Read the book: «The Angel»
Praise for the novels of
CARLA NEGGERS
“No one does romantic suspense better!”
—Janet Evanovich
“A believable, gripping story that will keep armchair sleuths guessing… Here is intelligent writing that remains highly entertaining.”
—Publishers Weekly on Betrayals
“Neggers has created yet another well-matched pair of characters and given them a crackerjack mystery to solve—complete with a seriously creepy villain.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Abandon
“[Neggers’s] skill at creating colorful characters and deliciously twisted story lines makes this an addictive read.”
—Publishers Weekly on Stonebrook Cottage
“When it comes to romance, adventure and suspense, nobody delivers like Carla Neggers.”
—Jayne Ann Krentz
“A keen ear for dialogue and a sure hand with multidimensional characterizations are Neggers’s greatest gifts as a storyteller…. By turns creepy and amusing, the story engages on several levels.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Breakwater
“Neggers keeps the reader guessing ‘whodunit’ to the end of her intriguing novel.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Widow
“Suspense, romance and the rocky Maine coast—what more could a reader ask? The Harbor has it all. Carla Neggers writes a story so vivid you can smell the salt air and feel the mist on your skin.”
—Tess Gerritsen
The Angel
Carla Neggers
www.mirabooks.co.uk
To Kate and Conor
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Brendan Gunning for all the wonderful Irish and Irish-American stories, and to Myles Heffernan, Paul Hudson, Jamie Carr and Christine Wenger for sharing your knowledge and expertise.
To Sarah Gallick for the help with Irish saints and for sending me early excerpts from The Big Book of Women Saints.
To my daughter, Kate Jewell, and my son-in-law, Conor Hansen, for getting us all to southwest Ireland. Conor, I’ll never forget standing in the stone house where your great-grandfather was born, or meeting your cousins on the Beara Peninsula.
To Don Lucey for the insight into Irish music and all the great recommendations.
To my agent, Margaret Ruley, and to my editor, Margaret Marbury, for the unwavering patience and support, and to the rest of the fabulous team in New York and Toronto—Donna Hayes, Craig Swinwood, Loriana Sacilotto, Dianne Moggy, Katherine Orr, Marleah Stout, Heather Foy, Michelle Renaud, Stacy Widdrington, Margie Miller, Adam Wilson and everyone who makes MIRA Books such an incredible pleasure to work with.
And to Joe Jewell, my husband, for all the great times in Boston, “our” city, and to Zack Jewell, my son…yes, another trip to Ireland is in the works. Can’t wait!
Carla Neggers
P.O. Box 826
Quechee, VT 05059
www.carlaneggers.com
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Prologue
South Boston, Massachusetts
2:00 p.m., EDT
July 12, Thirty Years Ago
A scrap of yellow crime scene tape bobbed in the rising tide of Boston Harbor where the brutalized body of nineteen-year-old Deirdre McCarthy had washed ashore. Bob O’Reilly couldn’t take his eyes off it.
Neither could Patsy McCarthy, Deirdre’s mother, who stood next to him in the hot summer sun. Coming out here was her idea. Bob didn’t want to, but he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t let her go alone.
“Deirdre was an angel.”
“She was, Mrs. McCarthy. Deirdre was the best.”
Ninety degrees outside, and Patsy shivered in her pastel blue polyester sweater. She’d lost weight in the three weeks since Deirdre hadn’t come home after her shift as a nurse’s aide. At first the police had believed she was just another South Boston girl who’d gone wrong. Patsy kept at them. Not Deirdre.
She disappeared on the night of the summer solstice. The longest day of the year.
Appropriate, somehow, Bob thought.
Patsy’s eyes, as clear and as blue as the afternoon sky, lifted to the horizon, as if she were trying to see the island of her birth, as if Ireland could bring her the comfort and strength she needed to get through her ordeal. She’d left the southwest Irish coast forty years ago at the age of nine and hadn’t been back since. She loved to tell stories about her Irish childhood, how she was born in a one-room cottage with no plumbing, no central heat—not even an outhouse—and how she’d learned to bake her famous brown bread on an open fire.
Bob wondered how she’d tell this story. The story of her daughter’s kidnapping, rape, torture and murder.
The police hadn’t released details, but Bob, the son of a Boston cop, had heard rumors of unspeakable acts of violence and depravity. He was twenty and planned on becoming a detective, and one day he would have to wade through such details himself. He hoped the victim would never be someone he knew. He and Deirdre had learned to roller-skate together, had given each other their first kiss, just to see what it was like.
“I heard the cry of a banshee all last night,” Patsy said quietly. “I can’t say I do or don’t believe in fairies, but I heard what I heard. I knew we’d find Deirdre this morning.”
The fine hairs stood on the back of Bob’s neck. A retired firefighter walking his golden retriever at sunrise had come upon Deirdre’s body. The police had come and gone, working with a grim efficiency, given Boston’s skyrocketing homicide rate. Now they had another killer to hunt.
With the city behind them and the boats out on the water and planes taking off from Logan Airport, Bob still could hear the lapping of the tide on the sand. He’d never felt so damn helpless and alone.
“Deirdre Ita McCarthy.” Patsy crossed her arms on her chest as if she were cold. “It’s the name of an Irish saint, you know. Saint Ita was born Deirdre and took the name Ita when she made her vows. Ita means ‘thirsting for divine love.’”
Patsy was deeply religious, but Bob had stopped attending mass regularly when he was sixteen and his mother said it was up to him to go or not go. He knew he’d go back to church for Deirdre’s funeral.
“I’ve never been good at keeping track of the saints.” He tried to smile. “Even the Irish ones.”
“Saint Patrick, Saint Brigid and Saint Ita are early Celtic saints. Saint Ita had the gift of prophecy. Angels visited her throughout her life. Do you believe in angels, Bob?”
