Free Carla Neggers by Declan's Cross Page A

last?”
    “Friday, after she got back to Dublin and found out her father was on his way. We only talked for a minute. We emailed a couple times after that.” Brent shut the van doors and lifted the tank. “She gave me her father’s cell number. If he’s still in Dublin, he’ll be at a five-star hotel. His name’s David—David Hargreaves. We’ve never met, but I’ve done some diving for the Hargreaves Oceanographic Institute. I hear he’s a good guy.”
    Sean could see that Brent was impatient to get on with his work and left him to it. Whether it was cynicism or experience, Sean doubted Lindsey Hargreaves was going to the trouble of launching a research facility simply out of devotion to marine science. Brent Corwin was a dedicated adventurer, good-looking, energetic. Eamon Carrick and his diving friends were the same. Temptations, perhaps, for a young woman with no clear direction in her life.
    There was also her father, perhaps not an easy man to impress.
    Sean didn’t know Lindsey well enough to have a good feel for what motivated her, but David Hargreaves’ impromptu stop in Dublin could have thrown her off just enough that she’d forgotten to pick up her new friend in Shannon.
    “A bored man you are, Sean Murphy,” he muttered, his teeth clenched as he walked into the village, knowing his next stop would be the O’Byrne House Hotel.
    Fool that he was.
    * * *
    Rave reviews and word-of-mouth of delighted guests had helped keep a steady flow of guests at the O’Byrne House Hotel since it opened its doors a year ago, but November was quiet. Sean went through the back gate and didn’t run into another soul in the gardens. Pretty Kitty O’Byrne Doyle had seen to every detail in transforming her uncle’s crumbling mansion, shrouded in cobwebs and overrun with mice, into a modern, elegant hotel that was at once tranquil and cheerful. He’d heard it was doing well. No doubt. Everything Kitty touched was a success—except, at least in her mind, her teenage son, Philip, who gave her fits.
    Sean found the lad alone in the bar lounge, unloading a tray of fresh glasses onto a head-high shelf. Philip Doyle had his mother’s blue eyes, dark hair and spirited temperament and his father’s stubborn jaw and ambition. One minute he was eighteen going on thirteen—angry, sullen, easily bored—and the next, eighteen going on thirty—strong, mature, solid. He’d moved to Declan’s Cross with his mother two years ago. He hadn’t wanted to. He could have stayed in Dublin with his father, a banker, but he hadn’t. And he hadn’t gone back to Dublin since he’d finished school.
    He glanced up and said, “Garda Murphy,” with just enough sarcasm to be annoying but not enough for Sean to haul him out from behind the bar by his shirt collar.
    “Not diving today?” Sean asked.
    “I went out early with Eamon Carrick and a couple of his friends.”
    As if it’s any of your business, his tone said.
    Sean sat on a high cushioned stool at the polished wood bar, saved from the original fittings in the house and refurbished to Kitty’s specifications. She had a background in business but loved this place. She and Aoife had been coming here since they were babies. Sean couldn’t recall when he’d first noticed them. By the time Kitty was seventeen, for certain. By eighteen, she’d been in love with her banker, William Doyle.
    “Where did you go?” Sean asked her son.
    Philip took the last glass from the tray and set it on the shelf with the others, all sparkling in a sudden ray of sun that was there and then gone again. “We went out to the Samson wreck off Ram Head in Ardmore.”
    “I know the spot.” In 1987, a trawler had run aground, its hulking, rusting wreck an eyesore to many but a popular spot for divers. “How well do you know these lads?”
    “Well enough. I’m learning a lot from them. They’re more experienced divers than I am.”
    “Diving is an expensive hobby.”
    “It’s not just a