Liar's Key

by Carla Neggers

  “Perhaps another dram of our passable Scotch,” he said, then shifted to Mary. “What do you plan to see while you’re in Maine?”

  She hesitated, then smiled, looking less strained. “Everything,” she said, her smile broadening. “I’ve a list.”

  * * *

  The Rock Point Harbor Inn, locally known as the Donovans’ inn, was located on a cove up past the village, in what was reputedly an old sea captain’s house complete with a widow’s walk. Oliver didn’t protest when Emma and Colin both insisted on walking back with him. It was a beautiful spring night, and Colin would have held Emma’s hand if not for their company. He at least appreciated being in familiar surroundings. His parents had their own quarters separate from the inn, but were considering converting a small cottage at the back of the property for themselves and using their current space for more guests.

  Oliver led the way into the front sitting room as if he owned the place. “Look, our lovely innkeepers left fresh fruit, milk and cookies. Care for anything?”

  “We’re not staying,” Colin said.

  “Thank heavens for that.” He grabbed a small plate and loaded it with fruit and cookies. “The Scotch and the walk to the harbor front and back woke up my appetite. You two can relax. I’m fairly certain none of my MI5 colleagues followed me here, but they know where I am.”

  “They’re not your colleagues,” Colin said. “They’re your watchdogs.”

  “Well, there’s that,” Oliver said good-naturedly.

  “If you put one toe out of line, they’ll open the files on you,” Emma added.

  “Imagine how dull that would be for them.” Oliver pointed to a grouping of a couch and two chairs. “Please, have a seat. Colin, you can stretch out on the couch if you’d like. I’m tired but you must be thoroughly exhausted.”

  “I’m fine, Oliver.”

  “As you wish.” He sat on the couch himself, placing his plate on the coffee table. “MI5 hasn’t demonstrated a keen interest in mythology, particularly my specialty of Celtic mythology, folklore and legends. But I know what you mean about stepping a toe out of line. I can’t walk Alfred at the farm without worrying an agent will pop out from behind a tree.” He turned to Emma as she sat in one of the chairs. “Alfred’s the puppy.”

  “Have you ever walked him?” she asked.

  “Not exactly but I was speaking hypothetically.”

  She leaned back, watching him eat a few strawberries and grapes. “Do your handlers know you threw the party at Claridge’s on Sunday?”

  Oliver’s gaze settled on her. He ate more fruit. Colin sat on the chair opposite Emma. Finally, Oliver wiped his fingers on a cloth napkin, got up, poured tea into a mug and returned to the couch. “I prefer a cup and saucer but one manages. Tell me, Emma, did your father ferret out this tidbit? Your mother? Not that Texan agent. Padgett.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “To you, maybe. To answer your question, yes, my MI5 colleagues are aware the philanthropic foundation set up in memory of my parents sponsored the party.”

  “Was this rumor about stolen mosaics your idea, too?” Emma asked.

  “Mosaics happen to be a Norwood favorite and were Alessandro Pearson’s specialty,” Oliver said.

  Colin could see Emma’s impatience but doubted Oliver would care. “Trying to smoke out a few bad guys, Oliver?” Colin asked, hearing the sarcastic edge to his voice.

  Oliver didn’t react. “I aim to please, but I’m not an intelligence agent or a law enforcement officer. I’m a mythologist. Rumors and concerns are quite different from solid leads on wealthy collectors and dealers recklessly buying and selling ancient works of dubious origin. If I were a collector, I would want to be sure I wasn’t buying something from people bent on murder, wouldn’t you?” He didn’t wait for a response. “If I could smoke out a few unscrupulous dealers and collectors, I’d be happy to do so.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Emma asked.

  “I’m here for the Sharpe open house.”

  “Right,” she said, plainly skeptical. “How did you put together your guest list for Sunday?”

  “The foundation took care of it, with my guidance. MI5 wasn’t involved. It was a spur-of-the-moment event. I don’t have my eye on anyone in particular if that’s what you’re wondering. The show at the Victoria and Albert was convenient. It provided a natural reason for us to focus on people interested in antiquities.”

