by J. D. Robb
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Lannigan.”
“Sinead will do. Did you come all the way from New York City in that little thing?”
“Just the last leg.”
“Still, you must be a brave and adventurous soul. Have you had breakfast then?”
“She wouldn’t have, no,” Roarke said before Eve could respond. “Brave and adventurous, she is, but a weak stomach for heights.”
“I can speak for myself.”
“I’ll wager you can.” Sinead nodded. “Come in then, and welcome. I’ll fix you breakfast. Your man hasn’t eaten either.”
She walked back toward the house. Understanding his wife, Roarke gave Eve’s hand a quick squeeze. “She’s been nothing but kind. I’m staggered by the kindness I’ve found here.”
“Okay. I could eat.”
Still, she held her opinion in reserve as she found herself seated at the enormous kitchen table with Sinead manning the stove and the pots and skillets on it like a conductor mans an orchestra.
She was given tea, nearly as black as coffee and so strong she was surprised it didn’t melt the enamel on her teeth. But it settled her as yet uneasy stomach.
“So you’re a cop. One who hunts murderers.” Sinead glanced back over her shoulder as she wielded a spatula. “Roarke says you’re brilliant, and dogged as a terrier, with a heart big as the moon.”
“He’s got a soft spot for me.”
“That he does. We’re told you’re in the middle of a difficult case now.”
“They’re all difficult, because someone’s dead who shouldn’t be.”
“Of course, you’re right.” Intrigued, Sinead watched her as meat sizzled in the pan. “And you solve the thing.”
“No. You never solve anything, because someone’s dead who shouldn’t be,” Eve repeated. “They can’t get up out of the grave, so it can’t be solved. All you can do is close the case, and trust the system for justice.”
“And is there justice?”
“If you keep at it long enough.”
“You closed this one quickly,” Roarke began, then stopped when he saw her face. “You didn’t close it.”
“Not yet.”
For a moment, there was only the sound of the meat frying in the skillet. “Lieutenant, I wouldn’t have pulled you away from your work.”
“You didn’t. I pulled myself away.”
“Eve—”
“Why are you badgering the girl, and here she’s not even had her breakfast.” To settle a matter that looked to her would heat up as quickly as the bacon, Sinead heaped food on plates, set them down. “If she’s as brilliant as you say, she ought to know what she’s about.”
“Thanks.” Eve picked up a fork, exchanged her first comfortable look with Sinead. “Looks great.”
“I’ll leave you to it then, as I’ve some things to see to upstairs. Don’t worry about the dishes when you’re done.”
“I think I like her,” Eve commented when they were alone, then poked a fat sausage with her fork. “Is this from pig?”
“Most likely. Eve, I want to be sorry you felt it necessary to leave in the middle of an investigation, but I’m so bloody glad you’re here. I haven’t been able to find my balance, haven’t been able to settle myself since I found out about my mother. I’ve handled the entire business badly. Bungled it, top to bottom.”
“Guess you did.” She tried a bite of sausage, approved. “It’s nice to know you can screw up now and again, like the rest of us mortals.”
“I couldn’t find my balance,” he repeated, “until I stood out there in the mist of the morning and saw you. Simple as that for me, it seems. There she is, so my life’s where it should be, whatever’s going on around it. You know the worst of me, but you came. I think what’s here, though I don’t understand it all yet, haven’t taken it all in, may be the best of me. I want you to be part of that.”
“You went to Dallas with me. You saw me through that, even though it was about as rough on you as it was on me. You’ve shuffled your work and your schedule around more times than I can count to help me out—even when I didn’t want you to.”
He smiled now. “Especially when you didn’t.”
“You’re part of my life, even the parts I wanted you clear of. So, same goes, Roarke. For better or worse, or all the crap that’s in between, I love you.” She scooped up eggs. “We straight on that?”
“As an arrow.”
“Good.” And so were the eggs, she discovered. “Why don’t you tell me about these people?”
