Irish Stewed (An Ethnic Eats Mystery)

by Kylie Logan

“Four brothers, two sisters, eleven nieces and nephews. So far.” He flashed a smile and pushed open the car door. “My parents would like more grandchildren than that. Come on. You are about to meet some of them.”

  I did.

  Rusty-haired James—whom everyone called Seamus—was older than Declan and married to a woman named Kate, who was in the kitchen and elbow-deep in peeling potatoes.

  Broad-shouldered Aiden was closest in age to Declan and looked the most like him. It was his little girl who was being honored the next day. He was busy wrapping knives and forks in napkins and he told me his wife, Fiona, would be by later after she got off work.

  Sisters Bridget and Claire weren’t there, either, because both were RNs and both were at work at the hospital in Youngstown that morning. Truth be told, I was grateful. By the time I’d also met brother Brian and his wife, Nora, and heard about the oldest in the family, Riordan, who was in the air force and stationed in South Korea, my head was in a spin.

  It was a wonder I was coherent by the time a woman of sixty or so stepped out of the family room. Ellen Fury was petite and once upon a time, she must have had the same flaming red hair I saw on any number of her grandchildren. These days, the color was faded to that of a well-thumbed penny, but no less spectacular against her porcelain skin. She had small, fine features and bright eyes the same shade as the blue T-shirt she wore with jeans. She also had a generous smile. Big points for her: it didn’t wilt around the edges—at least not too much—when she realized her youngest had brought an unfamiliar woman into the house.

  Ellen shook my hand and offered a smile at the same time she slid a look at her son. “Declan didn’t tell me he had a new friend.”

  I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to respond to this so I left it up to Declan to handle his mother.

  “She’s not exactly a friend,” he said as if he were sharing a confidence, but loud enough so everyone was sure to hear. “She’s more like a new neighbor over in Traintown. And she’s poking her nose into the murder.”

  “You mean the Lance of Justice?” Kate set down her potato peeler long enough to squeal with delight. “It’s all anybody can talk about.”

  “And Laurel”—Declan made a ta-da sort of gesture in my direction—“she found the body.”

  This caused a flurry of excitement. Before I knew it, Ellen grabbed my left hand, Kate grabbed my right, and with the rest of the crowd following, they dragged me into the dining room, where they deposited me in a chair and gathered around.

  “The kettle’s about to boil,” Ellen told Declan, and settled herself. “You can make us tea while Laurel tells us more.”

  “There’s really not much to tell,” I assured her. “I don’t know much of anything besides what you’ve heard on the news already.”

  “They say it was a mob hit.” Kate was breathless.

  “Because of something the Lance of Justice was investigating,” Nora added.

  “Hey, maybe it’s the food pantry down at church!” Aiden barked out a laugh and raised his voice so Declan could hear him. “Wasn’t that Lance guy down there once poking around?”

  Declan stuck his head out of the kitchen door. “He was doing a piece on hunger in the county,” he said. “Not looking into what we do down at the pantry.”

  “We?” Since Declan ducked back into the kitchen, I shifted my gaze to his mother. “You all work down at the food pantry?”

  “Declan does.” Ellen’s smile told me she approved. “He has for years. So has your aunt Sophie.”

  “She’s not really my aunt,” I was sure to add, even though I doubted anyone was listening.

  Ellen leaned forward, her gaze pinned to me. “So . . . ?”

  I reminded myself what we’d been talking about and shrugged. “So, if the police know anything more than what’s being reported on the news, they aren’t sharing the information with me. That’s why we . . .” I slid a glance toward the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. “We thought maybe if we talked to Owen—”

  Ellen tsked.

  Kate frowned.

  Nora’s lips thinned.

  Seamus grumbled a curse and at that, the various kids collected around the table giggled and whispered.

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure if their reactions were a criticism of my plan or of Owen.