  “You invited my parents,” Emma said.

  “Of course. That was a courtesy. How could I throw a party and not invite them?”

  “Even if it wasn’t obvious it was your party?”

  “I keep a low profile. Nothing unusual.”

  “How many parties have you thrown, Oliver?” Colin asked.

  “A first time for everything.”

  “Oliver,” Emma said, “was my grandfather involved with this party?”

  “He was here in Maine, Agent Sharpe.”

  “He wasn’t here when the invitations went out. Did you two cook up this party because of Alessandro’s death?”

  “No.”

  Emma smiled faintly. “I think that’s the first time you answered the question I asked. I hope it’s a true answer.”

  “I don’t lie. It’s too hard to keep track.” He sank back against the soft couch cushions. “I could fall asleep right here. I’m staying in the room where fair Naomi MacBride stayed this winter. Don’t worry, Colin, no one volunteered the information—I asked. How is Naomi? Well, I trust?”

  Naomi had been out to the York farm in the Cotswolds that winter, prior to her arrival in Rock Point. Plucky and nosy, Mike called her, but he knew, as Colin did, that she was also a good intelligence analyst. “She’s fine,” he said.

  “Excellent to hear.” Oliver stifled a yawn. “I’m going to take my tea up to my room and call it a night. You must be tired, too, Colin—Agent Donovan. Or don’t FBI agents need sleep the same as we mere mortals do?”

  “We need sleep,” Colin said. He glanced at Emma. “Any more questions?”

  “Not tonight,” she said, getting to her feet.

  Colin rose, too. “Be good, Oliver. Don’t make me come back here in the middle of the night.”

  “I won’t. I wouldn’t want to get thrown out before sampling a Maine inn breakfast.”

  “We’ll see ourselves out,” Emma said.

  The night was still and clear, cooler than Colin had expected. He took Emma’s hand as they walked back up to his house. “I used up a lot of patience not strangling Oliver on the drive here. He’s eccentric and unorthodox, but MI5 won’t let him drift too far off the beam.”

  “If he and my grandfather are colluding...”

  “Wendell knows where the edges of the beam are, Emma. He might stick a toe off the edge but he won’t go over.”

  “He’s in his eighties. He’s been preoccupied with this trip home to Heron’s Cove, and I’m sure Alessandro’s death hit him hard and reminded him of his own mortality. Maybe he doesn’t care.”

  “Not Wendell. Meanwhile, where’s our meddling retired agent?”

  “I hope he’s in North Carolina but I doubt it.”

  “We could be chasing the nonexistent shadows of Gordy Wheelock’s last case.”

  “That wouldn’t be a bad outcome—a retired agent who got carried away with a few innocent coincidences that also got my grandfather and Oliver stewing and brewing.”

  “Better than we’re missing something important.”

  “Yes.”

  “Alessandro Pearson worked in some dangerous areas during his career. He spent his last years focused on the preservation of mosaics in particular in their original context. He must have known all sorts in that world. Dealers, collectors, experts, ordinary workers.”


  “Possibly a terrorist or two,” Emma said. “At least sympathizers.”

  “Scotland Yard’s taking another look at his death?”

  “Yes.”

  They’d done what they could for tonight. Colin suspected Emma knew it as well as he did. “We don’t have a lot, Emma. A British archaeologist is dead. A known art thief threw a party in London. A former agent came to you to check out rumors and possibly lied about tripping on stairs, and your family’s having an open house at their new Maine offices.”

  “Yank wants me to find out what Gordy’s up to.”

  “And now me, too.” They went into his house through the front door and paused in the small entry by the stairs. Colin eased his hand from Emma’s and took her in his arms. “Meanwhile, how’s the separate bedroom working out?”

  “It was easier when you weren’t here.”

  “I am here.”

  She smiled. “Yes, you are.”

