Unable to stop herself, Kate glanced over her shoulder, but the drifting fog only heightened her sense of isolation. Did anyone actually live here in the west of Ireland?

A car’s yellow hazard lights drew close, fog curling around the lamps like ghostly ballerinas. Out on the footpath, Kate saw two figures. A moment passed, and the smaller of the two broke away and began to run. The tall one followed in swift pursuit, both moving, wraithlike, in and out of the fog. When it cleared again, she saw only the larger figure, motionless, before it, too, disappeared, leaving the footpath as empty as if Kate had imagined the whole thing.

Teeth chattering, she started her car. The tall one had done away with the little one, she decided. He was probably out there somewhere looking for his next victim.

Really panicked now, she let out the clutch. The car shuddered to a halt. Cursing manual transmissions, Kate started the engine again and let it idle. Her hands on the wheel were shaking. Get a grip. There’s no one out there. This is Ireland, not Santa Monica.

Then she looked up to see a man at her window.

Dear Reader,

The Man on the Cliff is set in one of my favorite places in the world, western Ireland. I love the wildness of the Connemara coast, the absolute hush of silence that falls over the countryside and the warmth and hospitality of the people. And, as the Irish say, the craic (Gaelic for a good time) in the pubs is first-rate. I made extensive notes for this book during a vacation in Ireland where we stayed in a converted coast guard cottage in Clifden, County Galway. We also washed down our fair share of Guinness as we listened to the music. I am, incidentally, a huge fan of Irish music and particularly enjoy a ballad singer by the name of Christy Moore, whose lyrics I think are poetry.

Kate Neeson, the heroine of this book, is a California writer who arrives in Ireland to do an investigative piece on a young folk singer who fell to her death from the Connemara cliffs. Kate is cynical and a little world-weary. She doesn’t trust men. When she finds herself falling in love with a man no one trusts, she’s definitely disconcerted. From signposts that point in the wrong direction and hovering mists that make her doubt her eyes, to the secrets and hidden agendas of the villagers, Ireland seems oddly unreal and slightly off-kilter. Before long she’s doing things she wouldn’t dream of doing back in Santa Monica. Personally, I think Kate just fell under Ireland’s spell. As I have myself.

I hope you enjoy the book.

Janice Macdonald

P.S. I enjoy hearing from readers. Please e-mail me through my Web site, www.janicemacdonald.com.

The Man on the Cliff
Janice MacDonald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER ONE

IF THERE WAS ANY correlation between bad luck with men and a poor sense of direction, Kate Neeson thought it might explain a whole lot about her life.

She was lost. Again. She turned off the ignition and peered gloomily through the window of the rented Peugeot at the unfamiliar Irish countryside. Isolated cottages, stunted windswept trees and stone walls. Endless stone walls. Around the twists and turns of the road, she’d caught glimpses of pale ocean merging into pale sky. Before the road started climbing again, she’d heard the low roar of waves breaking. On the coast, obviously, but in Ireland that wasn’t much help.

With a sigh, she reached for the map and spread it out over the passenger seat. Cragg’s Head, the village where she’d arranged to meet a local reporter, was barely more than a dot on Connemara’s ragged coast. She’d set up the meeting before she left the States, but had forgotten to ask him for directions. Jet-lagged and cold, she rubbed her eyes. On the map, the area looked like a piece of china, picked up and hurled to the ground in a tantrum.

Moruadh had fallen from Connemara’s steep cliffs nearly a year ago. Kate tucked her hands under her arms, chilled by the damp air seeping into the car. Moruadh, the young Irish folksinger whose songs of love, doomed, lost and unrequited, rang uncomfortably true to life. Or at least to her own life. Moruadh was why Kate was in Ireland, but she didn’t want to think about Moruadh right now. Specifically, she didn’t want to think about Moruadh’s death. Tomorrow would be time enough for that. Tomorrow—after a decent night’s sleep—she wouldn’t be plagued by a spooked feeling that had her glancing over her shoulder and checking door locks.

Tomorrow, she would wear down the widower’s resistance. If Niall Maguire had something to hide, she would ferret it out. Reluctant interview subjects didn’t discourage her.

Unable to stop herself, Kate again glanced over her shoulder, but a drifting fog only heightened the sense of isolation. Did anyone actually live in the west of Ireland? With her palm, she wiped away condensation from the windshield and tried to decide whether to plough on, in the unlikely hope she was headed in the right direction, or turn back to the last village.

Through the swirling air, she saw two figures out on a narrow footpath. She rolled down the passenger window to ask for directions, then changed her mind. Irish advice on such matters, she’d discovered, was picturesque, convoluted and usually wrong.

A car’s yellow hazard lights drew close, fog curling around the lamps like ghostly ballerinas. Out on the footpath, the two figures merged briefly. A moment passed and then the smaller of the two broke away and began to run. The tall one followed in swift pursuit, and both moved wraithlike in and out of the fog. When it cleared again, she saw only a tall, dark silhouette, motionless before it, too, disappeared, leaving the footpath as empty as if she’d imagined the whole thing.

Teeth chattering, she started the car. The tall one had done away with the small one, she decided. He was out there now looking for his next victim. A deranged woman hater. She could feel his eyes boring into her head. Probably deciding whether to drag her out of the car or just roll the car with her in it over the cliffs.

Panicked enough to convince herself that the scenario might not be that far-fetched, she let out the clutch. The car shuddered to a halt. Cursing manual transmissions, she started the engine up again and let it idle for a moment. Her hands on the wheel were shaking. Get a grip. There’s no one out there. This is Ireland not Santa Monica.

And then she looked up to see a man at the window.

She screamed.

His face, like an apparition in the swirling fog, was narrow with dark eyebrows and light gray eyes. For a moment he stood motionless at the open passenger window, evidently immobilized by her scream. Then, hands up at his chest, palms out, he slowly backed away from the window.

“God, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Kate stared at him. Even as the adrenaline rush of fear slowly faded, the scream still rang in her ears. She took some deep breaths. He was probably about her age, mid-thirties, tall and slender. He wore a rough woolen jersey, unraveling slightly at the neck, and an open sheepskin jacket, dark with moisture. A couple of cameras were slung around his neck, a leather gadget bag over one shoulder. A smile flickered tentatively across his face.

“Are you all right?

“I’m fine.” Given her panicky state a few minutes earlier, the presence of this complete stranger was oddly reassuring. “It’s kind of deserted out there, I don’t see a soul for a couple of hours. Then I see two people in the fog. One of them disappears and then the other, and suddenly you’re at my window.” She managed a shaky laugh. “Another minute and I’d have had my can of Mace out.”

“Would you now?” The faint smile appeared again. “But what if I’d been wanting to help you? Which I was.”

“I’m naturally suspicious,” she said, distracted momentarily by his eyes. Pale as the fog and fringed with dark lashes, they seemed focused on something beyond her shoulder. In a split second, though, she realized they were actually watching her. It was disconcerting. Like looking through a one-way mirror and finding someone looking back at you.

Moments passed. She stared through the open passenger window at him. He gazed into the car at her.

“Did you see anyone out there on the edge of the cliffs a few minutes ago?” she asked, thinking again of the disappearing figures.

“I didn’t. But I was supposed to meet a girl up here at six…” His glance took in the mist-shrouded landscape, then he looked at Kate again. “I was beginning to think I’d been stood up, but maybe it was her you saw. A few minutes ago, you say?”

She glanced at the dashboard clock, then up at him and felt vaguely envious of the girl who’d stood him up. “About that, I guess.”

“Did she have long fair hair?” he asked.

“I don’t even know if it was a girl. I just saw two people. One was smaller, I assumed it was female. She—if it was a she—wasn’t alone, though.”

“Right.” He studied her face for a moment. “Well, I’ll take a look around then. Maybe she’s just late.”

Kate eyed the cameras slung around his neck. The breast pocket of his jacket bulged with what she guessed was film and, in a lower pocket, she could see the corner of a green-and-white carton. “You’re shooting a new Waldo book? Find Waldo in the fog?”

He gave her a blank look.

“Waldo? Little blue-and-red-striped figure? You have to find him in a page of… Never mind. I was just curious about what kind of pictures you could take under these conditions.” The thought flashed through her brain that she wanted to prolong this encounter.

“It isn’t ideal,” he said, “but there are certain settings and film speeds that compensate.” He leaned into the window a little. “Listen, I’m sorry I frightened you just now.”

“You didn’t frighten me.” She met his eyes. “You startled me.”

“Ah.”

“There’s a difference.”

“Right, of course. I didn’t mean to suggest…” He shifted his bag to the other shoulder. “Can I do anything? Your car’s running all right, is it? You’re not out of petrol?”

“No.” Kate took another look at the clock. It was five minutes to six. “Am I headed the right way for Cragg’s Head?”

“You’re almost there,” he said with a smile. “But I’ll draw you a little map in case. It can be a bit tricky.”

She watched as he reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a notepad. Something metallic fluttered to the ground.

She craned her head to see better and caught a glimpse of a thin gold chain. As he reached to pick it up, she saw a gold letter she couldn’t make out. Briefly their eyes met, then he shoved the locket in his pocket and finished drawing the map.

“All right, here’s what you do,” he said. “It’s five minutes at the very most. Follow the road to Ballyconneely. You can’t miss it.”

A REASSURANCE THAT probably fell into the realm of Irish mythology, she decided thirty minutes later as green fields and more stone walls gave way to a village and a jumble of signposts, not one of which pointed to Cragg’s Head. She braked to let a couple with a stroller cross the street, her eye momentarily caught by a shop window’s picturesque clutter of paraffin stoves, candles and Wellington boots.

At the next village, she slowed the car, rolled down the windows and called out to an elderly woman in a raincoat and elastic stockings.

“Hi.” She smiled. “I’m trying to get to Cragg’s Head, and the last guy I asked told me to follow the road for Ballyconneely. He said I couldn’t miss it, but I guess I did.”

“Cragg’s Head is it?” The woman peered through the driver’s window. “Sure, well it’s easy enough, but there’s been a bit of signpost twisting going on, so things aren’t always what they seem, if you know what I mean.” She shifted a bulging string bag to the other hand. “Give me a minute to think.”

Kate waited.

“Right then.” The woman’s eyes briefly registered the cake crumbs and candy wrappers on the passenger seat, then she looked back at Kate. “Here’s what you do. D’you see that church over there?”

Kate craned her neck to look in the direction the woman was pointing. At the bottom of a hilly street that wound and bumped down to the water, she saw a small stone building with a Celtic cross. “Sure.”

“Pay no attention to it. You’ll be going in the opposite direction.”

“Ah.” Kate bit her lip.

“Go right and you’ll pass a… Oh, wait now, you can’t go that way anymore.” The woman thought for a moment. “Righto then, here’s an easy way, you can’t miss it…”

The directions would be wrong. Kate knew that, even as she steered the Peugeot up the hill the woman had indicated. “You can’t miss” was like “Trust me.” You always did and you never should.