  I found out soon enough when Ellen shooed the kids away. Once they were out of the room she said, “That Owen Quilligan’s got cabbage for brains. It’s why we invited him to spend some time with us in the first place. We thought a change of scenery would be good for him. He got in some trouble back home, you see. A stolen car.”

  “And that pizza place where he was working was missing some cash,” Nora added.

  Ellen shot her a look that clearly said that it wasn’t right to air all the family’s dirty laundry in front of strangers. She folded her hands on the oak table in front of her. “We thought the family here would set a good example.”

  “We thought,” Kate added, “that we might be able to change his sneaky, thieving ways.”

  “Or at least if he kept them up, Declan would be able to spring him from jail,” Nora put in.

  “Which he did,” her mother-in-law reminded her. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the boy betrayed our trust. Imagine, him stealing copper like a street thug!”

  “I told you he was no good.” Aiden shook his head in disgust. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was involved in the murder, too.”

  His mother shot him a look. “You know that’s not possible. He might be stupid, but he’s not evil.”

  “Or he is and he’s never been caught,” Aiden said.

  “Which is why—” Declan returned with a teapot and cups on a tray and I waited to say anything else until he set it down and passed the cups around. I waved off the offer of a cup of tea. “If I could just talk to Owen . . .”

  Ellen looked up at Declan.

  “I don’t see what it would hurt,” he told her.

  Ellen nodded, and Declan offered me a hand and led me through the living room with its beige carpet and soft green upholstered couch and easy chairs and up the stairs where the walls were lined with framed pictures of children and grandchildren and Ellen herself with a broad man with a beard, both of them smiling and Blarney Castle in the background. We stopped outside a closed door at the top of the steps.

  Declan knocked and identified himself before he pushed open the door.

  Owen sat on the edge of one of the two double beds in a room I didn’t even have to ask about; I knew it had once been shared by Bridget and Claire. The walls were pink, the woodwork was white, and there were framed photographs hung over each bed. A red-haired girl gymnast; a blonde posed with her swimming team.

  Owen glanced up when we walked in and shut the door behind us and when he looked at me, his eyes narrowed and his lips thinned.

  “If she’s a cop,” he grumbled, “I’m not saying nothing.”

  Declan pulled over a chair from the desk that sat along the far wall and waved me into it. “She’s not a cop, she’s a friend.”

  “And a gorger. You told me not to talk to any of them.”

  Declan glanced my way. “A gorger is an outsider, a person who’s not a Traveller,” he explained before he turned back to Owen. “You haven’t been paying attention to a word I’ve said to you since you came here. We don’t live in a bubble anymore, Owen. Not any of us. You have to start dealing with those in the outside world. When I told you not to talk to them, I was referring to the media. Not to someone who might be able to help you.”

  The kid folded his arms across his chest and looked at me through the shock of carroty hair that fell across his forehead and into his eyes. “How’s a girl going to help me?”

  “First of all, Laurel’s not just some girl. She’s a businesswoman and a smart one at that. Which means you’ll be polite when you’re addressing her and you’ll call her Ms. Inwood. You got that?”

  Whether he did or not, Owen gave a brief
nod.

  “As for how she’s going to help . . .” Declan drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “We don’t know yet. We thought if we talked—”

  “You mean if I talked. You want me to admit I was there in the building the night that guy was killed.”

  “You were there in the building.” Declan’s voice rang with authority. He sounded so different from the man who’d ordered pastrami and key lime pie for me, my head snapped up and I found him standing opposite Owen, his fists on his hips, his feet slightly apart. There was steel in his stance and fire in his eyes. “I’m not going to put up with your crap, Owen, and I’m not going to lie for you. Not to the cops and not to any judge. We know you were in the basement. Your fingerprints were all over down there, and all over that door that led from outside to the basement steps, the door you broke into to get inside. We know what you were doing there. It’s time to pay the piper, lad. Do the crime, do the time.”

  Owen’s pale skin went ashy. “You think I’ll actually go to jail?”

  Some of the rigidness went out of Declan’s shoulders. “Not if you’re honest.”

