Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery

by Alber, Lisa

  Kevin’s recliner squeaked when he shifted, and the stink of beer sweat filled his nose. Meanwhile, Liam scribbled away, comfortable as could be in his stuffed chair with the turf fire roaring at his feet. Kevin turned his gaze from flickering fire shadows to his father, the true source of Kevin’s tension. Something ailed Liam for sure. He’d been journaling since the bloody mystery letter arrived.

  “Stop staring at me.” Liam jabbed his pen down, a most emphatic period, and shut his journal. “I implore you, go out, have fun, have a life.”

  “Dusting,” Kevin said. “How about that for having fun?”

  Kevin fetched a damp dishcloth from the kitchen and began by wiping down the mantel above the hearth. He moved on to the shelves that lined the wall behind his chair. Shoeboxes and an eclectic assortment of trinkets lined the shelves. Kevin picked up a miniature painting of the River Seine as drawn by thousands of Parisian street artists. This one was signed, Thanks to Liam the Matchmaker!

  He set aside the painting, began dusting the first shoebox, labeled 1969, and continued on up the line of years. He could delve into any box and read thank-you notes from happy people everywhere. Liam’s public history on view.

  Liam’s displayed life didn’t amount to a piss in the wind though. “Why the sudden ache to record your life? The truth now.”

  “To leave to you, why else?”

  Some consolation. Kevin tipped a box labeled 1975 off the shelf and heard a soft thunk from within. “You ought to hit the scratcher early. The first day of the festival is always grueling.”

  “Don’t think I didn’t see you eyeballing that Merrit lass last night at the party.”

  “Would you leave off about women, for Christ’s sake?” Kevin said. “Marcus was the one to shout her out to us, but she didn’t look to need saving from Lonnie after all that.”

  The truth was, something in her expression had disturbed Kevin. A furtive longing that she’d shot around the room like a searchlight only to land on Liam once too often.

  “She reminded me of one of those lost dogs on the Battersea animal shelter commercials,” Liam said. “Probably could do with a friend.”

  “Better she find someone else then.”

  Kevin whap-whapped the 1975 container with the cloth, hard, and watched dust plumes lose themselves among shifting fire shadows. Curious about the thunk he had heard, he lifted the lid to see a jewelry box with tiny hinges and a shiny black surface. Apparently, he’d never snooped as far back as 1975. He’d have remembered this item. He flicked open the box. A pair of earrings shone up at him. He held one of them up so that the firelight reflected through a dazzling blue stone that dangled from a filigreed silver ear clasp.

  Liam squinted up at Kevin, who caught the sudden shock that rounded out his mouth. “What the devil?” Liam said.

  “My thought exactly. Some special lassie missed her earrings. What’s the story?”

  “No story. I just don’t care to see them.”

  “What’s got you crankier than a rusted screw?” Kevin said.

  “Oh me, that’s rich. You’ve been acting the broody hen for weeks. I’m telling you, you need to get a life before I land feet up.”

  Kevin snapped the jewelry box closed and shoved the 1975 container back onto the shelf. He retreated to the kitchen, where he ground his fists into his temples and ordered himself not to feel so frayed and edgy. Maybe the time had come for a serious chat with Liam, something along the lines of, “Old troll, don’t try to match me. Old troll, don’t distract me with requests to befriend a stranger. Old troll, leave me alone to be your son for the years you have left.”

  “Holy hell,” Kevin grunted and gave up the fight to stifle his frustration, not to mention his uneasiness. Liam had been acting sneaky. Hiding away a letter, writing in a journal, brooding on her ladyship Kilmoon’s church grounds. Sneaky.

  He yanked open the refrigerator. There stood the birthday cake he’d baked earlier that day while Liam napped. One cake for one year older, and he couldn’t stand the thought. The way Liam liked to talk, next year’s birthday party might be en memoriam. To hell with that. Kevin grabbed up the cake and exited through the back door. He clambered over a rock wall into the pasture he let the neighbor’s sheep graze, took aim, and heaved the cake against the water trough. It splattered with a moist popping sound. He reclimbed the wall while soft hoof steps whooshed through the grass behind him.

