7 Sweets, Begorra

by Connie Shelton

“I’d love to do it,” Keeva said. “I’ll enlist the help of Anna and Bridget. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  A random thought touched the edges of Sam’s brain—something she meant to ask Keeva— but she forgot it the moment a knock came at the door. She told Keeva to call if she needed anything for the wake, as a waiter wheeled their dinner table inside.

  Over dinner she remembered the large envelope Daniel Ryan had given her, so the minute they finished eating she pulled out her uncle’s legal papers and leaned against the headboard to read.

  There were listings of Terry’s possessions, with a few special bequests to local people who’d apparently helped him at one time or another. A hunting rifle for his gardener, a collection of Waterford crystal for Anna along with a cash bequest, small keepsakes for several people whose names Sam didn’t know. The will itself named the larger items: Bank and brokerage accounts were to be divided by percentages to a variety of individual charities (no mention of the charitable trust); Ambrose was to get the bookshop (Sam felt a shot of joy at this); Keeva and Bridget would receive decent yearly bonuses as long as they remained employed at the shop; Sam would inherit Terry’s house and its contents, except as otherwise bequeathed.

  Wow. She set the page on the duvet beside her and took a deep breath. It was far more than she’d expected—both as a gift and as a responsibility. She read on. Another clause, farther into the document, granted her the right to dispose of the property in any manner she saw fit. It was too much to think about now, at the end of a very long day.

  Beau had edged under the covers beside her and she shoved all the papers onto the nightstand and snuggled into his warmth. Secure and comfortable, she began to dream.

  She was in her uncle’s house, facing the task of sorting his possessions and deciding who should get which of them. Continually drawn to the carved box in the bookcase, she told herself that she’d already ruled out any magical effects with it, but each time she set it back in the cabinet she would turn around and find it back on the desk. She picked it up and held it close, the same way she sometimes did with her smaller one. The wood warmed slightly but there was no other reaction. Someone called to her from another room and she set the box on the desk.

  She walked from Terry’s study out a door, where she found herself standing on the rocky coastline, completely alone. Above, she could see grassy fields stretching into the distance. Terry’s house was nowhere to be seen. She watched the tide lapping at the rocks, idly wondering if it was going out or coming in at the moment. It was a peaceful setting but Sam found it unsettling to be there—how had she come to this place and where were Beau and the others who’d been at Terry’s house?

  She scanned the coastline in both directions, catching a glint of light off some object. As she looked, there were more of them. She thought of Taos and the way an entire field would sparkle with light after a snow—sunshine hitting ice. She bent to touch the spark, expecting cold. It was a stone, a diamond. She picked it up and stared at it in the palm of her hand.

  Another flash caught her attention—green. An emerald, then a yellow diamond, then a sapphire. The beach, for meters in each direction was littered with gemstones. She gathered a dozen of them, all sizes and colors, gripping them tightly as she walked among the rocks. She thought of her wooden jewelry box; she could fill it with these gems and have enough to replace the box’s dull ones with these beautifully cut, vivid ones. But she didn’t have the box with her. What could she use to carry them?

  A few yards ahead she spotted something, a dark pouch of sturdy fabric. With its straps and buckles, it would be easy to fasten it around her waist and fill it with the treasure. She headed toward it, caught her toe on a rock and started to fall . . . gripping the diamonds tightly in her fist, she went down.

  Beau was gazing down at her when her eyes came open. Sam felt herself panting. She stared at her tightly curled fingers, opened them slowly. Of course there was nothing there.

  “You okay?” he asked. “You must have had a doozy of a dream. You were thrashing around and breathing hard.”

  She sat up. “Whoa. Such a vivid scene.”

  He brushed her hair back from her face.

  “I’m okay,” she said with a little smile at his outline in the dark room. “Just a very weird dream.”

  “Do you need a glass of water or anything?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. I’ll just go back to sleep . . .” She eased back down into the curve of his arm and fell asleep again almost instantly. The dream didn’t return.