LONG AFTER HE’D packed his camera gear back into the Land Rover, Niall Maguire found himself thinking about the woman in the car. What, he wondered, was an American woman, apparently traveling alone, doing in western Ireland in February? Despite Annie Ryan’s efforts at the tourist office, Cragg’s Head wasn’t exactly a sought-after destination.

Back in the mid-1800s, the town had been a commercial center, but more recently it was trying to reinvent itself as a tourist destination. A few bed-and-breakfasts had sprouted up, and from May to August there were quite a few tourists milling about. By autumn, though, accents in the village were strictly local.

To his mind, the summer tourists missed a lot. Sure, the weather was warmer in July and the flowers were out, but it was an easy, uncomplicated prettiness. Niall far preferred winter’s dark melodrama. The white foam of the Atlantic during a winter storm. Stars distant and bright in the wind-scoured sky. The swift fall of darkness.

Thoughts drifting from one thing to another, he drove slowly along the length of Cragg’s Head Walk. Earlier in the day, he’d done a photo shoot near Roundstone. A collection for one of those big, glossy books Americans put on their coffee tables. Ireland’s relics. Ruined keeps and towers, roofless cottages and abbeys. Everything moss smothered and ivy strangled.

In the gusting wind, he’d climbed a small drumlin to take pictures of the disused graveyard where, as children, he, Moruadh and Hughie Fitzpatrick had played hide-and-seek among the gravestones. One hot summer day, Moruadh had lain very still on one of the marble slabs, telling them to pretend she was dead.

Today, he’d used nearly a roll of film on an old woman, her body bent into the wind, her clothes the colors of the earth and bogs. But his thoughts had returned to that summer day and a girl in a red cotton dress. Finally, his concentration shot, he’d packed up and moved to another spot.

As he turned into the Market Square, an image of the American flashed across his brain. With her red hair and green eyes, she could be Irish, but her accent and demeanor gave her away. In Dublin, he could spot Americans a mile off. A certain self-confidence about them. I’ve a right to be here, they seemed to say. Still, he’d noted the way fear had pinched her nose, giving lie to her bravado. Her bitten nails said something, too.

Slowly, he drove along the harbor, past the courthouse and jail. Moments later, he pulled up outside the Pot o’ Gold, the bed-and-breakfast run by Annie Ryan—when she wasn’t working at the tourist office. Once it had been a convent run by the Mercy Nuns and then, much later, an orphanage. By the time he was born, the place was long disused and abandoned, but that had never stopped his old man from threatening to pack him off there with just the clothes on his back.

All done up now with lace curtains and amber lights in the windows, but Niall could still recall the cold, hollow fear that had gripped him as he’d stared up at the blank windows. Watching for the boy-eating rats that he’d been told lived inside.

Slowly, it had dawned on him that his wailing and begging and tearful promises to behave himself had quite entertained the old man and that a sure way to prolong the ordeal was to let on that he was scared. He’d learned to hide his fear by pretending to himself that it wasn’t really him standing there. That it was all happening to someone else, and he was just a bystander.

A twitch of the curtains broke his reverie, and he got out of the car and walked up the pathway. Given the speed with which Annie Ryan answered his knock, she’d evidently been at the window. Her hand went to her throat, and her eyes registered his mud-splattered boots. A lamp behind her cast an amber glow.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Maguire?”

“I was looking for Elizabeth Jenkins. I have it right, do I? This is where she’s living?”

“It is,” Annie said. “For now at least. She’s visiting from England. The daughter of a friend of mine.”

Niall heard the sound of the television from inside the house. Behind Annie, he could see the polished wooden floors in the hallway and off to one side the floral chintz of a chair cover. He had never eaten a meal at the Pot o’ Gold, but Annie’s cooking was legendary and as he stood there, he caught a whiff of a roast or stew that made him suddenly ravenous and more than a little lonely. “Elizabeth was to meet me tonight at Cragg’s Head Leap,” he said.

Annie’s eyes narrowed.

“She’s a student in the photography class I teach at the college,” he explained.

“Ah.” Her expression cleared momentarily. “Well, that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“We were going to take some pictures—” He stopped, unable to remember if he’d said that already. Uncomfortable suddenly, he turned to leave. “Anyway, I’ll not keep you. I thought I’d just drop by and see if you might know where she is.”

Annie cupped her chin in one hand and gave him a long look as though she had something to ask him but didn’t quite know how to put it.

“Do you do that often, then?” Her eyes didn’t leave his face. “Meet students after class?”

He felt an unaccustomed surge of anger. Her tone was polite, but the inference was unavoidable. He took a deep breath, shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“No, I don’t, Mrs. Ryan. Hardly ever. Most students don’t show the promise and enthusiasm Elizabeth does. I don’t do it because it takes time out of my own schedule that I could use to do other things, but I try to encourage students when they obviously have the talent.”

“Elizabeth’s a very young and impressionable girl,” Annie said as though she was justifying her question. “It wouldn’t take much to turn her head.” Her face had colored slightly, though, and her glance shifted beyond his shoulder. “It’s awful foggy out, isn’t it? Could you have seen much?”

“Sure, it’s a bit patchy,” he said, wanting to end the conversation. “Drifts in and out, but it allows for some interesting effects. If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll give you my card. Perhaps you’d have Elizabeth ring me when she gets home.”

She took the card from him and dropped it into the pocket of her skirt. “Right then. If there’s nothing more you need then, Mr. Maguire, I’ve supper getting cold.”

He was already on the road back up to Sligo when he remembered something Sharon, his business partner, had said that morning about a meeting at the bank. For a moment he hesitated, then, with a sigh of resignation, he turned around and headed back for Cragg’s Head to make peace with Sharon. The conversation with Annie Ryan played on in his head as he drove. It had been no more hostile than other encounters he’d had since Moruadh’s death, but he was usually able to ignore them all. Tonight he couldn’t, and he wasn’t sure why.

THROUGH THE MISTED GLASS of the Gardai car, Kate could see a uniformed man slumped down in the driver’s seat, his head thrown back. Sound asleep from the look of it. It was the same car she’d seen half an hour earlier. Somehow she’d managed to drive in a circle. Maybe as a penalty for past transgressions she’d been sentenced to spend the rest of her life driving along the cliffs of western Ireland.

She rapped on the window.

The man stirred, opened his eyes and muttered something unintelligible. Then he fixed her with a bleary-eyed stare. Early twenties, she guessed, with a mop of dark hair and a ruddy complexion. His blue uniform shirt was open at the neck and pulled out of his trousers. She couldn’t make out the letters on the brass name badge.

“Hi.” She smiled and caught a strong whiff of alcohol. “I’m trying to get to Dooley’s Bar in Cragg’s Head and somehow—”

“Straight ahead,” he said. “Five minutes down the road.”

“I think that’s what I did, but—”

“It’s the only way,” he said. “Go in any other direction and you’ll fall into the water.”

“Okaay.” Kate slowly nodded. “Well, thanks.” As she started to leave, a thought struck her and she turned back. “Listen, one other thing. I may have seen something out on the cliffs.” She glanced at her watch. “About an hour ago, I guess. It could have been a fight…the fog made it kind of difficult to tell, but you might want to check it out.”

The man stared at her for a moment, then seemed suddenly aware of the state of his clothes. One hand moved to his midsection. His eyes became fractionally more alert.

“Right then,” he sat up. “I’ll see that it gets written up. Good evening now.”

Kate glanced over her shoulder as she walked back to her car. “Five minutes, you said?”

“That’s right,” the Garda said. “Five minutes at the most.”

CHAPTER TWO

HALF AN HOUR LATER, with apologies to Hugh Fitzpatrick for being late, Kate squeezed into one of the narrow wooden booths at the back of Dooley’s main lounge. “Obviously, I should have allowed more time for getting lost,” she said, peering at the reporter through a blue haze of cigarette smoke.

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Fitzpatrick said with a grin. “Sure, it’s no crime to waste a little time now and then.” He glanced over at the bar where half a dozen men in cloth caps and heavy jackets sat nursing pints, then lifted his empty tankard in the direction of the bartender. “And this is as good a place as any to do it.”

Kate studied him for a moment. Mid-thirties. Hawkish nose, sallow complexion. His hair dark, lank and a shade too long. Old tweed jacket, jeans and a black turtleneck. Struggling-writer type, she’d dated a few of them. They were always bad news. Lost in the world that existed between their ears. She watched him light a new cigarette from the one he’d been smoking. Judging from the empty glasses on the table and the speed with which he’d consumed the last pint, she figured he’d had some firsthand experience wasting time in bars.

In the window behind him, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection and moved her chair slightly to avoid the image. She didn’t need confirmation that the damp air had frizzed her long red hair, or that fatigue had created circles under her eyes and made her skin paler than usual, which caused her freckles to stand out.

A headache had been gathering strength for the past hour. Kate wanted to ask Fitzpatrick to extinguish his cigarette, something she would have done without hesitation back in Santa Monica. Since they were on his home turf and she needed his assistance, she decided to tolerate the discomfort.

She could hear the click of billiard cues, raucous laughter and American rock music coming from the next room. The smells of beer and fried fish hung heavily in the air, potent if not particularly appetizing reminders that she’d eaten nothing all day but cake and chocolate.

“Are you still serving food?” she asked the rotund and balding bartender when he brought Fitzpatrick’s drink to the table.

“We are.” He wiped a cloth over the table. “Fish and chips. Sausages and chips. Egg and chips.”

“Anything that’s not fried?”

“Not fried?” He scratched his ear. “Let’s see. Raw fish, raw sausage and raw potatoes.”

She grinned. “I’ll just have some chips then.”

“She means crisps,” Fitzpatrick told the bartender. “I speak a bit of American. What flavor?”

Kate shrugged, stumped.

“We’ve only prawn,” the bartender said.

“Prawn then. And a Diet Coke, please.” Over at the bar, one of the cloth caps muttered something in the ear of the man next to him, and they both looked over their shoulders at her. She smiled sweetly, maintaining eye contact until they turned away.

When she returned her glance to Fitzpatrick, he grinned at her.

“You’re a novelty,” he said. “Cragg’s Head isn’t exactly a mecca for American tourists at this time of year.”

The surreptitious glances had been going on ever since she’d arrived. If she’d walked in stark naked, she could hardly have provoked more interest. The sensation was strange and one she didn’t particularly enjoy. Back in Santa Monica, the tweed jacket and beige wool pants she’d picked up at Nordstrom’s annual sale had seemed to strike exactly the right note of country chic. Here in Dooley’s they apparently screamed American tourist.

“Why is it you’re interested in Moruadh?” Fitzpatrick asked.

He pronounced the name the way Moruadh had taught her to do. Mora. “It’s Gaelic,” she’d explained. “Some sort of sea creature.” And then she’d laughed. “Let’s hope it’s a mermaid and not a whale.” No last name. “Moruadh is plenty,” she’d said.

