THE ANGEL
book info: |
Mira Books |
The Angel
June 2009 | MIRA Books | mass market paperback
ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2608-3 | ISBN-10: 0-7783-2608-X
May 2008 | MIRA Books | original hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-0-77832-483-6 | ISBN-10: 0-7783-2483-4
Read Excerpt . . .
Beacon Hill
Boston, Massachusetts
8:30 p.m., EDT
June 17
Not for the first time in his life, Simon Cahill found himself in an argument with an unrelenting snob, this time in Boston, but he could as easily have been in New York, San Francisco, London or Paris. He'd been to all of them. He enjoyed a good argument—especially with someone as obnoxious and pretentious as Lloyd Adler.
Adler looked to be in his early forties and wore jeans and a rumpled black linen sportcoat with a white T-shirt, his graying hair pulled back in a short ponytail. He gestured across the crowded, elegant Beacon Hill drawing room toward a watercolor painting of an Irish stone cottage. "Keira Sullivan is more Tasha Tudor and Beatrix Potter than Picasso, wouldn't you agree, Simon?"
Probably, but Simon didn't care. The artist in question was supposed to have made her appearance by now. Adler had griped about that, too, but her tardiness hadn't seemed to stop people from bidding on the two paintings she'd donated to tonight's auction. The second was of a fairy or elf or some damn thing in a magical glen. Proceeds would go to support a scholarly conference on Irish and Irish-American folklore to be held next spring in Boston and Cork, Ireland.
In addition to being a popular illustrator, Keira Sullivan was also a folklorist.
Simon hadn't taken a close look at either of her donated paintings. A week ago, he'd been in Armenia searching for survivors of a moderate but damaging earthquake. Over a hundred people had died. Men, women, children.
Mostly children.
But now he was in a suit—an expensive one—and drinking champagne in the first-floor chandeliered drawing room of an elegant early nineteenth-century brick house overlooking Boston Common. He figured he deserved to be mistaken for an art snob.
"Beatrix Potter's the artist who drew Peter Rabbit, right?"
"Yes, of course."
Simon swallowed more of his champagne. It wasn't bad, but he wasn't a snob about champagne, either. He liked what he liked and didn't worry about the rest. He didn't mind if other people fussed over what they were drinking—he just minded if they were pains in the ass about it. "When I was a kid, my mother decorated my room with cross-stitched scenes of Peter and his buddies."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Cross-stitch. You know—you count these threads and—" Simon stopped, deliberately, and shrugged. He knew he didn't look like the kind of guy who'd had Beatrix Potter rabbits on his wall as a kid, but he was telling the truth. "Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder what happened to my little rabbits."
Adler frowned, then chuckled. "That's very funny," he said, as if he couldn't believe Simon was serious. "Keira Sullivan is good at what she does, obviously, but I hate to see her work overshadow several quite interesting pieces here tonight. A shame, really."
Simon looked at Adler, who suddenly went red and bolted into the crowd, mumbling that he needed to say hello to someone.
A lot of his arguments ended that way, Simon thought as he finished off his champagne, got rid of his empty glass and grabbed a full one from another tray. The event was catered, and most of the guests were dressed up and having a good time. From what he'd heard, they included a wide range of people—academics, graduate students, artists, musicians, folklorists, benefactors, a couple of priests and a handful of politicians and rich art collectors.
And at least two cops, but Simon steered clear of them.
"Lloyd Adler's not that easy to scare off," Owen Garrison said, shaking his head as he joined Simon. Owen was lean and good-looking, but all the Garrisons were. Simon was built like a bull. No other way to say it.
"I'm on good behavior tonight." He grinned, cheekily putting out his pinkie finger as he sipped his fresh champagne. Owen just rolled his eyes. Simon decided he'd probably had enough to drink and set the glass on a side table. Too much bubbly, and he'd start a fight. "I didn't say a word."
"You didn't have to," Owen said. "One look, and he scurried."
"No way. I'm charming. Everyone says so."
"Not everyone."
Probably true, but Simon did tend to get along with people. He was at the reception as a favor to Owen, whose family, not coincidentally, owned the house where it was taking place. The Garrisons were an old-money family who'd left Boston for Texas after the death of Owen's sister, Dorothy, at fourteen. It was a hellish story. Just eleven himself at the time, Owen had watched her fall off a cliff and drown near the Garrison summer home in Maine. There was nothing he could have done to save her.
Simon suspected the trauma of that day was the central reason Owen had founded Fast Rescue, an international search-and-rescue organization. It was based in Austin and operated on mostly private funds to perform its central mission to put expert volunteer teams in place within twenty-four hours of a disaster—manmade or natural—anywhere in the world.
Simon had become a Fast Rescue volunteer eighteen months ago, a decision that was complicating his life more than it should have, and not, he thought, because the Armenian mission had fallen at a particularly awkward time for him.
Owen, a top search-and-rescue expert himself, was wearing an expensive suit, too, but he still looked somewhat out of place in the house his great-grandfather had bought a century ago. The decor was in shades of cream and sage green, apparently Dorothy Garrison's favorite colors. The first floor was reserved for meeting and functions, but the second and third floors comprised the offices for the foundation named in Dorothy's honor and dedicated to projects her family believed would have been of particular interest to her.
