Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery

by Alber, Lisa

  Praise for Kilmoon

  In her moody debut, Alber skillfully uses many shades of gray to draw complex characters who discover how cruel love can be.

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Lisa Alber’s assured debut paints Lisfenora, County Clare, at the height of the local matchmaking festival, when the ordinarily sleepy village is crammed with revelers, cadgers, and con men galore. Amid mysteries and mayhem, Alber captures the heartfelt ache in all of us, the deep need for connection, and a true sense of purpose.

  —Erin Hart, Anthony and Agatha-nominated author of The Book of Killowen

  In the captivating Kilmoon, Lisa Alber serves up a haunting tale of Merrit Chase, a woman who travels to Ireland to sift through her family’s dark past in search of a future seemingly fated to elude her. With exquisite craft and a striking sense of place, Alber serves up a rich cast of unforgettable characters and an intricate, pull-no-punches plot. Raw with grief and painful honesty, Kilmoon is a soulful and beautifully told tale that never lets up, and never lets go.

  —Bill Cameron, author of the Spotted Owl Award-winning County Line

  This hauntingly lovely debut mystery evokes the romance of Irish lore and melds it with the poignant longings of a California woman. When Merrit Chase seeks answers to her deepest heartaches and oldest questions, she slams into the eccentric souls who populate the village of Lisfenora, County Clare, and at least one of them is a killer. Some residents hint at ancient wounds with shocking ties to the present, while others entangle her in their own disturbing intrigues. You will be charmed by this nuanced look into the eternal mysteries of the human heart.

  —Kay Kendall, author of Desolation Row—An Austin Starr Mystery

  Moody … Engrossing … Lisa Alber weaves an intricate plot and vivid characters into a twisty story about betrayal and family secrets, redemption and love. A splendid debut!

  —Elizabeth Engstrom, bestselling author of Baggage Claim and Lizzie Borden

  Full of surprises … Great Irish setting, compelling characters, and a tale full of passion, hate, and murder, told with style and craft.

  —Ann Littlewood, author of the Iris Oakley “zoo-dunnit” mysteries

  What a beguiling start to this new mystery series! Clever, suspenseful, and complex—Lisa Alber is a consummate storyteller. I can’t wait to read her next installment and neither will you.

  —Michael Bigham, author of Harkness, A High Desert Mystery

  Lisa Alber’s gripping debut signals the arrival of an outstanding new voice in the realm of crime fiction. Her dark Irish tale of family, love, murder, and matchmaking is a literary pot of gold.

  —Jeannie Burt, author of When Patty Went Away

  In memory of Joseph Anthony Alber, who would have loved to have seen this

  Contents

  June 28, 2008

  • Part I •

  • 1 •

  • 2 •

  • 3 •

  • 4 •

  • 5 •

  • 6 •

  • 7 •

  • 8 •

  • 9 •

  • Part II •

  • 10 •

  • 11 •

  • 12 •

  • 13 •

  • 14 •

  • 15 •

  • 16 •

  • 17 •

  • 18 •

  • 19 •

  • 20 •

  • 21 •

  • 22 •

  • 23 •

  • 24 •

  • 25 •

  • 26 •

  • 27 •

  • 28 •

  • 29 •

  • 30 •

  • 31 •

  • 32 •

  • 33 •

  • 34 •

  • 35 •

  • 36 •

  • 37 •

  • 38 •

  • 39 •

  • 40 •

  • Part III •

  • 41 •

  • 42 •

  • 43 •

  • 44 •

  • 45 •

  • 46 •

  • 47 •

  • 48 •

  • 49 •

  • 50 •

  • 51 •

  • 52 •

  • 53 •

  • 54 •

  • 55 •

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  June 28, 2008

  Northern California

  Merrit McCallum rolled a plastic vial between her palms so that the liquid morphine sloshed against the sides. Red and viscous—like blood—the liquid coated the plastic on the inside of the vial while her slick palms left smudges on the outside. She was tempted to squirt the opiate down her own throat rather than contend with Andrew, who waited her out from his rolling bed. She no longer called him father.

