Malarkey

by Sheila Simonson

  Joe listened with an air of polite skepticism. The possibility of finding a neolithic site in Stanyon Woods had no interest for him. Either that or he was still so angry with Maeve he wouldn't entertain any idea that originated with her.

  "So her ladyship's gone up to Dublin, has she?" He rose. "Did she mention when she'll grace us with her presence again?"

  I decided to put him out of his transparent misery. "She's bringing a crew of student archaeologists down Thursday, and she's having tea with us. Around five, if you'd like to join us."

  He forced a smile. "I don't want to curdle the cream. We had words last week, and she's still on her high horse."

  I said, "I'm sorry," and avoided looking at Jay.

  Joe sighed. "Women are the devil. Saving your presence, Lark."

  "You sound like St. Kevin." Kevin was the holy founder of the Glendalough monastery.

  His eyes widened, and he began to laugh. "Sure, if I shoved Maeve Butler into the water wouldn't she bob up again and scold me like a fishwife? Good night, sir. I hear you're a dab hand with a fly rod."

  Dad smiled. "It's grand country for trout fishing." They shook hands. Jay went out to the car with Joe. They must have conferred, because Jay was gone a good ten minutes.

  When Joe had driven off, Jay said, "What was the business about saints?"

  I rinsed the teapot. "St. Kevin had a hermitage at Glendalough where he went off by himself and thought holy thoughts. A beautiful woman kept intruding on him, so he pushed her into the lake."

  "I may make a pilgrimage."

  "According to some accounts," Dad said, "she drowned."

  I murmured, "We do but jest, murder in jest."

  Dad stared. "What's that, Hamlet?"

  "I think so."

  "It might almost be the war gamers' motto."

  Jay said, "I wonder..."

  "What?"

  He shook his head. "A fugitive thought." He went over to his computer. "I'd better close this down. With the modem running, no one can get through on the telephone."

  Chapter 14

  "Boil the Breakfast Early"

  Irish air

  "Stuff tastes like glue." Jay stirred his porridge. "And I what's that?" He pointed with the handle of his spoon.

  "Smoked haddock," I said with dignity. "A local delicacy." The delicacy had a strong fish odor. It was also a sulphurous shade of yellow. I had found it at the fishmonger's in the High Street.

  Dad was delighted. "Haddock! What a treat. I haven't tasted it in years." He transferred a generous portion to his plate and ate it with evident enjoyment. I tried a morsel and returned to my soda bread.

  "What's on the agenda for you two?" Dad asked in the hearty tones of one who has no intention of stirring from the house. He had already announced he meant to spend the day with his freshly organized notes.

  I dolloped marmalade on the soda bread. "I may go for a walk in the woods."

  Jay gave me a sharp frown.

  "Just pushing your buttons."

  Under ordinary circumstances that would have rated a smile. He shoved his porridge away and rose. "I have to call the security people and the airline."

  "A bit early for business, isn't it?"

  "Maybe I'll walk in the woods."

  "If you're bored, you could hold a press conference."

  His mouth eased marginally. "I wouldn't have far to look for reporters." He paused at the door arch. "Do you want me to clear up?"

  "We haven't finished yet. Relax."

  He slid around the corner, and I heard the computer hum to life.

  Dad took a last bite of haddock.

  "More coffee?"

  "No, thanks. Why don't you give yourself a respite, Lark? Drive to Dublin."

  "Eek."

  "Well, drive to Dun Laoghaire or Bray, and take the DART train in to Pearse Station. It's near Trinity and the big museums. The National Museum has a fabulous collection of gold artifacts of the pre-Christian era." He smiled. "Of the Christian era, too."

  "I'm tempted..." I started to say, "but I already have that on next week's itinerary," when the phone rang. So Jay wasn't using the modem.

  He brought me the instrument. "Barbara Stein. For you."

  "Hello," I said with caution. Barbara asked about the garbage, and I reported Jay's encounter with the TV crew.

  "He answered them in Spanish?" She gave a short laugh like a bark. "Brilliant. Uh, will you do me a favor?"

  I went on full alert. "I'll try." No rash promises.

  "I want to visit Grace Flynn this morning, see if she needs anything, but if I take the Mercedes the press will trail after me like a funeral parade."

