Heron's Cove

by Carla Neggers

  Colin grinned. “You don’t think I can convince them I tripped on my way to a cocktail party?”

  Finian gave up and smiled. “Go, my friend. Be with your woman.”

  “An excellent plan.” But as Colin pulled on his jacket, he pointed a finger at Finian. “If this Russian jeweler shows up again, you call me. Got that, Father Bracken?”

  Colin left without waiting for an answer, and Finian corked the Bracken 15 year old, then poured himself a glass of water. He had to remember to keep a clear head when dealing with a Donovan. He put the uncomfortable conversation out of his mind and looked around the quiet restaurant. An elderly couple was sharing a piece of wild blueberry pie—a local favorite—and two young sisters he recognized from the church were talking themselves out of ice-cream sundaes.

  His previous life in Ireland seemed so long ago, so far away.

  He shook off his melancholy before it could get him in its grip. A woman on Hurley’s staff edged over to his table with a plastic tray. She was slender and shapely, with deep gold-flecked hazel eyes and a thick golden-brown braid hanging down her back. “I’ll get these glasses, Father,” she said, anchoring the tray on one hip.

  He thanked her. “What’s your name?”

  “Julianne Maroney. My grandmother is helping with the bean-hole supper at the church this next weekend—that is, if she’s able.”

  “Is she ill?”

  Julianne grabbed Mike’s and Colin’s empty whiskey glasses. “I don’t know if you’d call it ill. More like thoroughly pissed off at God.” She blushed. “Sorry, Father.”

  Finian leaned back in his chair. “I understand being pissed off at God. I was for a time myself.”

  “Were you? Really? And you’re not now?”

  “I’m not now. In fact, I never was. I just thought I was.”

  “Misdirected anger,” Julianne said thoughtfully. “That’s Granny. She loves the bean-hole supper but she says she’s mad at God for taking Grandpa away from her. He died last year, before you arrived at St. Patrick’s. We all miss him, but it’s not good for her to be so mad all the time. I think it’s making her sick.”

  “Physically sick?”

  Her eyes shone with sudden tears. “I think she wants to die, too. Join Grandpa in the great beyond. Heaven. Whatever.” Julianne added the water pitcher to her tray. “Do you think you could talk to her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t tell her I said anything. Her name is Fran. Franny Maroney. Her grandmother was from Ireland. Sligo, I think. Do you know where that is?”

  Finian smiled. “I do, indeed.”

  “Granny likes your Irish accent. I want to go to Ireland someday. Working on it, in fact.” Julianne snatched up Andy Donovan’s whiskey glass with more force than was necessary and banged it onto her tray. “It’s nice to see Colin back in town. He does come and go. He and Kevin are my favorite Donovans. I don’t know Mike that well.”

  Given the way she grabbed Andy’s water glass and banged it onto the tray with the same force as she had his whiskey glass, Finian had an idea of her opinion of the third-born Donovan.

  “Andy Donovan’s a rake,” Julianne said matter-of-factly. “You know that, right, Father?”

  “I haven’t heard a man called a ‘rake’ in an age.”

  “It’s fitting.” She glared out the window at the dark harbor where Andy had his lobster boat moored. “I’m working my way through school. I’m finishing my master’s in marine biology. I don’t know what I was thinking…Andy and I…” She sighed. “That son of a bitch broke my heart.” Her cheek color deepened. “Sorry, Father.”

  “Not at all.”

  She seemed to regret having said anything. “I told Granny I’d go with her to the supper. She says she doesn’t want to go without Grandpa, but I think it’d be good for her.”

  “Thank you for letting me know,” Finian said.

  Julianne spun back across the restaurant with her tray and through the swinging door into Hurley’s kitchen. Finian returned the Bracken 15 to the bar, where it would be safe until his next visit, said good-night and headed outside, the wood door creaking as it shut hard behind him.

