“See you in the morning.” She turned out the lights and went back out to the front, where Mick was setting the chairs in order. “Rose is going to stay upstairs for what’s left of the night. Where’d the guy who took over the bar come from?”
“I thought you’d know. Never seen him before.”
“I asked Rose, but she didn’t know either. She thought he looked kind of familiar and she might have seen him around. So he didn’t ask you if you needed help?”
“I was kept busy at the door. I looked up and there he was, but he looked like he had things well in hand, so I let him be. I made sure he put the money in the till, and cleaned it out a couple times just to be safe.”
“Gawd, capable and honest. And kind of cute. We’re going to have to track him down. Tomorrow. Or maybe I mean later today. You going home?”
“Unless yeh’ve got a better idea?”
“My place?”
“Grand.”
Chapter Twenty
“Was that what you’d call the luck of the Irish?” Maura asked over breakfast the next morning. It was only brown bread and tea, but at least the bread was fresh and chewy and full of good grain flavor, and there was fresh milk for the tea. Baby steps, Maura.
“What, that heaven-sent bartender?” Mick asked. “I’d guess he looked at the situation and thought he could help. Which he could.”
“Think he’ll come back and ask for a night’s pay?”
Mick shrugged. “No idea.”
“Well, if you see him again, don’t let him escape. We don’t have any permanent fix for our problem. And maybe it’s time I learned how to work a computer, at least for business. Do you know what Rose asked me earlier this week?”
“Yeh’ll tell me, I’m sure.”
“She asked which I’d hate less—learning to cook or learning to use a computer.”
“And yeh had to think about it?” he said, smiling.
“Don’t you start! Yes, I will agree that as a business owner I should know how to use computer programs—not that I would have been able to stop Rose’s slip yesterday, and I don’t blame her for it. And as a human being, I should be able to make food that other people might actually be willing to eat. But I don’t think I’ll ever be an expert at either. Still, I hate to have to depend on Rose so much. If she leaves, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Has she said she wants to?” Mick asked.
“No, but you know I’ve been dangling the hope of fixing up the kitchen and letting her cook.”
“Do yeh mean to do it? Because yeh keep saying it. Yer gonna have to decide, or Rose’ll get tired of waitin’.”
“Do you think it makes sense?”
“Could do. Yeh’d have to find your niche fer the place.”
“Huh?” Maura spread more butter on her bread. She really liked the local butter, and she didn’t have to do anything to make it.
“Look, you’ve got the Leap Inn across the street, then Ger’s on the corner, and the bistro on the next corner, and that doesn’t even take Skib into account. There’s yer competition. What’re you gonna do that’s different?”
“Give the drinkers something that’ll make them thirsty?” Maura grinned.
“Yeh’re not far off. Yeh want yer people to stay in the pub and buy pints. They get hungry. If they leave fer food, will they be back? Mebbe, mebbe not. It’s up to you to make it easy fer them to stay. They’re not lookin’ for gourmet stuff, or even a full meal. Just somethin’ in their bellies to keep ’em from getting too drunk.”
“Mick, have you been thinking about this too?”
“Now and then. Wouldn’t take that much to fix up the kitchen, buy plates and the like. Mebbe a real dishwasher fer the back. Question is, what would yeh have to charge? And what would people pay?”
“Mick, I can’t answer things like that!”
“So ask Harry.”
“I will, I will—just as soon as I find the time.” Maura stood up and took her lone plate and cup over to the sink and washed them. “You ready to go?” she called back over her shoulder. “Because Rose has a class this morning. Hmm—I forgot she slept over at the pub. I hope she doesn’t have any trouble getting to Skibbereen on time. And there’s another thing—we should make some sort of decision about those rooms upstairs.”
“Why?” Mick asked, handing her his dirty dishes.
“I don’t want to rent them out—that’s a pain in the butt to manage—but they could be appealing to any staff we might find, at least in the short term, if we could offer them a place for cheap, or even free. I’ve already got the space, and it wouldn’t take that much to make them livable.”
“And where are we findin’ the time to make that happen?” Mick asked, and Maura tried to read his expression.
“I don’t know, Mick!” Maura finally told him emphatically. “It’s just something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’m trying to find ways to sweeten the deal for anyone I can find to hire, and I can’t offer more money than other people around here. It’s just an idea.”
“Right now yeh’ve got a boatload of ideas. What’s the most important?”
“Easy. Staff.”
“And yeh’ve made a good start with that. It’ll work out. We should go.”
“You’re not seeing Bridget this morning?”
“We’ve only the one car between us, remember? I’ll be seein’ her Sunday fer church.”
“Okay, I’ll stop in tomorrow morning.”
Mick had done the driving the night before. When they reached the end of Maura’s lane, she suddenly remembered that he probably hadn’t seen the Sheridan caravan parked in the field straight ahead. Mick stopped abruptly when he saw it.
“So they’re back,” he said in a flat tone.
Maura debated about playing dumb, but she didn’t want to lie. And there was something unsettling about his tone. “Peter Sheridan and his wife and kids. I met him day before yesterday.”
“And yeh didn’t mention it,” Mick said in the same odd voice.
