The Whisper f-4

by Carla Neggers

  "Hey, Scoop," Rafferty said, "I didn't know you were back in town."

  "I got in this afternoon. You're working for the Carlisles?"

  Rafferty shrugged. He was in his mid-fifties, with leathery skin from his four-pack-a-day smoking habit. "It's a cushy private security gig. Who's your friend here?" He held up a hand and grinned at Sophie. "Wait. Let me guess. You're Sophie Malone, Mr. Carlisle's archaeologist friend. He left a message last night to expect you. Cliff Rafferty. Nice to meet you."

  Sophie gave Scoop a sideways glance but made no move to step away from him. She smiled at Rafferty. "Nice to meet you, too. How did you recognize me?"

  He pointed at her head. "Red hair." He grinned again, the corners of his eyes crinkling under the streetlight. "Plus I looked you up on the Internet. You're listed as a postdoctoral fellow on your university Web site. Your picture's right there." He nodded toward Scoop. "You know Detective Wisdom?"

  "We were on the same flight from Ireland today."

  Rafferty didn't look satisfied with her answer, but he turned to Scoop. "I went by your place after the bomb. It's a mess. Where you staying?"

  "Hotel for now," Scoop said.

  "At least that nutball billionaire can't try again. How's Abigail?"

  "She and Owen are still on their honeymoon."

  "That'll help her put this thing behind her. She's tough. She'll get right back on the job." He shifted his attention back to Sophie. "What can I do for you, Dr. Malone?"

  "I was just getting some air after my flight," she said.

  Rafferty made a face. "I hate flying."

  "Have you ever been to Ireland?"

  "Yeah, sure. I had to see the ancestral homeland, you know?"

  "Is Helen Carlisle home?"

  "She's inside," he said.

  As he spoke, a tall, slender woman came out of the house, shutting the solid, black-painted door behind her and descending the steps to a brick walk. She joined them on the street. She wore a knee-length red sweater but she looked chilled. Scoop put her at around forty. She had pale blue eyes and thick dark hair that hung loose to her shoulders. If she had on any makeup, he couldn't tell. She was very attractive, but he liked standing close to disheveled Sophie. Across from him at Morrigan's, he'd noticed that she had a dimple in her left cheek when she smiled--not that he'd given her much reason to smile, coming down hard on her the way he had.

  Being out of Ireland wasn't helping him with the fairy spell. He was as attracted to her now, even after Josie Goodwin's report, as when he'd first spotted her in the Irish greenery.

  Rafferty made the introductions. "Mrs. Carlisle, Detective Cyrus Wisdom--Scoop to most of us--and Sophie Malone, the friend Mr. Carlisle mentioned would stop by. Scoop, Sophie, this is Helen Carlisle."

  "What a pleasure to meet you both," Helen said. "Sophie, it's so good to finally meet you. Detective Wisdom, I'm honored to meet you. You're a hero. All of us in Boston are fortunate to have brave police officers such as yourself looking after us." She didn't pause long enough for Scoop to respond. "Cliff, I didn't realize you knew any of the officers involved in that awful explosion."

  "I know them all," Rafferty said.

  Helen Carlisle turned her attention to Sophie. "How was Percy last night?"

  Sophie ran her fingertips along a black iron fence, her sweater and skirt askew at her hip. "Fine. I only saw him for a few minutes."

  "I hated to leave him," Helen said. "I had business in New York--I just got back a little while ago--and I'm overseeing the renovations here at the house."

  "Your husband's still in Ireland?" Scoop asked.

  "I'm not sure where he is. He's off on one of his personal retreats. He warned me about them when we first got together. We're newlyweds, but we both had full lives before we were married. We try to respect that." She smiled pleasantly and wrapped her sweater more tightly around her. "I have plenty to do here. I keep hoping to discover a 'find' tucked away in a far corner of the attic or cellar. It'd be such fun to happen onto some long-forgotten artwork of real value. You must know that feeling, Sophie, as an archaeologist."

  "I do," she said, shivering in a sudden spit of rain. "I shouldn't keep you, and jet lag's really hitting me all of a sudden."

  "Thank you for stopping by. Come again. I imagine Percy will be back before too long." Helen turned to Scoop, raindrops glistening on the bright red wool of her sweater. "You, too, Detective--come again anytime."

