The Angel Read online

  Praise for the novels of

  CARLA NEGGERS

  “No one does romantic suspense better!”

  —Janet Evanovich

  “A believable, gripping story that will keep armchair sleuths guessing… Here is intelligent writing

  that remains highly entertaining.”

  — Publishers Weekly on Betrayals

  “Neggers has created yet another well-matched pair of characters and given them a crackerjack mystery to solve—

  complete with a seriously creepy villain.”

  — Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Abandon

  “[Neggers’s] skill at creating colorful characters and deliciously twisted story lines makes this an addictive read.”

  — Publishers Weekly on Stonebrook Cottage

  “When it comes to romance, adventure and suspense, nobody delivers like Carla Neggers.”

  —Jayne Ann Krentz

  “A keen ear for dialogue and a sure hand with multidimensional characterizations are Neggers’s greatest gifts as a storyteller…. By turns creepy and amusing, the story engages on several levels.”

  — Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Breakwater

  “Neggers keeps the reader guessing ‘whodunit’

  to the end of her intriguing novel.”

  — Publishers Weekly on The Widow

  “Suspense, romance and the rocky Maine coast—what more could a reader ask? The Harbor has it all. Carla Neggers writes a story so vivid you can smell the salt air and feel the mist on your skin.”

  —Tess Gerritsen

  Also by

  BETRAYALS

  COLD PURSUIT

  TEMPTING FATE

  ABANDON

  CUT AND RUN

  THE WIDOW

  BREAKWATER

  DARK SKY

  THE RAPIDS

  NIGHT’S LANDING

  COLD RIDGE

  THE HARBOR

  STONEBROOK COTTAGE

  THE CABIN

  THE CARRIAGE HOUSE

  THE WATERFALL

  ON FIRE

  KISS THE MOON

  CLAIM THE CROWN

  Available in July 2009

  THE MIST

  THE ANGEL

  ®

  To Kate and Conor

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Brendan Gunning for all the wonderful Irish and Irish-American stories, and to Myles Heffernan, Paul Hudson, Jamie Carr and Christine Wenger for sharing your knowledge and expertise. To Sarah Gallick for the help with Irish saints and for sending me early excerpts from The Big Book of Women Saints. To my daughter, Kate Jewell, and my son-in-law, Conor Hansen, for getting us all to southwest Ireland. Conor, I’ll never forget standing in the stone house where your great-grandfather was born, or meeting your cousins on the Beara Peninsula.

  To Don Lucey for the insight into Irish music and all the great recommendations.

  To my agent, Margaret Ruley, and to my editor, Margaret Marbury, for the unwavering patience and support, and to the rest of the fabulous team in New York and Toronto—Donna Hayes, Craig Swinwood, Loriana Sacilotto, Dianne Moggy, Katherine Orr, Marleah Stout, Heather Foy, Michelle Renaud, Stacy Widdrington, Margie Miller, Adam Wilson and everyone who makes MIRA Books such an incredible pleasure to work with. And to Joe Jewell, my husband, for all the great times in Boston,

  “our” city, and to Zack Jewell, my son…yes, another trip to Ireland is in the works. Can’t wait!

  Carla Neggers

  P.O. Box 826

  Quechee, VT 05059

  www.carlaneggers.com

 
  South Boston, Massachusetts

  2:00 p.m., EDT

  July 12, Thirty Years Ago

  A scrap of yellow crime scene tape bobbed in the rising tide of Boston Harbor where the brutalized body of nineteen-year-old Deirdre McCarthy had washed ashore. Bob O’Reilly couldn’t take his eyes off it. Neither could Patsy McCarthy, Deirdre’s mother, who stood next to him in the hot summer sun. Coming out here was her idea. Bob didn’t want to, but he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t let her go alone.

  “Deirdre was an angel.”

  “She was, Mrs. McCarthy. Deirdre was the best.”

