Liar's Key

by Carla Neggers

  Would Oliver volunteer where he was staying?

  Possibly, possibly not.

  To be on the safe side, Emma texted Colin the information. Even if he was driving, he’d see the text before he arrived in Rock Point.

  14

  Emma parked at the end of the curving, tree-lined drive that led to the main gate to the convent of the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. She got out by a tall wrought-iron fence, the air fresh and cool out on the small peninsula where the sisters lived and worked. She noticed the pungent scent of the white pines and spruces that grew along the driveway and the other side of the fence.

  A small stone statue of Saint Francis of Assisi greeted her by the gate. It was a creation of Mother Sarah Jane Linden, the convent’s foundress and a talented artist who had encouraged young Wendell Sharpe in his early days in art recovery. Guided by her vision and commitment, the fledgling order had purchased a run-down nineteenth-century estate just outside Heron’s Cove and then had begun a long process of building and renovation. They’d installed multiple gardens and trails to aid in their mission of art education, preservation and conservation. Mother Linden had died years ago, but the two dozen or so religious sisters continued her vision of an order that was at once modern and traditional, hardworking and playful, isolated and connected to the wider community.

  Although Rosemary Donovan had been astute in her observations about the unintended and long-lasting effects of Emma’s brief time as a novice, Emma had never regretted it. Her months living there were in the past, but still a part of who she was.

  Sister Cecilia Catherine Rousseau opened the main gate and greeted Emma warmly. She wore a dove-gray tunic and skirt with a simple silver profession cross hanging from her neck and a gold band on her left ring finger. A wide black headband held back her chin-length light brown hair. With the warm weather, she wasn’t wearing a sweater or jacket, just her sturdy walking shoes. She’d professed her final vows last fall, shortly after she and Emma met, and was a dedicated art educator. She’d been giving Emma painting lessons, but they’d been infrequent lately due to work schedules and Emma’s less frequent trips to Maine.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” Emma said.

  “I’ve been doing some research for you. Come.”

  They went through the main gate and followed a paved walk to the motherhouse, part of the original estate. Built in 1898, the stone mansion had leaded-glass windows, several covered porches, multiple dormers and, as Emma recalled, some serious drafts. But Sister Cecilia didn’t linger, instead leading Emma through an expansive, colorful flower garden with late-season tulips, bleeding hearts and other spring flowers, to a wide lawn above a tumble of boulders that led to the sea.

  “Mother Aquinas knows you’re here,” Sister Cecilia said. “I’m not sneaking around.”

  Not that she was above it, Emma thought. “I wouldn’t want you to get yourself into trouble.”

  “Am I officially an FBI informant?”

  “No, Sister—”

  “Kidding,” she added quickly, her eyes bright with excitement. “I was having a Julie Andrews moment. You know, when she played Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music and the nuns at her former convent helped her and her new family escape the Nazis. But Colin isn’t exactly a Captain von Trapp, is he?”

  Emma smiled. “He hates The Sound of Music.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Sister Cecilia kept walking, now toward the estate’s former tower, an unusual structure that had been converted into the studio where most of the convent’s conservation work was done. “As you know, we focus primarily but not exclusively on religious art. We don’t take on antiquity conservation, restoration and preservation. We’re familiar with ancient works, particularly very early Christian art and artifacts, but we have limited capability in that field.”

  “Then that hasn’t changed since I was here.”

  “We can recommend specialists who handle works directly or on-site. Education in handling antiquities is a huge priority. You mentioned ancient mosaics when you called. They’re a good example of where one wrong move can lead to disaster—you can literally end up with a pile of dust and bits and pieces. It’s like Humpty Dumpty, who couldn’t be put back together again. It’s not always the case, of course, but best to know what you’re doing.”

  A gust of wind blew off the water, and Emma noticed a lobster boat heading northeast, no doubt on its way back to Rock Point after checking its traps. She turned back to Sister Cecilia. “Did the Norwoods or Deverells ever ask for help with their antiquity collection?”

