Chapter and Curse

by Nancy Warren

  I’d come here thinking we’d compare notes, see if either of us could think of a motive for Brenda’s murder, but I sensed Karen had put up a wall. She’d no intention of sharing information. In fact, she kept looking past me out into the road as though she could will customers to come in and free her from this tête-à-tête.

  She nearly breathed a sigh of relief when the door opened and someone came in. “Hello,” she said, giving me a nod and moving out of my way. “How can I help?”

  Edna and Clara, the pair of old women who lived for gossip and liked to dig for bargains, were hardly A-list customers. “We’re only here to browse.” And they’d both headed straight for the one-euro box Karen kept.

  I couldn’t talk murder in front of them, so I said, “Well, I’d better get back to my shop.”

  Edna pulled a frayed crocheted doily out of the box. “Oh, look at this, Clara. My aunt used to crochet. Lovely work, she did. I’m sure I’ve got some of her linens in the closet upstairs. I must turn it out one of these days. No doubt I’ve got treasures galore that you could sell for me, Karen.”

  I was all ready for the vampire book club meeting, though I was more interested in what they might have discovered about the murder than what they thought about Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, when there was a great commotion from downstairs. Usually they were quiet when they came in. It sounded like someone was having an argument.

  A man with a loud, blustery voice that I didn’t recognize was shouting. Before I could investigate, a trio of vampires burst in. Well, one of them burst in and two struggled to restrain him. The central figure was a curious one. He looked like Charles II. His hair was in flowing waves around a round, ruddy face. His eyes were fierce and bloodshot. He wore a full, white shirt and breeches. He was straining toward me even as Lochlan Balfour and a young, very strong-looking vampire held him back.

  He looked at me and his nose twitched as though he smelled something delicious. Instinctively, I took a step back.

  “And aren’t you a delectable, tasty colleen,” he said, looking at me and licking his lips.

  I felt some alarm, even though I knew how powerful Lochlan was. Instinctively, I gazed at him.

  “My apologies,” he said. “This is Thomas Blood. We don’t normally let him come out with us. And this is Desmond Cronin, who usually keeps him company during the book club meetings. But Thomas has some information you might find useful. It’s about Biddy O’Donnell.” I’d told Lochlan of the visits from the old witch and how she wanted me to help her get her old home back.

  Thomas Blood made a sound like a man about to rush into battle. “Not let me out much? They keep me a prisoner. Chained up in the dungeon, I am.” He pointed a finger at the young vampire. “With him as my jailer.”

  Lochlan shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous, Thomas. You have your own private quarters and outings every night.”

  “Never allowed out on my own. Might as well be chained in a dungeon.”

  “We cannot have you hunting. We live peacefully. You’d put us all in danger.”

  The man made another sound of outrage. “I like my food fresh. I do not want that cup of sustenance.” He eyed me up again. “I like to hunt my food.”

  “You will not hunt Quinn,” Lochlan said.

  “That gets my vote too,” I said.

  Oscar came in with Deidre, and they both looked quite surprised to see Thomas Blood there. Oscar said, “What have you brought this uncouth old boor here for? Can he even read?”

  Thomas Blood roared again. “I’d have had you at the end of me spit if I’d met you when you were still alive.”

  Oscar looked at Lochlan. “Can’t you put him back in his cage? The smell of him alone is turning my stomach.”

  “I will if he doesn’t behave,” Lochlan said.

  That had the effect of making Thomas Blood calm down a bit. “All right. I’ll behave.”

  He sat, Lochlan on one side of him and Desmond on the other side. I was pretty sure I was safe, but I would keep an eye on him, anyway. Just knowing there was a vampire who preferred the old-fashioned ways around made me determined to get a nice, sharpened stick to keep in my desk drawer. Just in case. Still, I had protection spells and enough power that I could probably keep him at bay if I had to.

  “Tell Quinn about Biddy O’Donnell,” Lochlan Balfour said.

  For the first time since he’d arrived, I warmed to Thomas Blood. “You knew my great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother?”

