Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery

by Alber, Lisa

  “Well?” Danny said.

  Merrit wavered, half turning away, rocking back and forth. The lung worm started its inexorable squeeze. Calm down, she told it like she always did, but once it started there was no stopping it. A pebble dug into her heel as she stepped backward. She sprinted for the stairs.

  “Bloody hell, she’s got a leg on her,” O’Neil called after her.

  Danny’s footsteps pounded up the stairs after her. Breathless, she kicked her door shut, but Danny’s foot was already inside. She twisted away from his grasping fingers, her lungs sizzling like the kiosk kebabs on the plaza. She knew this heart-attack feeling well, but familiarity didn’t lessen the surge of fear that propelled her over the sofa bed and into the bathroom. She banged open the medicine cabinet and swept a shaking hand through her toiletries. Travel-sized containers of aspirin and Vitamin C fell into the sink.

  Behind her Marcus mumbled, “Beth? Is wee Beth all right?”

  Danny hushed Marcus and stepped into the bathroom behind her. He was too close, as gritty a presence as the dirt on the bottom of her feet. Panting now, her heart skittering around in her chest, she gazed around the bathroom.

  Where the hell was it?

  Marcus repeated his question, and Danny told him Merrit—not Beth—would be all right once he got her sorted. He reached out to restrain her, but she lunged away. She remembered now. Marcus had knocked her inhaler behind the toilet. She grabbed it and cowered inside the shower stall, the lowly addict desperate for her fix.

  “What the devil?” Danny boomed. “Give me that.”

  Merrit pressed the nozzle and inhaled. She almost cried with relief as her lungs absorbed the blessed mist. Immediately, her heart rate slowed. She swiveled away from Danny and pumped her lungs again. And then again.

  “Give it here.” Danny pulled her around by the shoulder. “Now.”

  Merrit dropped the inhaler into a baggy. Her nerves vibrated taut as over-tightened guitar strings, but at least she could breathe and at least her lamentable weakness was under control.

  Danny sealed the inhaler into the bag, tucked it into his pocket, and ordered her out of the bathroom. “You will have to reside elsewhere tonight. We need time to examine your flat. Get dressed. O’Neil will see to the details here.”

  “But, my stuff.”

  “You possessions will be safe.”

  “That’s not right,” she said. “I should be allowed a few minutes of privacy so I can pack.”

  “I’m sure you’d like that.”

  Danny picked up Merrit’s oversized purse and rummaged through it with a vaguely disgusted look on his face. She winced, imagining his fingers touching everything she owned. She closed her eyes to prevent them from skittering around the room. She’d already given too much of herself away.

  “Quite the stink coming out of there, just so you know,” Danny said.

  She opened her eyes and grabbed the purse. “Where will Marcus stay?”

  “Bloody hell if I know. Right now he’ll have to come along to the Garda station because he’s implicated too.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “He was the last one to be seen with the afghan.”

  Marcus hung onto a chair. “I’ll be needing a bottle first.”

  ***

  Later, in Interview Room 1, Merrit once again cursed her need for inhalers. In Interview Room 2, Marcus pictured two plates with food on the night of Liam’s party. Two kind souls had thought of him while he sat on his bench watching the party from afar. If only he could remember who those kind souls might be. His attempt to pin down the memory faded into alcohol jitters.

  • 19 •

  Kate felt lighter than she had since arriving in this bunghole of a village. So much so that the balloons tied to the benches looked cheerful rather than infantile, and the flower stand seemed a nice touch rather than tacky. Euphoric might be the word if she were one to wallow in emotion. Instead, she congratulated herself for understanding that life was all about positioning. Positioning, literally, in that she stood at the plaza’s edge in view of Liam and, more importantly, in view of the lane from which a tall man who could only be Garda sauntered out with Merrit and her smelly sidekick.

  Earlier Ivan had attempted just such a bland escape through the mingling crowds, but she’d caught him out with her wave. His usual twitchiness had settled into a cornered-rat stance when she stepped in front of him. “Was that your hefty squeeze I saw tiptoeing away from your squat earlier this morning? Not that she was light on her feet anyhow. You’ve got yourself a right weighty meal there, bad boy. Wait until news gets around.”

