Heron's Cove (28 page)

“Did you ever talk to her about it?”

“No. It didn’t occur to me, and she never mentioned it. We both have our interests, and fortunately we’re always very busy with our work. Why? Is the nightingale significant for some reason?”

Nightingale
was the name of Dmitri Rusakov’s yacht, Lucas thought as he carefully set the pendant aside. The lacquered box had a removable rather than a hinged lid. It was stuck, but he managed to get it off without breaking it and set it next to the nightingale.

Inside the box was a single, faded color photograph.

Using the pads of his fingers, Lucas lifted out the photograph, held it in the light by the window for a better look.

A man, a woman and a small child were standing in front of a black-iron fence in the snow, all three of them bundled up against a cold winter, smiling at the camera.

Lucas showed the photograph to Ursula. “Do you recognize these people?”

She shook her head. “Not straight off. It’s not a recent picture, is it?”

“I don’t think so, no. Could the girl be Tatiana?”

Ursula seemed reluctant to take a closer look. “It must be her, wouldn’t you say?”

Lucas didn’t push her and placed the photograph flat on the table, next to the nightingale. He took out his iPhone and snapped several shots of both items.

He slipped his iPhone in his jacket and turned to Ursula. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Ursula, but you need to take extra safety precautions until you hear back from me with an all clear. If you even think you’re being followed or watched, call the police.”

She went pale but nodded. “All right. Don’t worry about me. Worry about Tatiana. What are you going to do?”

“I’m sending the pictures I just took to my sister. She’s with the FBI. She’s in Heron’s Cove with Tatiana.”

“Are you staying in London?”

“I’m catching the first flight I can back to Ireland.”

“You want to talk to your grandfather,” Ursula said.

Lucas managed a smile. “You have good instincts.”

They returned to the showroom and she walked to the door with him. “I’ll call Tatiana later,” she said, then managed a small smile. “Thank you for looking after her.”

“If you remember anything else—”

“I’ll call you.”

He was positive no one followed him back to his hotel, but he made sure he wasn’t alone on the elevator up to his room. He collected his bag, checked out and grabbed a cab.

His first call was to his parents. He told them to look out for themselves. “One wrong look from anyone,” he said, “and you call the police.”

“Lucas?” his father asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I think Granddad knows something he’s not supposed to know.”

“He knows a lot of things he’s not supposed to know. It’s the nature of the work he does.”

Lucas immediately regretted the urgency in his voice. Stress always made his father’s pain worse. “I know, Dad. Don’t worry.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“I’ve got a call in to him.” The truth was he had only a vague idea of where his grandfather was. “Emma and I will figure out what’s going on. Stay in touch.”

He disconnected, glanced at his watch. Still early in Maine. He emailed Emma the photos he’d taken in Tatiana’s studio and a note about the nesting dolls. After he hit Send, he gripped his phone, stifling a surge of anxiety. If the nightingale pendant was part of the Rusakov collection, how the hell had Tatiana Pavlova ended up with it?

Lucas sat back, impatient, hating the long drive to Heathrow. He’d get there just in time for his flight to Cork.

21

KEVIN DONOVAN STOOD at Hurley’s back window, pointing his coffee mug. “What’s Julianne doing down there?”

Colin and Mike both got to their feet and went to the window, standing on either side of their youngest brother, in his Maine marine patrol uniform. Directly below them, Julianne Maroney was marching through the mud, her hair flying with the early-morning breeze, the incoming tide oozing under her L.L.Bean boots.

“She looks pissed,” Mike said.

Kevin nodded. “I’ll bet Andy stood her up.”

The three brothers had met for breakfast, assuming Andy was either out with his lobster boat or with Julianne. Colin still had no food in the house. He was on his way to Heron’s Cove. Emma was already there. When he left his house, she was picking fallen orange maple leaves off the dew-soaked windshield of her car. For a fleeting moment, he felt as if they were an ordinary couple heading to work. Colin wasn’t sure what a normal life looked like for him anymore. He wasn’t sure “normal life” and Emma Sharpe fit in the same sentence, but he couldn’t imagine not having her as a part of whatever came next for him.

Not that “normal life” and Colin Donovan fit in the same sentence, either.

Julianne disappeared out of view. He took a last sip of his coffee and set the mug back on the table. “I’ll go talk to her.”