“Why should I? I figured you’d be stopping in anyway. What’s the problem?”
“They’re Travellers.”
“I know that—Peter told me. So I’ll say it again: what’s the problem?”
“Most people don’t trust ’em.”
“Does that include you? Are they any kind of threat to Bridget? She told me they’ve been stopping here for years.”
“The Sheridan’s aren’t so bad, but some of their friends aren’t welcome around here.”
Maura turned in her seat, despite the seat belt, and looked at Mick. As long as she’d known him, he’d been pretty open-minded about people. She’d never seen him act petty or suspicious about anyone. Why this particular group?
“Look, I don’t know squat about Travellers, apart from what I learned this week. I’ve never seen them before. And I’ve never seen you act like this before either. Why?”
“They’re most often thieves. Poachers. If they come upon a house that’s vacant or they know the owner’s away, they’ll pass on the word and the owner will come back to find his telly missing and the place trashed. They’ll offer to fix somethin’ fer yeh, and they’ll take it away and yeh’ll never see it again.”
“You sound like someone from another century. Is it really that bad, or is it because memories are so long around here? And Bridget didn’t seem to have any problem with them.”
“Bridget is a trusting person.”
“But she’s not stupid, and as far as I can tell she’s a good judge of character. Now, tell me—are you going to jump out of the car this minute and march over there and tell the Sheridans to leave? They just wanted a place to park!”
“Just keep an eye on them, will yeh?” Mick mumbled.
“Sure, and if they’re not around I’ll break in and search their home to make sure they haven’t taken Bridget’s spare teapot.” Maura lapsed into silence, and neither spoke until they arrived in Leap. Before they got out of the car, Maur
a said, “Mick, I don’t mean to be sarcastic, but I really don’t understand why you feel the way you do about Travellers. You’re usually pretty fair to everyone.”
He didn’t look at her but stared at the steering wheel. “I can’t say I’m proud of feelin’ that way—it has to be what I grew up with. But the Travellers haven’t changed much since then—it’s like they live in a different world. And they still use the same ways to get by.”
Maura decided she’d said enough for now. Maybe she should wait until the Travellers moved on to their next stop, wherever that was. Maybe she could talk to Bridget some more. Right now she had other, more urgent things to deal with.
Inside she found a short note from Rose. “Cleaned up some. Going to class. Back by noon.” She looked around the room and had to smile: Rose’s idea of “some” cleanup beat hers by a mile. The place looked almost normal now. She checked the back room and it looked good too. Having Rose around—minus her lazy father—was a blessing, and Maura wished she could clone her.
As if to make up for his early departure the day before, Billy came in earlier than usual. “Mornin’, Maura. Seems like the place survived. Good night?”
“It was, but kind of unexpectedly. Is it too early for a pint? Or would you rather have coffee?”
“Coffee, please—if yeh’ll join me.”
She smiled at him. “Since Rose did most of the cleanup I was going to do, I’d be happy to join you.” She went behind the bar and started up the coffee machine and waited for it to produce two cups. Then she carried them over to Billy’s seat and sat in the other chair. “Rose is at class at the moment. I envy her her energy—she went to bed well past midnight, and she was up early enough to clean the place this morning before going off to Skibbereen. I don’t think I ever had that much energy.”
“How’d yeh manage the night?”
Maura launched into the tale of the craziness of the crowds, and the band, and the appearing of an unexpected bartender named Niall. And how she wondered whether he was real. She finished up by saying, “Maybe he wasn’t there at all—we just made him up. He appeared out of nowhere and started pulling pints and making change. And don’t even think of asking if he emptied the cash box on his way out, because he didn’t. I’d love to know where to find him, but he didn’t leave much of a trail: twenty-something white man, dark hair, nice smile, name of Niall. He introduced himself and seemed pleasant enough, and we didn’t have time to talk, but I trusted him.”
“Accent?” Mick asked.
“You mean, was he Irish? I’m the wrong person to ask. He sounded Irish but not quite, you know what I mean? And that’s all I know. Any ideas how to look for someone like that?”
“Pray to Saint Anthony that he’ll come back?”
“Isn’t he the patron saint of lost things?”
“That he is. And how’d yeh come to hear of that? Yer gran?”
“No, Bridget, I think.” Maura leaned closer to him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Ask and I’ll answer if I can,” Billy told her quietly.
“What do you think of Travellers? I’m only asking because there’s one Traveller family parked in Bridget’s field. She says they’ve been coming there for years, but Mick seems kind of upset about it. What’s the problem?”
Billy gathered his thoughts for a moment. “Most are decent people who happen to live a different kind of life than most of us. They believe in family, and they look after their kids. But they’ve always been outsiders, and there’s people who don’t trust them. Mebbe they do steal, for they’ve precious few ways of earnin’ a livin’. But they’re not beggars, and they’re willin’ to work for what you give ’em, only they don’t stay around long after they’re done. You’ve nothin’ like them in the States?”
“Not that I knew of. I guess in the cities there are some people that are usually called gypsies, but I don’t know where they came from, and I don’t think they move around. Most of the homeless or the really poor—the ones who don’t have jobs for one reason or another—don’t go far. They kind of camp out in abandoned houses or under bridges—stuff like that. And yes, they steal, for food, or drugs these days. It’s a real problem in a lot of places. Are the Travellers like that?”
