The Angel. Carla Neggers
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world she was trying to exit.
And now Deirdre was dead.
Eileen’s fingers automatically moved to the next bead, and he saw her lips move as she silently recited the Hail, Mary.
He waited for her to finish the entire rosary and return her beads to their navy velvet pouch. She clutched it in her hand and leaned back against the bench.
They both watched a squirrel run up a maple tree.
Without looking at her brother, Eileen said, “I’m pregnant.”
Of all the things Bob had anticipated she might say when she’d finished praying, he hadn’t imagined that one. Their parents would be shocked. He was shocked. She didn’t have a boyfriend that he knew about.
He fought an urge to run away. Get out of Boston, away from the aftermath of Deirdre’s death, from what was to come with his sister. It all flashed in his mind—Patsy grieving next door, the police hunting for Deirdre’s killer, Eileen getting bigger, trying to figure out what to do with the baby.
The baby’s father. Who the hell was he?
Bob curled his hands into tight fists. He was young. He didn’t have to stay in Boston and deal with all these problems. He could go anywhere. He could be a detective in New York or Miami or Seattle.
Hawaii, he thought. He could move to Honolulu.
“How far along are you?” he asked.
“Not far. I haven’t had the test yet, but I know.”
“Eileen…” Bob looked at his younger sister, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “What happened in Ireland?”
But she jumped to her feet and walked quickly toward the ivy-covered building where she worked, and he didn’t follow her.
A week later, a series of calls into the Boston Police Department alerted them to a man who had just leaped from a boat into Boston Harbor.
He was in flames when he hit the water.
By the time a passing pleasure boat reached him, he was dead.
Within hours, the dead man was identified as Stuart Fuller, a twenty-four-year-old road worker who rented an attic apartment three blocks from the house where Deirdre McCarthy lived with her mother. Police discovered overwhelming evidence that tied him to Deirdre’s murder.
They had their devil.
The autopsy on Fuller determined that he’d drowned, but his burns would have killed him if he hadn’t gone into the water.
That evening, Bob found Patsy on her back porch with about twenty small angel figurines lined up on the top of the wide wooden railing. Despite the summer heat, she wore a pink polyester sweater, as if she expected never to be warm again.
“Deirdre collected angels,” Patsy said.
“I know. It made it easy to buy her presents.” Bob pointed at a colorful glass angel he’d found for her on a high school trip to Cape Cod. “I got her that one for her sixteenth birthday.”
“It’s beautiful, Bob.”
His throat tightened. “Mrs. McCarthy—”
“The police were here this morning. They told me about Stuart Fuller. They asked me if I knew him.”
“Did you?”
“Not that I recall. I suppose I could have seen him in the neighborhood.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “At church, perhaps. The devil is always drawn to good.”
Bob watched her use a damp cloth to clean a delicate white porcelain angel holding a small Irish harp. It was one of the more valuable figurines in Deirdre’s collection and one of her favorites. She’d loved all kinds of angels—it didn’t matter if they were cheap, cheesy, expensive, ethnic. She used to tell Bob she wanted to buy a glass curio cabinet in which to display them.
“Patsy…do you know anything about Fuller’s death?”
She seemed not to hear him. “I have a story I want to tell you.”
Bob didn’t have the patience for one of her stories right now. “Which one?”
“One you’ve never heard before.” She held up the cleaned figurine to the light. “My grandfather first told it to me as a child in Ireland. Oh, he was a wonderful storyteller.”
“I’m sure he was, but—”
“It’s a story about three brothers who get into a battle with fairies over an ancient stone angel.” Patsy’s eyes sparked, and for a moment, she seemed almost happy. “It was one of Deirdre’s favorites.”
“Then it can’t be depressing. Deirdre didn’t like depressing stories.”
“She didn’t, did she? Come, Bob. I’ll make tea and heat up some brown bread for you. It’s my mother’s recipe. I made it fresh this morning. My father used to say my mother made the best brown bread in all of West Cork.”
Bob had no choice but to follow Patsy into her small kitchen and help her set out the tea and the warm, dense bread. How many times had he and Eileen and Deirdre sat here, listening to Patsy tell old Irish stories?
She joined him at the table, her cheeks flushed as she buttered a small piece of bread. “Once upon a time,” she said, laying on her Irish accent, “there were three brothers who lived on the southwest coast of Ireland—a farmer, a hermit monk and a ne’er-do-well, who was, of course, everyone’s favorite…”
Bob drank the tea, ate the bread and pushed back tears for the friend he’d lost as he listened to Patsy’s story.
Chapter 1
Near Mount Monadnock
Southern New Hampshire
4:00 p.m., EDT
June 17, Present Day
Keira Sullivan swiped at a mosquito and wondered if its Irish cousins would be as persistent. She’d find out soon enough, she thought as she walked along the trail to her mother’s cabin in the southern New Hampshire woods. She’d be on a plane to Ireland tomorrow night, off to the southwest Irish coast to research an old story of mischief, magic and an ancient stone angel.
In the meantime, she had to get this visit behind her and attend a reception tonight in Boston. But she couldn’t wait to be tucked in her rented Irish cottage, alone with her art supplies, her laptop, her camera and her walking shoes.
For the next six weeks, she’d be free to think, dream, draw, paint, explore and, perhaps, make peace with her past.
More accurately, with her mother’s past.
The cabin came into view, nestled on an evergreen-blanketed hill above a stream. Keira could hear the water tumbling over rocks and feel it cooling the humid late spring air. Birds twittered and fluttered nearby—chickadees, probably. Her mother would have given all the birds on her hillside names.
The mosquito followed Keira the last few yards up the path. It had found her at the dead-end dirt road where she’d left her car and stayed with her throughout the long trek through the woods. She was less than two hours from Boston, but she might as well have been on another planet as she sweated in the June heat, her blond hair coming out of its pins, her legs spattered with mud. She wished instead of shorts she’d worn long pants, in case her solo mosquito summoned reinforcements.
She stood on the flat, gray rock that served as a step to the cabin’s back entrance. Her mother had built the cabin herself, using local lumber, refusing help from family and friends. She’d hired out, reluctantly, only what she couldn’t manage on her own.
There was no central heat, no plumbing, no electricity. She had no telephone, no radio, no television—no mail delivery, even. And forget about a car.
On