The Troubles (The Jessica Trilogy Book 2)

by Connie Johnson Hambley

  Confusion muddled his words. “Well, I... er, the Pope. I should most like to speak with the Pope. He would understand.”

  “The Pope himself? He’s a very busy man, and I’m not aware of him coming to Belfast any time soon.” Aoife stood up and helped the priest to his feet, walking him slowly to the vestry. “How about you tell me what you want to say to the Pope. Then I’ll have a better idea of how I can help you. What can I do for you? I’ll do it as I always have.”

  Tears ran down the old man’s face. “You’re a good soul. You know everything about my life here and all that I’ve done through the years. You must get out now. You must leave before Satan claims you.”

  “Thank you for your concern and protection, but it’s my turn to protect you as best as I can. Don’t talk of this again to anyone. You get some rest and we’ll talk more in the morning.”

  “Yes. Yes. Thank you. I trust you more than you know. You’re not ambitious or greedy. You don’t have the wits to scheme and climb like my brothers do.”

  Aoife kept the wince from creasing her face. “Thank you.”

  “I can trust you to hold things in safekeeping. Men can’t grip shoe leather without wonderin’ how they can wield it for more power. But you,” his voice trailed off, “you’ve never been out for your own gain.”

  “I helped all who accepted solace from you.”

  She was surprised when he placed a dry kiss on her cheek. “Thank you, Aoife. I feel better knowing you are watching out for me.” He brought a gnarled finger to his lips and shut the doors and shades to the vestry. The room was where the priests changed into the holy vestments for the service. It contained a tiny closet built into the wall, a spare wooden table with two chairs sat under the single set of lead-paned windows, hinges oiled but slightly reddened with rust. An ancient rosewood armoire, ornately carved with Celtic and Christian symbols, and darkened with age, dominated the room.

  Aoife was more than familiar with this room. She had started cleaning and polishing the wood and floors when she was a teen and felt there was not a dimple or cracked stone she wasn’t familiar with. Her curiosity had driven her to explore the back corners of the closet and even the musty drawers of the armoire only to be disappointed when the treasurers unearthed were moth eaten robes or wrinkled vestments yellowed with neglect. At one time, she was driven to snoop around the private rooms of the cathedral and the priests’ living quarters in the adjoining rectory, thinking she was gaining some insight into their secret lives. She soon learned that priests were simply old men with an isolating job and baggy knickers, and who maybe partook in a discrete nip of whiskey or two. In preparation for his retirement, half-filled boxes of faded albs and cassocks lay open on the floor, ready to be packed and moved.

  Father Storm stood in the middle of the room, looking from side to side as he repeatedly worked his fingers together and apart, rocking his body slightly as he did so. He looked nervously around the room toward the window and up at the armoire.

  “It’s been years. Years,” he said, more to himself than to Aoife. “I... I’m not sure, not sure.” He looked Aoife up and down. “You’ll do. You’ll do.”

  “Are you quite fit, Father?” Aoife said, betraying neither her impatience nor growing concern.

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m brilliant, actually. Such a relief.”

  “Father?”

  He hobbled over, gripped a wooden chair by the back rung, and dragged it across the floor. With an effort, he placed it in front of the armoire. “Climb up,” he said.

  Aoife did as she was told, balancing herself as the chair teetered on its worn and uneven legs. Carefully she stood upright, her head almost even with the top of the heavy doors. Above her was a large oval relief carved of a Celtic cross and flanked by figures reminiscent of the Apostles in the Last Supper. A faint layer of dust had settled, bringing the features of the seated apostles into grotesque focus. She absently wondered when was the last time she dusted there and made a note to herself to do so before the Bishop’s arrival.

  “Place your hand on the left corner and feel for a wooden block.”

  Aoife reached up and felt along the top edge she had become familiar with during her explorations long ago, but had since ignored for it held no enticement. She followed the priest’s precise directions and pushed the block with her fingertips while slightly pulling on the heavy door’s latch. A hairline crack appeared around the moldings framing the oval. Had she noticed the cracks before, it would not have registered to her as anything interesting to pursue because it simply looked as if the wood had aged and dried, shrinking slightly from the other pieces that anchored it into place. Father Storm then directed her to reach into the right corner and slide a fragment of wood to the side. The combined actions allowed the oval to protrude enough that she worked the rest out with her fingertips. She gently pulled the oval from its mount, revealing an area eight inches across by six wide and four inches deep filled with a perfectly fitting box.

