An Early Wake

by Sheila Connolly

  Sean shot a quick glance at Tim in the corner. “Keep it down, will yeh?”

  Mick followed Sean’s glance. “So yeh haven’t told . . . the whole story yet?”

  Sean shook his head. “I want to see what people would say without it. But there’s too many people who don’t know enough. Sure, they were here. Sure, they saw Aidan play. Some of them saw the man leave as well, through the front door. None of them saw him come back in after.”

  “Have you located any of Aidan’s relatives?”

  “Not yet.”

  Maura pushed the pint and the mug of coffee across the bar, then came around and sat on the other side of Sean. “You did talk to Billy?”

  “Of course I did. The man knows everybody in the county. And his eyesight is as keen as it ever was. He saw nothing out of the ordinary here last night. He did see a lot of familiar faces from the past, but that gets us no nearer to the truth. And, yes, he told me who I should tell, from what’s left of the family, if I can locate them.”

  “So now what?” asked Mick.

  “We’ll be meeting at the station in the mornin’ to go over what we’ve got. You’ll go on about yer business.”

  “Sounds like you need a computer program to sort this all out,” Maura said.

  “Are yeh volunteerin’?”

  She raised both her hands. “Not me! I don’t own a computer, and I don’t want one. I’m just saying that you’ve got a lot of information, and you need to see where it overlaps.”

  “I’ll raise the point at the meeting tomorrow.” Sean drained his pint and stood up. “Thanks for the drink.” He slid a couple of euro coins across the bar. Maura wrestled with whether to slide them back, or whether a free drink might violate some garda rule she didn’t know about. “No doubt I’ll be seein’ yeh tomorrow,” he said.

  When Sean had left, Maura and Mick were left alone—except for Tim, quiet as a mouse, sunk in gloom in the corner. “Hey, Tim, we’re closing now,” Maura called out to him.

  He raised his head slowly to look at her, his eyes dim. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t notice. I’ll get out of yer way.” He stood up stiffly, but at least he appeared steady on his feet once he made it to upright. And he wasn’t driving, just walking across the empty Sunday street. Maura couldn’t recall serving him more than one or two pints since he’d come in, hours earlier, so he must be sober. “You okay, Tim?”

  “Yeah, sure, fine.” His tone suggested anything but.

  Mick looked at her with a question in his eyes. “You go ahead,” Maura told him. “I’ll close up.”

  Mick didn’t argue. “See yeh tomorrow evening, then,” he said. “Unless of course yeh’d like me to open?”

  Maura thought for a moment. “You know, I’d like it if you would. And you’ve still got last night’s take at home, right? I need to get that, plus today’s, to the bank in Skibbereen in the morning, so I’ll stop by here and get it from you. We can work out the rest of the hours tomorrow, okay?”

  “No worries. I’ll be here early. Good night, Maura.”

  He slipped out into the dark, leaving Maura and Tim alone in the half-dark pub. “Tim, what’s going on?” Maura said quietly.

  “Nothing. Not. A. Thing,” he said firmly.

  “I don’t believe you. On Friday and Saturday you were in here practically jumping up and down with excitement. Now you look like your dog died. But on the other hand, you could have left, gone back to Dublin. Why are you still here?”

  “Why do yeh care?” Tim glared at her with bleary eyes.

  Maura took a moment to think about that. “Because you showed up here and started something, and I’m grateful to you for that.”

  “Yeah, and are yeh grateful for ending up with a body in the back?”

  “And is that your fault?” Maura demanded.

  Tim straightened his back and looked her in the eye. “How do yeh know it wasn’t my fault?”

  Uh-oh. “Did you talk to Aidan Crowley last night? Maybe get into some kind of argument?”

  “No. Well, not exactly.”

  It had been a very long day, and Maura was tired. “Tim, stop playing games. I don’t feel like guessing. Did something happen between you last night or not? Did you know him?”

  Tim took a deep breath. “I only met him on the Friday, but I was wondering if he wasn’t mebbe my father.”