  He crossed the quiet parking lot, a sharpness in the air he hadn’t noticed earlier. He was just barely warm enough in his suit coat. He continued onto the narrow streets above the harbor, lined with modest homes lit up against the dark night. He passed a large shade tree, bright yellow leaves clinging to its sweeping branches and scattered on the pavement, a reminder that the long Maine winter was soon upon them. He had heard tales of brutal New England winters. This would be his first.

  At least by winter the blasted bean-hole supper would be behind him.

  A man in a black fleece jacket and baseball cap walked across the street from Hurley’s. Finian didn’t recognize him but the man approached him as if they knew each other. “Evening, Father. Nice night. Chilly.” The stranger hunched his shoulders. He looked fit, with fair skin and fine lines at the corners of his eyes. “Didn’t I just see you at Hurley’s with the Donovan brothers?”

  Finian hadn’t noticed him. “Are you a friend of theirs?”

  “Nah. I’ve never stepped foot in Rock Point until today. A kid sweeping the floors told me. Four brothers altogether. FBI, marine patrol, lobsterman, Maine guide. Tough guys. Their folks own an inn on the waterfront. The father’s a retired cop.”

  “Are you asking me?”

  “Just shooting the breeze. I needed to stretch my legs.” He ambled a few more steps up the street, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. “Colin Donovan’s the FBI agent brother, right, Father?”

  “If you’d like, I can give him a quick ring—”

  “Thanks, but I’m on my way to Heron’s Cove. It’ll be my first time there, too. I should let you get back to your walk. You serve a church here in Rock Point?”

  “St. Patrick’s. We’re having a bean-hole supper next weekend. You’re welcome to join us.”

  The man grinned. “I can’t remember the last time I was at a church supper.”

  He said good-night, turned and walked back toward the harbor. Finian stood still, watching the man cross the street back to Hurley’s.

  At least he hadn’t spoken with a Russian accent.

  It was a fair guess that Colin’s secret work with the FBI involved Russians, Finian thought as he navigated the maze of now-familiar streets to the simple, stone-faced church and rectory that would be his home for at least a year. St. Patrick’s Church was a small parish, struggling more than some and less than others. A gnarled maple in front of the church had dropped all its leaves, but a river birch by the back steps—or what Colin had told Finian was a river birch—held on to its vibrant yellow leaves. The New England fall foliage season was as spectacular and festive as he had hoped and anticipated. St. Patrick’s bean-hole supper marked the last of the popular autumn suppers among the local churches.

  Finian had no illusions that Rock Point and the people of St. Patrick’s had fully embraced him since his arrival in June. That was all right. His presence was deliberately temporary, and he was Irish and a different sort of priest—a widower who had lost his wife and two young daughters before turning to the priesthood.

  He entered the rectory kitchen and pulled off his clerical garb, then slipped into a hand-knit Irish sweater. He went still, his pulse quickening as he noticed several envelopes on the floor by the old stove. All the windows were closed. Had he brushed them with his arm before he had left and simply hadn’t noticed?

  He thought of the man who had intercepted him. Could he have sneaked in here before heading to the waterfront?

  Why would anyone sneak into a rectory?

  Finian started for the telephone to call Colin but stopped himself. The poor man was just back home after what had obviously been a difficult ordeal. Finian shook off his uneasiness. He hadn’t observed any sign of a break-in at the back door.

  To further reassure himself, he checked the threadbare living roo
m and dining room, but nothing was out of place, broken or disturbed. He had let his imagination run wild.

  His gaze rested on a framed photograph on the china cupboard of his beautiful wife, Sally, and their sweet daughters, Kathleen and Mary, together on a sunlit Irish morning at their home above Kenmare Bay. They were smiling, and he could hear their laughter as he took the picture, only a few weeks before he lost them forever.

  He didn’t come into this room every day, but when he did, he would see them. The pain of his grief was still there and he recognized—accepted—that it always would be.

  But he hadn’t lost his girls forever. He’d lost them in this life.

  They had gone to God and were at peace.

  He left the dining room and checked the front door, discovering to his surprise that it was unlocked. Perhaps that oversight explained his sense of intrusion. With no evidence of a break-in, he had no reason to call Colin or the local police. He would feel ridiculous.

