Saint's Gate (3 page)

Colin sighed at Bracken. “I planned to go fishing tomorrow.”

The priest shrugged. “You can still go fishing. There’s water in Heron’s Cove. I imagine that’s why
heron
and
cove
are in its name.” His midnight-blue eyes narrowed with an intensity that had to have helped turn Bracken Distillers into a highly successful company. “Colin, you must investigate.”

“Why?”

“What if Sister Joan was killed and Agent Sharpe was at the convent because of an FBI concern? What if this tragedy occurred because of something you’re into?”

“I’m not into anything. I was about to take a nap when Mike found me.”

Bracken grunted. “I know you better than you think, Colin. You’ll want to be certain your presence in Rock Point didn’t lead to the death of an innocent woman and put a colleague at risk.”

Colin didn’t have colleagues, but that wasn’t anything he was about to explain to Bracken. “Maybe it’s the other way around and whatever they’re into will bite me. Did you consider that, Finian?”

“Not at all. Would Agent Sharpe recognize you?”

“No.” Colin spoke with more assurance than he felt. Ultimately, what did he know about Emma Sharpe? He resisted more whiskey. “Finian, if I stick my nose in this business and the state guys don’t like it, they’ll figure out you sent me.”

“How?”

“Because it’s their job. Are you prepared for a couple of police detectives to knock on your door and ask questions?”

“Our conversations are confidential, Colin,” Bracken said, unmoved. “Of course, I realize you haven’t told me anything that’s classified. I doubt you’ve even told me the complete truth about your role with the FBI.”

“I haven’t lied.” Not technically, anyway. “And I wasn’t thinking about me.”

“Me? I’ve nothing to hide.”

Colin raised an eyebrow but noticed Andy, his lobsterman younger brother, enter the restaurant. Bracken rose and helped himself to another brandy glass from a sideboard, then sat back down and poured more whiskey as Andy headed for their table.

He was in jeans and an Irish fisherman’s sweater that had immediately endeared him to Bracken when they first met.

Andy frowned at his older brother. “I thought you weren’t coming back for a couple more days. The mosquitoes get to you?”

“The thought of whiskey,” Colin said. “I need to borrow a boat.”

“FBI business?”

“A boat’s the quickest way to get where I’m going.”

Andy didn’t argue. He was tall, muscular and, at thirty, still a heartthrob in Rock Point. “Take the
Julianne,
” he said. “Bring it back with a full tank of gas.”

“Am I getting it with a full tank?”

His younger brother grinned. “Hell, no.”

“Sorry I can’t stay. I’ll see you around.” Colin got to his feet before Andy could ask more questions or Bracken could think of something else for him to do. “Thanks for the whiskey, Finian. Don’t get my brother drunk.”

No one stopped him on his way out of the restaurant. He welcomed the brisk air as he walked back across the parking lot to his truck. The sun had already disappeared. He drove the short distance to the small Craftsman-style house he owned on a hill above the harbor. He’d bought it eighteen months ago, in a spurt of optimism between deep-cover assignments. It was his bolt-hole, although not for the reasons he gave his family and friends in Rock Point. He told them he needed an occasional change of pace from his bureaucratic desk job and life in Washington.

The reality was, he needed Rock Point to remind him that he had a life.

He unloaded his kayak and gear and dumped them on the back porch. He debated making a few calls about the situation at the convent just to the south but instead took a shower and put on clean clothes. He again skipped shaving.

Reasonably presentable, he walked back down to the harbor.

The
Julianne,
named for the daughter of its original owner, was still tied up at the dock. Colin jumped on board. He could have stayed in Maine and become a lobsterman. He could be one yet, especially if he got fired or the wrong people found out who he was, that he was still alive.

Had the attack at the convent put him at risk? His family?

Was
it about him?

Colin cranked up the old boat’s engine. The air was turning cool, crisp, but Heron’s Cove and the offices of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery weren’t far.

Emma Sharpe was a member of Matt Yankowski’s new team based in Boston. Yank, Colin knew, would welcome an excuse to put him behind a desk for real.

Another excuse, anyway. He was keeping a list of Colin’s transgressions. Not that Yank was alone, but he had been Colin’s friend and then his contact agent during two dangerous, grueling years of undercover work.

A strong breeze blew out of the southwest but it would be an easy boat ride south. Colin had made the trip to Heron’s Cove countless times, for work and pleasure, if never because of the presence of an FBI agent at the death of a nun.

