Cruel Winter: A County Cork Mystery

by Sheila Connolly

  “Mrs. Minahane, unless someone has told him about what went on at Sullivan’s last night, he has no idea we’re searching for him, and most likely he’ll be at the farm. I’m sure we’ll find him quickly.”

  Nora looked only partially mollified. “Might be we’ll stick around Skib until that happens, fer he won’t think to look fer us here. I’ll let Joe know to keep his eye peeled fer him.”

  “Detective, once you do find Jacky, can we talk about it at the pub?” Maura asked. “You know how fast word spreads, and we’ve got a lot of curious people there—or will have soon enough.”

  “I’ll be sure to let you know when he’s found.” He smiled at Maura. “And thank you for your help. Diane, what are your plans?”

  “I’ve booked a flight for tonight.”

  “Then most likely I won’t be seeing you again. Let me apologize for all the trouble we’ve caused you.”

  “Thank you,” Diane said gravely. “I can’t exactly say I forgive you, but I do understand. And I appreciate that you let Ellen talk to us.”

  “It seemed the least I could do. I’ll see you out.”

  Twenty-Six

  It was time to get back to Sullivan’s: it was already close to five, and Maura expected a busy night. They made their way out to Maura’s car without speaking, and once they were seated, Maura turned it on and cranked up the heat. “What do you want to do now?”

  Diane looked blindly out the front window. “I . . . don’t know . . . It’s been twenty years. Mark and I, we were happy at the cottage, and then Sharon was killed, and somehow I became the favorite suspect, and things just dragged on and on . . . And here we are, all these years later, and it might actually be over.”

  “Did you ever meet Jacky Dempsey?”

  “Not that I can recall. It sounds awful of me, but mostly we stuck to our own kind. Mark and I wouldn’t have had much to do with an uneducated cattleman, even if he did live nearby. And we wouldn’t have expected Sharon to do that, any more than we would. This Jacky sounds a bit unstable. Poor Ellen.”

  “Why do you say that? Her keeping silent really screwed up your life.”

  “But I can understand her reasons, in a way. Certainly, she was wrong, but she was weak and frightened and didn’t see any other choices.”

  Maura felt little pity for weak women like Ellen, but she wasn’t going to argue with Diane. “What time’s your flight?”

  “Eight. And I still have to turn in the rental.”

  “You sure you won’t stay around until they catch the guy?”

  Diane’s mouth twitched. “I’ve had his sister’s apology. I doubt he’s going to tell me he’s sorry—he probably blames Sharon for leading him on.”

  “Do you want to wait at Sullivan’s? You don’t have to leave for the airport for an hour or two.”

  “Why not? I’ve nothing left to do.”

  Maura navigated her way back to Leap and parked. Inside Sullivan’s, more people gathered. Maura could hear Liam and Donal tuning up in the back room—acoustic, even though the power was back. Getting ready for their gig tonight—she kept forgetting about that. The music sounded a bit wistful, she thought, muffled by the thick walls and the doors.

  She slipped behind the bar, then tapped a spoon on a glass. When she finally had everyone’s attention, she said, “We’ve just come from the Skibbereen garda station. It looks like Diane Caldwell has been cleared of the murder of Sharon Morgan. The gardaí are now looking for Jacky Dempsey, based on new information from his sister. We’ll let you know when he’s found.”

  Diane resumed what now seemed to be her permanent seat in the corner, and Maura joined her there. “That inspector of yours—he’s an intelligent man, that one,” Diane said.

  “You were expecting a local dummy?”

  “No, but I suppose I didn’t believe he would have an open mind. As you might guess, I have few happy memories from my interactions with the gardaí.”

  “Detective Hurley does care about doing the job right. And he listened to some wacky theories from me when he had no reason to. He’s not your typical by-the-rules kind of guy.”

  “I suppose I’ve lived in cities for too long—I forget that there are decent people in jobs like his.”

  “And the ones before weren’t? Decent, I mean?”