  If only he would shut up, but no, his whispered voice penetrated the leaden exhaustion that she had succumbed to weeks ago. “You know you want to,” he said.

  She turned away from Andrew’s shrunken almost-corpse to gaze at a large framed photograph that hung above the fireplace mantel. A mist-enshrouded church stood among Celtic crosses. It was a nothing of a place, a moldering heap of rocks so old that without the crosses, it could be any artifact left to crumble in the North Atlantic rains. Andrew had insisted on hanging the image on this prime section of walled real estate. Merrit’s mom, meanwhile, had banished it to the coat closet during Andrew’s frequent business trips. All Merrit knew was that her parents had met in a village near the church. In Ireland.

  She stared at the picture in an attempt to drown herself in the imagined sounds of whipping winds and pounding rains. It didn’t work. Andrew’s voice irritated like the fly that bounced against the window. The fly, like Andrew, didn’t mean anything by its incessant buzzing. The fly, like Andrew, was nothing but a miserable prisoner inside this morgue of a house. Both of them irritant buzzes, no more, no less.

  Just a buzz, she told herself. Don’t let him get to you.

  “I’m in excruciating pain,” he said. “You hear me?”

  She dropped the oral syringe onto the swiveling bedside table, now parked near the Barcalounger and far away from Andrew’s bird-claw fingers. “It’s too soon for another dose.”

  “Check my nightstand,” he said. “You can read your mom’s notebook for yourself. Then you’ll see.”

  Notebook? What notebook? He’d never mentioned a notebook before. Or maybe he had. No, surely she wasn’t so out of it that she’d forgotten something as important as words written in her mother’s hand.

  Merrit wished she could steady her voice, but it wobbled out of her, giving her away. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at. I’ll see what?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  But she didn’t know anything except that Andrew exuded more energy now than he’d shown for weeks. Despite the morphine, he held her gaze with the steadiness of a combatant on the battlefield.

  Merrit pressed trembling hands together and struggled to maintain her poker face. If only she could think straight. If only she hadn’t been stupid enough to assume she could care for Andrew on her own. She’d forgotten why she’d insisted. Something about duty, or devotion, or loyalty. Now, six months after returning home to help him, her efforts felt pointless.

  She fumbled for the cell phone that she’d left on the mantel, knocking over her inhaler in the process. It rolled under the Barcalounger. A worm of tension squeezed Merrit’s lungs as she pressed in the hospice phone number. Unfortunately,
sunlight barely lightened the eastern horizon. She’d have to leave a message with the answering service. She steadied her voice, requested a hospice visit, and hung up.

  Merrit listened with her back still facing Andrew. She didn’t need to see him to know the cracks of bitterness that etched his face. He’d been awake all night, restless and demanding, and with a strange light in his eye. She sniffed against the oppressive odor of illness in the stuffy room and eyed the knitting needles sticking out of a ball of yarn. For a while the new hobby had helped her cope. She’d even gifted Andrew with her first afghan, which now lay in a discarded heap beneath the bed.

  “This pain,” he said. “It’s torture.”

  Slowly, she turned around. The glow from the bedside lamp illuminated his shiny head, which stood out of the murk like a floating skull. She knew about his pain. The hospice folks had explained it all, and it was horrible to witness. Yet, he didn’t seem to be in that much pain right now. She stepped forward. And then again. Until she stood next to him. She reached out to adjust his pillow. Andrew’s hand latched onto her arm. Merrit steeled herself not to flinch at the dried-up boniness of his fingers pressed against her skin.

  “You’re a coward,” he said. “But then why should I be surprised. Runs in your family.”

  “What are you saying? Why now?”

  “All those years your mother kept up the pretense that she loved me, not him,” he said.

  Patting her chest, Merrit retreated to the Barcalounger once again. She dropped to her knees and felt around under the chair for her inhaler. She pushed at the chair, but it was already wedged into the corner of the room. Worse still, she didn’t have the strength to maneuver it over the edge of the rug and away from the wall.

