Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery

by Alber, Lisa

  “How many do you have now?”

  “Three.”

  Kevin bit into the sandwich she handed him. Roast beef. The cat started to nose over Emma’s lap. Kevin relinquished half the beef, and the cat settled back into purring gobbles. Liam with a cat. Might be just the thing.

  Emma handed him a cranberry-apple juice, his favorite, and he made much of opening it and drinking, unsure what to say now that the moment was upon him. “I think he’d accept a cat. But you will have to deliver it to Liam yourself.”

  Emma rolled the cat up into her arms and flipped him over for a look between his legs. She handled him with confidence, but Burt arched his back in an effort to return to his lunch. She set him down. “Burt is a girl. I’m sure the poor mite will need a de-worming and flea bath. I have a cat-care booklet I can give Liam, though I’m sure he’s owned a cat or two in his life.” She turned away from petting Burt. Her gaze held a thousand unsaids. “Hasn’t he?”

  Kevin almost laughed. Given what he now knew about Liam, a simple fact about pet ownership seemed ridiculous by comparison. “No worries, he’ll take good care of any cat you gift him.”

  “You’re in on this too.”

  He reached over Emma, inhaling the scent of jasmine, and scratched under the cat’s ears. “You tell him I was with you when you found Burtene. He’ll understand.”

  Kevin finished his sandwich, savoring the horseradish that Emma mixed into the mustard. He could never get enough of her sandwiches.

  “Kev.” She placed fingers on his wrist. “What about me?”

  Kevin cursed timing and circumstance. If he’d been ready for her last year none of this would have happened. None. He couldn’t say what he suspected was the truth. They’d likely never be together again. He’d allowed himself to hope, but now he must put an end to that also.

  Tears dripped down Emma’s cheeks. She delved into the basket and pulled out home-baked chocolate biscuits. They chewed for a while, while the cat lounged in a contented sprawl and washed her face with dainty paw swipes. The sun settled itself atop a wall, and the chill started as it slid out of view.

  “What about Liam?” she said.

  “I’m sure Merrit Chase will look after him.”

  “Oh, her.” Emma leaned into him, then caught herself and pulled away. “What about money?”

  “I’ve enough saved up, and I can land construction or wood work anywhere.” A small surge of freedom startled him. He thought about the notebook filled with Julia Chase’s erratic entries, and her descriptions of her future husband, Andrew. “And I suspect that Merrit has money should Liam need help.”

  “What about your business?”

  “A fellow contractor has been giving me hassle to join our businesses together. He’ll take over my projects and my men, and we’ll see how he makes out.”

  “Does Liam know?”

  “He will soon enough.”

  “You have all the answers,” she said.

  Now Kevin did laugh.

  Kilmoon was well into shadow when they split ways. Emma placed Burtene in the picnic basket with tears trailing her cheeks. Her eyes skittered, never landing on him. “I hope it will be OK for you.”

  Still polite, even now. “And I hope it will be OK for you too.”

  Only after her Volkswagen chugged out of auditory range and bird calls quieted for the night did Kevin gather up their rubbish. A moist chill off the Atlantic had descended, crisp and clean. Autumn in the air, season for change, this September in particular.

  He turned back for a last look at the church. Limestone glowed in pinks, and the secrets Our Lady shared with Liam remained safe. He bowed to her in goodbye. The banking sun slid into a thick wall of clouds on the horizon, and Our Lady bowed back behind a descending curtain of nightfall.

  On the lane in front of the church, Kevin patted his truck canopy and gazed in the side window at his neatly packed belongings that included the wood turning table and Liam’s cast. Goodbye, Mistress Kilmoon.

  Liam Donellan’s journal

  Back then, I couldn’t help thinking that Kilmoon Church at night exuded an unquiet air quite different from daylight hours. I fancied spirits cavorting through the grasses and whispers light as rustling leaves following me as I wound through the grave markers. Unfortunately, these days the spirit whispers have felt too real so I haven’t returned except by day. And now these hours are ruined too. Perhaps I fear what the age-old rocks could say about my old-age bones …

  That last evening with Adrienne, the church walls looked porous indeed. Solid yet not, all but crumbling in the damp. Weathered and crackled old limestone still to last longer than I, longer than Adrienne, and, now, these many years later, longer than Kate.