  “Not that I could find in the records. I haven’t had time to do a thorough search, but I’d be surprised if there’s anything there to find. But the man who built this estate—Edward Hart, a railroad magnate—was great friends with Horace Norwood, the man who built the Norwood summer house in Heron’s Cove and started the Norwood family’s antiquities collection. Edward and Horace traveled to the Mediterranean together at least a half-dozen times.”

  “I don’t recall that Hart had much of an antiquities collection.”

  “Not here, that’s for certain. I asked one of the retired sisters, and she says there are a couple of trunks and chests that were left here and she believes could be from Hart’s travels. I think one of the trunks is now a coffee table in the rec room.” Sister Cecilia sighed, tucking a few stray hairs back under her headband. “Not quite as exciting as discovering a rare mosaic.”

  Emma had no memory of the trunks and chests and wondered if they’d been unearthed after her departure from the convent. A social connection between two wealthy men with homes in southern Maine at the turn of the last century wasn’t unusual or provocative, but she was appreciative of Sister Cecilia’s efforts and thanked her.

  “I’ll see if I can learn anything more. If nothing else, it’s fodder for the biography of Mother Linden I’m writing.” She paused as they came to the stone tower. “I hope whatever you’re into with all this turns out to be a tempest in a teapot.”

  “I hope so, too,” Emma said.

  With her regular duties to tend to, Sister Cecilia left Emma by the converted tower and headed onto a path, a shortcut through a small orchard to the sisters’ large vegetable garden. A few of the many gardens on the convent property were off-limits to guests, which, of course, Emma realized she was now. She rarely pictured herself out here in her late teens, absorbed in her studies and a life that seemed distant and yet still so real to her now.

  She shoved her hands in her pockets and squinted out at the ocean. The lobster boat had disappeared. In a few short weeks, she and Colin would be married on the lawn above the sea, next to a garden bursting with late spring flowers. She’d never imagined such a moment as a postulant and novice. She smiled, thinking of how surprised her nineteen-year-old self would have been.

  She watched a trio of seagulls perched on a giant boulder past the tideline. A cormorant popped out of the water, then dived again. It was out here last September, after the terrible murder of Sister Joan Fabriani, that Emma had spotted a lobster boat hung up on the rocks, its rugged operator making his way up to the convent.

  Colin Donovan, dispatched by Matt Yankowski to keep an eye on her.

  Colin had never run a boat aground in his life. It had been a ploy to get up here and catch her off guard without having to explain he was an FBI agent. He’d just returned home to Maine after a long, difficult, dangerous undercover mission. She remembered the toll the months of constant stress had taken on him. She’d seen it in his eyes that first day. What would he be like this time, coming home from this latest mission?

  She fingered her engagement ring. She and Colin had fallen in love fast and hard, and he’d proposed to her in a Dublin pub on a rainy November night. She hadn’t needed time to think. She’d said yes without hesitation, and she’d never once, even for a heartbeat, questioned or seco
nd-guessed herself since.

  The cormorant surfaced again, riding a swell as the seagulls swooped off the boulder, crying loudly and quickly disappearing around the tip of the peninsula. Emma imagined her life here, before her months working with her grandfather in Dublin, before the FBI Academy and now these first years as a special agent—before Colin Donovan of Rock Point, Maine. Could that Emma Sharpe have guessed she would be having her wedding here on the first Saturday in June?

  She took the main walk back through the convent grounds, refocusing on Gordy Wheelock and his real reasons for showing up in her office yesterday. As she reached a pine grove by the convent gate, her mother called. Faye Sharpe had never pretended to understand Emma’s decision to enter the convent, and she hadn’t hidden her relief when Emma left—not that her mother had had the FBI in mind as her next career choice. But her main focus, then and now, was her pain-stricken husband, not her two adult children.

  “Where are you now, Emma?” her mother asked.