Kate considered Fitzpatrick’s question. “I knew her. Kind of.” The bartender bought over the chips and the Coke in a glass with no ice. She tore open the bag. “About three years ago, I interviewed her for a magazine article. She called me several times after that and we became…” She hesitated. Friends would be a stretch, they’d never actually met and their lifestyles couldn’t have been more different. Moruadh sang to packed crowds all over Europe. Kate wrote about sheep-herding contests in Bakersfield. Moruadh spent long weekends in ancient and picturesque stone cottages in Provence. Kate spent weekends shuttling her ancient Toyota Tercel between the Laundromat and the supermarket. Moruadh had enjoyed success and recognition Kate herself never dreamed of. Still there had been this connection. Which was why the news of the singer’s death had come as such a shock.

“We shared dating horror stories,” she told Fitzpatrick. “Moruadh’s were a lot more glamorous than mine, but we’d both come to pretty much the same conclusion.”

Fitzpatrick looked at her.

“Men are jerks.” She bit into a chip. “Nothing personal, of course. Just the combined wisdom of our experiences.”

He moved his head slightly to exhale a cloud of smoke, turned back to face her again.

“And then I read about the accident—”

“Moruadh’s death was no accident.” Fitzpatrick tapped ash off his cigarette. “She was murdered.”

“You believe that, too?” Kate asked and felt her face color. She’d suspected that herself, but at least wanted to create a semblance of objectivity. She dug into her bag for a notebook, looked at Fitzpatrick. “So what’s your theory?”

Fitzpatrick laughed. “My theory, huh? Well, let’s just say, my theory is that murder is cheaper than divorce, which incidentally wasn’t legal in Ireland at the time of Moruadh’s death. Maguire could have gone to England or France, of course, but he must have worried she’d go after his money.” He drank some beer. “That’s more than just a journalistic theory. I know Maguire.”

“But her career was going fairly well. I mean she must have been making pretty good money herself?”

“Nothing compared to Maguire’s money. The three of us grew up together. His family had plenty, Moruadh was the daughter of the gardener. We had that in common, she and I, peasant stock.” He lifted his glass again, wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “My mother was a housekeeper on the Maguire estate. Moruadh enjoyed playing the two of us off against each other.”

“You and Maguire?”

He nodded. “For as long as I can remember. Of course, he had an unfair advantage. More pocket money than either of us had in a year. More of everything. And nothing has changed much over the years. He’s always had it all. Money, looks, women falling over themselves for him.”

“Was she in love with him?”

He shrugged. “Moruadh never knew her own mind. Maguire’s an aloof bastard. The more he kept his distance, the more she ran after him. He didn’t pay her a lot of attention until her career started taking off. When that began to wane—a year or so before she died—so did his interest in her. Pushing her off the cliff was an expedient way to end things.”

Kate kept her expression neutral. She fished in the bag for a chip, bit into it. “The Garda ruled it an accident. I read the investigation report. The cliffs were unstable. She lost her footing—”

“Ach.” He made a gesture of contempt. “Investigation. It was a farce. The old superintendent had been in the Maguire family’s pockets forever and he was a bit of an idiot anyway so he was easily taken in by Maguire.”

“Yeah, but pushing her off the cliffs seems a bit…well, extreme, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. “That’s Maguire. Have you met him yet?”

“Not yet.”

“You’ll get along famously.” He gave a wry smile. “Niall Maguire always gets along famously with beautiful women.”

“You’re not exactly Maguire’s biggest fan, huh?” she asked, deciding to ignore the compliment.

“You could say that.” He inhaled, narrowed his eyes against the expelled smoke. “Sure, it’s hard to feel a lot of warmth for someone who gets away with cold-blooded murder.” He tapped ash off the cigarette. “To be honest, though, I’ve never liked him much. No doubt it goes back to the stale cakes and bags of his old clothes my mother used to bring home from the big house. I’ve had an aversion to castoffs ever since.”

Kate watched him for a moment. Face twisted with emotion, he stared off across the room in the direction of the bartender who was drying pint glasses with a white cloth. She understood only too well how resentment and envy hardened into hate.

At fourteen, gawky and freckled with a mouthful of braces, she’d overheard an aunt say how unfair it was that, while Ned had heartbreaker written all over him, his little sister, Katie had none of the looks in the family. Months later, her father had to grab Kate’s arms to stop her clawing Ned’s face after they’d had a minor spat. She felt a stab of sympathy for Fitzpatrick.

“Sorry.” He shook his head, smiling slightly as though embarrassed. “You’re not here to listen to me vent my spleen about Maguire.”

“Hey.” She shrugged. “We all have our hang-ups.”

“I have these letters from Moruadh,” he said as though she hadn’t spoken. “Letters she wrote from Paris. I’ll show them to you. She complains bitterly about Maguire, saying how much happier her life would be if he would leave her alone. Sure, we’d both have been a lot happier.” He gave a harsh laugh. “But for Maguire, she’d still be alive and we’d be married.”

Kate looked at him. He’d answered a question that had been floating around in her brain since they’d started talking. There was something about the way he said Moruadh’s name, the look on his face as he spoke about her. But Moruadh had once confessed that she was only attracted to good-looking men and, while there was a certain appealing quality about him, Hugh Fitzpatrick was far from handsome.

“That surprises you, doesn’t it?” He was watching her face. “I can see that it does. Thinking that I couldn’t possibly be her type, weren’t you? A beautiful girl like Moruadh could have anyone. Why Hugh Fitzpatrick, who doesn’t have two pennies to rub together? That’s what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t like being told what I’m thinking,” Kate said. Especially when it happens to be right. “And you’re absolutely wrong.” She felt her face color. “If I looked surprised, it’s because I don’t remember her mentioning your name.”

Fitzpatrick seemed unconvinced. His face had darkened. Kate felt a tension that hadn’t been there moments before.

“I’ve always thought that there are two types of women,” he said after a moment. “Those who can’t see beyond pretty faces like Maguire’s and those who can.”

“Listen, Hugh,” she said, feeling rebuked, “in my fantasies I’m a tall, well-endowed blonde named Ingrid. Men flock to me.” She paused to let that sink in. “My reality is a long, long way removed from that. So don’t think I’m unaware of what it’s like to be judged on appearance.”

His broad smile, and the way his eyes lingered on her face told her that he’d read into her remark something she hadn’t intended. They were two drab birds in a gaudy flock, the look said, sensitive and under-valued. Let’s appreciate each other, it said. Kate yawned. The bar had almost emptied out. There were other things she wanted to ask him, but they could wait for another day.

Fitzpatrick was only one source, so it was too early for gloating, but she felt encouraged by what she’d learned so far. Clearly her theory about how Moruadh died wasn’t as off base as her editor at Modern World believed. Establishing her credibility with Tom was important if she ever wanted to move from the financially precarious world of freelance assignments to the more stable and lucrative staff job he’d hinted might be coming up. Still, he’d teased her for her stubborn refusal to accept the accidental death verdict. “Kate the Intrepid,” he’d laughed. “Relentless in her crusade to prove that beneath every male chest lurks a murderous and dowardly black heart. News flash, kid. Accidents happen.”

Kate drained her glass. Yeah, and husbands get away with murder. In the end, she’d worn Tom down and he’d given her the assignment. The trip had maxed out her credit card, but if she left Ireland knowing the truth about Moruadh’s death, it was worth the expense. And if she wrote a good article, Tom might even offer her a full-time position.

“You’re here for how long?” Hugh asked.

“Ten days.”

“There’s a lot to see. Galway is interesting. Would you like to go out one evening? We could have something to eat, talk a bit more. Hear some music.”

“Thanks.” Not wanting to step on his feelings again, or to mislead him, she hesitated. “But I really need to focus on the article.” She feigned a yawn. “And if I don’t get to the place where I’m staying, I’m going to fall asleep. My body clock is still on California time.”

Disappointment flickered in his eyes. “Are you interested in looking at the letters Moruadh sent to me?”

“Sure. I’ve got interviews scheduled for the next few days, but I could come by your office.”

“Right.” He appeared to be about to say something else, then he leaned across the table. “Maguire’s guilty, Kate.” His voice was low, impassioned. “He murdered Moruadh. He thinks he’s free and clear, that he got away with it, but he’s wrong. If it had happened today, under the watch of the new superintendent, he would be behind bars, but we can still make that happen. The two of us—”

“Hold on a second.” Startled by his sudden intensity, Kate leaned back in her chair, widening the distance between them. His eyes, dark and deep set, seemed to bore into her as though by sheer concentration he could make her believe. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. I still have a lot of people to talk to before I reach any conclusions.”

“What can I tell you to convince you?”

“What you’ve told me already has been helpful, but I’m going to need more than that.” Across the room, the remaining patrons were getting in their last curious looks at her before they toddled off into the night. “For starters, I want to talk to Maguire himself.”

“Sure, and Maguire will turn on his charm, and you’ll believe whatever he chooses to tell you.”

She met his eyes for a moment. “Obviously you don’t know me.”

KATE REMAINED at the table after Fitzpatrick left, making a few quick notes while the information was still fresh in her mind. Engrossed in her thoughts, she didn’t notice the bartender until he reached for the empty glasses.

“Anything else for you?” he asked.

“No.” With a yawn, she gathered up her notebook and purse. “Well, actually, you could tell me how to get to the Pot o’ Gold. It’s the B&B I’m staying in.”

“I know it well,” he said. “My wife runs the place. Just around the corner, you can’t miss it.”

Kate thanked him and dropped a handful of coins on the table. As she started toward the door, he called out to her.

“Listen, love, are you married?”

Kate stared at him. God, he had to be sixty. Was he trying to pick her up?

“Oh, not for me.” He laughed, obviously seeing the shock on her face. “My wife.”

“Your wife?”

“My wife. Look, do yourself a favor. When you get to the house and she asks you, tell her you are, otherwise she’ll have you engaged to a pig farmer faster than you can say Lisdoonvarna.”

“Lisdoonwhat?”

“Exactly. Married with two kiddies, tell her. Better yet, say you’ve a bun in the oven.”

Kate smiled and stepped out into the night. After the warm smokiness of the pub, the air hit her like a cold blast. She darted down the narrow alley behind Dooley’s to the muddy patch of grass where she’d parked. Vapor streaming from her mouth, she put the purse on the roof of the car while she unlocked the door. Inside, she buckled her seat belt then remembered the purse and got out to retrieve it. The car’s sudden movement sent the purse sliding from the roof and into a puddle of water. Naturally, she’d neglected to fasten it.

A tube of lipstick glinted up at her from the murky water; the apple that she’d saved from the flight bobbed and sank. As she bent down to retrieve her floating passport and airline ticket, the day seemed to cave in on her and she felt herself on the edge of hysteria—not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

She picked everything up and got back in the car again. As she started the ignition, a combination of fatigue and jet lag and—why not admit it?—loneliness left her suddenly so desolate and empty that her chest hurt. Married. No, she wasn’t married. If falling in love with the right guy was a college course, she would have flunked half a dozen times. A Love 101 dropout, auditing courses on Intro to Celibacy and Elements of Spinsterhood.

