Heron's Cove. Carla Neggers

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      She had sent the email at 8:00 p.m. Maine time, 1:00 a.m. in Ireland. Lucas had picked it up when he had awakened at seven in the spare bedroom of his grandfather’s Dublin apartment. Checking messages first thing, before he even crawled out of bed, was a habit he was trying, with limited success, to break. Given the five-hour time difference, there was even less point to diving onto his iPhone at first light in Ireland than in Maine, where at least he could rationalize that he wanted to stay abreast of what was going on in Europe.

      As it was, by the time he read Emma’s email, it was the middle of the night on the U.S. East Coast. He would have to wait several hours before he could call his sister for more information.

      Was Emma referring to Russian tycoon Dmitri Rusakov?

      “Bloody likely,” Lucas muttered, jogging past a curving ornamental pond, ducks grooming themselves in the rain-soaked grass.

      He slowed to a walk on a meandering path that led to a gate on the east end of the iconic green. The rain had let up but he was already soaked to the bone. Dublin was quiet so early on a drizzly Sunday morning. He crossed the normally busy street and continued into the heart of residential Georgian Dublin where his grandfather had lived for the past fifteen years.

      Three days ago, Lucas had seized on the disruption of the renovations at the Sharpe house in Heron’s Cove as an excuse to fly to Dublin. He had barely had time to adjust to Irish time and get over jet lag before he had received Emma’s urgent message.

      Having a sister who was an FBI agent had its drawbacks, but Lucas didn’t doubt that she was as concerned about their grandfather as he was. Ostensibly Lucas was in Dublin to check out the status of the Sharpe Fine Art Recovery office there, but he was also checking out the status of his grandfather. His health, his well-being, his plans for the future.

      Easier said than done with an independent-minded old codger like Wendell Sharpe, Lucas thought with a sigh of exasperation.

      He came to the narrow brick town house where his grandfather had an apartment. Born in Dublin, Wendell Sharpe had been just two when he had left Ireland with his parents for Boston. They soon moved to southern Maine, where his father had worked as a property manager and his mother as a domestic at large summer homes. Wendell had started out as a security guard at a Portland museum, ultimately finding his calling in investigating and recovering missing fine art and antiques.

      His decision to open a Dublin office and return to Ireland had been a surprise, but it had also worked out well. At first, his only son—Lucas’s father—had run the Heron’s Cove office. Then a fall on the ice landed Timothy Sharpe in chronic pain, and bit by bit Lucas took over.

      Now in his early eighties, Wendell, a widower for almost two decades, was giving up day-to-day work in the business to which he had devoted his life and edging into retirement, or at least semi-retirement.

      Lucas went around back and ducked through a gate onto the terrace and into the kitchen. It was past eight but still no sign that his grandfather had yet rolled out of bed. Lucas was dying for coffee but returned to the small guest room and stripped off his wet clothes, leaving them in a heap on the tile floor. He pulled on a robe and headed for the apartment’s only bathroom.

      A hot shower, shave and dry clothes didn’t ease his tension.

      He headed back to the kitchen, filled the electric kettle with tap water and plugged it in. He dumped loose-leaf Irish Breakfast tea into an earthenware pot for his grandfather and fresh-ground beans into a glass coffee press for himself. By the time he had tea and coffee steeping, his host entered the kitchen dressed in dark gray wool trousers, a crisp white shirt, black vest and red bowtie.

      “It’s Sunday, Granddad,” Lucas said.

      “I thought I might go to church. Don’t worry. The rafters won’t cave in. I’ve been going more frequently in recent months.”

      Lucas was worried, although not about his grandfather’s churchgoing habits. “I just don’t want you to be depressed,” СКАЧАТЬ