  She retreated back up the walk to the house. Rafferty watched her a moment before turning back to Scoop. "Augustine's arrest has made a lot of rich folks nervous. What an animal he turned out to be. The Carlisles had nothing to do with his violence. His dealings with them were strictly professional."

  Scoop almost welcomed the cold drizzle. "You met the Carlisles when you worked security at the Augustine showroom?"

  "Yeah. Cushy job, guarding paintings and statues. This new job's pretty cushy, too." He withdrew a pack of cigarettes and tapped out one. "See you when they hand out your commendation for bravery. Enjoy the limelight while you can." He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and nodded to Sophie. "Dr. Malone."

  He went back up the walk. Sophie shivered again. "It's colder out than I expected. I can feel fall in the air."

  Scoop resisted an impulse to slip an arm around her. "You must be about dead on your feet."

  "You, too," she said, almost smiling.

  "We're still on Irish time. I'll walk you back to your place."

  "As far as the Whitcomb is fine."

  "You're not very trusting, are you?"

  She laughed, tucking her hands into her sweater pockets. "I got on the same plane with you, didn't I?" She glanced back at the Carlisle house, the front door shut, lights shining in the tall windows. "A bit different from Keira's Irish ruin, isn't it?"

  Scoop shrugged. "Right now I'll settle for a bed and a blanket."

  "Me, too," she said, then caught herself. "I mean--"

  "It's okay. You're jet-lagged."

  "Very jet-lagged," she said, almost falling against him as she started down the street.

  Scoop walked alongside her to Charles Street. The rain stopped, but the wind picked up. She looked cold and tired, but she had the presence of mind not to go back into the hotel with him and instead continued on to her sister's apartment on her own.

  A good thing, Scoop thought when he headed downstairs for a drink and a sandwich and found Bob O'Reilly at the bar.

  "When I was in Ireland and couldn't sleep," Scoop said as he eased onto a high stool next to Bob, "I'd sit up with a book and listen to the sheep and cows in the hills. In another twenty years, maybe I'll retire there."

  "In another twenty years," Bob said, "you'll be running the department."

  "Nah. I'm no good at the politics."

  Bob O'Reilly was a big, burly fifty-year-old divorced father of three daughters. The son of a cop, he'd wanted to be a homicide detective even before a young woman two doors down from where he grew up in South Boston was kidnapped, sexually abused and murdered. That was thirty years ago. He still carried a picture of Deirdre McCarthy in his wallet.

  Deirdre's mother had told Keira the story about the three Irish brothers, the fairies and the stone angel that had taken her to the Beara Peninsula. But Patsy McCarthy had also told the story to Jay Augustine, believing he was a respected dealer interested in her collection of angel figurines--and he'd killed her. Keira and Simon had found her body.

  Bob drank some of his beer. His curly red hair was a tone lighter and brighter than Sophie Malone's and touched with gray. Not good, Scoop told himself, that he was thinking about the shade of Sophie's hair.

  He ordered a club sandwich and, following Sophie's lead, added a Guinness to go with it. "Lizzie Rush booked me a room here," he said. "She insisted."

  "I'm in Keira's place up the street," Bob said. "I took the lace out of the windows, but it still feels like I'm a creep or something, sleeping in my niece's apartment."

  Scoop's beer arri
ved. "Do you know Cliff Rafferty's working security for a rich couple in Back Bay?"

  "Yeah," Bob said, "I do."

  "The Carlisles. Know them?"

  "Old-money Boston. I think it's just the son left now. He did some business with Augustine. The wife--I forget her name..."

  "Helen," Scoop supplied.

  Bob lifted his glass. "Yeah. Helen. She worked at an auction house in New York before she married Percy. There are no missing Carlisles or auction house workers or anyone else to tie Augustine to them."

  "As a killer," Scoop said.

  "As opposed to what?"

  "What if he was involved in pushing stolen art?"

  Bob set his glass down and sighed. "Don't complicate my life more than it already is, Scoop, all right?"

  "Cliff Rafferty's been out to our place."

  Bob didn't respond right away. Finally he pushed aside his glass as if Scoop had just ruined his evening. "Hell, Scoop, what are you doing? You'll make yourself crazy. You'll make me crazy. Anyone could have planted that bomb. You said it yourself. Norman Estabrook could have slipped a few bucks to the meter reader to stick it under Abigail's grill. Said it was a present. A surprise. Who knows?"