  “Please hand that to me,” Father Storm requested, visibly relieved. He gave her careful instructions on re-locking the empty compartment.

  He stood, stroking the box and smelling the wood, fragrant of roses, which gave the wood its name. He bowed his head in prayer and waved the sign of the cross in the air with a rote motion that could have doubled for shooing flies away.

  “I must give this to you for safekeeping, Aoife. Through the powerful intersession of the immaculate heart of Mary, he spoke to me. Her Son wants this in the hands of a woman, for in it is the evidence of man’s failure to resist the temptations of Satan. Go, now, my child. Go with God’s blessing.”

  Aoife took the box, lighter and more plain than she would have thought for something so cherished. She looked at him with a question.

  “You will know what to do with it when the time comes,” he said and left.

  Aoife watched him go, standing silent, deep in thought. She wanted to go back to her flat and curl herself around a steaming cup of tea, but knew she could not. Going back to her cot and her electric kettle was all she could do. She hardly needed the hardness of the stone steps to remind her of reality. They made her knees ache and her heart heavy. When she pulled the curtain back, only the two milk crates upon her cot greeted her, her life relegated to their control. She thumped down with a creak of protest from the rusty springs and fumbled with the box’s latch long enough to learn it was locked. Hugging the box to her chest, she dreaded knowing who had the key more than she dreaded the secrets it could unlock.

  MANCHESTER, ENGLAND

  DALLY PUSHED THE phone up to her ear and sat back in her chair, not bothering to close her mouth or blink. A clear river of snot ran out of her nose, over her upper lip, and unchecked down her teeth. The slight saltiness prodded her out of her thoughts, and she automatically reached for a handful of tissues and blew, not yet focusing on her present world. Instead, her mind whirled away at the ramifications.

  On the other end of the line was an American reporter from Boston, Massachusetts. Colleen Shaughnessy-Carrillo’s elongated “r’s” and sultry voice belied her intensity and exposed that she was a driven woman who hammered away at the facts until she forged an ironclad story. While Dally would have woven a story with the weakest of threads, Colleen would not put one word on paper until the facts were checked and double-checked, evidence of the law degree she chucked to pursue a life in journalism. The story that poured from Colleen bested anything Dally could have dreamed up on her own, even after a few pints at the pub.

  “I first met Michael Conant in Boston while I was covering the ‘Murdering Heiress’ story.” Colleen pronounced her city Bah-stin.

  “You g-got the picture I sent of Wyeth snapped at a horse race, right?”

  “Yeah. That’s definitely Wyeth.”

  “So why tell me about Conant?”

  “He’s the guy standing next to her. Wyeth was headline news so anyone connected with her was, too. I’m not sure who hated the attention more, him or her. I
admit I got obsessed with the two of them and followed them back to Kentucky. You heard about the hoax search, right?”

  “A bit.” Had she? No matter, she fished for more. “Refresh me on the details.”

  “Conant was leading a search for a special needs boy lost on a mountain. He called in Wyeth to expand the search on horseback. A late season blizzard closed in. They never found the boy, Wyeth was critically injured, and a man ended up dead.”

  “A b-bloody mess.”

  “That’s not all. There was never a missing boy and the body found on the mountain did not die of exposure as the official medical examiner’s report claimed.”

  “I didn’t hear a whiff of that! How’d he die?”

  “Two bullets. One to the head and the other through the heart. A confidential source provided me with photos and the bullets used happened to be the same nine-millimeter caliber used by the favored Glock revolver of Sheriff Conant. Conant went missing, well, not missing as much he went on an ‘extended leave’ right around the time Wyeth decided to tour the world or something. You got my pictures, too. Right?”

