The Man On The Cliff

“You’ve lived in Cragg’s Head for a long time?”

“My whole life.” Annie gestured to the stack of wooden desks in the corner. “Until this year, this room used to be a classroom. Caitlin sat at one of those desks in this room and so did I…” She smiled. “Too many years back to remember. My father and grandfather tilled those fields out there. We’ve been here for as long as anyone can remember. Pat’s family too.”

“It must be nice to have that sense of continuity,” Kate said, recalling her own childhood. “My dad was always getting transferred. By the time I was nine, I’d been enrolled in a dozen different schools.”

“Ah God.” Annie gave Kate a horrified look. “What kind of a start in life is that? Your mother didn’t mind it then?”

“Well, they finally got divorced, so she probably did. But she tended to go along with whatever my father wanted and he was always looking for something he never seemed to find.” With her finger, she pushed scattered paper clips into a pile, lost for a moment in her thoughts. “We did okay, I guess. My brother and I. We both got decent grades. We made friends.” She grinned at Annie. “Of course they never lasted long, but then we made new friends.”

Annie clicked her tongue. “Sure, it would be like pulling up the daffodil bulbs every morning to see if they’re growing,” she said. “If you dug me up and put me somewhere else, I’d not be the same person.”

“In California, where I live,” Kate said, “almost everyone is from somewhere else. People talk about putting down roots and that sort of thing, but it’s more like we’re seeds blown on the wind. You could land anywhere and, just as easily, pull up and go somewhere else.”

Annie shook her head as though the thought were too outlandish to comprehend.

“That’s why you’re not married,” she finally said. “You’ve no idea who you are or where you belong. Come to think of it, that’s probably Hughie Fitzpatrick’s problem. Him growing up on the Maguire estate as he did. Like planting a potato in among the roses and expecting it to grow petals. Sure, who wouldn’t be confused?”

SHE WASN’T JUST CONFUSED, Kate thought later that morning as she sat at a small desk in Annie’s front parlor, she was besotted. For the last hour she’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to focus on the notes from an interview she’d just completed with an old school friend of Moruadh’s, but her brain was refusing to cooperate. All it wanted to do was think about the gray-eyed man. The man on the cliff.

Why had she turned down his offer of a ride home? Maybe he would have asked her out. Dinner perhaps. A little pub with mullioned windows and a fireplace. The stories of their lives exchanged over a couple of Guinnesses.

She shook her head to clear the images. You’re in Ireland to work. Not for a fling. She drank some coffee from a cup patterned with pink cabbage roses, picked a raisin out of a piece of soda bread, wrote three headings on her yellow pad: Accidental death. Suicide. Murder.

The school friend had said that Moruadh had occasionally suffered with bouts of depression. Spells, she’d called them. Kate recalled her mother’s incapacitating depression after the divorce. Days when she never left the bed.

But there were degrees of depression. From the friend’s description, Moruadh’s appeared to have been of the mild blues variety. Kate got up and wandered over to the window. Beyond Annie’s neatly planted front garden, she saw the dark turrets of Buncarroch Castle looming in the gray air. Something almost sinister about it. If Moruadh spent much time there, no wonder she’d had fits of depression.

Kate made more notes, drank some more coffee. Found her thoughts drifting back to the gray-eyed man. An Irish accent, but overlaid with something else. An expensive education maybe, or years abroad. She tried to re-create it. What had he said? ‘Just remember, the right side is on the left.’ Even now, she could feel this little tug in her stomach as she pictured him.

Restless, she got up from the table and wandered upstairs to her room. Maybe a little fling might have been fun. Since they didn’t exactly live within commuting distance, she wouldn’t be screening him as a husband candidate. Obviously nothing could come of it. Why not enjoy herself while she was here?

At the dresser, she stared at her reflection. Long red hair she’d worn the same way since she was about fourteen. Hanging loose down her back or tied up in a ponytail. Freckles she didn’t try to cover because she hated the feel of makeup on her skin. She picked up a brush and ran it through her hair. Not that there was much point in thinking about flings, she’d probably never see him again. Although, as Annie said, Cragg’s Head was a small place. She’d seen him twice already. Maybe she should take another walk.

Outside, a car door slammed, and she ran to the window. With a pang of disappointment, she saw that the car at the curb was a light green Gardai car, not a dark green Land Rover.

Get over it, she told herself as she watched Rory McBride get out. The guy doesn’t even know where you’re staying. She heard the front door open and close, then Rory’s voice calling her name.

Thinking of the strange exchange with him the night before, she hesitated. She was alone in the house. Annie and Patrick wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours, and Caitlin was at school. Paranoia, she decided. It was broad daylight and his car was parked outside in clear view. And this was Ireland, not Santa Monica.

