by Catie Murphy
“I thought you weren’t into golf.”
“I’m not, but I love human nature, and I can totally see a dramatic story when it’s being played out in front of me. Anyway, so call it about six minutes a hole? And we were on our way back when we found him. That’s just barely an hour between leaving the clubhouse and finding Mr. MacDonald in the water hazard. He’d been in the water long enough to get cold, but I was in the water long enough to get cold, and I still had blood flowing through my veins. So, if I was in there three minutes, he might have been in there thirty? We were at the fifteenth hole, so he had to have time to walk that far, get clobbered, fall in the pond, and die. I guess he had to leave the clubhouse pretty early, even if he knew the straightest path across the green to us.”
“You’ve been thinking about this.” Bourke sounded very faintly amused, and Megan spread her hands.
“Of course I have been. It’s not every day you come across a dead body.” At Bourke’s expression, she grimaced. “Or every month, either, I guess. I mean, maybe you do.”
“But it’s my job. Did you see anything noteworthy while you were out this morning? Aside from a dead man,” Bourke said before Megan could go there. “Any uncomfortable behavior from the ensemble? A sullen caddie?”
“Those are very leading questions, Detective. Are you supposed to ask things like that?”
“No, which is a problem with interviewing someone you know and whom you suppose is not responsible for the incident. So were there?”
Megan shook her head. “I talked with the caddie for a minute while we were setting out. He was pretty formal, but nice. I didn’t know part of their job was walking ahead of the golfer to find out where the ball had actually landed, but he only did that for a couple of holes this morning before Mr. Walsh said it was silly to put him to the trouble when it was just himself playing and no one coming up behind us.” Megan smiled, amused. “I could tell the caddie didn’t really think much of that. Like Walsh was trying to make himself a man of the people, right? To impress the ladies, I guess. It worked, too.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, you know. You’ve gone out with Niamh a couple of times, right? You know how people get around celebrities. If they do anything vaguely normal, people get all fluttery about it.”
A smile pulled at the corner of Bourke’s mouth. “I didn’t expect to find myself trending when somebody snapped a picture of her buying a smoothie and then wanted to know who the bloke was, so I suppose I do.”
“It was a good picture, though.”
Bourke looked faintly horrified. “You saw it?”
“You were trending.” Megan grinned broadly. She’d accidentally mortified both Bourke and her friend, rising film star Niamh O’Sullivan, on a phone call a few months earlier. They’d recovered from their embarrassment enough to date, which not-so-secretly delighted Megan. “All you needed was Dip or Thong and you’d have been a perfect family portrait.”
“We’re getting off-topic,” Bourke said firmly. “Please relate your experience on the green this morning, Ms. Malone.” He managed to combine a light note with absolute seriousness in his tone. Megan sat up, gathering herself, and closed her eyes to help herself recall the morning.
“I was a little distance away from most of the crowd for most of the walk,” she admitted. “Closer to the caddie than the fans. The fans definitely thought I belonged with Walsh. One woman even sidled up to ask me if I’d been with Mr. Walsh long. I mean, she must know he’s married, right? But I don’t know, maybe that didn’t matter to her. She looked pretty thrilled when I said I was only his driver. Which I would have thought obvious, because . . .” She gestured at her clothes, then, remembering she was no longer in her chauffeur’s uniform, opened her eyes and shrugged expressively.
Bourke met the wordless commentary with a brief nod, and Megan continued, her gaze now focused out the windows. They had a splendid view of the green, and she imagined that on a sunny day, it was truly glorious. Even today, with the heavy mist and thick clouds, it had a certain deep quietness that offered a feeling of serenity at odds with knowing a man had just died out there.
