Cover

Also by Andrea Carter

Death at Whitewater Church

Treacherous Strand

The Well of Ice

Murder at Greysbridge

Dedication

For Christopher

Chapter One

I STRETCHED MY arms above my head, stood up, and taking my coffee with me, walked from my desk to the window, if you could call floor-to-ceiling glass a window. It was still early, pink and grey streaks the only traces of a sunrise that had been spectacular earlier on. I gazed out over the city, my eyes moving from downtown on the left, with its mix of high- and low-rise buildings: Morgan Stanley Chase, Bank of America and the Art Ovation Hotel, to the right where I caught a glimpse of the marina with its perfect white yachts moored in gentle rows. The seafront was the pink and blue palette from Miami Vice, below, it was white and green, the green contributed by the ubiquitous Sarasota palm trees, lining the roads, nestling around buildings, lush in car parks.

Palm trees as ubiquitous as Starbucks. I took a sip from my coffee, a huge cardboard cup of the stuff from the café on the ground floor. I was getting a worrying taste for it. Tony from the Oak would be appalled.

I rested my forehead briefly on the glass. Eight o’clock and I’d been here an hour already. My ninth-floor office was in a prime spot. Blown away at first by the view, I couldn’t stop staring at the city and the water when I’d first arrived, but I’d soon become accustomed to it. Accustomed, also, to the early mornings.

Traffic was heavy, the morning rush hour kicking in properly now, although the triple glazing blocked out all sounds: the huge saloon cars and SUVs, the open-backed trucks with their monster wheels. Everything was super-size in America, not just the coffee. The temperature would be rising too, now that the sun was up – I could see traces of blue in the distance – although the air conditioning created enough of a chill for a suit jacket, blocking out the humidity.

Was that what I’d been doing for the past six months: blocking everything out? Running away to Florida? I’d worked hard, giving me little time to brood. If there was one thing this grudging Irishwoman admired about the Americans, it was that they put the hours in. Ten days holidays a year; the Irish would never stand for it! Nor would any of the other Europeans for that matter. But they got things done, the Americans, and they made money. This trip had been lucrative for me and I’d go home with a nice little nest egg.

When I’d been here ten years ago, I’d taken the Bar Exams, making it easy enough to return, and this time around I’d found the work absorbing. I’d been practicing Elder Law, something that had always interested me but I’d never been able to specialize in. It was quiet work, meetings with clients were rare and regulated – unlike in Glendara where people called into the office “on spec” – and many of the clients had Irish roots, happy to hear an Irish accent to remind them of “home”. Plus, I had three support staff, unlike in Glendara, although Leah had often seemed like three people in one.

I rubbed the window with my sleeve, force of habit from Glendara where the central heating was usually on full blast, cold from outside fogging up the inside. Although we’d had an exceptional summer last year in more ways than one, with a heatwave bringing the highest temperatures for many years, two murders and a wedding. And a proposal.

I forced myself not to think about the last one. I wondered instead what the weather was like at home now, tried to remember how cold it usually was in April. But I dismissed the thought. I’d find out soon enough. I returned to my desk, threw the empty coffee cup in the bin and started to look through some papers. No time for daydreaming, I had work to finish.

I heard a knock and looked up. “Come in.”

A face appeared around the door. “Got a minute?”

I put down the Power of Attorney I’d been reading. “Of course.”

Mitch Stevens, tall, greying and handsome with a tanned face from sailing every weekend, strode into the room with a mock sad expression on his face. “Are you sure you need to go back? Can’t you just advertise your job, so you can stay here with us?”

I laughed. “It’s not a job, Mitch. It’s my practice. I own it and I’m responsible for it. I’m not an employee like I am here.”

He perched on the edge of my desk and crossed his arms. “Don’t you like being an employee?”

I couldn’t deny it had been nice for a while to not have to shoulder all the responsibility as I did in Glendara. The firm here had a mentoring system. You met with your mentor every couple of weeks: Mitch was mine. The same three questions were asked each time, cleverly formulated to weed out worries and ensure that employees weren’t carrying too much stress: Tell me something good, something bad, and something really bad? It had certainly made a nice change to be able to share my work worries, but …

“It’s not me.” I smiled. “I like to control things too much.”