  He looked at me like he was having trouble counting all the greats. “I knew Biddy O’Donnell, aye. Dreadful old crone.”

  Yep, sounded like we were talking about the same person. “What do you know about her?”

  “She ran an inn. It was the only one for miles. She was a notorious skinflint, overcharged for flea-bitten quarters, where the sheets were always damp, if they’d been changed at all. She used to tell fortunes in the corner of the alehouse. Killed all three of her husbands, you know? I had an eye to her myself, but after the third went to meet his maker, I decided to keep my sword in its scabbard.”

  Thomas Blood seemed like an awful man, but he had known Biddy O’Donnell. He was the only witness we had, and I was grateful to Lochlan for bringing him to the bookshop, even as I hoped he wouldn’t make a habit of it.

  “Now that you’ve been around a lot longer, Mr. Blood—”

  “You may call me Tom,” he said with a leer.

  “Tom.” I had to gather my thoughts again. It was difficult to hold my focus when I could feel his gaze on my throat. “Do you really believe that she murdered her husbands?”

  He seemed to give the matter serious thought. He crossed his arms across his barrel chest and sank his chin down so at least now he was contemplating the floor and not my jugular vein. “I could not tell you about the first husband. He was taken by a fever, which could be true. But the second husband, struth, he was an ugly, old blighter. It was his alehouse, mark you, and after she married him, she worked as a serving wench. She was nay so hideous in those days. Not comely, but passable. He went off in an apoplexy. Could she not have done that by magic?”

  He looked at me, and I had to admit I thought she probably could have. I thought back in those days they used the term apoplexy for everything from a stroke to an epileptic fit. There were plenty of poisons that could cause a death that way.

  “Possibly,” I said.

  “As I said, I had my eye on her at that point. They’d had no children, and she was now a wealthy widow with a good bit of property. And I was lying low myself. I’d had a venture that didn’t pay off.”

  Lochlan chuckled. “A venture? Is that what you call it?”

  Thomas Blood broke out into a broad chuckle of his own. “I was always a bold man. I had no time for half measures.” He looked at me, and he was like a different man, suddenly jovial and bluff. “I nearly got away with the Crown Jewels.”

  It was so unexpected, even I laughed. “You stole the Crown Jewels?”

  “In my very hands I had them. I had the crown about me, though I’d had to flatten it with a mallet to avoid detection. I was dressed as a parson, you see. Slipped the thing into my robes as quietly as a confession. My son had the orb, and a colleague attempted to take the sceptre.” He shook his head, looking suddenly heartbroken. “But the luck wasn’t with us.”

  I thought it was astonishing they’d got that far. “I saw the Crown Jewels once, in the Tower of London.” I’d had to line up for ages and then to stand on a conveyer belt and float past some of the world’s most fabulous jewels. I couldn’t even stop to stare as long as I wanted to.

  “You’re right, Mistress. That’s where they stored the crown jewels even then. Though there weren’t so many in those days. Still, a tidy haul.”

  “Mr. Blood, Tom, how were you not hanged?”

  “Well, they put me in the Tower good and tight.” He glared at Lochlan. “Like I’m imprisoned now. But I refused to speak to anyone but the king. That was C
harles the second, you understand. He had a sense of humor, the king, I’ll give him that. He sent for me, and I told him my story, and when I was finished he not only pardoned me but gave me a pension of five hundred a year.”

  Was he having me on? Telling tall tales for the gullible colonial? I glanced at Lochlan, but he was nodding. It must be true. Math had never been my strongest subject, but I thought a pension of five hundred a year in the reign of Charles II must have been a tidy sum.

  “So you came back with your pension to hide away here in Ireland.” It probably wasn’t a terrible idea. He must have worried that Charles might change his mind.

  “And that’s when I met her last husband. Gerry O’Donnell, he was. He managed to get her with child, and then he too met with an unfortunate end.”

  “What happened to him?” I almost didn’t want to know. If Biddy O’Donnell was my many times back grandmother, then this poor sap must be my many times back grandfather.

