Rival's Break

by Carla Neggers

  “I think deep down he always knew. She was a lovely woman, Colin. I was a young SAS officer doing my bit, ripe for a grand romance. She was older, lonely. She knew how I felt and treated me kindly, but she never...we never...” He stopped, looked out at the harbor. “The painting was a beautiful gift Robin gave to Georgina, and I was happy to help make it happen. I’d have given her a one-way ticket back to London away from these people and set her up with a cooking job.”

  “Nick was a chemist,” Emma said.

  “Robin remembered him in the end. A lot of interns didn’t cut it. It wasn’t a big deal. You always hope they go on to better things, but I wasn’t involved. Nick got wrapped up in his hatred and self-pity. He never had a nerve agent in his possession.”

  “Nick had knowledge, and he had motive,” Colin said. “That’s a dangerous combination when you’re dealing with something as lethal as a boutique nerve agent. Is there a chance he had ampoules tucked away no one’s ever known about?”

  “No. But you’ll search the yacht in full hazmat gear?”

  “Already happening. What were his plans for the nerve agent?”

  “Profit. Chaos. Revenge. Toss it into the sea once he was free of the hold Robin and I had on him. Doesn’t matter because he didn’t have any, and he’s not good enough to produce more. He’s obsessed with revenge, and he likes to let the world burn and sit back and watch. Profit was secondary to his desire for revenge, but I’d take a good hard look at what he’s been up to the past seventeen years. He strikes the match telling himself the kindling and tinder are there and not his doing. He benefits. Why shouldn’t he? He liked the drama of vengeance. It wasn’t about justice.”

  They got in Colin’s truck. Jeremy sank against the seat and didn’t bother with a seat belt. “Have I ever told you I hate boats? It’s one thing your boss and I have in common.”

  “You know Matt Yankowski?”

  Jeremy shut his eyes and smiled. Colin started the truck. Well, hell. Of course Jeremy and Yank knew each other. How else had he sneaked into the country?

  24

  Finian returned from the hospital and lined up whiskey glasses on the dining room table. He would check in with Franny Maroney later, and the regulars at Hurley’s. He was one himself, he thought. But Rock Point locals being who they were, volunteer work crews were already forming to help tackle the damage once the building was released as a crime scene. There was insurance but it wouldn’t be enough, and they wanted to get started. They already planned to be open for breakfast with a reduced menu. There were lobstermen to serve at 4:00 a.m., and doughnuts to make, eggs to cook, batches of clam and haddock chowder to make. Finian had messages from parishioners who wanted to use the church kitchen to prepare food for the crews. Whatever the damage at the popular restaurant, Hurley’s would be back at full steam sooner rather than later.

  He opened the cupboard and got out bottles of Bracken, Yellow Spot, Redbreast, all good Irish whiskeys, and, for Oliver, Scotch—Auchentoshan, Talisker, Glenfiddich. Two by two he set them on the table, remembering when he’d toured each of the distilleries back when he was a whiskey man.

  “You miss it, don’t you?” Henrietta asked as she entered the room.

  He shut the cupboard glass door. “Miss what?”

  She smiled. “The life.” She picked up the Bracken Distillers pot-still. “Home.”

  “I’m where I’m needed.”

  “You’re where you need to be, at least for now. You’re a man apart in Rock Point, but I suppose to a degree any priest would be.” She set the bottle back on the table. “It has its attraction.”

  Finian studied her as she touched the Auchentoshan label. He saw the dark circles under her eyes. “Are we talking about me, Henrietta, or about you?”

  She angled a look at him. “Me?”

  “The work you do. The secrets you must keep.”

  “Maybe so. Once Nick realized Jeremy was part of something that happened to him in the past, there was no turning back for him. He needed to kill him. Simple as that. And I didn’t see it.”

  “Did Jeremy?” Finian asked.

  She hesitated and then shook her head. “He says he walked right into it. At one time, I thought hearing those words would be music to my ears. They’re not.” She squared her shoulders, tossed back her rich curls. “I don’t have all the details, and you don’t need to be burdened by them. Thank you for helping with Georgina.”