  He returned to the kitchen and made tea as he opened St. Patrick’s well-worn file on the bean-hole supper. The menu was tried-and-true, unchanged in decades. Homemade baked beans, roast pork, coleslaw, applesauce, pickles, rolls and pies. The folder included handwritten recipes and instructions on digging the bean holes, building the fire inside them and burying the pots for the slow baking of the beans.

  Well. Why not?

  Finian settled back in his chair, reading the recipes and dismissing his stubborn sense of uneasiness as the result of having just enjoyed a bit of Irish whiskey with four intense Donovans.

  5

  EMMA WAS SURPRISED to find a rolling pin in one of Colin’s kitchen drawers. It had a worn, broken-in feel that suggested he had inherited it from someone else’s kitchen. She didn’t find a pastry cutter, but she used her fingers to work in the shortening and flour that a cupboard had yielded, another surprise. She managed to put together a respectable pie while Colin was drinking whiskey with his brothers and Father Bracken.

  She leaned back against the sink and forced herself to focus on her surroundings and practice the kind of mindfulness she had during her days with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. They had shared all the routine chores of convent life, hiring out only what they couldn’t do themselves. She had discovered purpose and comfort in preparing meals, cleaning, doing laundry, gardening—daily work that didn’t directly involve the sisters’ mission in art conservation, education and history.

  A different life, and yet she still could draw on what she had learned during her time as Sister Brigid.

  She smelled the apples bubbling in the oven and felt the warmth of the kitchen, noticed the reflection of the overhead lights in the windows. Colin didn’t have drapes or curtains, only natural-fiber shades. There were no plants or knickknacks on the windowsills, although he had left a small, rounded gray stone on the sill above the sink. He must have picked it up on a Maine beach. It was smooth, polished by the sea.

  She heard footsteps outside and saw him in the back door window.

  “I see you didn’t lock the door behind you,” he said, entering the kitchen. “I guess you’re not worried about intruders.”

  “I guess not.” She smiled through her sudden, inexplicable tension. She had just been with him at Hurley’s, but his presence still was a shock to her system. She pointed at the gas stove. “I have a pie in the oven.”

  “Smells good. Apple, right?”

  “I had some Northern Spies in the car. I bought them at the orchard where we went apple-picking before you took off to parts unknown.”

  He shut the door behind him, a stiffness to his movements that reminded her it had been only hours, not days, since his escape from killers. “That was a good afternoon.”

  “One of those afternoons you never want to end.”

  “You enjoy baking.”

  “Most of the time. Baking helps me think.”

  His smoky eyes narrowed on her. “What were you thinking about, Special Agent Sharpe?”

  Dmitri Rusakov, a Russian billionaire. Ivan Alexander, a private security consultant who had started out as Dmitri’s bodyguard. Her week in London four years ago when she had met them, shortly after the disappearance of the Russian Art Nouveau collection Dmitri had discovered in the walls of his Moscow house sixteen years earlier.

  She hadn’t heard from Dmitri since London, but she had heard from Ivan.

  Three times, she thought. The third was last night.

  All three times his information was valuable, provided with the understanding that she would utter his name to no one.

  She stood straight, noticed the shadows on Colin’s face. “You must be exhausted.”

  “Emma, Emma.” He took a dish towel she had forgotten about off her shoulder and set it on the counter. “You have a lot on your mind. Calls from confidential informants in the middle of the night. Russians in Heron’s Cove.”

  Emma covered her surprise that he knew about Tatiana by turning on the faucet at the sink, washing a stray apple seed down the drain. “One call, and one Russian. I assume Yank told you about the call. Who told you about Tatiana Pavlova?”

  “That’s her name—Tatiana Pavlova?”

  “She’s a jewelry designer in London. She’s renting a cottage in Heron’s Cove.”

  “Finian ran into her at the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. Why would she go all the way out there to check you out?”

  “Is that what she said? That she was checking me out?”

  “Close enough.”

