The House On Willow Street (55 page)

“I told you I didn’t ring men,” Sherry went on, “I wait for them to ring me, and you said we’d do none of that ‘will I ring you/won’t I ring you’ stuff. And now, you haven’t rung me.”

“Sherry, I’m sorry,” Cashel said recollecting himself. “I meant to phone and I didn’t. I’ve been so busy since I got back here.”

“Oh, and
I’m
not busy,” Sherry said. “You know, I wish you’d been honest with me from the start.”

“I was being honest at the time,” Cashel said, “and I’m sorry for not phoning you, because I did mean to. I apologize. Let’s have dinner next time I’m in London—” he broke off. There was a silence. “Look, I really like you, but there’s someone in Avalon, the town I’m in at the moment where I’m restoring that old house, there’s somebody here from the past and . . .”

He couldn’t believe he was being so honest; this didn’t sound like him at all. Normally he’d have taken her out a few times, seen what unfolded, said:
Sorry, wrong time, wrong place, see you sometime.
But he felt he needed to explain, partly to her, partly to himself.

“There was a woman I was involved with twenty years ago and now that I’m back here, I need to see her again, and it would be unfair of me to be seeing you at the same time.”

“Right,” said Sherry. “I see. Rhona told me all about that. Well, good luck.” And he could tell from the tone of her voice that she didn’t see at all.

Cashel pressed end on his phone. That had hurt. He felt like a heel, and he didn’t treat people like that.

He was heading for his car, having decided to drive down to Avalon and get a cappuccino from Lorena’s, anything to
get his head out of the space it was currently in, when he heard a commotion from the house.

“Cashel, Cashel,” roared a voice, and he turned to see Freddie rushing toward him as fast as a man could rush when he was encumbered with a large beer belly and a pair of hobnailed boots. “Cashel, you’re not going to believe what we’ve found, you’ve got to come.”

“What now?” demanded Cashel.

“In the basement, it’s a hidden room, we’re trying to break through.”

The basement was a danger zone, full of special beams, steel girders supporting the old ceiling for fear it would collapse on top of them. It was a major job, Freddie had said, and for once, Cashel hadn’t contradicted him. Now Freddie and Cashel hurried through, wearing their hard hats. A group of men stood clustered around one end of the wine cellar. There had been no valuable bottles of wine left, nothing but cobwebs, dark corners, a smell of damp and spiders the size of your hand—or so the men had told Cashel.

“We’re nearly through, boss,” said one of the men, working with a crowbar.

“It was hidden behind this brick wall,” Freddie explained. “We were demolishing the wall to knock through to the wine cellar when we found it.”

Cashel peered past him to a cobweb-strewn door, double locked, and in front of that, a rusty iron gate like the one to the wine cellar, also locked. There seemed to be no way to get in except to rip the iron gate off the wall and then somehow gouge out the wooden door.

“Whatever’s in there must be worth something,” Freddie remarked. “They were sure keen on keeping it hidden. I’ve heard about old houses with these treasure rooms, but this is
the first one I’ve actually seen. You’d have thought they’d have opened it up before the house was sold. Unless they didn’t know it existed. Did you ever hear of a locked room when you were here, Cashel?” He’d stopped calling Cashel “Mr. Reilly” a long time ago, and Cashel didn’t mind. It was clear that Freddie was now entirely up to date on the gossip about Cashel’s mother having worked for the Powers, and his relationship with Tess Power. In a place like Avalon, few things remained secret for long. There were always old folk around with long memories, who were eager to talk once the correct amount of Guinness was put up on the counter in front of them.

“No, I never heard anything about a locked room,” said Cashel. “What would you keep in somewhere like that?”

“Lord, I don’t know,” said Freddie. “With rich people, it’s anybody’s guess. Some of these families hid away the mad relatives they didn’t want anyone to see—like your sister,” he roared, turning to one of the other men, and suddenly the crew were all laughing.

“Your sister?” said Cashel, looking at the one man in the crowd who wasn’t joining in the laughter. “I’m sorry to hear that. Does she have a . . .” he tried to find the correct word, “. . . problem?”

“Oh Lord, my sister is a problem,” said the other man, his face splitting in a wide grin. “I’ve never met a more temperamental woman in my life. She has her husband’s heart scalded.”

Again, roars of laughter.

“I have the use of my ears, you know,” said another man, obviously the temperamental woman’s husband. “It’s the decorating benders that are the worst. Now, the whole house has to be repapered. I only finished putting the bloody stuff up just before Christmas, and already she doesn’t like it. She’s gone off mushroom stripes, apparently . . .”

Cashel grinned and turned his attention to the men with crowbars, who’d now succeeded in wrenching the big steel gate off. Two more men moved in to start on the wooden door.

“It could be mummies,” said one man. “King Tut’s treasure.”

“They found that, you gobshite,” said someone else.

The old, decaying door was no match for the modern tools and finally, with a giant clang, it hit the floor. Torches were produced and Freddie handed one to Cashel.

“Do you want to go in first, seeing as it’s your house? Or will I lead the way in case there’s some mad dinosaur in there that’s been locked up for hundreds of years and is very hungry?”

Cashel laughed: “No, Freddie, I think I’ll go in first, but you can follow close behind in case the dinosaur needs dessert.”