For a moment she just sat there with the windshield fogging, the car shuddering beneath her. Here she was in a rental car in some dark alley in a remote village thousands of miles from home and no one was waiting back in Santa Monica for her to call and say she’d arrived safely. No one was counting the days until she was home again. No one gave a damn and that was the truth of it. Sure, she could do her conjuring tricks. Divert the eye. Look over here, look over there. See how busy and full my life is. When she faced it right on, though, there was nothing. No center. Nothing but black emptiness.

“Get over it.” She put the car in gear, adjusted the rearview mirror and peered into it for a minute. “Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” she told the face with the under-eye circles that stared back at her, “or you’ll blow the assignment. Tom will replace you with some twenty-something and you’ll end up jobless, homeless, wandering around Santa Monica with all your stuff packed in a shopping cart and sleeping on benches on Ocean Boulevard. Is that what you want?”

It wasn’t and by the time she parked outside the Pot o’ Gold some fifteen minutes later, she’d pulled herself out of the funk. Imagine the worst and whatever happens probably won’t be quite as bad. One of the tools in her coping kit. That and the breezy, confident mask that only slipped when she was too tired to maintain it. By the time she rang the bell, it was firmly back in place.

The woman who answered the door wore a red wool dress that hugged her slim figure and set off her black hair and blue eyes. Recalling the sixtyish bartender at Dooley’s who looked a good ten years older, Kate wondered if she’d misunderstood what he’d said about his wife running the place. If she’d got it right, the two seemed an unlikely pair.

“Kate Neeson.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m really sorry I’m late.”

“It’s all right, darlin’. Patrick called to say you were on your way.” Smiling, the woman shook Kate’s hand. “Annie Ryan. Sure, I did get a bit worried, it’s the way I am. My houseguest isn’t home yet and I’m running to the window every five minutes.” She peered at Kate’s face. “You’re all right, are you? Your eyes are a bit red.”

“I’m fine,” she said, but Annie looked so doubtful, Kate felt the need to offer more reassurance. “It’s allergies.” She improvised. “Probably the damp air.”

Annie patted her arm, as if to say she wasn’t convinced but she’d go along with it, and ushered her along the hallway and into a brightly lit room that smelled of wood smoke, furniture polish and flowers. Kate glanced around. Flower-patterned couches and armchairs grouped cozily around the flickering fire. The glow of amber lamps on the teacups set out on a low table by the hearth.

“This is really nice.” She smiled at Annie, her spirits revived. “It’s so warm and inviting. I was…well, ever since I arrived, I’ve been getting lost and everything’s kind of strange, but I think it’s all going to work out.” She stopped, embarrassed. Why was she blabbering like this to a complete stranger? It wasn’t even like her. But Annie, who was bustling around the room, poking at the fire, seemed to find nothing amiss.

“Make yourself at home now. I’ll have someone bring in your suitcases.” She helped Kate off with her coat, disappeared with it, and returned moments later. “While you’re here, you’re part of the family. Now, will you have a cup of tea and a bit of supper? I’ve a lamb stew in the oven, but if that’s not what you fancy, there’s a chicken pie. By the way, love,” she said as Kate started up the stairs, “there’s a phone in the hall, should you want to ring your husband. You are married, aren’t you?”

NIALL LOOKED across the vast stretch of Buncarroch Castle’s great hall to the mantelpiece where his business partner, Sharon Garroty, stood, hands on her hips, her expression one of severely strained patience. She had on narrow black trousers and a black silk blouse, her pale blond hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head.

“What I really can’t understand,” she was saying, “is exactly how you could just forget about signing papers on a fifty-thousand-pound loan because you were too busy snapping shots with a little twit of a coed who obviously has designs on you.”

“Put that way,” he said, pulling off a boot, “I’m sure it must be hard to understand.”

“And how would you put it then?”

“I’ve explained already that I forgot we were to meet at the bank. I’ve also apologized for forgetting. Either accept it, or don’t. I won’t spend the night justifying myself to you.”

He removed the other boot and stood dangling it by the laces as he looked at her. If he’d told her that anger enhanced her beauty, she’d no doubt throttle him, but it was true. The faint pink of anger that tinged her creamy skin was as flattering as the most artfully applied cosmetic. Often his assignments involved photographing beautiful women, but few of them had her classic sort of beauty. Clearly, though, it wasn’t the moment to mention it.

He averted his eyes from Sharon and from the eagle on the chimney wall immediately above her head. It had been there for as long as he could remember, but the sight of it, wings outstretched in frozen flight, had always depressed him and they’d talked of taking it down. Or he had. Sharon thought it should stay. They’d talked of turning the castle into a small and exclusive hotel, and Sharon had argued that the eagle—along with the various hunting trophies and stuffed animal heads that adorned the walls—were what tourists would expect to see.

He had dropped the subject. Although he didn’t like the thought that the trophies might suggest his endorsement of blood sports, he disliked a fight even more. Whatever gene the Irish had for volatility had bypassed him completely. Tonight unfortunately, the likelihood of avoiding confrontation was as remote as a month without rain.

Bits of mud had flaked off his boots, and Niall scooped them up and threw them into the grate. While he was the castle’s owner, Sharon made no secret of the fact that she rather fancied herself as lady of the manor, graciously opening her stately home to wealthy tourists. Where he fit into that picture, he wasn’t quite sure. He was hardly the lordly type. More the groundskeeper, he reflected, his thoughts drifting to the cromlech that dotted the grounds and an idea he’d had for a series of pictures of Celtic stones.

“Who is this Elizabeth girl?” Sharon demanded. “Is she the one who’s always ringing the studio?”

He ignored the question, carried his boots across the great hall, down a stone-flagged corridor and into the kitchen. Behind him he heard the tap of Sharon’s heels. He opened the pantry door and did an inventory of the nearly empty shelves. Two tins of mulligatawny soup, some pilchards and a bit of moldy cheese. He thought of the savory smells in Annie Ryan’s house and wondered whether the American woman might be staying there.

Again he regretted not making sure she’d found her way safely. Tomorrow, perhaps, he’d ring Annie Ryan just to check whether the American was there. He peeled waxed paper from the Stilton. After tonight’s inquiry about Elizabeth, a call would almost certainly convince Annie that he had an obsession with stray women. Sharon’s voice again interrupted his thoughts.

“You didn’t answer me. The girl you were supposed to meet? She’s the one who’s always ringing you, isn’t she?”

“She is.” In the bread bin, he found half a loaf of brown bread. It had gone stale, but he didn’t care. Aware of Sharon behind him, he hacked off a piece, sandwiched it around the cheese. After he’d finished eating, he brushed the crumbs into the sink, put the bread back in the bin and went to the back door. Through the windowpane, he looked out into the dark night and after a moment heard a flurry of movement outside, followed by a frantic scratching at the woodwork.

“Rufus.” He pulled the door open, and a large gray dog burst into the kitchen on a blast of cold air. “You’ve awful-smelling breath, d’you know that?” He scratched the dog’s wiry head. “And you’re a bit of a scruff bag, too. If you ever hope to interest that little Pekingese down the road, you’ll have to do something about yourself.”

“Oh, I see.” Sharon spoke at his shoulder. “You’re just going to ignore me, is that it? Sure, the bloody dog gets more attention than I do. Maybe I should get down on all fours and bark at you. Would that do it?”

Over the dog’s head, he met Sharon’s ice-blue stare.

“It’s a character flaw, you have,” she said. “You know that, don’t you? Your head’s always up in the bloody clouds. You’re not grounded in reality.”

He pushed the dog down. The charge wasn’t exactly new. Three years ago when they’d first become partners in the small art gallery, she’d teased him about mentally disappearing. For a while, it had been a joke between them. Sharon would knock on his head, inquire if anyone was home. Gradually, the teasing started to get a bit of an edge. It wasn’t until they’d started sleeping together that she’d taken to calling it a character flaw.

On the dresser, there was an unopened bottle of whiskey that he’d bought to take up to Sligo. The converted lighthouse he’d bought a few years back was his favorite place in the world, remote and beautiful—with a constant crash of the ocean all around. He could do with a little of that solitude right now, he thought, with a glance at Sharon. He poured a little whiskey into a couple of glasses and handed one to her. She downed it in one gulp, carried her empty glass to the sink, then returned to where he stood.

“She’s a bit young, isn’t she, Niall? Have you thought of what people will think?” She put one hand up as though to ward off an outburst. “All right, you say she’s just a student in your class and it’s all perfectly innocent. Maybe that’s true, but people talk.” She gave him a meaningful look. “As you well know. I didn’t say it to the bank manager, of course, but can you imagine if I’d told him you weren’t there because it was more important to be with this…this little tart?” A faint flush of pink stained her face. “Can you?”

“I can.”

“But you don’t care, do you? It really doesn’t matter to you what people think. You lock yourself away in your own little world, and nothing else exists.” She stopped, left the room and returned a few moments later with a large white envelope. “Maybe this will bring you back to earth. It came today.” She handed it to him. “From that boyfriend of Moruadh’s in Paris. It was addressed to you, so I opened it, but the letters inside were for her.”

He took them from her. Half a dozen gray envelopes.

He riffled through them. All had been opened. Letters from him sent during the year before Moruadh died, forwarded by one of the many men who had drifted through her life at that time. He looked up and met Sharon’s eyes.

“Did you open these?”

“They were already open.”

He looked up at her. “Did you read them?”

“One of them, I glanced at. It said something about her needing to get help and—”

“I know what it said, Sharon. I wrote it.” He got up and walked across the kitchen to the window and stared out at the dark night.

“I don’t make a habit of reading your personal mail,” Sharon said. “You know that. You had that exhibit in Paris last month, and I thought that this was something to do with that. A business matter. We’re supposed to be partners, aren’t we?”

He didn’t answer.

“Whatever you think you understand from what you read,” he said a moment later, “you understand nothing at all.”

“But Niall—”

“You understand nothing,” he repeated. “Moruadh was a talented young musician, greatly loved and admired by everyone who knew her.” He said the words as though by rote. “She was also a beautiful woman who had a lot of admirers. Her death was a tragic accident and an incredible loss to us all.”

Sharon stared at him as though transfixed.

“Is that clear?”

Various emotions played across her face. For a moment, she seemed about to speak, but then she shrugged and took his glass to the sink.

“There’s another matter I wanted to talk to you about.” He sat down at the table, watched as she pulled out a chair. “Look, I think we both know this isn’t working, Sharon. Us, I mean. We spend half our time together arguing over one thing or another. There’s just—” he shrugged “—nothing there anymore.”

“Oh, really?” She got up from the table, crossed the room. Regarded him, arms crossed, her back against the wall. “Nothing there, you say? And do you know why that is? Niall? Do you have the faintest bloody idea why there’s nothing there?”

He waited for her to tell him.

“No, of course you don’t, because you’re as oblivious to what’s happening with us as you are to everything else going on around you. Well, I’ll tell you. You’ve lost touch with yourself, Niall. You can’t connect.”