  Tomorrow it would be as if the cake had never existed, and he didn’t feel any better for it.

  Liam Donellan’s journal

  My magpie son, hovering over me, taking care of me, little knowing that all those years ago you saved me. That day is clear as crystal. My broken hand throbbed, and a tiny orphanage boy stared after the couple that had just rejected him. You were too young for that kind of heartbreak, and I knew this, too, to be my fault.

  So I stooped and held out my arms for this little boy—you—and you picked up a red coloring pen on your approach. Maybe you saw despair you thought you could heal, pretending to be Jesus to whom the nuns prayed? By then, I was sitting on the ground. You perched on my left thigh and pulled the plaster cast that protected my hand onto your lap. The first thing you drew, a happy face. So simple. You looked up at me, hesitant and watchful, and of course I said, “That’s lovely.” Only then did you smile. A wavering and shaky attempt, to be sure, because the initial loss was still there and deeper than I could heal, but Christ was I going to try to erase the disillusionment, prevent it from appearing again. I’m still trying, all these years later.

  Kevin, you’re the one person in this world hardest to help. Maybe this is the tragedy of fathers and sons, I don’t know.

  • 13 •

  Danny parked his grumbling Peugeot in front of Liam’s house and heaved himself out of the car. He stood for a moment, breathing in the scents of gasoline exhaust, damp sheep wool, and Atlantic tang.

  Kevin rounded the corner of the house. “Thought I heard your sorry excuse for a ride.”

  Tension pinched the skin around his friend’s eyes and a whiff of alcohol musk rose off him.

  “You look like the bad end of a cow,” Danny said.

  “You don’t look much better. Come on, let me pour us both something.”

  Danny shook his head, then nodded. He sneezed as they stepped into the living room. Liam’s head popped around the side of his head rest. “Ah, Danny boy, looking like you’ve been ground under a butcher’s mallet.”

  Too true on this crap of a day, which had started with conciliatory dough making and ended with fingerprint powder clouding Danny’s vision, clogging his nose, and coating his throat.

  Danny stood blinking at the hearth fire, unsure how to proceed. He thought about Kevin as Clarkson’s—and the O’Briens’—favorite suspect. Below the surface of him, Kevin was softer than a stuffed lamb. Brawling was one thing, killing quite another, not that Danny could say this to Clarkson.

  “Ah hell, hit me with it twice then,” he said and dropped into Kevin’s chair.

  Kevin retreated to the kitchen to fetch the whiskey.

  “What’s on with you? Is Ellen OK?” Danny read the misgivings in Liam’s half-smile, then the decision to go ahead with the next query. “The children, they’re fine?”

  “I don’t know what fine is anymore. Seems like time should have healed something between Ellen and me.”

  “For shite, that. Time could give a damn.”

  “That’s a font of dire wisdom—thank you kindly.”

  “My pleasure,” Liam said. “Always try to help.”

  Kevin arrived with a bottle and three glasses. He pulled up a dining chair from across the room and sat between Liam and Danny. The cozy silence the three of them usually inhabited felt estranged. His fault, Danny knew, for arriving with weighted conscience. He swallowed half the whiskey Kevin handed him, feeling Liam’s gaze on him.

  “I suppose I could use your advice, as usual. Only not about my marriage.”

  Liam se
ttled back in his chair, sipping his whiskey. “Go on then.”

  “A case came in today not of the usual drug-addled sort. I should say an important case, and I could do with a promotion. Maybe if I progress in my professional life, Ellen will take heart and progress with her sadness. The good thing is that I’m in charge of the case—”

  “Cheers to that.” Kevin drank and poured himself another shot.

  “The problem,” Danny continued, “is that I already don’t like the direction the case is going. You might say it involves family. You might say I’m torn between loyalty and duty. So what do I do?”

  Liam and Kevin stared at him. They didn’t utter a word, didn’t drink, didn’t move. Kevin’s face reddened. After a long pause, Liam set aside his tumbler. “It seems to me,” he said, “that we can only do what feels sane to do. It’s unfortunate that sanity is a slippery slope.”

