The Selkie Sorceress (Seal Island Trilogy, Book 3) by Sophie Moss Read Free Book Online Page B

said, transferring cookies from the baking sheet to a platter. “I’m glad you called.”
    “Really?” Sam paused in the act of blowing on the steam floating out of the mug. “Why is that?”
    She gestured for him to open the back door and led him out to a rickety metal table painted a cheerful apple green in the back garden. She set the cookies down and settled into the chair opposite him. “I’ve thought about Brigid a lot over the years. I’m surprised you’re the first detective to ask me about her.”
    Sam nodded for her to go on.
    “Brigid was part of the cleaning crew at the college,” Eileen began. “She used to come into the library after hours to dust the books. I know it sounds silly—dusting the books. But the library at Trinity College is one of Ireland’s finest museums. It’s a celebration of our literary culture and heritage. Some of the books go back thousands of years.”
    “It’s an impressive place,” Sam admitted.
    “Aye,” Eileen smiled, straightening her shoulders with pride. “I took care to keep it that way for the twenty years I managed it.” Sliding the platter toward him, she waited until Sam took a cookie. “Part of my job was to oversee the cleaning crew. Most of the girls were quiet, hard-working. There wasn’t much to manage, really.”
    Eileen leaned back in her chair, cradling her tea in both hands. “But there was something about Brigid that worried me. I suspected things were not good at home. Every now and then, she’d show up with a fresh bruise on her face. And, despite protests from the other girls, sometimes she would bring her children with her to work.”
    “Was that allowed?” Sam asked.
    “No,” Eileen admitted. “But in her case, I let the rules slide a bit. Her two boys were very well behaved. They played quietly in the corner while she cleaned. And I spied bruises on them a time or two. I figured they were safer in the library than they were at home.”
    Sam thought about the neighborhood where Liam and Dominic had grown up, and imagined their drunk father stumbling home from the bars late at night. No wonder Brigid had brought them into work with her. “How long was she an employee?”
    “Less than a year.” Eileen broke off half of a cookie and nibbled on the edge. “But it was long enough for me to get to know her. One night, she didn’t show up for her shift and didn’t bother to call. When she didn’t come in the next night, or the night after that, I tried to track her down, but no one seemed to know who she was or where she lived.”
    “Didn’t she have to give an address on her employment form?”
    “Yes. But it was a fake one. When I went to check, it was an address of a music shop in Bray. I asked the shop owner and the neighbors who lived around the shop. But they didn’t know her. No one had ever seen a woman by the description I gave.”
    “What else did you do to track her down?”
    “I went to the local hospitals.” She looked up, her expression sober. “I thought…with the bruises and all, maybe there’d been an incident .” She swallowed a sip of tea, and looked away. “But no one had checked in under that name.”
    Sam nodded. He’d done some searching too, hacking into the hospital records of every emergency room in this area. But no one named Brigid O’Sullivan had checked into a Dublin hospital in the winter of 1988.
    “After a while, I went to the garda and filed a missing person’s report. I was really worried. But they didn’t take it seriously. They said her family would have come in, if something was really wrong. I tried to explain that maybe her husband wasn’t such a nice man, but things were…different in Ireland back then. Domestic disputes were usually treated as a matter between a husband and wife and the garda didn’t want to get in the middle of it.”
    Sam tapped his fingers over his mug. He was familiar with the situation. It wasn’t that different in America still, to this day. It