Three Fates

Mrs. Sullivan, is it worth it to you? To risk your family?”
    “Nothing’s worth my family, but they won’t be stopped now. I’d be disappointed in them if they did. There’s a young man dead, and that has to be accounted for. This woman can’t steal and murder without an accounting.”
    “How did she get the first Fate away from you?”
    “How do you know she did?” Rebecca demanded. “Unless she told you herself.”
    “You told me,” he said mildly. “You called her a thief. And you put flowers on the grave of your great-great-grandfather, one Felix Greenfield, who’d been aboard the Lusitania. Up until recently, I believed the first Fate to have been lost along with Henry W. Wyley. The way this plays out, the Fate and your ancestor were spared. How did he manage it? Did he work for Wyley?”
    “Felix wasn’t the only one who survived,” Rebecca began.
    “Oh, Becca, for pity’s sake, the man’s got a brain in his head, and he’s used it. I’m afraid Felix stole the statue. He was a bit of a thief, but he reformed. He slipped the little thing in his pocket just as the torpedo hit. Though it might seem self-serving, I like to think it was meant.”
    “He stole it.” A grin spread over Jack’s face. “That’s perfect. Then Anita steals it from you.”
    “That’s different,” Rebecca insisted. “She knew what it was, and Felix didn’t. She used her dead husband’s business reputation when Mal took it to her for appraisal. Then she used her body to dull his common sense—and him being a man, it was easily done. She made a fool out of all of us and that . . . well, we’ll have an accounting for that as well.”
    “If this is a matter of pride, you’d better rethink. She’ll eat a tasty morsel like you alive.”
    “She can try. And she’ll choke.”
    “Pride isn’t a luxury,” Eileen said quietly. “And not always a kind of vanity. Surviving when others died changed Felix. It, you could say, made a man out of him. The Fate was a symbol of that change, and it stood for it in our family for five generations. Now we know what it is, beyond that symbol, and we believe the three should be brought back together. That was meant as well. Maybe there’s profit in it, and we won’t turn from that. But it’s not for greed. It’s for family.”
    “Anita has the first, and knows—or thinks she knows—how to get the second. You’re in her way.”
    “And the Sullivans aren’t so easily pushed aside as she might think,” Eileen said. “Felix floated freezing on a broken crate while one of the grandest ships ever built sank behind him. He survived, while it didn’t. While more than a thousand others didn’t. And he had that little silver figure in his pocket. He brought it here, and we’ll have it back.”
    “If I help you do that, help you put the three together, will you sell it to me?”
    “If you meet the asking price,” Rebecca began, but her mother cut her off with one sharp look.
    “If you help us, we’ll sell it to you. You have my word on it,” she said and extended her hand over the table.
     
     
    HE WANTED TIME to think it through, so stayed over in Cobh another day. It gave him the opportunity to make a number of calls, begin a number of background checks on the players in what Jack was finding a very interesting game.
    He trusted Eileen Sullivan. While he was attracted to Rebecca, he didn’t have the same instinctive faith in the daughter as he did in the mother. Because he wanted a second run at her, Jack bought another ticket for the tour and strolled down to the dock.
    She didn’t look pleased to see him. The cheerful expression she wore while chatting with passengers went cold and hard when her gaze shifted, landed on him.
    She snatched the voucher out of his hand. “What are you doing back here?”
    “Maybe I can’t keep away from you.”
    “Bollocks. But it’s your money.”
    “I’ll give you ten pounds more for a seat on the bridge and some conversation.”
    “Twenty.” She held out a hand. “In advance.”
    “Distrusting and mercenary.” He dug out twenty pounds. “Careful, I could fall in love with you.”
    “Then I’d have the pleasure of grinding your heart into dust. For that, I’d refund your twenty. Take your seat, then, and don’t touch anything. I’ve got to get started.”
    He waited, let her wonder and stew as she maneuvered into the harbor and set her mother’s recording.
    “Looks like rain,” he commented.
    “We’ve