  Dally pulled an image up on her screen. Colleen’s snooping uncovered photos of Wyeth and Conant looking rather cozy at a formal event, dressed to the nines. Sheriff Conant had a distinctly proprietary air over Miss Wyeth.

  Colleen continued. “I heard the whole county was at that event. I interviewed the hostess of the party and other guests, but the lips of the dear citizens were sealed tighter than a squirrel’s arse.” She gave a little laugh. “At least, that’s how the hostess would characterize it. Electra Lavielle is a gatekeeper of sorts, and no one dared speak to me in fear of her wrath. Lavielle lives off her father’s media fortune that’s enough to make Rupert Murdoch proud. It seems her presence had a chilling effect on my learning enough to nail down details and sources. My editors refused to print without confirmations so the trail stopped there.”

  A lowly horse trainer leaving the country in the dead of night would merit a few hundred words at best. But any updates on the Murdering Heiress would be enough for Grandier News to churn out stories about Wyeth for months to come. After all, lesser personalities had become minor celebrities on dust specks and drivel and Wyeth’s story was meat and taters. As Colleen spoke, Dally looked at the smiling people on the screen. At first, her whole attention was on Wyeth. Then her attention shifted to the sheriff. Dally rubbed her eyes in disbelief, but she could not mistake the iron stare and strong brow. Miss Jessica Wyeth had begun a romantic entanglement with a Mr. Michael Conant, a.k.a. Michael M. Connaught of the Magnus Mikevy Connaught fame.

  There wasn’t a self-respecting Englishman in all of the United Kingdom who did not know Magnus Connaught. Although he never ran for an elected office, the newspapers’ archives were full of images any candidate would die for. She closed her eyes and remembered some of the more popular snaps. Many were of Magnus, sitting bedside in a cancer ward, head bowed in prayer for the cure his companies would invest in. Others showed Magnus, surrounded by smiling women, kissing a laughing baby, happy their nappies wouldn’t leak because of his newly patented design. In many, his young sons were beside him.

  She took a deep breath and spoke in the tune of Spice Girls’ Wannabe. “So, tell me what you want, what you really, really want.” She winced.

  She heard a slight pause and chuff on the other end of the line. “I want to know what happened to them. Are they together? Wyeth skulked out of the U.S. to points unknown over two months ago. Most people assume she fled to some remote tropical island and is waiting until the world’s interest in her dies down so she can avoid the swarms of paparazzi. What is Wyeth doing and why have you contacted me?”

  Dally worried that Colleen’s obsession with the case would create an irresistible urge to travel to the U.K. and stomp all over Dally’s turf. Buried beneath the stacks of printouts and notes that had become Dally’s life were more pictures of Jessica. Dally retrieved the one she had emailed to Colleen. Jessica was dressed in jockey silks covered in mud leaning against a tall and dashing man as if her legs would collapse if he weren’t there to prop her up.

  The man at the Aintree track and the man at the American event were certainly one and the same. Michael Conant had been busy indeed. Connecting him to that private event at Aintree meant that he was clearly stepping into daddy’s shoes. Only the richest of the rich were there, and sonny-boy was doing his best to fit in.

  She wanted to keep Colleen as a supportive source but didn’t want to be scooped. Being caught lying to Colleen’s direct questions would cost her job, but omissions weren’t lies. “Wyeth might have been spotted in England, and my boss wanted to run a few column inches with an update on her.”

  “That picture you sent, which racetrack was she at? Who else was she with? Is she still in England? Who was she training for? Why is Conant in England, too? Wait a second, didn’t you guys just have another bombing?”

  “I’ve nothing more than that, but I promise I’ll c-call you as soon as I hear more.”

  “When was that picture taken? Who took it?”

  Dally wrinkled scrap paper by the phone’s mouthpiece. “Sorry? We’re losing our c-connection. Hello? I’m sorry, I can–” She disconnected their call midsentence with a flourish of her hand, pinky up.

  Every nerve in Dally’s body twitched with excitement. Not only was she on the trail of the face that would sell ten thousand issues, but she had a corker of a story that was better than anything she could have cooked up. This could take her from the cesspool of the tabloids to the hallways of real journalism. She might actually get some respect and loose the magpie for good.