  He bared his teeth.

  “And then there’s your other friend, Merrit. Connie might be interested in how well you know her. Even if it was only because of Lonnie’s illegal sideline, it could look a little dodgy. Best you take care which side you land on.”

  “I am my own side, nothing to do with you.”

  “You think?”

  He nodded but appeared uncertain, as well he should.

  “If you think it through—as I’m sure you will—your best option for remaining in Ireland lies with me, but I can’t hire you as my technical whiz unless the Garda take you for Lonnie’s innocent victim. Which you are, because how could you not obey him? He was all for holding back your wages, wasn’t he? I, as a fellow victim, can vouch for this.” She paused, entranced by the eager way he nodded. “Or not. It’s up to you.”

  Too easy. In under two minutes Kate had positioned herself—metaphorically, that is—within Ivan’s limited worldview. Dear little man, he was cute enough with his strung-out hair and wobbly Adam’s apple, trotting away from her without a goodbye.

  That was thirty minutes ago. This was now, in which Merrit ducked into the tall man’s car and held out her hand for the drunk to follow, all of them trying to look invisible.

  Kate hummed with satisfaction, inhaling the scent of overheated lamb and the more subtle fragrances that wafted in over the harvesting fields. September could be one of the best months of the year. The sunny afternoons and slow twilight, the snap in the air, the sense of all of summer’s ultraviolet energy reaching a stored-up peak before the rain started in earnest.

  She strolled toward the center of the plaza where Liam plied his trade. No playing it invisible for her. Promenading tourists brushed past her. They flirted; they mingled; they circled around Liam, hoping for their turns. She paused to eavesdrop on a reporter and a French tourist. The reporter was obviously looking for a dramatic statement about murder and matchmaking. Kate smiled at the tourist’s comment. “This murder, it is interesting for now, but it is nothing to do with the festival.”

  She continued on, all too aware of the magnitude of Liam’s importance to this community, and with that, his onerous responsibility. Stuck in this bog hole with everyone aware of his slightest sniffle. Stifled, surely, but what else did she have to inherit, as was rightfully hers, but this—this slice of power? This fragment of belonging that had eluded her since childhood?

  Kate halted just within the no-hovering zone around Liam’s tent. Conversation around her petered off as the congregants waited out Liam’s next pick. He stood to scan the crowd, and Kate grimaced to see him looking dapper in an old-fashioned velvet waistcoat with long tails and gold buttons. He fooled them all. The gnawing she’d felt in her head since uncovering the truth of her orphaned status turned into maddened bites of anger.

  She stepped forward and shushed a woman who admonished her for the trespass. Liam snapped his head in her direction, and for a dizzy moment Kate looked into eyes shaped exactly like hers. I know you, she thought, and nodded at him. He beckoned the woman who’d complained a moment before. Kate shrugged and stepped away to ponder Plan B. Meanwhile, she hoped Merrit was having a fine time with the Garda.

  Memo of Interview

  Detective Sergeant Danny Ahern questioning Merrit Chase in the death of Lonnie O’Brien. Tuesday, 2 September 2008, at 12.50, in Lisfenora Station.


  DA:You told me previously that you don’t suffer from asthma, yet this morning I witnessed you using an inhaler identical to the type we found at the crime scene.

  MC:I told the truth. I don’t have asthma.

  DA:If not asthma, why the inhaler?

  MC:Long story short, my mother died when I was thirteen and soon afterward I started having panic attacks, only the doctors thought it was asthma. By the time they realized their mistake, I was used to the inhaler.

  DA:Tell me about the inhaler we found in Lonnie’s office.

  MC:I can’t tell you what I don’t know. If it was mine, then it fell out of my purse when I first saw Lonnie on the floor. I almost jumped out of my skin.

  DA:Fell out and flew over Lonnie’s body to land under the desk?

  MC:Maybe Ivan accidentally kicked it under the desk.

  DA:So you’re saying this is a series of coincidences. That you happen to walk in on Lonnie’s body, that your inhaler happens to be at the scene, that the afghan you made happens to be in your landlady’s rubbish bin, stained with what appears to be Lonnie’s blood.