  Chapter 26

  Beau was in the shower when Sam snapped awake. She sat up and shook her limbs. Snapshots from the dream stayed with her, along with the strange sensation that she’d just been unconscious for several hours. She turned on the electric kettle and dumped double-strength instant coffee and three sugars into a mug.

  “Hey, you,” he said with a smile when he emerged, shirtless, in jeans as she was pouring boiling water. “First you were restless, then you slept like a dead person.”

  “What’s with this anyway?” she said, blowing on the steam from her cup. “Second really weird dream this week. Maybe there’s something they put in this Irish food.”

  “Or the fact that you are on sensory overload? Between an uncle who came back from the dead and then went there again, a bookshop to clean up and operate, and chasing a jewel thief all over the countryside . . .”

  She laughed. “It’s not exactly been an uneventful trip, has it?”

  “I suppose we should check on Deirdre this morning, be sure she’s doing okay,” he said as he buttoned his shirt.

  “She was pretty banged up. Emotionally, too.” Sam flipped through the hangers in the closet, trying to decide what to wear. “I could call her.”

  She dressed in jeans and chose the last shirt that hadn’t been worn at least once, then dialed the phone. Deirdre said she was on her way out the door.

  “Have to go to work or there’s no money for the rent, much less comin’ up with a car.” She sounded bitter.

  “Surely the police will find yours. It’s not like an American can do a whole lot with a stolen car here. He’ll abandon it somewhere and then try to leave the country,” Sam said. “Beau can ask the police to watch the airports and ferry parking lots.”

  She realized the local authorities would have already thought of that, but it felt like she was somehow reassuring the distraught woman.

  Deirdre cut the call short, asking Sam to phone her if they got any word on her car.

  “I take it Quint never came back,” Beau said as Sam replaced the receiver.

  “Nope.”

  “Let’s get some breakfast in you. This time I’ll tell them to leave out the vivid-dream ingredient.” He handed Sam her jacket and held the door open.

  They stopped in at a little dockside restaurant they’d noticed earlier in the week, sitting down to another of those hearty full Irish breakfasts.

  “You know, Deirdre’s new office is just up the block,” Beau said, stabbing a section of sausage with his fork. “We could pop in and ask again if she can think of where Quint might have gone. She may have had some ideas during the night.”

  “I get the feeling she had plenty of ideas, mainly of ways to render a slow and painful death to the man.”

  “Good. You know what they say about a woman scorned—she’s likely to talk.”

  Deirdre’s face looked only marginally better this morning. The swelling was down considerably, but she’d depended on heavy coats of makeup to hide the bruises. It was only partially successful. She lowered her sunglasses when Sam asked about her black eye, but immediately put them in place again.

  “He’ll not leave this area until he’s found the diamonds,” she said to Beau’s question about whether she could guess where Quint might have gone. “It was the thing he talked about all the time, losing those stones. He truly thought the Travellers had taken them while he was out of it.”

  “So that’s why he went bac
k to Tuam?”

  “And again why he followed that group of ’em down here. He said they swore they never took anything from him.” She touched the side of her face gingerly. “I never asked how he asked the questions. You could likely follow a trail of bloodied faces.”

  She reached for a cigarette pack, lit one and took a shallow draw on it.

  “Your ribs are killing you, aren’t they?” Sam asked.

  Deirdre nodded, blowing out a ragged stream of smoke.

  “You should see a doctor.”

  “Can’t afford it. And what’s he gonna do? Tell me to put ice on the bruises and not strain the ribs. Everything will heal in time, he’ll say. I can save the money and tell it to myself.”

  She pressed the glowing tip of her cigarette against an ashtray, putting out the fire and preserving half of the little pleasure stick for later.

  “I’ll tell you one thing. Quint’s a bit rattled that an American lawman is after him. He doesn’t know who you’re with, what agency, but it’s unnerved him that you got here so fast.”