“There’s a lot of them to start. There’s Sinead, who was my mother’s twin. Her husband, Robbie, who works the farm here with Sinead’s brother Ned. Sinead and Robbie have three grown children, who would be my cousins, and between them, there are five more children, and two more on the way.”
“Good God.”
“Haven’t even gotten started,” he said with a laugh. “Ned, he’s married to Mary Katherine, or maybe it’s Ailish. I’m good at names, you know, but all these names and faces and bodies were coming down like a flood. They’ve four children, cousins of mine, and they’ve managed to make five—no I think it might be six more. Then there’s Sinead’s younger brother, that’s Fergus, who lives in Ennis and works in his wife’s family’s restaurant business. I think her name’s Meghan, but I’m not entirely sure.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Already feeling crowded, Eve waved her fork.
“But there’s so many more.” He grinned now, and ate as he hadn’t been able to do for days. “My grandparents. Imagine having grandparents.”
“I can’t,” she said after a moment.
“Neither can I, though I appear to have them. They’ve been married nearly sixty years now, and they’re hearty. They live now in a cottage over the hill to the west. They didn’t want the big house, I’m told, when their children were grown and married, so it came to Sinead as she was the one who wanted it most.”
He paused, and she said nothing. Just waited for him to finish.
“They don’t want anything from me.” Still puzzled by it, he broke a slice of toasted brown bread in two. “Nothing that I expected them to want. There’s none of this, ‘Well now, we could use a bit of the ready since you’ve so much and we’re in the way of being family.’ Or ‘You owe us for all the years that’ve gone by.’ Not even the ‘Who the hell do you think you are, coming around here, you son of a murdering bastard.’ I’d expected any of those things, would have understood that. Instead it’s ‘Ah, there you are, it’s Siobahn’s boy. We’re glad to see you.’ ”
With a shake of his head, he set the toast down again. “What do you do with that?”
“I don’t know. I never know how to act, or feel, when somebody loves me. I always feel inadequate, or just stupid.”
“We never had much practice at it, did we, you and I?” He covered her hand with his, rubbed it as though he needed the feel of her skin against his. “Two lost souls. If you’re done there, I’d like to show you something.”
“I’m overdone.” She pushed the plate away. “She made enough food for half the residents of Sidewalk City.”
“We’ll walk some of it off,” he said and took her hand.
“I’m not going back with the cows. I don’t love you that much.”
“We’ll leave the cows to their cow business.”
“Which is what, exactly? No, I don’t want to know,” she decided as he pulled her out the door. “I get these weird and scary pictures in my head. What’s that thing out there?” she asked, pointing.
“It’s called a tractor.”
“Why’s that guy riding around with the cows? Don’t they have remotes, or droids, or something?”
He laughed.
“You laugh”—and it was good to hear it—“but there are more cows than people around here. What if the cows got tired of hanging around in the field and decided, hey, we want to drive the tractor, or live in the house, or wear clothes for a while. What then?”
“Remind me to dig out Animal Farm from the library when we get home, and you’ll find out. Here now.” He took her hand in his once more, wanting the link. “They planted this for her. For my mother.”
Eve studied the tree, the lush green leaves and sturdy trunk and branches. “It’s . . . a nice tree.”
“They knew, in their hearts, she was dead. Lost to them. But there was no proof. Trying to find it, to find me when I was a baby, one of my uncles was almost killed. They had to let go. So they planted this for her, not wanting to put up a stone or marker. Just the cherry tree, that blooms in the spring.”
Looking at it again, Eve felt something click inside her. “I went to a memorial for one of the victims last night. This job, you go to too many memorials and funerals. The flowers and the music, the bodies laid out on display. People seem to need that, the ritual, I guess. But it always seems off to me. This seems right. This is better.”
He watched her now as she studied his mother’s tree. “Is it?”
“The flowers just die, you know? And the body gets buried or burned. But you plant a tree and it grows, and it lives. It says something.”