  MC:(no response)

  DA:Mrs. Sheedy states that you know the combination to the bin’s lock.

  MC:(no response)

  DA:You realize that only Mrs. Sheedy and you know the combination.

  MC:Someone managed to slip in the lemon and lime rinds. Obviously the trash can isn’t that secure.

  DA:Let’s try this. You left the party around ten thirty, everyone knows that much. Where did you go after you left the party?

  MC:To my flat.

  DA:Witnesses?

  MC:If you mean did I pick up a stranger, then no. But I bumped into dozens of voyeurs on my way back to Mrs. Sheedy’s place. I can picture a few of them. A big, blond guy. A woman in a baggy cardigan. Another guy who looked like your officer, O’Neil. That’s the best I can do for you. No, wait, Kate Meehan too. I’d met her that day. She also uses the Internet café, by the way.

  DA:Your point being?

  MC:That I’m not the only newcomer to become acquainted with Lonnie.

  DA:But you’re the one he invited to the party.

  MC:(no response)

  • 20 •

  Stymied by Merrit’s selective silence, Danny excused himself and entered the viewing room. He dropped into a chair beside O’Neil, who watched Merrit through the video monitor. She sat in the center of the boxy space with hands curved together on her lap. During the interview, she had settled her gaze on the wall and there it had remained until Danny had given up the attempt to shake the monotone from her voice. He’d have to ease his way past her defenses rather than batter them down. She apparently had experience with the latter.

  “Did you see her outside the pub?” Danny said.

  “Wasn’t me she saw. I was inside the whole time.” O’Neil fiddled with the volume control. “She’s tougher than she looks.”

  “Except for the fact that she has panic attacks.”

  “Ay, funny that. You’d never know it to look at her.”

  Indeed. And no telling what else lurked beneath her wide gaze.

  Merrit’s panic attacks explained the lab’s preliminary report. The inhaler found at the crime scene contained nothing but a saline solution inside it, and it wasn’t inscribed with a prescription number. No way to track the inhaler, but then again, Danny would wager that Merrit was the only American in Ireland carrying around useless inhalers. And odds were that the duplicate inhaler Danny had grabbed from her flat would reveal the same saline mixture.

  Merrit shifted in her seat. She stared at the video lens as if she could see him. “Where’s Marcus? Is he all right?”

  Feverish and incoherent, that’s what, but now Danny had a convenient entrée into his second go-round with Merrit. The door to the corridor opened as he reached for the knob. Clarkson poked his head in. “A word, Ahern.”

  Earlier, Danny had spied Clarkson’s Volvo when he pulled into the Garda station with Merrit and Marcus in the backseat. The superintendent normally worked out of division headquarters in Ennis, the county seat, where he oversaw the four districts that made up County Clare. Unfortunately, him being a close and dear O’Brien friend, he’d taken to appearing in Lisfenora and remaining for most of the day.

  “Let the tourist and drunk go,” Clarkson said. “Marcus Tully is useless, and we don’t know how bloody long that inhaler was under the desk. Merrit Chase knew Lonnie. She could have dropped it any time. But we do know Kevin Donellan had a grudge against Lonnie. You and O’Neil fetch him in tonight when it’s quieter. I’ve had my fill of reporters for today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Danny foresaw a long afternoon of filling out paperwork and wading through witness statements from the party. There was nothing he could do about Merrit’s flat until the crime scene techs arrived from Dublin, which wouldn’t be until tomorrow.

  • 21 •

  “I’m off,” Kevin said. “I’ll return at four to fetch Liam.”

  Constanza “Connie” O’Brien drooped onto a chair inside the festival information booth, pulling at a black skirt that stretched tight around her hips. She twisted a damp handkerchief through her fingers. “I’ll be here. Better than anywhere else, I suppose.”

  “Thanks for showing up for your shift. I didn’t expect—”

  “Oh, I know. Mum will shout down the roof when she finds out.” She smiled a little, but immediately wiped it away with the back of her hand. “Not that I care.”

  “I’m sorry for everything.”