  "Do you want me to drive you in the Toyota?"

  "Will you?"

  "Okay. What time?"

  "Ten, I thought. Drive around behind the house to the kitchen. It's in the stubby wing on the river side. I'll slip out the kitchen door—"

  "And hide under the seat. Sounds good. See you then."

  "Thanks." She sounded genuinely grateful.

  "That takes care of the morning," I announced as I took the phone back to the desk. I explained Barbara's mission.

  "Grace Flynn." Jay cocked his head. "Wheeler's girlfriend?"

  "No, you cannot come. It's girl stuff."

  He started to say something, changed his mind, and turned back to the computer. "Will you get me some cash? I'm short."

  "How much?"

  "I dunno. Fifty pounds?"

  "Punts. I'll use an ATM machine," I assured him, lest he imagine I was going to cash my own traveler's checks for his purposes. I hadn't planned on paying for Jay when I budgeted for the trip.

  "Mmm." He was unimpressed. He did something with the mouse, and the computer dialed.

  I went back to the kitchen. Dad poured himself an illicit third cup of coffee and drifted off with no sign of a bad conscience, leaving the kitchen in a mess. Jay was better trained.

  Though there were no reporters or television crews visible when I approached Stanyon, I drove behind the house anyway, found what I thought was the right place, and tooted the horn. Barbara dashed out and ducked into the car with no wasted motion.

  "I could hardly wait to escape. It's awful." She hooked the seatbelt. "I really appreciate this, Lark."

  "No problem." I eased around and headed back the way I had come.

  As I drove past the house and up the long driveway, Barbara slid lower in the seat. She was wearing a pair of California sunglasses that would make her the magnet of all eyes, though her jeans and pullover were anonymous enough.

  "I didn't see any sign of reporters," I ventured.

  "They're here. One of them walked in with the data processors this morning and strolled around taking notes for a good half hour before Mike discovered him and threw him out."

  "Where was he found?"

  "On his way to Kayla's room," Barbara said grimly.

  "Is the Garda still in residence?"

  "No. The crime scene people finished their work last night. It's pretty horrible."

  "The bedroom?"

  "Yes. I told my housekeeper to burn the bedding and scrub everything down with Lysol, but her...Kayla's stuff is still there. I don't know what to do with it."

  "Box it up and ship it to her next of kin."

  "There doesn't seem to be anybody."

  "Give it to Oxfam. Yeow." That in response to a very large lorry that careened past me going fifty. I was so far onto the shoulder of the road I scraped the stone wall.

  "Where does Grace live?" I asked when my breathing went back to normal.

  "She has a bedsit in Arklow."

  I negotiated the turn onto the highway and drove south through the sparse traffic to the bridge over the Avoca. "It's nice of you to concern yourself for her."

  "Somebody has to," Barbara said absently. "It's off the High Street. Turn left."

  I complied.

  Grace's nest looked unappealing from the outside. The walkup entry squeezed between a bettin
g shop and a greengrocer. I parked in a vacant spot on the street, and Barbara led me up the stairs.

  There was no sign of security, no buzzer. The stairway was narrow and badly lit, but a long skylight brightened the drab hall, and it didn't smell of urine, just of ancient dust. Barbara looked at the slip of paper with Grace's address and knocked on the third door.

  No response.

  When she knocked again, we heard a groan and the creak of springs. The door opened. Tousled and heavy-eyed in a bright pink nylon negligee, Grace blinked at us. For a nanosecond, I wondered whether we were interrupting a Moment of Passion, but Grace was just having a lie-in. A Murphy bed thrust rumpled bedclothes into the living area.

  She blushed and said, "Oh, Mrs. Stein. Is it ten? I'll just put the kettle on." She stepped aside, and we entered.

  There were two upholstered chairs vintage 1955. Barbara perched on one and began talking lawyer. Grace wandered from the Pullman kitchen to the bed, eyes blurry. I wondered how much she was taking in. She folded the duvet and stuffed the pillow into a cupboard. Barbara was making negative comments about Irish inheritance rights.

  I stood by the window and saw that the flat had a million punt vista of the Avoca and the boat harbor. I heard the word amniocentesis. The Murphy bed slid up the wall.

