Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (100 page)

“Well now we know they did exist and it seems there aren’t many of them left.”

“Anyone who was part of it, Jewel, wouldn’t admit to it these days. Ye said it yerself, most of the people on that list are dead, an’ none of them from natural causes. My Da’ included. I’m awfully surprised William Bright would wear it on his person.”

“I think he intended I should see it. I don’t think that man does anything without forethought.”

Casey breathed heavily through his nose, brows drawing down in anger. “What the hell were ye thinkin’, woman, to go an’ see such a man? He’s feared throughout Ulster, an’ for good reason. In a land of hard men, he’s king.”

“I know, I just thought he might have an answer for me.”

“So he knew my Daddy, did he?” Casey asked softly. Under his words she could hear the half-eager, half-sorrowed note of a child who had lost their parent too soon, and would always be searching for the bits of that person that remained behind in other’s memories.

“He did, and rather liked him too. Which I think, considering the source, is no small compliment.”

Casey nodded, squeezing her cold hand in reassurance, his own only slightly warmer. In the uncertain light of the fire she saw that he was staring into the distance, seeing not the stones of the fireplace, nor the walls or windows, but a memory that would not let him go.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said, hand resting over the beat of his heart.

“I am thinking,” he replied quietly, “that one man can never really understand the heart of another. Even if that other is his own father. I loved him, lived with him, near to worshipped the ground the man walked on, but there were many things, it would seem, that I didn’t know about him.”

“Are you angry with him?”

“No, Jewel.” He laid his hand over her own. “Even a father has a right to his secrets. I suppose I’m feelin’ a little lost is all. I know for certain now that he was murdered. What do I do with that knowledge?”

She felt the familiar clutch of fear in her intestines. And yet how could she deny him his right to know, when she’d risked her own life to try and get at the truth of what had happened to Brian?

“I don’t think there are any clear answers. Maybe if I’d had a chance to talk to that man before they killed him I would have gotten the answers.”

Casey raised a black brow at her, underneath which was a very black look. “I swear to God, woman, if I have to have ye kneecapped to keep ye in place, I’ll do it. An’ I know the men to do the job.”

She swallowed and managed a tremulous smile. There was only one bit of unfinished business that needed attending to and if that didn’t yield any more leads as to what exactly had happened to Brian she would call it a day.

In her pocket, where it had burned from the second William Bright had palmed it, was a piece of paper with an address on it. Under the address was the information that this address was the last place Brian Riordan was known to have visited before his untimely death. Why he hadn’t told her this during their terse interview she did not know, but suspected that even William Bright was not entirely free from fear of the past.

“Is that all, woman? Are all the skeletons free from the closet now?” Casey’s tone was light, but the look in his eyes was not. And for a moment, she considered telling him about Love just to have it out in the open, so that it would no longer have to fester in her soul. But knowing just as surely that it would fester in his, she did not say the words he asked for, but rather the ones that would keep him safe.

“It’s done.”

I AM NOT,” CASEY SAID, FOR THE FOURTH TIME in as many minutes, “goin’ to a doctor.”

“Why in heaven’s name not?” Pamela asked in frustration, feeling a strong need to kick something.

“It’s only a wee cold,” he insisted stubbornly. “I’ll not die from it.”

“Here,” she said, and stuck a thermometer in his mouth, feeling his forehead with her palm. He was burning up, eyes glassy with fever. He sat now, mutinously, on the bed with a blanket wrapped tight around him, shaking despite his avowal that he was perfectly fine.

“Casey Riordan,” she said in exasperation, “you make a terrible sick person.”

“I’ve never been sick before, I don’t know how to act,” he said grumpily, thermometer bobbing up and down with the force of his words.

“I know you’ve said it before, but really?” she asked in disbelief. “Not a cold or an earache even?”

He shook his head, the movement precipitating several violent sneezes.

“Not even chicken pox?”

“Is that the one with the itchy red rash all over ye?”

“Yes.”

“Oh aye,” he nodded. “Pat had that one. I slept beside him every night an’ never got so much as a spot. Poor little bugger scratched himself silly, though.”

