Heron's Cove

At least by winter the blasted bean-hole supper would be behind him.

A man in a black fleece jacket and baseball cap walked across the street from Hurley’s. Finian didn’t recognize him but the man approached him as if they knew each other. “Evening, Father. Nice night. Chilly.” The stranger hunched his shoulders. He looked fit, with fair skin and fine lines at the corners of his eyes. “Didn’t I just see you at Hurley’s with the Donovan brothers?”

Finian hadn’t noticed him. “Are you a friend of theirs?”

“Nah. I’ve never stepped foot in Rock Point until today. A kid sweeping the floors told me. Four brothers altogether. FBI, marine patrol, lobsterman, Maine guide. Tough guys. Their folks own an inn on the waterfront. The father’s a retired cop.”

“Are you asking me?”

“Just shooting the breeze. I needed to stretch my legs.” He ambled a few more steps up the street, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. “Colin Donovan’s the FBI agent brother, right, Father?”

“If you’d like, I can give him a quick ring—”

“Thanks, but I’m on my way to Heron’s Cove. It’ll be my first time there, too. I should let you get back to your walk. You serve a church here in Rock Point?”

“St. Patrick’s. We’re having a bean-hole supper next weekend. You’re welcome to join us.”

The man grinned. “I can’t remember the last time I was at a church supper.”

He said good-night, turned and walked back toward the harbor. Finian stood still, watching the man cross the street back to Hurley’s.

At least he hadn’t spoken with a Russian accent.

It was a fair guess that Colin’s secret work with the FBI involved Russians, Finian thought as he navigated the maze of now-familiar streets to the simple, stone-faced church and rectory that would be his home for at least a year. St. Patrick’s Church was a small parish, struggling more than some and less than others. A gnarled maple in front of the church had dropped all its leaves, but a river birch by the back steps—or what Colin had told Finian was a river birch—held on to its vibrant yellow leaves. The New England fall foliage season was as spectacular and festive as he had hoped and anticipated. St. Patrick’s bean-hole supper marked the last of the popular autumn suppers among the local churches.

Finian had no illusions that Rock Point and the people of St. Patrick’s had fully embraced him since his arrival in June. That was all right. His presence was deliberately temporary, and he was Irish and a different sort of priest—a widower who had lost his wife and two young daughters before turning to the priesthood.

He entered the rectory kitchen and pulled off his clerical garb, then slipped into a hand-knit Irish sweater. He went still, his pulse quickening as he noticed several envelopes on the floor by the old stove. All the windows were closed. Had he brushed them with his arm before he had left and simply hadn’t noticed?

He thought of the man who had intercepted him. Could he have sneaked in here before heading to the waterfront?

Why would anyone sneak into a rectory?

Finian started for the telephone to call Colin but stopped himself. The poor man was just back home after what had obviously been a difficult ordeal. Finian shook off his uneasiness. He hadn’t observed any sign of a break-in at the back door.

To further reassure himself, he checked the threadbare living room and dining room, but nothing was out of place, broken or disturbed. He had let his imagination run wild.

His gaze rested on a framed photograph on the china cupboard of his beautiful wife, Sally, and their sweet daughters, Kathleen and Mary, together on a sunlit Irish morning at their home above Kenmare Bay. They were smiling, and he could hear their laughter as he took the picture, only a few weeks before he lost them forever.

He didn’t come into this room every day, but when he did, he would see them. The pain of his grief was still there and he recognized—accepted—that it always would be.

But he hadn’t lost his girls forever. He’d lost them in this life.

They had gone to God and were at peace.

He left the dining room and checked the front door, discovering to his surprise that it was unlocked. Perhaps that oversight explained his sense of intrusion. With no evidence of a break-in, he had no reason to call Colin or the local police. He would feel ridiculous.

He returned to the kitchen and made tea as he opened St. Patrick’s well-worn file on the bean-hole supper. The menu was tried-and-true, unchanged in decades. Homemade baked beans, roast pork, coleslaw, applesauce, pickles, rolls and pies. The folder included handwritten recipes and instructions on digging the bean holes, building the fire inside them and burying the pots for the slow baking of the beans.

Well. Why not?

Finian settled back in his chair, reading the recipes and dismissing his stubborn sense of uneasiness as the result of having just enjoyed a bit of Irish whiskey with four intense Donovans.

5

EMMA WAS SURPRISED to find a rolling pin in one of Colin’s kitchen drawers. It had a worn, broken-in feel that suggested he had inherited it from someone else’s kitchen. She didn’t find a pastry cutter, but she used her fingers to work in the shortening and flour that a cupboard had yielded, another surprise. She managed to put together a respectable pie while Colin was drinking whiskey with his brothers and Father Bracken.

She leaned back against the sink and forced herself to focus on her surroundings and practice the kind of mindfulness she had during her days with the Sisters of the Joyful Heart. They had shared all the routine chores of convent life, hiring out only what they couldn’t do themselves. She had discovered purpose and comfort in preparing meals, cleaning, doing laundry, gardening—daily work that didn’t directly involve the sisters’ mission in art conservation, education and history.

A different life, and yet she still could draw on what she had learned during her time as Sister Brigid.

She smelled the apples bubbling in the oven and felt the warmth of the kitchen, noticed the reflection of the overhead lights in the windows. Colin didn’t have drapes or curtains, only natural-fiber shades. There were no plants or knickknacks on the windowsills, although he had left a small, rounded gray stone on the sill above the sink. He must have picked it up on a Maine beach. It was smooth, polished by the sea.

She heard footsteps outside and saw him in the back door window.

“I see you didn’t lock the door behind you,” he said, entering the kitchen. “I guess you’re not worried about intruders.”

“I guess not.” She smiled through her sudden, inexplicable tension. She had just been with him at Hurley’s, but his presence still was a shock to her system. She pointed at the gas stove. “I have a pie in the oven.”

“Smells good. Apple, right?”

“I had some Northern Spies in the car. I bought them at the orchard where we went apple-picking before you took off to parts unknown.”

He shut the door behind him, a stiffness to his movements that reminded her it had been only hours, not days, since his escape from killers. “That was a good afternoon.”

“One of those afternoons you never want to end.”

“You enjoy baking.”

“Most of the time. Baking helps me think.”

His smoky eyes narrowed on her. “What were you thinking about, Special Agent Sharpe?”

Dmitri Rusakov, a Russian billionaire. Ivan Alexander, a private security consultant who had started out as Dmitri’s bodyguard. Her week in London four years ago when she had met them, shortly after the disappearance of the Russian Art Nouveau collection Dmitri had discovered in the walls of his Moscow house sixteen years earlier.

She hadn’t heard from Dmitri since London, but she had heard from Ivan.

Three times, she thought. The third was last night.

All three times his information was valuable, provided with the understanding that she would utter his name to no one.

She stood straight, noticed the shadows on Colin’s face. “You must be exhausted.”

“Emma, Emma.” He took a dish towel she had forgotten about off her shoulder and set it on the counter. “You have a lot on your mind. Calls from confidential informants in the middle of the night. Russians in Heron’s Cove.”

Emma covered her surprise that he knew about Tatiana by turning on the faucet at the sink, washing a stray apple seed down the drain. “One call, and one Russian. I assume Yank told you about the call. Who told you about Tatiana Pavlova?”

“That’s her name—Tatiana Pavlova?”