“I’m oldest—and wisest—so I’ll go first,” Aidan said, smiling. “Zach, I’ve had your friend completely checked out, and I can’t come up with anything that contradicts what you’ve been told. She has no known association with any intelligence agency, either in the States, Great Britain or the Irish Republic. She’s absolutely clean. She got her nursing degree five years ago. She’s lived in Dublin all her life. Good grades in school…the whole kit and caboodle. She’s clean, Zach. Pure as the driven snow.”
Jeremy picked up when Aidan was done. “As to the arsenic, my experts all say it’s not a weapon any killer is going to use these days if there’s any possibility of an autopsy. It’s too easily detected, for one thing. They think you might be spot-on with the toxic mushroom theory. The delay in the advent of symptoms causes doctors to look for other possibilities first. By the time they’ve ruled those out, even if someone thinks of mushroom poisoning, the victim has passed the toxin via the violence of the very illness it caused. It can be especially dangerous in the elderly, because of the wear and tear it causes on the heart. In can even—as certainly happened in Sean’s case, whatever the cause—bring on cardiac arrest.”
“So, assuming that Sean was poisoned, it almost certainly happened here, in the United States,” Zach said.
“It’s a theory, but a good theory, I think,” Jeremy told him.
“So where are you with this?” Aidan asked. He’d always been the most serious of the three of them, and the death of his first wife had only made him more so.
Remarriage, however, had done wonders for him. His wife was filled with life, with a touch of the psychic about her, and Zach knew that they were both convinced that they shared the family plantation outside New Orleans with the remaining spirits of the past. But they were happy, and Aidan was a crack investigator.
“At the moment it’s impossible to know what happened first, Eddie disappearing or Sean becoming ill. Chances are the two things more or less coincided,” Zach said. “A few nights ago, we found ground glass in a pie Clara made, and more was found in several other jars of the same brand of blueberries. Not exactly a foolproof method of killing someone, but I’d bet cash money it’s connected. Yesterday, at the station, Jorey Jenkins—you remember him, his parents run the hardware store near the wharf—recognized someone on the grocery store security tapes as the same person who went out with Eddie. Problem is, the guy was obviously wearing a disguise. A very bad disguise. I don’t believe that Bridey’s passing had anything to do with any of this, by the way. It was just her time.” He took a deep breath and looked at his brothers. “I started digging out on Cow Cay after studying the charts Eddie had been reading, and then seeing the way someone—I’m assuming Eddie, since I know it wasn’t Sean—doctored one of the charts in Sean’s office. Detective Morrissey sent a man out to the island to keep an eye on things, and that man has disappeared and was presumably murdered. Again, no body. But this time there was blood. A lot of blood. Then there’s Caer.”
“She seems charming, and she’s absolutely gorgeous,” Jeremy told him. “Though I get the feeling you know that,” he added with a wink.
“There’s something…not right about her. She acts like she’s some kind of investigator, even though we know she’s not,” Zach said.
“You’ve never just asked her?” Aidan asked.
“Sure.”
“And what did she say?” Jeremy asked.
“She started out acting all innocent and swearing she was only here to take care of Sean,” Zach told them.
“As a good nurse should,” Jeremy said.
“Well, you met her in Ireland. Did you meet any of her friends?” Aidan asked. “How much time did you spend together over there?”
“Not much.”
“Maybe you should just take her at face value. Maybe everything about her is true,” Aidan suggested.
“Oh yeah? Last night she told me she’s a banshee,” Zach said dryly.
To his surprise, neither of his brothers laughed. They just stared at him.
“I did some research,” Jeremy said. “Like you asked me to. The legends are fascinating. Supposedly they were once beautiful women, and when they died, they were…recruited, I guess you’d say, to mourn and to help people cross over from this world to the next one. There are banshee laws, even. A banshee can take on human form, and it’s said that she actually enjoys it when she does. She gets to enjoy the pleasures of life once again. But she can’t remain, not unless she can find someone to take her place. But it has to be someone with a good soul. If she loses sight of honor and justice, and chooses someone evil, she’ll be damned for all eternity.”
“So you’re saying you think Caer Cavannaugh might really be a banshee?” Zach asked incredulously.
“No, of course not,” Jeremy told him.
“Then what are you saying?”
“Nothing—I’m just giving you the information you asked me for,” Jeremy said.
“I think we should all head out to the island,” Aidan said.
“The cops are out there now,” Zach said.
“I still think we need to get out there,” Aidan said. “And we should get going, so we can be back for tonight. Sean is having an old-fashioned Irish wake at the house, and we all need to be there to honor Bridey.”
“Right,” Zach said. “Let’s go get a boat and head out.”