Free The Book of Killowen (Nora Gavin #4) by Erin Hart Page B

ranged around the room, exploring. She peered through a small window into the steam bath; behind a folding screen at the opposite end, she found a massage table and a large oval tub sunk into the floor, with steps spiraling down along the rim. Nearby shelves held stacks of folded towels, bath salts, and dried seaweed in large apothecary jars. Alongside the jars lay several long clear plastic tubes, cinched at each end with metal clasps. Nora picked one up. “Tir na nOg,” read the brand name in large letters on the label, “Authentic Irish Moor Peat.” She’d heard of spas where you could steep in a hot peat bath, or detoxify by smearing moor mud on various parts of your anatomy. The scientist in her naturally discounted most of the outrageous health claims, but peat did have some pretty remarkable chemical and biological qualities that weren’t completely understood. Maybe she ought to give it a go, although her main concern at this point was getting at the muck lodged under her nails.
    She kicked off her shoes and felt a delicious warmth radiating from the stone floor. Turning on the taps, she began to fill the tub, thinking about what she’d seen so far of Killowen. Through the French doors inthe kitchen, she had spied a large empty room in the adjoining wing that looked almost like a yoga studio. She’d still not seen any of the residents besides Claire Finnerty, but they must have staff. It would take a lot of effort to keep this place running. Especially if most of the food came from the farm. Claire had explained that residents and guests took meals together in the main kitchen; the rotating cooking detail and menus for the week were sketched out on a chalkboard on the wall. Communal living did seem to have some advantages. Nora supposed her own current arrangement with Cormac and his father had similar perks and pitfalls. But the homemade bread and cheese she’d just consumed let her imagine an idyllic existence here: What could be better than following the creative impulse, living on the bounty of the earth just outside the door? Of course there must be downsides: lack of privacy, for a start, which she understood firsthand. And there were always undercurrents of tension wherever human beings tried to work in concert. No doubt the rifts would become apparent the longer she stayed. But at least for tonight, it seemed easy enough to admire the beautiful façade.
    When the bath was full, she stripped off her clothes and lowered herself into the water, snipping the end off one of the tubes of moor peat and squeezing it out onto her knees. This peat was the next thing to mud, but not remotely mineral—its texture was smooth and silky, its color the darkest chocolate. She rubbed the ooze between her palms until it finally dissolved, turning the steaming bathwater a dark brown. This was the same peat that preserved bog butter, wooden roads, all those ritual sacrifices. Ten thousand years, that’s how long it had lain in a suspended state in the bottom of a bog, and now it was being disturbed, for what? Beauty treatments whose effects were at best transitory. The impossible quest for youth. She thought of all the endangered bogs and suddenly began to feel guilty for enjoying the fruits of such exploitation.
    As she closed her eyes, the vision of the two men in the car boot resurfaced—limbs at all angles, intertwined like two figures in a medieval knotwork design. The first corpse she’d already begun to refer to as Killowen Man, with his delicate hands and cutwork shoe, who, despite being dead, had also become a miraculous survivor in a way. She was eager to begin learning more about him tomorrow. Those cuts in his garments said he hadn’t simply fallen into a bog and drowned, but his remains were too recent to have been a ritual sacrifice. So maybe he wasthe victim of a crime of passion, a domestic dispute, or a robbery gone wrong? One thing was certain: people murdered one another centuries ago for the very