The Man on the Cliff

by Janice Macdonald

  “It’s usually only a problem,” he said, watching her, “when people ride on the wrong side of the road. Which you were.”

  She felt her face flame. Tap-dance your way out of this one. Rooted to the spot, unwilling to break eye contact and concede the point, she stood there until she saw he was fighting to keep a straight face. And then she recognized him.

  “The man on the cliff,” she said.

  “The Mace bandit,” he said.

  “Mace bandit.” She shook her head at him. He wore an open black leather jacket over a black sweater. The somber color accentuated his fair skin and dark hair, set off the fine-boned features and clear gray eyes. His hair was clean, slightly curly and just a shade too long. The shadow on his jaw suggested he’d neglected to shave that morning. He also had a truly sensational smile, which he was turning on her now.

  “I’m not sure about you,” she finally said. “Last night you nearly scared me to death. Today you knock me off my bike.”

  “I’m bad news all around,” he said. “Or so I’ve been told.”

  “I bet you have.” She tried not to smile back at him. He looked wildly attractive, a kind of unstudied sexiness that perked up her hormones and pheromones and God knows what other mones. Something about the way he was looking at her told her the attraction was mutual.

  “How can I make amends?” He gestured at her bike. “What about this then? I’ll see what the damage is.”

  “There’s no damage.” Even if there were, she’d rather walk the damn thing back to Annie’s than drive up in his car, looking like a fool because she’d forgotten which side of the road to ride on. She smiled. “It’s fine.”

  “You’ve not looked.”

  “Trust me. I know these things.”

  Moments passed. A breeze rustled the grasses, tousled his hair. A car went by. Her knee started to throb, and her hands smarted where she’d landed on them. She shoved them in the pocket of her parka.

  “You’re all right, really? No broken bones.”

  “I’m all right, really,” she said, imitating him. “No broken bones.” Given his looks, the lyrical accent was overkill. This guy was too cute by half.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Cragg’s Head.”

  “That’s the opposite direction from where you’re going.”

  “Well…” She glanced at him from under her lashes. “I was taking the scenic route.”

  “Actually, you’re on the road to Dublin.”

  “The scenic and very circuitous route,” she amended.

  They looked at each other until neither one of them could keep a straight face. It occurred to her that she could stand there indefinitely trading lines back and forth with him. And he seemed in no hurry to leave, either.

  “If you think you’re going to get me to admit I’m lost,” she finally said, “give up.”

  “Ah, I didn’t think for a moment you were lost.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward her a little. “But I’ll tell you a secret. Cragg’s Head is that way.” He gestured with his arm. “Straight ahead. You can’t miss it.”

  “I think I’ve heard that before.” She bent to pick up her bike and felt him watching her. Either she could prolong the exchange, shift it up to the next gear or do the safe thing and ride off. In a split-second decision, she chose the latter. He’d told her something she already knew. He was bad news. His sort always was. That attractive got-the-world-by-a-string type. They were like strawberries. When you were allergic to them, it didn’t matter how tempting they looked, heaped into pies, dolled up with shiny red glaze and whipped cream. The fact was they screwed up your system and caused endless misery.

  They were something to be avoided.

  “Can I at least give you a lift?”

  “No, thanks.” She climbed on the bike. “I can make it on my own steam. I’ll try and remember to stay on the right side.”

  “Just remember, the right side is on the left.”

  “Got it.” With a smile and a glance over her shoulder, Kate started off down the road, praying the wheel wouldn’t fall off while he was still watching her. The final image of him burned in her brain. Sunlight and shadows dappling his head and shoulders. The quizzical smile. For a moment, she almost turned around and rode back. Maybe she’d been too flip. After all, he had seemed genuinely concerned.

  She kept riding. No, better this way. Better not even knowing his name. What was the point anyway? A little more than a week and she’d be back in the States.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ON HER WAY back to the Pot o’ Gold, Kate passed the redbrick building that housed the tourist bureau where Annie worked part-time. Through the window, she could see Annie working at her desk. She rapped on the window and Annie motioned for her to come in.

