“I appreciate the invitation—”
“Then accept. At least come for iced tea on the patio.” She motioned vaguely with one hand. “I’m just five minutes by car on the other side of the village. On the left over the bridge.”
Finian considered a moment, then nodded. “Thank you, I gladly accept your invitation.”
“Excellent.” She beamed, looking altogether less troubled. Her pace picked up, as if she were quite pleased with herself, and she rattled off directions and a phone number, which Finian managed to log into his iPhone before she glided down to her car and climbed in.
Finian watched her streak out into the street, then returned to the waterfront parking lot behind the inn.
He was positive he’d seen Colin Donovan head in that direction.
* * *
Colin was leaning against Finian’s BMW, clearly in no mood to find him in Heron’s Cove. “What are you doing here, Fin?”
Finian shrugged, unperturbed by Colin’s reaction to seeing him. “I was restless after our conversation last night and decided to go on an outing. I was working up an appetite for a lobster roll later on.” That, of course, was before he’d agreed to meet Ainsley d’Auberville and make sure she spoke to the police. “And you?”
“Just docked Andy’s boat. You’d get a better lobster roll at Hurley’s. Cheaper, too.” Colin stood up from the car. “Who was the woman with you?”
“Ainsley d’Auberville. Attractive, isn’t she?”
The name was obviously familiar to his FBI friend. “And you just happened to meet on the street and start chatting?”
Finian, unruffled, nodded toward the Sharpe house above the docks. “I ran into her there, as a matter of fact. She was knocking on the back door. No one was home. She seemed frustrated. Interesting, isn’t it, how the house is squeezed between water and street?”
“Common here. What did she want?”
“Your secrets are safe with me, Colin, if that’s a concern.”
“You’re dodging my question, and I haven’t told you any secrets.”
Undoubtedly. “I’m merely doing what I would do if we weren’t friends and I’d heard about the violent death of a nun in my community.”
“Well, we are friends. You sent me here, remember? Otherwise, I’d be on an island fishing.”
“That’s a good point,” Finian said, calm.
“What did Ainsley d’Auberville have to say, Fin?”
“You know better than to ask.”
“It was a privileged conversation? She was confessing—”
“She didn’t have to confess anything for our conversation to be privileged.”
“But she knew you were a priest,” Colin said.
Finian waved a hand. “Don’t do your FBI thing with me. I’m unmoved.”
Colin didn’t relent. “Was she here to see Lucas Sharpe?”
“So she said. She’s invited me to her place for a drink.”
“A drink?”
“Iced tea. She has a fiancé, Colin, not that it matters. I’m an ordained priest. I made a solemn vow of celibacy.”
“Not poverty,” Colin said, walking around to the passenger’s side of the BMW and looking over the roof at Finian. “Obviously.”
Finian pulled open the driver’s side door and got in behind the wheel. He’d grown accustomed to driving on the right, although it still didn’t feel natural to him. “Are there any developments in the investigation into Sister Joan’s death?”
“I’m not on the investigative team.”
It wasn’t a direct answer, but Finian had no standing to press for one. He stuck the key into the ignition. “She wasn’t killed in the midst of a random break-in, Colin. You know that, don’t you?”
“Once Emma Sharpe sees you, she’s going to want to know who you are.”
“It was that way when she saw you?”
“Yeah. It was that way.”
“Does she know you’re an FBI agent?”
“More or less.” It was a little unsettling to think he couldn’t pass for a lobsterman, but she’d had a heads-up when she’d spotted him with Yank. Colin glanced back at the Sharpe house. “She’s going to want to know why Ainsley d’Auberville was here.”
“That means you’ll tell her?”
Colin shifted his gaze to Finian but said nothing.
“I suppose you’re obligated,” Finian said, starting the engine. “I should go visit Ainsley before she changes her mind about having invited me. I think you should come with me.”
“That’s why I’m in your car, Fin.”
“Yes.” Finian noticed Colin’s rigid expression and frowned. “Are you armed?”
“You don’t talk about privileged conversations,” the FBI agent said. “I don’t talk about guns.”
CHAPTER 12
COLIN RODE WITH BRACKEN THROUGH THE bustling village of Heron’s Cove and back out to the ocean, thinking up a reason to be hanging out with an Irish priest. Bracken was going on about just telling the truth, and the distinctions between facts and truth. Colin let him talk. He was more interested in why Ainsley d’Auberville, the daughter of Jack d’Auberville, had been looking for Lucas Sharpe.
Her place wasn’t what Bracken expected, obviously. “One would think a Viking raiding party’s been here and gone,” the priest muttered as he pulled into the gravel driveway.
“I’ve been by here before,” Colin said. “I thought it was a barn.”
“It’s her father’s former studio.”
“That’s not privileged information?”
Bracken adjusted his sunglasses. “No.”
The d’Auberville studio was actually an old barn or carriage house, located on a paved lane just off the main road, a few miles south of Heron’s Cove and in another world from Rock Point farther to the north. It wasn’t directly on the water but sat up on a sandy knoll, just a peek of a cove through birches and ash trees. The coastline was gentler here, sea and land not divided by chunks of granite.
Colin got out of the BMW and Bracken joined him. As they approached a van, its back opened up, an attractive woman—Ainsley d’Auberville—was arguing with a compact, muscular man in painter’s clothes.
“That must be Gabe Campbell,” Bracken said in a