  Thomas Blood might not have been the most successful thief, but he was a gifted storyteller. He all but rubbed his hands. “Well, now, that’s a strange tale. Gerry O’Donnell had a fine business, he did. He was an ale merchant, you see. And he not only gave her the babe but a great deal of money. I suspect she had no further use for him and one day he was found drownded in a barrel of his own ale. It looked like he’d fallen in. But I always wondered. So did the rest of the town. People began to look at Biddy O’Donnell sideways. Ye used to see her, in the corner where she’d be telling her fortunes, whispering away to that black cat of hers.”

  A little shiver went over my spine. I knew all about that cat.

  “And then they said she cursed Esther Flynt.” He put his head to one side. “Esther was a comely lass with hair that flowed down her back like a fountain of gold. Powerful jealous of her, old Biddy was. And then one day the poor lass—Esther that be—lost her hair. Pitiful to see, it was, until she was as bald as a newborn babe.”

  “But a disease could have caused her baldness.”

  “It was the glee and triumph of Biddy that gave her away. I’d thought I might have a go at her myself one more time. But I had a nasty feeling. I did not want to be the fourth of her husbands to come to an untimely end. Besides, if I’d had the Crown Jewels, she probably would have taken me, but I had little more than my sword, my pension and my grand ideas to my name.”

  “Not to mention a wife still alive,” Lochlan reminded him.

  Thomas Blood waved a hand at such minor inconveniences.

  I thought he’d had a lucky escape. “What happened?” I was waiting for the rest of the story.

  He blinked those bloodshot eyes and looked at me. “She was hanged, wasn’t she?”

  “Hanged.”

  He nodded. “And that mangy, old cat with her. They were never separated, even on the scaffold.”

  My mind skittered away from that image. “What happened to the baby?” I assumed it had survived since Biddy claimed me as her kin.

  “It was taken in by a local family. Name of Kennedy.”

  Something inside me jerked like a plucked guitar string. Kennedy was a very common name in these parts. Still, could there be a connection between me and Pendress Kennedy? It made sense that whoever took in Biddy O’Donnell’s baby would likely have been a witch. I suspected in those days most of the villagers wouldn’t have touched her with a ten-foot pole. I hoped the Kennedys had been kind to her, poor thing. Still, I suspected it was in her best interests not to have Biddy O’Donnell bring her up.

  “What happened to the inn?” I asked.

  “They burned it to the ground. Once they’d deemed that it was a place of witchcraft, the local councilors decided to burn it. Shame. It was a nice public house in its time.”

  “Do you remember where it was?”

  He looked at me. “Aye. The land lay empty for a long time. Nobody wanted it. Young Mistress O’Donnell grew up and claimed it. She married and had children of her own. She’d taken the name Kennedy by then, but oddly she married an O’Donnell. The land’s been in O’Donnell hands ever since. And one of them made a bit of money and had ideas above his station. He built that Georgian house, and it still stands today.”

  It was nice to have Biddy O’Donnell’s story confirmed. How weird to think I had a connection with that place. I didn’t like the house, though. It gave me the creeps when I was inside of it. Maybe, like the blood that ran through my veins, so did the memories of what had happened there. I was surprised Biddy O’Donnell wanted it back unless as a reminder of when she’d been alive.

  I could hardly concentrate on the book. Thomas Blood enjoyed it immensely, though, as it was about stolen jewels. I kept thinking about Biddy O’Donnell and how she’d been so irked by the people invading her house. Had she been bothered enough to take a candlestick and bash Brenda O’Donnell on the back of the head?

  When the meeting ended, Lochlan made sure Thomas Blood was well escorted and then remained behind to talk to me.

  “I hope you didn’t mind me bringing him? I thought you might find it helpful to hear about Biddy O’Donnell. Considering…”

  I nodded. “Considering she nearly killed me in my own home with that spell book. Do you think she killed Brenda O’Donnell?”

  “To get her house back?” He raised his hand and did a maybe, maybe not motion. “She’s not a stupid witch. She must know that someone will move into that house.”