  She hadn’t expected that. “I think you’re going to have to explain.” She debated about offering him something to drink, but settled for, “Will coffee help? Did you manage to eat earlier? I could probably scrounge up something.”

  “Coffee’d be grand.”

  Maura started two cups of coffee. She was pretty sure she’d need it as much as he did. When they were ready she presented him with one, then sat down next to him. “Okay, talk. What makes you think Aidan was your father?”

  Tim sighed again, and Maura wanted to shake him to get the words out. It was late, she was tired, and if he had something to say, couldn’t he just spit it out? Finally he started speaking, sounding less like a college boy than he had before. “I was raised by me mother, in Dublin. She never mentioned me father. When I got old enough to wonder about him, she refused to say anything. Except she called him a bastard, and worse. Never told her family who he was either, and there wasn’t anybody else to ask. She had a sister she might have been close to then, but she lit out for Australia years ago, and I didn’t think she’d answer me mail or e-mail. Anyways, me ma got married a few years later, had me sisters, and refused to talk about it at all, even when I kept nagging. It was my father, wasn’t it? Didn’t I have a right to know? Finally I guess she thought she’d better say somethin’, if only to shut me up. She told me he was some guy she’d met, a musician, at an event she’d gone to with a girlfriend when she lived in Clonakilty, growin’ up. And that was all she’d say. She kind of hinted she might not have known his name, and that was her excuse for keepin’ her mouth shut—she was ashamed of that night.”

  Tim swallowed some coffee and cleared his throat. “Not much to work with, eh? I did the math so I knew more or less when she’d have run into the man, then I looked up what bands were big then. I mean, big enough for her to make a special effort to go hear them a few towns over. But there were so many . . . Seems like every town spawned its own band or three, and they all kept movin’ around, and they’d swap players. And then there were the sidemen, who didn’t belong to any group but ended up playing for a lot of ’em.”

  “Do you know the girlfriend?” Maura asked.

  “Nah, Ma said they drifted apart years ago, and she never told me her name. Anyway, then me mother died last year, of the cancer. And before yeh ask, she didn’t leave some handy letter behind tellin’ me all the facts. But with her gone, I really wanted to find me father if I could, so I studied music at uni, thinkin’ it might get me closer to him somehow.”

  “So what did you hope to find, just showing up here the way you did?”

  Tim slumped in his chair, looking drained. “I don’t know. I was running out of ideas, and I had a fortnight free before term starts, and I truly was curious about how this place just kind of happened to become an important place for the music. I mean, what I told you about the research I was doin’, that part was true. So here I am. I figured I’d run into a few old guys and we’d talk fer a while, and maybe I’d get some more names—who hung out with who in the day—and I’d go back to uni and write it up and call it an oral history. I told a couple of people what I was looking for, and I guess they told a couple of people, and then Old Billy stepped in and last night just . . . happened. Like it used to do. I never expected anything more. Certainly not that someone would die.”

  “Nobody did, I’m pretty sure,” Maura said tartly. “So how’d you expect to flush out the man who might be your father? And what made you think it was Aidan Crowley?”

  “I’d run into the name, now and again. Sometimes along with Niall’s, sometimes with other bands. But the more I read, the more people I talked
to, the more it seemed like he’d been in the right place at the right time. He never made it big, so he played a lot of the smaller places in West Cork, where me ma could have . . . seen him. So when he first came by on the Friday, I told him I wanted to talk to him—I never mentioned why. He put me off then, and I thought it was because he was playing and getting reacquainted with his old mates, and he couldn’t be bothered. But I kept after him, and finally last night he said I should meet him after the pub shut down. So I did—outside, partway up the hill overlooking the stream. He was alive when I left him there, I swear.”

  And outside, not inside, if Tim was telling the truth. At least that explained why she and Mick hadn’t seen anyone in the pub when they had closed: Tim and Aidan would’ve been outside then. Except Aidan had used the key to come back in later. With someone else? “What time was this?”

  “One thirty, mebbe?” Tim said.

  “You never came back into the building?” Maura asked, just to be sure.