  Grace ducked into the loo and performed various liquid chores. The toilet flushed.

  Barbara said, "This place is a pit. They should have found something better."

  "They?"

  "The women's aid group."

  "I like the view."

  She got up, craned around me, and sniffed. "Nice."

  Grace reappeared, brushing her curly blond hair, in jeans and a sweatshirt that claimed allegiance to Louisiana State University. She wasn't showing yet, at least not in the sweatshirt.

  I smiled at her, and she gave me a shy grin. "Me stomach's upset."

  I felt a pang, remembering my too brief experience of morning sickness. "Eat a saltine...a biscuit."

  "Ta." The kettle was shrieking, and she went to silence it. All three of us sipped tea, and Grace nibbled a biscuit while Barbara mapped out the rest of Grace's life. I thought that Grace would do exactly what Grace wanted to do.

  Midway through the education of Junior Wheeler, I got up and strolled around the room. With the Murphy bed back in the wall, the flat was surprisingly spacious. Someone had repapered it and painted the woodwork, though the carpet was icky gray. The place had to have come furnished, but there were some signs that Grace had tried to make it hers. Stuffed toys of the kind people win at fairs peeked from an otherwise empty bookcase. There was an old telly with rabbit ears. A tiny figure of the Infant of Prague stood on the mantle above the gas-log fireplace. The tea table displayed a bunch of daffodils in a fruit jar.

  On one wall, Grace had hung a framed photograph. It was the only wildcard in the decor—the black and white scene of a bridge, Renaissance or earlier I thought, with a town rising behind it. If Grace had hung a picture of the Sacred Heart, or a photo of one of her boyfriends, or a rock poster, I would scarcely have noticed it. This scene, however, baffled me. I thought Grace was not a great traveler, yet there was something vaguely Mediterranean about the bridge and the town. The photograph itself was handsome and handsomely mounted.

  At the first long pause in Barbara's monologue, I said, "I like the photo, Grace."

  She beamed. "It's me cousin Liam's work. He gave it me when I left school."

  "Our Liam?" Barbara got up and came over for a closer look. "Yes, I've seen a copy of that one. It's in his portfolio. The Bridge on the Drina." She turned back and went on with a discussion of Irish versus American higher education.

  Grace nibbled another biscuit.

  I turned the implications of Grace's kinship to Liam McDiarmuid over in my mind. I had thought he might have been drooping after her romantically. Mere cousinhood was less interesting. I didn't think an Irish man would feel obliged to defend his cousin's honor by killing her seducer. Italian or Spanish, maybe, not Irish. Besides, I recalled Liam's look of surprise when Grace proclaimed her pregnancy. He hadn't known she was bearing Wheeler's child at that point—and Slade was already dead.

  But Liam might have known of the relationship and disapproved of it. I considered. Disapproval was inadequate fuel for murder, surely, yet Grace's father had responded to the news with violence. A cousin is not a father...

  "Time for us to go," Barbara announced. "And be sure to eat plenty of leafy green vegetables, Grace. You're eating for two."

  Grace looked mutinous, but she was too polite to snap at the hand that was, I supposed, feeding her. Perhaps the women's aid group had arranged for the equivalent of welfare, but I thought Barbara had probably paid the rental deposit at the very least.

  I said, "Cheer up, Grace. You have a lovely place of your own. Do you like it?"

  "Sure, it's grand." Her face clouded. "But I miss jarring with me sisters."

  We took our leave and went back to the street. It was a nice day, so I told Barbara we could walk up the street to the bank. We could look at the shops.

  She made a face. "They're poky. And I don't want to cause a sensation. I'll sit in the car."

  Please yourself, I reflected, and unlocked the door for her.

  I had spotted a bank with an ATM machine, so I walked to it and had fun watching it spew out Irish punts instead of American dollars. Traveler's checks would soon be outmoded.

  I didn't dally long. When I returned and settled behind the wheel, I looked over at Barbara. Her nose was pink. I thought she had been crying.

  I fastened my seatbelt and started the engine. "Are you all right?"