She closed the bedroom door behind her. He stood at the foot of the stairs, backlit by the amber light streaming from the fan-shaped window above the front door. He wore a navy overcoat over his blue uniform.

“Hi.” She smiled at him from the top of the stairs. “You caught me here between interviews. I was just going over my notes. What’s up?”

“I saw your car outside.” He pulled off his cap, shook raindrops onto the rug. “It’s a lovely country, Ireland, they just need to put a roof over it.”

“Well, at least the rain’s let up a bit,” she provided. No Irish exchange, she was learning, could start without a comment on the weather. “Maybe it will clear up tomorrow.”

“Let’s hope so.” Holding his hat in both hands, Rory smiled hesitantly, like a suitor come to call. “I wondered…could I have a word with you? If you’ve a minute, that is.”

“Sure.” She ran down the stairs and led him into the sitting room where her notes were still spread out over the desk. “Want some coffee?” She gestured at the pot. “I can make some fresh.”

“I don’t. Thank you, though.” He unbuttoned his coat and sat down at the table. “You might have wondered a bit about last night. My telling you I wasn’t up there on the cliffs, I mean.”

Kate, glad that at least one of the mysteries was cleared up, decided that no response was necessary.

“The thing is, I love Caitlin.” He stuck his finger into the neck of his blue uniform shirt. “Sure, we’re getting married in June, and Annie, well, she’s like my own mother. But, see, yesterday I went into Galway to meet Elizabeth, the girl who’s staying with Annie.” Eyes downcast, he appeared to be composing his thoughts. “We’d just come back when you saw me in my car up on the cliffs but, uh, we had a few words and she left.”

“And you didn’t want Caitlin and Annie to know?” Kate watched his face. “That’s why you said it wasn’t you I saw up there?”

“Right.” Faint relief flickered across his face. “Honestly, there’s nothing at all between me and Elizabeth, but Caitlin…well, she’s a bit green-eyed, if you know what I mean.”

“Does she have reason to be?”

“She doesn’t, no. I sowed my wild oats some time ago.” He smiled at her, his eyes exactly the same blue as his shirt. Easy to understand why Caitlin would find him attractive, although she suspected that Caitlin’s jealousy wasn’t unfounded.

“So you’ve no idea where Elizabeth is?”

“I have not.” His look suggested the question was stupid. “Would I be letting Annie worry if I knew where Elizabeth was?”

“Well, I’d hope not,” she retorted and then something occurred to her. “By the way, did you check out whatever it was I told you I saw on the cliffs?”

“I did. Up and down the footpath. There were a few people about. Teenagers. Probably a couple of them larking about was what you saw.”

“Probably.” She folded her arms across her chest. He clearly wanted her assurance that she wouldn’t blow his cover, but something about the whole thing made her uncomfortable. “I don’t know your relationship with Elizabeth, but…” She put her hand up to stop his protest. “I’m not going to lie to Annie or Caitlin.”

“I’m not asking you to lie. You don’t have to say anything. They think I was seeing into a car crash, and that’s what I want them to think. Besides, Elizabeth’ll show up tonight and the whole thing will blow over.”

She met his eyes for a moment. He reminded her a bit of her younger brother. Before Ned had married and settled down, he’d come to her to bail him out of various scrapes he’d gotten into. He’d go into some torturous explanation of what had happened and then look at her, anxiety all over his face, as he waited for her reaction. Just the way Rory McBride was looking at her now.

“Listen, Rory. I’m going to tell you something about myself. I can’t stand liars. And I can’t stand cheating men. And, trust me, I’ve had plenty of experience with both.” Kate saw the flicker of interest in his eyes as though what she’d said had cast her in a slightly different light. “Here’s the deal. I won’t bring it up, but if anyone should ask me whether I saw you on the cliffs last night, I won’t lie, either. Okay?”

“Right.” He gave her a little smile. “Thanks, Kate.”

“And I better not find out that you were cheating on Caitlin.”

“I told you, I love her.”

“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. “I’m not much of a believer in that sort of thing.”

He grinned, relief now clear on his face. “Your work’s going well, is it?”

“Not bad. I did a phone interview this morning and I’ve got another one later today. Niall Maguire wasn’t in when I stopped at the castle. You wouldn’t happen to know if he’s in town?”

“He is. I saw him myself not an hour ago. You’ll have the best chance of meeting him if you go directly up there.” He frowned down at the table, started to speak, then stopped. A moment passed. “You’ll want to be careful, Kate,” he finally said. “With Maguire, that is.”

“What d’you mean?”

“It’s like I was saying last night, he’s a bit—” He stopped as though a thought had occurred to him and shrugged. “Sure, you probably think I’m a fine one to talk, after what I’ve told you, but Maguire…well, he has an eye for the women. He’s a fancy photographer of some sort. Does those big glossy picture books. There’s always one woman or another up there visiting him.”