“I can’t remember her. I’ve searched back, making myself half-mad trying, somehow thinking if I could remember something, some small thing, it would make it better. But I can’t. And that’s that. So this tree here, it’s something solid, and more comforting to me than a stone marker. If there’s more than whatever time we have bumbling around here, then she knows I came. That you came with me. And that’s enough.”
When they went back in, Sinead was in the kitchen clearing breakfast away. Roarke walked to her, touched a hand to her shoulder.
“Eve needs to go back. I need to go with her.”
“Of course.” She lifted her hand, touched his lightly. “Well then, you’d best go up and get your things. I’ll have just a moment here with your wife, if she doesn’t mind.”
Trapped, Eve slid her hands into her pockets. “Sure. No problem.”
“I’ll only be a minute.”
“Ah . . .” Eve searched for something appropriate to say when she was alone with Sinead. “It means a lot to him that you let him stay.”
“It means a lot to me, to us, to have had this time with him, however short. It was difficult for him to come, to tell us what he’d learned.”
“Roarke’s no stranger to doing the difficult.”
“So I gather, and neither would you be, if I’m a judge.” She wiped her hands on a cloth, set it aside. “I was watching him from the window before, sort of gathering up pictures of him you might say. Ones I can share with Siobhan when I speak with her. I talk to her in my head,” Sinead explained at Eve’s blank look. “And right out loud now and then when no one’s about. So I’m gathering up my pictures, and there’s one I’ll never forget. The way he looked—the change in his face, in his body, in the whole of him when he saw it was you. The love was naked on him when he saw it was you, and it’s one of the loveliest things I’ve ever seen. It’s a fine picture to have in my head, for he’s my sister’s child, grown man or no, and I want what’s good for him. You seem to be.”
“We seem to be good for each other, God knows why.”
She smiled now, bright and pretty. “Sometimes it’s best not to know all the reasons. I’m glad you came, so I had a chance to look at you, and see the two of you together. I want more chances with him, and you’ll be a large part of letting that happen, or preventing it.”
“Nobody prevents Roarke.”
“Nobody,” Sinead said with a nod, “but you.”
“I wouldn’t do anything to get in the way of something he needed. He needed to come here. He’ll need to come back. Maybe you weren’t looking in the right place when he introduced me to you, when he looked at you. He already loves you.”
“Oh.” Her eyes filled up before she could stop them, and she blinked, wiping at them quickly when she heard him coming back in. “I’ll fix you some food for the journey.”
“Don’t trouble.” Roarke touched her shoulder again. “There’s plenty of it on the shuttle. I’ve made arrangements to have the car I drove here picked up.”
“Well that’ll be sad news for my Liam, who thinks it’s as fine and fancy a machine as ever built. I’ve something for you.” She reached in her pocket, closing her fingers over the treasure as she turned to him. “Siobhan didn’t take all her things when she went to Dublin. She was going to come back and get them, or send for them, but, well, one thing and another.”
She pulled out a thin chain and the rectangle of silver that dangled from it. “It’s just a trinket, but she wore it often. You see this is her name, in Ogham script. I know she’d want you to have it.”
Sinead pressed it into Roarke’s hand, closed his fingers around it. “Safe journey then, and . . . ah, damn it.”
The tears beat her, plopped onto her cheeks as she wrapped her arms around him. “Come back, will you? Come back sometime, and keep well until you do.”
“I will.” He closed his eyes, breathed her in. Vanilla and wild roses. He murmured in Gaelic as he pressed his lips to her hair.
She gave a watery laugh, pulled back to swipe at her cheeks. “I don’t have that much of the Gaelic.”
“I said thank you for showing me my mother’s heart. I won’t forget her, or you.”
“See that you don’t. Well, be off then before I start blubbering all over you. Good-bye to you, Eve, keep yourself safe.”
“It was a pleasure to meet you.” She took Sinead’s hand in a firm grip. “A genuine pleasure. The shuttle runs both ways, if you decide to come to New York.”
