The Angel

by Carla Neggers

  cally, hatred of God.”

  Scoop, eminently practical, nodded. “So the rest of us have to choose between God and Satan.”

  “That’s fundamental to the understanding of the devil 224

  CARLA NEGGERS

  and evil—we choose. Satan will do anything to get us to choose the path of evil, and therefore him.” Abigail thought back to the book Charlotte Augustine had loaned her.

  “There’s a lot more to this subject, but so much hangs on this basic concept.”

  “I can imagine,” Scoop said, then gave Abigail an incisive look. “Do you think your guy’s interest in Lucifer had a hand in his death?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A lot of people believe in angels and the devil, Abigail.”

  “But not everyone has a room filled with flamespewing, fork-tongued devils,” Bob said as he rejoined them, picking up his empty beer bottle off the table with a calm that Abigail found unsettling. “That’s what Abigail here is fixed on, Scoop.”

  She forced herself not to respond, and Scoop just shrugged.

  Bob continued. “Keira paints pretty pictures of folk­

  tales and flowers. No devils. Her only interest in angels is the one in this crazy story.”

  “All right,” Scoop said, starting for the back steps to his second-floor apartment. “I’ve had enough. I’m going on up. You two can fight it out.”

  Abigail didn’t blame him. In his place, she’d have fled inside a long time ago.

  She opened the folder Fiona had delivered and peeked at the printout of names. Victor Sarakis’s name was no secret. Colm could easily have figured out what she was up to and checked the list, deleted names if he’d wanted to. Not that he had any reason, but she realized she hadn’t been all that clever in asking him for the list.

  “You weren’t aware of Keira’s reasons for going to Ireland, were you?”

  THE ANGEL

  225

  Bob remained on his feet, but he seemed uncertain, which wasn’t like him. Finally, he sighed, shaking his head. “Keira doesn’t confide in me or anyone else. She’s an O’Reilly, after all. She does what she needs to do.” He returned to his chair at the table. “That was you last summer in Maine, Abigail. You had to check out that tip on your own. You shut out Scoop, me, your father, the Maine police. It’s just that you’re not used to shutting people out, and Keira is.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be used to it.”

  “I don’t know about that. She wants to do things, see the world, draw, paint, talk to people. But deep down I think she’s worried she’s going to end up a recluse like her mother.”

  “Does she blame herself for her mother’s decision to become a religious hermit?”

  Bob didn’t answer and seemed to stare out at nothing.

  “Bob,” Abigail said, “do you blame yourself?”

  She half expected him to tell her to mind her own business, but he didn’t. “Eileen came home from Ireland pregnant with Keira. She was nineteen—quit college. She’s never talked about what went on in Ireland. Not to me, not to our folks. As far as I know, she never told a friend. I don’t even think she told her husband. He was a great guy. He adopted Keira, loved both of them—” Bob paused, raked his forearm over the top of his head. “Hell of a thing, his death. Freak accident in the Callahan Tunnel. They happen, you know. Freak accidents.”

  Abigail ignored the jibe. “Do you think Keira latched on to this old story because her mother looked for the village when she was in Ireland and hoped it’d lead her to her father?”

  “John Michael Sullivan was her father. Keira missed him like crazy when he died. She was just this little tyke, 226

  CARLA NEGGERS

  but you could see it. She kept wanting her mother to read her stories and poems. One after another. Eileen loved it. Helped her, too. They moved to southern New Hampshire, and she opened an art supply store. I got out there when I could.” He looked up at the darkening sky. “I don’t know what more I could have done.”

  “Bob, it’s not your fault.”

  He shifted his gaze back to her. “What, that my sister’s abandoned her family, her friends, the whole damn world to live by herself in a cabin with no running water, no elec­

  tricity? Keira doesn’t have a phone, but her nutty mother…” He stopped himself. “I respect Eileen’s relig­

  ious convictions, but this life—it isn’t her, Abigail. Her choice isn’t easy on the rest of us, but we could live with it if we thought it was her. It’s not. She’s never married again, but she’s always been social—lots of friends, all that. Now she sits in the woods and doesn’t see anyone for days on end.”