  “Okay, all right.” Owen pushed off the bed and stomped to the other side of the room. There were two windows there that looked out over the spreading branches of a maple tree, and Owen watched a brown squirrel scamper out on a limb. “I was going to take the copper. I admit it. I’ll admit it in court if I have to. But there’s no way I had anything to do with killing that guy.” He spun toward his cousin. “You know that, Declan. You know I’d never do a thing like that.”

  “I do know it. And we’ve got the evidence to back it up. Your fingerprints are downstairs, but not upstairs, not even on that back door upstairs that was broken into. We’ve got to keep that in mind. We’ve got to make sure we have all the facts and we’ve got to figure out what they mean. And Laurel here, she’s trying to help. She’s the one who proved to the cops that you never came upstairs.

  Owen scrubbed a finger under his nose. “I was just sort of, you know, hanging around. After I left Bronntanas. I figured I’d walk around the neighborhood and see what was happening. Only there’s not much happening there at all, is there?” He made a face. “Then I saw that there were no lights on in that dumpy restaurant and—”

  “Hey!” Declan’s voice snapped the kid to attention. He pointed at me and Owen paled even more.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean dumpy. I meant . . .” Since he obviously did mean dumpy, he shook off the rest of his apology and went right on. “There weren’t any lights on and there was nobody around so I figured I’d just go in and see what I could see.”

  “And take what you could take.” It was the first I’d said since we walked into the room, and I made sure to keep my voice even and neutral. We all knew Owen was a thief; there was no use hitting him over the head with my opinion.

  “I wasn’t planning on touching the cash register or anything,” the kid told me. “I just thought . . . well, you know what I thought. I figured I could make a few fast bucks. It wasn’t like I had a truck or anything to load the copper into. So it’s not like I was gonna take out all the plumbing or anything. I figured just a couple pieces. Just so I could sell it and get some pocket money. I found a wrench and a pair of pliers and these big scissors sort of things down on one of the shelves and I figured with that stuff, I could pull out some of the copper. I got a couple small pieces, and that’s when I heard noise from upstairs.”

  “What kind of noise?” I asked.

  “People walking around. Voices.”

  I glanced at Declan but since he didn’t say a thing, I took the lead. “Men’s voices?”

  The kid shrugged.

  “Women’s?”

  Another shrug. “Just voices, and I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention because I thought . . . well, I figured I was screwed for sure. That somebody who worked there came in for something and that they were going to find me if I didn’t haul my butt out of there.”

  “And that’s when you dropped what little copper you’d already cut and ran?”

  He nodded in answer to my question. “Only I didn’t get very far. I just got over to the steps that led up to that door I came in when I heard a guy say something pretty loud. Then there was another sound, like chairs falling over.”

  I could picture the scene. “And then?” I asked him.

  “Then things got really quiet.” As if he were reliving the scene, Owen froze at the center of the room, his arms tight against his sides, his breath suspended. “I waited,” he said, glancing up at the ceiling just like he must have glanced up when he was down in the Terminal’s basement. “I dunno how long. I thought”—he swallowed hard—“I thought if I ducked out the door I came in, somebody might see me. So I just stood there. And then, that’s when I heard the glass break.”

  I glanced at Declan. “The back door? Upstairs? The door that leads right outside?”

  He looked at Owen. “You’re sure it was after you heard the commotion? Not before? Because both the killer and the victim had to get in the restaurant, and that broken back door was the only way in.”

  Not the only way.

  It wasn’t like I thought Declan could read my mind, but I looked away, anyway. Just so there was no chance he’d pick up on the fact that I was thinking about Sophie. Sophie, and her front door key.

  “It was after,” Owen said. “I’m sure. I think.”

  “It’s important, Owen,” Declan reminded him.

