Read In Like Flynn for Free Online

handed the wine list.
    “A French champagne, I think,” he said, handing it back without opening it. 'Your best.”
    “So go on about Senator Flynn,” I said, after the champagne had been brought, tasted and poured, and I had tried to give the waiter the impression that sitting in such establishments with a glass of French champagne in front of me was an everyday occurrence in my life. “I am intrigued. Has he something to do with the spiritualists you were telling me about?”
    “You must be aware of the Senator’s great tragedy?” Daniel asked. “I am sure it must have made the newspapers in Ireland. It was all the talk here for months.”
    I shook my head. “We had no money for newspapers, so I doubt that any news short of a French invasion would have reached County Mayo.”
    “It was about five years ago now,” Daniel said. He paused, raising his glass to me. 'Your very good health, Molly. Here’s to success in all your ventures.” We clinked glasses.
    “Go on,” I said, because any hint of intimacy was unnerving.
    “Barney Flynn was running for the United States Senate for the first time. In the middle of his campaign his infant son was kidnapped.”
    “How terrible,” I exclaimed. The poor man. Was the child ever returned?”
    Daniel shook his head. “No. It was most tragic. The ransom note announced that the child had been buried in a secret hiding place, somewhere on the Flynns'estate.”
    I gasped. “Buried alive?”
    He nodded. “In a special chamber with a vent to provide oxygen. Barney Flynn gave instructions to hand over the money, no questions asked. Anything to get his son back. But he made the mistake of alerting the police. An overzealous policeman shot the kidnapper as he came to retrieve the ransom money.”
    “So they never found the hiding place of the child?”
    “Never. They searched exhaustively with dogs, all over the es-tate, but the child was never found. The estate is huge, of course. Hundreds of acres of woodland and rocky mountainside.”
    There was only one kidnapper then? He had no accomplice?”
    “The police investigated thoroughly and no second kidnapper came to light, although it was suggested that the child’s nurse might have been in on the plot. It was the Flynns' chauffeur, you see. And the child’s nurse had been walking out with him.”
    “But she didn't know anything of where the child might have been buried?”
    “She denied all knowledge of the entire scheme.”
    “How awful, Daniel. How very tragic for the Senator and his wife.”
    “Very.” Daniel sighed. “Senator Flynn has thrown himself into his political work with extra vigor, but his poor wife has never re-ally recovered from the shock.”
    “Did they have any more children?”
    “A little girl, a year or so later, but the mother still grieves her lost son. She has recently turned to the Sorensen Sisters and has invited them to the house this summer, so that she can communicate with little Brendan.”
    “Ah.” I looked at him over my champagne glass. “And you would like me to be there, as an observer.”
    “It’s a perfect opportunity. I couldn't do it myself, as I am known to the Misses Sorensen, and to the Flynns. Splendid. Here comes the soup.”
    We broke off while we worked our way through a creamy oyster stew, then a salad, then a dish of smoked fish.
    “Now how am I to pass as the Senator’s cousin?” I asked in the pause before the main course was brought. “Surely he knows his own cousins?”
    “Luckily for us,” Daniel said, “the Senator comes from a very large Irish family. He was born over here, of course. His parents came over in the famine with nothing. Barney grew up in the worst slums of New York. Truly a self-made man. His fortune started when he hired a barge, sailed it up the coast to Maine and returned with it full of ice. He also played Tammany politics to perfection— going from ward boss to state Senate. And with Tammany’s help he cornered the ice