“I’ve never thought about it.”
“I do,” she whispered. “I believe in angels.”
It wouldn’t strike Patsy as particularly contradictory to say in one breath she’d heard a banshee—a solitary fairy—and in another that she believed in angels. If her beliefs brought her comfort, Bob didn’t care. He didn’t know what to tell her about banshees or angels or anything else. Her husband had died of a heart attack four years ago. Now this. “The police will find who took Deirdre from us.”
“No. They won’t. They can’t.” Patsy shifted her gaze back to the crime scene tape floating in the water. “The police are only human after all.”
“They won’t rest until they catch whoever did this.”
“It was the devil who took Deirdre. It wasn’t a man.”
“Doesn’t matter. If the police have to go to hell to find and arrest the devil, that’s what they’ll do. If I have to do it myself, I will.”
“No—no, Bob. Deirdre wouldn’t have you sacrifice your soul. She’s with her sister angels now. She’s at peace.”
Bob suddenly realized Patsy meant the devil literally. He pictured Deirdre with her blond hair and blue eyes, her translucent skin and innocent smile. She was as good as good ever was. She wouldn’t have stood a chance with someone who meant her harm. Devil or no devil.
He’d miss her. He’d miss her for as long as he lived.
He pushed back his emotions. It was something he’d need to learn to do if he was going to be a detective and catch people the likes of whoever had killed Deirdre.
“We don’t want this cretin to hurt someone else.”
“No, we don’t.” Patsy turned from the water. “But there are other ways to fight the devil.”
Two hours later, Bob found his sister, Eileen, reciting the rosary on a bench in the shade of a sprawling oak on the Boston College campus, where she had a summer work-study job at the library.
“I didn’t know you still had rosary beads,” he said.
“I didn’t, either. I found them in my jewelry box this morning.” She spoke in a near whisper as she held a single ivory-colored bead between her thumb and forefinger. “I haven’t said the rosary in ages. I thought I might not remember, but it came right back to me.”
Bob sat next to her. His sister was the smart one in the family. She’d returned two days ago from a summer study program in Dublin. No one had called to tell her Deirdre had gone missing. What could Eileen do from Ireland? Why spoil her time there, when they all hoped Deirdre would turn up, safe and sound?
When news of the discovery of Deirdre’s body reached the O’Reilly household that morning, Eileen pretended nothing had happened and left for work.
“I’ve just come from the waterfront with Mrs. McCarthy,” Bob said.
Eileen tensed, as if his words were a blow, and he didn’t go on. Her hair was more dirty blond than red like his, and she had more freckles. She’d never thought she was all that attractive, but she’d always been hard on herself—his sister had no limit to her personal list of faults big and small.
“There’s nothing the police can do now.” Eileen lifted her eyes from her rosary beads and shifted her gaze to her older brother. “Is there?”
“They can find Deirdre’s killer. They can stop him from killing again.”
“They can’t undo what happened.”
His sister’s left hand trembled, but her right hand, which held her rosary beads, was steady. Bob noticed how pale she was, as if she’d been sick. His smart, driven sister had so many plans for her life, but coming back home from Ireland to Deirdre’s disappearance had thrown Eileen right back into the world she was trying to exit.
And now Deirdre was dead.
Eileen’s fingers automatically moved to the next bead, and he saw her lips move as she silently recited the Hail, Mary.
He waited for her to finish the entire rosary and return her beads to their navy velvet pouch. She clutched it in her hand and leaned back against the bench.
They both watched a squirrel run up a maple tree.
Without looking at her brother, Eileen said, “I’m pregnant.”
Of all the things Bob had anticipated she might say when she’d finished praying, he hadn’t imagined that one. Their parents would be shocked. He was shocked. She didn’t have a boyfriend that he knew about.
He fought an urge to run away. Get out of Boston, away from the aftermath of Deirdre’s death, from what was to come with his sister. It all flashed in his mind—Patsy grieving next door, the police hunting for Deirdre’s killer, Eileen getting bigger, trying to figure out what to do with the baby.
The baby’s father. Who the hell was he?
Bob curled his hands into tight fists. He was young. He didn’t have to stay in Boston and deal with all these problems. He could go anywhere. He could be a detective in New York or Miami or Seattle.
Hawaii, he thought. He could move to Honolulu.
“How far along are you?” he asked.
“Not far. I haven’t had the test yet, but I know.”
“Eileen…” Bob looked at his younger sister, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “What happened in Ireland?”
But she jumped to her feet and walked quickly toward the ivy-covered building where she worked, and he didn’t follow her.
A week later, a series of calls into the Boston Police Department alerted them to a man who had just leaped from a boat into Boston Harbor.
He was in flames when he hit the water.
By the time a passing pleasure boat reached him, he was dead.
Within hours, the dead man was identified as Stuart Fuller, a twenty-four-year-old road worker who rented an attic apartment three blocks from the house where Deirdre McCarthy lived with her mother. Police discovered overwhelming evidence that tied him to Deirdre’s murder.
They had their devil.
The autopsy on Fuller determined that he’d drowned, but his burns would have killed him if he hadn’t gone into the water.
That evening, Bob found Patsy on her back porch with about twenty small angel figurines lined up on the top of the wide wooden railing. Despite the summer heat, she wore a pink polyester sweater, as if she expected never to be warm again.
“Deirdre collected angels,” Patsy said.
“I know. It made it easy to buy her presents.” Bob pointed at a colorful glass angel he’d found for her on a high school trip to Cape Cod. “I got her that one for her sixteenth birthday.”
“It’s beautiful, Bob.”
His throat tightened. “Mrs. McCarthy—”
“The police were here this morning. They told me about Stuart Fuller. They asked me if I knew him.”
“Did you?”