  “No. It was locked up, wasn’t it? So we sat up there and talked, and I worked my way around to who he might have . . . been with at the right time, and he laughed and said he couldn’t remember much of anything from those days. I showed him a picture of my mother and he said he didn’t know her. It’s not that I wanted anything from him, like money or a big ‘welcome to the family, my boy.’ I just wanted to know.”

  Was that enough motive for throttling Aidan? “And he blew you off. Did you get mad at him?”

  “No! I mean, I realized how daft I must look, cornering strangers and asking, ‘Are you me da?’ And I didn’t think he was lying—I think he really didn’t remember. So I just said thank you and went back to the Keohanes’ place, and that’s the whole of it.”

  “So why were you so hungover all day?”

  “I had a bottle back in me room, didn’t I? After talking with Aidan, I finished it, which is not something I do much. I really don’t have any other ideas for looking for my father, and maybe it’s time I give it up and move on. I was feeling pretty sorry for meself, if yeh want to know the truth. Then Rose dragged me out of bed today. I didn’t want to come over, but I figured I’d better—it might get me out of my funk. Then you tell me Aidan’s dead. Is it any wonder I’ve been drinking?”

  No, thought Maura, it isn’t, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Look, Tim, you’ve got to tell all this to the gardaí. Don’t just cut and run, because Sean Murphy already wants to talk to you. If nothing else, it sounds like you were probably the last person to see Aidan alive.” Not counting whoever might’ve assaulted him. Maura kept that thought silent.

  Tim hung his head. “I know. I will, in the morning. Will that do?”

  “That’s fair enough. You’re in no shape to go anywhere right now. You can talk to Sean Murphy tomorrow, early. Deal?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Maura.”

  She escorted Tim to the door and watched him cross the street. Then she locked the door behind her and headed home.

  Chapter 17

  A man died at Sullivan’s.

  That thought slammed into Maura’s head when she woke up Monday morning after a short and restless night. She lay in bed worrying while the sun came up. Why had Aidan Crowley died at Sullivan’s? Was it going to affect her business? It seemed kind of heartless to worry about that, but she couldn’t help it. It would help if the gardaí could settle the question of Aidan’s death. The one thing they knew for sure was that Aidan’s heart had given out. But had someone frightened him to death? The bruises on his neck hinted at that, but who could say that had made the difference? Maybe it was just Aidan’s time. She made a mental note to call Sean and have him talk with Tim ASAP. Assuming Tim hadn’t run for Dublin already or disappeared entirely.

  Did she believe Tim’s story? Maybe. Maura could understand from her own life wanting to know who your parents were and where you came from. Of course, there was a slim possibility that Tim was obsessed with the man who had knocked up his mother, and had come seeking revenge. But that didn’t match what she’d seen of Tim, who seemed anything but aggressive. He was sweet. Kind of innocent. Even Rose seemed more mature. Maura had to keep reminding herself that Tim was only a few years younger than she was, closer still in age to Sean. Of course, it wasn’t exactly comparing apples to apples: Tim was a student, while Sean was a garda, trained to solve—or even stop—crimes and keep the peace, not that it was a difficult job around here. Not like in Boston. Anyway, Sean had a very different set of responsibilities.

  Maura wondered just how the Skibbereen gardaí were going to handle this case. Sean had told her once that most crimes in this part of Cork were committed by people already known to the gardaí and were solved quickly. But Aidan Crowley wasn’t a local, so if there was a crime here, nobody even knew who the likely suspects would be or where to find them. Maura had to admit that the simplest course for everybody—gardaí, Aidan’s friends, Maura and her staff—would be to call it a heart attack and be done. Not a crime.

  What a mess. Maybe she should go talk to Bridget. She’d missed seeing her the past couple of days and was kind of curious about what news had filtered to Bridget through her own network of friends and what she thought about it. Having decided on a plan, Maura got up and showered and fixed herself some breakfast.

