The Whisper by Carla Neggers

Detective—come again anytime.”
    She retreated back up the walk to the house. Rafferty watched her a moment before turning back to Scoop. “Augustine’s arrest has made a lot of rich folks nervous. What an animal he turned out to be. The Carlisles had nothing to do with his violence. His dealings with them were strictly professional.”
    Scoop almost welcomed the cold drizzle. “You met the Carlisles when you worked security at the Augustine showroom?”
    “Yeah. Cushy job, guarding paintings and statues. This new job’s pretty cushy, too.” He withdrew a pack of cigarettes and tapped out one. “See you when they hand out your commendation for bravery. Enjoy the limelight while you can.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and nodded to Sophie. “Dr. Malone.”
    He went back up the walk. Sophie shivered again. “It’s colder out than I expected. I can feel fall in the air.”
    Scoop resisted an impulse to slip an arm around her. “You must be about dead on your feet.”
    “You, too,” she said, almost smiling.
    “We’re still on Irish time. I’ll walk you back to your place.”
    “As far as the Whitcomb is fine.”
    “You’re not very trusting, are you?”
    She laughed, tucking her hands into her sweater pockets. “I got on the same plane with you, didn’t I?” She glanced back at the Carlisle house, the front door shut, lights shining in the tall windows. “A bit different from Keira’s Irish ruin, isn’t it?”
    Scoop shrugged. “Right now I’ll settle for a bed and a blanket.”
    “Me, too,” she said, then caught herself. “I mean—”
    “It’s okay. You’re jet-lagged.”
    “Very jet-lagged,” she said, almost falling against him as she started down the street.
    Scoop walked alongside her to Charles Street. The rain stopped, but the wind picked up. She looked cold and tired, but she had the presence of mind not to go back into the hotel with him and instead continued on to her sister’s apartment on her own.
    A good thing, Scoop thought when he headed downstairs for a drink and a sandwich and found Bob O’Reilly at the bar.
    “When I was in Ireland and couldn’t sleep,” Scoop said as he eased onto a high stool next to Bob, “I’d sit up with a book and listen to the sheep and cows in the hills. In another twenty years, maybe I’ll retire there.”
    “In another twenty years,” Bob said, “you’ll be running the department.”
    “Nah. I’m no good at the politics.”
    Bob O’Reilly was a big, burly fifty-year-old divorced father of three daughters. The son of a cop, he’d wanted to be a homicide detective even before a young woman two doors down from where he grew up in South Boston was kidnapped, sexually abused and murdered. That was thirty years ago. He still carried a picture of Deirdre McCarthy in his wallet.
    Deirdre’s mother had told Keira the story about the three Irish brothers, the fairies and the stone angel that had taken her to theBeara Peninsula. But Patsy McCarthy had also told the story to Jay Augustine, believing he was a respected dealer interested in her collection of angel figurines—and he’d killed her. Keira and Simon had found her body.
    Bob drank some of his beer. His curly red hair was a tone lighter and brighter than Sophie Malone’s and touched with gray. Not good, Scoop told himself, that he was thinking about the shade of Sophie’s hair.
    He ordered a club sandwich and, following Sophie’s lead, added a Guinness to go with it. “Lizzie Rush booked me a room here,” he said. “She insisted.”
    “I’m in Keira’s place up the street,” Bob said. “I took the lace out of the windows, but it still feels like I’m a creep or something, sleeping in my niece’s apartment.”
    Scoop’s beer arrived. “Do you know Cliff Rafferty’s working security for a rich couple in Back Bay?”
    “Yeah,” Bob said, “I do.”
    “The Carlisles. Know them?”
    “Old-money Boston. I think it’s just the son left now. He did some