  “I don’t mean to say that. I think they were simply overwhelmed and uncertain. You won’t know this, since you’ve only just arrived, but this part of Ireland was still quite isolated then. That’s one of the reasons people like me came here—for the peace and quiet. And the beauty of the land. The gardaí simply weren’t prepared to deal with a gruesome high-profile murder.”

  Maura looked at her critically. “You know, I thought you’d be angrier now that you’d been dragged through this for so long.”

  Diane smiled ruefully at Maura. “What good would that do me? They got it wrong, but not out of malice or laziness. And now they’ve finally gotten it right. I might wish it had taken less time, but they got there in the end.”

  “Have you talked to your husband since all this started?”

  “I texted him when I found I’d be delayed, but I didn’t want to share the details until I knew the outcome.”

  Not exactly a warm and supportive relationship there, Maura said to herself. Was it ever? But who was she to judge? “What will he think?”

  “As I’ve said more than once, he thought the whole accusation was a joke at the start, and then he was surprised that the case dragged on so long. And then he more or less forgot about it all, since the English papers didn’t follow the case, and I didn’t bring it up. He was more interested in how much I’d realize from the sale of my grandparents’ property. I know you’re probably too polite to ask, but it’s less than he expected.”

  “Do you still plan to sell the property?” Maura asked.

  “I’ve signed a contract. I suppose I could still withdraw, but I don’t know if I want to.”

  “Do you need the money?”

  “No. If we had, I’d’ve sold the place years ago. I hated to part with it. It was the last piece of my childhood, in a way. Would I be welcome here now, when the news gets round?”

  Maura remembered Diane’s hands caressing the shabby old salt shaker—was it only yesterday? She must still feel some attachment to the old place to have brought it with her. “I can’t answer that,” Maura said. “If anyone had asked me would I be welcome here, I would have laughed in their face. But I was wrong. It might not be as hard as you think.”

  “They remembered your gran, Maura, and they honored her memory, I assume. She kept in touch with people here?”

  “Yes, not that she ever told me.”

  “Ah, there’s the difference. Any memories of me in West Cork are bad ones, and I didn’t contact anyone after I left. People here wanted to like you, but they were happy to hate me.”

  “That’s just sad,” Maura said. But probably true, she added to herself.

  Maura gazed around the room. Everything seemed to be running smoothly, and there was a steady stream of people wandering in and out of the back room, where Liam and Donal had started playing in a kind of haphazard way. Irish musicians didn’t pay much attention to schedules, she’d found.

  What an odd couple of days this had been! If there was such a thing as a book called Pub Management for Dummies, battling blizzards and solving old crimes—at the same time!—were probably not categories. When would Ireland stop surprising her?

  She wandered back to the kitchen, which was as clean as such an old place could be. It had the basics, even though the stove was no doubt older than she was, although not quite as old as Billy—a thought that made her smile. It worked, kind of, but if she decided to expand and start offering food, she’d have to get a more modern one, and that would probably be expensive. And there would also be various fees and licenses for serving food that she’d never even heard of. And inspections. And approvals. Maybe she wouldn’t rush into it. Or she could ask Rose to do the
legal homework if she really did want to cook. So much to learn and so little time to look into it all.

  Mick appeared in the doorway. “Sounds like yer meetin’ went well. Any more wrongs to right?”

  “Not likely. I don’t go looking for these things, you know.”

  “Maybe you attract them like a magnet, since yer country is so violent.”

  Maura bristled. “More than around here, maybe, but most of the US is pretty peaceful. There are only a few states where people walk around in public wearing guns.” Sad but true: if it was no states, she would be happier. She’d known more than one person in her high school class who had been shot on a dark Boston street. “I never got lunch, and we owe Billy some food. If you’ll cover here, I’ll go and ask him what he needs and then go to the Costcutter and see if they’ve got anything in.”

  “You go on then. We’re fine here.”

  Maura grabbed her coat and hurried the twenty feet or so to Billy’s door at the end of the building. She knocked and after a few moments heard slow shuffling approaching. “Billy? It’s Maura,” she called out, waiting. After another thirty seconds, he reached the door and opened it, smiling.