  “You couldn’t have stopped by at a better moment,” Annie said. “First off, if you wouldn’t mind making sure Rory gets the sandwiches I made for him, I’d be grateful. He’s mad for cold chicken and I had some left from last Sunday’s lunch.”

  “Sure, no problem,” Kate said. “Do you want me to take them down to the station?”

  “If he doesn’t drop by first.” Annie held up a poster for her to see. “And now I’d like your opinion on this. Tell me what you think.”

  “The Cragg’s Head Fleadh,” Kate read aloud, mentally shoving aside thoughts of her encounter with the man on the cliff. “A festival of fiddles, flutes and concertinas. It looks great.”

  “Flah,” Annie corrected. “Rhymes with hah,” she said with a smile. “That’s all right, though, you’re not the first to say it wrong. I’ve so much to do I can hardly see straight and now, with this worry over Elizabeth, it’s all I can do to keep my mind on anything.”

  “You still haven’t heard from her?” Kate asked.

  “I haven’t directly, but that was a friend of hers on the phone just now. Swears she saw Elizabeth at a coffee bar this morning. Would have spoken to her, she says, but she ran off. Still, it’s good to have even a wee bit of news.”

  “I’m sure it must be.” Kate glanced again at the poster. “So you’re in charge of putting this whole thing together?”

  “I am. Well, we’ve a committee, of course, but in the time it takes for them to decide on anything, I can already have it done.” She retrieved a slim blue book from under a pile of papers on her desk and handed it to Kate. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother, though. Last year, Cragg’s Head wasn’t even in here. This year they put a little note that said it wasn’t worth a detour.”

  Kate riffled through the pages and smiled up at her.

  “Well, we’re never going to have the crowds flocking here,” Annie said, returning the smile. “But it’s home. I’d never leave. My sister left for America, a few years back. Boston. Pat and I went over there for a holiday and they took us to an Irish bar of all places.” She shook her head. “All of them singing ‘Danny Boy’ and shedding tears for dear old Ireland as though they’d go back in a minute, if they could. And few of them ever would.”

  “You’ve lived in Cragg’s Head for a long time?”

  “My whole life.” Annie gestured to the stack of wooden desks in the corner. “Until this year, this room used to be a classroom. Caitlin sat at one of those desks in this room and so did I…” She smiled. “Too many years back to remember. My father and grandfather tilled those fields out there. We’ve been here for as long as anyone can remember. Pat’s family too.”

  “It must be nice to have that sense of continuity,” Kate said, recalling her own childhood. “My dad was always getting transferred. By the time I was nine, I’d been enrolled in a dozen different schools.”

  “Ah God.” Annie gave Kate a horrified look. “What kind of a start in life is that? Your mother didn’t mind it then?”

  “Well, they finally got divorced, so she probably did. But she tended to go along with whatever my father wanted and he was always looking for something he never seemed to find.” With her finger, she pushed scattered
paper clips into a pile, lost for a moment in her thoughts. “We did okay, I guess. My brother and I. We both got decent grades. We made friends.” She grinned at Annie. “Of course they never lasted long, but then we made new friends.”

  Annie clicked her tongue. “Sure, it would be like pulling up the daffodil bulbs every morning to see if they’re growing,” she said. “If you dug me up and put me somewhere else, I’d not be the same person.”

  “In California, where I live,” Kate said, “almost everyone is from somewhere else. People talk about putting down roots and that sort of thing, but it’s more like we’re seeds blown on the wind. You could land anywhere and, just as easily, pull up and go somewhere else.”

  Annie shook her head as though the thought were too outlandish to comprehend.

  “That’s why you’re not married,” she finally said. “You’ve no idea who you are or where you belong. Come to think of it, that’s probably Hughie Fitzpatrick’s problem. Him growing up on the Maguire estate as he did. Like planting a potato in among the roses and expecting it to grow petals. Sure, who wouldn’t be confused?”

