by Nancy Warren
I nodded. “The first thing I have to do is go through every box and every corner of the O’Donnell house to see if they’re missing.”
“You’ll also have to ask Karen Tate for permission to look through her boxes.”
“And even then, who’s to say that she didn’t know that they were anything more than broken-down, old toys? She could have thrown them away.” I didn’t even mention the other possibility. That Karen Tate, who ran a secondhand store and had spent time with her father in his house, knew to the penny how much those toys were worth. Which only strengthened her motive to kill Brenda.
“If you want to make this theory of yours stick, Quinn, you’ll have to find the stolen valuables in the hands of the thief.”
He was right. There was just one enormous problem with that idea.
I had no idea who the thief was.
“Will you help me?” I asked Lochlan. I put on a whiny voice, because I couldn’t bear the thought of doing all the sleuthing by myself.
“I’m happy to help. But where do we start?”
“Brenda’s house. If the toys are in a moving box, then I’m wrong.” I gnawed my lip. I didn’t want to waste any more time. I didn’t want to wait until five o’clock, when my shop closed, to start sleuthing. I had a burning sensation that I needed to get moving on this. If I had killed someone for valuable toys, I would want to get them out of my house as soon as possible. Because, if I was right, finding those toys was as good as finding a smoking gun. Or, in this case, a bloodied, heavy candlestick.
I said, “I could start right now checking the boxes at Granny’s Drawers. I need to get to them before Karen unpacks them. Do you think you could watch the store for an hour?”
He glanced around as though he’d never seen the bookstore before. “You want me to be a shopkeeper?”
I rolled my eyes. “Only temporarily.”
“But what do I do if someone wants to buy something?”
I thought about Kathleen and how she dealt with Danny if she needed to leave her grocery store in his charge. I said, “Tell them to write down whatever they took and the price and I’ll sort it out later.”
He looked a bit offended. “I’m sure I could manage a cash register, Quinn.”
I gripped my lips together to stop from laughing. “Okay. Do you want a lesson?”
I could see he did. He looked as eager to play with my cash register as a little kid wanting to play store. It wasn’t a very complicated machine, and he was a very smart man, so it didn’t take long until he had grasped the rudiments of my cash register.
Feeling that I was leaving my store in better charge than poor Kathleen McGinnis did when she left Danny at the till, I made my way back outside and across the road and walked swiftly up to Granny’s Drawers. On the way, I passed the coffee shop and, on impulse, I asked for two takeaway coffees. I thought smoothing my way with bribery would be an excellent way to get Karen’s cooperation.
When I walked in, she looked amazed to see me, not surprising as we’d spent last evening together, and I’d once more practically accused her of murder. I waved the coffee at her, and she softened. Luckily, like mine, her store was currently empty of customers.
“Quinn. What a surprise.” From her tone, it didn’t sound like it was the greatest surprise she’d ever had.
“I need your help.”
She looked even less enthusiastic. “What is it now?”
“I have an idea of who killed Brenda O’Donnell.”
She didn’t jump up and down with joy. “Is it me again?”
“No. Look, I’m sorry if it seemed like I was accusing you, but look at it from my point of view. You had an excellent motive.” She still did, but I wouldn’t get anywhere if she thought I was trying to prove she’d murdered her half sister.
“Lots of people have motives for many things they don’t do. Like murder.”
“Look, I can keep apologizing, or you can help me find the person who killed,”—I dropped my tone here, even though we were alone—“your sister.”
“If it’s illegal, I won’t do it. She may have been my sister, but I don’t owe her that.”
“It’s not illegal. All I want to do is look through the boxes you have upstairs.”
That made her look puzzled. “Whatever for?”
I showed her the book. And within five minutes, I’d also shown her the pertinent pages in the book. “Did your dad ever show you those toys?”