  • 49 •

  Merrit hissed in frustration and ducked into the bowels of the kitchen cabinetry. She almost missed the front door’s wheeze and indecipherable grumbles from the living room where Liam rested on his easy chair. A moment later Danny entered the kitchen, opened the dishwasher, and pulled out a clean pot. “Extra storage. They hand wash.”

  Taking over, he littered the counter with sandwich makings and got the canned soup going. Merrit retreated like the awkward outsider she was. Stretching for a conversational opener, she mentioned that she’d seen Ivan that afternoon, and that he was just as stressed as ever.

  Danny continued slicing the Swiss cheese. “That’s because he knows that I know he lied about overhearing an argument between Lonnie and Kate. He’s still too slippery for my liking.” The knife bit into the chopping board with a decided thump. “Telephone records are a wonderful thing.”

  Of course, telephone records. Much good arguing with Lonnie had done Merrit anyhow.

  Danny left to fetch Liam while Merrit poured soup into bowls and finished the sandwiches. When they returned, Liam slipped past Danny to peer out the window toward Kevin’s unlit studio. When he turned around a frown line bisected the skin between his eyebrows.

  The men sat down. Still standing, Merrit bit into ham and cheese on wheat bread, and managed to swallow.

  Danny stirred his soup restlessly. “I need to ask some questions. Then you two can return to where you left off last night.”

  “As you wish, Danny-boy, as you wish,” Liam said.

  “Why did you cut off Lonnie’s braid?”

  Good question, Merrit thought.

  “A pair of scissors were in the desk,” Liam said. “I held them through the afghan and snipped, that’s all. I also scattered the money about the room. Only an ass would take the braid but not the cash.” He sipped a spoonful of soup. “Kate was surprised to see Marcus enter Internet Café the night of the party and even more surprised to see him turn into me when I discarded the afghan afterward. I was sorry to do that, by the way, but I’d gotten blood on it.”

  “You thought it all out,” Danny said.

  “If you only knew how wrong you are. For example, my shoes. What to do with them? I had to tuck them into my waistband, which was awkward at best. And then on the return trip from Lonnie’s shop, anyone could have noticed that I suddenly gained a stone in the gut because I needed a place to store Marcus’s shoes after I set aside the afghan. I regretted borrowing Marcus’s shoes, but the afghan was too short. That Kate, prowling as usual, of course she noticed it all. And of course she legged it into the café to see what I’d been up to. Even I said a prayer over Lonnie’s body, but I’ll wager she danced a jig knowing she had yet more to use against me, not to mention a perfect opportunity to complicate Merrit’s life with an inhaler she’d stolen out of Merrit’s purse that very day.” He nodded at Merrit. “Eh?”

  “Yes, at the tea house while I was in the bathroom,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “We talked.” He stirred his soup and let the spoon clank against the bowl. “Just before she died.”

  Merrit swallowed another bite of sandwich. It felt like sandpaper sliding down her throat. Kate and her, they weren’t so different, both of them daughters with br
oken childhoods, daughters who had followed their mothers’ footsteps in search of something from Liam. She pushed the soup and sandwich away, sick with the realization that despite her best efforts, she had never come to terms with her desire for a sense of place missing since her mom’s death, a true home.

  But she could salvage something. Maybe. If Kevin let her. If Liam stayed out of jail.

  “I’m not hungry either.” Liam arched his back with a grunt. “Kate wanted me all to herself.”

  “Why?” Danny said.

  “Because I owed her, of course. She told me quite the tale about her adoptive family. Seems Kate’s younger sister, the miracle birth child, had severe asthma. Kate sat through many a doctor’s appointment while her sister was tested. She even learned the name of the drug used—something starting with M.”

  “Methcholine,” Merrit said.

  She told them about Kate’s visit to the hospital, where she confessed to the not-quite-sleeping Merrit that she’d stolen two inhalers, not one, out of Merrit’s purse, and latched onto the idea of using Methcholine to screw with Merrit. “I didn’t notice that the new inhaler was an Irish model. Since the placebos don’t have labels, they look the same to me. She wanted to give me a scare, but I don’t think she’d have minded if I’d died.”