  SHE WASN’T JUST CONFUSED, Kate thought later that morning as she sat at a small desk in Annie’s front parlor, she was besotted. For the last hour she’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to focus on the notes from an interview she’d just completed with an old school friend of Moruadh’s, but her brain was refusing to cooperate. All it wanted to do was think about the gray-eyed man. The man on the cliff.

  Why had she turned down his offer of a ride home? Maybe he would have asked her out. Dinner perhaps. A little pub with mullioned windows and a fireplace. The stories of their lives exchanged over a couple of Guinnesses.

  She shook her head to clear the images. You’re in Ireland to work. Not for a fling. She drank some coffee from a cup patterned with pink cabbage roses, picked a raisin out of a piece of soda bread, wrote three headings on her yellow pad: Accidental death. Suicide. Murder.

  The school friend had said that Moruadh had occasionally suffered with bouts of depression. Spells, she’d called them. Kate recalled her mother’s incapacitating depression after the divorce. Days when she never left the bed.

  But there were degrees of depression. From the friend’s description, Moruadh’s appeared to have been of the mild blues variety. Kate got up and wandered over to the window. Beyond Annie’s neatly planted front garden, she saw the dark turrets of Buncarroch Castle looming in the gray air. Something almost sinister about it. If Moruadh spent much time there, no wonder she’d had fits of depression.

  Kate made more notes, drank some more coffee. Found her thoughts drifting back to the gray-eyed man. An Irish accent, but overlaid with something else. An expensive education maybe, or years abroad. She tried to re-create it. What had he said? ‘Just remember, the right side is on the left.’ Even now, she could feel this little tug in her stomach as she pictured him.

  Restless, she got up from the table and wandered upstairs to her room. Maybe a little fling might have been fun. Since they didn’t exactly live within commuting distance, she wouldn’t be screening him as a husband candidate. Obviously nothing could come of it. Why not enjoy herself while she was here?

  At the dresser, she stared at her reflection. Long red hair she’d worn the same way since she was about fourteen. Hanging loose down her back or tied up in a ponytail. Freckles she didn’t try to cover because she hated the feel of makeup on her skin. She picked up a brush and ran it through her hair. Not that there was much point in thinking about flings, she’d probably never see him again. Although, as Annie said, Cragg’s Head was a small place. She’d seen him twice already. Maybe she should take another walk.

  Outside, a car door slammed, and she ran to the window. With a pang of disappointment, she saw that the car at the curb was a light green Gardai car, not a dark green Land Rover.

  Get over it, she told herself as she watched Rory McBride get out. The guy doesn’t even know where you’re staying. She heard the front door open and close, then Rory’s voice calling her name.

  Thinking of the strange exchange with him the night before, she hesitated. She was alone in the house. Annie and Patrick wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours, and Caitlin was at school. Paranoia, she decided. It was broad daylight and his car was parked outside in clear view. And this was Ireland, not Santa Monica.

  She closed the bedroom door behind her. He stood at the foot of the stairs, backlit by the amber light streaming from the fan-shaped window above the front door. He wore a navy overcoat over his blue uniform.

  “Hi.” She smiled at him from the top of the stairs. “You caught me here between interviews. I was just going over my notes. What’s up?”

  “I saw your car outside.” He pulled off his cap, shook raindrops onto the rug. “It’s a lovely country, Ireland, they just need to put a roof over it.”

  “Well, at least the rain’s let up a bit,” she provided. No Irish exchange, she was learning, could start without a comment on the weather. “Maybe it will clear up tomorrow.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Holding his hat in both hands, Rory smiled hesitantly, like a suitor come to call. “I wondered…could I have a word with you? If you’ve a minute, that is.”

  “Sure.” She ran down the stairs and led him into the sitting room where her notes were still spread out over the desk. “Want some coffee?” She gestured at the pot. “I can make some fresh.”

