* * *
After the two women disappeared around the front of the old carriage house, Gabe Campbell rubbed the back of his neck and sighed deeply. “I know Ainsley likes to call me her personal Viking, but I don’t come with a mountain-smashing hammer like Thor—just a paintbrush. And I paint walls, not museum-quality paintings.” He dropped into a chair across from Bracken and Colin. “Is she in danger?”
“A woman was killed yesterday,” Bracken said, as if that answered the question.
Colin said nothing.
“Ainsley’s so open,” Gabe went on. “I love that about her, but now it worries me.”
Bracken leaned over the table. “Stay close to her. Listen to her.”
“The paintings…the show…” He rubbed his neck again. “Have you seen pictures of her father? He was a good-looking guy—she has his eyes, his blond hair. He wasn’t perfect. She knows that, but he’s still larger than life to her.” He looked in the direction she’d just gone. “I’m glad she didn’t go to Lucas Sharpe.”
Bracken frowned. “Why is that? Do they have a history?”
“A brief one. They saw each other for a few weeks last summer. It didn’t go anywhere.” Gabe laughed suddenly. “I guess he wasn’t up to being her personal Viking. I have to get back to work. Good to meet you. I wish the circumstances had been better.”
He didn’t wait for a response before he jumped up and went inside, easing the door shut behind him.
Colin took a last swallow of iced tea and looked across the table at Bracken. “I’ll bet Ainsley thinks you look like Bono, too. Emma Sharpe might, but she’d never say. Too repressed. Ainsley’s the opposite of repressed.”
“Go to blazes,” Bracken said.
Colin grinned and rose, Bracken following him off the stone patio. They headed onto a sandy trail through the overgrown yard, intersecting the lane just below the d’Auberville place. Colin tasted salt on the breeze.
Bracken put on his sunglasses again. “Ainsley doesn’t know what to do with her life. She’s painting as much for the father she never knew as for herself.”
“She needs a paycheck. Nothing wrong with that.” Colin squinted through the trees, bits of blue ocean peeking out amid the changing leaves. “Go home, Fin.”
“Home as in Ireland?”
“You’re not getting out of Rock Point that easily, although I suppose you could go back to Ireland and show Ainsley d’Auberville some Viking ruins.”
“On her honeymoon,” Bracken said.
“Go on. I’ll deal with Agent Sharpe and the detectives.” He didn’t quite know how he’d explain his Irish priest friend to the local authorities. “Do your thing, Fin. Dust pews, drink whiskey, visit sick people. Stay out of this mess.”
“You’re not an agent who shuffles papers in an office, Colin. You don’t have to pretend with me that you are.”
“I repeat. Go home.”
Bracken walked farther down the quiet lane and looked out toward the Atlantic. “It’s a straight line from here to Spain. Ireland’s farther to the north. Yet it’s so much colder here.”
“Gulf Stream,” Colin said.
“Yes.” Bracken pulled his gaze away and turned back up the lane. “Why did Sister Joan call Agent Sharpe?”
“The Sharpes are internationally recognized art detectives. They must have had dealings with the convent before.”
“Why not call Lucas Sharpe instead?”
Good question, but Colin didn’t answer him.
“Agent Sharpe is based in Boston, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“What will you do now?”
“Go back to my boat and wait for her to come after me.”
“Because you came here with me,” Bracken said.
“And because she realizes I know she’s hiding something.”
“I wondered if you’d noticed that. You don’t have to go back to your boat and wait for her.” Bracken nodded up the lane as Emma walked in their direction. “She’s here right now.”
CHAPTER 13
EMMA DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO MAKE OF COLIN Donovan and Father Finian Bracken. “The BMW is yours, Father?”
The priest nodded, his eyes invisible behind his dark sunglasses. “Yes, it is.”
“He’s a priest to the lobstermen of Rock Point,” Colin said, standing in the sunlight as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “My hometown.”
Bracken gave the slightest of smiles.
“Saint Peter is the patron saint of fishermen,” Emma said. “He was a fisherman. Imagine the centuries of fishermen who have prayed to Saint Peter to intercede on their behalf—”
“Like when the ship’s going down, or the fish aren’t biting,” Colin said.
He was, Emma thought, being deliberately irreverent, testing her, perhaps, for her reaction. “Saint Peter is often depicted in art with the accoutrements of a fisherman. Fishing rods, nets, that sort of thing. They help identify him.” She had only a vague idea of where she was going with this. She’d had saints on her mind ever since Sister Cecilia’s description of the painting of the woman in the cave, in The Garden Gallery, Jack d’Auberville’s missing painting. “Finian was an early Irish saint.”
Bracken turned from the partial view of the water. “There are several Irish saints named Finian, in fact. They all lived in the sixth century, when Christianity was still taking root in Ireland. My mother, God rest her soul, didn’t have a particular Finian in mind, but she grew up near the ruins of Saint Finian’s church and holy well in Kenmare.”
“That’s in the southwest,” Emma said. “I’ve been there.”
“The church and well are probably named for Saint Finian the Leper,” Bracken said. “There was no leprosy in Ireland at the time, but he could have had some sort of eye ailment. He founded the monastery at Innisfallen in County Kerry. It’s on an island in a lake in Killarney National Park. It’s a lovely site—a ruin now, of course. The early monks there wrote down the oral history of Ireland, capturing ancient pre-Christian tales.”
“The Annals of Innisfallen.” Emma kept her tone conversational but professional. “They’re invaluable.”
“Ah, I see you know your Irish history.”
“I learned about the annals studying art and Irish history when I worked with my grandfather