Over the past few months, I’d realized that might be my problem, needing to be in control. I’d always had difficulty sharing worries, until the day when I found someone I could do that with, a person I trusted completely: Molloy. Then he’d left. He’d had his reasons and eventually he had come back, but the vacuum he’d left behind had left me feeling vulnerable, as if I’d been leaning on a gate that collapsed under my weight. It made me unsure about leaning on that gate again when he’d asked me to marry him, out of the blue, with no warning whatsoever. Six months later that proposal still seemed like a crazy thing for him to have done. We hadn’t even been together at the time.

Mitch looked across at me and sighed theatrically. “Okay then. If you have to.”

“I have to.” I thought how amusing a city lawyer like Mitch Stevens would find my gate imagery. I may have grown up in Dublin, but it seemed I was a country girl at heart.

“What time is your flight in the morning?” he asked.

“It’s not till the evening but it’s from Orlando so …”

“You want to leave in the morning?”

I nodded.

He raised his eyebrows. “Lunch? A last supper so to speak?”

“Sure. That would be lovely.”

“The Greek place?”

Mitch was already at the table when I arrived even though I was early, and he wasn’t alone. Ten other people from the office were seated at a big round table in the middle of the restaurant, and they all cheered when I walked in. Mortified, I mouthed an apology to one of the waitresses who just smiled in amusement. It was no skin off her nose.

If I’d given it any thought, I should have anticipated some type of a send-off, but Mitch had such an ability to dissemble I hadn’t noticed anything other than a casual invitation to lunch. I suppose that was what made him such a good trial lawyer. You’d be forgiven for thinking that lawyers were incapable of subtlety in a place where billboards along highways and on taxis bellowed Get Aggressive Attorneys – Timberlake and Yonkers or Auto Accident dial 1800 – ask Gary! but that would be a mistake. I’d grown hugely fond of Mitch, but he had the capacity to be as sneaky and manipulative as hell when required.

And he’d gone all out for my send-off. There were balloons and streamers, even a bottle of champagne in the center of the table, which I eyed as I took the seat beside him.

“I hope you don’t expect me to do any work this afternoon!”

“It’s only a glass. One bottle isn’t going to go too far with this lot.”

He was right. In fact, during the lunch, the one bottle remained in its ice bucket, and I suspected it wouldn’t be opened, its presence only for show. Instead, I sipped my iced tea, another beverage I’d acquired a taste for, and tucked into a very good veggie moussaka.

While the conversation was busy elsewhere, Mitch leaned in, fork raised. “There was something I wanted to ask you.”

I narrowed my eyes, my own fork halfway to my mouth. “Yes?”

“I don’t want us to cut our ties entirely.”

Thankfully there had never been anything romantic between myself and Mitch, not even a hint of it, so I had no fear that he meant anything like that.

He grinned as if he knew what I’d been thinking. “I’m talking about professionally. Sometimes we need a contact on the other side of the Atlantic. Any interest in being that contact?”

I frowned. “For what kind of work?”

He took a bite of his food, chewed and swallowed, taking his time to respond. “Outstanding warrants, that kind of thing, I guess.”

“Do you get many of those in Ireland?” I was surprised. I hadn’t come across a single outstanding warrant for Ireland in the six months I’d been in the US. But then I hadn’t been working in crime.

“A few.” He took a sip of his Diet Coke. “Maybe the odd tax issue?”

I shook my head. “I’m no tax expert, Mitch. And you know my practice is a small operation – nothing like here. There’s only me and my legal assistant.”

He shrugged, not quite meeting my eye. “Well, whatever comes up that you might be able to help us with? What do you think?”

I smiled, taking a sip of my iced tea. “Can I decide on a case-by-case basis?”

“Sure,” he clinked his glass against mine. “I’m glad it’s not goodbye, completely.”