  "Estabrook was caught up in Jay Augustine's obsession with evil. There could be a stronger connection between those two than we realize."

  Bob's eyes--the same shade of blue as those of his three daughters and niece--narrowed on Scoop. "What's going on? What do you have?"

  Scoop drank more of his Guinness, remembering evenings alone on the Beara Peninsula when he'd force himself not to speculate, not to lose himself in the possible scenarios and suspects. He and Bob weren't on the investigation. They couldn't be. They were personally involved.

  Victims.

  He hated that word.

  "Nothing," he said finally. "Grasping at thin air. You ever run into an archaeologist named Sophie Malone? She used to work here."

  Bob sighed. "Archaeologist, Scoop? What the hell?"

  "We met in Ireland yesterday and ended up on the same plane back to Boston today. Just one of those things."

  "Yeah. Imagine. That's the short version?"

  Scoop nodded and looked at the sandwich placed in front of him. He'd lost his appetite.

  "You need sleep," Bob said. "Jet lag makes me feel like I have dryer lint in my head. Keira had me try some scheme she read about on the Internet. Basically you don't eat for about twelve hours on the day you travel. You just drink a lot of water."

  "Did it work?"

  "I don't know. I didn't make it past four hours. Did you run into Keira in Ireland?"

  It was a blatant ploy for more information, not that Scoop blamed him. "I saw her and Simon yesterday before I headed to the airport." He decided not to mention the Brits. "They're good."

  "The fairy prince and princess," Bob said, only half joking.

  "I could believe in fairies after going out to Keira's ruin."

  "Cathartic being there, wasn't it?"

  "Yeah." He almost could hear the dog splashing in the stream, Sophie's laughter. "Yeah, it was."

  Bob scratched one side of his mouth, looking the experienced homicide detective he was. "I'm not an enemy, Scoop. What else happened in Ireland?"

  "It rained a lot my last week there."

  Bob stood up. "Go to bed."

  "Your beer's on me."

  "Yeah. Good. We'll talk tomorrow."

  He thumped up the stairs. Morrigan's had emptied out. Scoop ate a few bites of his sandwich and drank more of his Guinness. It was true that anyone could have planted the bomb. The triple-decker had no alarm system. There wasn't much of a lock on the gate. There was often no one at home, although he, Bob and Abigail had unpredictable schedules--which could be a deterrent to some stranger walking out back with a pipe-bomb stuck under his shirt or hidden in a backpack.

  Another cop could have found out their schedules.

  Scoop gave up on his sandwich and took his beer upstairs with him. His room was on the third floor, small, understated, with upscale towels and bath products and a fussy little table that he could use as a desk. He didn't care. The water was hot and the bed had clean sheets. The rest didn't matter.

  No question it beat Tom Yarborough's sofa bed.

  Yarborough had been out to Jamaica Plain countless times as Abigail's partner, but Scoop couldn't see him planting the bomb. Too ambitious. Too by-the-book. If Yarborough had an axe to grind or was after some extra cash, he'd go all out--he wouldn't do one small job for a billionaire like Norman Estabrook.

  Given the increasingly late hour in Ireland, Scoop texted Josie Goodwin instead of calling: Ask your friends about Percy Carlisle.

  He didn't waste time typing more of an explanation. Josie would have no problem figuring out who Percy Carlisle was. Maybe she already knew.

  As Scoop washed up, he got an answer from Ireland: Will do.

  Obviously his new British friend wasn't sleeping, which didn't bode well for his own night. He returned to the bedroom and finally noticed the Whitcomb had a turndown service. The drapes were pulled, soft music was playing and chocolates were on his pillow.

  Definitely better than Yarborough's sofa bed.

  9

  Sophie woke up to not so much as a coffee ground in the cupboards and decided she should have gone to the grocery last night instead of getting herself further under the suspicion of a Boston police officer. Never mind how sexy Scoop was, she thought as she headed through the archway and out to the street. She couldn't just blame jet lag for her reaction to him--she hadn't been jet-lagged on the Beara Peninsula.

  The wee folk, then. She'd blame them.