“Not that I recall. I suppose I could have seen him in the neighborhood.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “At church, perhaps. The devil is always drawn to good.”
Bob watched her use a damp cloth to clean a delicate white porcelain angel holding a small Irish harp. It was one of the more valuable figurines in Deirdre’s collection and one of her favorites. She’d loved all kinds of angels—it didn’t matter if they were cheap, cheesy, expensive, ethnic. She used to tell Bob she wanted to buy a glass curio cabinet in which to display them.
“Patsy…do you know anything about Fuller’s death?”
She seemed not to hear him. “I have a story I want to tell you.”
Bob didn’t have the patience for one of her stories right now. “Which one?”
“One you’ve never heard before.” She held up the cleaned figurine to the light. “My grandfather first told it to me as a child in Ireland. Oh, he was a wonderful storyteller.”
“I’m sure he was, but—”
“It’s a story about three brothers who get into a battle with fairies over an ancient stone angel.” Patsy’s eyes sparked, and for a moment, she seemed almost happy. “It was one of Deirdre’s favorites.”
“Then it can’t be depressing. Deirdre didn’t like depressing stories.”
“She didn’t, did she? Come, Bob. I’ll make tea and heat up some brown bread for you. It’s my mother’s recipe. I made it fresh this morning. My father used to say my mother made the best brown bread in all of West Cork.”
Bob had no choice but to follow Patsy into her small kitchen and help her set out the tea and the warm, dense bread. How many times had he and Eileen and Deirdre sat here, listening to Patsy tell old Irish stories?
She joined him at the table, her cheeks flushed as she buttered a small piece of bread. “Once upon a time,” she said, laying on her Irish accent, “there were three brothers who lived on the southwest coast of Ireland—a farmer, a hermit monk and a ne’er-do-well, who was, of course, everyone’s favorite…”
Bob drank the tea, ate the bread and pushed back tears for the friend he’d lost as he listened to Patsy’s story.
Chapter 1
Near Mount Monadnock
Southern New Hampshire
4:00 p.m., EDT
June 17, Present Day
Keira Sullivan swiped at a mosquito and wondered if its Irish cousins would be as persistent. She’d find out soon enough, she thought as she walked along the trail to her mother’s cabin in the southern New Hampshire woods. She’d be on a plane to Ireland tomorrow night, off to the southwest Irish coast to research an old story of mischief, magic and an ancient stone angel.
In the meantime, she had to get this visit behind her and attend a reception tonight in Boston. But she couldn’t wait to be tucked in her rented Irish cottage, alone with her art supplies, her laptop, her camera and her walking shoes.
For the next six weeks, she’d be free to think, dream, draw, paint, explore and, perhaps, make peace with her past.
More accurately, with her mother’s past.
The cabin came into view, nestled on an evergreen-blanketed hill above a stream. Keira could hear the water tumbling over rocks and feel it cooling the humid late spring air. Birds twittered and fluttered nearby—chickadees, probably. Her mother would have given all the birds on her hillside names.
The mosquito followed Keira the last few yards up the path. It had found her at the dead-end dirt road where she’d left her car and stayed with her throughout the long trek through the woods. She was less than two hours from Boston, but she might as well have been on another planet as she sweated in the June heat, her blond hair coming out of its pins, her legs spattered with mud. She wished instead of shorts she’d worn long pants, in case her solo mosquito summoned reinforcements.
She stood on the flat, gray rock that served as a step to the cabin’s back entrance. Her mother had built the cabin herself, using local lumber, refusing help from family and friends. She’d hired out, reluctantly, only what she couldn’t manage on her own.
There was no central heat, no plumbing, no electricity. She had no telephone, no radio, no television—no mail delivery, even. And forget about a car.
On frigid New England winter nights, life had to get downright unbearable, if not dangerous, but Keira knew her mother would never complain. She had chosen the simple, rugged existence of a religious ascetic. No one had thrust it upon her.
Keira peered through the screen door, grateful that her mother’s stripped-down lifestyle didn’t prohibit the use of screens. The pesky mosquito could stay outside.
“Hello—it’s me, Mum. Keira.”
As if her mother had other children. As if she might have forgotten her only daughter’s name since chucking the outside world. Keira had last visited her mother several weeks ago but hadn’t stayed long. Then again, they hadn’t spent much time together in the past few years, never mind the past eighteen months when she’d first announced her intention to pursue this new commitment.
Her mother had always been religious, which Keira respected, but this, she thought as she swiped again at her mosquito—this isolated hermit’s life just wasn’t right.
“Keira!” her mother called, sounding cheerful. “Come in, come in. I’m here in the front room. Leave your shoes on the step, won’t you?”
Keira kicked off her hiking shoes and entered the kitchen—or what passed for one. It consisted of a few rustic cupboards and basic supplies that her mother had scavenged at yard sales for her austere life. Her priest had talked her into a gas-powered refrigerator. He was working on talking her into a gas-powered stove and basic plumbing—even just a single cold-water faucet—but she was resisting. Except for the coldest days, she said, she could manage to fetch her own water from the nearby spring.
Winning an argument with Eileen O’Reilly Sullivan had never been an easy task.
Keira crossed the rough pine-board floor into the cabin’s main living area. Her mother, dressed in a flowing top and elastic-waist pants, got up from a high stool at a big hunk of birch board set on trestles that served as her worktable. Her graying hair was blunt cut, reminding Keira of a nun, but although her mother had turned to a religious life, she’d taken no vows.
“It’s so good to see you, Keira.”
“You, too.” Keira meant it, but if she wanted to see her mother, she had to come out here—her mother wouldn’t come to her in Boston. “The place looks great. Nice and cozy.”
“It’s home.”
Her mother sat back on her work stool. Behind her, a picture window overlooked an evergreen-covered hillside that dropped down to a stream. Keira appreciated the view, but, as much as she needed solitude herself at times, she couldn’t imagine living out here.