  “Everyone’s in shock. The hotel lobby is filling up with flowers and gifts. Dad sectioned off a portion of the lounge so the locals can congregate. I had to get out of there. I can’t cope, I just can’t. My brain is about to explode.” Her tone turned stubborn. “And I have nothing against you, so why shouldn’t I work the booth like I’d planned? I need a social life too.”

  Kevin didn’t know what to make of that. He avoided working the information booth if he could help it. September was hell on his work routines. Without volunteers, Kevin would fall behind on his construction projects.

  A skinny man wearing a matchmaking festival T-shirt approached. Connie handed him Liam’s pub schedule. Every year hundreds of men and women congregated to snatch up a bit of connubial happiness. Every year Kevin observed their love-starved antics as they waited for Liam to achieve their goals for them. They were needy, desperate, lonely specimens to Kevin’s way of thinking, and every year they wearied him all the more.

  It didn’t help that every year brought its share of troublemakers, those who interrupted Liam’s sessions or pestered him at every chance. One way or the other, the troublemakers made their presence too well known. The woman who now beelined toward them looked to be a prime candidate.

  Connie stopped twisting her handkerchief to stare. “Slapper. Look at those shoes.”

  Kevin perused the long legs attached to the shoes. Stilettos, a rarity around here, and just the thing that would offend Connie with her thick ankles and arch-support shoes.

  Connie’s voice wobbled. “What’s she after with the festival? She can have at any man. Not like me who’d do anything to hold on to one boyfriend.”

  In tears, Connie stumbled out of the booth with a mumbled apology about making it up to Kevin on her next shift. Bloody hell, it figured. But then again, he shouldn’t be surprised. She was still an O’Brien—and a grieving O’Brien at that.

  “Hello, Kevin, I’m Kate Meehan.”

  He threw down the volunteer schedule and straightened to his full height, which the stiletto-clad woman topped by an inch. Her black eyeliner, fringe of fake eyelashes, and pixie haircut seemed out of character, as if she wanted to beam herself back to the late 1960s from the neck up. And from the neck down? A right modern slapper, all right.

  Kate glanced over her shoulder toward Liam. “He’d rather I left you alone.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You and I lived at t
he same orphanage in Limerick for a time, is all. I was nothing but an infant, and you were four. Still, we overlapped for a short while.”

  Beyond her, Liam half-stood. His jacket slid back on his shoulders, and he didn’t bother to straighten it. Kevin’s stomach tightened.

  “Nice nuns at that particular orphanage. I don’t mind admitting that I helped them with a bit of volunteerism of my own. They still tracked their adoptions the old-fashioned ledger-and-ink way, so I set up a computer database.” She leaned forward and Kevin caught sight of a lace bra. “I couldn’t help my access to their records and their documents, now could I?” She bent closer still. “Did you know that the day my adoptive family picked me, Liam started the process for you?”

  Liam approached. The sight of the matchmaker abandoning a petitioner said everything; Kevin didn’t need a neon sign to know that this woman was toxic. Worse still, Kevin spied Joe, the Clare Challenger’s chief muckraker, bearing down on them with his reporter’s pad on the ready.

  Liam arrived and propped himself against the table with rigid arm and splayed fingers. “I’ve been expecting you, Kate.”

  “Lonnie mentioned me then? I’m not surprised. Couldn’t trust him to leave without swiping the door hinges.”

  “I received word of your impending arrival well before Lonnie caught on.”

  Kate grinned, and Kevin almost collapsed to his knees when he recognized Liam within the upturned corners of her lips. He grabbed the table to steady himself.

  “Too brilliant,” Kate was saying. “You were manipulated from beyond the grave too. Bad luck Merrit was carted off by the Garda a little while ago. I’d love to round out our happy family reunion.”

  Kevin’s mind froze around the word “family.” The word echoed inside his head like the nuns’ voices from the orphanage, with their hymns that used to scare him.

  Kate’s smile turned beatific. “Merrit is nothing but my half-sister, didn’t you know?”

  He choked on denial—two sisters, not possible—but denial was pointless because the truth of her statement was evident in Liam, whose skin had settled into a chiseled mask so tight Kevin’s facial muscles quivered in response.