Carla Neggers - Liar's Key

She dug her overnight bag out of the closet and set it on the double bed. Thinking about living arrangements was a welcome respite from thinking about Gordy Wheelock and whatever he was up to, and how it involved Oliver York, Claudia Deverell and the Sharpes.

The Sharpes.

Emma unzipped her suitcase. She was a Sharpe, too. She didn’t need to remind herself.

Her parents hadn’t responded yet to her text. Her father still worked for Sharpe Fine Art Recovery from London in a low-stress research and analysis position. Her mother had left her job as an art teacher. They made a point of socializing on occasion, sometimes because it was good for business but mostly because it was good for them for its own sake. A new procedure in December had provided her father with some relief from his chronic back pain, but Emma didn’t know when, or if, her parents would return to Maine, even for her wedding.

She threw a few things into her suitcase. She had some clothes at Colin’s house—yoga pants, sweatshirts, hiking shoes, kayaking gear—but she’d need something to wear to lunch with his mother as well as to the open house. Now she had to add checking up on Gordy Wheelock to her list for the long weekend.

Would Claudia Deverell be there? Emma hadn’t seen Claudia or any of the Deverells in at least six years. She’d been a novice then. Blonde, attractive and a few years older, Claudia had joined Emma on the tidal river in Heron’s Cove. I can’t believe you’re a nun, Emma. You were always so worldly and well-dressed, and you seemed to enjoy life. But I shouldn’t call you Emma, should I? It must be Sister Something.

Sister Brigid. I’m a novice. Are you in town long?

I’m here with my mother for the weekend. It’s Fourth of July, or didn’t you know?

Emma, wearing her modified habit, her hair pulled back with a wide white headband, had picked up two river-polished stones, handed one to Claudia and then tossed hers into the rising tide. She’d learned not to be defensive about people’s notions about a religious life. She invited Claudia to tour the convent, located on a small peninsula near Heron’s Cove.

Claudia had tossed her stone into the river. My maternal great-grandfather was good friends with the man who built the original estate that’s now your convent. They were adventurers. They did several trips together in the early twentieth century and brought home all sorts of treasures from the lands of the former Roman Empire. Loot, we might call it now. Eye of the beholder, I suppose. She’d dusted bits of mud off her hands and smiled. Good to see you, Emma.

Claudia never came to the convent for a tour, and Emma left the Sisters of the Joyful Heart a short time later for her new life with the FBI—and now her life included Colin.

She wondered if Claudia had been the one who’d told Gordy about her past.

Emma slung her overnight bag over one shoulder and headed out. Her next logical step was a chat with her brother and her grandfather about Gordy, Alessandro Pearson, Claudia Deverell and the rumors about stolen mosaics. Fortunately, for the first time in years, Wendell Sharpe, founder of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery and one of the foremost private art detectives in the world, was less than two hours away in southern Maine, and Emma wouldn’t have to fly all the way to Dublin to see him.

4

Near Ardmore

County Waterford, Ireland

Mary Bracken paused on the narrow lane that wound along the cliffs above the village of Declan’s Cross. She was winded from walking too fast up the hill, but the lane had leveled off. She was on the headland where Sean Murphy, a garda detective, had his farm. As she caught her breath, she watched a trio of chubby lambs chase each other in the pasture on the other side of a barbed-wire fence. Nearby, two ewes nibbled on the lush green. Mary could hear the bleating of the lambs above the crash of waves on the rocks far below her. She didn’t know if the tide was coming in or going out, just that it was somewhere between low and high.

She knew whiskey, not tides, she thought with a smile.

She resumed her walk on the quiet lane, a short distance from historic Ardmore, the ancient land of Saint Declan. She loved this part of Ireland, but it wasn’t home. Home was Killarney to the west, a favorite with tourists given its natural beauty, national park and fascinating history. Bracken Distillers, where she worked, was located in the hills not far from the busy village. A good location.

I should be there now.

Mary sighed, frustrated with her obsessing. She’d made her decision. She even had her boarding pass for her flight tomorrow. No point questioning her motives for setting off to America now. She’d fly from Dublin to Boston and then drive on to Maine and a visit with her brother, Finian.

Her priest brother.

One of the ewes spotted her and bleated loudly, as if she knew Mary needed a good talking-to.

She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and continued on her way. Where would she be now if Finian and Declan, twin brothers and the eldest of the five Bracken siblings, had decided to make a go of the Bracken farm instead of launching their own whiskey business?

She passed another ewe, a lamb at her teats.

Mary smiled. “That’s where I’d be. I’d have little ones at my teats by now.”

As it was, she had a full-time job at Bracken Distillers, running tours and the whiskey school. She loved her work. She and Declan got on well.

They missed Finian.

Mary felt a lump in her throat. “Ah, Fin.”

Where would he be if he’d made a go of the farm?

He’d be off on a tractor, fixing fences and tending sheep instead of across the Atlantic working as a parish priest in a small Maine fishing village. Fixing himself, tending his church flock—living far away from the reminders of his loss. His wife, his daughters. Gone too soon.

He was a worry, Father Finian Bracken was.

Mary, the youngest Bracken, usually wasn’t prone to worry or obsessing, but Finian’s choice to enter the priesthood felt all wrong to her and had from the start. Now seven years had passed and he hadn’t yet returned to Bracken Distillers and his senses. She feared he never would.

Old Paddy Murphy waved to her from his tractor, across a rolling pasture on the other side of the lane as it curved along the cliffs. She waved back, and Paddy continued his work, which no doubt involved mud, muck and manure. Mary could smell the salt water and welcomed the fresh, clean breeze, no hint of rain in the clear air. As the lane wound closer to the cliffs, she saw the tide indeed was ebbing, and she wished her worries could ebb with it. Yet she knew even if they could, they’d be back, as sure as the tide would rise again.

The lane turned to dirt, narrowing further as she approached the tip of the headland, where a medieval church lay in ruin along an ancient stone wall covered with moss and tangles of greenery. Mary recognized holly, rushes and a small oak, but she couldn’t name the spring wildflowers, delicate-looking with their pink and blue blossoms amid the vines and moss. Like tides, she didn’t know much about wildflowers. They seemed to hold their own against rock, wind and sea, and were an integral part of the rugged, beautiful scenery.

Three ornately carved Celtic Christian stone crosses stood on a green hilltop above her, as if they were sentries protecting the headland. She noticed a movement, and then recognized Oliver York as he emerged from behind the center cross. “Don’t come up here,” he called to her. “It’s muddy as bloody hell.”

Mary stayed put as he trotted down the hillside toward her. She zipped her Irish Mackintosh and felt the stiffening breeze whip through her long, dark Bracken hair.

She thought the mysterious Brit on his way to her might be one of Finian’s new friends, too. He disappeared into the church ruin, its partial walls of lichen-covered stone behind the trees and vines on the overgrown wall. Mary didn’t know what to make of him. They’d met briefly in February, here in Declan’s Cross. Finian had been there, home in Ireland for a short visit.