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    Bee and Harp
    Bee and Harp
    Bee and Harp
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    Bee and Harp

    By Siondalin OCraig

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Dublin Museum Curator Bee McBride’s research tour is interrupted by a shady stranger with a broken harp -- and a broken heart.

    When Bee, the stranger, and the harp are kidnapped by art thieves, Bee discovers the dusty instrument is the legendary magic harp of the ancient Celtic god Dagda.

    Can her buzzing fervor find a way to unlock the harp’s music and the stranger’s ardor before Midsummer Night?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChangeling Press
    Release dateJul 8, 2022
    Bee and Harp

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      Book preview

      Bee and Harp - Siondalin OCraig

      Chapter One

      July 4

      It was not exactly what I would call a standing ovation, Bee said, feeling deflated and a bit queasy. It was the Fourth of July in Manhattan, and temperatures were over 100 degrees in the shade. Bee stood talking on the phone backstage after delivering her lecture, delaying the moment when she would have to step back out onto a sidewalk so hot it burned the bottoms of her feet through the soles of the Ferragamo flats she’d bought on eBay just for this trip. More like the polite smattering of applause from twelve academic-types and one homeless guy who apparently wandered in looking for a place out of the heat.

      Oh, Bee, Chandice consoled her from the other end of the cell phone connection. And on your birthday, too.

      Chandice Stewart was Director of Collections at the Celtic Institute of Legends and Folklore in Dublin. A plaque on the dusty little office door down the hall from Chandice read Bee MacBride, Curator of Musical History.

      Well, I wish I was there, Chandice said, teasing Bee by way of consolation. I know exactly what to do to make you feel so much better. Her laughter did bring a wry smile to Bee’s face. Chandice is a beautiful woman, probably the most beautiful woman Bee had ever seen, with smooth night-black skin and rich bosomy curves that were pillow-soft and iron-strong at the same time. Six years of college in England and eight years working at CILF had barely eroded Chandice’s Jamaican accent, and Bee could listen to that silky voice all day.

      The women’s sexual preferences were not the same, but neither that, nor the fact that Chandice was technically Bee’s boss had stopped them from becoming inseparable best friends. It hadn’t stopped them from flirting mercilessly with one another either, partly out of fun, and partly because it ticked off their uptight executive director Louise to no end.

      I appreciate the sentiment, my dear. And I can’t believe you remembered my birthday. Bee laughed. But it is too damned hot here to even think about that. Bee put Chandice on speakerphone and set the phone down, then peeled off her navy linen blazer. She pulled her cotton batiste blouse away from her skin and fanned it, trying to dry the sweat.

      Fancy hotel in New York, you got air conditioning. And speaking of hot, wait, let me close the door.

      Bee heard Chandice’s office chair squeak, and the groan of the heavy old Institute door closing. The CILF administrative offices were located in a former military jail, with all the amenities and creature comforts that phrase implies. Fortunately the collections were housed in a new donor-sponsored building next door, and the Heritage Theater immediately behind the collections wing let CILF use their state-of-the-art auditorium for workshops and presentations.

      Still there? Chandice asked. So James Carbill stopped in today. Dropped off a check for a thousand euros and asked if you were around.

      James is not hot. He’s as cold as my Uncle Connor who’s been lying in his grave all these last twelve years.

      C’mon Bee. He’s tall, fit, steely-eyed, fabulously rich. And he obviously has taken a shine to you. What’s there not to like?

      Chandice and Bee had this same conversation at least eight times in the past eight years. Chandice would hone in on some over-six-foot, lean, handsome, wealthy man at one of the interminable charity dinners they had to attend, go to work lavishing her bubbly lesbian charm on him, then foist him off on Bee so that she could wangle a date with him, along with a sizeable donation to CILF.

      Bee didn’t mind much. They were technically her type, every single one of them, and Bee had to admit she would usually have a good time, drop her drawers at a speed that would horrify her Ma if she had known, and watched the donor checks flood in to CILF’s accounts. But within a month -- or a week, or a day -- she would say to herself, Bee, what are you doing? You don’t even like this man! and she would walk away, not looking back. James was Bee’s shortest liaison yet; she had actually walked out in the middle of their first date because James gave Bee the creeps. Apparently he didn’t like being ditched.

      I have a bad feeling about that one, Bee said. And in any event, he is definitely not the man for me.

      Chandice sighed. So what do I tell Louise about your lecture? She is going to be breathing her dragon breath down my neck for news. You know she was counting on this to set up a collections tour in the States.

      Louise McKenna is Chandice’s boss, Executive Director of CILF, four-foot-eleven in heels, still wearing dirndl skirts, matching cardigans and pearls to work every day, with more eyes in the back of her head than a nun on hall monitor duty in a Catholic middle school. Work at CILF was fifty percent the joyous privilege of collecting and archiving the most amazing artifacts, stories and songs that formed the foundation of Irish heritage. And the other half was trying to figure out how to not invoke the wrath of Louise. Or at least, not to the extent that she fired everyone.

      Och. That. Tell her… Bee thought a moment. Tell her I’m working on it, and following up on leads. She wriggled her hands under her skirt and pulled off her nylons. Who wears nylons anymore? Bee chided herself, though in Ireland, bare legs were still a bit of a new thing. Bee’s Ma would kill her for being out in public in a pencil skirt with no stockings. Bee slipped her feet back into her flats, wishing she’d brought sandals.

      She’ll want to know what leads.

      It’s Louise’s own damned fault! Bee’s red hair was showing, as her Ma always said. If she wanted to book a collections tour in the States, she could have learned enough about the place to realize that Fourth of July is a huge patriotic American holiday, and no one was going to come out to hear a lecture on the history of the Irish bone flute and skin drum. And on my birthday, too. Bee heard the heavy click of the auditorium’s air conditioner breaker being shut off by a janitor, then the banks of lights off through the hall, one by one. It felt cooler in the dark, but without the AC fans running, it would soon be as stifling in here as it was outside. Right now, I’d settle for a lead to somewhere that serves a cold pint. These Americans believe this urban myth that Guinness is supposed to be served warm. But how are things going there?

      We’re at a nice cool comfortable 36 degrees here, without a speck of rain in sight. To be honest -- Chandice’s voice lost its cheerful lilt and dropped into serious academic mode. To be honest, Bee, things have gotten even more tense in the week you’ve been gone. Some elderly folks have died in the heat. The grass is brown on the hills and even down along the Liffey. BBC was talking about possible food shortages this winter unless the crops get water.

      At least it sounds cooler in Celsius. They’d call that nearly 100 in the States. Somebody has apparently pissed off Dagda, Bee said. The ancient Celtic god supposedly controlled the crops and weather, when he wasn’t off fighting Fomorians alongside his absolutely bitching wife Morrigan.

      Or just forgotten about him, Chandice said forlornly. But reminding people is the primary task in your job description, last I looked.

      * * *

      June 21

      Sometimes the fall to rock bottom is a long slow slide. Other times it’s as fast as a bone-bruising tumble down a dank set of basement steps with a 160-pound keg of beer on top of you.

      In Kevin O’Donnell’s case, it had been both.

      McSteele’s was the oldest pub in New York City, serving up dark pints on a narrow street a few blocks west of the docks on the lower East Side since before the American revolution. Kevin O’Donnell had been sitting on a stool at the end of the bar not quite as long as that, but certainly long enough to look as if he’d grown there and molded over. His hands around his near-empty pint glass were ragged and dirty, as were his khaki chinos, his boots, and his threadbare tweed jacket. He nursed the last inch in his glass slowly. He’d

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