  Sam looked at Beau, whose expression was unreadable.

  “He’s desperate,” Deirdre said. “Be careful of him.”

  “Thanks. We’ll watch our backs.”

  The telephone rang and they used the interruption as a reason to go.

  “How, exactly, are we going to watch our backs?” Sam said as they walked toward the hotel.

  The plan was to get their rental and take one of the drives Beau had planned a few days ago, get away a few hours before they had to appear at Terrance’s viewing this evening. But Sam caught herself glancing nervously over her shoulder.

  “The same way we always do, darlin’. Just be alert.”

  Fine. She could only see about a thousand places where Quint could be waiting to jump them or a million vantage points where he could pull off a shot. Taking the car and getting away from town seemed like a good idea. They decided to stop by their room first, collect the maps and pick up umbrellas just in case.

  I know one little layer of alertness I can add, Sam thought as Beau slid his card key into the lock. She used the excuse that she wanted different earrings and pulled her wooden box from the room safe, carrying it with her into the bathroom and closing the door. Setting it on the countertop, she placed her hands along its sides. The wood began to warm.

  What the heck. She picked it up and cradled it close to her body. Within a minute or two the warmth had spread up her arms and into her chest. When her hands began to tingle she set the box down. Her palms were deep pink. Immediately, the glowing wood began to dim and the stones lost their vivid color.

  She flushed the toilet to explain why she hadn’t immediately come back, then carried the box back to the safe.

  “I thought those were the earrings you were already wearing,” Beau said.

  Oops.

  “Changed my mind.” She regretted not telling him the whole truth, but there were still some things it was better not to share.

  She locked the safe and joined him for the walk down to the parking garage.

  “I thought we might drive the north shore of Galway Bay today,” he said, handing her the map and starting the engine.

  She studied the route in case he wanted help figuring out which turns to take. All at once, the print on the map blurred. When Sam squeezed her eyes shut she saw the coastline. A black parcel floated in on a wave and as it hit the beach it hung up on a large rock. The wave receded. She blinked away the vision and the map became perfectly clear.

  Okay, what was that?

  Beau’s eyes were on the road and she didn’t mention the weird feeling. They chatted as they drove through the area known as Salthill and past several golf courses, the road veering closer and farther from the shoreline in different places. They came to a spot with an overlook and Beau pulled over without asking.

  “Good place for some pictures?” he suggested, reaching for the camera bag in the back seat.

  Sam set the map aside and they walked across the springy grass to a low wall where a few lovers had scratched their initials in the rock.

  “Sit there,” Beau said. “I’ll get you with that winding coastline in the background.”

  She smiled when he told her to, and he snapped two before walking over to sit beside her and hold the camera at arm’s length for a shot of the two of them. Then a shot of the two of them kissing.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s going in the family album,” he said as he looked at it.

  When he showed it to Sam she felt her vision blur again. She spun around, half expecting someone to be coming up behind them. Aside from two people crouching at the water’s edge, a hundred yards away, there wasn’t another person in sight. She tracked the water line and it happened again. A quick vision of a dark package lying almost invisibly against the dark rocks.

  Quint Farrell’s face flashed before her. This was it!

  “Beau! There’s something here—near here. Do you know anything about tides?”

  “I grew up on a ranch, darlin’. Tides are beyond me.”

  “I need to know when the next high tide is. There’s something . . . I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s going to get washed away when the next high tide comes.”

  “What are you saying? What thing?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s Farrell’s missing diamonds.”

  He gave her a sideways look.

  “Beau, it’s like the other times—when I saw those fingerprints, when that guy’s aura glowed so brightly—you know I can’t really explain what happens . . .”

  “But you’ve proven it works. I believe you. Where’s your phone?”

  She pulled it from the pocket of her coat. He dialed a number.