  “I don’t. Thank you, though.” He unbuttoned his coat and sat down at the table. “You might have wondered a bit about last night. My telling you I wasn’t up there on the cliffs, I mean.”

  Kate, glad that at least one of the mysteries was cleared up, decided that no response was necessary.

  “The thing is, I love Caitlin.” He stuck his finger into the neck of his blue uniform shirt. “Sure, we’re getting married in June, and Annie, well, she’s like my own mother. But, see, yesterday I went into Galway to meet Elizabeth, the girl who’s staying with Annie.” Eyes downcast, he appeared to be composing his thoughts. “We’d just come back when you saw me in my car up on the cliffs but, uh, we had a few words and she left.”

  “And you didn’t want Caitlin and Annie to know?” Kate watched his face. “That’s why you said it wasn’t you I saw up there?”

  “Right.” Faint relief flickered across his face. “Honestly, there’s nothing at all between me and Elizabeth, but Caitlin…well, she’s a bit green-eyed, if you know what I mean.”

  “Does she have reason to be?”

  “She doesn’t, no. I sowed my wild oats some time ago.” He smiled at her, his eyes exactly the same blue as his shirt. Easy to understand why Caitlin would find him attractive, although she suspected that Caitlin’s jealousy wasn’t unfounded.

  “So you’ve no idea where Elizabeth is?”

  “I have not.” His look suggested the question was stupid. “Would I be letting Annie worry if I knew where Elizabeth was?”

  “Well, I’d hope not,” she retorted and then something occurred to her. “By the way, did you check out whatever it was I told you I saw on the cliffs?”

  “I did. Up and down the footpath. There were a few people about. Teenagers. Probably a couple of them larking about was what you saw.”

  “Probably.” She folded her arms across her chest. He clearly wanted her assurance that she wouldn’t blow his cover, but something about the whole thing made her uncomfortable. “I don’t know your relationship with Elizabeth, but…” She put her hand up to stop his protest. “I’m not going to lie to Annie or Caitlin.”

  “I’m not asking you to lie. You don’t have to say anything. They think I was seeing into a car crash, and that’s what I want them to think. Besides, Elizabeth’ll show up tonight and the whole thing will blow over.”

  She met his eyes for a moment. He reminded her a bit of her younger brother. Before Ned had married and settled down, he’d come to her to bail him out of various scrapes he’d gotten into. He’d go into some torturous explanation o
f what had happened and then look at her, anxiety all over his face, as he waited for her reaction. Just the way Rory McBride was looking at her now.

  “Listen, Rory. I’m going to tell you something about myself. I can’t stand liars. And I can’t stand cheating men. And, trust me, I’ve had plenty of experience with both.” Kate saw the flicker of interest in his eyes as though what she’d said had cast her in a slightly different light. “Here’s the deal. I won’t bring it up, but if anyone should ask me whether I saw you on the cliffs last night, I won’t lie, either. Okay?”

  “Right.” He gave her a little smile. “Thanks, Kate.”

  “And I better not find out that you were cheating on Caitlin.”

  “I told you, I love her.”

  “Yeah, well…” She shrugged. “I’m not much of a believer in that sort of thing.”

  He grinned, relief now clear on his face. “Your work’s going well, is it?”

  “Not bad. I did a phone interview this morning and I’ve got another one later today. Niall Maguire wasn’t in when I stopped at the castle. You wouldn’t happen to know if he’s in town?”

  “He is. I saw him myself not an hour ago. You’ll have the best chance of meeting him if you go directly up there.” He frowned down at the table, started to speak, then stopped. A moment passed. “You’ll want to be careful, Kate,” he finally said. “With Maguire, that is.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “It’s like I was saying last night, he’s a bit—” He stopped as though a thought had occurred to him and shrugged. “Sure, you probably think I’m a fine one to talk, after what I’ve told you, but Maguire…well, he has an eye for the women. He’s a fancy photographer of some sort. Does those big glossy picture books. There’s always one woman or another up there visiting him.”