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"NIAMH? WHO ON EARTH is that?" Eve felt the blood drain from her face. "This place belongs to Shauna O'Connor."
He clearly didn't believe her. "And how did you get inside?"
"Front door. The shop was open for business when I arrived."
He frowned.
"My plane from Minneapolis was delayed and I missed my connection in Amsterdam this morning. Some woman named Colleen was here, and told me Shauna had already gone. Now there's a crazy man who has locked himself in a back room and I think a woman might be seriously injured upstairs. Maybe he did it—or maybe it’s just a television left running. I can't get past the locked doors to check."
The officer blinked, his expression wary—as if he were assessing her for signs of mental illness. "We're responding to a call about a break-in, ma'am. From a young boy's ma, who said he was right upset. The boy described a coppertop intruder. Long hair. Slender." His voice dropped to a soothing tone. "And I believe that would be you."
She took a deep breath, trying to slow her tendency to babble under pressure. "C-coppertop?"
"Ginger." He spoke slower now, apparently so she could understand. "Red hair, if ye please."
"Strawberry blonde, actually."
"Yeah, well—everything will be just fine once we go for a little ride."
That meant going to a police station somewhere...and leaving that strange man to rifle through Shauna's cash register and possessions once Eve was gone. Any guy wearing a Miss Piggy sweatshirt and admitting to drug use posed a definite risk, far as she could tell. "Wait—you've got this all wrong."
"That's what we'll figure out at the Garda station. Come along, and we'll get you settled in the patrol car."
"But a woman upstairs may be hurt—and the man in one of the back rooms said he was on drugs, for Pete's sake," she said desperately. "Can't you check? Please."
The officer's left eyelid started to twitch. He sighed heavily, then motioned to someone who must have been standing in the front entryway, just out of Eve's line of sight. "Handcuffs, Garda McElligott?"
A woman cleared her throat. "Yes indeed, Brosnan. Policy."
A ribbon of panic sped through Eve, spurring her fear of being confined in any way. "No—please. I called for assistance, like I told you. Something is terribly wrong here."
"We'll get it sorted," the woman said politely as she moved to Brosnan's side. She was a good decade older than him, with a steely, no nonsense glint in her eye. "No worries if it's all just as ye said. But for now, I need ye to turn around with your hands behind your back."
"But—" an Irish jig started playing in Eve's jeans pocket, engulfing her with a sense of relief. "Please—can you grab my phone and answer it? Or can I? This is Shauna O'Connor's ring tone. I've been trying to reach her for hours. She owns this place and can explain everything."
McElligott's narrowed gaze felt like a dagger piercing Eve's very soul. "Answer, but try anything smart and you'll be on the floor in the blink of an eye. Understand?"
"I have no doubt you could do it." Eve reached for her phone, withdrew it slowly, and raised it to her ear. "Shauna? I've been praying that you'd call me back."
"I am so, so sorry, Eve. My gran was in the emergency room. She has pneumonia and terrible bronchitis, and became so weak and dizzy that she fell in her garden."
"Is she all right?"
"She didn't break a hip, thank God. But I've got to stay with her this week, at least." Shauna sighed. "Which means I'll miss part of my writer's workshop, but she's more important to me than anything else. I'll still be crushed if I can't fly to Minneapolis to stay at your place, though. What a great time that would be!"
Eve glanced up at the female officer, who was glaring at her. "I need to put you on speaker phone. There's a bit of trouble here at the bookshop."
"Trouble?"
Eve switched the phone to speaker. "I've got two police—uh, Gardai—here who assume I broke in. I can't find any keys for the hallway doors. Can't find your list of instructions. These officers say the shop belongs to someone named Niamh, not you. There's also a crazy guy in one of the back rooms and someone upstairs has been screaming. Oh—and I hear a dog barking up there, too. But all the doors along the hallway are locked.” Eve took a deep breath. "Did you leave a TV on? I really hope so, because otherwise the person who screamed must be injured—but I can't get through any of the doors to find the stairs and check on her."
"Can the Gardai hear me? Make sure they can." Shauna cleared her throat. "The shop is still technically owned by my gran—Niamh O'Conner—but I run it now and I'm in the process of buying it from her. I'd put her on the phone but they've given her a sedative and she probably won't make sense. The Gardai can ask anyone in the village about me."
Eve glanced toward the back hallway, where Brosnan was industriously jiggling doorknobs to no avail. "And about the commotion upstairs? We really need to get up there, but your doors are massive and the locks—I've never seen anything like them."
"The keys are hanging on a hook in the closet next to the bathroom, underneath my Burberry winter coat. You won't be able to open the doors any other way. The building goes back to the mid 1700's, or so my gran says. The doors are massive oak with iron hinges, and when you get them open you'll see just how thick the stone walls are."
Brosnan glanced toward the front of the shop, nodded at her, and found the keys in the closet. Fumbling through the ring, he unlocked the door nearest the back entrance and stepped inside to search.
"What about the screaming?"
"That's just Maybelline, possibly the most obnoxious parrot on earth. We tried moving him to Gran's senior housing flat in Cork, but the stupid bird started ripping out his feathers and would not shut up. Scared anyone there who wasn't deaf, so he had to come back to the store. Gran loves the American crime shows, and that bird has watched way too much TV."
"Maybelline is a guy?"
"He belonged to a friend of Gran's, who passed away. Apparently Minnie thought he was a she."
So Maybelline would be the "creature" Colleen had mentioned. "And the barking dog?"
"Either Maybelline imitating Walter, or Walter himself—and by now that dog must really, really need to go outside. The garden is fenced so you can just let him out the back door."