  She smiled, debating her immediate options. Breakfast on Charles Street and chance she'd run into Scoop? Hope she would? The sky had cleared overnight, and it was a bright, pleasant late-September morning, a perfect day to help her kick any lingering jet lag and adjust to being back in Boston.

  "Hey, Sophie--Dr. Malone." Cliff Rafferty got out of a car just up her quiet, narrow street and shut the door. "I hope I didn't startle you. Mr. Carlisle--Percy--mentioned your sister has an apartment up here. It wasn't hard to get the address. You two look a lot alike." He gave Sophie an easy grin as he tossed a cigarette onto the street and approached her. "I looked her up on the Internet, too."

  Sophie relaxed slightly. She'd slipped into jeans and a dark green long-sleeve top, not bothering with a sweater. "I'm borrowing her place until I figure out what comes next. What can I do for you, Mr. Rafferty?"

  He looked up at a windowbox dripping with ivy on the town house behind them, then at her again. "Like being back in Boston?"

  "So far, so good. It hasn't been a full day yet."

  "Feels great being done with school, doesn't it? All those years of classes, papers, research, and now you finally have those initials after your name."

  He had an engaging manner, but Sophie assumed he'd looked her up for a reason beyond cheerful chitchat. "It does feel great, but there are more classes, papers, and research ahead. If I'm lucky."

  "At least you'll be paid more as a professor than as a student." He shoved his hands into the pockets of his lightweight jacket. He had on baggy jeans that were an inch too short and running shoes. "You and Scoop Wisdom last night. That took me by surprise. I gather you didn't just meet on your flight back to Ireland yesterday."

  "Just about. I ran into him on the Beara Peninsula the day before."

  Rafferty's gaze was distant now, reminding her that he'd been a police officer. "Scoop's quite the ladies' man. He seems taken with you."

  "I wouldn't know about that," Sophie said, heat rushing to her cheeks.

  "Bet you'll find out." Rafferty winked at her unexpectedly, then withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. "I need to talk to you. Not here. My place. I wrote down the address. Give me an hour."

  Sophie folded up the paper. "I haven't had breakfast. Why don't we go for coffee? You can talk to me now."

  "Nah. You come
to me."

  "What's this all about?"

  "You're an expert in Celtic archaeology," he said. "I have something I want to show you. Get your opinion."

  "Is it Celtic?"

  "I don't know. If I knew..." He didn't finish, looking awkward now, even defensive. "I was a cop for thirty years. I might not have played things as straight and narrow as Scoop Wisdom would want, but I never hurt anyone."

  "Can I bring someone with me?"

  "Yeah, why not? Go find Scoop and ask him if he wants to go with you. See how far you get." He grinned at her, then raised his thin shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. "Show up or don't. Your call. Just make it this morning. I'm working this afternoon."

  He walked back to his car, got in and waved as he drove past her on the one-way street. Sophie watched him, trying to make sense of their conversation. Did he want to talk to her about stolen Celtic artifacts? His last assignment as a police officer had been working security at the Augustine showroom after Jay Augustine's arrest. He'd gone right from there to his job with the Carlisles.

  Sophie headed back down the steps and through the gate and the archway into the secluded courtyard, dialing Taryn's number on her iPhone. Taryn picked up on the second ring, just as Sophie unlocked the apartment door. "Hey, Taryn," she said, "where's your car?"

  "It's probably on Anderson or Myrtle, but it could be anywhere. I have a friend who moves it every ten days. Sophie, what's going on? You sound out of breath."

  "That's because I'm walking fast."

  "All right." Taryn didn't sound reassured. "I'm on my way back to London. If you need me, I'll be there."

  "Thanks. What color's your car? I can't remember."

  "Dark blue. It's a Mini--"

  "That I remember," Sophie said with a smile, trying to sound less agitated. "All's well, Taryn. I'll be in touch."

  Sophie disconnected and grabbed Taryn's car keys out of a drawer in the kitchen, then ducked back out to the street. She located the Mini in front of a small market on the next block. She still had time before meeting Rafferty and walked down to Cambridge Street--deliberately avoiding Charles Street and the Whitcomb Hotel--and got a coffee and a bagel. She ate the bagel on her way back up Beacon Hill and sipped her coffee as she unlocked the Mini and slid behind the wheel. It started right up.