He bent to pick out a burr from the dog’s coat. “You’re right, Sharon. I can’t. Don’t. Won’t. I’ve never been much on giving guided tours of my psyche. Go and find someone who emotes. There’s a drama teacher at the college who’ll sob at the drop of a hat. I’ll find out if he’s available.”

“Sure, make a joke of it. It’s the easy way, isn’t it? Well, fine. It’s over, finished. I’ll survive. And you’ll meet someone new and it’ll be fine at first, just as it was with us. She’ll fall in love with your looks and the way you have about you, so bloody interested with all your questions and rapt attention, but you’re like a collector. You take what you need, but you give nothing back.”

“Well, that’s my problem, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is, Niall. And frankly, I’m glad to be done with it. You’ve got something locked away up there and you’ll sacrifice anything before you let it out.”

AN HOUR OR SO AFTER Sharon left, Niall sat at his desk in the study, going through the rest of the mail. Press notices from his show in Paris, an invitation to a gallery opening in Dublin. Another letter from the American writer who wanted to interview him about Moruadh. For a moment, he held the blue envelope in his hand, its color triggering a memory of a spring day five years ago. Wisps of clouds, a lark high in the sky. A windy hillside…

Moruadh had found a gentian, the first of the year. A bright blue flower that she’d held out for him to see. There was a bit of doggerel that went along with finding the first one. They’d both learned it as children, and he had recited it in Irish, one of the few scraps of Irish he knew.

“May we be here at this time next,” he’d said.

“I won’t be,” Moruadh replied. “I’m going to die.”

Her eyes as blue as the flower in her hand looked right into his and he felt a chill across his back.

“What is it? Are you ill? Is there something wrong?”

“There is not.” She smiled, one of the lightning-quick smiles that lit her face like sunshine. “Nothing at all.”

“Then why would you say something like that?”

“Because it just came to me.”

“You’re standing in a field on a sunny day and it just comes to you that you’re going to die?” He started to become angry with her. “Sure, it makes perfect sense.”

“No, it makes no sense. It just came to me.”

At a loss for words, he shook his head at her.

“Ah, Niall.” With a laugh, she tossed the flower aside. “Don’t try to understand. Some things aren’t meant to be understood.”

By the same time the next year, she’d claimed not to remember that day with the gentians. Niall looked at the blue envelope again, and without bothering to open it, threw it into the wastepaper basket at his feet.

CHAPTER THREE

STILL GROGGY, Kate stood in the doorway of Annie’s sitting room. Instead of the quick nap she’d meant to take, she’d slept through dinner. When Annie tapped at the door to say she’d made sandwiches and tea, it was nearly eleven.

Kate’s glance shifted from the bartender, dozing now by a blazing fire, to Annie, who sat at a little desk talking on the phone. A girl with cropped orange hair and thickly mascaraed eyes sat on the couch next to a dark-haired boy who was whispering in her ear. Arms folded across her chest, the girl dangled a shoe from her toe, studying her foot as she listened.

Apparently sensing Kate in the doorway, the boy looked up and his eyes widened slightly. It took Kate a moment to recognize him as the Garda she’d seen earlier, changed now into jeans and a red sweater. He half stood and smiled at her.

“Didn’t I meet you on the cliffs earlier this evening?” she asked.

His face went blank.

“About six-thirty?” She waited for him to recognize her. “I told you about seeing a fight, or something.”

He shook his head. “Must have been someone who looked like me.”

“Rory was out on the Galway Road investigating an accident.” The girl draped her arm around his neck, eyeing Kate as though she might constitute competition. “Weren’t you, love?”

“I was.” He winked at Kate. “But sure, all the Gardai look alike, don’t they? Tall, dark, handsome and irresistible to women.” He nudged his thigh against the girl’s. “Right, Caitlin?”

Kate shrugged. Maybe she was wrong. She’d been tired, her brain still on California time and the light hadn’t been good. She started to speak, but Rory had turned his attention back to the girl, his mouth at her ear. Awkward and more than a little confused, Kate was about to go back upstairs, when Annie got off the phone.

“Did you have a little snooze then?” Annie put her arm around Kate’s shoulder, drawing her into the sitting room. “This is my daughter, Caitlin.” She laughed. “Kate and Caitlin, funny that. And this is Rory McBride, soon to be my son-in-law.”

“June fourteenth.” Caitlin gazed adoringly at Rory, who had one arm around her shoulder, the other draped along the back of the couch. “And we’re going on honeymoon. Majorca,” she added with a little giggle.

“And this Sleeping Beauty over here—” Annie tweaked the bartender’s cheek “—is my husband, Patrick, who you’ve already met.”

“Whaa?” The bartender stirred and opened his eyes.

“Nothing, Pat. Go back to sleep. Kate, you make yourself comfortable, now.” Annie flapped her hand at Rory. “Move over and give Katie some room on the couch.”

“No, stay where you are.” Kate dropped down on a hassock by the fire and looked over at Annie. “Did your houseguest come home yet?”

“She did not.” Annie poured tea into flowered cups and handed one to Kate. “But that was my brother Michael on the phone. He’s the sergeant in charge at the station. ‘Don’t worry about Elizabeth,’ he tells me. ‘Teenagers are like that.’”

“He’s right, Annie,” Rory said. “Elizabeth’s been on and on about wanting to go to Galway. It’s natural enough. The whole reason she’s here with us is to see a bit of the country. She’s not seeing much of it stuck in Cragg’s Head.”

“It’s true, Mam,” Caitlin said. “All I hear from her is how boring it is in Cragg’s Head.” She eyed Kate for a moment. “It’s very quiet, especially in the winter. If you’re looking for excitement, you’ll not find it here.”

“Kate’s not here for excitement,” Annie said. “She’s writing about Moruadh Maguire. Big American magazine, right, Katie?” She laughed. “Just think of it, a celebrity right in my sitting room.”

Kate grinned, thinking about her maxed-out credit cards and depleted checking account. “Hardly.”

As Annie went on to tell Caitlin about a mutual friend she’d seen that day, Kate looked around the cozy room. Overstuffed armchairs, flowered curtains drawn across the dark night outside. A feeling of well-tended comfort. The kind of room in which you’d curl up with a good book. Her eyes moved from Annie, presiding over a small table set with a china teapot and plates of sliced cake and sandwiches, to Caitlin pouring milk and tea into teacups, and then to Rory who was staring into the fire. Kate watched him for a moment. At first glance, he appeared at ease, but his fingers rapped a continuous tattoo on the back of the couch. He reminded her of an engine idling—motion barely contained, ready to bolt in an instant. When Caitlin offered him a teacup, he jumped as though he’d just realized she was there. His head, Kate was almost certain, was not in this room.

“Come on, Kate.” Annie broke into her reverie. “Tea? A bit of treacle bread. It’s nice. I made it just this afternoon.” She held out the plate. “A bit overdone, I suppose. Took my eye off the stove for a minute and the next thing I knew I was smelling smoke.”

“How did you hear about Moruadh then?” Caitlin sipped her tea and looked at Kate. “Was she popular in America?”

“She wasn’t really well-known, but I wrote about her three years ago and we talked on the phone a few times.” Kate glanced down at the slice of cake Annie had just put on her plate. “Even though I’d never met her, I felt as though I knew her somehow.”

“Moruadh could make you feel that way,” Annie said.

“She could.” Patrick spooned jam onto a piece of bread. “And she had a way of making you think there was no one in the world she’d rather be talking to than you yourself.” He laughed. “Even a tubby old baldy like me.”

Caitlin smiled at her father. “Da had a little crush on her.”

“Tell me a man under ninety who didn’t,” Annie said. “She was a pretty girl. I don’t think Hughie Fitzpatrick ever got over her marrying Maguire.”

Kate thought of the reporter she’d met in Dooley’s, the bitterness in his voice as he’d spoken about Maguire. Time had obviously done little to lessen his hatred for the man.

“Hughie and Moruadh were sweethearts, until she started making a name for herself,” Annie said. “The next thing I hear, she’s married to Maguire, and they’re living in Paris.”

“A cool one, that Maguire,” Patrick said. “I suppose his money won her over in the end.” He looked over at the couple on the couch. “How would you describe Niall Maguire, Rory?”

“Ah, he’s just…” Rory’s forehead creased in a frown. “Sure, I don’t know how to put it. He can look right at you and it’s as though you’re not even there. And you’ll never see him having a laugh down at the pub or out kicking a football. He’s just never been one of the lads.”

“But he’s lovely looking, though,” Caitlin said with a little smile. “Those eyelashes of his. No matter how much mascara I used, I couldn’t get mine to look that long. You’ve not met him yet, Kate?”

“No. I’m going to try and see him tomorrow.” She’d left her notebook upstairs, but made a mental note to jot down the comments she’d heard as soon as she got back to her room. At this rate, and given her own suspicions about Maguire’s guilt, it was going to be hard to maintain even a semblance of objectivity.

“He’s very polite.” Caitlin examined her nails. “Makes you feel as though what you’re saying is really important to him.”

“Very polite.” Rory traced circles in the air near his temple. “Go and varnish your nails or something, Caitlin.”

“What’s the matter with that?” Caitlin asked, wide-eyed. “I’m just saying he has nice manners.”

“Sure, Caitlin,” Rory said quietly, his head bowed, “if he’s got nice manners, he couldn’t possibly have pushed Moruadh down the cliffs, could he? Not without saying ‘pardon me’ as he shoved her over.”

“Rory.” Caitlin slapped his arm. “That’s terrible, no one knows that for sure.”

“I’m no fan of Maguire, mind you, but in my opinion, Moruadh fell,” Patrick said. “She was a great one for the outdoors. Out there every day she was, in all weather, going for her walks. For years, people have been clamoring at the council to put a fence up. ’Tis a tragedy that it took this to make it happen.”

“He’s right.” Caitlin looked at Kate. “People should stop all this gossip about Mr. Maguire. It isn’t nice. Wait till you meet him, Kate. You’ll fall in love with him, I’m telling you.”

“Oh, but Kate’s married,” Annie said, smiling. “Aren’t you, Kate?”

Kate and the bartender exchanged glances. Time for her to bow out, she decided.

“No.” She grinned. “I like to play the field. Love ’em and leave ’em, that’s my motto.” She stood and put her teacup on the tray. “I’m going to say goodnight. I’m about to fall asleep on my feet.”

BUT AS TIRED as she’d felt downstairs, when she got to her room Kate was suddenly wide-awake. Fully dressed, she stretched out on the bed, her eyes fixed on the repeating pattern of the wallpaper. Tiny sprigs of white flowers against a yellow background. Her thoughts drifted back to Moruadh. At home, she would listen to Moruadh’s clear high voice as she drove. Haunting and ephemeral, the music weaving its spell as it conjured visions of mists and hills, yearning and heartache. Of sadness too unbearable to endure.

“And tell the world,” Moruadh sang. “That I died for love.”