We walked back to the office together, just the two of us, down Main St with its pretty shops and restaurants, then across Pineapple, and towards the water. My attention was taken by a wooden windmill in the window of a café, and a blue ghost bike leaning against a telephone pole with a bird on its handlebars. I liked Sarasota. It was arty and creative, with a significant retirement community of readers and painters. Bookstore1, a bright independent bookshop with regular events, had been my refuge since I’d arrived. It was a place Phyllis Kettle would have appreciated.

We reached the traffic lights at the seafront and crossed the road, walking out towards the sea and back along the marina, returning to the office the long way around.

The sea glistened in the sunshine beyond the boats. When I’d decided to come back to Florida for a while, I’d asked to be put in the Sarasota office because I wanted to be close to the sea. I’d thought it would remind me of Inishowen, but I couldn’t have imagined how different it would be, a marina full of yachts instead of fishing trawlers. The sea today was mirror-still like a lake; it looked as if you could walk across it without any divine power. I’d never seen the sea in Inishowen look like that.

I put my hands in the pockets of my trousers as we walked. I’d lost weight while I’d been here. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the heat. We tried to stick to the shade as we walked, from palm tree to palm tree, but my shirt still felt damp; a trickle of sweat worked its way down my back. I’d never mastered the art of looking cool in this weather and I suspected I never would. In the air conditioning I wanted a jumper and each time I left a building I was shocked anew by the heat. I ran my fingers through my damp hair.

Mitch looked at me curiously. “You all right?”

I smiled at him. “Just hot.”

Mitch had been there for me when I’d worked for the firm more than a decade ago, just after my sister had died. I’d told him everything then and he’d been a huge support. This time around, things had remained strictly professional between us, but I was sure he suspected I had my reasons for coming back even for a short while, that there was something I hadn’t shared with him.

We walked past the statue at the marina, a rather kitsch sculpture of a sailor kissing a nurse based on the famous photograph taken in New York at the announcement of the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War. The picture was called V-J Day in Times Square, the statue Unconditional Surrender. Every time I passed it, I thought of Molloy.

I’d been in Florida for six months. It had been just what I needed but the respite was about to come to an end. Reality was about to seep in.

Chapter Two

A SWEATY FUG enveloped the cabin, and a loud snore came my way when I pulled the earplugs from my ears. I rubbed my neck and slid the window shade all the way up allowing light to flood in, into my little section of the plane at least. Morning had broken without my being aware of it, curled up under the tiny blue blanket which hadn’t quite reached my feet. I’d had almost two hours sleep, not bad for the red eye from Orlando. I’d been lucky – the flight was only 70 per cent full, which meant I’d had an entire row of three seats to myself. But now I was awake, headachy and dry-eyed.

I gazed out the window. No land yet. I had a seat over the wing and the sky below was nothing but white cloud. I tapped the screen on the back of the seat in front of me and brought up the map with the little aeroplane and the arrows – an hour and thirty-five minutes to go.

I tried to remember where I’d put my plastic bag of toiletries and wondered if I could be bothered to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth, when the squeak of a trolley brought a smiling air steward with a beard, a bun and a broad Scottish accent. He handed me a bottle of water and a warm cardboard box. The water went down in one, but I struggled to swallow the gloopy cheese croissant even with the later addition of coffee and orange juice. Still, it took up some time and once I’d finished, there was only an hour and twenty-one minutes to go. So I drank the last of my juice and turned on a film.

I wasn’t yet ready to think about what lay ahead, to reprogramme my brain to my Irish life.

By the time we got to Dublin my head was pounding and there was a red hue around everything I could see. Two hours sleep in twenty-four hours will do that to you. The sky outside was grey and rain blistered down the windows of the plane when we landed. Irish spring weather.

As I trotted down the marathon corridors of Dublin Airport with the rest of the herd, it was hard not to recall my return from the States nearly ten years earlier and how different things had been then. How raw I’d felt after the death of my sister, Fay, who had been killed by my ex-boyfriend. How I’d dreaded facing my parents and their grief. In retrospect, how selfish I’d been.

But then, I’d found a home in Donegal on the Inishowen peninsula, which was where my life was now, a life I’d made for myself. I’d realized in America how much I valued that life, how much an anchor Inishowen was for me. I wouldn’t be leaving again in a hurry.