  She blew her nose on a tissue. "Yes, sorry. I just get depressed, thinking about Grace. Alex and I talked of offering to adopt the baby that night she came to the house. We talked for hours."

  I eased out into the traffic and headed for the harbor. I could turn around there. "Did you suggest the possibility to Grace?"

  Barbara gave a watery giggle. "She told me to feck off."

  After a pause for translation, I laughed. "Cheer up. The kid might turn out to be a big flatfooted Irish cop."

  "Better that than Tay-Sachs." She blew her nose again.

  After a constrained moment, I said, "Are you a carrier?"

  She gulped. "The gene's present in Alex's family, too. We decided not to have children after my little cousin died."

  I eased the car right at the non-functional stop light. "I'm sorry, Barbara. I lost a baby last spring. We've been trying for years."

  "George told us the baby miscarried."

  I drove with fierce concentration. The baby miscarried. I had said that myself a number of times, but my thought was always that I had lost her. And yet I had done nothing the doctors disapproved of. Language can tell the truth or lie. Something in my mind shifted.

  I deposited Barbara at Stanyon before noon without incident, though several suspicious-looking cars were parked near the house. She thanked me briefly and went in the back way.

  "Can you drive me to Dublin?" Jay asked without preliminaries as soon as I entered the door of the cottage.

  "What's wrong?"

  "The burglar stole his passport and airline ticket," Dad said. Both men were hovering in the kitchen, obviously waiting for me.

  "I should have checked more thoroughly yesterday," Jay growled. He looked embarrassed. The great detective.

  I didn't say anything, but he went on, defensive, "The downstairs looked undisturbed, and I was in a hurry to shut the damned alarm off. When I decided to phone Aer Lingus today I couldn't find the ticket. Or the passport."

  "What about my stuff?"

  "It seems to be in order. He went for mine."

  It was possible the thief hadn't been able to find my ticket and passport. I had zipped them into a pocket of my suitcase and left the case in the room's tiny closet, whereas Jay's had reposed at the back of the top drawer of the dresser. The burglar must have gone straight to the dresser when h
e found the computer missing—with the alarm sounding in his ears. If he'd had that much presence of mind, why the melodrama with Dad's notes?

  I looked at my father. "Is your passport missing?"

  "I don't think he entered my room at all."

  "What about traveler's checks?" I asked Jay.

  "Mine are gone. Yours are still in your suitcase. I'm glad I kept my Visa card and driver's license in my wallet. This is going to be enough of a nuisance without having to cancel credit cards."

  "Did you call the embassy?"

  "Yes. If I come in this afternoon with four passport photos, they may be able to issue a temporary passport by Friday. They said George could vouch for me. There's a fee, of course. Did you get money?"

  I described the ATM machine and handed over the cash. "Dublin traffic. Aargh."

  "My sympathies," Jay said with only mild sarcasm. "I'm not allowed to drive the Toyota, remember?"

  "I want lunch."

  "We can grab a sandwich in Dublin."

  "Well, hang on while I change." Like Barbara I was wearing jeans and a grubby pullover. That might do for Arklow but it didn't suit my idea of what was appropriate for Dublin. I took the tags off the turquoise tunic and wore it with the skirt of the gray suit. It looked classy.

  On the way up the N11 we debated the merits of taking the DART train, as Dad had suggested, but I wound up driving in. The traffic was horrendous. We found a sandwich shop somewhere near Merrion Square and a place that took passport photos. While Jay was saying 'cheese' for the camera I bought a science fiction paperback at a newsagent. I like sf, and the book weighed less than Phineas Finn. Dad bought a newspaper.

  Fortunately, my father had had occasion to visit the embassy, so he was able to navigate for me. Inside the cylindrical building, a monument to Federal taste of the early sixties, the process was slow. It was also complicated by the fact that, when the clerk found out the passport had been stolen, she demanded to know the incident number of the police report. That meant I had to call Joe in Killaveen from a balky pay phone. It accepted my AT&T credit number eventually. Joe was in.

  When we drove south at last, all three of us were cranky and the rush hour was well under way. I got lost because I couldn't change lanes in time for a crucial turn. I finally decided the hell with it and headed south by east. Sooner or later I'd hit either the N11 or the Irish Sea.