After Kate’s article came out, Moruadh had called her a few times from Ireland and Paris. Usually in the early hours of the morning. For the most part, Moruadh talked while Kate listened. Inevitably, the topic turned to men and relationships and love. Moruadh fell in and out of love with a succession of men. Nothing lasted, and she would talk about the howling-in-the-wilderness bouts of loneliness that gripped her in the early hours. “Ah God, I could die of it,” Moruadh said once. “I’ve crawled into the beds of men who meant nothing at all, just to have someone’s arms around me.”

Her last call had been short and perfunctory. She was marrying a man by the name of Niall Maguire, she’d told Kate. No time to talk, but she would call again soon.

But she never had. Kate had read about Moruadh’s death in the obituary section of the Times. A small reference just a couple of paragraphs summing up Moruadh’s career. While walking along the cliffs near her home in Cragg’s Head, the article said, Moruadh Maguire had fallen some three hundred feet to her death. Ruling it an accident, the Gardai had blamed wind and rain and the unstable cliffs. Kate had thought about love and loneliness and had been unable to get Moruadh off her mind.

Restless now, she got up to examine the framed prints that hung on the walls. Sylphs and sprites in a field of bluebells. A gnome on a toadstool. More sprites and bluebells. Everything felt oddly unreal and slightly off-kilter, as though she’d been dropped into the middle of another world that bore a superficial resemblance to her own but functioned in a way she didn’t entirely understand. Unanswered questions. Confused directions and screwed-up road signs. The shadowy figure up on the cliffs. The young Garda in the car. The way the gray-eyed man had suddenly appeared out of the fog.

The sensation was similar to the way she felt after she’d taken her car to be washed at one of those full-service places. She’d get back in and find that everything—radio, seats, mirrors—had been slightly changed. Not enough that she couldn’t drive, but sufficient to send her neuroses into overdrive. Kind of the way she felt right now. Just a little thrown off. She yawned again and moved back to the bed. On the other hand, maybe she’d just overdosed on Celtic intrigue.

Through the closed door, she could hear the soft murmur of conversation from the sitting room below. Like a video, images of the evening ran through her head. The play of firelight on the faces around the room. The clink of flowered china teacups and saucers, the crackle of flames. Patrick dozing in his chair. The smells of baking and fresh flowers.

Annie bustling around. Smiling, urging food on everyone. Annie had a natural warmth—an openness that instantly turned strangers into friends. A quality Kate envied but couldn’t master herself. Probably because it required a certain willingness to let yourself be vulnerable. Her own defense mechanisms were too finely honed to allow that. Compared to Annie, she felt world-weary and a little jaded.

A fleeting childhood memory drifted across her consciousness. A night spent at a friend’s house. A girl with lots of brothers and sisters. The house was full of warmth and light and people laughing and talking. It had seemed perfect, like a page from a storybook. When she grew up, Kate had vowed, she would have a house just like it. Full of happy children. A smiling husband.

More memories, dim and fragmentary. Herself at ten, wakened from sleep by raised voices coming from downstairs. Her father’s voice, cold, dispassionate. No, he wouldn’t be back. He had fallen in love. A student in one of his classes. Her mother’s sobs.

A memory of walking home from school after her parents divorced. Looking through brightly lit windows of other houses. The little rituals she had developed that, if followed exactly, would make everything all right again. If she touched every mailbox on her street as she passed, her mother wouldn’t be crying when she walked in. If she skipped for four blocks, she would smell cookies baking when she opened the front door. If she held her breath for two minutes, her mother would be sober.

She got up, dug out a robe and toilet bag from her suitcase and walked down the hall to the bathroom. It was after her mother committed suicide that she’d pretty much stopped believing in magic. Or love.

TO CALL BUNCARROCH CASTLE gloomy, she decided the next morning, would be like calling Trump Tower upscale. She stood in the damp air, craning her neck to look up.

Niall Maguire’s ancestral home stood at the crest of a small hill, surrounded on three sides by the ocean. Massive and vaguely misshapen, it sprouted various architectural embellishments that she guessed had been added over the years. Battlements, gargoyles, wartlike turrets. One wing, jutting awkwardly like a broken limb, seemed in imminent danger of crashing into the ocean.

Niall Maguire was not home. Or at least he wasn’t answering the doorbell. She rang it again, glanced around the graveled circular driveway. No cars, but she wasn’t sure what that meant. Did castles have garages? Again she rang the doorbell and waited. After a few moments she walked back across the gravel, climbed onto Annie’s elderly Raleigh and pedaled down the hill again.

She would try later, she decided as she rode through a waste of rock-and-boulder-smattered heather into the village. Although Maguire had ignored her letters, which suggested he didn’t want to talk to her, he might be less inclined to turn her down if they actually met face-to-face. On the other hand, if he was as aloof and detached as Patrick and Rory had described him, maybe not.

She thought of what Hugh Fitzpatrick had told her about Maguire’s attractiveness to women. Objectivity was becoming difficult. Her tendency was always to root for the underdog, and Niall Maguire with his castle and money and fawning women appeared to be anything but.

As she passed Sullivan’s Butcher Shop, a man in a navy, striped apron sweeping the pavement looked up and waved.

“Fine day,” he called.

“Terrific,” Kate called back and caught her reflection in a shop window. Warm, if not particularly fetching, in her dark green parka and old black cords. An errant strand of hair had escaped from the black woolen cap she’d jammed on and it flew out behind her like a long red ribbon.

Earlier, at Annie’s insistence, she’d eaten an enormous breakfast of Irish bacon, eggs, tomatoes and soda bread slathered with butter. More calories than she ate at home in an entire week, but it was amazing what food and a decent night’s sleep did for the disposition. Last night Ireland had seemed strange and a little disconcerting. Today, in the glow of early-morning sunshine, all was well. A ride to burn off some of the calories and then a couple of interviews she’d scheduled. After that, she would try Niall Maguire again.

She pedaled through the village. Only a few of the brightly painted shops along the high street were open this early, but the area was already busy. Horns tooted, car doors slammed. From Claddagh Music came the trill of a flute, as pure and clear as birdsong. From Joyce’s Bakery, the aroma of warm bread rose to mingle with the peat smoke and the salty tang of the harbor.

It all seemed quite idyllic. Far removed from the police sirens and gang shootings and other staples of her daily life in Santa Monica. She rode past the small harbor where men in heavy jerseys and oilskin trousers were dragging a small boat onto the shingles. Then past the Connacht Superette and Kelly’s Garage.

A mile or so out of the village, the road narrowed and acrid farm smells filled the air. A light breeze moved the clouds overhead. Except for the faint sigh of the wind and the hum of her tires on the road, the silence all around her was absolute. It hovered in the air like a presence—a peaceful hush that made the whole countryside appear to be sleeping.

Back home in Santa Monica, Kate worked to the constant chatter of the all-news radio that played in her office. When she drove, it was to the accompaniment of the assorted tapes she carried in her car. When you live with noise around you, she’d heard a radio shrink say, it drowns out the knowledge that you’re alone.

Deep in thought, she heard a whoosh of air and a sharp squeal of brakes. The dark green Land Rover seemed to materialize from nowhere. She swerved wildly, slammed on the brakes and toppled over into a patch of grass. For a moment she just sat there, stunned, her nose filled with the smell of burned rubber. The car’s driver, a tall, dark-haired man, made his way over to where she sat.

“Are you all right?” He reached to help her up.

“I’m fine.” Ignoring his hand, Kate pulled herself to her feet and brushed grass from her pants. “No thanks to you. God, you could have killed me.” She glared up at him, but he towered over her by at least a foot, which meant that she had to crane her neck and squint into the sun to see his face, something that further incensed her. “Perhaps it never occurred to you that not everyone might be zipping along in a fancy car?”

“It’s usually only a problem,” he said, watching her, “when people ride on the wrong side of the road. Which you were.”

She felt her face flame. Tap-dance your way out of this one. Rooted to the spot, unwilling to break eye contact and concede the point, she stood there until she saw he was fighting to keep a straight face. And then she recognized him.

“The man on the cliff,” she said.

“The Mace bandit,” he said.

“Mace bandit.” She shook her head at him. He wore an open black leather jacket over a black sweater. The somber color accentuated his fair skin and dark hair, set off the fine-boned features and clear gray eyes. His hair was clean, slightly curly and just a shade too long. The shadow on his jaw suggested he’d neglected to shave that morning. He also had a truly sensational smile, which he was turning on her now.

“I’m not sure about you,” she finally said. “Last night you nearly scared me to death. Today you knock me off my bike.”

“I’m bad news all around,” he said. “Or so I’ve been told.”

“I bet you have.” She tried not to smile back at him. He looked wildly attractive, a kind of unstudied sexiness that perked up her hormones and pheromones and God knows what other mones. Something about the way he was looking at her told her the attraction was mutual.

“How can I make amends?” He gestured at her bike. “What about this then? I’ll see what the damage is.”

“There’s no damage.” Even if there were, she’d rather walk the damn thing back to Annie’s than drive up in his car, looking like a fool because she’d forgotten which side of the road to ride on. She smiled. “It’s fine.”

“You’ve not looked.”

“Trust me. I know these things.”

Moments passed. A breeze rustled the grasses, tousled his hair. A car went by. Her knee started to throb, and her hands smarted where she’d landed on them. She shoved them in the pocket of her parka.

“You’re all right, really? No broken bones.”

“I’m all right, really,” she said, imitating him. “No broken bones.” Given his looks, the lyrical accent was overkill. This guy was too cute by half.

“Where are you headed?”

“Cragg’s Head.”

“That’s the opposite direction from where you’re going.”

“Well…” She glanced at him from under her lashes. “I was taking the scenic route.”

“Actually, you’re on the road to Dublin.”

“The scenic and very circuitous route,” she amended.

They looked at each other until neither one of them could keep a straight face. It occurred to her that she could stand there indefinitely trading lines back and forth with him. And he seemed in no hurry to leave, either.

“If you think you’re going to get me to admit I’m lost,” she finally said, “give up.”

“Ah, I didn’t think for a moment you were lost.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward her a little. “But I’ll tell you a secret. Cragg’s Head is that way.” He gestured with his arm. “Straight ahead. You can’t miss it.”

“I think I’ve heard that before.” She bent to pick up her bike and felt him watching her. Either she could prolong the exchange, shift it up to the next gear or do the safe thing and ride off. In a split-second decision, she chose the latter. He’d told her something she already knew. He was bad news. His sort always was. That attractive got-the-world-by-a-string type. They were like strawberries. When you were allergic to them, it didn’t matter how tempting they looked, heaped into pies, dolled up with shiny red glaze and whipped cream. The fact was they screwed up your system and caused endless misery.

They were something to be avoided.

“Can I at least give you a lift?”

“No, thanks.” She climbed on the bike. “I can make it on my own steam. I’ll try and remember to stay on the right side.”

“Just remember, the right side is on the left.”

“Got it.” With a smile and a glance over her shoulder, Kate started off down the road, praying the wheel wouldn’t fall off while he was still watching her. The final image of him burned in her brain. Sunlight and shadows dappling his head and shoulders. The quizzical smile. For a moment, she almost turned around and rode back. Maybe she’d been too flip. After all, he had seemed genuinely concerned.