  The kid squeezed his eyes shut. His hair was blunt cut and hung to his collar and he tugged at one red lock. “Maybe it was before,” he said, and turned pleading eyes toward his cousin. “I dunno. I was scared, Declan. That proves I couldn’t have killed that guy, right? I was scared that somebody would find me and that means I’d never have the nerve to do something like kill somebody. I sneaked back up the steps and I couldn’t risk walking out of the building and going around front and over to Uncle Pat and Aunt Kitty’s because I figured whoever was in the restaurant, they might see me and figure out what I was doing. So I hid behind the Dumpster.”

  “For how long?” I asked.

  The kid shrugged. “Don’t tell nobody.” He slid Declan a look. “If Jamie or Connor or Brendan find out—”

  “What your cousins think of you is the least of your worries,” Declan told him. “You realized you’d done something wrong, you were afraid of being caught. They’d understand why you were hiding.”

  “I should have took some of that copper with me,” Owen grumbled, then swallowed his words at a fierce look from Declan.

  I ignored their sparring. “Well, you couldn’t have been there for hours and hours,” I said, thinking over everything Owen told us. “So when Sophie and I arrived, that must have been soon after whoever killed Jack left.”

  “I just got up the nerve to slip out from behind the Dumpster and run. That’s when I heard your car,” Owen said. “After that, well, I heard you talking from out front.” He looked toward Declan. “And then the lights came on. And then . . .” Owen ran his tongue over his lips. “Then the police cars showed up and the ambulances and all those reporters. If I ran, it would look really bad. So I went back behind the Dumpster and stayed there.”

  “And that looked really bad, too,” Declan reminded him.

  One hand out, Owen took a step toward his cousin, then realized that he looked too needy and pulled back. “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked.

  “Well, you’re not going to prison for a murder you didn’t commit,” Declan told him. “I can guarantee that. As for the copper . . .”

  He left the words hanging in the air, and Owen to think about them.

  Outside in the hallway, Declan shut the bedroom door and turned to me. “So the back door was broken in either before or after the murder. What does that tell us?”

  “I can’t imagine.” I could, of course, but since what I imagined was Sophie using her key to go into the restaurant for some unknown reason, killing Jack
for some other unknown reason, and then breaking the window in the back door to make it look like the Terminal had been broken into, I decided I was better off playing dumb.

  Playing dumb and changing the subject.

  As it turned out, that was easy enough to do when we walked back down into the living room and I caught a whiff of the scent wafting from the kitchen.

  I drew in a deep breath. “Cayenne pepper,” I said. “Just a little. And garlic and thyme. And beer. Something dark and strong.”

  Declan confirmed this with a nod. “Mom’s cooking for tomorrow. I have no doubt you smell Guinness and some red wine, too, I bet. She likes to replace some of the water in her grandmother’s recipe with a little of each.”

  The scent was a siren’s song, and I followed it, my nose in the air. “There’s Worcestershire, too,” I said before we arrived in the kitchen. “And bay leaves and onion.”

  “You’ve got another convert, Ma,” Declan announced when we stepped into the bustling kitchen. “Laurel’s come about the Irish stew.”

  Ellen wiped her hands on her apron. “It’s not ready yet, I’m afraid. If you’d like to come back tomorrow for the party—”

  “I’ve got to work tomorrow.” Was that my voice, so high-pitched and eager to distance myself from the swirl of Declan’s family life? I consoled myself with the fact that no one could blame me. I’d never had a family of my own and this . . .

  Three little kids barreled through the back door and their grandmother reminded them to walk inside the house. They listened, at least until they got as far as the dining room, where they checked over their shoulders to make sure she was busy and broke into a trot.

  This was overwhelming.

  “Well, if you can’t come back tomorrow, maybe Declan can bring you a container of stew,” Ellen said. “That is . . .” She looked up at her son, all sweetness and innocence. “If you’ll be seeing Laurel again, that is.”

  “She works across the street, Ma,” he reminded her.

  “Of course.” Ellen scurried over a desk built into the countertop next to the refrigerator. She dug around and came back my way holding an index card.