Carla Neggers - The Whisper

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 arrived. "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."