  “What about Keira? It must feel as if her mother’s rejected her, even if that wasn’t her intention.”

  “We haven’t talked that much about it. My opinion, she’s not trying to talk Eileen out of the woods so much as trying to figure out what it means about who she is. Keira’s pretty as hell, but she—well, you’ve seen her. She marches to the beat of her own drummer.”

  “Sounds like an O’Reilly to me,” Abigail said with a smile. “Except the pretty part. You’re not pretty, Bob.”

  He grinned at her. “I hope to hell not. You know why Keira went to the police academy? Because she figured that was what an O’Reilly would do.”

  “She thinks you’re disappointed in her for not becoming a police officer?”

  “Nah. That’s not it. She’s pissed she wasted her time at

  THE ANGEL

  227 the academy when she could have been drawing pictures of fairies and researching crazy old stories.”

  “Not everyone figures out what they want to do in life at age five. You did. A lot of us take a winding road.”

  “You’re a good detective, Abigail.”

  His praise caught her off guard. “Thanks.”

  “I’m sorry you came to the job the way you did, but you’d have found your way to it, eventually.”

  “I don’t believe that. I’d have finished law school if Chris hadn’t died. My life changed because of his death.”

  “What are you doing, Abigail?” he asked suddenly. “If you have a legitimate reason to think your drowning case ties back to Keira, you could turn it over to someone else. But you don’t want to, do you? You latched on to it because you wanted to pick a fight with me. Why?”

  “I didn’t want to pick a fight with you, Bob. I’m just—”

  “Just doing your job? That’s crap. You’ve been prickly for a while now, looking for distractions. Something. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  It was true as far as it went. Abigail hadn’t spent much time exploring her feelings, but she had to admit that she’d been out of sorts for several weeks.

  “Everything okay with you and Owen?”

  “Everything’s fine. We have unusual lives, that’s all.”

  “Afraid of losing him?”

  She shook her head. That wasn’t it, she thought. Not even close, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what was troubling her, either. “I’m not afraid of anything, Bob. Really.”

  “We’re all afraid of something,” he said.

  “I meant in terms of Owen and me. What are you afraid of?”

  He gave her an irreverent grin. “Marriage. All right. I 228

  CARLA NEGGERS

  guess I shouldn’t give you advice on your relationship with Owen seeing how I have two ex-wives.”

  But for once, Abigail didn’t let him use humor to pull back from a conversation about his emotions. “You got married thinking it’d be forever, didn’t you?”

  He surprised her by answering. “The first time.” He shrugged. “The second time I had a feeling I was biting off more than I could chew, but I did it, anyway.”

  Abigail knew Bob’s first wife—the mother of his three daughters—better, but she’d met his second wife, and she could see his point. His two wives had been polar oppo­

  sites of
each other. He’d overcompensated with the second for what he regarded, as only Bob could, as mistakes with the first.

  “You did too hot and too cold,” Abigail said. “Now you need to find your Goldilocks woman. The one who’s just right.”

  He snorted. “She’s going to have to find me, because I’m not looking. I’m spending my money on a new sound system. Scoop and I are buying a boat.” Bob exhaled at the now dark sky. “Abigail…I wish I knew what the hell went on with Keira in Ireland.”

  “I know, Bob. I do, too.”

  “This Simon character’s a bruiser. Looks as if he’s not going anywhere. He’ll figure out what to do if Keira’s stuck her hand in fire. And she’s always been good at taking care of herself.” He looked at Abigail, his eyes focused now, alert, sharp. “If you had information that Keira was in trouble, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes. If I had anything. I don’t.”

  “You didn’t bite my head off, Abigail. Why not?”