  Breathing hard, her brain fuzzy with exhaustion and distress, Merrit staggered to her feet. Andrew’s insidious, creeping, rasping voice kept at her. His lips smirked. They pulsed, they pursed, they stretched around more words.

  “Your mother was a lying whore.”

  No.

  “She screwed a goddamned hippie freak—an Irish hippie freak—and said it didn’t matter. Nothing but a mistake.”

  No. No.

  Merrit grabbed the morphine syringe. She managed to gasp, “Just to sleep for a bit. Until the hospice nurse arrives.”

  “You’re so weak. Look at you. Poor baby can’t breathe.”

  Merrit leaned against the lounger, panting. White bubbles floated across her vision. She lifted the syringe and depressed the plunger the tiniest bit. One bitter drop of morphine landed on her tongue. Andrew’s hand spasmed toward her and fell back. His voice wheedled up a notch, its incessant buzz pitched high.

  “Your fault she died,” he said.

  NO.

  Merrit acknowledged the truth of the matter: Andrew had never loved her, and he never would no matter how hard she tried to be the perfect daughter. Sobbing, beyond caring, just wanting to survive this moment, she dripped another smidgen of morphine onto her tongue. Calm down, lungs, please.

  “If not for you, she’d still be alive.”

  NO NO.

  White hot despair and guilt coursed through her, so molten that anger seeped in around its edges. She pictured her mom striding away from her, hurrying away really, because she’d wanted to flee her spiteful child. Merrit opened her mouth, but nothing came out except a painful wheeze.

  “You should never have been born. A mistake.”

  NO NO NO.

  Merrit clenched the morphine syringe, shaking. The fly still buzzed, louder than ever. Her vision narrowed into a dark tunnel through which all she saw was Andrew’s caved-in face. His hateful face.

  “The man your precious mom fucked right before she fucked me back in 1975? He never wanted you either. Ask him yourself. After you read the notebook.”

  Her head exploded. “Shut up!” she screamed.

  ***

  The white hot rage subsided and Merrit’s vision cleared. She blinked, disoriented and shaky with leftover adrenaline. It took her a moment to realize that she still held the syringe. She gaped down at the plastic vial—now empty—and then at Andrew’s self-satisfied rictus of a smile, at his eyes focused on nothing. Depleted to her very core, she sank to the ground and let the syringe roll off her palm. The haunting image of the church gazed down at her as it always had, but now it also beckoned her. Come home to Ireland, it seemed to say. Find out the truth.

  A trickle of longing surprised her. Yes, she’d discover the truth that had simmered beneath the facade of her parents’ marriage, which was the truth that defined Merrit’s very existence. Her mom died long ago, leaving Merrit alone with Andrew. Now Andrew was dead, leaving her—what?

  Guilty. Lost. Possibly irredeemable.

  She stared at the empty syringe lying beside her on the rug. The truth. From her real father.

  • Part I •

  Friday, August 29th – Sunday, August 31st

  “Better well-intentioned duplicity than truth’s fallout.”

  —Liam the Matchmaker

  Liam Donellan’s journal

  Ah Kevin, as you know, we Irish, closet superstition mongers all, find solace and hope in imagining faeries, in calling upon the spirits of the long departed in moments of stress, in deifying the woman who gave birth to Jesus. Whether the wood sprite at home in the local thicket or the Holy Virgin, we Irish, we tend to prefer our myths to daily realities. Hence, the fame of the Matchmaker of Lisfenora. Me.

  In the ’70s free-lovers traveled here in hopes of a good shag during the matchmaking festival. And you’d best believe I was the shag king who scoffed when a stranger proclaimed that my swagger masked kindness, the proof of which was my talent for creating happily-ever-afters. Matchmaking is the best part of me, true, but only a part of a flawed whole.

  Here’s what she said, this stranger: “You have something, whether it’s an amazing knowledge of human nature or an uncanny sixth sense, I don’t know. What do you call this ability of yours?”

