It was a wonder I got anything done, really.
And so Sunday afternoon, August 31, the last day of Alina’s lease, the day she should have been packed and waiting for a cab to take her to the airport and, finally, home to me and Georgia, and endless summer beach parties on the cusp of fall, found me propping a dripping umbrella at the top of her stairs and wiping my shoes on the rug outside her door. I stood there a few minutes, shuffling aimlessly, taking deep breaths, digging for my compact to remove the speck from my eye that was making them water.
Alina’s apartment was above a pub in the Temple Bar District, not far from Trinity, where she’d been studying, at least for the first few months that she’d been here, when she’d still been going to class, before she’d begun looking stressed and losing weight and behaving secretively.
I could understand how I’d forgotten about cleaning out her apartment, but now that I was standing outside it, I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about her journal. Alina was a diary addict. She couldn’t live without one. She’d been keeping one ever since she was a little girl. She’d never missed a day. I know; I used to snoop and read them and torment her with secrets she’d chosen to confide to some stupid book over me.
During her tenure abroad, she’d confided the biggest secrets of her life to a stupid book over me, and I needed that book. Unless someone had beaten me to it and destroyed it, somewhere in Dublin was a record of everything that had happened to her since the day she’d set foot in this country. Alina was neurotically detailed. In those pages would be an account of all she’d seen and felt, where she’d gone and what she’d learned, how she’d discovered what she and I were, how the Lord Master had tricked her into falling for him, and—I hoped—a solid lead on the location of the Sinsar Dubh: who had it, who was transporting it, and for what mysterious reason. “I know what it is now,” she’d said in her final, frantic phone message, “and I know where—” The call had ended abruptly.
I was certain Alina had been about to say she knew where it was. I hoped she’d written it down in her journal and hidden the journal somewhere she thought I, and only I, would figure out how to find it. I’d been finding them all our lives. Surely she’d left me a clue for how to find the most important one.
I slid the key into the door, jiggled the handle trying to turn it—the lock was sticky—pushed open the door, and gaped at the girl standing inside, glaring at me and wielding a baseball bat.
“Hand it over,” she demanded, holding out a hand and nodding at the key. “I heard you out there and I already called the police. How’d you get a key to my place?”
I pocketed my key. “Who are you?”
“I live here. Who are you?”
“You don’t live here. My sister lives here. At least she does until midnight today.”
“No way. I signed a lease three days ago and paid up front. You have a problem with that, talk to the landlord.”
“Did you really call the police?”
She assessed me coolly. “No. But I will if I have to.”
That was a relief. I hadn’t seen Inspector Jayne yet today and was savoring the respite. All I needed was for him to show up and arrest me for breaking and entering, or some other trumped-up charge. I glanced past her. “Where’s my sister’s stuff?” I demanded. All my carefully packed boxes were gone. There was no fingerprint dust on the floor, no broken glass scattered about, no sliced and diced furniture, no shredded drapes. All of it was gone. The apartment was spotless and had been tastefully redecorated.
“How should I know? The place was empty when I moved in.”
“Who’s the landlord?” I was stunned. I’d been shut out. While I’d vacillated in indecision about whether or not to destroy the walls and floors in a thorough but damagingly expensive search for her journal, then been sidetracked by other things, I’d lost all my sister’s personal possessions!
Someone was living in her apartment. It wasn’t fair—I had one more day!
I would have continued to argue until the sun had gone down, the clock struck twelve, and the final bell finished chiming if the new tenant had said anything other than what she said next.
“The guy downstairs at the bar handles things for him, but it’s probably the owner you’ll need to talk to.”
“And who’s that?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never met him. Some guy named Barrons.”
I felt like a rat in a maze and everyone else was human, wearing lab coats and standing outside my box, watching me run blindly up and down dead-end corridors, and laughing.
I left the new tenant without another word. I stepped outside, into the alley behind the pub, backed myself into an alcoved, bricked-up door to avoid the drizzle, and rang up Barrons on the cell phone he’d left outside my door last night with three numbers programmed in.
One was JB. That was the one I used now. The other two were mystifying: IYCGM and IYD.
He sounded angry when he answered. “What?” he snarled. I could hear the sound of things crashing, glass breaking.
“Tell me about my sister,” I barked back.
“She’s dead?” he said sarcastically. There was another crash.
“Where’s her stuff?”
“Upstairs in the room next to yours. What’s this about, Ms. Lane, and can’t it wait? I’m a bit busy right now.”
“Upstairs?” I exclaimed. “You admit you have it?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I was her landlord and you didn’t get the place cleaned out in time.”
“I was on time. I had through today!”
“You were beat up and busy and I took care of it for you.” A thunderous crash punctuated his words. “You’re welcome.”
“You were my sister’s landlord and you never bothered to tell me? You said you didn’t know her!” I shouted to make myself heard above the din coming out of the earpiece. Okay, maybe I shouted because I was furious. He’d lied to me. Baldly and blatantly. What else was he lying to me about? A clap of thunder above me made me even madder. One day I was going to escape Jericho Barrons and this rain. One day I was going to find myself a sunny beach, plant my petunia on it, and sprout roots. “Besides,” I snapped, “your name wasn’t on the letter we got about the damages to the apartment!”