She shrugged. “He may have. But he knew I was more interested in the china and crystal and dolls. That’s what we talked about. He may have shown me a dusty old truck. He showed me all sorts of dusty, old things that I probably should have paid more attention to.” Her pale skin looked blotchy, as though she’d been crying recently.
“But you weren’t there to admire his collections.”
She shook her head. “I wanted to be with him. I’d look at his face to see if I could recognize myself in him. I loved his voice and tried to get him talking about the past.” She laughed softly. “Like most old men, it wasn’t difficult. So I might not have paid as close attention as I should have. He certainly didn’t tell me about toys worth a million dollars. That I would have heard.”
“Can I look through those boxes and see if I can find the toys?”
“Which would mean what? That I’d be the prime suspect again in my sister’s murder?” Her voice rose a little at that.
I hastened to reassure her. “No. I don’t think you killed Brenda. I also don’t think those toys will turn up in those boxes. But, on the good side, if they do, you’re a million dollars richer. If they don’t, we have to keep looking.”
She appeared to think for a moment, and I thought she might turn me down, and then she said, “I’ll put the ‘back in ten minutes’ sign up on the door. And I’ll come up and help you.”
This was marvellous news. When she’d put the sign up, the pair of us went upstairs to her flat. It was unchanged from the night before. I remembered coming in here and all but accusing her of murder and felt a twinge of remorse. I would really have to get more smooth at this or, better yet, stop getting involved in murders. I had a rather blunt way of attacking people who turned out to be innocent. Especially Karen. However, she seemed to have forgiven me since she was now helping me do some sleuthing. “I keep my extra stock in the spare bedroom. It’s through here.”
I followed her down a narrow hall, past an old-fashioned bathroom, and she opened a closed door. I said, “Wow.” It was like a treasure trove of junk. No doubt it was treasure to some, but a lot of it looked like junk to me. And there were boxes. Boxes and boxes and boxes. Boxes stacked to ceiling height, all labeled, but that was a lot of boxes. And there were bits of old furniture, a couple of cabinets, some dressmaker’s dummies, an old sewing machine, a dressing table with a broken mirror. I was beginning to think she resembled her father more than she knew.
She sighed. “I know. Some of these things are lovely, they just need a little bit of loving care to bring them back. And I always think I’ll have more time than I do. Anyway, I’ve got the boxes from the O’Donnell house here.”
There were a dozen boxes. “Normally, I label everything, but I didn’t get around to it.”
I thought I understood. We opened the boxes. All twelve of them. Karen cried a little over a set of Royal Crown Derby teacups. She and her dad had drunk tea out of them one Sunday when she’d gone to visit him. I thought it was therapeutic for her to have someone to talk to about him, as she came to terms with her grief. There were some lovely things in the boxes, though most of it needed a good wash or dust. There was a tarnished sterling tea set that she said was Georgian, and various other beautiful things, but not a single toy, apart from three Victorian dolls with painted china faces.
As we returned everything and closed up the last box, we looked at each other. She shook her head. “Not in here.”
“No.” I felt simultaneously closer to discovering who had murdered Brenda O’Donnell and di
sappointed that, in fact, the toys hadn’t turned out to be here. It was such a sordid thing to kill someone over a few old toys. Mind you, would it have been better if Karen had killed her own sister out of anger and grief and jealousy?
Murder was a thoroughly unsavory business, whatever the motive. She’d been looking sad, no doubt from going over all those things that had been her father’s, and then she suddenly laughed. “You’ve got a smudge of dust on one cheek. And I think there’s a cobweb on your elbow.”
I stood up then. “I feel dusty from head to toe. I definitely need a shower.”
“Well, I can offer you my bathroom, where you can wash your hands. I’ll leave you to shower at your own house.”
When I got back to the shop, Lochlan looked pleased with himself.
“Did you have some customers?”
“I did at that. Tourists, they were. They came in wanting a road map which I found and then I upsold them to one of your history books about County Cork.”
I was delighted with him. “I’d give you a raise if I was actually paying you.”