How the hell had Sister Joan been killed under Emma Sharpe’s nose?

He glanced back at the houses and streets that made up Rock Point and noticed the steeple of Saint Patrick’s, Bracken’s small church, rising behind the town library. The Irishman was a mystery, but he was also one of the few people Colin trusted without question.

He just wasn’t sure why.

“Well, Emma Sharpe,” he said as he maneuvered the boat out toward open water, “let’s see what you were up to today at the Sisters of the Joyful Heart.”

5

EMMA COULD HEAR THE SISTERS SINGING IN THE chapel in the motherhouse as she climbed into her car just outside the main convent gate. The Maine CID detectives had finished interviewing the sisters one by one, and the medical examiner had removed Sister Joan’s body for autopsy. The search of the grounds for evidence and any sign of the attacker’s trail continued.

As focused as she was on her duties as a law enforcement officer, Emma nonetheless felt the pull of her former life—a yearning for the sense of belonging she’d once experienced with the dedicated women, many of whom she still considered friends, gathered now in mourning.

Two Maine CID detectives had interviewed her, too. Hindsight would do her no good now. What she could have, perhaps should have, done no longer mattered. She had to focus on making sure she hadn’t left out anything that could help find Sister Joan’s killer.

She took the winding road into Heron’s Cove, crowded with tourists on what was turning into a crisp, beautiful fall weekend, and parked in front of a yellow clapboard Colonial on a narrow, shaded side street two blocks from the village center. The house needed work. Even its roof sagged. But her brother, Lucas, who’d bought it six months ago, enjoyed a challenge.

It was dusk, the chilly air penetrating her leather jacket as she headed up the crumbling brick walk. Lucas burst out of the front door and trotted down the steps to greet her. He was in khakis and a dark sweater, his sandy hair and lean build reminding Emma of their grandfather in Dublin.

“Damn, Emma,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “I’ve been trying to figure out what to do since I heard the news. How close was this?”

“Not close enough. Otherwise I might have been able to save Sister Joan.”

Lucas winced. “Do you want to come inside and have a drink?”

“I can’t. My boss is driving up from Boston to see me.”

“Are you in trouble?”

She glanced at the yard, a mix of crabgrass and dandelions that Lucas envisioned turning into a garden. He’d already hired a landscape designer. He’d grown weary of living where he worked and had finally bought a place of his own, figuring there was no point in waiting for the right woman to turn up. At thirty-four, he was intensely focused on leading Sharpe Fine Art Recovery into the future and had decided to make changes.

Emma turned back to him. “I guess I’ll find out.”

“Matt Yankowski is my idea of a real SOB.”

“He’d probably consider that a compliment.”

Her brother’s good humor faded. “How well did you know the sister who was killed?”

“Very well. She was an early skeptic of my calling to a religious life. She was right, of course. I hadn’t seen her since I left the convent. It’s hard to believe it’s been four years. I should have gone back sooner.”

“Today wasn’t your fault, Emma,” her brother said.

She blew out a breath in an effort to push back her emotions. “Had Sister Joan been in touch with you recently?”

Lucas scooped up a loose chunk of brick and tossed it onto a pile by the steps. “I haven’t had any direct contact with anyone at the convent in months. We refer clients to them from time to time but haven’t lately. Why were you up there today?”

“Sister Joan called me this morning. She wanted my opinion on a painting. She said it wasn’t FBI business but she didn’t have a chance to go into detail.”

A breeze caught the ends of her brother’s hair. “What painting?”

“I don’t know.” Emma zipped up her jacket in the cool air. “There weren’t any paintings in the tower and nothing new had been logged in recently.”

“Could it have been a painting already at the convent? The sisters have a decent art collection themselves.”

“Sister Joan was taking me to the tower. I assume the painting she wanted to show me was there, for whatever reason.”

“Then whoever killed her took it.”

Emma nodded at Lucas’s stark words. “That’s what I think.”

“The police?”

“They’re not saying at this point. It’s not my investigation. It’s okay if I jump to conclusions. They can’t.” She swallowed past a stubborn tightness in her throat. “I shouldn’t have let Sister Joan get the gate key on her own.”

“If you hadn’t, you could be dead now, too.”

“I was armed, Lucas. We’d have a dead would-be killer instead of a dead nun.”