Owen glanced toward the door to the house's main entry. "Still no sign of Keira Sullivan. Her uncle's getting impatient."
Her uncle was Bob O'Reilly, her mother's older brother and one of the two cops there tonight Simon was avoiding. Owen's fiancée, Abigail Browning, was the other one. She and O'Reilly were both detectives with the Boston Police Department. O'Reilly was a beefy, freckle-faced redhead with a couple decades on the job. Abigail was in her early thirties, slim and dark-haired, a rising star in the Homicide Unit.
She was also the daughter of John March, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the reason Simon's association with Fast Rescue had become complicated. He used to work for March. Sort of still did.
He'd decided to avoid Abigail and O'Reilly because both of them would have a nose for liars.
"Any reason to worry about your missing artist?" he asked Owen.
"Not at this point. It's pouring rain, and the Red Sox are in town—rained out by now, I'm sure. I imagine traffic's a nightmare."
"Can you call her?"
"She doesn't own a cell phone. No phone upstairs in her apartment, either."
"Why not?"
"Just the way she is."
A flake, Simon thought. He'd learned, not that he was interested, that Keira was renting a one-bedroom apartment on the top floor of the Garrison house until she figured out whether she wanted to stay in Boston. He understood wanting to keep moving—he lived on a boat himself and not by accident.
"Abigail's bidding on one of Keira's pieces," Owen said.
"The fairies or the Irish cottage?"
"The cottage, I think."
They were imaginative, cheerful pieces. Keira had a flare for capturing and creating a mood—a part-real, part-imagined place where people wanted to be. Her work wasn't sentimental, but it wasn't edgy and self-involved, either. Simon didn't have much use for a painting of fairies or an Irish cottage in his life. No house to hang it in, for one thing.
Irish music kicked up, and he noticed an ensemble of young musicians in the far corner, obviously enjoying themselves on their mix of traditional instruments. He picked out a tin whistle, Irish harp, bodhran, mandolin, fiddle and guitar.
Not bad, Simon thought. But he liked Irish music.
"The girl on the harp is Fiona O'Reilly," Owen said. "Bob's oldest daughter."
Simon wasn't sure he wanted to know any more about Owen's friends in Boston, especially ones in, or related to, people in law enforcement. It was all too tricky. Too damn dangerous. But here he was, playing with fire.
Owen's gaze drifted back to his fiancée, who wore a simple black dress and was laughing and half-dancing to the spirited music. Abigail caught his eye and waved, her smile broadening. They were working on setting a date for their wedding. Whenever it was, Simon planned to be out of the country.
"You can't tell her about me, Owen."
"I know." He broke his eye contact with Abigail and sighed at Simon. "She'll find out you're not just another Fast Rescue volunteer on her own. One way or the other, she'll figure out your relationship with her father—she'll figure out that I knew and didn't tell her. Then she'll hang us both by our thumbs."
"We'll deserve it, but you still can't tell her. My association with March is classified. We shouldn't even be talking about it now."
Owen gave a curt nod.
Simon felt a measure of sympathy for his friend. "I'm sorry I put you in this position."
"You didn't. It just happened."
"I should have lied."
"You did lie. You just didn't get away with it."
The song ended, and the band transitioned right into the "The Rising of the Moon," a song Simon knew well enough from his days in Dublin pubs to hum. But he didn't hum, because if he'd been mistaken for an art critic—or at least an art snob—already tonight, next he'd be mistaken for a music critic. Then he'd have to rethink his entire approach to his life, or at least start a brawl.
"In some ways," he said, "my lie was more true than the truth."
Owen grabbed a glass of champagne. "Only you could come up with a statement like that, Simon."
"There are facts, and there's truth. They're not always the same thing."
A whirl of movement by the entry drew Simon's attention, and he gave up on trying to explain himself.
A woman stood in the doorway, soaking wet, water dripping off the ends of her long, blond hair.
"The missing artist, I presume."
Even as he spoke, Simon saw that something was wrong. He heard Owen's breath catch and knew he saw it, too. The woman—she had to be Keira Sullivan—was unnaturally pale and unsteady on her feet, her eyes wide as she seemed to search the crowd for someone.
Simon surged forward, Owen right with him, and they reached her just as she rallied, straightening her spine and pushing a sopping lock of hair out of her face. She was dressed for the woods, but even as obviously shaken as she was, she had a pretty, fairy princess look about her with her black-lashed blue eyes and flaxen hair that was half pinned up, half hanging almost to her elbows.
She was slim and fine-boned, and whatever had just happened, Simon knew it hadn't been good.
"There's a body," she said tightly. "A man. Dead."
That Simon hadn't expected.
Owen touched her wrist. "Where, Keira?"
"The Public Garden—he drowned, I think."
Simon was familiar enough with Boston to know the Public Garden was just down Beacon Street. "Are the police there?" he asked.