  She laughed then. It was a good sound. The best. “Emma...”

  “You don’t have to carry me up the stairs, Colin.”

  “If I wanted to?”

  “I wouldn’t stop you,” she said.

  “Good, because imagining this moment got me through some rough nights.”

  He heard her intake of breath as he tightened his hold on her and lifted her, relishing the feel of her taut muscles, her soft breasts and the scent of her...her clothes, her hair, her skin. He hardly noticed her weight as he bounded up the stairs.

  They both were laughing when they fell on his bed together.

  “Emma,” he whispered. “Emma, Emma.”

  “I can’t believe you’re back. At dinner and then with Oliver at the inn, I kept wanting to stare at you, just to be sure...”

  “I’m here.”

  He kissed her, felt her hands on his waist, tearing at his clothes. It didn’t take long before his pants, jacket and the rest were in a heap on the floor, with her skirt and top and tights—hell, the tights—scattered somewhere in the small, dark room. He managed to get her under the covers before he took her, knowing she was as ready as he was. His fatigue, the long hours crossing the Atlantic, the drive up here, the questions and frustrations all fell away as he made love to this woman who had transformed his life and would soon be his wife.

  “I love you, Colin,” she said, clutching him, crying out with her release.

  All he could manage was to say her name again, but he knew it was enough.

  * * *

  Colin had drifted off when Emma’s phone vibrated on the bedside table, waking him. She reached for it, glanced at the screen, then showed it to him. A text from Gordy Wheelock: Went for a whale watch and got my head screwed on straight. Going home. See you, kid.

  Colin returned the phone to her. “Feel better?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Me, either.”

  17

  Mary entered her brother’s office at St. Patrick’s Holy Roman Catholic Church of Rock Point, Maine. She was here at last, in this place he lived and worked. It was at once simpler and humbler than she’d expected, having relied on his vague descriptions, hunts on the internet and her own presuppositions for images. She fingered the cover of a thick book on Finian’s desk on the history and geology of the Iveragh, one of the peninsulas jutting into the Atlantic on the southwest Irish coast. The book was one of the few familiar objects in the prosaic office. He’d stopped at the church to check on donations parishioners had dropped off for a rummage sale.

  Her brother the whiskey man, sorting through old clothes and dishes.

  Nothing about his life here made sense to her, except perhaps whiskey and chowder with his friends—but they were FBI agents, not fishermen. At least Emma and Colin were. Mary couldn’t figure out Oliver York.

  “You’re still here,” Finian said, obviously surprised when he returned to his office. “I thought you’d be off to bed by now.”

  “It’s not even ten o’clock.”

  “Here in Maine,” he said.

  “Which is where I am.”

  “Yes.” He went around his desk chair and grabbed a sweater off a peg. “Oliver York, Sean Murphy, this retired FBI agent.” He paused, coming back to her. “Is there anything else I should know about your recent adventures?”

  “They’re hardly adventures. I ran into Oliver by accident in Declan’s Cross, and I meet all sorts on distillery tours.”

  “Are you certain you ran into Oliver by chance?”

  “By fate instead, you mean? There’s nothing romantic between us. He’s sexy in his own English aristocratic way, I suppose—”

  “Mary.”

  She grinned. “I can still be the pesky little sister. Do you know the Deverells? They have a summer house in Heron’s Cove. Claudia Deverell did a distillery tour last week. Her name seems to strike a nerve with everyone.”

  “Not with me, nor should it with you, if I might be so blunt.”

  “As if I could stop you. Don’t worry, I’ve no intention of sticking my nose into affairs that are clearly none of my business. But you have interesting friends, Fin. Oliver seems to be a bit of both friend and...” She sighed. “I’m not sure what. Too tired to think of the right word. Sean made it perfectly clear he doesn’t consider Oliver a friend at all. What are your objections to him?”

  “Sean can speak for himself, but I will put it this way—Oliver York lives in a different world from yours or mine.”