A nearby hemlock swayed in a gust of wind, sending a warm breeze through the tiny cabin. Except for a wooden crucifix, the barn-board walls of the main room were unadorned. Besides the worktable and stool, the only other furnishings were an iron bed with a thin mattress, a rocking chair and a narrow chest of drawers. Not only was the small, efficient cast-iron woodstove the sole source of heat, it was also where her mother did any cooking. She chopped the wood for the stove herself.
The land on which the cabin was built was owned by a South Boston couple whose country home was through the woods, in the opposite direction of the path Keira had just used. She considered them complicit in her mother’s withdrawal from the world—from her own family. They’d let her choose the spot for her cabin and then stood back, neutral, until she’d finally moved in last summer.
A year out here, Keira thought. A year, and she looks as content as ever.
“It really is so good to see you, sweetheart,” her mother said quietly.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.”
A large sheet of inexpensive sketch paper was spread out on her worktable. Before retreating to the woods, she’d owned an art supply store in the southern New Hampshire town where she’d moved as a young widow with a small daughter. Over the years, she’d become adept at calligraphy and the tricky art of gilding, supplementing her income by restoring gilt picture frames and mirrors and creating elaborate wedding and birth announcements. Now she was applying her skills to the almost-forgotten art of producing an illuminated manuscript. The same couple who’d let her build on their land had found someone willing to pay her to illustrate an original manuscript of select Bible passages. Other than requesting an Irish Celtic sensibility and choosing the passages, the client left her alone.
It was painstaking work—deliberate, skilled, imaginative. She had her supplies at arm’s reach. Brushes, pens, inks, paints, calligraphy nibs, gilding tips, a gilding cushion, polishing cloths and burnishers.
“You’re working on your own Book of Kells,” Keira said with a smile.
Her mother shook her head. “The Book of Kells is a masterpiece. It’s been described as the work of angels. I’m a mere human.”
Another wind gust shook the trees outside on the hill. Storms were brewing, a cold front about to move in and blow out the humidity that had settled over New England during the past week. Keira wanted to get back to her car before the rain started.
“Did you see the Book of Kells when you were in Ireland in college?”
“I did.” Her mother’s tone was distant, controlled. She shifted her gaze to the blank, pure white paper on her desk, as if envisioning the intricate, thousand-year-old illuminated manuscript. “I’ll never forget it. What I’m doing is quite different. Much simpler.”
“It’ll be wonderful.”
“Thank you. The Book of Kells consists mainly of the four Gospels, but I was asked to start with the fall of Adam and Eve.” Her mother’s eyes, a striking shade of cornflower blue, shone with sudden humor. “I haven’t settled on the right serpent.”
Keira noticed a series of small pencil sketches taped to the birch board. “Those are some pretty wild serpents. It doesn’t get to you, being up here all alone drawing pictures of bad-assed snakes and bolts of lightning?”
Her mother laughed. “No bolts of lightning, I’m afraid. Although…” She thought a moment. “I don’t know, Keira, you could be onto something. A bright, organic bolt of lightning in the Garden of Eden could work, don’t you think?”
Keira could feel the tension easing out of her. She’d moved to Boston in January after a brief stint in San Diego and had trekked up here on snowshoes, hoping just to find her mother alive and reasonably sane. But her mother had been warm and toasty, a pot of chili bubbling on her woodstove, content with her rigid routines of prayer and work. Keira had thought living closer would mean they’d see more of each other. It hadn’t. She could have stayed in San Diego or moved to Miami or Tahiti or Mozambique—or Ireland, she thought. The land of her ancestors.
The land of her father.
Maybe.
Her mother’s sociability didn’t last, and the humor in her eyes died almost immediately. A studied blankness—a sense of peace, she would no doubt say—brought a neutrality to her expression. She seemed to take a conscious step back from her engagement with the world. In this case, the world as represented by her daughter.
Keira tried not to be offended. “I came to say goodbye for a few weeks. I leave for Ireland tomorrow night for six weeks.”
“Six weeks? Isn’t that a long time?”
“I’m doing something different this trip.” Keira hesitated, then said, “I’m renting a cottage on the southwest coast. The Beara Peninsula.”
Her mother gazed out at her wooded hillside. A second screen door opened onto another rock step and a small yard where she’d planted a vegetable garden, fencing it off to keep out deer and who knew what other animals.
Finally, she let out a breath. “Always so restless.”
True enough, Keira thought. As a child, she’d roamed the woods with a sketch pad and colored pencils. In college, she’d snapped up every opportunity to go places—backpacking with friends out West, jumping on a lobster boat with a short-lived boyfriend, spending a summer in Paris on a shoestring. After college, she’d tried several careers before falling back on what she loved most—drawing, painting, folklore. She’d managed to combine them into a successful career, becoming known for her illustrations of classic poems and folktales. That her work was portable, allowing her to indulge her sense of adventure, was another plus.
“When I was here last,” she said, “I told you about a project I’m involved with—I’m working with an Irish professor who’s putting together a conference on Irish folklore next spring. It’ll be in two parts, one in Boston and one in Cork.”
“I remember,” her mother said.
“One of the emphases will be on twentieth-century immigrants to America. I’ve been working that angle, and I ended up deciding to put together and illustrate a collection specifically of their stories. I have a wonderful one Gran told me before she died. She was from West Cork—”
“I know she was. Keira…” Her mother’s eyes were pained.
“What’s wrong? I’ve been to Ireland before. Not the Beara Peninsula, but—Mum, are you afraid I’m going to run into my father?”
“Your father was John Michael Sullivan.”
But Keira was referring to her biological father. Her mother had returned home from a summer study program in Ireland at nineteen, pregnant with Keira. When Keira was a year old, her mother had married John Sullivan, a South Boston electrician ten years her senior. He was killed in a car accident two years later, and his widow and adopted daughter had moved out of Boston and started a new life.