“I think Martin shook everybody’s hand at least once. He was right in there, enjoying being the celebrity. One of the women—not Fingernails—”
Bourke lifted his pen a few centimetres, questioning. Megan said, “The woman I talked to, the one who lent me her coat, had great fingernails. An inch long, pointy, with coral and gold sparkle shellac.” She glanced at her own hands, at nails kept short, tidy, and polished with unobtrusive, clear varnish. “I’d love to do that, but I’d live in terror of breaking them every five minutes. Anyway, a different woman asked Martin if he could help her with her backswing. She was obviously angling to get into a clinch with him right there on the field, but he put her off charmingly and played alone. It’s something, watching him. Even if I don’t know anything about golf, I was obviously watching a master. He played the whole front nine—is that what they call it?—under par, except for a couple of bad shots early on that put him at only par for the hole.” Megan rolled her eyes. “ ‘Bad shots.’ As if I could have done it at all. But I could tell he wasn’t pleased about them. He stood there for a minute looking after the ball, then came back and talked to them about a slice or a hook or something before we went on. Somebody—a guy—asked about a shot like them from some competition a few years ago, and he was polite, but kind of cranky about it. Later, I heard somebody say that had been the beginning of the end for his pro career, at least in any meaningful way.”
Megan looked toward the bar and the second Irish coffee Martin had more than a little longingly, then sighed and turned her attention back to Bourke. “He and the caddie went a little ways ahead then, and I kind of hung back to eavesdrop. They all knew everything about him, and the guy who’d asked about the competition said a shoulder injury had opened him up to the slice. Somebody else said she knew he’d gone to physical therapy and it had mostly helped, but sometimes, especially on a cool morning like today, when he hadn’t warmed up enough it came back to haunt him. I would hate to be famous,” she said, almost mystified. “Can you imagine living your whole life with strangers knowing that much about you?”
“Some people want that,” Bourke replied. “What happened next?”
“I don’t remember any more bad shots after about the fourth hole, so it all kind of got samey-samey. A load of people tromping along going ‘oooh’ and ‘aaaah,’ and Walsh eating it up with a spoon and sparkling those big brown eyes at the ladies. And then we came over the hill at the fifteenth hole and saw MacDonald in the pond, and everybody froze for a second. I thought Walsh was going to pass out. I went into the water and decided there was a chance he was just in cold-water shock—I hadn’t seen the head injury—and pulled him out. Martin helped, but it made him throw up. And when I realized MacDonald hadn’t drowned . . .” Megan spread her hands. “I called you.”
Bourke closed his notebook and sighed unprofessionally. “That’s pretty nearly what everyone’s said like. The course has been closed down and we’ve lads on the bridge and the causeway, so no one’s left the island, at least. I’ll be interviewing everyone on the grounds, but so far, the stories of all the people who were with you corroborate.”
“Are those of us who have been interviewed allowed to leave?” Megan glanced toward the window again, then looked for a clock. “Mr. Walsh has an actual game tomorrow, if he’s up for it, and I have to go get his wife from St. Anne’s.”
“The hospital?” Bourke looked startled.
“No, the golf course! The other golf course!”
“Oh.” Bourke shook himself. “That makes more sense so. The hospital closed when I was a kid.”
“Just because you look like the Doctor doesn’t mean you can time travel, Detective.”
Pure delight spread over Bourke’s face. “Do I now?”
“Well, I thought so, in that outfit. The boots really kind of sealed it for me. So can we go? Although if
my uniform isn’t dry, I can’t drive anywhere. Orla would skin me alive.” Megan made a face and then made a gesture that threw the concern away. “She’s going to anyway. She was half-convinced I’m a curse on the Leprechaun Limousine Service name after the business with Elizabeth Darr, and this isn’t going to help. I’m surprised she hasn’t called to give out to me already.”
“Give it another hour,” Bourke said, not at all helpfully. “She’ll hear about it by then. And I think you can go, but don’t leave the country.”
Megan stood up, smiling. “If I left mid-job, Orla would fire me anyway, so I’ll probably stick around. Besides, I’ve got to walk the dogs.”
“Good to know the power of An Garda Síochána is less compelling than the threat of an ill-tempered, inner-city lass in her sixties and the power of puppy bladders,” Bourke said dryly. He stood, too, offering his hand for Megan to shake. “Tell your wee creatures hello for me.”