  Finian took the bottle of Redbreast and opened it, splashed some into a glass and handed it to Henrietta. “I’ll look in on Georgina in the morning. She pushed herself hard the past few days with her running, and she’s dealing with the shock of her father’s illness and death.”

  “His murder,” Henrietta said, swirling her whiskey. “Nick did a decent job of making it appear to be a suicide. I’m sure watching Georgina suffer gave him a great deal of satisfaction.”

  “His secret knowledge gave him a sense of power.”

  “Yes. Bloody bastard.” Henrietta took a gulped of the Redbreast. “I will get Georgina home—assuming the FBI hasn’t already escorted Oliver and me onto a flight to London.”

  Finian replaced the cork on the Redbreast bottle. “Expect them to barrel through the front door at any moment, do you?”

  He welcomed the spark in her eyes. “I’d be considering it in their place.” But she, serious again, took a more modest sip of her whiskey. “She’s alone, our Georgina. Oliver and I are only children, but I have my parents and other family in England, my colleagues, my work, my gardens. Oliver. I have him, although some days...” She didn’t finish. “He’s solitary, and he suffered a terrible trauma as a boy when his parents were murdered in front of him. But he’s not alone. Do you think he realizes that?”

  “I think he does.”

  “He has Martin, and Alfred. And me. And we have our twee Cotswolds village.” She sniffled back sudden tears. “I want a family, Father Bracken.”

  He couldn’t stop himself from glancing at the photo of himself and his wife and daughters at their cottage. His heart ached but not as much for the past, he realized. For the future.

  “You’ll make a wonderful mother, Henrietta.”

  “And Oliver?”

  “He’ll make a wonderful father.”

  “You didn’t hesitate,” she said.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, we’d never lack for tales by the fire.”

  Finian saw himself with his young family in front of the fire in his Kerry cottage. A good memory. He picked up the Glenfiddich. “Oliver likes a good Scotch.”

  Henrietta set her glass on the table, walked over to him, kissed him on the cheek. “When the time is right, Finian, you’ll know what to do, just as you knew when you needed to enter the priesthood. Trust that you’ll know.”

  He opened the Glenfiddich. Out the front window, he could see Oliver coming to the door. The light shone on the brightly colored leaves on the maple tree. Finian had come to love this place, no matter that he’d never be a part of it the way he’d been a part of things with Bracken Distillers, his brother and sisters and Sally and the girls.

  “It was all bloody-minded revenge and fantasy on Nick’s part,” Oliver said, angry and disgusted as he burst into the dining room. “He didn’t have to kill Robin. That poor man. Nick couldn’t accept he’d bollixed up his own life. And what was wrong with the life he had? Working on yachts and...” He stopped midsentence. “Am I interrupting?”

  “As if that would stop you,” Henrietta snorted affectionately. “Father Bracken and I were just processing the day.”

  Oliver glanced at Finian. “Glenfiddich will help.”

  Finian grinned and handed him a glass, and then poured a taoscán of Redbreast for himself, triple distilled, matured in oak casks—a taste of home.

  Henrietta swept up her glass. Finian held up his glass, not
ing how Oliver eased next to his love, the way she brushed her fingertips across his hand. Finian smiled. “Sláinte, my friends.”

  “Sláinte,” Oliver said.

  Henrietta hesitated. “To knowing when the time is right.” She raised her glass. “Sláinte.”

  * * *

  Emma wasn’t surprised the Fannings didn’t take news of Nick’s actions well. She and Colin met with them on the sundeck as a team finished searching the yacht. Shocked and angry, Melodie couldn’t stand still, or temper her language. “How dare you come here like this, with Bryce weak from his ordeal. We didn’t know what was happening. It was terrifying. We had no idea Nick was...that he’s...my God.”

  “We want to be sure the yacht’s safe,” Colin said. “Nick knew he wasn’t coming back here, and he set off a crude explosive device at a restaurant in Rock Point.”

  Melodie paled. “You mean he could have left a bomb here?”