  Ninety degrees outside, and Patsy shivered in her pastel blue polyester sweater. She’d lost weight in the three weeks since Deirdre hadn’t come home after her shift as a nurse’s aide. At first the police had believed she was just another South Boston girl who’d gone wrong. Patsy kept at them. Not Deirdre.

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  She disappeared on the night of the summer solstice. The longest day of the year.

  Appropriate, somehow, Bob thought.

  Patsy’s eyes, as clear and as blue as the afternoon sky, lifted to the horizon, as if she were trying to see the island of her birth, as if Ireland could bring her the comfort and strength she needed to get through her ordeal. She’d left the southwest Irish coast forty years ago at the age of nine and hadn’t been back since. She loved to tell stories about her Irish childhood, how she was born in a one-room cottage with no plumbing, no central heat—not even an outhouse—and how she’d learned to bake her famous brown bread on an open fire.

  Bob wondered how she’d tell this story. The story of her daughter’s kidnapping, rape, torture and murder. The police hadn’t released details, but Bob, the son of a Boston cop, had heard rumors of unspeakable acts of violence and depravity. He was twenty and planned on becoming a detective, and one day he would have to wade through such details himself. He hoped the victim would never be someone he knew. He and Deirdre had learned to roller-skate together, had given each other their first kiss, just to see what it was like.

  “I heard the cry of a banshee all last night,” Patsy said quietly. “I can’t say I do or don’t believe in fairies, but I heard what I heard. I knew we’d find Deirdre this morning.”

  The fine hairs stood on the back of Bob’s neck. A retired firefighter walking his golden retriever at sunrise had come upon Deirdre’s body. The police had come and gone, working with a grim efficiency, given Boston’s skyrocket­

  ing homicide rate. Now they had another killer to hunt. With the city behind them and the boats out on the water and planes taking off from Logan Airport, Bob still could

  THE ANGEL

  11 hear the lapping of the tide on the sand. He’d never felt so damn helpless and alone.

  “Deirdre Ita McCarthy.” Patsy crossed her arms on her chest as if she were cold. “It’s the name of an Irish saint, you know. Saint Ita was born Deirdre and took the name Ita when she made her vows. Ita means ‘thirsting for divine love.’”

  Patsy was deeply religious, but Bob had stopped attend­

  ing mass regularly when he was sixteen and his mother said it was up to him to go or not go. He knew he’d go back to church for Deirdre’s funeral.

  “I’ve never been good at keeping track of the saints.” He tried to smile. “Even the Irish ones.”

  “Saint Patrick, Saint Brigid and Saint Ita are early Celtic saints. Saint Ita had the gift of prophecy. Angels visited her throughout her life. Do you believe in angels, Bob?”

  “I’ve never thought about it.”

  “I do,” she whispered. “I believe in angels.”

  It wouldn’t strike Patsy as particularly contradictory to say in one breath she’d heard a banshee—a solitary fairy—

  and in another that she believed in angels. If her beliefs brought her comfort, Bob didn’t care. He didn’t know what to tell her about banshees or angels or anything else. Her husband had died of a heart attack four years ago. Now this.

  “The police will find who took Deirdre from us.”

  “No. They won’t. They can’t.” Patsy shifted her gaze back to the crime scene tape floating in
the water. “The police are only human after all.”

  “They won’t rest until they catch whoever did this.”

  “It was the devil who took Deirdre. It wasn’t a man.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If the police have to go to hell to find and arrest the devil, that’s what they’ll do. If I have to do it myself, I will.”

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  CARLA NEGGERS

  “No—no, Bob. Deirdre wouldn’t have you sacrifice your soul. She’s with her sister angels now. She’s at peace.”

  Bob suddenly realized Patsy meant the devil literally. He pictured Deirdre with her blond hair and blue eyes, her translucent skin and innocent smile. She was as good as good ever was. She wouldn’t have stood a chance with someone who meant her harm. Devil or no devil. He’d miss her. He’d miss her for as long as he lived. He pushed back his emotions. It was something he’d need to learn to do if he was going to be a detective and catch people the likes of whoever had killed Deirdre.