Keira had no clear memory of him, but when she looked at pictures of him, she felt an overwhelming sense of affection, gratitude and grief, as if some part of her did remember him. Her mother never discussed that one trip to Ireland thirty years ago. For all Keira knew, her biological father could have been a Swedish tourist or another American student.
She debated a moment, then said, “A woman on your old street in South Boston heard about the folklore project and got in touch with me. She told me this incredible story about three Irish brothers who fight with each other and fairies over an ancient stone angel—”
“Patsy McCarthy,” her mother said in a toneless voice.
“That’s right. She says she told you this story, too, before your trip to Ireland. The brothers believe the statue is of one of the angels said to visit Saint Ita during her lifetime. The fairies believe it’s not an angel at all but actually one of their own who’s been turned to stone. There’s more to it—it’s quite a tale.”
“Mrs. McCarthy told a lot of stories.”
“Her grandfather heard this one when he worked in the copper mines on the Beara Peninsula and told it to Patsy when she was a little girl in Ireland. The village where the brothers lived isn’t named, but there are enough details—”
“To pinpoint it. Yes, I know.”
“And the spot where the hermit monk brother lived. You could make a stab at finding it, at least, if you know the story.” Keira waited, but when her mother didn’t respond, continued. “Patsy told me you were determined to find the village and look for the hermit monk’s hut on your trip to Ireland before I was born.”
“She’s a gifted storyteller.”
“Yes, she is.”
Her mother lifted a small, filmy sheet of gold leaf to the light streaming in through the window. The use of gold—real gold—was what distinguished a true illuminated manuscript, but Keira knew it was far too soon for her mother to apply gold to her work-in-progress.
“Do you know the difference between sin and evil, Keira?”
Keira didn’t want to talk about sin and evil. She wanted to talk about Patsy’s old story and magic, mischief and fairies. “It’s not something I think much about.”
“Adam and Eve sinned.” Her mother turned the gold leaf so that it gleamed in the late-afternoon light. “They wanted to please God, but they succumbed to temptation. They regretted their disobedience. They took no delight in what they did.”
“In other words, they sinned.”
“Yes, but the serpent is a different case altogether. He delights in his wrongdoing. He exults in thwarting God. He sees himself as the antithesis of God. Unlike Adam and Eve, the serpent didn’t commit a sin in the Garden of Eden. The serpent chose evil.”
“Honestly, Mum, I don’t know how you can stand to think about this stuff out here by yourself.”
She set the thin gold leaf on the pure white paper. Keira knew from experience that the gold leaf was difficult to work with but resilient, able to withstand considerable manipulation without breaking into pieces. Applied properly, it looked like solid gold, not just a whisper of gold.
“We all sin, Keira,” her mother said without a hint of a smile, “but we’re not all evil. The devil understands that. Evil is a particular dispensation of the soul.”
“Does this have anything to do with Ireland? With what happened there when you—”
“No. It has nothing at all to do with Ireland.” She took a breath. “So, how’s your work?”
Keira stifled her irritation at the abrupt change of subject. It felt like a dismissal and probably was, but she reminded herself that she hadn’t come out to the woods to judge her mother, or even for information. She’d come simply to say goodbye before flying out of Boston tomorrow night.
“My work’s going great right now, thanks.” Why go into detail when that world no longer interested or concerned her mother?
“That’s good to hear. Thank you for stopping by.” She got to her feet and hugged Keira goodbye. “Live your life, sweetheart. Don’t get too caught up in all these crazy old stories. And please don’t worry about me out here. I’m fine.”
On her way back through the woods, Keira resisted the urge to look over her shoulder for the devil and serpents. Instead, she remembered herself as a child, and how her mother would sing her Irish songs and read her stories. Every kind of story—stories about fairies and wizards and giants, about hobbits and elves and dark lords, princes and princesses, witches, goblins, cobblers, explorers and adventurers.
How could such a fun-loving, sociable woman end up alone out here?
But Keira had to admit there had been hints of what was to come—that she’d seen glimpses in her mother of a mysterious sadness and private guilt, of a longing for a peace that she knew could never really be hers in this life.
Her mother insisted she hadn’t withdrawn from the world or rejected her family but rather had embraced her religious beliefs in a personal and profound way. She viewed herself as participating in a centuries-old monastic tradition.
That was no doubt true, but Keira didn’t believe her mother’s retreat to her isolated cabin was rooted entirely in her faith. As she’d listened to Patsy McCarthy tell her old story, Keira had begun to wonder if her mother’s trip to Ireland thirty years ago had somehow set into motion her eventual turn to the life of a religious hermit.
Another mosquito—or maybe the same one—found Keira, buzzing in her ear and jerking her back to the here and now, to her own life. She swiped at the mosquito as she plunged down the narrow trail through the woods to the dead-end dirt road where she’d parked.
The story of the three Irish brothers, the fairies and the stone angel wasn’t about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Ultimately, Keira thought, it was about the push-pull of family ties and the deep, human yearning for a connection with others, for happiness and good fortune.
Mostly, it was just a damn good yarn—a mesmerizing story that Keira could illustrate and tell on the pages of her new book.
“They say the stone angel lies buried to this day in the old ruin of the hermit monk’s hut.”
Maybe, maybe not. Patsy McCarthy, and her grandfather before her, easily could have exaggerated and embellished the story over the years. It didn’t matter. Keira was hooked, and she couldn’t wait to be on her way to Ireland.
In the meantime, she had to get back to Boston in time for a reception and a silent auction to benefit the Boston-Cork folklore project that had brought her to Patsy’s South Boston kitchen in the first place.
She glanced back into the woods, wishing her mother could be at the reception tonight. “Not just for my sake, Mum,” Keira whispered. “For your own.”
