The Celtic Riddle

"Lara," Rob exclaimed as I'd walked up to the bar. I wasn't sure what the tone meant. I suspected it wasn't Lara as in Lara-I'm-so-delighted-to-see-you. He'd picked this bar a couple of blocks from the Inn, in hopes I wouldn't find him, I'd warrant. "Lara, I'd like you to meet Maeve Minogue. Maeve, this is my associate Lara McClintoch." Associate? I see. "How do you do," I said, shaking her hand. She had a very firm handshake.

"It's grand to meet a friend of Robert's," she said. "We're all enjoying having him here."

Who is we, I wondered. The name Minogue was familiar, but it took a minute or two for me to twig to it. This woman was the "chap" Minogue Rob had talked to at the police station. It gave a whole new meaning to the term "improving international relations," to use Rob's own words, and the fact that he'd used the term chap to describe her spoke volumes of his intention to keep her a secret from me.

"Well, Robert," I said, sweetly. "Perhaps you'll excuse me while I go and sit with another of your associates. Lovely to meet you, Maeve."

I went and sat with Alex, trying not to huff. This was a development I found intensely irritating, although I don't know why it incensed me so much. Rob is, after all, free to do as he pleases. I have no claim to his affections. Occasionally, I wonder if he might make a suitable partner for me, but really our lives don't seem to work out in that direction.

When I first met him, he was living with Ms. Perfect, and I was in a long-distance relationship with a Mexican archaeologist. Then I was free, which is to say I got dumped, but Rob was still with Barbara. Then Clive, my ex-husband, persuaded his second wife, Celeste, to buy him the store across the street from Green-halgh McClintoch, setting me off into a fury and putting me off relationships with the opposite sex for some time. After a while Clive ditched Celeste and took up with my best friend Moira, about the time Rob and Barbara parted company. Rob expressed mild interest in me at that time, at least I think he did, but Iwas so traumatized by Clive and Moira, that I ignored him, or at least chose not to notice.

As I think about this, I am beginning to wonder if I might have a career as a scriptwriter for afternoon television, drawing from my own life experience for the plots, should the antiques business, perilous at the best of times, not work out. I do know that as someone who has seen the dark side of forty, I should probably just reconcile myself to the single life, and take up needlepoint, or something, to fill the long evenings, but I don't. Like many of my generation, I feel younger than my years-or at least I delude myself that I do. I no longer feel as if I could live forever, but I don't feel old, either. I am, however, at the stage in life where men my age appear to prefer younger-much younger-women. That made Ireland, that through some demographic anomaly having to do with emigration rates and such, has a population 5percent of which is under the age of twenty-five, pretty much a paradise for forty-somethingish guys like Rob.

But I digress. The final and deciding factor in my renewed resolution to find the treasure was a series of events that took place as Alex and I left Second Chance after our unpleasant session with the inhabitants, to head back to the village. It was late afternoon as I negotiated the rental car down the long driveway toward the main road. It had begun to rain quite hard, and Michael was nowhere to be seen, having presumably gone indoors for shelter. The windshield wipers were waving hypnotically in front of me, and the defroster was working overtime to clear the fog from the windshield. As I rounded a turn a hooded figure stepped out from dense brush at the side of the road and into the path of the car. I slammed on the brakes but, forgetting I was driving a standard shift, didn't depress the clutch in my hurry. The car jerked along then stalled a few feet from the figure.

I rolled down the window and peered out at the face under the hood. It was Deirdre, and she looked genuinely frightened, a trembling little bird on scrawny legs, her hair matted from the rain, despite the hood. "Stay away from Second Chance," she said breathlessly. "You have no idea what's going on here. This family is cursed!" Then she looked over her shoulder and quickly stepped back into the brush and disappeared.

Then I saw what might have startled her. Sean McHugh, son-in-law number one, was walking down the drive toward the house. He was, like his brother-in-law, fair, but a little softer looking, a little jowly perhaps, and less threatening in demeanor, though not, in this case, in stance. He was still in his tweeds and high boots, but he'd added a rain cape swirling behind him-the aforementioned country gentleman look- except that he wasn't looking particularly gentlemanly. He was carrying a gun, a rifle, slung over one shoulder. Even though it wasn't pointed at us, it was an unpleasant moment.