“It was my pleasure. Besides, I could tell them a bit more about the Blarney Stone and the castle than you’ll find in any book.”
“I don’t even want to know.”
“How about you? How did you make out?”
I told him that apart from getting covered in dust and grime from those boxes, I hadn’t discovered a hint of the missing toys.
We agreed that our next stop was the O’Donnell home.
I thought I had one more ally in all of this. Biddy O’Donnell. Not that I wanted to talk to that dreadful old witch any more than I had to, but she’d been hanging around the O’Donnell house. I wondered if she’d seen something. I suspected I’d been asking her the wrong questions.
“Shall I come back later?” Lochlan asked.
I shook my head. I couldn’t stop feeling that there was some urgency. “I’m entitled to a lunch break,” I said, and put the closed sign up.
I looked at him. “Let’s go catch ourselves a murderer.”
“I’ve nothing more pressing.”
Chapter 19
Lochlan said he’d drive me, and when we got outside, he unlocked a sports car. It was low, sleek and black. I felt like an international woman of mystery. I had to bend low and twist my body to get inside, but once I settled in, it was awesome. Lochlan Balfour’s castle might be extremely old, but his car was anything but. We rode low to the road, and the seat hugged all my contours. “What is this?”
“A Maserati Ghibli.”
I glanced at him as we pulled smoothly into the road. “Ghibli?”
“It’s Arabic for hot wind.”
I could see him driving at top speed, probably late at night when no one was about. However, he drove at a decorous speed to the O’Donnell home. If it weren’t for the low growl of power coming from the engine, I wouldn’t have known how many horses were raring to go.
We spent two hours going through every single box that Brenda had intended to take with her to Dublin and then the ones she’d left behind. If possible, it was even more heartbreaking than going through the boxes that Karen Tate had taped up in her spare room. Both spoke to the love of a daughter for her father, who was no longer there. She’d boxed up family photo albums, a book she’d won as a school prize, her christening gown. And a few treasures that I suspected reminded Brenda of her parents. An old clock, a needlework footstool.
At the end of our search, we still didn’t have the toy cars.
“There’s one other place I have to try,” I said.
Lochlan looked at me in that pitying way people do when they know you’re trying to avoid the truth. “You’re going to ask Biddy O’Donnell, aren’t you?”
“I am. Maybe she saw something. Maybe she has a hankering for dusty, old toys built hundreds of years after they put her in the ground.” Man, that sounded weak even to my own ears.
But Lochlan Balfour didn’t argue with me. He reached over and took a cobweb out of my hair. “One of the things I like best about you is your compassion.”
Frankly, it was also an absolute curse. “I’ll see if I can rouse Biddy. You stay here.”
If he came upstairs, he would change the energy. Maybe even having him in the house would stop Biddy from appearing. So far, whenever I went in, she was happy to show herself. But with Lochlan? I wasn’t certain.
I braced my shoulders as I went up those stairs once again. “Biddy?” I called out. Nothing. Echoing silence. But I knew she was there.
She wanted to play games? Fine. I stomped down the hallway. “Biddy? I know you’re here.”
Again nothing. Did she think she’d get rid of me that easily? I said in a loud voice, “I’m listing the house with a real estate agent. They have this wonderful family in mind. There are thirteen children. In fact, I think the family has their own circus act. They’ll be perfect companions for you. You’ll hardly notice them.”
Biddy O’Donnell appeared in front of me so quickly, I barely had time to stow my laugh before she was glaring at me. “What is wrong with you? Circus act?”
“Well, we could keep looking, see if we can find a quieter tenant.”
Her eyes went crafty. She knew that I had deliberately lured her out. “What do you want?”
“I want to know if you saw these?” And I opened the book to the description page of the valuable toys. She put her head so close to the book, her nose nearly touched the page. Then she glanced up at me, distaste in her eyes. “What on earth would I want with this old rubbish?”