  “Ah, Maura, please come into where it’s warm.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad to hear your heat is working. I was going to get something to eat and then I remembered that we ate a lot of what was in your pantry. If you’ll tell me what you need, I’ll pick it all up together.”

  “Ah, don’t trouble yerself,” Billy said, dropping into his chair and waving Maura toward one opposite.

  “Billy, it’s no trouble, and we owe you. What did the boys borrow? Milk? Bread? Eggs?”

  “All those and a bit o’ cheese as well. Thank you, Maura. What’s the news?”

  Maura leaned against the door. “Diane and I just got back from the garda station. Detective Hurley invited us to talk with Ellen Layton, and she told us as much as she knew of the story. Add what Bart Hayes told them, and they expect to arrest Jacky Dempsey for the murder.”

  “Ah,” Billy said and stopped.

  “You don’t sound surprised, Billy,” Maura said.

  “I can’t say that I am. The Dempseys tried to make a go of the farm, but even with Denis Layton runnin’ the place, it didn’t do well. Ellen’s brothers weren’t interested, so they went lookin’ fer easier ways to make a livin’. Dairy farmin’s hard work, yeh know. Jacky was always the bad seed.”

  “And you know this why?”

  “When yeh’ve been around as long as I have on this earth, you hear things, and you know people.”

  Maura couldn’t argue with that. “Judith seems to be making dairy farming work for her. Do you think Jimmy is up to it?”

  Billy waved a dismissive hand. “Ah, he’ll find a way to weasel out of the work, I’ve no doubt. Probably say he’s important to the runnin’ of Sullivan’s. But Judith’s a strong woman, and she’ll handle him.”

  Maura wasn’t convinced, but she wished Judith luck. Maybe marrying Judith would sweeten Jimmy’s mood, although she wasn’t going to count on it. “So I’ll get you eggs, bread, milk, and cheese and drop them off here. Will you be coming by the pub later?”

  “I may do, after a bit.”

  “Then I’ll see you later.” Maura gave him a last smile and let herself out to make the trek to the Costcutter.

  Twenty-Seven

  The walk up the street to the store gave Maura some time to think—time alone had been in short supply recently. When the murder had happened, people—including the gardaí—had been happy to assume that the killer had been an outsider rather than one of their own. Maura respected the loyalty that people felt for each other, especially when they’d known each other all their lives, as had their families known each other for decades. But that didn’t justify ignoring the truth. The only result of that bias had been years of suspicion and a general feeling of dissatisfaction that nothing had ever been proved. The unsolved case still troubled people.

  Well, now it was solved, which should satisfy people. Jacky Dempsey didn’t sound like a man who had a lot of friends who’d care.

  When she reached the store, Maura found the shelves pretty much picked over, which didn’t surprise her after what Rose had told her. “You got new stuff coming soon?” she called out to the older woman behind the register, who she recognized but whose name she didn’t know.

  “Here’s hopin’! Like a pack of wolves, it’s been—you’d think people were planning fer a siege or the like. But I didn’t like to put a limit on what they could take. There’s a truck due in the mornin’, I’m told. What do yeh need?”

  “Probably the same thing as everyone else. Most of what I need is for Billy Sheahan—we kind of borrowed most of his food for breakfast.”

  “Ah, well then—wouldn’t want the man to starve. I’ve got some bread and stuff put away in the back, and I’ll let you have it—fer Billy.” The woman disappeared toward the back of the store, and Maura found herself staring at the day-old newspapers in a rack near the register. She wondered what the headlines would look like in the next edition.

  “I’ll put yer stuff in a sack, shall I?”

  “Please.” Maura waited while the woman disappeared through a door at the rear and emerged with a carry bag a minute later. “What do I owe you?”

  “Ah, I’ll put it on yer tab, shall I?”

  She had a tab? She must have inherited Old Mick’s. Rose would know. “Thanks.”

  “Give my best to Billy,” Hannah called out as Maura went out the door.

