Page 10

TEN

The door to the incident room Kieran and his team had set up was unlocked. He must have forgotten to do it in his rush to reach Gordon and me. And yes, if I’d asked, he probably would have allowed me to take a look at his files. He already had earlier in the day, but I only had access to what he wanted me to see.

In his mind, he had to treat us all, including his gran, as suspects. He very much liked going by the book. He was a great detective and didn’t need my help, but that had never stopped me from doing a bit of snooping.

“You stay by the door. If you hear anyone coming, let me know.”

She rolled her eyes. “I hate being lookout. It’s nerve-racking.”

“Well, you can go to bed if you want. There’s no sense in both of us getting in trouble if he catches us.”

“No. I’ll do it.” She glanced at her fitness watch. “First of all, I’m not leaving you alone for the killer to find you. Don’t you think they might have the same idea since the police are busy elsewhere?”

I actually had not thought about that.

“And second, I’m curious as well. But you have exactly ten minutes, no more. Okay?”

I nodded. She’d had a rough year, and I didn’t like causing her stress. But something about this case kept nagging at me. I felt like I’d seen something important but hadn’t quite put the pieces of the puzzle together yet. My brain was obsessive that way. I had to keep trying until I had a clear picture in my head.

My first stop was Kieran’s computer. But it was password protected, and though I had ways of breaking into it that I’d learned from real-life hackers for a book, I didn’t have that kind of time. It wasn’t like the movies where that sort of thing happened in seconds.

Well, that, and I really wasn’t that great at it.

He must have had his black notebook, which he kept everything in, with him because it wasn’t anywhere on the long table. It was a shame I couldn’t look through it. Sometimes, his detective brain saw things mine didn’t.

I searched for more information about the two victims among the papers on the desk, but couldn’t find anything. Maybe all of that was at the station, or he had it on his computer.

Bummer. I really wanted to know who the nun was. There had been some kind of bad blood between her and the priest. Hence the arguments. I thought they might have been rivals for whatever it was they’d been trying to find.

But since she’d been murdered as well, and Gordon had been attacked, there was a third party. That person had no qualms about violence, which I had to admit was scary.

There was a box marked Guests. Each of the guests, including Lizzie and me, had a file in there. I was curious about what he had in there about us, but I thought it best to take a look at the others. I was certain my sister and I had not committed murder.

I might think about it for many hours a day when I was writing, but there was no way I could ever cross that threshold to commit the actual act. Well, unless someone hurt Lizzie or Mr. Poe. Then all bets were off. If someone attacked my sister, or our dog, they would be in a world of hurt.

The first file I glanced at was for the accountant Maximillian Herbert. According to the reports he’d been involved in some illegal property schemes in the past, when he was younger.

After learning bookkeeping skills while he was in prison, he’d gone on to become an accountant. How did that even happen? It seemed like there should have been some kind of licensing problem for an ex-felon. Not that I didn’t believe in second chances. It just seemed like there would have been someone along the way that said, no, money handling isn’t for you.

I wondered if the O’Sullivans were aware their accountant had a record. I certainly would not have trusted my money to the man. One had to be careful in this world when it came to life savings. The last thing the O’Sullivans needed was to fall victim to some scheme to steal their money. They were struggling as it was.

I wasn’t certain how to broach the subject with them, but I would. They were good people and deserved to know.

Kieran will kill me .

But I would find a way to work it into a conversation.

There was another file for the Airendales, the American couple. From the notes, it looked as if they’d come to check out Gordon O’Sullivan’s business with the intent of possibly importing their Irish whiskey to the States. They owned a liquor distribution company.

Kieran had a note he was waiting to hear back from American law enforcement and Interpol about the couple.

Does he suspect them of something ?

As I went through the papers, I found no answers, only more questions.

He had very little about Fiona the birder. He’d printed out the photo from her camera. Even though it had been blown up, it was impossible to see the figure as more than a shadow. It looked like a man, though, it could possibly have been a tall woman in pants.

There wasn’t much more about Fiona in the files. She was tall and strong enough to stab the priest, but I just couldn’t see her as the murderer. She seemed way more interested in birds than humans. I wasn’t even certain she was aware of the other people here. She didn’t seem to interact with anyone except my sister, me and the O’Sullivans. She was shy. Not that I hadn’t been duped by a woman who murdered before.

We were just as capable as men when it came to committing heinous crimes. But they were usually crimes of passion. That, and few women would be able to strangle someone to death. It took much more strength, and skill, than most people realized.

What we lacked with all of the suspects was motive.

That was except for Maximillian. If he had been involved in a financial scheme with the priest and nun, it would follow that he might knock them off to keep them quiet. Even I had to admit that was a bit of a reach, but he was the only one I’d seen so far who had a record. Did the priest and nun find out about the mishandling of money? Were they possibly blackmailing him? It was as good a theory as any I’d come up with and answered the third-party question.

He went to the top of my list. He had shifty eyes, and more importantly, a crime-filled past. Okay, it had been only one illegal scheme, but that was enough.