  “Scoop reminded me we’re talking about your family. Your niece, your sister. Even your daughter.”

  THE ANGEL

  229 But Bob responded to her serious tone with a victori­

  ous snort. “That’s it. I’ll be damned. I’ve got it now.” He slapped the table, obviously excited about whatever he’d just figured out. “You’re not afraid you won’t have kids. You’re afraid of what happens if you do have kids.”

  Abigail jumped to her feet, grabbed Colm’s folder and her wineglass. She wasn’t having this conversation with Bob, not now—not even as a way for him to keep from thinking about his own problems.

  He didn’t take the hint and kept going. “You’re afraid of what kids will mean to you and Owen, your lives. He’s on the go all the time, you chew on a case night and day. Kids would change that. You’re worried he won’t—”

  “Good night, Bob.”

  He waited until she was on the back steps before calling to her. “I’m right.”

  She ignored him and went inside. She set the wineglass in the sink and opened the folder on the counter, telling herself she was just doing her job and not looking for a dis­

  traction. She didn’t want to think about Bob’s comment. He was good at reading people. Had he just read her? She scanned the printout of Colm’s database, saw that the list was alphabetical by last names. She didn’t see a Sarakis or an Augustine. There was one Butler, but not Liam. Bob had regarded her asking for the names not as thoroughness on her part but as a deliberate thumb in his eye. He didn’t want there to be a connection between the auction and Victor Sarakis’s death, and Abigail couldn’t blame him. She headed for the bedroom, just wanted to forget about everything.

  Owen had the paint can open at his feet. “What’s up?”

  she asked, easing beside him in the doorway.

  “I don’t know about the color after all. This shade isn’t 230

  CARLA NEGGERS

  my favorite.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “If you love it, I can live with it. Blue’s fine.”

  “Meaning you hate it,” she said.

  He kissed the top of her head. “That would be one way to put it.”

  She laughed. “Then let’s pick out a color we both like, okay? Owen, honestly—I consider this place as much yours as mine. I want you to speak up and not just go along with me.”

  “Fair enough.” He nodded toward the backyard.

  “How’s Bob?”

  “Worried. Hey, did you notice the way Simon and Keira looked at each other tonight?”

  “No.”

  She elbowed him playfully. “You did, too. I don’t know that much about Simon. He’s okay, though?”

  “If you’d seen him in Armenia—” Owen stopped, nodded. “I’d trust him with my life.”

  “You’re careful about who becomes a Fast Rescue vol­

  unteer, right?”

  “Absolutely. Simon’s one of our best.”

  “I’m still wide awake.” She slid out of Owen’s embrace and set the top back on the paint can. “Since we’re not going to be painting tonight, why don’t you tell me what you know about our man to the rescue.”

  “I have a better idea,” Owen said, grabbing her up into his arms and carrying her to the bed.

  Abigail didn’t object. Given what Owen clearly had in mind, she could definitely wait until morning to talk to him about Simon Cahill.

 
  Beacon Hill

  Boston, Massachusetts

  7:00 a.m., EDT

  June 24

  Dying for coffee, Keira listened for sounds of life in the next room. She didn’t know why she should be self-con­

  scious now, but she was. She pressed her ear to her bedroom door. She couldn’t hear breathing, a running faucet, the drip of a coffeepot—nothing. She cracked open the door. She didn’t want to wake Simon, but, even more, she didn’t want to catch him stretched out temptingly on her sofa bed.

  “It’s safe to come out,” he said with a note of irony in his voice.

  She threw open the door. “I’m trying to be polite.”

  He was dressed—lightweight pants and a dark polo shirt—and sitting at the table with a classic collection of Irish folktales, the sofa bed put away, the linens folded and stacked on a chair. He looked freshly showered and shaved, but she hadn’t heard the shower.

  232

  CARLA NEGGERS

  “No nightmares?”

  She shook her head. “How was your night?”