  “Probably not,” Liam said. “Kate told me she had a medical contact through her website design work. Apparently, she was quite good despite specializing in websites for the kinky set. I didn’t ask how she coaxed a doctor out of a test inhaler.” He grimaced. “I’m certain of her persuasiveness. In that, she was like me in my youth. She went on down to Limerick to pick up a new inhaler and later slipped it into your purse by way of one of our local lads.”

  A phantom ache reminded Merrit of the teenager who had practically broken her big toe when he bumped into her.

  “What else did Kate tell you?” Danny asked Liam.

  “She was the one to plant the afghan in Mrs. Sheedy’s rubbish bin, also to implicate Merrit. You want to know how?”

  This was crazy. Beyond crazy. The way Liam circled around the Kate topic without landing on her death. Yet, Merrit couldn’t help nodding like a child before a storyteller.

  “If you tilt the bin on edge and pull the chain so that it tightens against one side of the lid and loosens on the other—you need to be quite strong, obviously—you can lift the lid on the loose side. Kate had seen a few of the pub workers do it to mess about with Mrs. Sheedy.”

  Merrit didn’t care about the garbage can. It was beside the point, a sideshow to the main event. She opened her mouth and closed it again, taking her cue from Danny, who merely stared off into space as if he were listening to a dull radio program. Silence reigned for a full minute.

  “Our Lady of the Kilmoon.” Liam repeated the words three times, each time in a softer voice. “She had her own designs. First the mother, then the daughter. Our Lady misses protecting families within her boundaries. She wanted the Meehans.”

  “Liam,” Danny said.

  “I’d like tea.”

  More silence as Danny prepared tea and heated up scones. “Here,” he said a few minutes later. And then, “Your cane left a perfect circle of a bruise on Kate’s chest.”

  Liam spoke with a hazy tone. “This time around, I thought to help Our Lady, yes.”

  “You—what?” Merrit said.

  “She wasn’t about to send a falling rock to my rescue, so I felled Kate toward her. It helped that Kate had a sprained ankle. I’d seen her limping around. That’s how I got the idea. I suggested we meet so we could talk things out, and what better place than Kilmoon? Fitting, I thought.”

  Merrit leaned against the counter, her lungs beginning to cramp. “It was a defensive push. Tell me her death was an accident like her mother’s.”

  Liam cut his scone in half and layered each half with red currant jam. Danny yanked out scone innards while muttering “Jesus oh Jesus fucking hell” under his breath.

  “You pushed her with the cane, that’s all,” she tried again. “I saw her. Her shoe heel broke. She tripped. How were you to know she’d fall against a gravestone?”

  “Providence looked out for me, but it was a decided aim. I had to wait her out though.” Remorse entered Liam’s voice. “She didn’t die immediately. She looked so much like her mother. I talked to her, you know. I explained my actions, and I thought I heard her say I was probably right.”

  “Right about what?” Merrit asked.

  “My instincts, which I know to be right anyhow.”

  Danny had by now buried his face in his hands. “Jesus, Liam, you make it sound like Kate was a sacrificial lamb.”

  “In a way, she was.”

  Danny raised his head with a wild stare. “For what? Tell me, sacrificed for what?”

  “For the life I want to leave behind. I’m nonnegotiable when it comes to that, and when it comes to Kevin’s well-being.”

  “You planted Lonnie’s braid on her,” Danny said.

  “Poetic, I thought. Leave the braid in the same vein she left the inhaler at Lonnie’s crime scene. We like to spread the blame around, don’t we? I wanted Lonnie’s case closed with no further investigation, so I did what I could in that regard, including breaking off one of Kate’s heels so her death appeared accidental.”

  Danny groaned.

  “I need to know why,” Merrit said. “All to protect Kevin from your past?”

  “Not all, no. Part of my motivation will become clear to you later with perspective and a little knowledge I’m unwilling to divulge at the moment.”

