Carla Neggers - Harbor Island

“What time did you arrive on the island?” Colin asked from the foyer door.

Maisie looked startled, as if she’d forgotten he was there, but recovered quickly. “Just before the police did. I knew something terrible had happened. I threw up.”

“I arrived a few minutes later,” Travis said.

“It’s been a long day. I know you understand.” Maisie pointed vaguely toward the back of the house. “Why don’t I show you my workroom? It’s just downstairs. I don’t like sharing the details of a project too soon, but...” She tried to smile. “But you’re the FBI, and you want to know. And I have nothing to hide.”

“I’ll go with you,” Danny said.

Maisie bristled visibly. “You don’t have to stay, Danny. You can go anytime. Dad and I will be fine.”

He shifted his impassive gaze to Emma. “Maisie is independent. That’s cool, but it doesn’t occur to her that someone might not wish her well.”

“That’s not what today is about, Danny,” she interjected, clearly annoyed with him. “I’m not the one who was in danger, obviously, and we don’t know that Rachel’s death has anything to do with me. In fact, I can’t imagine how it could.”

“Rachel had her own life apart from Maisie and me,” Travis said.

Maisie nodded. “She could have had her own enemies, too. More likely, what happened this morning was just a stupid accident. With the cottages falling into disrepair, vagrants and people out for a good time have been using that side of the island. Developing it would end all that. But we don’t know what happened today, except that Rachel is gone.”

Travis eased in next to his daughter. “Danny, you’re welcome to move in here. If we’d known you were coming, we’d have had a room ready for you.”

“I’m good with my rental,” Danny said. “No rats or roaches.”

Maisie gave him a cool look before turning to Emma. “Shall we go downstairs?”

Danny made a move to join them, but Colin shook his head. “You sit tight, Danny. We’ll be back.”

“Feds,” he said, good-naturedly. “Love you guys. Go do your thing.”

* * *

Maisie Bristol’s workroom was down a half flight of stairs at street or “garden” level. French doors opened onto a brick courtyard with a stone fountain, statues and pots now mostly empty with the cooler weather. In the fading afternoon light, Emma noticed chips and cracks in the fountain. Moss and crabgrass covered patches of the brick. A six-foot stepladder leaned up against the back wall, reminding her that the Bristols were having work done on the place.

Maisie grabbed a book off a worktable pushed up against multipaned windows. “I’m sorry, I don’t have many chairs in here, and the few I have are stacked with books. I’ve been collecting them like a madwoman. I don’t know when I’ll get to read even half of them.”

“We don’t mind standing,” Emma said.

Colin walked over to the window. He’d said little since arriving at the Bristols’ house, but she had no doubt he was paying close attention. That she’d found a dead woman and Yank had found his wife trapped in Aoife O’Byrne’s Dublin studio hadn’t sat well with him—as an FBI agent or as Emma’s fiancé and Yank’s friend.

Maisie set her book back on the table. Emma saw it was on Jack B. Yeats. “I wasn’t familiar with his work until recently,” Maisie said, brushing her fingertips across the cover, one of his western Irish landscapes. “Rachel told me about him, as a matter of fact. I didn’t realize at first that her interest in Yeats cuts to our different approaches to the film we were working on together. She wanted flash and dazzle. I want...” Her eyes shone with fresh tears. “Well, I don’t know what I want.”

“When did Rachel introduce you to Yeats’s work?” Emma asked.

“About a week ago. She’d done some research and thought she’d found the perfect hook for our movie.”

“And you weren’t sure?”

“I wasn’t, no. I’m interested in the intersection of pagan Celtic Ireland and Christianity and the integration of those two worlds. I’ve been gobbling up everything I can.” Maisie gave a broad gesture to more books stacked on the worktable. “It’s fascinating.”

Maisie—or someone—had turned the end wall into a collage of color printouts of photographs of Irish Celtic scenes. Emma recognized ogham stones, Celtic crosses, beehive huts and church ruins, pages from the Book of Kells.

“I wasn’t upset by Rachel’s ideas,” Maisie added quickly. “Differences are to be expected in a creative endeavor. I like to throw everything out onto the table—without self-censorship—and see what develops. Let things simmer and percolate until what’s meant to be emerges. It’s not always a neat and tidy process, but it works, at least for me.”

“You’ve had a great deal of success,” Emma said.

“I support good people and get out of their way and let them do their work.”

“That takes a certain vision, doesn’t it?”

Maisie smiled, brushing at her tears with the heel of one hand. “And luck.”

“Did Rachel—”

“All my successes were flukes according to Rachel. She said it was a positive viewpoint. If they were flukes, I wouldn’t expect to duplicate them in the future. I wouldn’t be disappointed.”

“She was lowering your expectations?”

“Helping me to a soft landing,” Maisie said. “She and my dad started seeing each other when I was fifteen. I was even more awkward than the average awkward fifteen-year-old. Living in Las Vegas with my erratic but loving mother. Traveling back and forth to Los Angeles and Boston to see my father. It’s not like not knowing where your next meal is coming from or going to bed hungry, but I coped by watching movies, talking movies, eating and sleeping movies. Rachel was very kind to me in her own way, and she taught me a lot.”

“But part of her still thought of you as that awkward fifteen-year-old,” Emma said.

“She admitted as much.”

Colin turned from the window. “Was she hijacking your movie, Maisie?”

“She knew I wouldn’t let that happen. She told me last night that she realized I wasn’t the insecure girl breathless for whatever words of wisdom she had for me—that just because I’m open to ideas doesn’t mean I don’t have ideas of my own, or a strong vision of my own. That I...I...” Maisie gulped in air, her face crumpling as she sobbed, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I can’t believe someone killed her.”

Emma pulled out the one chair that was pushed under the table and lifted a stack of books from the seat. Colin eased Maisie onto the chair. “Try not to hyperventilate,” he said. “It won’t help.”

She nodded, still gulping in air. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been in such a state of shock that I’ve hardly cried at all. I don’t know what all Rachel was up to—I think she was trying to manipulate me or bully me into doing the movie her way. I’m sure that’s why she invited Aoife O’Byrne here. How awful it must be for her to arrive in Boston and not twenty-four hours later, the woman who got her here is shot to death in cold blood. I can’t believe—” She clutched her shirt at her solar plexus. “I’m going to be sick.”

Colin placed a hand on her shoulder. “Easy, Maisie. Just breathe normally.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, tears leaking out of the corners. Her nose was running. She sniffled, letting go of her shirt and wiping her nose on the sleeve. She opened her eyes and sniffled again. “Sorry. I never seem to have a tissue. I’ll change in a few minutes. God, what an awful day.” She raised her gaze to Emma. “I know you’re the one who found Rachel this morning. The police asked us—Dad and me—if we knew that she’d called you. We didn’t. We’ve no idea what she wanted. Did she tell you? When Rachel called—” Maisie stopped abruptly and shook her head. “Never mind. I know you can’t tell me things.”