  She was an American journalist, you see, and she wanted a rational explanation for my success rate. So I said, “There are math and music prodigies, no one doubts that, so why not a—” and here I stopped for I didn’t know what to call myself. A gut-instinct virtuoso? An intuition whiz? Bloody hell, an empath—that soulless word used in science fiction?

  “Call me charmed for it,” I said.

  • 1 •

  For the seventh day in a row, Merrit sat on a plaza bench in Lisfenora, County Clare, Ireland. She sat with back straight and sure against the bench, and with bare legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. Unlike most tourists—especially her fellow Americans—she wore flip-flops instead of sturdy walking sandals, and a skirt instead of hiking shorts. Day after day, she appeared to be waiting for someone. While she waited, she jabbed her knitting needles through blue yarn hard enough to skewer the poor sheep to death.

  One of the locals, Marcus Tully, lounged beside Merrit with hands settled over his crotch. A fresh, unopened flask perched next to him. As usual, Merrit had invaded his self-assigned bench in the plaza with its centerpiece statue depicting an illustrious O’Brien of generations past. Fuchsia-lined walkways radiated from the statue like bicycle spokes. Sunlight cast a mellow glow onto colorful gift shops and pubs that pushed up against the sidewalks. All of it was bathed in an Irish heat, milky and cocoon-like compared with August in California.

  Merrit stopped knitting to stretch out her fingers and gaze around the village. She reminded herself to be grateful that her journey had brought her to Lisfenora rather than to one of the nondescript villages she’d driven through after her red-eye flight. Lisfenora was only thirty-five miles from the Shannon International Airport, yet she’d imagined she was driving into the outback, Irish style. Drystone walls snaked for miles over the hillsides, delineating emptiness rather than relieving it. One-horse—or maybe that would be one-pub—villages rose out of the early morning mists and slid away as the green expanses took over again. The roads narrowe
d, and Merrit hugged the embankments as she drove, unsure of herself because of the left-handed road rules. She gripped the steering wheel and scraped along the hedgerows, predicting head-on collisions every time a car barreled toward her from the opposite direction.

  Two hours after leaving the airport she had arrived in Lisfenora jet-lagged and frazzled, but also intact despite the scratches marring her rental car’s paint job. One glimpse at Lisfenora and she’d heaved a soul-unburdening sigh. Charming, yes, and lively, and obviously historic. It was a far cry from the claustrophobia and trauma she’d left behind in California.

  Lovely, all of it, and she’d absorbed everything from the failte welcome mats to the old-fashioned name boards and cheery shop fronts, trying to imagine what her mom had felt when she’d first seen the village. The fact that her mom had looked upon the same stained glass transom windows had amazed Merrit most of all.

  Unfortunately, after a week, her amazement had long since faded. She was here for a purpose, after all, and her purpose had led her to pester every local she’d met to no avail. She’d given up cajoling information out of Marcus days ago.

  “I’m after warning you not to waste your time,” he’d said. “Liam’s address and phone number are off limits to tourists. You’ll have to wait for the matchmaking festival to start and stand in line with the rest of the love-starved wankers.”

  The problem was that Merrit wasn’t just any tourist, was she? She’d bet Marcus would lead her to Liam the Matchmaker if she revealed she was Liam’s long-lost biological daughter. But this knowledge was hers and hers alone.

  Well, almost hers alone. Anxiety constricted her chest as she fumbled her knitting. She counted back the stitches along the shorter edge of the afghan and continued on with the trim that she’d begun earlier in the day.

  “Yonder Ivan, one of God’s own victims,” Marcus said as a short man with jutting Adam’s apple and red Albert Einstein hair rounded a street corner and disappeared from view.

  Merrit waited, hoping for more, then shrugged away the knot in her stomach, or rather, tried to, but the same tension that disturbed her sleep prevented her from relaxing now. “I wouldn’t call Ivan a victim. He seems savvy in his own way.”

  “And how would you be knowing that?”

  “I’ve met him. At the Internet café.”