She kept riding. No, better this way. Better not even knowing his name. What was the point anyway? A little more than a week and she’d be back in the States.

CHAPTER FOUR

ON HER WAY back to the Pot o’ Gold, Kate passed the redbrick building that housed the tourist bureau where Annie worked part-time. Through the window, she could see Annie working at her desk. She rapped on the window and Annie motioned for her to come in.

“You couldn’t have stopped by at a better moment,” Annie said. “First off, if you wouldn’t mind making sure Rory gets the sandwiches I made for him, I’d be grateful. He’s mad for cold chicken and I had some left from last Sunday’s lunch.”

“Sure, no problem,” Kate said. “Do you want me to take them down to the station?”

“If he doesn’t drop by first.” Annie held up a poster for her to see. “And now I’d like your opinion on this. Tell me what you think.”

“The Cragg’s Head Fleadh,” Kate read aloud, mentally shoving aside thoughts of her encounter with the man on the cliff. “A festival of fiddles, flutes and concertinas. It looks great.”

“Flah,” Annie corrected. “Rhymes with hah,” she said with a smile. “That’s all right, though, you’re not the first to say it wrong. I’ve so much to do I can hardly see straight and now, with this worry over Elizabeth, it’s all I can do to keep my mind on anything.”

“You still haven’t heard from her?” Kate asked.

“I haven’t directly, but that was a friend of hers on the phone just now. Swears she saw Elizabeth at a coffee bar this morning. Would have spoken to her, she says, but she ran off. Still, it’s good to have even a wee bit of news.”

“I’m sure it must be.” Kate glanced again at the poster. “So you’re in charge of putting this whole thing together?”

“I am. Well, we’ve a committee, of course, but in the time it takes for them to decide on anything, I can already have it done.” She retrieved a slim blue book from under a pile of papers on her desk and handed it to Kate. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother, though. Last year, Cragg’s Head wasn’t even in here. This year they put a little note that said it wasn’t worth a detour.”

Kate riffled through the pages and smiled up at her.

“Well, we’re never going to have the crowds flocking here,” Annie said, returning the smile. “But it’s home. I’d never leave. My sister left for America, a few years back. Boston. Pat and I went over there for a holiday and they took us to an Irish bar of all places.” She shook her head. “All of them singing ‘Danny Boy’ and shedding tears for dear old Ireland as though they’d go back in a minute, if they could. And few of them ever would.”

“You’ve lived in Cragg’s Head for a long time?”

“My whole life.” Annie gestured to the stack of wooden desks in the corner. “Until this year, this room used to be a classroom. Caitlin sat at one of those desks in this room and so did I…” She smiled. “Too many years back to remember. My father and grandfather tilled those fields out there. We’ve been here for as long as anyone can remember. Pat’s family too.”

“It must be nice to have that sense of continuity,” Kate said, recalling her own childhood. “My dad was always getting transferred. By the time I was nine, I’d been enrolled in a dozen different schools.”

“Ah God.” Annie gave Kate a horrified look. “What kind of a start in life is that? Your mother didn’t mind it then?”

“Well, they finally got divorced, so she probably did. But she tended to go along with whatever my father wanted and he was always looking for something he never seemed to find.” With her finger, she pushed scattered paper clips into a pile, lost for a moment in her thoughts. “We did okay, I guess. My brother and I. We both got decent grades. We made friends.” She grinned at Annie. “Of course they never lasted long, but then we made new friends.”

Annie clicked her tongue. “Sure, it would be like pulling up the daffodil bulbs every morning to see if they’re growing,” she said. “If you dug me up and put me somewhere else, I’d not be the same person.”

“In California, where I live,” Kate said, “almost everyone is from somewhere else. People talk about putting down roots and that sort of thing, but it’s more like we’re seeds blown on the wind. You could land anywhere and, just as easily, pull up and go somewhere else.”

Annie shook her head as though the thought were too outlandish to comprehend.

“That’s why you’re not married,” she finally said. “You’ve no idea who you are or where you belong. Come to think of it, that’s probably Hughie Fitzpatrick’s problem. Him growing up on the Maguire estate as he did. Like planting a potato in among the roses and expecting it to grow petals. Sure, who wouldn’t be confused?”

SHE WASN’T JUST CONFUSED, Kate thought later that morning as she sat at a small desk in Annie’s front parlor, she was besotted. For the last hour she’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to focus on the notes from an interview she’d just completed with an old school friend of Moruadh’s, but her brain was refusing to cooperate. All it wanted to do was think about the gray-eyed man. The man on the cliff.

Why had she turned down his offer of a ride home? Maybe he would have asked her out. Dinner perhaps. A little pub with mullioned windows and a fireplace. The stories of their lives exchanged over a couple of Guinnesses.

She shook her head to clear the images. You’re in Ireland to work. Not for a fling. She drank some coffee from a cup patterned with pink cabbage roses, picked a raisin out of a piece of soda bread, wrote three headings on her yellow pad: Accidental death. Suicide. Murder.

The school friend had said that Moruadh had occasionally suffered with bouts of depression. Spells, she’d called them. Kate recalled her mother’s incapacitating depression after the divorce. Days when she never left the bed.

But there were degrees of depression. From the friend’s description, Moruadh’s appeared to have been of the mild blues variety. Kate got up and wandered over to the window. Beyond Annie’s neatly planted front garden, she saw the dark turrets of Buncarroch Castle looming in the gray air. Something almost sinister about it. If Moruadh spent much time there, no wonder she’d had fits of depression.

Kate made more notes, drank some more coffee. Found her thoughts drifting back to the gray-eyed man. An Irish accent, but overlaid with something else. An expensive education maybe, or years abroad. She tried to re-create it. What had he said? ‘Just remember, the right side is on the left.’ Even now, she could feel this little tug in her stomach as she pictured him.

Restless, she got up from the table and wandered upstairs to her room. Maybe a little fling might have been fun. Since they didn’t exactly live within commuting distance, she wouldn’t be screening him as a husband candidate. Obviously nothing could come of it. Why not enjoy herself while she was here?

At the dresser, she stared at her reflection. Long red hair she’d worn the same way since she was about fourteen. Hanging loose down her back or tied up in a ponytail. Freckles she didn’t try to cover because she hated the feel of makeup on her skin. She picked up a brush and ran it through her hair. Not that there was much point in thinking about flings, she’d probably never see him again. Although, as Annie said, Cragg’s Head was a small place. She’d seen him twice already. Maybe she should take another walk.

Outside, a car door slammed, and she ran to the window. With a pang of disappointment, she saw that the car at the curb was a light green Gardai car, not a dark green Land Rover.

Get over it, she told herself as she watched Rory McBride get out. The guy doesn’t even know where you’re staying. She heard the front door open and close, then Rory’s voice calling her name.

Thinking of the strange exchange with him the night before, she hesitated. She was alone in the house. Annie and Patrick wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours, and Caitlin was at school. Paranoia, she decided. It was broad daylight and his car was parked outside in clear view. And this was Ireland, not Santa Monica.

She closed the bedroom door behind her. He stood at the foot of the stairs, backlit by the amber light streaming from the fan-shaped window above the front door. He wore a navy overcoat over his blue uniform.

“Hi.” She smiled at him from the top of the stairs. “You caught me here between interviews. I was just going over my notes. What’s up?”

“I saw your car outside.” He pulled off his cap, shook raindrops onto the rug. “It’s a lovely country, Ireland, they just need to put a roof over it.”

“Well, at least the rain’s let up a bit,” she provided. No Irish exchange, she was learning, could start without a comment on the weather. “Maybe it will clear up tomorrow.”

“Let’s hope so.” Holding his hat in both hands, Rory smiled hesitantly, like a suitor come to call. “I wondered…could I have a word with you? If you’ve a minute, that is.”

“Sure.” She ran down the stairs and led him into the sitting room where her notes were still spread out over the desk. “Want some coffee?” She gestured at the pot. “I can make some fresh.”

“I don’t. Thank you, though.” He unbuttoned his coat and sat down at the table. “You might have wondered a bit about last night. My telling you I wasn’t up there on the cliffs, I mean.”

Kate, glad that at least one of the mysteries was cleared up, decided that no response was necessary.

“The thing is, I love Caitlin.” He stuck his finger into the neck of his blue uniform shirt. “Sure, we’re getting married in June, and Annie, well, she’s like my own mother. But, see, yesterday I went into Galway to meet Elizabeth, the girl who’s staying with Annie.” Eyes downcast, he appeared to be composing his thoughts. “We’d just come back when you saw me in my car up on the cliffs but, uh, we had a few words and she left.”

“And you didn’t want Caitlin and Annie to know?” Kate watched his face. “That’s why you said it wasn’t you I saw up there?”

“Right.” Faint relief flickered across his face. “Honestly, there’s nothing at all between me and Elizabeth, but Caitlin…well, she’s a bit green-eyed, if you know what I mean.”

“Does she have reason to be?”

“She doesn’t, no. I sowed my wild oats some time ago.” He smiled at her, his eyes exactly the same blue as his shirt. Easy to understand why Caitlin would find him attractive, although she suspected that Caitlin’s jealousy wasn’t unfounded.

“So you’ve no idea where Elizabeth is?”

“I have not.” His look suggested the question was stupid. “Would I be letting Annie worry if I knew where Elizabeth was?”

“Well, I’d hope not,” she retorted and then something occurred to her. “By the way, did you check out whatever it was I told you I saw on the cliffs?”

“I did. Up and down the footpath. There were a few people about. Teenagers. Probably a couple of them larking about was what you saw.”

“Probably.” She folded her arms across her chest. He clearly wanted her assurance that she wouldn’t blow his cover, but something about the whole thing made her uncomfortable. “I don’t know your relationship with Elizabeth, but…” She put her hand up to stop his protest. “I’m not going to lie to Annie or Caitlin.”

“I’m not asking you to lie. You don’t have to say anything. They think I was seeing into a car crash, and that’s what I want them to think. Besides, Elizabeth’ll show up tonight and the whole thing will blow over.”

She met his eyes for a moment. He reminded her a bit of her younger brother. Before Ned had married and settled down, he’d come to her to bail him out of various scrapes he’d gotten into. He’d go into some torturous explanation of what had happened and then look at her, anxiety all over his face, as he waited for her reaction. Just the way Rory McBride was looking at her now.

“Listen, Rory. I’m going to tell you something about myself. I can’t stand liars. And I can’t stand cheating men. And, trust me, I’ve had plenty of experience with both.” Kate saw the flicker of interest in his eyes as though what she’d said had cast her in a slightly different light. “Here’s the deal. I won’t bring it up, but if anyone should ask me whether I saw you on the cliffs last night, I won’t lie, either. Okay?”

“Right.” He gave her a little smile. “Thanks, Kate.”

“And I better not find out that you were cheating on Caitlin.”

“I told you, I love her.”

“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. “I’m not much of a believer in that sort of thing.”