  Kevin reared back in his chair, almost toppling over. “Out with it already. Who’s itching after my balls now?”

  “Do you have something on your mind?” Danny said.

  “I can tell you what’s on Kevin’s mind.” Liam pointed at himself. “Me. He’s as transparent as sunshine through spiderwebs, that he is. And, he’s also worried he’s made the neighbor’s sheep sick.”

  Danny drained his glass and poured himself another dram. Liam and Kevin’s relationship had always fascinated him. Their loyalty to each other was fierce, the kind that used up most of their emotional reserves. Whereas some ignorant pricks proclaimed Kevin bent, Danny had long ago ceased to rib him about his bachelor ways. The man didn’t have the energy for a full-fledged relationship, not with Liam there to soak up his affection—and vice versa.

  On the other hand, Kevin would marry someday given proper timing and nurturance, maybe even to Emma. He was a man who fared ill on his own, an orphanage boy through and through. Product of the nuns, even down to the way he glided when he walked.

  Liam’s caw of a laugh brought Danny back to the scene at hand. He’d missed their back-and-forth but now caught Liam’s, “Did you think I wouldn’t spy on you after you left the room in a sulk? Imagine, Danny boy, he fed my birthday cake to the sheep because I asked him to make nice with that Merrit lass. God forbid I help him with his rat-arsed social life.”

  Danny’s ears stretched in Liam’s direction. “You know Merrit Chase?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Marcus seems keen on her,” Danny said, “but I swear she’s already wrecking my head. I’m fetching ice. Any for you?”

  They shook their heads and waved him on with mannerisms so similar anyone would think they were biologically related. In the kitchen, Danny leaned into the freezer. Merrit Chase. In the plaza with Marcus. At the party. At the crime scene. He’d bet she had more to do with Lonnie’s death than Kevin—little good that did his friend.

  He checked the batteries in his microrecorder and made ready to tackle Kevin.

  • 14 •

  Kevin recognized Danny’s professional mask face when he returned with ice in his whiskey. “About to get to the point, are you?”

  “Unfortunately. Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  “You’ve nothing to hide, remember that,” Liam called after them. The confidence in his tone comforted Kevin until Danny set a tape recorder on the counter. A sickening déjà vu enveloped him as Danny settled himself on a stool at the kitchen island.

  “We’re at this again? Why so official?”

  “Because I need to be on this one. And I don’t have an extra man handy to be my note taker. Better this way, actually.” Danny fiddled with the recorder without turning it on. “Listen here, Kev, the shit’s about to blow your way again. Lonnie was knifed in the heart sometime during the party.”

  “Holy shit. Why didn’t anyone tell us?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—because of your temper?” Danny held up his hand to quiet Kevin’s protest. “The news is already out. The journalists have arrived, and Clarkson has started his media games. He’s already sniffing after you on the O’Briens’ good say.”

  Unable to stand still, or sit, Kevin jerked open a cupboard. Of course the O’Briens pointed their fingers at him. It stood to reason, didn’t it, because of his supposed jealousy, his uncontrollable temper?

  He grabbed the cake and frosting mixes he’d bought before deciding to bake from scratch. Chocolate fudge, Liam’s favorite. “I’d have been mad to kill Lonnie. Pure mad. And besides you were with me the whole evening.” He yanked down a bowl, poured in the cake mix, and ruined two eggs in his attempt to crack them against the bowl. “Fucking hell.”

  “How much do you remember about last night?” Danny said.

  “Is this the official interview?”

  “Not yet. We’re two friends, talking. Though you know I ought to treat you like any other suspect.”

  “Oh yes, duty.” Kevin splattered another egg and bowed his head. “I’m grand. I did nothing. I have nothing to hide.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.” With quiet finesse Danny cracked two eggs into the cake mix. “The reason I ask about what you remember—” He shoved the bowl aside. “Listen, you went missing for a good thirty minutes.”

  “I did?”

  “And I have to include this in my report. In fact, Mrs. O’Brien nattered on about it when she gave her statement this afternoon, so I’m sure others noticed, too.”

  “That cow can’t help herself, always the busybody bitch.”