“You must have the constitution of an ox,” she said, rubbing eucalyptus oil vigorously between her palms until it was slick with heat.

“Well,” he said, eyeing her hands dubiously, “Daddy always did say as I’d the skull of one.” The red-tipped nose sniffed the air as she approached. “That’s evil-smellin’ stuff, are ye certain it’s not gone off?”

“It’s supposed to smell like this. Now take off that blanket, I’m going to rub your chest down with it.”

Casey gave her a lopsided grin due to the thermometer and said, “Now I like the sound of that.”

An hour later, reeking of eucalyptus oil, Pamela covered up a blissfully slumbering Casey and quietly took her leave of the house.

Pat, as promised, was waiting at the top of the road, car engine idling.

“Christ, it’s about time,” he said as she slid into the car. “I half froze out here—good Lord, what’s that smell?”

“Eucalyptus, and don’t ask,” she said. “Come on, let’s get out of here before either Casey or Lawrence wakes up.”

The house was lying in utter darkness as they approached. The car they’d abandoned far back, tucking it in to a road overgrown with rhododendrons. The rest of the way they covered on foot. Both were shivering by the time they came up on the back yard, a large luxuriant stretch of grass, surrounded by well-groomed cedars. They paused for a minute, the gravity of what they were about to do weighing in rather heavily.

The weather, however, was on their side, the fog so thick that the house, even at such a close proximity, was a vague shape with only glimpses of chimney and long casement windows. This was where William Bright’s scrap of paper had led them. Suddenly Pamela wasn’t sure she wanted to know what secrets were hidden behind the thick stone walls. She had a strange shivery feeling that had nothing to do with the cold, that tonight they might well find answers that were going to prove very hard to live with.

“Christ.” Pat breathed out, breath condensing onto his skin instantly. “Is it possible that we’ve completely lost our minds? I mean, what if we get caught?”

“We can’t,” she said. “Casey will kill me.”

“Me as well.” Pat laughed, a sharp sound of nervousness. Somewhere in the distance a dog howled, and the two of them clutched at each other.

Pat snorted. “Fine pair the two of us are. We’re like to scare each other to death, never mind if we actually run into someone else. Tell me again what the note says.”

“Just the address and the information that the house would be empty for the next week. Nothing else.”

“Right.” Pat blew on his hands, face grim. “We’re completely insane to be here on so little. Let’s go inside.”

The grass, stiff with icy dew, crunched under their feet as they stole across the lawn.

Pamela slid a narrow leather box out of her pocket and flipped it open. The picks, gold-colored, glowed in the fog like the proverbial needles in a haystack. She pulled out the most likely looking one and fit it to the lock. It slid in easily enough, and only took a minute to catch the tumblers and turn them. Lawrence had made her practice blindfold until she could do each lock in the house in under a minute. The practice served her well now, even though her hands were shaking and her heart was pounding fit to burst from her chest.

“Yer very good at that,” Pat said, looking slightly disconcerted.

“I taught Lawrence how to play backgammon and he taught me how to pick locks.”

“Oh, good to see ye do things as a family,” Pat said, sarcasm in good form despite the chattering of his teeth.

“Come on.” She slipped through the door onto a heavy carpet. She moved into the room so that Pat could get inside. He shut the door behind him with a soft click that, to their overly tuned ears, sounded like a gunshot.

They stood completely still for a long moment, letting their vision adjust to the dark and listening carefully to the silence that surrounded them. There were only the normal sounds of an empty house whose owners are on holiday—the hum of electrical appliances, the creaking boards responding to their intrusion, and the low level prickling that all houses seemed to contain, as if they were living, sentient beings.

“Where should we start?” Pamela asked.

They stood in the dining room, a long wooden table glowing like ebony in the darkness, the dim glow of crystal lighting the far wall.

“This way,” Pat said, moving off on cat feet. She followed in his footsteps, knowing he shared his brother’s instincts in darkness. Both men had the night sense of a cat, whereas she was likely to trip over the edge of a carpet she wasn’t anticipating, and was currently hampered by an ankle that was still swathed in a thin cast.

Pat rejected the kitchen, two downstairs powder rooms, and a guestroom as being a waste of their limited time.