At the carousel I collected my bags, stumbled through passport control and grabbed a taxi. Thankfully, given the sleepless fog I was in, I didn’t have to drive back to Glendara till the morning. I’d left the Mini with my parents in Dublin and I was spending the night with them. I had some concerns as to whether the engine would turn over; she was an old car, but I suspected my dad would have started the engine periodically while I’d been away. It was the kind of thing he would do. It would be good to see them both; we’d all come a long way in the past couple of years.

The journey took longer than I expected; I’d hit Dublin at rush hour and rain bucketed down the whole way into town. But eventually we pulled into my parents’ road and rounded the corner to their house, a 1940s semi-detached in a row of identical terraces with neat front gardens, although my parents’ house was easy to spot today because there was my old Mini parked out front. I smiled when I saw her.

They’d told me they might not be here when I arrived, but I’d had a text from my mother saying that they wouldn’t be long and to use my key and let myself in. So, I hauled my case out of the taxi and stood on the steps trying to balance it while I turned the key in the lock.

Once inside, I left my luggage in the hall and made my way towards the kitchen, thinking suddenly of tea, something I realized I’d missed. Americans don’t understand tea, not in the way the Irish do anyway.

I pushed open the door, then stopped dead. There was a man poking about in the fridge, a man who certainly wasn’t my father, a man I didn’t recognize. I must have yelped in surprise because he turned around quickly, a carton of milk in his hand. Then his face broke into a smile and he put down the milk and came over to me hand outstretched, welcoming me as if he were the host.

“Hello, you must be Benedicta.”

His hand was clammy and his handshake limp. It didn’t help to warm me up. I saw now that he was conservatively dressed in chinos and a shirt and tie, not the attire of your average house breaker, but who the hell was he?

“It’s Ben,” I said. “And you are?”

He studied my face. “Stuart. Stuart Chambers. I’m a good friend of your parents.”

“Right.”

He went back to the fridge and closed the door. “You must be tired. I’m making some tea – would you like some?”

The fridge was the same one my sister and I used to make a beeline for when we came home from school and college. My parents had never changed it and I could still see traces of cartoon stickers we’d stuck across it over the years. Ridiculously it made me resent this man’s hand on it, even more, and his apparent familiarity with what was inside. Who was this Stuart Chambers and why was he treating my parents’ kitchen as if it were his own?

Begrudgingly I accepted his offer of tea and sat redundantly at the table while he made it, answering his questions about Florida without enthusiasm. I was aware I was being rude, but as time passed, I became more and more uneasy as I wondered where exactly my parents were. When I asked, all I managed to extract was what my mother had put in the text – that they’d be back soon.

Then I heard the front door and seconds later the two of them walked into the kitchen laden down with grocery bags. Relieved, I stood up to take one from each of them, giving them both hugs.

My mother lifted her remaining bag onto the counter by the sink with a groan. “So, you’ve met Stuart then?”

“I have.”

It seemed rude to ask who the hell he was while he was sitting there. So, I helped my mother unpack the groceries and put them away while Stuart made another pot of tea, which the four of us sat down to drink with a ginger cake my mother produced from a tin in the cupboard. It was like some weird double date.

“Would you like me to take your bags up to your room?” Stuart asked while pouring the tea.

This was the final straw. There was something about the ease with which he offered to go upstairs that made me realize he knew his way around up there too. Was he staying here?

So I asked the question directly.

“Yes,” my mother replied, taking a piece of cake. “Stuart’s been helping us around the house. He needed somewhere to stay, and we needed someone to help with certain things. So, it seemed to make sense.” She smiled over at him.

“What kind of things?” I asked, trying and failing to keep my tone light.

“Oh, just some house maintenance, that sort of thing. Nothing you could have done,” my father added hurriedly as if to assuage my guilt, making me feel even worse. “Guttering, some electrical stuff, things I can’t do since I had my fall.”

“Right,” I said, still baffled as to how a handyman doing odd jobs had managed to get his feet under the table. Literally. His shoe brushed off mine and he looked up at me with a rather creepy smile.

“And how did you meet?” I asked, taking a sip of tea.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!

Read the complete book free online → 🔗

Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!

Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!

Happy Reading!