  “We just needed to be certain.”

  Nick hadn’t left anything, but the search team found his tablet in his cabin. It was where he’d done the bulk of his drawing before copying his sketches onto paper in order to implicate Georgina and upset her father. A scientist by training, he’d documented his activities, fueled by his arrogance, narcissism and sense of grievance.

  A lot to talk to him about in his jail cell, Emma thought

  The Fannings were cooperating with the FBI and local and state police detectives, but they were free to go home.

  “We lead quiet, uneventful lives,” Melodie said.

  Bryce nodded next to her and took her hand. “We’ll buy that yacht and sail the Caribbean for the winter.”

  Emma thanked them and headed out with Colin. “Their idea of a quiet, uneventful life and mine are two different things,” he said.

  “You’ll take an afternoon kayaking out of Rock Point harbor?”

  “With you.”

  When they arrived back in Rock Point, Sam Padgett called, already on the case in Boston. Emma took his call on the rectory front steps while Colin went inside. “Yank’s even dragged himself into the office,” Sam said. “Nick Lothian was a busy guy. Revenge might have been his driving motive, but he was collecting some interesting materials on various people he’d encountered in his yachting life the past few years. The Fannings look to be clean, but that doesn’t mean all their friends are.”

  “Blackmail potential?”

  “Uh-huh. We’re not interested in the salacious stuff, but there some real issues to dig into.”

  “And Yank?”

  “Says you two did okay with poisons, considering Colin’s an arms trafficking undercover agent and you’re an art crimes analyst.”

  “He knew our three British friends were in country?”

  “Yank knows everything. He says he wants you two back here Wednesday morning. That gives you tomorrow to clean up things there and hopefully have a moment to relax. Go catch lobster or something.”

  Emma heard a seagull, not far away, “We have two bags of local apples in the refrigerator.”

  “That’s a lot of apples to eat,” Sam said.

  She smiled. “Enough for applesauce and a pie for the church’s bean-hole supper this weekend.”

  “Got it,” Sam said. “Have fun.”’

  * * *

  Franny Maroney dropped off another casserole at the rectory. She didn’t look particularly shaken by the day’s events, but Colin wasn’t surprised. Finian invited her to stay, but she wanted to get home to a baseball game. She was in her Red Sox shirt.

  After she left, Colin set the casserole—something to do with chicken—in the oven to warm up. “Franny’s seen a lot in her day, but she also doesn’t mind a little excitement once in a while, provided no one gets seriously hurt.”

  “Luckily no one did, today, at least,” Finian said.

  “Close call at Hurley’s, and with Jeremy.”

  Jeremy was in no shape to join them for dinner, but Colin brought him whiskey. He managed to sit up and take the glass. “I’m glad you don’t need a sippy cup,” Colin said.

  “What’s a sippy cup? Never mind. It’s scary you know these things. Life in Rock Point. Did someone tell Georgina about today? Her father didn’t commit suicide after their visit. He’d figured it out—the death caps, the sketch, Nick. By the time I found him in the park, he was too sick to get it all out.”

  “But in hindsight, you can see what he was trying to tell you.”

  “Yeah.” Jeremy stared at his whiskey. “If he’d just told me early on Nick had visited him on Sunday...”

  “Nick had already made sure Robin saw one of the sketches. That’s why he wanted to talk to someone about poisons and myths.”

  “I don’t know how or when—”

  “Friday,” Colin said. “He dropped Georgina off at her father’s place.”

  “You’ve spoken with her?”

  Colin shook his head. “Nick’s talking, and he wrote everything down.”

  A smile spread across Jeremy’s face and reached his gray eyes. “That’s excellent news.”

  “Talk to me about Valerie Masterson,” Colin said, sitting across from Jeremy with his own glass of whiskey. He’d barely taken a sip yet.

  Jeremy cupped his glass with both hands. “She wasn’t right in the head due to her brain tumor. Robin covered for her theft. He knew the nerve agent wasn’t viable, and he wanted to protect her in her last days—and Georgina. He wanted her to have positive memories of her mother. I’m prohibited from telling Georgina everything, but she has good instincts and I’m sure will fill in the blanks.”