“You’re the risk-taker of the family,” Mike said with a grin.

Colin started to reach for his wallet but Kevin shook his head. “Go. Least we can do is buy you breakfast since you chose the short straw.” He grinned, too. “Good luck.”

Colin headed out, pulling on his canvas jacket. The light morning fog had cleared, the bright, brisk October day just the sort he had dreamed about the past month. He noticed Andy’s lobster boat at its mooring thirty yards out from the main pier in the small, horseshoe-shaped harbor.

So his brother wasn’t out checking his traps.

Julianne’s boot prints trailed across the gray mud still exposed by the tide, which hadn’t yet reached under Hurley’s floorboards. Colin stepped into the mud, keeping to the right of Julianne’s trail and out of the incoming tide. He figured Mike and Kevin were watching. He continued past the restaurant, then out of its view as he angled back above the tide line.

Hurley’s was at his back now. Up ahead, just at the natural curve of the harbor, a small dock jutted into the water next to a boathouse that John Hurley used for his prized Boston whaler. The weathered-shingle exterior was covered with old lobster buoys.

Julianne stood at the end of the dock, next to a stack of lobster pots. She was leaning over, hands on her hips as she peered at several pots that had fallen into the shallow water. Out past the boathouse, bobbing in the rising tide, was the
Julianne,
the bone of contention between her and Andy Donovan—if not the only bone of contention.

Colin waved to her. “Hey, Julianne, how’s it going?”

She didn’t seem to hear him. He had noticed his brother’s truck in Hurley’s parking lot. Andy could have gone off with a friend on another boat, or he could have gotten distracted and was off helping someone. He had to see to any lobsters he had caught but he didn’t punch a time clock.

Colin debated leaving Julianne to her mood, but she shifted, leaning even more over the edge of the dock, then yelled. “Andy!” She jerked upright. “Colin, help!”

He was already bolting across the mud, stones and threads of wet seaweed. “Hang on, Julianne,” he called to her. “Don’t move.”

She ignored him and jumped into the water at the tip of the dock. An incoming swell hit her at the knees, but she stayed on her feet. She grabbed one of the fallen lobster pots, tossed it into the mud so that the tide wouldn’t drag it back to her.

“It’s Andy,” she yelled. “He’s not moving.”

Colin charged into the water, taking in a breath at the jolt of cold as a wave rolled past his calves, then out again, sucking sand and tiny stones with it. Julianne shifted, and he saw Andy, wedged facedown between the lobster pots and one of the dock mooring posts. His arms were splayed out at his shoulders, his head turned so that his right cheek was in the mud. The dark blue shirt he wore was soaked through, his lower body already partially submerged in the tide.

His legs appeared to be hung up under the dock.

Julianne dropped onto her knees in the rising water. “He’s breathing. He’s got a big bump behind his ear.”

“Go,” Colin said. “Kevin’s at Hurley’s. He can get an ambulance out here.”

“We can’t wait. The tide’s coming in. He’ll drown. And he has hypothermia. You can see his lips are purple. We need to get him out of the water.”

“I know.” Colin took her by the shoulders. “Julianne. Get Kevin. Now.”

She nodded, stood. Water had soaked into her baggy, hip-length wool sweater, its pale gray matching the color of her face. “He moved our meeting later. He texted me last night. When I got down here and didn’t see him, I was so mad—” She broke off. “I’ll be right back.”

Colin squatted down by Andy’s shoulders and saw that Julianne was right and his brother was suffering from at least mild hypothermia. He was semiconscious, trying to speak. Colin placed a hand on his brother’s arm. “It’s okay, Andy. We’ll get you warm and dry. How’re your legs? Can you move them for me?”

He tried to push himself up, then sank back into the mud. “Julianne?”

“She’s fine. Screaming your name, brother.”

Andy swore at him and Colin figured that was a good sign. He heard men’s voices and glanced behind him, saw Julianne with Mike and Kevin. Colin started to wave to his brothers, but they raced into the water, Julianne sprinting back onto the dock.

Mike fell in opposite Colin, on Andy’s right side, Kevin at his head. They got up under him, lifting him, then waited as another swell rolled in. As the wave motion raised the dock, they freed Andy’s legs.

“Let’s get him up onto the dock,” Mike said.