She nodded. "I called 911. Two Boston University students found him—the body. We all got caught in the rain, but they were ahead of me and saw him before I did. He was in the pond. They pulled him out—they're just kids. They were so upset. But there was nothing anyone could do at that point." Despite her distress, she was composed, focused. Her eyes narrowed. "My uncle's here, isn't he?"
"Yes," Simon said, but he wasn't sure she heard him.
He noticed Detectives Browning and O'Reilly working their way to Keira from different parts of the room, their intense expressions indicating they'd already found out about the body through other means. They'd have pagers, cell phones.
The well-dressed crowd and the lively Irish music—the laughter and the tinkle of champagne glasses—were a contrast to stoic, drenched Keira Sullivan and her stark report of a dead man.
Abigail got there first. "Keira," she said crisply but not without sympathy. "I just heard about what happened. Let's go into the foyer where it's quiet, okay?"
Keira didn't budge. "I didn't see anything or the patrol officers on the scene wouldn't have let me go." She wasn't combative, just firm, stubborn. "I'm not a witness, Abigail."
Abigail didn't argue, but she didn't have to because Keira suddenly whipped around, water flying out of her hair, and shot back into the foyer, out of sight of onlookers in the drawing room. Simon knew better than to butt in, but he figured she wanted to avoid her uncle, who was about two seconds from getting through the last knot of people.
Simon wished he still had his champagne. "I wonder who the dead guy is."
Owen stiffened. "Simon—"
"I'm just saying."
But Owen didn't have a chance to respond before Detective O'Reilly arrived, his hard-set jaw suggesting he wasn't pleased with the turn the evening had taken. "Where's Keira?"
"Talking to Abigail," Owen said quickly, as if he didn't want to give Simon a chance to open his mouth.
O'Reilly gave the unoccupied doorway a searing look. "She's okay?"
"Remarkably so," Owen said. "She's not the one who actually found the body."
"She called it in." Obviously, that was plenty for O'Reilly not to like. He sucked in a breath. "How the hell does a grown man drown in the Public Garden pond? It's about two feet deep. It's not even a real pond."
Good question, but Simon didn't go near it. He wasn't on O'Reilly's radar, and he preferred to keep it that way.
The senior detective glanced back toward his daughter, Fiona, the harpist. She and her ensemble were taking a break. "I need to go with Abigail, see what this is all about," O'Reilly said, addressing Owen. "You'll make sure Fiona stays here until I know what's going on?"
"Sure."
"And Keira. Keep her here, too."
Owen looked surprised at the request. "Bob, she's old enough—"
"Yeah, whatever. Just don't let her go traipsing back down to the Public Garden and getting into the middle of things. She's like that. Always has been."
"There's no reason to think the drowning was anything but an accident, is there?"
"Not at this point," O'Reilly said without elaboration and stalked into the foyer.
Simon didn't mind being a fly on the wall for a change. "Does the uncle get along with his daughter and niece?"
"They get along fine," Owen said, "but Bob sometimes forgets that Keira is ten years older than Fiona. For that matter, he forgets Fiona's nineteen. They're a complicated family."
"All families are complicated, even the good ones." Simon moved closer to the foyer doorway, just as Keira started up the stairs barefoot, wet socks and shoes in one hand. She was prettier than he'd expected. More or less drop-you-in-your-tracks pretty, really. He noticed her uncle scowling at her from the bottom of the stairs and grinned, turning back to Owen. "Maybe especially the good ones."
Ten seconds later, the two BPD detectives left.
The Irish ensemble started up again, playing a quieter tune.
Owen headed for Fiona O'Reilly, who cast a worried look in his direction. She had freckles, but otherwise didn't resemble her father as far as Simon could see. Her long hair had reddish tints but really was almost as blond as her cousin's, and she was a lot better looking than her father.
People in the crowd seemed unaware of the drama over by the door. Caterers brought out trays of hot hors d'oeuvres. Mini spinach quiches, some little flaky buttery things oozing cheese, stuffed mushrooms, skewered strips of marinated chicken. Simon wasn't hungry. He noticed Lloyd Adler pontificating to an older couple who looked as if they thought he was a pretentious ass, too.
Simon went in the opposite direction of Adler and made his way to the back wall where Keira's two donated watercolors were on display.
He decided to bid on the one with the cottage, just to give himself something to do.
It was a white stone cottage set against a background of wildflowers, green pastures and ocean that wasn't in any part of Ireland that he had ever visited. He supposed that was part of the point—to create a place of imagination and dreams. A beautiful, bucolic place. A place not entirely of this world.
At least not the world in which he lived and worked.
Simon settled on a number and put in his bid, one that virtually assured him of ending up with the painting. He could give it to Abigail and Owen as a wedding present. Even if he didn't plan to go to the wedding, he could give them a present.
He acknowledged an itch to head down to the Public Garden with the BPD detectives, but he let it go. He'd seen enough dead bodies, enough to last him for a long time. A lifetime, even. Except he knew there would be more. There always were.
Instead, he decided to find another glass of champagne, maybe grab a couple of the chicken skewers and wait for a dry, calmer Keira Sullivan to make her appearance.
Copyright © 2008 by Carla Neggers
Permission to reproduce text granted by MIRA Books
