Deadly Gift (29 page)

“I’m not certain, but I think these poems were his…his way of leaving something behind. Insurance, maybe.”

“Take them. We can go over them later. We should get back to the house.”

“All right.”

She gathered up the poems, which had been written on all kinds of paper, then shoved into a file folder.

“How did you get in?” he asked her a few minutes later, as they were driving back to the house.

She hesitated, and he wondered if she was about to lie, to tell him that the door had been open when she’d arrived.

“I picked the lock,” she admitted.

“You did a good job. I might not have known.”

She shrugged.

Suddenly he veered the car to the side of the road and slammed it into park. She stared at him, startled.

“Who are you, Caer? And what are you doing here?”

“I told you—”

“Everything you’ve told me is a bunch of horseshit. Who are you?”

“Caer Cavannaugh.”

“All right, let me try again. Who and what are you—really?”

She stared at him, her eyes hard. “You’ve accepted that I want to save Sean’s life. Can’t we just leave it at that?”

He shook his head. “No. A man was murdered out on Cow Cay last night, the man I hired to watch over the area where we were digging.”

Her eyes widened. “Murdered?”

“Presumably. We found a lot of blood, but his body has disappeared, just like Eddie’s.”

“The birds,” she murmured. “It’s starting.”

“Who are you working for?” Zach demanded.

“An Irish agency,” she said after a moment.

“The name of it, please.”

“It’s just referred to as the Agency,” she said.

“That’s bull.”

He saw her take in a deep breath, then she said, “All right, Zach. You want the truth? Here it is.” She practically spat out the words. “I’m a banshee. They refer to us as
death ghosts.
I guess that’s an appropriate label. We
are
ghosts, and we
do
deal in death. But anything you might have heard that’s frightening or bad about banshees isn’t true. We come to ease the burden, to be a friend. We help people cross over.”

She spoke so seriously.

He felt his temper soar. “That’s the biggest pile of crap I’ve ever heard,” he told her angrily. “And you know what? Gloves are off. I wanted to trust you. I
did
trust you. Hell, I started falling in love with you. But you need to tell the truth. If you’re some kind of Irish secret service, spit it out. I’ll get on your credentials. Governments share information. My oldest brother has contacts almost everywhere.”

Her expression had gone implacable. “Do what you have to do, Zach.” To his amazement, there was a quaver in her voice.

His fingers were locked on the wheel. “People are dying. Tell me the truth.”

“I just told you the truth,” she said dully, looking ahead. “Why is this so hard for you? Can’t you just accept that I’m here to save lives, and…and can’t you give me what time we have before I have to go?”

He stared back at her. God, she was beautiful. He wanted to draw her into his arms. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t give a damn if she was an alien from planet Zardov, he just wanted
her
, wanted a life with her, waking up to her eyes every morning, to the feel of her close against him. He wanted to grow old with her.

A banshee?

He swore, determined not to touch her. He’d trusted her—and she returned the favor by coming up with a bunch of Irish claptrap.

He revved the motor far too hard and jerked the car back onto the road. He didn’t say another word as they drove back to the house.

When they arrived, there were cars lining the driveway.

The Irish mourning process had begun.

Caer found it difficult to concentrate. The house was full of people, and this first night following Bridey’s death was long and draining. At eleven, despite the continuing crowd of visitors, she decided that she had to act like a nurse and make sure Sean got to sleep.

She firmly insisted that he go to bed. As she gave him his medications, he told her, “You know, Caer, I could handle these on my own.”

“You hired me through the end of the year, and I’m going to earn my salary.” She smiled to take the sting out of the words.

“You’re a very special young lady,” he told her. “Hell of a thing. I’m starting to worry about you. Another man was killed today. A stranger, but he died in my employ. I’m thinking I should send you back to Ireland.”

“I wouldn’t go.”

“And why am I not surprised to hear that?”

At last he was in bed. Kat had spent most of the day resting, though she had finally come down for a while to accept condolences, then returned to bed. She was young, and she felt the loss keenly. But she was going to be all right.

As long as her father was all right.

With Sean in bed, Caer curled up in her own room to read more of Eddie’s poems. By themselves, they were just silly, but then she began to put them in a semblance of logical order. “Me, me, me,” led to “clever boy, I’ve found the joy,” and they went on from there.

“The clue is left, the clue is right, follow the North Star tonight.”

And then, “I dream, therefore I am. Careful, must not be a sacrificial lamb.”

She set the sheets of paper down on the bed, cursing Michael for not staying to help. Then again, not even Michael had all the answers. People had that whole “free will” thing going on, and he never tampered with the rules that applied to his place in the grand scheme of things.

Men had choices, and choices meant chances.

She herself had done well that night, she thought, helping with the guests. Amanda had come down, but she had only swanned around regally, the lady of the manor. She loathed Marni, but that hadn’t stopped her from letting the other woman take over the hospitality arrangements while Clara stayed in her own small house, mourning privately, while Kat had been a zombie.

Caer hadn’t given herself much time to think, much less to feel.

And she was glad. She didn’t like feeling. It was far too painful.

Now she prayed for sleep. Flesh and blood were so weak. Without sleep, she couldn’t function, and when she was awake, she hurt.

Sleep. At last it came.

The next day, Aidan and Jeremy arrived.

Aidan was alone, because his wife, Kendall, couldn’t leave the community theater that they ran on the plantation so quickly, not to mention that traveling with an infant took preparation.