“Study, I’m betting,” he whispered back over his shoulder as he jiggled the heavy latch of a door at the far east end of the house. “Door’s locked. Where’s yer wee picks?”

“Less than a minute,” she said some fifty-odd seconds later. “Lawrence would be proud.”

“Aye, well,” Pat said dryly, “that’s up for debate, all things considered.”

The study smelled of leather, old paper, and disuse. It was much colder than the rest of the house, which was saying something.

“It’s like the devil’s meat locker in here.” Pat breathed out, teeth audibly chattering. Heavy curtains hung on the long casement windows, and they felt safe to turn their torches on. The first impression was that the room was rather cluttered. A desk sat in the center, an enormous antique with dozens of small bird-nest holes, filled to overflowing with bits of paper. Scattered around the desk were a bizarre variety of ottomans, chaise lounges and dozens and dozens of large cushions, islands of color on the dark rugs that scrolled out to the edges of the room.

“It looks like some sort of pasha’s den in here,” Pat said, flicking the torch from one velvet-covered atrocity to the next. “Come on, let’s get started with the desk.”

She knelt down, Lawrence’s set of picks glinting like wicked sharp needles. The desk was a bit of a challenge, being that a larger barreled key was needed for the ornate locks. She chose the largest of the picks, which had a barrel roughly half the diameter of a screwdriver, and slid it into the top lock, which should, she hoped, unlock the entire set of drawers. The drawer popped open a few seconds later and she sighed with relief.

“Here, you check the desk while I get the filing cabinet.” Pamela said.

Pat nodded, already riffling through the top drawer, where a series of manila envelopes with dates on them were stacked a foot deep.

The file cabinet wasn’t much of a challenge. The second smallest pick and twenty seconds were all that were needed before the lock popped and the heavy drawers rolled outward.

The top drawer held business documents, as well as the normal run of bills, household expenses, insurance documents etc. Pamela flicked through it quickly, her hands stiffening even with the protection of the gloves. The room was so cold it was akin to standing inside a refrigerator with the door shut.

The second drawer held a disgusting array of racist tracts and religious dogma—pamphlets and books that made her feel soiled just for touching them. Hatred was something she had firsthand experience with; hated for merely being of a certain religion, or more particularly in her case, for being female. But hate on an organized scale—the Third Reich or the KKK, or any of the narrow fundamentalist sects whose foundations rested heavily upon hatred of the Other— was something, even after time in Belfast with its firmly entrenched and ancient tribal schisms, she found much harder to comprehend.

There was nothing of particular interest, though, and nothing to tell her why William Bright had put this address in her hands. Given his reputation, he was no stranger to organized hatred himself. She flicked over the last file, and then understood just where he’d been leading her that day.

The photos were poorly lit amateur shots and yet their impact was not lessened by these qualities. Pictures of boys; boys who had a few things in common, they were all young, all naked, and all posed in a variety of perverse sexual tableaux that made her close her eyes in horror.

“What is it?”

“I—I—just come look.”

Pat took the file out and the pictures spilled across the floor. He made an inarticulate, half-choked noise and then quickly shoved them back in the dark brown folder they had been hidden inside.

“Desk is full of film strips, negative an’ reels. I imagine they’d be the same as these.” He put a gloved fist to his forehead and breathed hard through his nose. And then put his hand out to open the bottom drawer of the file cabinet.

Ropes, handcuffs, leather hoods, whips, and other devices that didn’t bear a closer scrutiny, filled the bottom drawer. Pat cursed under his breath and turned abruptly away. Pamela stepped back, wanting distance between herself and what they were seeing. In doing so, she stumbled over one of the low tables and caught up hard on her elbow against the solid shelves built into the wall.

“Ye alright?” Pat whispered, breath a chill fog in front of him.

“I’m okay. But I could swear that bookshelf just gave when I hit it.”

Pat frowned, and stepped over the velvet-tasseled ottoman. His skin was stark white against the dark wool of his hat and sweater; his eyes indiscernible from the shadows that clustered about them. He looked the shelf over, pushing on the edge, where it seemingly dovetailed with the one next to it.