Cashel walked in carefully. First, there was a low hallway and he had to bend down. He winced at the sensation of cobwebs and all sorts of things going through his hair—he wasn’t that keen on spiders—but now was not the time for fear. Then the hallway opened up into a bigger room that was at least thirty feet square. Cashel shone the torch around. There was nothing there.

“Hate to tell you, lads,” he roared out, “but someone else has cleaned out the treasure room.”

“Ah, for feck’s sake,” said a voice. “I thought we’d get some of the salvage money. Isn’t that how it works?”

“That’s at sea,” said another voice.

“Ten percent of nothing is nothing,” said Freddie, shining his torch around in case Cashel had missed anything.

Cashel was turning to leave when Freddie’s torch beam caught a little indentation in the wall on one side. He shone
his own torch at it. There was a small space, made by removing an old brick, and when he looked inside properly, he found an old leather box jammed in there. It took a minute or two to unwedge it, but it came free in the end.

“What have you got?” said Freddie.

“Don’t know,” said Cashel. He put his torch in his pocket. “Shine yours here, Freddie.”

The box was so old that the locking device fell apart when Cashel tried to open it. Inside was a necklace, covered in dust and mold, but it had clearly once been some sort of shiny choker.

“Diamonds?” said Freddie hopefully.

“Hard to tell,” said Cashel doubtfully. “It might be glass. I think everything that wasn’t nailed down was sold years ago.”

Well, it’s your glass now,” said Freddie. “Back out, lads—we’ve work to be getting on with.”

“It’s not mine,” said Cashel. “It’s the property of the Powers, whatever it is.”

“Are you sure?” said Freddie.

“Oh, I’m sure,” said Cashel. “This has obviously been in their family for hundreds of years, so well hidden they didn’t even know anything about it. No, this belongs to them.”

“Fat lot of good that’ll be to Tess Power if it’s not worth tuppence,” said Freddie. “Work, lads, come on.”

“Mara’ll know how to check it,” Cashel said. “Let’s get her here. Then I think it’s time I went to see Tess Power.”

Suki felt Avalon wrap itself around her like a fur-lined cloak from the moment she stepped off the bus. The people behind her were pushing to get off, so she had no time to experimentally
feel
what it was like to be home. She was just there. Home. Properly home, after so many years away.

Once, she might have minded people seeing her getting off the bus instead of arriving in a chauffeur-driven car—which was the way she had done it once, years ago. Gone were the Jethro years, when a bus trip or even a taxi were deemed too ordinary for the likes of her. She was a bus person now, no doubt about it. Funds demanded it.

The driver got off and wrenched open the luggage compartment in the side of the bus and everyone surged forward to grab their luggage. Suki had two bags, giant ones which had been classified as overweight baggage.

There was no such thing as overweight when you traveled on a private jet with TradeWind. Nor was it a problem when the publishers were picking up the tab. But there was nobody but Suki to pick up the tab now, and she’d had to pay the airline money she could ill afford for her speedy, uncoordinated packing.

January in Avalon could be freezing or mild, so she’d packed for all eventualities.

The driver offered to heft her bags on to the pavement. He was young, Eastern European from his accent, with pale skin and dark hair, very polite to everyone. He’d called her ma’am when she got on the bus. Probably thought she was as old as his granny—a thought which no longer horrified her.

“Thank you,” she said, and surveyed the town.

Avalon had changed in the years since she’d been gone. Her visits could have been counted on the fingers of one hand, and the last time had been what, well over four years ago? During her time with Jethro, at any rate; back in the crazy days.

It was prettier than she’d remembered, and more up to date. The cars weren’t the wrecked old sedans of her youth, and the place looked polished, more modern, despite what was clearly a deliberate attempt to emphasize its heritage.
The hotel was a case in point: in her youth, it had been a rambling place where farmers went on market day to fill themselves with giant plates of beef, spuds and turnips. Now, its beautiful old brickwork had been restored, arched stone windows re-created the sense of a Reformation monastery, and it had been renamed The Avalon Hotel and Spa instead of Lawlor’s Hotel, Fine Food & Drink.

The town square was now pedestrianized and glossy SUVs that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Hyannis Port were neatly parked in designated spaces. There was even a Maserati, sleek and gray like a waiting shark.

“Taxi?” said someone.

Mara had found a seat by the window of Lorena’s Café and was sipping her hot chocolate and enjoying a forbidden piece of red velvet cake, when she spotted the glamorous blonde woman standing at the bus stop. Even though Avalon was a tourist town frequented by visitors from all over the globe, the woman with the long mocha sheepskin coat thrown nonchalantly over her shoulders stood out. Her streaky platinum hair matched creamy retro sunglasses, even though nobody but people accompanied by guide dogs needed sunglasses in Avalon in January. Mara watched, transfixed, as the glossy blonde woman reached into a tan shoulder bag and removed cigarettes and a lighter. When she lit up it was like seeing Faye Dunaway in the original
Thomas Crown Affair
roll into town. Mara felt like a fourteen-year-old with her first girl crush. If she wasn’t totally in love with Rafe, gorgeous Rafe, she’d follow this woman like a schoolgirl.