Chapter 2
Boston Public Garden
Boston, Massachusetts
7:00 p.m., EDT
June 17
Victor Sarakis didn’t let the heavy downpour stop him.
He couldn’t.
He had to warn Keira Sullivan.
Rain spattered on the asphalt walks of the Public Garden, a Victorian oasis in the heart of Boston. He picked up his pace, wishing he’d remembered to bring an umbrella or even a hooded jacket, but he didn’t have far to go. Once through the Public Garden, he had only to cross Charles Street and make his way up Beacon Street to an address just below the gold-domed Massachusetts State House.
He could do it. He had to do it.
The gray, muted light and startling amount of rain darkened his mood and further fueled his sense of urgency.
“Keira can’t go to Ireland.”
He was surprised he spoke out loud. He was aware that many people didn’t consider him entirely normal, but he’d never been one to talk to himself.
“She can’t look for the stone angel.”
Drenched to the bone as he was, he’d look like a madman when he arrived at the elegant house where the benefit auction that Keira was attending tonight was being held. He couldn’t let that deter him. He had to get her to hear him out.
He had to tell her what she was up against.
What was after her.
Evil.
Pure evil.
Not mental illness, not sin—evil.
Victor had to warn her in person. He couldn’t call the authorities and leave it to them. What proof did he have? What evidence? He’d sound like a lunatic.
Just stop Keira from going to Ireland. Then he could decide how to approach the police. What to tell them.
“Victor.”
His name seemed to be carried on the wind.
The warm, heavy rain streamed down his face and back, poured into his shoes. He slowed his pace.
“Victor.”
He realized now that he hadn’t imagined the voice.
His gaze fell on the Public Garden’s shallow pond, rain pelting into its gray water. The famous swan boats were tied up for the evening. With the fierce storms, the Public Garden was virtually empty of people.
No witnesses.
Victor broke into an outright run, even as he debated his options. He could continue on the walkways to Charles Street, or he could charge through the pond’s shallow water, try to escape that way.
But already he knew there’d be no escape.
“Victor.”
His gait faltered. He couldn’t run fast enough. He wasn’t athletic, but that didn’t matter.
He couldn’t outrun such evil.
He couldn’t outrun one of the devil’s own.
No one could.
Chapter 3
Beacon Hill
Boston, Massachusetts
8:30 p.m., EDT
June 17
Not for the first time in his life, Simon Cahill found himself in an argument with an unrelenting snob, this time in Boston, but he could as easily have been in New York, San Francisco, London or Paris. He’d been to all of them. He enjoyed a good argument—especially with someone as obnoxious and pretentious as Lloyd Adler.
Adler looked to be in his early forties and wore jeans and a rumpled black linen sport coat with a white T-shirt, his graying hair pulled back in a short ponytail. He gestured across the crowded, elegant Beacon Hill drawing room toward a watercolor painting of an Irish stone cottage. “Keira Sullivan is more Tasha Tudor and Beatrix Potter than Picasso, wouldn’t you agree, Simon?”
Probably, but Simon didn’t care. The artist in question was supposed to have made her appearance by now. Adler had griped about that, too, but her tardiness hadn’t seemed to stop people from bidding on the two paintings she’d donated to tonight’s auction. The second was of a fairy or elf or some damn thing in a magical glen. Proceeds would go to support a scholarly conference on Irish and Irish-American folklore to be held next spring in Boston and Cork, Ireland.
In addition to being a popular illustrator, Keira Sullivan was also a folklorist.
Simon hadn’t taken a close look at either of her donated paintings. A week ago, he’d been in Armenia searching for survivors of a moderate but damaging earthquake. Over a hundred people had died. Men, women, children.
Mostly children.
But now he was in a suit—an expensive one—and drinking champagne in the first-floor chandeliered drawing room of an elegant early nineteenth-century brick house overlooking Boston Common. He figured he deserved to be mistaken for an art snob.
“Beatrix Potter’s the artist who drew Peter Rabbit, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
Simon swallowed more of his champagne. It wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t a snob about champagne, either. He liked what he liked and didn’t worry about the rest. He didn’t mind if other people fussed over what they were drinking—he just minded if they were a pain in the ass about it. “When I was a kid, my mother decorated my room with cross-stitched scenes of Peter and his buddies.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Cross-stitch. You know—you count these threads and—” Simon stopped, deliberately, and shrugged. He knew he didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d had Beatrix Potter rabbits on his wall as a kid, but he was telling the truth. “Now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder what happened to my little rabbits.”
Adler frowned, then chuckled. “That’s very funny,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe Simon was serious. “Keira Sullivan is good at what she does, obviously, but I hate to see her work overshadow several quite interesting pieces here tonight. A shame, really.”
Simon looked at Adler, who suddenly went red and bolted into the crowd, mumbling that he needed to say hello to someone.
A lot of his arguments ended that way, Simon thought as he finished off his champagne, got rid of his empty glass and grabbed a full one from another tray. The event was catered, and most of the guests were dressed up and having a good time. From what he’d heard, they included a wide range of people—academics, graduate students, artists, musicians, folklorists, benefactors, a couple of priests and a handful of politicians and rich art collectors.
And at least two cops, but Simon steered clear of them.
“Lloyd Adler’s not that easy to scare off,” Owen Garrison said, shaking his head as he joined Simon. Owen was lean and good-looking, but all the Garrisons were. Simon was built like a bull. No other way to say it.
“I’m on good behavior tonight.” He grinned, cheekily putting out his pinkie finger as he sipped his fresh champagne. Owen just rolled his eyes. Simon decided he’d probably had enough to drink and set the glass on a side table. Too much bubbly and he’d start a fight. “I didn’t say a word.”
“You didn’t have to,” Owen said. “One look, and he scurried.”