  “The convent. The gardens are going to be beautiful for the wedding.”

  “I can imagine. You must be getting excited.”

  Emma smiled. “I am.”

  “Well, I won’t keep you. We did some research on the party at Claridge’s this past Sunday. You’ll never guess who was behind it.”

  “Not...” Emma gritted her teeth. “Oliver York?”

  “I know. Of all people, Emma. It took a bit of work to find out. He sponsored the party through a small charitable foundation his grandparents set up in honor of his parents, after their deaths. It’s based in Stow-on-the-Wold, not far from the York farm, and it has one part-time employee.”

  “Did you suspect Oliver was behind the party before you started digging?”

  “Not a clue,” her mother said frankly. “We learned about the foundation first, then about his involvement with it. It does just enough to keep it legal and in existence. I doubt anyone else realized the party had anything to do with Oliver.”

  “What about Granddad?” Emma asked. “Was he involved with this party?”

  A long pause. “Nothing would surprise me, but we haven’t discovered anything that points to Wendell. Colin and your father had a chat last night at Claridge’s. I think he’s getting used to what it means to be marrying a Sharpe. It took me some getting used to, and things were much less complicated then. One of us wasn’t a federal law enforcement agent, for one thing.”

  Emma didn’t detect a hint of criticism in her mother’s voice. “That is a fact,” she said.

  “I won’t keep you. Enjoy your time at the convent. I have to say, you never got into these tangles when you were a nun.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then again, it could have been you last fall instead of Sister Joan...” Her mother cleared her throat, as if she didn’t want to imagine such a scenario. “Your father and I like Colin. We’re still figuring out when we can get there for your wedding.”

  “It’ll be great to see you, but everyone will understand if Dad has a flare-up.”

  “We need to give ourselves enough margin that it won’t matter if he does. We will be there, Emma.”

  She told her mother about Rosemary Donovan’s choice of blue for her mother-of-the-groom dress, and they chatted a few more minutes. When they hung up, Emma looked back toward the water, part of the converted tower visible through the trees. Her parents had seldom visited her at the convent, or since she’d joined the Bureau, for that matter. They’d become more and more insular since her father’s fall. Emma had found herself increasingly reluctant to ask anything of them—to be a burden to them in any way. But she had to admit she very much wanted them at her wedding.

  She continued on the walk, enjoying the dappled shade and the smells of pine needles, sea and freshly mown grass. “I’ll see you at my wedding,” she said to Saint Francis as she returned to the parking lot.

  A man was leaning against her car. Dark hair, a sport coat, a collared shirt with a loosened tie...

  Colin.

  Emma’s knees almost buckled. That would have been very un-FBI of her, but she rallied and crossed the parking lot to him. “I was just talking to Saint Francis,” she said.

  “He’s a tough act to follow.”

  Colin stood straight, looking tired but alert—and like himself, the man who’d jumped out of the lobster boat that day last September, who’d dropped onto one knee in the Dublin pub and proposed to her, who’d searched for her when she’d gone missing in February. The man who’d carried her upstairs to his bedroom, who’d made love to her in front of more than one Irish fire.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  “You, too, babe. Damn...”

  He held out his arms, and she fell into them, felt them tighten around her. She breathed in the smell of him, relished having his muscular, hard body envelop her. Only now, with him here, close, did she acknowledge that a part of her had been afraid that this time he wouldn’t make it home.

  “I just got here. I figured I’d wait for you. I didn’t want to interrupt you in case you were meditating with your nun friends.”

  “I was planning our wedding and decompressing after lunch with your mother.”

  “Even more reason not to interrupt you. Did you warn my mother you’re armed and dangerous?” But he didn’t smile as his gray-blue eyes settled on her. “It’s been a while but it seems longer. It’s good to see you. It’s good to be home.”

  “You wouldn’t want to miss spring in Maine.”

  “If you say so. It’s chilly right now.”