  “Were you complicit in the cover-up?”

  “‘Cover-up’ is strong, Colin. I didn’t say or do anything illegal or against protocols. I didn’t pursue what I suspected might be true. I wasn’t a senior intelligence officer at the time.”

  “You let Robin have time with his dying wife and kept him working in the program.” Colin held his glass up but didn’t drink any of the whiskey. “Tell me the truth, Jeremy. How sure were you Nick didn’t have a real nerve agent?”

  He shrugged. “Mostly sure.”

  “Ninety-nine percent?”

  “Is one ever ninety-nine percent sure of anything?”

  “Estimate.”

  “More than fifty-fifty.”

  “What, sixty-forty? Hell, Jeremy, you’re reassuring.”

  “It’s not our job to be reassuring, is it?”

  Colin didn’t answer.

  “As Nick was swinging that knife and perfume bottle, it did occur to me I wasn’t a hundred-percent certain if he might have put together some sort of crude nerve agent.” Jeremy waved a hand, dismissive. “One wonders these things at the point of a knife, and I was right.”

  “Chanel.”

  The smallest of smiles this time.

  “How close did Nick get with the knife before I showed up and saved your ass?”

  “Too close, and I could have handled him.”

  Colin didn’t argue because it was probably the truth.

  “Robin was a good man,” Jeremy said. “I never would have had an affair with Valerie Masterson. Her marriage was in trouble, but I like to believe she and Robin would have worked it out if she’d lived.”

  “You’re a romantic at heart. Who knew?”

  “Every now and then I need a bit of hope to penetrate my cynicism. Robin tried to be a good husband and father, but he was clueless. I stayed in touch with him and kept an eye out for Georgina. Valerie asked me to. She knew what Robin was like. She had cogent moments toward the end, and that was one of them.”

  Colin got heavily to his feet. “Go home as soon as you can travel, Jeremy. Take a long walk on some picturesque English country lane, and then get back to work.”

  “I’m not good for anything else at this point. Watch yourself, C
olin. Don’t make that mistake. Don’t think you aren’t expendable. Train people to take your place. Let them do it.”

  “You’ve saved a lot of lives in your day.”

  “It’s the misses that haunt me. The people I couldn’t save.”

  “You saved me.”

  “I’m still waiting for a thank-you note from Yank.”

  Colin grinned. His friend would be fine. “Wear headphones when you walk. Listen to Harry Potter. I hear the narrator’s top-notch. It’ll keep you from thinking too much.”

  “Voice of experience?”

  “I kayak and listen to the oceans and the birds.”

  “Mainer.”

  And Colin knew then. His role with the FBI was changing not in some unspecified future but soon—now.

  He took his whiskey into the dining room. He smiled at Emma and touched her cheek. “Let’s see what Franny’s cooked up for us tonight.”

  * * *

  Georgina rallied and left the hospital that evening. She could have spent the night, but she didn’t want to be alone if she didn’t have to be. She reminded herself she was young, strong and determined, but she knew she needed to be with people who cared about her—people who’d helped her.

  Oliver and Henrietta picked her up and drove her to the rectory. Colin Donovan, Emma Sharpe and Finian Bracken were having after-dinner whiskey in the kitchen. She couldn’t face whiskey yet.

  They chatted about everything and nothing—the upcoming bean-hole supper, the damage at the restaurant that caught fire, Irish whiskey versus Scotch—and she relaxed in their company. “Are you going to continue with your botanical drawings?” Emma asked her.

  Georgina smiled past tears. “I think so. My father would like that. There’s nothing creepy about what I draw.”

  “No, there isn’t,” Colin said.

  Georgina appreciated his certainty. “Nick should have used his skills and imagination for fun graphic novels or screenplays. I draw mostly because I have time to kill when I’m not cooking, and I want to learn to identify wild edibles. I don’t mingle much. I suppose I’m my father’s daughter, after all.”