  “I dreamed about fairy princesses.”

  Keira wasn’t going near that one.

  He set his book on the table. “These are addictive.”

  “Aren’t they? Sean O’Sullivan put together that collec­

  tion. He was the chief archivist of the Irish Folklore Com­

  mission during its entire existence in the mid-twentieth century. It was a nationwide effort to gather and preserve folktales. Its work is now part of the National Folklore Col­

  lection at University College Dublin—literally millions of pages of transcripts, tens of thousands of photographs and audio and video recordings. It’s incredible, really.”

  “Quite an undertaking.”

  “Sean O’Sullivan was from the Beara Peninsula.”

  But Simon rose. “Let’s go see your storyteller.”

  Keira grabbed her various sketches as she and Simon headed out, fetching her car and stopping for coffee and muffins on the way to South Boston. She called Patsy on his cell phone, but didn’t get an answer. “She goes to church most mornings. My grandmother did, too, espe­

  cially in the last few years before she died.”

  “Did your grandparents always live in South Boston?”

  Simon asked.

  She shook her head. “No, they moved to Florida when my grandfather retired from the police department. He’s still there.” She smiled, thinking about him. “He keeps trying to get me to learn golf. He loves the weather in Florida—he can play year-round. I’ve told him I’ve seen golfers playing in gale-force winds in Ireland.”

  “If you wait for perfect weather, you wouldn’t play much.”

  Keira enjoyed the normalcy of their conversation. She pointed out the simple duplex where her grandparents had

  THE ANGEL

  233 raised her mother and uncle, imagined them on just such a warm early summer morning.

  They parked in front of Patsy’s house, one of only a handful of single-family houses in the neighborhood, and Keira rang the doorbell. During their first visit, Patsy had explained that she’d managed to keep her home after she was widowed at a young age because her husband had insisted on having good life insurance. She’d worked various office jobs over the years, but it was that insurance that had made the difference—she’d wanted Keira to know. When there was no answer, she knocked. Again, no response from inside the house. “She should be home from church by now—it’s just up the street.”

  “Maybe she’s out back,” Simo
n said.

  They headed up the sidewalk and pulled open an unlocked, rickety white wooden gate between Patsy’s house and the looming triple-decker next door, making their way back to a tiny, fenced-in yard crammed with bird feeders, birdhouses, leprechauns and gnomes. But Patsy wasn’t there, either.

  Keira climbed the steps onto the back porch, where a lone wind chime dinged once in the slight stir of a breeze. She raised her hand to knock on the back door, but saw that it wasn’t latched all the way. “Simon…”

  He touched her hand. “Let me go first.” He opened the door. “Mrs. McCarthy? My name’s Simon Cahill. I’m with Keira Sullivan.”

  “Hi, Mrs. McCarthy,” Keira called, trying to sound cheerful.

  She followed Simon into the kitchen, half expecting to find Patsy at the table with a cup of tea. Instead, her teapot, decorated with green shamrocks, sat on the counter. Magnets of American flags held an array of postcards of 234

  CARLA NEGGERS

  Irish scenes to her refrigerator. In their handful of meetings, Keira had enjoyed Patsy’s sense of humor. Patsy was com­

  fortable with her romanticized view of an Ireland she knew more now from memory and stories than from experience.

  “Her bedroom’s upstairs?” Simon asked.

  “I think so.” Keira nodded to the hall door. “That’ll take us to the dining room and living room. There’s a small study, too. The stairs are in the front entry.”

  Simon gave a curt nod. “Stay close, okay?”

  Halfway down the hall, he stopped in the open doorway to the dining room, and when she stood next to him, Keira saw why. Scores of angels were set out on Patsy’s lacecovered oval table, all facing the door as though to greet whoever walked in. They ranged in size from barely an inch to two feet tall and were constructed of a variety of materials—porcelain, pottery, silver, copper, gold, wood, glass, wax and origami paper.