“No way. I’m charming. Everyone says so.”
“Not everyone.”
Probably true, but Simon did tend to get along with people. He was at the reception as a favor to Owen, whose family, not coincidentally, owned the house where it was taking place. The Garrisons were an old-money family who’d left Boston for Texas after the death of Owen’s sister, Dorothy, at fourteen. It was a hellish story. Just eleven himself at the time, Owen had watched her fall off a cliff and drown near the Garrison summer home in Maine. There was nothing he could have done to save her.
Simon suspected the trauma of that day was the central reason Owen had founded Fast Rescue, an international search-and-rescue organization. It was based in Austin and operated on mostly private funds to perform its central mission to put expert volunteer teams in place within twenty-four hours of a disaster—man-made or natural—anywhere in the world.
Simon had become a Fast Rescue volunteer eighteen months ago, a decision that was complicating his life more than it should have, and not, he thought, because the Armenian mission had fallen at a particularly awkward time for him.
Owen, a top search-and-rescue expert himself, was wearing an expensive suit, too, but he still looked somewhat out of place in the house his great-grandfather had bought a century ago. The decor was in shades of cream and sage green, apparently Dorothy Garrison’s favorite colors. The first floor was reserved for meetings and functions, but the second and third floors comprised the offices for the foundation named in Dorothy’s honor and dedicated to projects her family believed would have been of particular interest to her.
Owen glanced toward the door to the house’s main entry. “Still no sign of Keira Sullivan. Her uncle’s getting impatient.”
Her uncle was Bob O’Reilly, her mother’s older brother and one of the two cops there tonight Simon was avoiding. Owen’s fiancée, Abigail Browning, was the other one. She and O’Reilly were both detectives with the Boston Police Department. O’Reilly was a beefy, freckle-faced redhead with a couple decades on the job. Abigail was in her early thirties, slim and dark-haired, a rising star in the Homicide Unit.
She was also the daughter of John March, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the reason Simon’s association with Fast Rescue had become complicated. He used to work for March. Sort of still did.
He’d decided to avoid Abigail and O’Reilly because both of them would have a nose for liars.
“Any reason to worry about your missing artist?” he asked Owen.
“Not at this point. It’s pouring rain, and the Red Sox are in town—rained out by now, I’m sure. I imagine traffic’s a nightmare.”
“Can you call her?”
“She doesn’t own a cell phone. No phone upstairs in her apartment, either.”
“Why not?”
“Just the way she is.”
A flake, Simon thought. He’d learned, not that he was interested, that Keira was renting a one-bedroom apartment on the top floor of the Garrison house until she figured out whether she wanted to stay in Boston. He understood wanting to keep moving—he lived on a boat himself and not by accident.
“Abigail’s bidding on one of Keira’s pieces,” Owen said.
“The fairies or the Irish cottage?”
“The cottage, I think.”
They were imaginative, cheerful pieces. Keira had a flare for capturing and creating a mood—a part-real, part-imagined place where people wanted to be. Her work wasn’t sentimental, but it wasn’t edgy and self-involved, either. Simon didn’t have much use for a painting of fairies or an Irish cottage in his life. No house to hang it in, for one thing.
Irish music kicked up, and he noticed an ensemble of young musicians in the far corner, obviously enjoying themselves on their mix of traditional instruments. He picked out a tin whistle, Irish harp, bodhran, mandolin, fiddle and guitar.
Not bad, Simon thought. But then, he liked Irish music.
“The girl on the harp is Fiona O’Reilly,” Owen said. “Bob’s oldest daughter.”
Simon wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more about Owen’s friends in Boston, especially ones in, or related to, people in law enforcement. It was all too tricky. Too damn dangerous. But here he was, playing with fire.
Owen’s gaze drifted back to his fiancée, who wore a simple black dress and was laughing and half dancing to the spirited music. Abigail caught his eye and waved, her smile broadening. They were working on setting a date for their wedding. Whenever it was, Simon planned to be out of the country.
“You can’t tell her about me, Owen.”
“I know.” He broke his eye contact with Abigail and sighed at Simon. “She’ll find out you’re not just another Fast Rescue volunteer on her own. One way or the other, she’ll figure out your relationship with her father—she’ll figure out that I knew and didn’t tell her. Then she’ll hang us both by our thumbs.”
“We’ll deserve it, but you still can’t tell her. My association with March is classified. We shouldn’t even be talking about it now.”
Owen gave a curt nod.
Simon felt a measure of sympathy for his friend. “I’m sorry I put you in this position.”
“You didn’t. It just happened.”
“I should have lied.”
“You did lie. You just didn’t get away with it.”
The song ended, and the band transitioned right into the “The Rising of the Moon,” a song Simon knew well enough from his days in Dublin pubs to hum. But he didn’t hum, because if he’d been mistaken for an art critic—or at least an art snob—already tonight, next he’d be mistaken for a music critic. Then he’d have to rethink his entire approach to his life, or at least start a brawl.
“In some ways,” he said, “my lie was more true than the truth.”
Owen grabbed a glass of champagne. “Only you could come up with a statement like that, Simon.”
“There are facts, and there’s truth. They’re not always the same thing.”
A whirl of movement by the entry drew Simon’s attention, and he gave up on trying to explain himself.
A woman stood in the doorway, soaking wet, water dripping off the ends of her long, blond hair.
“The missing artist, I presume.”
Even as he spoke, Simon saw that something was wrong. He heard Owen’s breath catch and knew he saw it, too. The woman—she had to be Keira Sullivan—was unnaturally pale and unsteady on her feet, her eyes wide as she seemed to search the crowd for someone.
Simon surged forward, Owen right with him, and they reached her just as she rallied, straightening her spine and pushing a sopping lock of hair out of her face. She was dressed for the woods, but even as obviously shaken as she was, she had a pretty, fairy-princess look about her with her black-lashed blue eyes and flaxen hair that was half pinned up, half hanging almost to her elbows.