  Dally liked Jessica’s spunk and looked at her as Dally’s ticket to legitimacy. Multiple story ideas popped into her head. The one she ruminated on was how oh-so-sweet and innocent Jessica Wyeth regained her freedom by lynching Magnus Connaught for murder and lassoed his son in the process. Dally had to tip her hat to the beautiful American, who had done what legions of English wished they could do—string Magnus Connaught up by his thumbs with his head resting beside him on a spike. But why would such a girl continue to be enmeshed with the Connaught family? She must have been duped into it. In spite of herself, Dally began to feel the stirrings of an allegiance with her.

  She looked at the papers on her desk. The Arndale bombers were connected to the Aintree racetrack by betting slips connected to Jessica Wyeth, who was connected with Michael Conant, née Connaught, whose father is Magnus Connaught, king of love/hate media buzz. The details were circumstantial at best but had all the makings of an epic human interest story.

  The angle Dally would work was of prey and predator—how a deceitful rogue led the fragile and vulnerable Miss Wyeth astray. Normally she would have begged to run with that slant, pleading to add another concocted tale to the list of many Don defended. Maybe owing some debt to Colleen’s influence, this time she knew she needed solid and verifiable facts and on the record sources before she started writing. She hadn’t had this much fun in a long time.

  Dally dabbed her nose with a tissue. She felt another sneeze coming on as she got back to work.

  NORTH CHANNEL, IRISH SEA

  TIM PRESSED AGAINST the curve of the hull to make himself as small as possible. It stank like dead fish. He knew he would too. He would stink like that stupid man who piloted the boat, and he was angry about it. Telling the man he stank didn’t help. When someone tells you that you stink, you wash your clothes and bathe. That man didn’t bathe. He didn’t even wash his hands, just snarled and squirted a brown stream of spit over the deck. It looked like tobacco colored seagull shit. Seagull shit smelled like fish, too.

  Tim wanted to wash his clothes. His face contorted in spasms like it did when he smelled bad things and wanted to stop the smell from getting in his nostrils. He wanted to get clean. Now. No waiting. His upper body started to rock, but he hardly moved. The walls of the confined hiding space held him in place.

  Liam taught him how to be very quiet.
He had practiced with him and showed him how to move and breathe so he wouldn’t be heard, but he didn’t teach him how not to smell. Liam taught him how to talk the way other people talked. Not all rushed and chopped but smoothly with a grin on his face. Liam helped him to stop rocking, too. The lessons were hard but worth it. Afterward, Liam let him read his books or play with the dogs for as long as he liked. But the best reward was the girl.

  The dogs didn’t like Liam. They put their ears back and made their eyes round whenever they heard his voice or smelled him. But they liked Jessica. The corners of their mouths went up. They wagged their tails when she was around. That meant she was a good person and it was okay for him to like her too. He tried to show her how much he liked her but she yelled at him. He told Liam and Liam said she was surprised, that’s all.

  Liam said he should try again. Jessica would be nice like that girl in the village Liam brought over for him when he was good at learning. The girl said no at first too, but Liam said she was pretending. He was right. The girl said no but reached for his pants. Tim practiced and practiced his lessons, and soon the girl was doing things to him that felt really good. He was going to try again with Jessica, but then Michael showed up. Jessica let Michael do the things Tim wanted to do. He hardened against the confines of the tight space.

  He could hear voices and footsteps on the deck. Two people were on the deck now. Now three. Was that scratching noise the sound of a dog’s feet? The stupid stinking man was walking to the left side of the boat then to the right. He called it port and starboard, fore and aft. Why didn’t he call it left and right, front and back? His rubber Wellies squeaked and made a slight squishing sound. The other feet wore shoes with harder soles. Those feet thumped and were heavy when they walked.

  He dipped his nose inside the collar of his shirt and tried to breathe. He wanted to get clean, but the stupid man shoved him in the fake door behind the galley and told him to stay next to the freezers and the frozen dead fish until the other people got off the boat. He was cold. If he made a sound, the stupid man was going to make him scrub out the fish guts with his hands. Tim stayed remained still and listened.