  A hint he’d been in a warmer climate during his weeks of silence? Emma brushed her fingertips across his cheek. “Good flight?”

  “Long. I read about ancient mosaics. Oliver loaned me Alessandro Pearson’s book.”

  “It’s fascinating, isn’t it?”

  “It has its moments.” He curved his hand around hers. “You have that look, Emma.”

  “Today was supposed to be a vacation day, but I’ve been working on figuring out what Gordy, Oliver and my grandfather are up to between a few personal things. I’ve already had doughnuts and pie.”

  “Not the break you imagined, except maybe for the doughnuts and pie.”

  “Colin...” She smiled at him. “I’m just glad you’re back. The rest doesn’t matter.”

  “Are there security cameras out here? Would the nuns go nuts if I kiss you?”

  “No security cameras, no sisters hiding in the trees.”

  “Not that it matters because I’m going to kiss you anyway, unless you tell me no.”

  “I’m not going to tell you no.”

  His mouth was close to hers before she finished. She put one hand on his upper arm and the other on his face as he drew her closer, kissing her softly, tentatively, as if he were taking into account their surroundings, or perhaps his own rawness after his long weeks away, his long day at airports and on planes.

  He stood straight and winked at her, some of his natural Donovan cockiness back. “More to come.”

  “You’re on. Who gave you a ride out here?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oliver.”

  “Himself. We dropped off Mary Bracken at the rectory and drove up here. I figured I could get a ride back with you.”

  “You got my text? Oliver’s staying at your parents’ inn.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the heads-up. He told me as we crossed into Rock Point. He said the idea of staying with us lost its charm when he realized he’d have to share a bathroom—never mind that we’d have said no. Then he said he’d debated asking Fin Bracken but figured that would be rude with Mary in town.”

  “Oliver York worrying about being rude,” Emma said. “Imagine that.”

  Colin sighed. �
�Yeah, imagine. My dad loves him. Offered to try his hand at proper English scones if Oliver wants them while he’s here.”

  “A shame we can’t tell the truth about him.”

  “It wouldn’t matter. Pop’s done chasing criminals. Mom loves having him done. If their guests are good talkers, pay their bill and don’t steal anything of value, they’re fine.”

  “It wouldn’t matter to them Oliver’s an unrepentant art thief?”

  “Not if he’s entertaining, which he can be.” Colin touched the knuckles of one hand to her cheek. “Damn, Emma. I’ve missed you. What do you say we have chowder and whiskey with the gang and I carry you upstairs for the night? Or are you still into this separate-beds thing until the wedding?”

  “Colin...”

  He grinned. “That’s what I thought.” He headed toward the passenger side of her car. “You good to drive? I’m a little ragged.”

  “I’m good,” Emma said, pulling open the driver’s side. She eased behind the wheel as he climbed in next to her. “Where to first?”

  “Let’s pay Oliver a visit and see how he’s getting settled in at the inn. My father makes great afternoon tea these days.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “You can fill me in on what’s going on with Gordy Wheelock on the way. I talked to Sam Padgett for two seconds at the airport. I bet he knows more about Gordy than Gordy does about himself at this point. I never want to have to hide anything from that guy. But first,” Colin added, reaching over to her and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “tell me the latest on our wedding and what I can do to help.”

  15

  Claudia had walked almost to the Sharpes before she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, telling herself she needed to change her mind and give it up, not try to see Lucas while she was here. If they ran into each other, okay. But why try to make it happen?

  She’d done the same thing last night, aware of how much darker it was here than in London. The endless black of the Atlantic had freaked her out. It was as if the ocean wanted to grab her and suck her into its depths to teach her a lesson, punish her for her transgressions. Every wave crashing on the rocks made her jump, but she’d refused to look down at the tide. Panicky and shaky, afraid she’d let the sea take her, she’d forced herself to focus on the lights in the inn, the Sharpe house and the little restaurant across the street.