He eyed her with a dispassion that she’d come to respect—and that also reminded her of their grandfather. “You had no reason to think Sister Joan would be attacked.”

“I knew she was on edge. I knew she hadn’t asked me to come see her for old times’ sake. She didn’t want me to go through the meditation garden. It’s as if she had to remind me that I no longer belonged there.” Emma paused, not sure she could explain. Her brother had never understood why she’d entered the convent in the first place. No surprise. She wasn’t entirely sure that she understood anymore herself. “Another agent in my position might not have cared.”

“About violating the privacy of a convent for no good reason? You think so?”

“What would you have done?”

“Whatever Sister Joan asked me to do.” He gave Emma an irreverent smile. “Nuns scare me.”

She couldn’t resist a small laugh.
Nothing
scared her brother. “Thanks, Lucas.”

“Sure. You can stay here if you want. Fair warning, though. I think the place is haunted, and it has bats.”

“Your kind of house.”

He grinned. “That it is.” He cuffed her on the shoulder. “Hang in there, okay, kid? And if that SOB Yankowski decides to fire you, you know you always have a place back with the family biz. You can always sweep floors, file—”

“Bastard,” Emma said with a laugh, and headed back to her car.

Ten minutes later, Emma drove down a busy, attractive waterfront street of inns, marinas and graceful older homes, and stopped in front of the small, gray-shingled house that served as the unexpected main offices of Sharpe Fine Art Recovery. Her grandfather, Wendell Sharpe, had worked out of the front rooms and lived in back until fifteen years ago, when, in his late sixties, he’d decided to open up an office in his native Dublin.

Lucas had been tempted to move the offices to Boston, but Heron’s Cove was part of the Sharpe mystique. He’d finally opted to modernize and had worked up plans with a local architect to gut the place down to the studs. The process had started a month ago with relocating the offices temporarily to their parents’ house in the village. Since they were spending a year in England, the timing was perfect.

Emma had promised to come up one weekend and help clear out the attic and the living quarters.

It wouldn’t be this weekend, she thought as she walked around to the back of the house.

Matt Yankowski was standing on the grass at the edge of the retaining wall above the docks at the mouth of the Heron River. Two hundred yards to his left, past a parking lot and an inn, a deep channel led into the Atlantic. Next door on the right was a marina.

Yank gave Emma a sideways glance as she eased next to him. He was a tall, fit, good-looking man with silver streaks in his dark hair and an unrelenting toughness in his dark eyes. “I thought you came up here to pick apples.”

“I did.”

“The Sisters of the Joyful Heart have apple trees?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I had a local orchard in mind.”

A sailboat drifted past them, a scruffy white dog sitting in the stern. Yank said nothing. He was the senior agent in charge of a small, specialized team that investigated and responded to high-impact incidents involving criminals with virtually unlimited resources. HIT, for short. Four years ago, he’d personally recruited Emma to join the FBI. She’d left the Sisters of the Joyful Heart and worked with her grandfather in Dublin for a year before she finally called Yank and said she wanted to give the FBI a shot. Six months ago, he’d summoned her to his unit.

His days as a field agent were legendary. If he’d been at the convent that morning, Emma had no doubt Sister Joan would still be alive.

“When do you leave for Dublin?” he asked.

She didn’t let his seeming non sequitur throw her. Several weeks ago she’d arranged to spend a few days with her grandfather as he packed up his work and turned over the Dublin office to one of his Irish protégés. “Sunday night.”

“Good. I’ll carry your suitcase and drive you to the airport.”

A battered warhorse of a lobster boat passed them. Emma noticed the faded script on the stern:
Julianne.
She didn’t recognize the boat or the man at the wheel. He was big and broad shouldered with medium brown hair and a couple days’ growth of beard. A worker. She half expected him to catch her staring at him but he didn’t even glance in her direction. She imagined his life and then imagined herself with a different life, but she’d had different lives. A nun. A Sharpe art detective. Now an FBI agent.

Yank scowled at her. “What are you doing, lusting after lobstermen?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “There are worse distractions. Finding a dead nun would be among them.”

Emma knew better than to let him get to her. He’d straddled the supervisory and operational worlds for years but had always been more comfortable in the field. He looked out of place on the Heron’s Cove waterfront in his wrinkle-free charcoal-gray suit, striped tie and polished shoes. She doubted her lobsterman would mark him as an FBI agent, or even armed, but Matt Yankowski was both.