Jeremy came with Rowenna, his new wife, and the two of them were settled on the second floor, while Aidan took an attic room. Clara was happy to have all three Flynn boys to fuss over, Sean was grateful for the show of support, and Zach was pleased that he would be able to talk over the situation with them.

Rowenna and Kat seemed to hit it off right away. She told Kat that she needed to pick up a few things and actually convinced Kat to go out shopping with her. Since Sean was closeted in his office, Zach decided it would be a good time to bring his brothers up to speed, not to mention go over the information they both had for him.

“Where do we start?” Jeremy asked.

“I’m oldest—and wisest—so I’ll go first,” Aidan said, smiling. “Zach, I’ve had your friend completely checked out, and I can’t come up with anything that contradicts what you’ve been told. She has no known association with any intelligence agency, either in the States, Great Britain or the Irish Republic. She’s absolutely clean. She got her nursing degree five years ago. She’s lived in Dublin all her life. Good grades in school…the whole kit and caboodle. She’s clean, Zach. Pure as the driven snow.”

Jeremy picked up when Aidan was done. “As to the arsenic, my experts all say it’s not a weapon any killer is going to use these days if there’s any possibility of an autopsy. It’s too easily detected, for one thing. They think you might be spot-on with the toxic mushroom theory. The delay in the advent of symptoms causes doctors to look for other possibilities first. By the time they’ve ruled those out, even if someone thinks of mushroom poisoning, the victim has passed the toxin via the violence of the very illness it caused. It can be especially dangerous in the elderly, because of the wear and tear it causes on the heart. In can even—as certainly happened in Sean’s case, whatever the cause—bring on cardiac arrest.”

“So, assuming that Sean was poisoned, it almost certainly happened here, in the United States,” Zach said.

“It’s a theory, but a good theory, I think,” Jeremy told him.

“So where are you with this?” Aidan asked. He’d always been the most serious of the three of them, and the death of his first wife had only made him more so.

Remarriage, however, had done wonders for him. His wife was filled with life, with a touch of the psychic about her, and Zach knew that they were both convinced that they shared the family plantation outside New Orleans with the remaining spirits of the past. But they were happy, and Aidan was a crack investigator.

“At the moment it’s impossible to know what happened first, Eddie disappearing or Sean becoming ill. Chances are the two things more or less coincided,” Zach said. “A few nights ago, we found ground glass in a pie Clara made, and more was found in several other jars of the same brand of blueberries. Not exactly a foolproof method of killing someone, but I’d bet cash money it’s connected. Yesterday, at the station, Jorey Jenkins—you remember him, his parents run the hardware store near the wharf—recognized someone on the grocery store security tapes as the same person who went out with Eddie. Problem is, the guy was obviously wearing a disguise. A very bad disguise. I don’t believe that Bridey’s passing had anything to do with any of this, by the way. It was just her time.” He took a deep breath and looked at his brothers. “I started digging out on Cow Cay after studying the charts Eddie had been reading, and then seeing the way someone—I’m assuming Eddie, since I know it wasn’t Sean—doctored one of the charts in Sean’s office. Detective Morrissey sent a man out to the island to keep an eye on things, and that man has disappeared and was presumably murdered. Again, no body. But this time there was blood. A lot of blood. Then there’s Caer.”

“She seems charming, and she’s absolutely gorgeous,” Jeremy told him. “Though I get the feeling you know that,” he added with a wink.

“There’s something…not right about her. She acts like she’s some kind of investigator, even though we know she’s not,” Zach said.

“You’ve never just asked her?” Aidan asked.

“Sure.”

“And what did she say?” Jeremy asked.

“She started out acting all innocent and swearing she was only here to take care of Sean,” Zach told them.

“As a good nurse should,” Jeremy said.

“Well, you met her in Ireland. Did you meet any of her friends?” Aidan asked. “How much time did you spend together over there?”

“Not much.”

“Maybe you should just take her at face value. Maybe everything about her is true,” Aidan suggested.

“Oh yeah? Last night she told me she’s a banshee,” Zach said dryly.

To his surprise, neither of his brothers laughed. They just stared at him.

“I did some research,” Jeremy said. “Like you asked me to. The legends are fascinating. Supposedly they were once beautiful women, and when they died, they were…recruited, I guess you’d say, to mourn and to help people cross over from this world to the next one. There are banshee laws, even. A banshee can take on human form, and it’s said that she actually enjoys it when she does. She gets to enjoy the pleasures of life once again. But she can’t remain, not unless she can find someone to take her place. But it has to be someone with a good soul. If she loses sight of honor and justice, and chooses someone evil, she’ll be damned for all eternity.”

“So you’re saying you think Caer Cavannaugh might really be a banshee?” Zach asked incredulously.

“No, of course not,” Jeremy told him.

“Then what
are
you saying?”

“Nothing—I’m just giving you the information you asked me for,” Jeremy said.

“I think we should all head out to the island,” Aidan said.

“The cops are out there now,” Zach said.

“I still think we need to get out there,” Aidan said. “And we should get going, so we can be back for tonight. Sean is having an old-fashioned Irish wake at the house, and we all need to be there to honor Bridey.”

“Right,” Zach said. “Let’s go get a boat and head out.”

It was a harsh day out. Fitting, maybe.

The black birds still lined the wharves. They were huddled on perches, feathers fluffed against the rising wind. Zach noticed that signs were out all over, advertising the Christmas flotilla. It was just four days away.

He wondered if Sean would still participate, then realized that of course he would. It was tradition, and he would feel honor-bound to participate, if only in Bridey’s honor.