The Celtic Riddle

"I don't think your mother likes him," I said. Now that was an understatement. I hoped we weren't already too late, and the family wasn't slurping turtle soup even as we spoke. "Michael!" she exclaimed. "Will you get Vigs out of there for me?"

"I will," he replied. "I'll take him to my place."

"Tonight!" she said.

"Yes, all right. Tonight," he agreed.

Alex and I walked them to the door. "Can I give you a lift?" I said.

"No, but thanks," she said.

"I'll walk you to the bus, Bree," Michael said.

She smiled at him. "Only if you promise me you'll go to the house and get Vigs afterwards," she said.

"I promise," he said. "I'll go tonight for certain. I'll creep in, so the family won't hear me, and spirit old Vigs away. I'm going to start looking for the treasure tomorrow," he called back. "First thing. It's my day off. Will you help us find it?"

I looked at Alex. He nodded. "Okay," I said. "Why not?"

"Do you promise?" Michael asked.

"Yes, I promise," I said.

He grinned. "Good. Let's get an early start. I'll be here at eight tomorrow morning. Okay?"

"Okay," Alex and I said in unison.

The street was slick with rain, but only a light drizzle was now falling. The air felt fresh and good after the heat and smoke of the pub. Several people were out on the street, their collars turned up against the damp. A few yards away, Fionuala was getting into her car, and idly, I wondered where her husband, soon to be ex, was. It was definitely, I decided, none of my business.

Alex and I stood watching Breeta and Michael until they were almost out of sight, he walking his bicycle with one hand, holding Breeta's hand with the other. It was the happiest I'd seen her, and him for that matter, and I couldn't bring myself to tell them that Amair- gen's clues led just about nowhere, that the second clue, retrieved with such drama, contained the same old chicken scratches the first one did. It could wait until tomorrow.

"Eight o'clock tomorrow," he called back again, just as they were about to round a corner. "I'll be at your door at eight."

As I watched them disappear around the corner, I had this flash of insight the way you sometimes do. It was hard to tell with that layer of insulation about her, but I was pretty sure I knew who the all of us that Michael had room for were. It was Michael, Breeta and her as yet unborn child. Breeta Byrne was pregnant.

Chapter Seven. THE BEAUTY OF A PLANT

WE found Michael in his garden, among the roses, out of sight of the house. Eight o'clock had come and gone; then eight-thirty; then nine. He was lying facedown, and from the look of the tracks in the mud behind him, he had dragged himself a hundred agonizing yards before he died. There was not a mark on him that I could see. But if John Herlihy had not fallen forty feet onto a pile of rocks, perhaps there'd have been no mark on him either.

Better trained eyes than mine found the tiny tear in the fabric of his jeans, the puncture in the skin behind his knee. "Poison," they said. "If only someone had found him in time."

In his rigid hand, Michael held a torn piece of paper so tightly it was as if he'd wrestled the Devil himself for it. EONB, it said, and Second Cha. The ragged clue was marked as the seventh, 'The beauty o.' "

I remember two things about that horrible moment when we found him. One is the light. The sun, preter-naturally bright, seemed to have sucked the color from all the flowers, the blood from the roses, the heart from the purple hydrangeas, the living breath from the ivy. The other was the sound: Breeta, beside me, making small animal noises, like a kitten being drowned or a child's pet strangled.

And then, some days later, I found myself in a churchyard. It was raining, a bone-chilling drizzle, as it damn well should have been. Michael's coffin, adorned with the flowers he had coaxed into life-a bunch of white roses, a spray or two of tiny orchids- was lowered into the ground. He was buried less than a hundred yards from where he was born. The priest spoke of dust and ashes. I could taste both of them in my mouth.

I looked about the churchyard. There were many among the mourners I did not recognize, townspeople, Michael's friends. Breeta was there, standing apart from the others. Her eyes were strangely opaque, and she twisted her handkerchief over and over. Sometimes her lips moved, but no sound came out. At some point, I edged over to try to comfort her, but she turned away.