  Meaning he was operating on gut instinct. It was what he did, why he could do deep-cover work. Emma took a more measured, analytical approach. Both, she told herself, had their place.

  “Do you know her?” Colin asked.

  “We only met today.”

  He leaned against the counter, then stood straight again. “My back doesn’t like that position. I have some nice bruises where two Russians pounded me last night. Imagine that. I also investigated a Russian arms merchant now in federal custody. And here I come home to a Russian jeweler down the road. What are the odds?”

  Emma shut off the faucet. “Tatiana wants me to stop a Russian Art Nouveau collection from being stolen. She says it’s arriving in Heron’s Cove soon.”

  “Who has it?”

  “A woman from Phoenix. She’s American. This all goes back to a former Sharpe client.”

  “The former client is Russian?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When you say ‘Sharpe,’ do you mean you, your grandfather, your parents, your brother or all of the above?”

  Emma grabbed two pot holders off the counter by the stove. “It doesn’t matter.” She glanced back at him, felt his intensity, his restless fatigue. “Yank said you need to rest.”

  “A wise man, our fearless senior agent in charge.” Colin shrugged off his jacket and hung it on a hook by the door. “And your tip about me? Was that from a Sharpe client?”

  “No.”

  “Another Russian?”

  Emma didn’t want to lie to him. Couldn’t lie to him. “I’m glad you’re safe, Colin. That’s what counts.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “No, I didn’t. I’m not going to talk about my source.”

  “Does this source have any connection to this Russian collection?”

  She tucked her hand into one of the pot holders. “I came here to do something with the bag of apples. Tatiana Pavlova isn’t your problem. I’ll deal with her. I’ve emailed my grandfather and brother already. I’ll talk to them in the morning. Tatiana was emotional, and she had no facts to back up her suspicions about the collection.”

  “All right. For now.” Colin touched a finger to her cheek. “How long before the pie’s out of the oven?”

  “Maybe five minutes.”

  “Five minutes,” he said as if it were an eternity.

  “It’s basically done now. I can turn off the oven and it’ll be fine.”

  “Excellent plan.”

&nbs
p; She yanked open the oven door, the burst of heat enough to remind her to think, take her time, be sensible. She lifted the glass pie plate off the rack and set it on top of the stove, then switched off the timer and the oven heat.

  “I meant to go straight back to Heron’s Cove,” she said quietly. “I wanted to give you a chance to get some rest, but I can still go.”

  “Isn’t the Sharpe house gutted by now?”

  “Mostly gutted.”

  “You slept here last night.”

  “Because of the whiskey,” she said.

  Colin took the pot holders from her and set them on the counter. “Thank you for the pie.” He slipped his arms around her. “We can talk about your new Russian friend later. Let me decide if I need rest. I slept some on my flights.”

  “But not last night—”

  “Not much in recent days.”

  Steam rose from the pie, sweet juice from the cooked apples, sugar and cinnamon oozing over the crimped edges of the browned crust. Emma eased her arms along his sides and around to his back, her physical attraction to him as strong, as immediate, as the first time he had touched her a little more than a month ago.

  “It’s been a long month,” she said. “If you want to talk, I can put on coffee and cut the pie.”

  “I’m good with Fin’s whiskey and warming up my cold bed with you. We can save the pie for tomorrow.” Colin drew her closer to him. “I don’t need to talk about what happened. I’m here. I’m with you. The rest can wait.”

  “I’m not hiding anything from you. I just can’t talk about everything that involves my family’s work.”

  He touched his lips to hers, just a breath of a kiss. “No talking, no thinking. Not tonight.” He ran his fingers into her hair and smiled. “No sleeping on a mat in Heron’s Cove, either.”

  She smiled back at him. “Where, then?”

  “With me.”

  “You’re in pain, aren’t you? These bastards—”

  “I don’t want to think about them. I want to think about you.”

  Her heartbeat quickened. “I should carry you upstairs tonight.”

  He gave a small laugh. “Sweetheart, the day I can’t carry you up to bed…”