on Beacon Hill.'
'Funny, Sophie.'
'It's been a long day already. When will you be able to determine if Cliff Rafferty was murdered?'
'There are flower shops on Charles. Try there.' Scoop headed down the sidewalk, away from the Carlisle house, but turned, facing her as he walked backward. 'I like a mix of colors--reminds me of all the different shades of autumn leaves more than a solid color does.'
'A gardener, are you?'
He pointed a thick finger at her. 'Be where we can find you. At your apartment with the mums. Tutoring hockey players. Anywhere but near a police investigation.'
'I was thinking about Morrigan's after the mums,' she said, suspecting she was being annoying, too. 'But I wouldn't want to be provocative again and have you catch me there with a Guinness.'
'That wouldn't be provocative this time. That would be smart.'
She got into the Mini and watched him turn back around and walk another few yards. He wasn't at all what she'd expected from Colm's descriptions and news accounts of his heroism, his work, his injuries. He was more self-contained, funnier, not nearly as cocky as she'd have imagined.
The man was a gardener, for heaven's sake.
But he was still a police detective--an intense, committed one at that--and she would be smart, she thought, to keep that in mind.
Nonetheless, she called to him, 'What does Detective Acosta have against you?'
'Pick out a nice yellow mum for me,' he said without so much as a glance back at her.
'Did he do something to come to the attention of internal affairs?'
Scoop didn't respond. Sophie wasn't surprised. Whether Acosta had or hadn't had a run-in with internal affairs, Scoop wasn't about to tell her--even if it was a matter of public record. He was a man who kept his own counsel. Not a talker, not a confider. It wasn't just training or part of his job description. It was the way he was.
He didn't change his mind and trot back to her and climb into the passenger seat. Sophie didn't know if she wanted him to or not.
She wondered how long she had before he heard from Tim's Brits and showed up at her door for more details.
Enough time to buy mums, even?
As she started the car, she wondered, too, how close she'd been to ending up like Cliff Rafferty a year ago. If not hanged, just as dead.
13
Josie let Myles drive the last bit to Dublin. He was behind the wheel when they stopped in front of the Rush Hotel off St. Stephen's Green. She doubted she'd shut her eyes the entire hour he'd been driving, but it wasn't because she was afraid he'd run them into a ditch. She'd kept imagining Sophie Malone venturing out to a tiny island alone.
'I'm not very brave,' she said as Myles turned off the engine.
He glanced at her, his eyes flinty in the late-day light. 'Is that why you didn't want to drive in Dublin? It takes a brave heart.'
'Are you never serious unless someone has a gun to your head? I'm initiating a heart-to-heart conversation.'
'No, you're not. You're looking for sympathy, and I've none to offer. Besides, if you wanted to talk, you'd have waited until we were sitting in the pub with a couple of pints, not watching a doorman come to us.'
'This is a five-star hotel. I'm not sure it has a pub. Our doorman is Lizzie's cousin Justin, by the way. He's the youngest of the lot. Can you see the family resemblance?'
'Not really, no.'
'His hair's lighter, but the strong jaw, the determined walk--Lizzie has them, don't you think?'
Myles sighed. 'What she has is Will Davenport's heart and soul.'
'That she does. No question.' Suddenly awkward at Myles's unexpected romantic insight, Josie unfastened her seat belt and tried to stretch the kink out of her lower back. She'd left several messages for Scoop Wisdom, but so far he hadn't returned her call. 'I suppose you're right about this not being the moment for a heart-to-heart conversation, but you already know you're right, don't you, Myles?'
'Always, love. Always.' He winked at her without smiling. 'And you are very brave.'
'Hardly. When I think about what you've--'
'Don't think about what I've been through. I don't.'
She wanted to throttle him where he sat. The hours on the road and the mad traffic seemed not to have fazed him in the least. No nightmares, no worries about being back close to her, no fretting about the past or the future. He looked no more or less drawn and tired than he had at the beginning of the trip.
'I have a thirteen-year-old son who wants to follow your footsteps straight into the SAS,' she said tartly. 'I suppose that qualifies as brave.'
Myles jumped out of the car with a bounce to his step and greeted Justin Rush as if they were longtime friends. Josie had no illusions that being with her had put Myles in a lighthearted, sardonic mood. He grabbed his rucksack and trotted up the steps and through the brass-trimmed door into the hotel. However tired he was, he wouldn't let it get in the way of his mission, which, at the moment, was Sophie Malone.
As Josie climbed out of the car, Justin Rush retrieved her bag from the back. 'Lizzie would like you to meet her in her room when you've got yourselves settled,' he said. 'Keira will be joining you, too.'
'Lovely,' Josie said.
Explaining that the hotel was quiet, Justin carried Josie's bag into the lobby, where a fire glowed in a marble fireplace. He slipped behind the elegant front desk. 'I've jotted down Lizzie's room number for you. She's on the second floor. You're on the third. She booked you and Mr. Fletcher each a room. They're adjoining.' He handed Josie the keys, adding, matter-of-factly, 'There's a connecting door between them. I've given you that key, as well.'
'Wonderful,' Josie said briskly. 'Thanks much, Justin. I'll take my bag from here. Do tell Lizzie we'll be down shortly, won't you?'
'Happy to,' Justin said.
Mercifully, Myles had stayed out of the exchange. He silently followed Josie up the curving stairs off the lobby. Just thinking about hotel rooms and beds and baths and towels had her feeling all afire and on edge, but she quickly blamed her sleepless night and the interminable drive across Ireland.
As they came to their rooms, she handed Myles his set of keys. 'Good job, love,' he said. 'I'll see you in Lizzie's room in a few.'
'Taking a nap, Myles, or checking on Will and Simon?'
But he was already through the door, which automatically shut quietly behind him. Josie resisted pounding her fist on it and instead went into her own room, a charming and tasteful mix of modern and traditional furnishings. From what she'd learned in having known Lizzie Rush for a month, each of the boutique hotel's twenty-seven rooms was individually appointed, with an eye to the comfort of the guests.
Now that she was finally alone, Josie let down her guard and tried to diminish the tension in her back and shoulders with a few stretches while the tub filled. She added a dollop of the ginger-and-ginseng-scented bath oil that came with her room, stripped, left her clothes in a heap on the floor and sank into the steaming water, closing her eyes as the events of the day drifted away for a bit.
When she imagined Myles letting himself in through the connecting door, she bolted straight up out of the tub, toweled off and slipped into a soft, cuddly hotel bathrobe ready on a hook on the door.
By then, Scoop Wisdom was ringing her from Boston. She'd tried him several times on the drive from Dublin and expected to dive in and tell him about her conversation with Tim O'Donovan, but he had developments of his own. Josie sat on a chair in a window overlooking a darkening Dublin street and listened without interruption as the Boston detective related his unpleasant news--that he and Sophie Malone had found a man dead.