Moving in unison, they heaved him up onto the, dock, laying him flat on the dry wood. He shivered, moaned, swore some more, but Julianne was there, pulling off her sweater, only the lower edge wet. She draped it over Andy, not waiting for one of his three brothers to tell her what to do as they climbed onto the dock.

She raised her eyes to them. “I helped with beached dolphins. It’s not that different.”

“Ambulance is on the way,” Kevin said, then squatted down and took a look at the lump behind Andy’s ear. “How’d that happen?”

“Blindsided,” Andy said, his teeth chattering as he clutched Julianne’s sweater to him.

Mike frowned down at him. “Bad spot to get hit. You probably went right out. Took a few lobster pots with you, got caught under the dock.”

“You’re lucky Julianne came over here when she did,” Colin said. “What were you doing?”

“I was stacking traps, waiting for Jules.” Andy shivered, then moaned, as if his shivering made him hurt worse; his speech was slightly slurred with the onset of hypothermia. “Damn, my head feels like it’s going to explode.”

“Go easy,” Mike said.

“I wasn’t paying attention. Next thing, you’re pulling me out from under the damn dock and I’m freezing my ass off.”

Kevin stood up. “Where were you stacking the traps?”

Andy shut his eyes, his lips still purple. “By Hurley’s boathouse. I don’t…”

“You ended up in the water by the dock,” Colin said.

“I must have… Hell.” Andy tried to sit up, cursed in pain and stayed down on his back. “I think I heard something. I can’t remember.”

“Warm up,” Mike said. “You’ll remember more when your body temperature is back to normal.”

Julianne sprang to her feet and frowned at Kevin, then Colin. “We need to check with anyone who was on the docks, at Hurley’s, in the parking lot. Someone must have seen something, right?” She caught herself. “Sorry. You guys know what to do.”

Kevin, always the most patient Donovan, touched her shoulder. “What about you, Julianne?”

“Me? I didn’t see anything. And I didn’t hit him. I swear.”

Mike grinned at her. “You were just muttering about drowning him from one end of the harbor to the other.”

“What were you doing, watching me?”

Mike nodded back toward the waterfront restaurant. “We saw you.”

Kevin tried to intercede. “Julianne—”

“Bastards,” she said. “Every damn one of you. You’re all bastards.”

Mike shrugged off his jacket and put it over her shoulders. “Andy’ll be okay. You did good today, kid.”

She fought back tears, then pulled off Mike’s coat and added it to her sweater atop Andy. He unearthed a hand from under the layers and placed it on her muddy ankle. “Thanks, Jules. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t found me.”

“You’d have drowned,” she said, sniffling back more tears.

An ambulance and town cruiser arrived on the boat launch.

“I’ll check on Father Bracken,” Mike said.

Kevin glanced at Colin. “You’re getting in touch with Emma?”

He nodded. “On my way to Heron’s Cove now.”

* * *

Apple cider was as quintessentially Maine as bean-hole suppers, Finian thought as he set a plastic jug of cider on the kitchen table in the rectory. But what an odd thing. He’d walked over to the rectory after morning mass, and there was the cider on his back doorstep, along with a sheet of thick white sketch paper rolled up and tied with a purple velvet ribbon. A note card was clipped to it: “Compliments of Tatiana Pavlova, Firebird Boutique, London.”

Finian was about to untie the ribbon when Mike Donovan materialized in the screen door. “Thought you were going to keep your doors locked,” the eldest Donovan said, entering the kitchen.

“At night,” Finian said, “and I refuse to lock my church office when I’m there, so don’t even ask.”

Mike frowned at the note. “What’s that?”

Finian could tell something was wrong, given Mike’s grim look and his sodden jeans. “It can wait. You—”

“Just tell me,” Mike said, glancing at the note card.

Finian explained, and when he finished his tale, Mike withdrew a small jackknife from a pocket and cut the ribbon on the sketch. “Let’s have a look,” he said, unrolling it on the table. He grabbed the salt and pepper shakers and set them on corners diagonally across from each other, then eyed the pencil sketch. “A falcon? A guy?”

“So it appears.” The sketch took up the entire page and wasn’t elaborate but was beyond anything Finian knew that he could accomplish. “It looks as if the falcon transforms into a handsome man. A prince, possibly.”

“Is the prince supposed to be you?” Mike asked.

Finian sighed, mystified. “I have no idea.”