At that point I was interrupted. “Your ten minutes are up. Besides, I think I heard someone down the hall,” my sister whispered, coming into the room.

After taking quick pictures of the files with my phone, I put the lid back on the box and we scooted out of the incident room.

We’d just turned the corner into the main hall when we heard Kieran speaking. It sounded like he was on his phone. How did he have a signal when the rest of us didn’t? Then I saw, he was speaking on a SAT phone that the military used.

“Run a check on the staff. Yes, everyone.”

I hadn’t seen any files on the staff in the box I’d looked through. He must have had those in a different one. Could the killer be someone who worked here? But why strike now? And why kill the priest and nun? Even though I was sure they weren’t clergy, I would always call them that in my head.

While I’m normally good with directions, my mind was busy running through facts on our way to the room. We took a couple of wrong turns but eventually found the way.

“I’m exhausted,” Lizzie said.

Mr. Poe yawned so big he almost fell over. It was way past his bedtime. He would sometimes try to drag Lizzie by her pajama legs upstairs if she stayed up late watching television. He was a dog with a schedule.

“Me too,” I said honestly. “We’ve had a lot going on the last twenty-four hours.”

“I’d feel safer if Kieran would allow us to go home, but I also want to find out what happened. And I know you’ll refuse even if he did let us head back to Shamrock Cove.”

“If he lets us leave, he must allow the others to go too. He’s smart trying to keep everyone contained, even though it may feel a bit scary for us.”

“A bit?”

She shivered.

“Okay, a lot scary. But it is smart. I need a shower. Why don’t you go on to bed?”

As I stood under the hot water, my mind whirled with facts like a bingo cage with too many numbers. Except for our lovely neighbors, I considered everyone in the castle a suspect.

But I’d already made a wrong turn. Since most of the staff had been with the O’Sullivans for years, they hadn’t been on my radar. That was a rookie mistake. But there was no way I could interview all of them without looking highly suspicious.

Still, from experience, I knew people here in Ireland liked a bit of gossip. Lolly had once said it came from their rich heritage of storytelling. I believed her. All of our neighbors were great storytellers.

In Shamrock Cove, everyone knew your business, sometimes before you did. It was one of the town’s many quirks.

Someone in this castle had seen something. Maybe they didn’t even understand what they’d seen at the time, but we would figure it out. I had a plan for tomorrow. One that involved a few of my closest friends.

I only hoped they didn’t mind being a part of my Scooby-Doo gang once again.

A hand shook my shoulder, and I sat straight up in bed gasping.

“It’s me,” Lizzie whispered.

She was lucky she’d spoken, as I’d already been reaching out to twist her wrist painfully in a Krav Maga move I’d learned years ago.

“You scared me,” I said.

“I heard a noise,” she said, still speaking under her breath. “Well, Mr. Poe did, and woke me up. But then I heard it.”

I blinked in the darkness and then reached for the lamp. “What time is it?”

“Three a.m.,” she said. She waved a hand at me. “Listen.”

There was nothing for more than a minute and then there was a strange thudding sound in the wall behind our headboards.

“That,” she whispered.

Mr. Poe growled.

I hadn’t minded her waking me up. I’d been dreaming a killer was chasing me through the halls of the castle. When I was working on one of my mysteries, that was the kind of dream, or rather nightmare, that was commonplace.

“The place is hundreds of years old, and there is no telling when the plumbing was last replaced. That’s all it is.”

She shook her head. “No. There’s a difference. Plumbing doesn’t sound like footsteps. And we definitely heard that.”

I was about to ask if she was certain she hadn’t been dreaming, when there was a shuffling sound in the wall.

She was quiet, and we sat there for another few minutes. There were more footsteps and it sounded like they were just on the other side of the headboard. I jumped out of bed and unlocked the bedroom door. The hallway was lit with sconces but there was no one out there. Besides, it was the interior wall where we’d heard the footsteps.

Were there secret passages in the castle? It wouldn’t have been the first time a family had done that. Throughout history, nobles had to have escape routes built in for when times went south. At least, that was what I’d read. They’d have secret rooms, and access to places where the enemy couldn’t find them.

We sat there for another half-hour but didn’t hear anything else.

I moved around the room, knocking on walls, trying to find a secret doorway, but to no avail.

Tiredness swept through me, and I yawned. “We’ll look again in the daylight,” I said. “And if the O’Sullivans aren’t around for us to ask questions, we’ll see what we can find on the history of the architecture of the place.”

Lizzie frowned.

“What is it?”

“Isn’t that what the priest was researching before he died? The books on the desk were all on architecture.”

Darn. I’d forgotten about that.

“Right, we’ll keep this between us. We’ll do a bit of exploring tomorrow. And I’ll ask Kieran’s permission to look at the books on the desk where the priest was killed.”

She shivered again. “I really want to figure out who’s doing this and go home.”

I didn’t blame her. This case just kept getting creepier.