  “Unless she can convince the community that the house is so badly haunted that no one ever wants to move there again.”

  I thought she was going about it the right way, too. The house had experienced both a natural death and a murder within its walls within the past couple of weeks. I thought most people would think twice before rushing to buy it.

  “She told me that there’d been a dandy in the place going through the things. She described his watch. I think the man she’s referring to is Brenda O’Donnell’s fiancé, Dylan McAuliffe.” I paused, thinking. “At least he told me he was her fiancé. I’ve only his word for it.”

  His gaze sharpened on my face. “You think he wasn’t?”

  “I don’t know. Why would he lie? Unless he had some other reason to be there. And if he killed her, why did he do it?”

  Lochlan walked over to the window, raised the blind slightly and looked out. No doubt he was making sure Thomas Blood was being properly escorted home, which I very much appreciated. He turned. “Whatever happened to Brenda O’Donnell, it would make sense that the answer was in Dublin.”

  I hadn’t thought of that angle, but he was right. I’d assumed that coming home had stirred old angers and enemies. Which led right to Jack the drug dealer’s door. But when Jack had been to see me, I had half believed him when he insisted he hadn’t killed Brenda.

  “I’ll do some sleuthing. Jack said he saw Dylan McAuliffe before I did, when Brenda was already on her way to the hospital. Dylan told me he’d just arrived. If that was true, he couldn’t have killed her. If Jack was right, he could be our guy. I’ll call the lawyer’s office where they both worked. Hopefully, his assistant will know what time he left the office that day.”

  “Or even if he went in at all. It’s about a four-hour drive from Dublin to Ballydehag if you don’t stop.”

  “Let’s see what time he left.”

  Chapter 15

  It felt good to have another avenue to explore. I gathered together a story that sounded plausible to me and the next morning I phoned the law offices of Fitzpatrick, Lyon, McKenzie five minutes after the offices officially opened.

  I’d chosen my time deliberately. Having worked in a lawyer’s office, I knew that while the assistants started right on time, the lawyers often wandered in later, after breakfast meetings or squash games. I called early because I didn’t want to speak to the lawyer himself; I very much wanted to talk to his assistant.

  Sure enough, they put me straight through to a pleasant-sounding woman after I had asked the switchboard operator for Dylan McAuliffe.

>   I asked for him again, and she said, “I’m sorry. He’s not here. Can I put you through to one of our other partners who is taking his cases?”

  Someone else was taking his cases? Had he decided to take some time off while he was here? “I was really hoping to speak to him. Do you know when he’ll be back in the office?”

  There was a tiny pause, and then she said, “I’m sorry. He no longer works here.”

  “What?” The exclamation was out before I could stop myself. “This must be sudden. I’m sure he was working there last week.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more. Would you like me to refer your case?”

  I shook my head. Then realized she couldn’t see me, and said, “Could I speak to Brenda O’Donnell’s assistant?”

  I felt the silence between me and this stranger on the other end of the phone grow thick. Was she trying to decide whether to tell me Brenda was dead? Thinking of hanging up? Finally, she said, cool and professional, “One moment,” and the line clicked. I thought she might have hung up, but a second or two passed, and another voice said, “Brenda O’Donnell’s office.”

  I’d only had seconds to think, but I decided to tell the truth as much as I could to get some information. “Hello,” I said. “My name’s Quinn Callahan, and I’m calling from Ballydehag.”

  “Ballydehag.”

  “Yes. I know that Brenda O’Donnell passed away. I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I have some valuable books that belong to her estate. I wonder if you know who her next of kin is?”

  “I don’t. No.”

  There was a pause. She didn’t hang up, so I pushed a little. “Should I give them to Dylan McAuliffe? He’s here, and I understand he’s her fiancé.”

  There was a sound like shuffling and then the click of a closing door. The woman said, dropping the cool, professional act, “Don’t give anything to Dylan McAuliffe. He is not her fiancé.” That was told in a fierce tone. I bet this woman had been a great personal assistant and was still utterly loyal to her boss. “She finished with him.”