Brosnan reappeared in the hall. "Storeroom. All clear."
He opened another door, and stumbled backward when a mass of white fur and long ears flopping like bird's wings thundered down the stairs and barreled past his legs to launch itself at the back door.
McElligott snorted, clearly not amused. "Let the poor thing outside, Brosnan," she snapped. "Before there's a mess to be cleaning."
Eve leaned closer to the phone and lowered her voice. "I suppose there's a good explanation for the man, then? Crotchety. Tall. Wearing what might be one of your Miss Piggy sweatshirts and nothing else. He seems a bit...tipsy. Mentioned drugs. Apparently he's camping out in a locked room on the main floor."
Shauna burst out laughing. "Devlin is still there? He swore he was going to hit the road ASAP."
"You know him, then?" Eve had a sudden vision of the man remaining a resident for the full two months of her stay. It wasn't a pretty thought. "Colleen mentioned him but seemed to think he was a stranger. I'm hoping the Gardai take him away."
"He's my brother, but she wouldn't know him. We grew up in Cork, and since I took over Gran's shop he hasn't come to visit. Until last night, anyway."
Had he been incarcerated somewhere? Eve considered more tactful words. "So...he works out of the country?"
"He's a photographer. Travels the world over."
Eve tried to imagine that and couldn't quite make the leap. "Really."
"He broke his right ankle last night, taking photographs out on the cliffs, so I had to drive out there to pick him up. We were both up 'til the wee hours this morning waiting around at the E.R. Our gran couldn't handle the stairs the last few years she was at the shop. So Devlin is actually in her old bedroom on the main floor."
"Still, you...um...may want to talk to him. He sounded high to me."
"He doesn't handle pain meds very well. He ends up either skipping the meds and bearing the pain, or he takes a half-dose and then he's loopy for days. A full dose usually puts him to sleep. Sounds like he opted for loopy."
Eve's heart sank. "So he won't be going anywhere for a while?"
"He told me he was going to leave first thing this morning, but obviously he didn't realize just how hard that would be." She chuckled. "I do wish I could've seen him in my sweatshirt—I could have teased him for years about Miss Piggy. He once mentioned that he sleeps in the buff, so he must've pulled it on when he heard something going on in the store."
"That's more info than I really needed," Eve retorted dryly.
"Don't worry about having him around for a while. He's a very independent guy. A loner, actually. I've got food in the upstairs kitchen and the main floor break room that both of you can have. But there's also a little pub two doors down with good bar food, and he'll probably just hobble down there for meals. You'll barely know he's around."
"Really." Even in a floppy pink sweatshirt, he'd still had the sort of presence, height and handsome, chiseled face that would make him stand out in any crowd. Not that she was interested by any means. "He appears to be a man who'll be hard to ignore."
"Not if he takes his pain medication as prescribed." Shauna laughed. "He'll be out like a light. He needs to go back for outpatient surgery on Friday, by the way. If you could help him get there, you could just close the shop while you're gone."
"You don't need to open that last door, Brosnan," McElligott called out. "There's a man resting in there. Don't disturb him."
She turned back to Eve with a thin smile. "While you two were talking, I texted the station and had the clerk do some checking. Your own 999 call was indeed received, just so you know, but the dispatcher saw we were already coming to this address and assumed it was a repeat call by the same person. He's new, and the sergeant will be discussing the incident with him today. And—" she tipped her head toward the cell phone in Eve's hand "—your friend's explanation of the shop's ownership and your presence here both check out. I apologize for our misunderstanding, Ma'am."
"Thanks. I do understand that things here looked a bit sketchy."
The woman offered her hand and a firm handshake. "We'll be off, then. Let us know if you need any assistance in the future."
Once the Gardai were gone, Eve locked the door behind them and began peppering Shauna with questions. "About all those instructions you left for me...where are they?"
"On the coffee table upstairs—I think. I was in such a rush to leave for Cork that I may have left them somewhere else. There should be four typed pages, stapled. I really am sorry about everything you've gone through. Two relatives at two hospitals in less than twenty-four hours has made me crazy."
"The instructions will explain how to run the register, right? About the heating system? When the trash is picked up? Where to go for groceries and such?"
"Uh...no." Shauna rattled off a lengthy list of additional instructions covering the dog, parrot and the bookshop. "My gran is waking up from her nap so I'd better go. Just call me anytime, okay? Or text. Thanks ever so much for taking on the store. Have fun in Ireland!"`
The dog started barking at the back door to be let back in.
From upstairs came the sound of the parrot screaming...followed by a string of colorful curses, and a perfect imitation of a phone ringing.
Fun?
These two months in Ireland had been a chance to return the huge favor Shauna had done for her while they were in graduate school together. It had also sounded like a great adventure. A trip of a lifetime that she'd never forget.
She laughed at her own naïveté as she went to let Walter back inside.
Between grumpy Devlin, a mouthy parrot and the dog, it could prove unforgettable, all right. She glanced at a calendar on the wall behind the front counter, flipped the pages, grabbed a marker and circled her last day—January 28th—in bold red, then turned to survey the charming shop.
It was warm and cozy, with the wonderful scent of books that had always made her feel a quiet sense of peace. But beyond that, the charming wreaths and electric candles in the front windows and the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree in the corner were poignant reminders of just how much she'd wanted to escape her family during this holiday season.
The joy, the festivities. The worried glances in her direction and the overly solicitous attention of relatives thinking they could help her forget what she never, ever could. Not in a hundred lifetimes.
Coming here had been the perfect excuse to get away.