Luckily, she seemed not to have noticed the figures Billy O’Donnell had jotted in pencil. I suspected, based on what I’d heard of her, that if she did the sums in her head, she’d be very interested in those old toys.
“I don’t think you’d be interested in them. I just wondered if anyone else had been in the house while you were here who’d taken them away.”
She shook her head. “Not that I noticed.”
“And you didn’t take a liking to them yourself? You haven’t tucked them away somewhere?”
She flapped her scrawny arms about like a newly hatched chick being chucked out of the nest. “I’ll have you know I’m very discriminating. A bit of nasty old painted tin? No. I wouldn’t want it.”
She was a sly old thing, but I was sure she was telling the truth.
I wasn’t sure if I was happy or sad that she didn’t have the toys. “Okay. Sorry I bothered you,” I said, and turned to leave.
But Biddy O’Donnell was nothing if not cunning. “Not so fast. Why? What’s so important about them?”
I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “Sentimental value. That’s all.”
She sniffed. “If you’ve nothing more important to discuss, I have better things to do.”
I couldn’t imagine what those better things were, and I was way too smart to ask. I smiled. “I’ll let you get on with it then.”
And made my way out of there as fast as I could. I breathed deep of the fresh air when I got outside. Being around her was too much like being trapped inside a coffin with someone who hadn’t bathed very often.
Lochlan was waiting outside when I came out the front door. He took one look at my face and said, “She didn’t have them.”
I took another deep breath of cleansing air. Shook my head. “No.”
“Now what?”
“Now we track them down. Where would you sell those toys if you were trying to get your million dollars?”
Lochlan thought about it for a minute. “Dublin. It would have to be Dublin. The auctioneer might end up being in London or New York, but you’d start in Dublin.”
“And we know someone who’s heading back to Dublin very soon.”
He nodded. “We do, at that.”
It wasn’t difficult to discover where Dylan McAuliffe was staying. The closest five-star hotel was Castlecork Inn, about five miles away.
“He’s lost his job,” Lochlan reminded me when I said I
was sure we’d find him at the Castelcork Inn.
I shook my head at him. “Dylan McAuliffe may not have a job, but that won’t stop him enjoying his five-star lifestyle. I’d bet on it.”
Lochlan declined the bet which turned out to be an excellent decision because when I phoned Castlecork, the woman who answered said, “Yes, Dylan McAuliffe was with us for three nights, but he checked out an hour ago.”
“An hour ago?”
“You just missed him,” she said in a cheerful voice that had me gnashing my teeth.
“Was he headed straight back to Dublin?” I asked in the sweetest tone I could manage, considering my back molars were jammed together.
“I assume so.”
I thanked her and turned to Lochlan, who’d heard the conversation. With his acute vampire hearing, he’d heard her side of it too. “Get in the car. We’ll go after him.”
I had a feeling this hot wind of a car would easily overtake Dylan McAuliffe’s, especially as he wouldn’t know we were following.
The Ghibli would definitely get us there faster than the old runabout that belonged to Lucinda and was currently making a funny noise in the engine. Maybe we were chasing a murderer, but I could enjoy the ride, couldn’t I? The engine hummed, and had I not cast the odd glance at the speedometer, I would never have known how fast we were going. I said nothing to slow him down. Lochlan was an excellent driver.
He said, “Luckily, there’s only one main route to Dublin.”
“He’s got an hour’s head start. Are you sure we’ll catch him?”
He glanced my way, cool and in control. “Yes.”
We passed buses and trucks, what they called lorries here, wove in and out of cars, and after about two hours I said, “I think that’s him, up ahead,” I said, recognizing the late model BMW. There were two people in the car.
Lochlan said, “I’ll wait until we’re on a slightly quieter stretch of road.”
I hadn’t really thought this part through. “Then what will you do?”
He looked at me like I was being dim. “I’ll get him to pull over.”