections, Sean was skeptical, but that was his nature.

A van was parked out front, its back open, revealing state-of-the-art diving gear. Brent Corwin, the American diver, emerged from a side door of the garage. He was in his late thirties, his close-cropped hair almost fully gray. He gave an exaggerated shiver as he stuffed an oily rag into a sweatshirt pocket. “Hey, Sean. Where did the mild air go? It feels more like November in New York. I’m from Florida. Warm-blooded. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Lindsey Hargreaves.”

“Two Americans were just here looking for her, too. Friends of the woman she was supposed to pick up in Shannon this morning. I guess that didn’t happen. That’s flaky even for Lindsey.”

“Has she been in touch with you?”

“Uh-uh. I haven’t seen her since she left for the U.S. last week to visit her father. She arrived back in Dublin on Friday but ended up staying for a couple days. Her father had to be in London on business and decided to make a stop in Dublin and see the sights.”

Sean glanced in the van at the wet suits, masks, tanks and other diving paraphernalia, none of it looking as if it had been used in the past few hours. He turned back to Brent. “Do you think she’s still in Dublin, then?”

“Could be. If my dad turned up out of the blue, I’d probably forget half the things I had to do, too, but you’ve met Lindsey. She’s not the most organized person, you know? I can see her forgetting it was Shannon and ending up at the Dublin airport, wondering what kind of flake Julianne is.” Brent lifted a tank out of the van and set it on the ground. He didn’t look at all worried about Lindsey or anything else. “I’ll make a few calls and see if I can find out where Lindsey’s off to. I’ll let you know if I hear from her, or if she turns up. Would you mind doing the same?”

“Not at all.”

“And Julianne—if she hears from Lindsey, she’ll let us know?”

Sean nodded. “I’m sure she will.”

“I’ll check with Eamon, too,” Brent said. “He’s up in Ardmore diving with some of his buddies today.”

Eamon Carrick was the younger brother of one of Sean’s garda colleagues, both solid divers who looked for any opportunity to get under the water. Not Sean. He hated even the idea of diving. “How many of you were here last night?” he asked.

“Just me.” Brent gestured back toward the garage. “The place has heat and decent facilities. It’s roughing it by Lindsey’s standards. She’s looking forward to moving into the cottage. She’s well-meaning but she’s not reliable. She’d be the first to say so.”

“She visited a friend of mine in Maine last week—”

“The priest. Bracken, right? Yeah. That’s when she met this marine biologist, Julianne.”

“Why did she visit Father Bracken, do you know?”

Brent shook his head. “No idea. She said he’s Irish—he and his brother own a whiskey distillery near Killarney. I didn’t know you were friends with him.”

“We go back a ways,” Sean said, deliberately vague. He’d met Fin Bracken after the deaths of Fin’s wife and daughters. Not an easy subject. “When did you talk to Lindsey last?”

“Friday, after she got back to Dublin and found out her father was on his way. We only talked for a minute. We emailed a couple times after that.” Brent shut the van doors and lifted the tank. “She gave me her father’s cell number. If he’s still in Dublin, he’ll be at a five-star hotel. His name’s David—David Hargreaves. We’ve never met, but I’ve done some diving for the Hargreaves Oceanographic Institute. I hear he’s a good guy.”

Sean could see that Brent was impatient to get on with his work and left him to it. Whether it was cynicism or experience, Sean doubted Lindsey Hargreaves was going to the trouble of launching a research facility simply out of devotion to marine science. Brent Corwin was a dedicated adventurer, good-looking, energetic. Eamon Carrick and his diving friends were the same. Temptations, perhaps, for a young woman with no clear direction in her life.

There was also her father, perhaps not an easy man to impress.

Sean didn’t know Lindsey well enough to have a good feel for what motivated her, but David Hargreaves’ impromptu stop in Dublin could have thrown her off just enough that she’d forgotten to pick up her new friend in Shannon.

“A bored man you are, Sean Murphy,” he muttered, his teeth clenched as he walked into the village, knowing his next stop would be the O’Byrne House Hotel.

Fool that he was.

