* * *
Rave reviews and word-of-mouth of delighted guests had helped keep a steady flow of guests at the O’Byrne House Hotel since it opened its doors a year ago, but November was quiet. Sean went through the back gate and didn’t run into another soul in the gardens. Pretty Kitty O’Byrne Doyle had seen to every detail in transforming her uncle’s crumbling mansion, shrouded in cobwebs and overrun with mice, into a modern, elegant hotel that was at once tranquil and cheerful. He’d heard it was doing well. No doubt. Everything Kitty touched was a success—except, at least in her mind, her teenage son, Philip, who gave her fits.
Sean found the lad alone in the bar lounge, unloading a tray of fresh glasses onto a head-high shelf. Philip Doyle had his mother’s blue eyes, dark hair and spirited temperament and his father’s stubborn jaw and ambition. One minute he was eighteen going on thirteen—angry, sullen, easily bored—and the next, eighteen going on thirty—strong, mature, solid. He’d moved to Declan’s Cross with his mother two years ago. He hadn’t wanted to. He could have stayed in Dublin with his father, a banker, but he hadn’t. And he hadn’t gone back to Dublin since he’d finished school.
He glanced up and said, “Garda Murphy,” with just enough sarcasm to be annoying but not enough for Sean to haul him out from behind the bar by his shirt collar.
“Not diving today?” Sean asked.
“I went out early with Eamon Carrick and a couple of his friends.”
As if it’s any of your business, his tone said.
Sean sat on a high cushioned stool at the polished wood bar, saved from the original fittings in the house and refurbished to Kitty’s specifications. She had a background in business but loved this place. She and Aoife had been coming here since they were babies. Sean couldn’t recall when he’d first noticed them. By the time Kitty was seventeen, for certain. By eighteen, she’d been in love with her banker, William Doyle.
“Where did you go?” Sean asked her son.
Philip took the last glass from the tray and set it on the shelf with the others, all sparkling in a sudden ray of sun that was there and then gone again. “We went out to the Samson wreck off Ram Head in Ardmore.”
“I know the spot.” In 1987, a trawler had run aground, its hulking, rusting wreck an eyesore to many but a popular spot for divers. “How well do you know these lads?”
“Well enough. I’m learning a lot from them. They’re more experienced divers than I am.”
“Diving is an expensive hobby.”
“It’s not just a hobby,” Philip said. “I’m thinking of becoming an oceanographic research diver.”
Sean wasn’t one to puncture a young man’s dreams, but he said, “A college degree would help, I would think.”
“It would if I decide I want one.” He tucked the empty tray under one arm. “What if I wanted to join the garda water unit like Eamon’s brother?”
“Think you could pull a body out of the water?”
Philip didn’t flinch. “I could.”
“It’d be in addition to your regular garda duties.”
“Good.”
Practical considerations didn’t necessarily interest Philip, but that could be youth and the attitude of some of his diving friends rubbing off on him. From what Sean had gleaned in the three or four weeks since Lindsey and Brent had arrived in Declan’s Cross, they’d been bouncing from place to place in order to indulge their passion for diving. Brent in particular was a respected diver, willing to cobble together a living if it gave him the freedom to dive. Their arrival in Declan’s Cross had attracted local divers. Everyone had assumed they’d move on. Then came the idea for a research field station, the rented garage...and now Julianne Maroney.
Sean decided to get Philip’s opinion, gauge his reaction. “What’s the status of this marine science research field station?”
“Lindsey’s securing funding from her family. She wants it to be a proper field station.” Philip opened a lower cabinet and shoved the tray inside, then stood straight, his cheeks flushed with enthusiasm. “I’ve volunteered to do what I can to help.”
Meaning he wasn’t getting paid. Same with Lindsey’s new friend from Maine. “Lindsey seems to have a knack for getting people to help her.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
Sean shrugged, unruffled. “Nothing on the face of it. What about Brent and Eamon? Are they volunteers?”
“I don’t know, but Eamon’s not involved with the field station that I can see. Brent could be on a Hargreaves Institute grant. He hasn’t said, and I haven’t asked.” Philip was less combative, his interest in the field station plainly genuine. “Can I get you anything?”
Sean shook his head. “Just passing through. You haven’t seen Lindsey, have you?”
“Not since yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
“Yeah.” Philip lifted a bottle of wine from a rack and checked the cork, obviously looking for something to do. “She stopped by the garage—the field station. I was in back with the tanks. By the time I realized she was there, she was on her way again.”
“Did you speak to her?” Sean asked.
“Not a word. I don’t think she saw me.”
“You were alone?”
“Yes. Sean—geez, man—”
“What time was this?”
“Two o’clock or so. After lunch.” He gave a half nervous, half sarcastic laugh. “I wouldn’t want to get into real trouble with you. I’m sweating.”
Sean eased off the stool, attempting to look less as if Philip were a terror suspect. His months of inaction—healing, thinking, tending sheep—had taken a toll, and now he was overreacting to absolutely nothing. “Where were Eamon and Brent yesterday?” he asked casually.
“I don’t really know. Off diving, I expect. You don’t think anything’s happened to Lindsey, do you?”
“I’ve no reason to think so.”
It was a careful answer, and Philip seemed to recognize it as such. He returned the wine bottle to the rack and grabbed a wet rag out of the small, stainless-steel sink but didn’t seem to know what to do with it. He finally slopped it onto the edge of the sink and scrubbed at some possibly imaginary stain. The color in his face was all the confirmation Sean needed that the lad was taken with Lindsey. She was at least a decade older, but that wouldn’t stop an eighteen-year-old’s fantasies.
Not much did, Sean thought. At the moment he had no desire for alcohol. He stood by the fire, burning hot with no one to enjoy it. Above the marble mantel was a mirror that had hung there for as long as he could remember. Interesting to see what Kitty had kept of John O’Byrne’s and what she’d dumped.
She