“I will, and Mama Dog, too.” Megan shook the detective’s hand, then looked around in search of someone who could tell her where her uniform had gotten to. She’d just caught a staff member’s eye when the main doors burst open and Heather Walsh ran in crying, “Martin! Where’s Martin? Oh my God, is my husband dead?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Heather Walsh collapsed in a wailing heap in front of the open doors, making, Megan thought, a nicely cinematic picture. Mist and clouds billowed in the background, the whites and greys contrasting with the dark doors. Heather, drenched with that same mist—it weighed and darkened the strands of her honey-colored hair to brown, and made a cream-colored polo shirt cling as well as knitted cotton could—looked fragile and helpless in their framing. Deceptively fragile: Megan knew perfectly well that the rangy young woman had the physical strength to drive a golf ball three hundred metres down the course. Her cheeks were flushed and her legs, bare beneath a black golfing skort, were as muddy as her shoes, as if she’d run all the way from St. Anne’s, two miles up the island. Her heaving cries broke through the rush of noise as men ran to her side, shouting reassurances. Megan took a couple of prudent steps backward, keeping out of the surge, and bumped into Paul Bourke.
He caught her so she wouldn’t stumble, and met her eyes with lifted eyebrows that implied both a trace of personal amusement and a great deal of professional interest in the ruckus unfolding around Heather. Megan allowed herself the very faintest smile in return and enjoyed the warmth of his arm around her middle for a moment as their mutual attention was drawn back to the performance before them.
For a few seconds, Heather was entirely engulfed by the crowd, but as Martin, who had sprung from his bar stool, tried to push his way through to his wife, the crowd parted to make a corridor—a funnel, Megan thought—that opened up to allow him a path. Heather sat at the base of that funnel, looking improbably tiny because everyone around her was on their feet. Like a small, helpless creature, she lifted a gaze torn between disbelief and hope until she saw her husband. A cry burst from her throat and her expression crumbled into agony as she scrambled forward to crash into Martin’s arms. He fell to his knees as he caught her, and their gut-wrenching sobs briefly silenced all other sound in the clubhouse.
Later, Megan thought it was truly astonishing that no one took out their mobile to record the heart-rending scene, but just then, even she only dragged in a breath that shook with reflected emotion. The club members slowly closed ranks around the bereft couple again, as if protecting them from the outside world’s view, although none of them spoke. Megan heard Martin’s murmur clearly as he explained that Lou had died, that he hadn’t called because he knew she was playing and didn’t imagine she’d hear about it until he had a chance to tell her. Heather blurted something unintelligible. Through the gaps between legs and shoulders, Megan saw Martin shift, searching for his phone, then heard his low curse. Like Megan, he had not only changed clothes entirely, but had been carrying his phone, probably in a hip pocket. He wouldn’t have been able to answer Heather’s calls if he’d wanted to. His apology filtered through the crowd, and then he helped her to her feet. Solemn men parted again, allowing them to move slowly toward the bar, their heads bowed toward one another’s.
Megan rocked back on her heels, half taken in by the theatrics and half feeling like she was watching a stage play. To her surprise, she found that Paul Bourke’s hand still rested, lightly, on the small of her back, and her heart gave a sudden emphatic thump. “You’re nice and warm.”
“Mum always said I was a furnace, even though I was skinny. You’re still chilled.”
“It’d help if they closed the doors.” Someone did as Megan spoke, the ambient warmth rising considerably as soon as the breeze passed. Bourke dropped his hand, and a little surge of disappointment ran through Megan. So did the impulse to kick her own ankle, as she knew perfectly well he was seeing her friend Niamh at least casually, and she herself had had a handful of nicely successful dates with Jelena from the gym. “Still,” she said out loud to herself, and when Bourke looked askance, felt her face heat and shook her head. “Nothing. That was quite a thing,” she said with a nod toward the Walshes, who were now locked in an embrace beside the bar, Heather’s face buried in Martin’s shoulder. “I wonder if I should interrupt.”
“Find your uniform first,” Bourke suggested. “Give them a few minutes to calm down.”