“In some ways, mebbe. In other ways, not so much. I’d have to say they feel some pride in the way they live—they don’t take anythin’ from the government. And that’s the way they like it, even though it means that they haven’t much of their own. Let me ask you this, Maura. Are you troubled by them since they’re new to yeh, or because of the death of that young man?”
“More than I would have been before? Maybe. But are they killers?”
“I’ll have to answer that two ways. Among themselves, they might get into fights, and some don’t end well. But their crimes are mostly petty theft. It’s a rare thing that a Traveller will kill a man fer what’s in his pocket. They know that would be a threat to their way of life, not just to the man holdin’ the knife. Can yeh see that?”
“You know, I think I can. They kind of live outside the law, but they have their own rules.”
“That’s it. And the gardaí leave them alone unless they get too many complaints. But most people who’ve been here a while are used to them. Does that ease yer mind?”
“I think so. But what about Mick? He really seemed bent out of shape when he saw the caravan in Bridget’s field. And then he didn’t want to talk about it. That doesn’t seem like him. Am I missing something?”
“That I can’t say. Talk to Bridget—could be she knows somethin’ about it.”
“Thank, Billy.” Maura stood up. It was past ten, and she should take another look through the place—she was still surprised that last night’s crowd had passed through without leaving much of a trace. She should check the rooms upstairs, in the event she might need them shortly for her expanded staff. If ever she found anyone who wanted to work for her. Or she could look at the kitchen again. Mostly she avoided it. Rose had managed to make the sink and cooker work in the winter when they were snowed in, but Maura really didn’t want to touch either of them.
To her surprise, she found Mick in the kitchen, leaning against the wall. “Taking measurements?” she asked.
“Wonderin’ if it could ever work. Might be fine fer Rose, who’s young and slender and can get around easily. But an older, stouter person, man or woman, might take one look and run. There’s nowhere to expand—yeh’ve the rock wall behind. Might be that a more modern cooker would take up less space, but Rose or whoever worked in here would need at least one other person to help, and it would get crowded fast. And where’s the storage, for food or for pots and pans and plates and the like?”
“I haven’t a clue. You’d have to ask Rose those questions.” Maura heard the outside door open and slam shut, and Rose called out, “Where is everybody?”
Maura and Mick joined her in the front room. “We were checking out the kitchen. What’s got you so excited?”
“I saw the man! The bartender from last night!”
“And did you tie him up and drag him back here?” Maura asked, only half joking.
“I didn’t have the chance. But he was meeting one of the other girls who’s in my class at the café, and I can ask her who he is the next time I see her. I would have talked to them today, but the bus was just leavin’ and I figured I should get back here. But at least now we’ve got a way to find him!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Finally, a break, Maura thought. Maybe her luck was turning. “When’s your next class?”
Rose’s expression wilted. “Not until the day after tomorrow. I’ve no idea where else to look for ’em, and I only know the girl as Sophie.”
“Rose, don’t beat yourself up. It’s a starting point. Heck, maybe we’ll be lucky and the pair of them have a busload of friends who really want to work in an authentic Irish pub. Have you talked to her at the café at all?”
Rose shook her head. “All I can tell yeh is that she�
�s got an Irish accent, or pretty near.”
“Well, don’t worry about it now. By the way, thanks for cleaning up this morning. You have any ideas about fixing up the rooms upstairs? The last time I took a real look at them was when we were snowed in, and since it was freezing I didn’t spend a lot of time up there.”
“As it happens, I do—I was lookin’ about when I woke up. They need cleanin’, of course, but mostly you could get by with a decent bed in each, maybe a rug fer the floor and a lamp or two. If yeh’re not renting the rooms to guests, just your staff. I’d think of takin’ one.”
“Really?” Maura said, surprised. Although Rose had never mentioned where she lived, and Maura was embarrassed to admit she had never asked. She had no idea how much it cost, or how Rose got herself back and forth to the pub, or even how she paid for it. Had she really been so selfish? For that matter, she hadn’t seen Mick’s place, not that he had invited her there. But he brought a car to Leap each day, so it must be out a ways. Something to add to her mental to-do list: pay attention to the other people she worked with and their lives. Since she’d been more or less handed a place to live and the use of a car—one that Bridget had owned for years but no longer drove, and that Mick had maintained all along—she’d had no reason to look into things like rents. If she could only get her staffing issues straightened out, she’d have more time to check out all these things. And visit with Gillian more—she realized she hadn’t seen her for days. Maura reminded herself to keep looking for child care for her—after she found wait staff and another bartender. Ireland might look simple on the surface, but there sure were a lot of details to take care of.
“Maura! Are yeh still with us?” Mick’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts.
“Yes. I was just thinking about all the things I need to do, that I’ve been ignoring or putting off. What do we need to do right now?”
“I’ve got to check the kegs and figure out when we’ll need to reorder. I’m guessin’ if it’s a busy night tonight, we could come up short by Monday.”
The Lost Traveller Page 15