  “Aiden? We’ve come across a clue in the Farrell case. What time is the next high tide?”

  He nodded a few times, repeated some numbers.

  “Today will be the highest tide of the month, he says. At 2:14 this afternoon. He wants to know what it has to do with the Farrell case.”

  Sam wiggled her fingers and took the phone from Beau. “Aiden, I can’t really explain how I know this, but the missing diamonds have washed up in a black pouch, somewhere along the shore on the R336.”

  “Sam, that’s miles long. Do you have anything more specific?”

  She looked out over the water. “It’s close to where we are now.” She grabbed the map from the car and gave him the name of the last little town they’d passed through. “The bag washed up on the tide last night. If today’s tide is higher, it will get washed back out to sea unless we can find it. Can you round up enough officers to search several miles of coastline?”

  “Round them up and conduct a search—on less than three hours notice?”

  When he phrased it that way, she realized how impossible it would be.

  “And what do I have to go on?” Aiden was saying. “It’ll be my head if I muster all these men and it turns out to be nothin’.”

  Beau sensed how the conversation was going. He took back the phone. “Aiden, I don’t know how to explain it either . . . Are you superstitious?”

  “All Irish are superstitious.”

  “Then let’s just say that my wife has the gift of sight. She’s helped me solve several cases, based on these . . . hunches, visions . . . whatever they are. We need to believe her.”

  A huge sigh came over the line. “I’ll do my best to gather enough help. Please don’t get me demoted over this.”

  Beau assured the man that he would stand behind him. He clicked off the call.

  “My cell phone bill will be astronomical,” Sam said, “but thanks for trusting me.”

  “We could start looking before they get here,” Beau said. “I can’t imagine sitting around for the next hour or more until the rest of them arrive.”

  Sam nodded. “Bring the camera, in case we have to photograph evidence or something.”

  “You’re already thinking like a cop.” He ruffled her hair. “Half cop, half psych
ic. Do you know how flaky most law enforcement think those people are?”

  She rolled her eyes, not at all wanting to be lumped in with either camp—those with true insights or the charlatans who put up plywood signs with a big palm print by the side of the road.

  “Let’s start walking,” she said.

  They rounded the end of the low wall where they’d been sitting minutes earlier and decided they could cover more ground if they went opposite directions.

  “I’ll head east, you go west,” Beau said. “If we end up far apart, I’ll come back for the car and catch up with you so we can work a different section.”

  Sam hoped the police would get there before they had to hike too many miles on the rocky shore. Her sneakers weren’t exactly ideal for this.

  She described the bag she’d seen in the dream. “It will be between the high tide line and where the water is now. If you find it, do this.” She stuck two fingers in her mouth and gave an eardrum-piercing blow.

  “Where’d you learn to whistle like that?” He smiled at her.

  “Doesn’t matter.” She felt her mouth form a grin. “Okay, an old boyfriend. In high school. Go. Get busy.”

  She covered ten yards slowly, realizing what a challenge it would be to spot a black bag among the wet gray-black stones on the shoreline. Patches of sand were few and far between, and she remembered someone saying that it was a frustrating place for fishermen because they spent more time retrieving tackle than catching anything. She glanced back at Beau. He’d covered only a little more ground than she.

  Work smarter, not harder, her father used to say. She closed her eyes and tried to bring up a picture. Between last night’s dream and the sudden vision she’d had at the overlook, surely she could call up an image of the rock where it lay snagged.

  She concentrated.

  She saw it again.

  She opened her eyes but all the rocks looked so much alike. A big sigh and she walked on, eyes to the details on the ground.

  Twenty or thirty minutes passed. She and Beau were now more than shouting distance from one another. He seemed equally intent on the goal. She stretched her neck and shoulders, which felt permanently frozen at the awkward angle she’d been working. While her shoulders rolled she tried to call up the vision again but with the passage of time it was getting dimmer. The lapping waves were also coming closer to her feet.