  One task accomplished, Maura thought as she set off back toward the pub. She rapped on Billy’s door when she reached it and handed him the bag when he opened the door.

  “I’ll be down to yer place directly,” he said. “Once I’ve had me supper, that is.” Billy lifted the bag and smiled at her and then closed his door.

  Back at Sullivan’s, Maura opened up a can of some pasta product, dumped it in a bowl, and heated it briefly in the microwave. That was lunch—or was it supper? She was startled when the door flew open, slamming against the wall, and Sean Murphy strode in, looking flushed with excitement. Maura did a double take, taking a harder look at him. “Sean, have you been fighting?”

  “I have indeed,” he said, looking very pleased with himself. “And I’ve news fer yeh. We’ve got yer man Dempsey.”

  “That was fast! Wait, weren’t you off duty today?”

  “The inspector wanted everyone on hand to look for the man, so I was called in.”

  The small crowd had fallen silent, and then everyone started talking at once, surging toward the bar. Maura raised one hand. “Hold it!” She turned to Sean. “Can you talk about it? Publicly, I mean?”

  Sean grinned. “It’ll be on the telly soon enough.”

  Maura eyed the crowd. “Okay, then. But first, Sean, looks like that shiner could do with some ice. If we have any, that is.”

  “Ta, Maura. I hardly noticed.”

  The Irish gardaí—and Sean in particular—rarely resorted to violence, so for Sean to come in sporting battle injuries was startling. She couldn’t wait to hear the story, but she thought some first aid might be needed first. Before she could do anything about it, Rose handed her a plastic bag filled with ice and wrapped in a towel. She passed it over the bar to Sean.

  “Something to drink?” she asked.

  “Coffee, if yeh don’t mind. I’ve got to get back to the station, but I thought Diane deserved to hear the news from one of us rather than on the news.”

  Diane passed through the small crowd, and she stopped next to Sean at the bar and faced him. “He’s in custody?”

  “He is. The warrant’s on its way,” Sean told her triumphantly.

  Diane’s face gave nothing away. She studied him, as if to reassure herself that he wasn’t kidding. “Where’d you find him?”

  “At the Layton farm, where he’s been all these years. He thought he was safe there—he never believed his sister would tell us anything. We’re sti
ll talkin’ to the gardaí in Schull about him, fer it’s hard to believe he’d’ve stayed out of trouble fer long, and I’m guessin’ he’s been a guest of theirs before.”

  “Does he know yet that it was his sisters who finally turned him in?”

  “That I can’t tell you, but he didn’t declare that he was innocent. We have the right man, and with his sister’s story and a few comments he might have made when we came to talk with him, not to mention assaulting a garda or two, I don’t think there’ll be any problem holdin’ him. It’s just paperwork now.”

  “Oh.” Diane was finally beginning to process the reality. “Thank you for telling me. Us.”

  “The whole country’ll know soon enough.” Sean nodded at the television over the bar, which somebody had turned on without the sound. The news broadcast was on, and the crawl at the bottom of the screen read “Arrest of man in Sharon Morgan case.”

  Maura was pretty sure it would be a busy night at the pub.

  Sean finished his coffee. “I’ll be gettin’ back to the station now, but I wanted to be the one to tell yeh.” The small crowd of men parted once again to let him pass to the door, but not without a few of them slapping him on the back as he passed.

  When he was gone, they closed ranks once again, clustering around the bar, looking expectant. Like a herd of cows at feeding time, Maura thought irreverently. “I’m thinking this calls for drinks all around,” Maura told them. “Mick, can you handle that?” When he nodded, she turned to look for Diane, but she’d retreated to her corner and was gathering up her things.

  When Maura approached her, Diane said, “You did it. You found out what really happened. You convinced the gardaí. And they’ve caught him. I never thought I’d see this day. And I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “For a start, you don’t have to thank me,” Maura told her. “I just got things started. The rest was luck.”

  “More than that, Maura. You’ve got a sharp mind, and you pointed out some things that others missed. And you’ve got a good place here. Friends. A home.”