He grinned, relief now clear on his face. “Your work’s going well, is it?”

“Not bad. I did a phone interview this morning and I’ve got another one later today. Niall Maguire wasn’t in when I stopped at the castle. You wouldn’t happen to know if he’s in town?”

“He is. I saw him myself not an hour ago. You’ll have the best chance of meeting him if you go directly up there.” He frowned down at the table, started to speak, then stopped. A moment passed. “You’ll want to be careful, Kate,” he finally said. “With Maguire, that is.”

“What d’you mean?”

“It’s like I was saying last night, he’s a bit—” He stopped as though a thought had occurred to him and shrugged. “Sure, you probably think I’m a fine one to talk, after what I’ve told you, but Maguire…well, he has an eye for the women. He’s a fancy photographer of some sort. Does those big glossy picture books. There’s always one woman or another up there visiting him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She bit back a grin. Despite her suspicions about Rory McBride, he looked so young and earnest in his blue uniform. Advising her, a woman at least ten years his senior, to be careful. “If he tries to put any moves on me, I’ll sock him one.”

“I’m serious, Kate.” He frowned. “As a Garda, I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’ve never doubted that Maguire had a part in his wife’s death.”

This was the second time Rory had mentioned his suspicions. Kate reached for the coffeepot. “This stuff is cold. Come and talk to me while I make some more.”

Rory followed her into the kitchen and stood with his back to the wall, watching her as she ran water. “Maguire’s got money,” he said after a moment. “The rules are different for him. People will turn a blind eye and that includes those high up in the Gardai, although you never heard me say that.”

Kate turned from the sink to look at him.

“Under the same circumstances, anyone but Maguire would have been locked up long ago,” he said.

She measured coffee into the pot and put it on the stove. The view from the kitchen window offered a panorama of green fields and gray ocean and, off in the distance, another, but equally gloomy, perspective of Buncarroch Castle. It seemed to dominate the small white cottages dotted all around. If she lived in one of those cottages, she’d probably dislike Niall Maguire. She looked back at Rory.

“So what do you think his motive would have been?”

“Well—” he scratched the back of his head “—myself, I think Moruadh just got to be a bit too much for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Anyone you speak to will tell you how everyone liked Moruadh. Small wonder, she was a great girl. I liked her myself.” He stared for a moment at the kitchen wall. “The thing is, she had a…well, a reckless way about her that sometimes made you wonder whether she was right in the head.”

“In what way?” She sat down at the table again. “Can you give me an example?”

“I can.” He looked down at the floor as if in search of a dog to pet, and glanced quickly up at her. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”

Kate met his eyes for a moment.

“I’m serious. If it got out that I told you this, it’d be my job. I’m only telling you because we’ve a bit of an understanding. You help me, I do the same for you.” He watched her face. “Do you want to know?”

“Go ahead.”

“A few months before she died, we got a call late one night about a bit of a disturbance at Reilly’s flower shop. I was sent down to look into it and when I got there I couldn’t believe my eyes. A window had been smashed, and Moruadh was inside, blood all over the place.” He glanced over at the door as though scared someone might come in. “Stretched out on the floor, covered in flowers.” His voice had dropped to a whisper. “Not a stitch of clothing on her.”

Kate felt her breath catch.

“Still as a statue, she was.” Rory reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Eyes closed. I thought at first she was dead. Christ, my heart was going like a drum. Then all of a sudden, she just opens her eyes and smiles at me as though it was the most natural thing in the world for her to be there. ‘Oh, hello,’ she says. ‘I’m just choosing some flowers for my coffin.’”

“My God…” Kate shook her head. “That’s incredible.”

“It’s written up in a report,” Rory said, “but you’ll never get anyone to show it to you. It was all hushed up quicker than a wink. That very night I was called into the superintendent’s office, told that I hadn’t seen a thing and if so much as a word got out, I’d find myself back in Donegal and off the force. If anyone should ask about the window, it had been broken by tinkers.”

“And it was never mentioned?”

“It never happened.” He held her gaze. “The next time I saw Moruadh she was giving a recital at the library. Right as rain, she seemed. Smiling and friendly when she saw me. The funny thing is, after a bit I began to wonder myself whether I’d just dreamed the whole thing.”

“But Maguire must have known about the incident, right?”

“He knew, all right. Sure, it was him she was asking for the night it happened. He was brought to the shop in the superintendent’s car. No doubt he paid for the damage himself.”

“And you think, what? That this sort of thing happened enough that he got tired of covering for her so he killed her?” She frowned. “It seems kind of farfetched. I mean why wouldn’t he just get psychological help for her?”

“I’m not the one you should be asking that question.” Rory looked down at the pack of cigarettes in his hands. “To my mind, Maguire’s odd himself. In fact, before I saw this with my own eyes, I’d have said she was the normal one and it was him who was off in the head.”

Kate nodded. Cold and aloof according to almost everyone she’d spoken to. Easy enough to see how such traits wouldn’t make him popular, but it didn’t exactly convince her that he was capable of murder.

“No slight on the article you’re writing,” he said, “but I’d be surprised if you turn up anything that hasn’t already been gone over. To my way of thinking, her death is a closed book. Sure, if they all want to believe it was an accident, better to just let them.” He stood and buttoned his coat. “And about the other matter…”

“I’ve already forgotten it.”

“Thanks, Kate.” He smiled at her. “And be careful when you go up to Maguire’s, all right? If you’re not back at Annie’s by supper, I’ll have a car sent up to the castle.” He’d already taken off down the road when Kate remembered the sandwiches Annie had made for him. It took her only a minute to decide to take them down to the station. Maybe she’d run into the gray-eyed man again. A third chance encounter would be an unlikely coincidence in Santa Monica, here in Cragg’s Head anything was possible.

“RUFUS. Come on, boy.” Niall whistled for the dog. After a moment it came bounding back, stick in its mouth. It panted, eyes expectant, waiting for him to throw.

“You think I’ve nothing more to do, don’t you?” As he ran his hands through the long hair on the dog’s neck, Niall eyed the bank of purple clouds banked over the low hills, mentally composing a shot. A silver shaft of light pierced the clouds, shimmered on a ruined tower. The light was just right, but if he went back for his equipment, by the time he’d got everything set up, it would have faded.

The dog barked at him.

“Sorry. I forgot. You’ve got your priorities, too, haven’t you?” He flung the stick and grinned as the dog chased after it. An Irish wolfhound, rescued from a German couple who had rented one of his cottages a couple of years back, intending to make Ireland their home. After a taste of one Irish winter, they’d packed their bags and left. Rufus had become his by default.

Chin cupped in his hand, Niall studied the bruised-looking clouds again, then decided against going back for the camera. The second time that day, he thought as he started across the fields, that he’d had to forgo a bit of inspiration. The first time had been the American girl. He had a vivid mental picture of her on the grass by her fallen bike. Glaring up at him. Strands of red hair had escaped her black wool cap, and he’d fought an impulse to pull the bloody thing off her head and watch her hair tumble free.

She had green eyes. Not flecked with hazel, as he often saw, just pure green. And freckles on her forehead and throat. Seven of them over the bridge of her nose. He’d counted them. They probably multiplied in the summer. He thought of the summer he’d spent in America a few years back. California. It had been very hot, he remembered. But so beautiful you forgot about the heat until you got burned.

He walked out to the edge of the cliff, peered through the clumps of purple-red valerian. About halfway down, a rocky outcrop formed a shelf that ran for several miles and eventually down to the beach below. As a boy, he would ride his bike along the narrow ledge, thrilled at the danger of riding high above the ocean. He walked on for a mile or so, the wind tugging at his coat, his thoughts drifting.

When the talk started after Moruadh’s death, he had wanted only anonymity. An escape from the hostile stares and murmurs that seemed to follow him everywhere he went. He’d considered America. New York, perhaps. Los Angeles. Any big city.

And then one day as he walked out across the fields, he had seen, as though for the first time, the vast wideness of the sky, the heather-colored landscape. He had felt the wind on his face, tasted on it the faint tang of salt from the Atlantic. And, in that moment, he had known he could never leave Ireland. He might be estranged from those around him, estranged from himself if it came to that, but here was where he belonged. Nothing would drive him away.

The dog bounded back across the grass and Niall threw the stick again. He’d stood at the car door and watched the American girl ride off, red hair streaming behind her. Stood there until she disappeared from view. Unable to remember what it was he’d been about to do before he met her. For some reason, he’d wandered back to the grassy patch where she’d fallen. Sometimes you did things without really knowing why and this was one of those times, he supposed.

As he’d bent to take a closer look at the tracks her bicycle tires had left, his hand brushed across something hard and flat beneath the grass. When he pulled the blades aside, he’d found a lichen-covered stone. Next to that stone, there’d been another, and another. A half-dozen of them in all, formed in a circle.

A cromlech. They were all over Ireland, circles of stones, half buried in the earth. Left there by farmers too superstitious to move them. They were also known by another name, the thought of which made him smile. Fairy rings they were called. She had fallen into a fairy ring.

Moruadh, who had claimed that rooks nesting in the turrets of the castle spoke to her, would have called it a sign.

Five minutes later, he pushed open the door to the tourist office. Annie Ryan and Brigid Riley were eating sandwiches as they stuffed envelopes. Both of them gave him looks that suggested he was about as welcome as rain at a picnic.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Maguire?” Annie asked.

“I have those pictures you’d asked me to develop for the festival.” Annie was one of the organizers of Cragg’s Head’s yearly music festival, and he’d offered to photograph some of the musicians for advertisements she was running in the local paper. He glanced down at the envelope in his hand. “So I thought I’d drop them off.”

“Ah, good.” Annie put her sandwich down and reached for the envelope. Brigid had started eating again, but she didn’t take her eyes off him.

“I was also wondering about Elizabeth.” He looked at Annie. “When I spoke to you last night, she hadn’t come home.”

“She still hasn’t.”

“And you’ve no idea where she might be?”

“None at all.” Annie’s gaze was steady on his face. “The Gardai are keeping an eye out for her.”

He nodded. “Last weekend when she came up to my place,” he said after a moment, “she said something about seeing some friends up in Donegal. Maybe—”

“I didn’t know she was up at your place, Mr. Maguire,” Annie interrupted. A chair creaked as Brigid shifted her weight. “Elizabeth said nothing to me about being there.”

As he had the night before, Niall heard the accusatory tone in Annie’s voice. “What I was suggesting, Mrs. Ryan,” he said, “was that perhaps she was staying with friends up there. It might be something you’d want to look into.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Well, I hope you hear something soon.” He ran his hand across the back of his neck, glanced down at the posters on her desk. Finally, he looked up at her. “And are you keeping busy these days, Mrs. Ryan? At the bed-and-breakfast, I mean?”

“It’s a bit early in the year for the tourists. I thought there might be a few for the festival, but there’s no one so far.” Annie folded up the waxed paper from the sandwiches, then brushed some bread crumbs into her hand. “I’ve just one guest right now,” she said with a glance at him. “After she leaves, there’s no one until late June.”