  “We don’t want this cretin to hurt someone else.”

  “No, we don’t.” Patsy turned from the water. “But there are other ways to fight the devil.”

  Two hours later, Bob found his sister, Eileen, reciting the rosary on a bench in the shade of a sprawling oak on the Boston College campus, where she had a summer work-study job at the library.

  “I didn’t know you still had rosary beads,” he said.

  “I didn’t, either. I found them in my jewelry box this morning.” She spoke in a near whisper as she held a single ivory-colored bead between her thumb and forefinger. “I haven’t said the rosary in ages. I thought I might not remember, but it came right back to me.”

  Bob sat next to her. His sister was the smart one in the family. She’d returned two days ago from a summer study program in Dublin. No one had called to tell her Deirdre had gone missing. What could Eileen do from Ireland? Why spoil her time there, when they all hoped Deirdre would turn up, safe and sound?

  When news of the discovery of Deirdre’s body reached

  THE ANGEL

  13 the O’Reilly household that morning, Eileen pretended nothing had happened and left for work.

  “I’ve just come from the waterfront with Mrs. McCarthy,” Bob said.

  Eileen tensed, as if his words were a blow, and he didn’t go on. Her hair was more dirty blond than red like his, and she had more freckles. She’d never thought she was all that attractive, but she’d always been hard on herself—his sister had no limit to her personal list of faults big and small.

  “There’s nothing the police can do now.” Eileen lifted her eyes from her rosary beads and shifted her gaze to her older brother. “Is there?”

  “They can find Deirdre’s killer. They can stop him from killing again.”

  “They can’t undo what happened.”

  His sister’s left hand trembled, but her right hand, which held her rosary beads, was steady. Bob noticed how pale she was, as if she’d been sick. His smart, driven sister had so many plans for her life, but coming back home from Ireland to Deirdre’s disappearance had thrown Eileen right back into the world she was trying to exit. And now Deirdre was dead.

  Eileen’s fingers automatically moved to the next bead, and he saw her lips move as she silently recited the Hail, Mary. He waited for her to finish the entire rosary and return her beads to their navy velvet pouch. She clutched it in her hand and leaned back against the bench.

  They both watched a squirrel run up a maple tree. Without looking at her brother, Eileen said, “I’m pregnant.”

  Of all the things Bob had anticipated she might say when she’d finished praying, he hadn’t imagined that one. 14

  CARLA NEGGERS

  Their parents would be shocked. He was shocked. She didn’t have a boyfriend that he knew about. He fought an urge to run away. Get out of Boston, away from the aftermath of Deirdre’s death, from what was to come with his sister. It all flashed in his mind—Patsy grieving next door, the police hunting for Deirdre’s killer, Eileen getting bigger, trying to figure out what to do with the baby. The baby’s father. Who the hell was he?

  Bob curled his hands into tight fists. He was young. He didn’t have to stay in Boston and deal with all these problems. He could go anywhere. He could be a detective in New York or Miami or Seattle.

  Hawaii, he thought. He could move to Honolulu.

  “How far along are you?” he asked.

  “Not far. I haven’t had the test yet, but I know.”

  “Eileen…” Bob looked at his younger sister, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “What happened in Ireland?”

  But she jumped to her feet and walked quickly toward the ivy-covered building where she worked, and he didn’t follow her.

  A week later, a series of calls into the Boston Police De­

  partment alerted them to a man who had just leaped from a boat into Boston Harbor.

  He was in flames when he hit the water.

  By the time a passing pleasure boat reached him, he was dead.

  Within hours, the dead man was identified as Stuart Fuller, a twenty-four-year-old road worker who rented an attic apartment three blocks from the house where Deirdre McCarthy lived with her mother. Police discovered over­

  whelming evidence that tied him to Deirdre’s murder. They had their devil.

