“I will be watching over you. Somehow, I know I will be watching over you,” Bridey said. She did. She knew it. Already she felt so strong. Like running again, skipping, laughing…
The carriage would take her to the emerald hills, and there she would see so many people she had missed so badly for so many years, and she would run and skip and laugh.
Caer smiled. “Aye, I know you will be looking out for us.”
Bridey took her seat in the coach, no longer afraid.
As the coach took to the skies again, she looked back, and she felt a little pang. Caer was still standing on the hill, the breeze catching her beautiful dark hair and lifting it around the porcelain sculpture of her face. The air caressed the black silk mourning gown she wore, outlining her form. Caer lifted a hand, smiled and waved.
And Bridey rode on.
“It looks as if he was killed right here,” Zach told Morrissey.
Morrissey was apparently not a cold-weather fan. He was trying not to, but he was visibly shivering.
Four crime scene techs had accompanied Morrissey in the police patrol boat that had brought him out.
“I’d say he’s right,” one of the techs said. “No bird bleeds that much. And the sand…right there. You’ve got drag marks. Stay back, or you’ll compromise the evidence.”
There were drag marks. They had been smoothed over with some kind of makeshift broom, probably nothing more than a branch, but if you looked for them, they were there.
And they led to the water.
Two of the techs went out to Gary Swipes’s boat. Zach didn’t expect them to find anything there, since it was unlikely he had returned to it once he had reached the island, but they had to be thorough.
The police combed the island again, using waders to search the shallows, but there was no sign of Gary Swipes.
All he had left behind was a pool of blood on a dead bird.
Zach found himself searching through the small copse, examining the ground under the skeletal trees. Scrub grasses and a few hardy shrubs were clinging to existence there.
The area directly under the trees afforded no clues, but digging around in the shrubs, Zach discovered an object that didn’t belong.
A thermos.
A thermos covered in blood spatter.
He called the photographer over to get a picture of it in situ, then put on a latex glove and picked it up gingerly, and took it over to one of the crime scene techs to be bagged.
Phil Stowe looked at it forlornly.
“He was a tough guy,” he said thickly. “He could be a jerk, but he was a…decent guy at heart. He sure as hell didn’t deserve this.”
“What the fuck is going on out here?” Morrissey asked. “Shit!” It was the most anger—the most emotion of any sort—Zach had seen the guy display. “I thought I was giving him a break, giving him a chance to pocket some money—that ex-wife of his took everything. Some damned favor.” He shook his head.
“Someone will have to be out here all the time now. On the clock.”
The three of them were standing there, just staring at one another, when Morrissey’s phone rang.
He took the call, frowned, then looked at Zach as he flipped his phone closed. His expression was leaden.
“Zach, you’ve got to get back right away.”
Zach tensed. “What’s happened?” What the hell could it be? If there had been a problem, why hadn’t someone called him?
“That was Clara. She couldn’t reach you. They need you back at the house. Bridey passed away. I’m sorry.”
Amanda had taken to her bed in a fit of dramatics. Caer was with Kat, who was inconsolable. Sean and Tom had headed out, following Father O’Malley, to make arrangements with the church and the funeral home.
Clara was in no shape to deal with the situation, Marni thought. The old woman was family, too emotionally involved to be the hostess, so she decided to stay and help out.
Cal kept standing about awkwardly, or following her around, until he finally got on her nerves. She sent him off to the grocery and liquor stores with a list of things to buy. The O’Rileys were well-known in town. Everyone would be coming by to pay their condolences, and someone needed to be ready to welcome them.
Thank God the doctor had been there when Bridey died. That meant the O’Rileys wouldn’t be subjected to the official questions that were obligatory when someone died at home without a physician present. It was just the law, of course, but she knew it was difficult on those in the household. Her father had died at home, and the police had been forced to ask how and why. Without a doctor’s assurance of illness, a body would be subject to autopsy. Family members could wind up accused of murder. It was horrible, and Marni couldn’t even imagine Kat having to deal with such a situation.
She was just arranging glasses on a silver serving tray by the bar when she heard the door open. She rushed out to see who it was.
Zach.