Roarke pressed a kiss to her temple as they walked to the field, and the waiting copter. “That was well done.”
“She’s a stand-up.”
“That she is.” He looked back toward the house, and the woman who stood in the back doorway to wave them off.
“You should get some sleep,” he said to her when they were settled on the shuttle.
“Don’t start poking at me, pal. You’re the one who looks like he’s been on a week’s bender.”
“Might stem from the fact that I’ve consumed more whiskey in the past two days than I have in the past two years, altogether. Why don’t we both stretch out for a bit?”
She jiggled her foot, checked the time, did the math. “Too early to call Central and check in. I’ll be back in a couple hours anyway, won’t even have missed any time.”
“Just missed sleep.” He engaged the mechanism that turned the wide sofa into a wide bed.
“Too revved to sleep.”
“Is that so?” Some of the light she loved was back in his eyes. “Well, what can we do to pass the time, help you relax? Cribbage, perhaps?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Cribbage? Is that some perverted sexual activity?”
He laughed, and grabbing her, tossed her onto the bed. “Why not?”
But he was gentle, and so was she. Tender, as she was. They watched each other as they touched. So she could see the shadows that had haunted him these last days lift away, and leave that deep and vivid blue clear again.
Love, she thought, the act of it, could chase away ghosts for a while, tuck the dead away. Here was life, with him filling her, life as she surrounded the hard length of him, and their fingers linked, their mouths meeting.
Life, he thought, while she rose to him so he could only sink into her. Their life.
She was definitely relaxed, and not particularly sleepy when they arrived at the transport dock in New York. Then again, she figured, if a woman wasn’t relaxed after an energetic session of cribbage with Roarke, something was wrong with her.
She let him take the wheel of the city vehicle she’d left in his personal parking slot for the drive home so she could use her energies to alert Central she was back, and on duty.
“No point in mentioning you could have taken a couple of hours personal time before diving back in.”
“I’ve had more than
my quota of personal time. I’m fine.” She looked over at him. “We’re fine now.”
He closed a hand over hers as he maneuvered through the early morning traffic. “We are, yes. My head’s clearer than it’s been in days. I guess I’m a bit anxious to get back to things myself.”
“Good deal. So before we both get back to things, is there anything else you should tell me?”
He thought of Grogin, and how close he’d come to crossing a line. Eve’s line. “No. Oh wait, there is one thing. It turns out I’m a year younger than I thought I was.”
“No kidding. Huh. Does it feel weird?”
“A bit, actually.”
“I guess you’ll get used to it.” She snuck a look at the time. “Listen, I’ll dump you home, then head straight downtown to . . . Damn.” Her communicator signaled.
DISPATCH, DALLAS, LIEUTENANT EVE.
“Dallas, acknowledged.”
REPORT EAST SIDE HEALTH CENTER, SECOND LEVEL UNDERGROUND PARKING FACILITY. HOMICIDE VERIFIED BY FEENEY, CAPTAIN RYAN, ON SCENE.
“On my way. Dallas out. Goddamn it, goddamn it. I thought I had more time. I have to dump you now, Roarke.”
“I’ll take you. Let me do this,” he said before she could object. “Let me do whatever I can.”
Chapter 19
Sirens were screaming, and the lights from the emergency vehicle whirled as it sped by. Someone was in trouble.
But Alicia Dilbert had no more need for sirens or whirling lights; her trouble was over.
The scene was already cordoned off, with cops doing their busy work. The morning was beginning to steam, with the hot breath from the subway belching up through the sidewalk vent adding another layer.
On the corner, an enterprising glide-cart operator was set up and doing a brisk business selling coffee and fried egg sandwiches to cops and health workers—both of whom should have known better.
Eve smelled the stink of fake eggs sizzling on the grill, the body odor from men who’d been at work too long, and the medicinal scent of hospital that clung to the crowded air.
If the dog days of August didn’t take a breather soon, the city was going to parboil in its own sweat.