  “I can see that he lives in a different world from me,” Mary said. “I don’t know about you. Oliver’s world is yours now, too, isn’t it? Your friendship with these two FBI agents has sucked you into a few adventures of your own.”

  “You’re here for a visit, Mary. It was just chance you were on the same flight as Colin and drove up here with him and Oliver.”

  “But Emma and Colin are your friends, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “You just don’t want me to flirt with a wealthy Brit.”

  “He has a difficult past. It undoubtedly influences who he is now.”

  Mary could read layers and layers into that statement, but she was too tired. Every nerve in her body seemed to cry out for a soft, comfy bed. “Well, I’m here to have fun. Remember what fun is, Fin?” She gasped immediately, horrified by her remark. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shook his head. “It’s okay.”

  She followed him out of the office and across a paved drive to the rectory. He’d sent photos when he’d first arrived in Rock Point, giving her an idea of where he lived, but it was different seeing the simple house and church on the southern Maine coast. She loved the traditional cottage he and Sally had rebuilt outside Killarney. It was so them. But there was no Fin and Sally anymore, there was just Fin, and if this place felt foreign and different, Mary supposed it was because she no longer knew her brother and the man he’d become. It was as if he’d exorcised anything that could remind him of his past, whether in his heart or his surroundings.

  And she used the word exorcised deliberately, because it truly was as if he regarded any thought of his wife and daughters as the devil in possession of him.

  Perhaps that wasn’t fair, but Mary couldn’t deny that was what she at least wondered.

  They entered the kitchen and he went straight to the sink and grabbed the kettle. “A cup of tea will settle you down and help you sleep.”

  She sank into a chair and looked up at a cross above the table. “Do you believe you’re here in Rock Point because of your sins, Fin?”

  He turned on the tap and filled the kettle. “I’m here because I’m replacing Father Callaghan while he’s on a one-year sabbatical in Ireland.”

  “You’re also here because you answered a call to the priesthood,” she said, hearing the combat
iveness in her voice.

  “That was a while ago, Mary. It’s old ground for us to traverse again.”

  She didn’t back down. “Were you called because of your sins?”

  “Let’s have tea.”

  “You don’t have to heed a calling,” she said, pulling out a chair at the table. “I know that much. You can ignore it. You have a choice, even if it’s a call you believe is from God.”

  “That’s true. I also went through an exacting process of discernment that tested that call before I was accepted into the priesthood, perhaps more exacting because of my background.”

  “As a previously married man and father,” she said.

  “Yes.” He set the kettle onto its stand and flipped the switch. “What’s your calling, Mary?”

  “To teach people about whiskey.” She liked that as tired as she was, she’d been able to answer without hesitation. “You’re running from yourself, Fin. I don’t care what discernment process you went through. You fooled everyone including yourself. Including God, for all I know.”

  “Mary...” He sighed, looking as tired as she felt. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to return home and marry Aoife.”

  He didn’t seem surprised or offended by her answer. “Aoife has her own life.”

  “You were protective of her when she was here last fall.”

  “Because there was a killer on the loose.”

  “More than that. But never mind. You don’t have to marry Aoife. You can marry anyone. Marry the barmaid at your favorite Killarney pub. Or don’t marry anyone, just come home and be with your family.”

  He leaned against the counter, studying her a moment. “How’s your romantic life these days?”

  “Well, now that Oliver York is off my list of possible suitors, who knows?” Mary grinned at Finian. “It scares you that I’m all grown up now, doesn’t it?”

  He laughed. “It terrifies me.”

  He made tea, a lovely peppermint suitable for her delayed bedtime and her jet lag, and with a bit of luck it would also soothe her mad curiosity about the obvious tensions between the FBI agents and Oliver York, Gordon Wheelock and Claudia Deverell—just for starters. She recognized so much had been left unsaid since her encounter with Oliver and then Sean Murphy yesterday. Bumping into Colin Donovan at the airport that morning with a ticket on the same flight as hers couldn’t have been merely a happy coincidence.