  “Still, I’m warning you, OK? I’ve got my men questioning the partygoers as we speak, and hopefully they’ll find someone who saw where you went.” Danny dipped his finger into the cake powder and licked it. “How many people do you suppose were in and out last night?”

  “Three fifty? Four hundred? Your men will have more work than a ram in breeding season.”

  “But not nearly as much fun.” Danny swung an arm around Kevin’s shoulder, the manly shake, and then his voice turned serious again. “Remember to answer with the minimum necessary. This is routine. We’re asking everyone to run through their evenings.”

  “Not routine from your boss’s point of view, I’d wager.”

  “And do not, I repeat, do not lose your patience.”

  “Good luck to that.”

  Memo of Interview

  Detective Sergeant Danny Ahern questioning Kevin Donellan in the death of Lonnie O’Brien. Sunday, 31 August 2008, at 21.40, in the home of Liam Donellan at 94 Kilkany Lane.

  DA:Let’s start at the beginning. What time did you arrive at the Plough and Trough Pub?

  KD:Eight or thereabouts. People were starting to arrive.

  DA:And what did you and Emma talk about?

  KD:What’s that got to do with the price of potatoes?

  DA:Several people saw you talking with her early on.

  KD:I bet they did—took a sorry interest in seeing us together, I’m sure. Last year, the relationship not even laid to rest, and she showed up at the party with Lonnie. Oh, and Lonnie made sure to swagger her around the room, acting as if he actually cared for her—

  DA:You didn’t grease this tin.

  KD:(clanking) Anyway, last night Emma only wanted to be sure I was right in the head again, such as that goes.

  DA:Were you angry last night?

  KD:Angry enough to kill Lonnie, you mean? You can say it.

  DA:Please answer the question.

  KD:Talking to Emma saddened me, that’s all. And honestly, maybe some residual guilt. That business was my fault. I left her high and dry.

  DA:And last night?

  KD:We said “hi,” and then I fetched Liam. That’s it. He was outside with Marcus. That was around eight thirty. I escorted Liam back into the party, and I didn’t so much as wink at Lonnie the whole night.

  DA:Did you meet his date?

  KD:Of course not. I avoided him—and her by association. Felt sorry for her though. Hope she didn’t end up like Emma. She didn’t, did
she?

  DA:No.

  KD:Besides, I was pretty well ossified by the end. I don’t remember much of anything.

  DA:Then how do you know you didn’t speak to her or Lonnie?

  KD:Because I’d remember that much, wouldn’t I? Are we done now?

  • 15 •

  After ten minutes of listening to Kevin rant, Danny clicked off the tape recorder. In that time, Kevin had managed to pummel the cake batter into submission, pour the batter into cake pans, and shove the pans into the oven.

  “So much for not losing your patience,” Danny said. “Plenty of people have seen your temper fly. This isn’t exactly in your favor.”

  Without a word, Kevin added milk to the frosting mix. Danny, harking back to his own kitchen with Ellen, watched Kevin beat the frosting until sweat broke out on his forehead. Ellen, he predicted, had put herself to bed at the same time as the children, whose mouths and fingers were probably still berry-juice stained. If they went berry picking at all, that is.

  The swinging door creaked behind them. “Ah, chocolate cake, I see,” Liam said. “And thank you for that. I couldn’t be bothered with the white cake Mrs. O’Brien supplied for the party. I detest white cake.”

  “And God forbid we sing happy birthday,” Kevin said.

  “I draw the line at that. I made a point of not going near the bloody cake in case Mrs. O’Brien saw me and rallied up a song. Don’t know why she insists on a cake. Give the people their pints and they’re happier than two peckered dogs.”

  “She knows what she’s doing,” Kevin said. “More cake for her to gorge on at home.”

  “Silliness in any case. After the first couple of hours no one cares whether I’m there or not, and thank Christ for that. People having their fun, the way it should be.”

  It was the same conversation every year. In Danny’s opinion, the only solution was to fire Mrs. O’Brien. Unfortunately, she prided herself on her party planning skills and fancied herself a festival sponsor because her husband’s hotel turned a healthy profit during the festival.