The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf Read Online Free PDF

are youhere with a proposition?” To show him she was fooling, she touched a hand to her hair which had turned gray early and was now closer to white. She kept it in braids.
    In her mid-fifties now, Mirna Gottschalk-Byrne was still an attractive woman with a lithe body and the dark Spanish, good looks of her mother. The only bit of her father that Ford had ever been able to discern in her was her long, straight nose and hazel eyes.
    Divorced now, she lived mostly alone, although she was visited from time to time by her son, Karl, and “suitors,” she called them, who never stayed more than a few weeks. During weekdays, of course, she was surrounded by other island women, who came to work on the driftwood ornaments that she designed and produced in the shop.
    Ford tried to move around her, but she again stepped in front of him. “Really, Clem—can we go into the house? I’ll make you a cup of tea. You look”—her eyes ran down his muddy anorak and soiled trousers—“like you could use one. Did you fall? Where’s your hat.”
    “No,” said Ford, easily pushing past the thin woman. “There isn’t time.”
    “But”—she reached for his sleeve—“you’ll only ruin the surprise.”
    “What?”
    “The surprise that I’m making for your birthday. It’s not done, and I only have the week.”
    She tried to prevent him, but Ford’s eyes swept the studio and fixed on the canvas and easel that was illuminated in the center of the room.
    It was a large oil portrait of Breege, painted after Ford’s favorite photograph of her that had been taken in 1948. A print was clipped to the easel. He moved toward it.
    “Well, so much for the surprise,” said Mirna.
    It was Breege as Ford always saw her in his mind’s eye—as the dark, fey, young angel who had nursed him back to health and made him believe in life again. There was her slight smile and her full red lips, and the definite youthful sparkle in her bright, blind but very blue eyes. It was the same smile she had when Ford had declared his love for her, the one that said I love you too, and I’m yours. She had arose in her hair, and her long graceful neck was the color of ivory. She was wearing the ring that Ford had only then recently given her, the one with the large diamond and sapphire surround.
    Tears filled his eyes, and he had to wipe them away. “It’s beautiful, but—” He pulled out his handkerchief.
    “But what?” Mirna now moved beside him, obviously wishing to hear his reservation.
    Ford blew his nose. “But nothing. It’s beautiful, better than the photograph, but”—he turned to Mirna—“I only hope to God that we’ll live to savor it. It’s why I’m here like this.” He swept his hand down his clothes. “I’ve only got”—he checked his wristwatch; it had taken him twenty-three minutes, longer than he thought, to get there—“a short time before Rehm gets to the cottage, and I must tell you something. For the good of—” of whom? Of Breege and him, certainly, but perhaps not for the good of Mirna herself, who would most assuredly be burdened with the knowledge. “For the good of the island.” He reached for her hands and shook them. “Will you listen to me, Mirna? As a favor to me and Breege?”
    Mirna Gottschalk’s eyes were wide and round. “Why—what’s happened? Is it Breege?”
    “No, I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway.”
    “Who’s Rehm?”
    “Angus Rehm—he’s the worst, the very worst!” Ford glanced at his wristwatch. “But you must listen to me.” Ford’s eyes flickered up at the black, rain-spattered wash of the studio windows. Where to start? There was so little time.
    He straightened up. “I am not Clement Ford, I never was. Who I am doesn’t matter anymore. What does matter is this.” He waved the packet. “It’s the Trust, the Clare Island Trust. And it’s meant everything to Breege and me. It’s given our lives purpose and done much good for people who otherwise would have had