“You’re a wise man, Detective Bourke.”
“That I am. Go on so. And Megan?” He spoke just loudly enough to make her turn back quizzically before searching for her uniform.
One of his brilliant smiles slid across his face, lighting his eyes. “Do try not to get involved in any more murders.”
* * *
The youth she’d scolded earlier eventually brought Megan her newly dried chauffeur’s uniform. Once back in the suit, she approached Martin and Heather Walsh at the bar.
A little to her surprise, they were both more sober than not. Martin’s second Irish coffee remained half full, and although a crystal whiskey tumbler sat next to it, the amber liquid looked barely touched. Martin saw her glance go to the drinks and a look of bitter acknowledgment swept his face. “My best mate’s dead and I can’t even drown my sorrows for fear of the hangover losing me a wild card slot tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Walsh. Is there anyone you’d like me to call?”
“Oh, they’re already ringing Heather’s phone because mine’s banjanxed. She had to turn it off.” Heather Walsh’s mouth tightened in grieved acknowledgment, and she put her hand on Martin’s arm as he said, “What kind of man turns away his bereaved friends so it won’t upset his game?”
The recrimination in Walsh’s voice ran deeply enough that Megan caught the bartender’s eye and, with a couple of pointed glances and a small gesture of one hand, asked, without words, if Walsh had drunk more than she thought he had. The bartender shook his head, flickering two fingers up, and then shrugged. Surprised for the second time, Megan schooled her expression.
“I know I only spoke to him for a few minutes, Mr. Walsh, but your friend seemed like the kind of person who would—” Megan broke off with a breath of laughter. “Honestly, he seemed like the kind of person who would probably want you to play the game brilliantly and then break down on national TV so everyone would really appreciate what a terrific guy he was.”
Martin Walsh gave a startled, sharp laugh that lurched between hilarity and hysteria before settling into a wheeze that had him wiping his eyes. “You sized him up, all right. God, he’d love that!”
“Well, then, I suppose that’s the kind of man who puts off bereaved friends for a day,” Megan said gently. “You’re from Westport, aren’t you, Mr. Walsh? Will I call any family over to be with you? Mrs. Walsh?”
“My family is all in America.” Heather had a naturally low, smoky voice that now broke over the roughness in her throat caused by her earlier sobs. “And Lou—we’ve called his daughter. Someone’s driving her over from Westport.” She took a shuddering breath. “She’s d
estroyed. I don’t know what we’re going to do, how we’re going to—I don’t think I can play on Thursday, Marty.”
“Of course you can.” Walsh’s tenor changed, becoming supportive. “He’d want you to, love. You know how good he thought you were. He wouldn’t want to be the reason you didn’t play.”
“He wouldn’t want to be dead either!” A gut-wrenching cry tore from Heather’s chest, and she swiped her arm over eyes suddenly flooded with tears. She blurted, “Sorry,” at Megan, who shook her head helplessly, murmuring, “No, it’s fine. It’s fine. Come on, why don’t I get you two back to the hotel?”
She guided the Walshes out the doors, her breath catching at the sea-borne mist’s cool contrast to the warm clubhouse. The sky had brightened over the past hour or so, white now instead of heavy grey, but clouds still hung low over the island. It left the mainland, only a few hundred metres away, feeling distant. Someone closed their car door with the dull, hollow pop that wet air could carry. Then excited, insufficiently hushed voices made it clear that the story of Lou MacDonald’s death was spreading. Megan put herself between the Walshes and the gawkers, hurrying them to her Lincoln Continental. The faint, dark green Leprechaun Limos emblem embossed on its door caught the light as she held the door for them, and faded again as she closed it behind them.
Martin Walsh didn’t seem to notice the onlookers, Megan’s efforts in getting the Walshes out of the public eye, or even Heather as she buckled in beside him. He sat heavily and staring out the tinted side window until Megan got in the driver’s seat, then said, “Lou was the only family I got on with besides Heather. And God, he hated my first wives.”
“Wives?” Megan winced, having not meant to say that out loud.