  She was glad that Mick would be opening the pub this morning. Not that she expected any more unpleasant surprises today, but she figured she really would need the help. Mick had kind of a reassuring presence—he didn’t get rattled by problems, he just fixed them quietly. Jimmy, on the other hand, was a schmoozer. He’d talk with anybody, and while sometimes he lost sight of business, Maura had to admit she was beginning to realize how making customers feel welcome played a part in keeping them coming back again and again. That was something she had to work on herself, because she wasn’t usually a warm and chatty person. People in her past had told her she didn’t smile enough. Maybe if she ever found the time she should check out other local pubs and see who stood behind that bar and how they handled things.

  Breakfast eaten, she checked her watch: still early. She decided that before visiting Bridget she should try to call Sean, in case he got sucked into his morning meeting. She was relieved when he answered.

  “Good mornin’, Maura. Why so early? No new problems down the pub?”

  “None that I know of—I’m still at home. But I wanted to tell you that I talked with Tim Reilly last night, after closing, and I think you need to hear what he has to say.”

  “Ah.” Sean didn’t ask dumb questions, like “what?” or “why?” He simply thought for a moment. “We’ve a conference on at ten, but I could be over to Keohanes’ well before that. Will it be important to hear him before the meeting?”

  “I think so. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he had anything to do with Aidan Crowley’s death. But you can decide for yourself.”

  “Thanks, Maura. I’ll see you after.”

  There, that was her good deed for the day. She grabbed a raincoat to head down to Bridget’s—after the early glimpse of sun, the clouds had started rolling in.

  As usual, Bridget was up, and two fresh loaves of brown bread were already cooling on her pine table when Maura walked in.

  “Ah, there you are, Maura.” Bridget greeted her when she let herself in. “I wondered if you’d stop by today, what with all the fuss at the pub.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it? Fuss?” It seemed a mild term for a dead body, but Maura realized she was glad that Bridget wasn’t upset.

  “Sit. Help yerself to the bread, and the tea’s almost ready.” Maura obediently sat and sliced herself a piece of the warm bread and began to butter it. Bridget set a mug of tea in front of her, then settled herself on the chair next to hers. “I don’t mean to belittle the poor man’s passing, but he wasn’t one of ours, was he?”

  “From around here, you mean? Not that I’ve heard. Is it better if he’s a stranger?”

  “Just different, I’d say. Poor soul.
Is there any family to be found?”

  “Sean’s looking into it. The only person who seems to have known him is Niall, and he says they lost touch years ago.”

  “What’s the man like?”

  “Who, Niall? Why? Were you a fan of his?”

  “Who wasn’t, twenty years ago? You couldn’t turn on a radio without hearing his voice.”

  Maura smiled to herself. It was hard to imagine the graying middle-aged man she’d been talking to as a rock idol, but that was what people kept telling her. Maybe the standards in Ireland were different. Of course, U2 seemed to have hit it big on both sides of the Atlantic—and Bono had to be about the same age as Niall. Was Niall ever in their league? The only kind of music her grandmother had played on her old plastic radio in their kitchen in Boston had been what Maura now recognized as traditional Irish.

  “Weren’t there any women performers then, Bridget? Because all the guys who showed up on Saturday were, well, guys. And so were most of the people who came to hear them. I mean, I’ve heard of the Cranberries—they have a female singer, don’t they? What about Sinéad O’Connor?”

  “I’m not the one you should be askin’, love. But I’m guessing performin’ was a hard life then, and still is. I mean, the men, they can bed down anywhere there’s space—a bed, a chair, even the floor. But a woman couldn’t do that, not the same way.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “And if yeh look in the stores, I’m told, yeh’ll see that there are more women playin’ the traditional music, not the newer stuff. And singin’ it too.”

  “Huh. Thanks, Bridget. That’s interesting. This is still new to me.”

  “Was it a good crowd?”

  “I’d say so—we filled the place, and we were busy all night. What did Mick tell you?”

  “That it was like he remembered it, and it made him happy. Will yeh keep on with it?”

  “I don’t know. I would have said yes, probably, until I found Aidan. Now I’m not sure how people would feel about it. I’ll see how it goes today.”