  THE ANGEL

  15 The autopsy on Fuller determined that he’d drowned, but his burns would have killed him if he hadn’t gone into the water.

  That evening, Bob found Patsy on her back porch with about twenty small angel figurines lined up on the top of the wide wooden railing. Despite the summer heat, she wore a pink polyester sweater, as if she expected never to be warm again.

  “Deirdre collected angels,” Patsy said.

  “I know. It made it easy to buy her presents.” Bob pointed at a colorful glass angel he’d found for her on a high school trip to Cape Cod. “I got her that one for her sixteenth birthday.”

  “It’s beautiful, Bob.”

  His throat tightened. “Mrs. McCarthy—”

  “The police were here this morning. They told me about Stuart Fuller. They asked me if I knew him.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not that I recall. I suppose I could have seen him in the neighborhood.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “At church, perhaps. The devil is always drawn to good.”

  Bob watched her use a damp cloth to clean a delicate white porcelain angel holding a small Irish harp. It was one of the more valuable figurines in Deirdre’s collection and one of her favorites. She’d loved all kinds of angels—it didn’t matter if they were cheap, cheesy, expensive, ethnic. She used to tell Bob she wanted to buy a glass curio cabinet in which to display them.

  “Patsy…do you know anything about Fuller’s death?”

  She seemed not to hear him. “I have a story I want to tell you.”

  Bob didn’t have the patience for one of her stories right now. “Which one?”

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  CARLA NEGGERS

  “One you’ve never heard before.” She held up the cleaned figurine to the light. “My grandfather first told it to me as a child in Ireland. Oh, he was a wonderful storyteller.”

  “I’m sure he was, but—”

  “It’s a story about three brothers who get into a battle with fairies over an ancient stone angel.” Patsy’s eyes sparked, and for a moment, she seemed almost happy. “It was one of Deirdre’s favorites.”

  “Then it can’t be depressing. Deirdre didn’t like de­

  pressing stories.”

  “She didn’t, did she? Come, Bob. I’ll make tea and heat up some brown bread for you. It’s my mother’s recipe. I made it fresh this morning. My father used to say my mother made the best brown bread in all of West Cork.”

  Bob had no choice but to follow Patsy into her small kitchen and help her set out the tea and the warm, dense bread. How many times had he and Eileen and Deirdre sat here, listening to Patsy tell old Irish stories? She joined him at the table, h
er cheeks flushed as she buttered a small piece of bread. “Once upon a time,” she said, laying on her Irish accent, “there were three brothers who lived on the southwest coast of Ireland—a farmer, a hermit monk and a ne’er-do-well, who was, of course, everyone’s favorite…”

  Bob drank the tea, ate the bread and pushed back tears for the friend he’d lost as he listened to Patsy’s story.

 
  Near Mount Monadnock

  Southern New Hampshire

  4:00 p.m., EDT

  June 17, Present Day

  Keira Sullivan swiped at a mosquito and wondered if its Irish cousins would be as persistent. She’d find out soon enough, she thought as she walked along the trail to her mother’s cabin in the southern New Hampshire woods. She’d be on a plane to Ireland tomorrow night, off to the southwest Irish coast to research an old story of mischief, magic and an ancient stone angel.

  In the meantime, she had to get this visit behind her and attend a reception tonight in Boston. But she couldn’t wait to be tucked in her rented Irish cottage, alone with her art supplies, her laptop, her camera and her walking shoes. For the next six weeks, she’d be free to think, dream, draw, paint, explore and, perhaps, make peace with her past. More accurately, with her mother’s past. The cabin came into view, nestled on an evergreen­

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  CARLA NEGGERS

  blanketed hill above a stream. Keira could hear the water tumbling over rocks and feel it cooling the humid late spring air. Birds twittered and fluttered nearby—chicka­

  dees, probably. Her mother would have given all the birds on her hillside names.