  Merrit breathed into her hands. Even when he told the truth, Liam didn’t tell the whole truth. What the hell, ultimately, was he trying to accomplish?

  Liam squinted toward the window. “Where is that Kevin? It’s not like him not to call.”

  • 50 •

  Kevin drove toward the westernmost end of Connemara, land of shaggy ponies, lonely valleys, and pale mountains. A faint purple smudge of day’s end colored the horizon, and his high beams spotlighted bumpy asphalt right before it passed under his tires. He sped up and felt the road stretch its miles out behind him, ever lengthening the distance between the known and the unknown.

  On a hilly rise he caught the lights of Clare across Galway Bay. Lisfenora lay beyond a bend of coast, south, its glow hidden by a craggy shoreline and limestone plateaus. Too fast, the narrow coast road folded back on itself and Clare blinked out, leaving Kevin to his nomadic journey. And maybe even to his outlaw journey if the Garda decided they wanted him for breaking and entering. The thought thrilled him even as nerves sent his fingers rat-a-tatting against the steering wheel. Liam must be worrying by now.

  He’d left Lisfenora with Emma’s pain a lip gloss smear across his cheek. Now orphanage memories hovered like specters. The rustling wool, flickering candles, and echoing sorrow within a hall that led to rooms with crayon art on the walls. The area earmarked for the children had smelled like wood shavings from sharpened pencils and chalk dust flurries caught in sunshine. But Kevin still couldn’t picture the couple who had almost adopted him. Of them he felt only a yearning for something lost. Now he knew that they’d adopted Kate instead.

  Father Dooley’s haunting question also remained close at hand: what scares you so? The answer hid within another orphanage moment. Kevin had stared up at a giant man with hair on fire and a white thing on his arm. He’d almost hid behind Sister Ignatius rather than risk venturing close to this stranger with sad eyes. He hadn’t trusted his good luck, had lost faith that he wouldn’t be traded in for a better model.

  A better model. Kevin dropped a hand to the envelope that sat on the passenger seat. He held it pressed against the steering wheel with his thumbs and considered the name penned across the front. Merrit. He turned it over. His repeated tinkering had loosened the flap. He slipped his finger under the flap, ripping it open a little more, and tossed the letter aside once again. Not yet. He still wasn’t ready to read the truths Liam had selecte
d for her.

  ***

  The clank of newly formed ice cubes startled Merrit. The refrigerator hummed, and a few more ice cubes fell out of the ice maker. The discordant sound seemed fitting somehow. Liam had excused himself to change for that evening’s pub event, leaving Merrit and Danny to sit in silence. Danny still stared off into space. He eased a crumbled mess of scone into his mouth and chewed. Slowly. He looked like he was about to vomit, but he swallowed.

  “Liam didn’t seem so guilty until now,” Merrit said. “Would you agree with that statement?”

  “Tell me how that flight of fancy works.”

  “Adrienne Meehan’s death was an accident, and Liam showed poor—rather, selfish—judgment in covering it up, but OK, let’s grant him immunity because that was over thirty years ago and he was torn up with love over my mom.”

  “And Lonnie?”

  “Seeing Lonnie at the party with me brought up all of Liam’s old feelings of impotency because of Andrew, and I personally think he snapped a little, the past and present coming together that way.”

  “His defense would be what—mental impairment?” Danny didn’t sound convinced. “OK, let’s grant him immunity again.”

  “Then there’s Kate.”

  “Yes, Kate.”

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  “There’s no we. There’s only me and—fucking hell—I can’t let it go.”

  Liam reappeared resplendent as ever in his velvet jacket. “There’s something to be said for reaching the end of a life. When you’re down to congratulating yourself for waking up at all, what becomes important is how you leave your legacy. I’ve always preferred having my way, and Kate was fast becoming the sore spot on what I’d otherwise imagined as a peaceful tumble toward death. She’d have instigated a mess of a controversy with the festival and with you, Merrit. And I’ll not have Kevin despising me at my bedside either.”

  He stood there, leaning against the door with fortitude squaring his shoulders and acceptance clearing his gaze of self-pity. No more revelations, Merrit pleaded silently.