He was also frustrated, concerned and angry. Not everyone would notice. Emma did; she could see it in his rigid stance, the tightness at the corners of his mouth, the pinched look to his eyes.

Sister Joan’s inexplicable murder and her own actions that morning had gotten to Yank.

It hadn’t been a good day.

“Let’s go up to the porch,” he said. “We can pretend we’re normal.”

Emma nodded and followed him onto the back porch of her grandfather’s house. Yank glanced at an old metal wind chime that clinked pleasantly in the breeze. She wondered if he already knew it was one of Mother Linden’s early folk-art efforts, a gift to the Sharpes before she’d founded the Sisters of the Joyful Heart.

He ignored the wicker chairs set in front of a small table and instead stayed on his feet. He pointed at Emma’s right thigh, where she’d torn a hole in her jeans. “Hurt?”

“No.”

“There’s blood.”

“It’s a scrape, Yank. That’s all.”

“You got it jumping the fence?”

“Climbing the fence. It’s six feet tall. I’d have to be Wonder Woman to jump it.”

“Why was the gate locked?”

“I don’t know.” Emma, too, remained on her feet. “Sister Joan thought it would be unlocked. It’s standard to lock the gate when there’s a retreat at the convent. It deters visitors from wandering into the tower. That’s a work area. No one’s admitted without permission.”

“There wasn’t a retreat at the convent,” Yank said.

“And none coming in for the weekend. Technically, I had permission to be there because Sister Joan escorted me, but she didn’t tell her Mother Superior. That’s a violation of the rules.”

“Her violation. Not yours.”

Emma didn’t argue. Another sailboat maneuvered past them toward the marina. It was sleek, expensive. She couldn’t see a soul on board. Nightfall was coming earlier, the arrival of autumn already reducing the number of pleasure boats.

Her lobsterman had tied off his boat and seemed in no hurry as he rearranged traps stacked in the stern.

Yank stood next to her at the balustrade. “Why didn’t you go with Sister Joan to get the key?”

“She asked me not to. I respected her wishes. She had to go through a secluded meditation garden to get to the tower.”

“Ex-nuns aren’t allowed in this meditation garden?”

“No,” Emma said.

“It’s an either-or thing? Either you’re a nun or you’re not a nun? Ex doesn’t count?”

She kept her focus on the water, mirrorlike under the darkening sky, with the wind dying down. “It doesn’t matter. I waited by the gate.” Her voice was steady but she heard the anguish in it and expected Yank did, too. “I wasn’t in the tower when Sister Joan was attacked. I couldn’t help her. I didn’t get there in time even to get a description of her killer.”

“Damn.” Yank shook his head at her. “You
were
useless, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

“There’s a good chance this killer locked the gate, either hoping to buy time to steal any valuables before one of the sisters came by or already calculating that Sister Joan would have to go through the meditation garden to get the key.”

Emma could hear the gentle lapping of the rising tide on the rocky beach and the dock posts. “If the killer knew about the garden, then the attack wasn’t just a random act. He or she could have had the convent under surveillance for some time.”

“Or could live there,” Yank said.

“We can speculate until sunrise and not get anywhere.”

“Maybe you and Sister Joan would both be dead if you’d gone with her.” Yank paused, eyeing Emma. “Maybe more nuns would have been killed or injured if you hadn’t done exactly what you did.”

Emma banked down a rush of emotion that she didn’t want Yank to see, or perhaps even to acknowledge herself. She hadn’t just lived at the Sisters of the Joyful Heart’s convent for three years. She’d dedicated herself to their community, their mission, their charism. She’d believed she would live out her life at their isolated convent and be buried in its simple cemetery.

All in the past, but the past had roared back to her the moment she’d heard Sister Joan’s voice on her cell phone that morning.
“Emma. I need your help.”

“The investigation’s in Maine CID’s hands now,” she said.

Yank shook his head. “Not totally. Not when one of my people is involved.” He sat on a wicker chair and put his feet up on the table, next to a white mum in a clay pot. “I thought you were gutting this place.”

“We are—Lucas is. I’m only peripherally involved.”

“How come there are wicker chairs and mums on the porch?”

“We haven’t finished clearing out the living quarters yet. Might as well keep a place to sit out here as long as we can.” Emma wasn’t fooled by the casual conversation. Yank always had a purpose. “We can have nice days for weeks yet.”