She was slim and fine-boned, and whatever had just happened, Simon knew it hadn’t been good.
“There’s a body,” she said tightly. “A man. Dead.”
That Simon hadn’t expected.
Owen touched her wrist. “Where, Keira?”
“The Public Garden—he drowned, I think.”
Simon was familiar enough with Boston to know the Public Garden was just down Beacon Street. “Are the police there?” he asked.
She nodded. “I called 911. Two Boston University students found him—the body. We all got caught in the rain, but they were ahead of me and saw him before I did. He was in the pond. They pulled him out. They’re just kids. They were so upset. But there was nothing anyone could do at that point.” Despite her distress, she was composed, focused. Her eyes narrowed. “My uncle’s here, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Simon said, but he wasn’t sure she heard him.
He noticed Detectives Browning and O’Reilly working their way to Keira from different parts of the room, their intense expressions indicating they’d already found out about the body through other means. They’d have pagers, cell phones.
The well-dressed crowd and the lively Irish music—the laughter and the tinkle of champagne glasses—were a contrast to stoic, drenched Keira Sullivan and her stark report of a dead man.
Abigail got there first. “Keira,” she said crisply but not without sympathy. “I just heard about what happened. Let’s go into the foyer where it’s quiet, okay?”
Keira didn’t budge. “I didn’t see anything or the patrol officers on the scene wouldn’t have let me go.” She wasn’t combative, just firm, stubborn. “I’m not a witness, Abigail.”
Abigail didn’t argue, but she didn’t have to because Keira suddenly whipped around, water flying out of her hair, and shot back into the foyer, out of sight of onlookers in the drawing room. Simon knew better than to butt in, but he figured she wanted to avoid her uncle, who was about two seconds from getting through the last knot of people.
Simon wished he still had his champagne. “I wonder who the dead guy is.”
Owen stiffened. “Simon—”
“I’m just saying.”
But Owen didn’t have a chance to respond before Detective O’Reilly arrived, his hard-set jaw suggesting he wasn’t pleased with the turn the evening had taken. “Where’s Keira?”
“Talking to Abigail,” Owen said quickly, as if he didn’t want to give Simon a chance to open his mouth.
O’Reilly gave the unoccupied doorway a searing look. “She’s okay?”
“Remarkably so,” Owen said. “She’s not the one who actually found the body.”
“She called it in.” Obviously, that was plenty for O’Reilly not to like. He sucked in a breath. “How the hell does a grown man drown in the Public Garden pond? It’s about two feet deep. It’s not even a real pond.”
Good question, but Simon didn’t go near it. He wasn’t on O’Reilly’s radar, and he preferred to keep it that way.
The senior detective glanced back toward his daughter, Fiona, the harpist. She and her ensemble were taking a break. “I need to go with Abigail, see what this is all about,” O’Reilly said, addressing Owen. “You’ll make sure Fiona stays here until I know what’s going on?”
“Sure.”
“And Keira. Keep her here, too.”
Owen looked surprised at the request. “Bob, she’s old enough—”
“Yeah, whatever. Just don’t let her go traipsing back down to the Public Garden and getting into the middle of things. She’s like that. Always has been.”
“There’s no reason to think the drowning was anything but an accident, is there?”
“Not at this point,” O’Reilly said without elaboration and stalked into the foyer.
Simon didn’t mind being a fly on the wall for a change. “Does the uncle get along with his daughter and niece?”
“They get along fine,” Owen said, “but Bob sometimes forgets that Keira is ten years older than Fiona. For that matter, he forgets Fiona’s nineteen. They’re a complicated family.”
“All families are complicated, even the good ones.” Simon moved closer to the foyer doorway just as Keira started up the stairs barefoot, wet socks and shoes in one hand. She was prettier than he’d expected. Drop-you-in-your-tracks pretty, really. He noticed her uncle scowling at her from the bottom of the stairs and grinned, turning back to Owen. “Maybe especially the good ones.”
Ten seconds later, the two BPD detectives left.
The Irish ensemble started up again, playing a quieter tune.
Owen headed for Fiona O’Reilly, who cast a worried look in his direction. She had freckles, but otherwise didn’t resemble her father as far as Simon could see. Her long hair had reddish tints but really was almost as blond as her cousin’s, and she was a lot better looking than her father.
People in the crowd seemed unaware of the drama over by the door. Caterers brought out trays of hot hors d’oeuvres. Mini spinach quiches, some little flaky buttery things oozing cheese, stuffed mushrooms, skewered strips of marinated chicken. Simon wasn’t hungry. He noticed Lloyd Adler pontificating to an older couple who looked as if they thought he was a pretentious ass, too.
Simon went in the opposite direction of Adler and made his way to the back wall where Keira’s two donated watercolors were on display.
He decided to bid on the one with the cottage, just to give himself something to do.
It was a white stone cottage set against a background of wildflowers, green pastures and ocean that wasn’t in any part of Ireland that he had ever visited. He supposed that was part of the point—to create a place of imagination and dreams. A beautiful, bucolic place. A place not entirely of this world.
At least not the world in which he lived and worked.
Simon settled on a number and put in his bid, one that virtually assured him of ending up with the painting. He could give it to Abigail and Owen as a wedding present. Even if he didn’t plan to go to the wedding, he could give them a present.
He acknowledged an itch to head down to the Public Garden with the BPD detectives, but he let it go. He’d seen enough dead bodies, enough to last him for a long time. A lifetime, even. Except he knew there would be more. There always were.
Instead, he decided to find another glass of champagne, maybe grab a couple of the chicken skewers and wait for a dry, calmer Keira Sullivan to make her appearance.
The free sample has ended.