* * *

Rave reviews and word-of-mouth of delighted guests had helped keep a steady flow of guests at the O’Byrne House Hotel since it opened its doors a year ago, but November was quiet. Sean went through the back gate and didn’t run into another soul in the gardens. Pretty Kitty O’Byrne Doyle had seen to every detail in transforming her uncle’s crumbling mansion, shrouded in cobwebs and overrun with mice, into a modern, elegant hotel that was at once tranquil and cheerful. He’d heard it was doing well. No doubt. Everything Kitty touched was a success—except, at least in her mind, her teenage son, Philip, who gave her fits.

Sean found the lad alone in the bar lounge, unloading a tray of fresh glasses onto a head-high shelf. Philip Doyle had his mother’s blue eyes, dark hair and spirited temperament and his father’s stubborn jaw and ambition. One minute he was eighteen going on thirteen—angry, sullen, easily bored—and the next, eighteen going on thirty—strong, mature, solid. He’d moved to Declan’s Cross with his mother two years ago. He hadn’t wanted to. He could have stayed in Dublin with his father, a banker, but he hadn’t. And he hadn’t gone back to Dublin since he’d finished school.

He glanced up and said, “Garda Murphy,” with just enough sarcasm to be annoying but not enough for Sean to haul him out from behind the bar by his shirt collar.

“Not diving today?” Sean asked.

“I went out early with Eamon Carrick and a couple of his friends.”

As if it’s any of your business,
his tone said.

Sean sat on a high cushioned stool at the polished wood bar, saved from the original fittings in the house and refurbished to Kitty’s specifications. She had a background in business but loved this place. She and Aoife had been coming here since they were babies. Sean couldn’t recall when he’d first noticed them. By the time Kitty was seventeen, for certain. By eighteen, she’d been in love with her banker, William Doyle.

“Where did you go?” Sean asked her son.

Philip took the last glass from the tray and set it on the shelf with the others, all sparkling in a sudden ray of sun that was there and then gone again. “We went out to the
Samson
wreck off Ram Head in Ardmore.”

“I know the spot.” In 1987, a trawler had run aground, its hulking, rusting wreck an eyesore to many but a popular spot for divers. “How well do you know these lads?”

“Well enough. I’m learning a lot from them. They’re more experienced divers than I am.”

“Diving is an expensive hobby.”

“It’s not just a hobby,” Philip said. “I’m thinking of becoming an oceanographic research diver.”

Sean wasn’t one to puncture a young man’s dreams, but he said, “A college degree would help, I would think.”

“It would if I decide I want one.” He tucked the empty tray under one arm. “What if I wanted to join the garda water unit like Eamon’s brother?”

“Think you could pull a body out of the water?”

Philip didn’t flinch. “I could.”

“It’d be in addition to your regular garda duties.”

“Good.”

Practical considerations didn’t necessarily interest Philip, but that could be youth and the attitude of some of his diving friends rubbing off on him. From what Sean had gleaned in the three or four weeks since Lindsey and Brent had arrived in Declan’s Cross, they’d been bouncing from place to place in order to indulge their passion for diving. Brent in particular was a respected diver, willing to cobble together a living if it gave him the freedom to dive. Their arrival in Declan’s Cross had attracted local divers. Everyone had assumed they’d move on. Then came the idea for a research field station, the rented garage...and now Julianne Maroney.

Sean decided to get Philip’s opinion, gauge his reaction. “What’s the status of this marine science research field station?”

“Lindsey’s securing funding from her family. She wants it to be a proper field station.” Philip opened a lower cabinet and shoved the tray inside, then stood straight, his cheeks flushed with enthusiasm. “I’ve volunteered to do what I can to help.”

Meaning he wasn’t getting paid. Same with Lindsey’s new friend from Maine. “Lindsey seems to have a knack for getting people to help her.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

Sean shrugged, unruffled. “Nothing on the face of it. What about Brent and Eamon? Are they volunteers?”

“I don’t know, but Eamon’s not involved with the field station that I can see. Brent could be on a Hargreaves Institute grant. He hasn’t said, and I haven’t asked.” Philip was less combative, his interest in the field station plainly genuine. “Can I get you anything?”