Death on the Green

by Catie Murphy

  “Yes, please.” Heather kept her gaze on the buildings—some old and beautifully cared for, some old and less well cared for, and all with modern ones interspersed—slowly gliding by. “I should probably meet Ms. Keegan to explain what’s happened, but honestly, I just don’t think I’m brave enough. I feel like a total chickenshit right now.”

  “It’s fine. You’re going through a lot. I’ll introduce you to the puppies and deal with Orla myself, which I’d end up having to do anyway.” Megan pulled into a barely legal parking place up the street from her flat and paid the parking fee on the meter machine, figuring it was better to pay a couple extra quid than a parking ticket. She got Heather’s suitcase out of the Lincoln’s back seat and hauled it up the stairs to her apartment with the argument “I’m not in heels,” which silenced Heather’s perfunctory objections. Once inside, she pointed out the amenities: kitchen, bathroom, and, to her own surprise and confusion, no puppies. “Oh, dang it. They’re at Brian’s. Look, I’ll get them after I bring back the car, okay? I thought I was going to be out all night, so a friend is dog sitting them. There are leftovers in the fridge, or there’s a ton of takeaway places right nearby, although Brian’s got my spare keys, so you’ll have to wait unless you want to order in. I’ll be back in . . .” Megan considered the conversation she was about to have with Orla and hedged, “An hour, probably.”

  “Okay.” Heather sat on the living room couch, looking around for—as it turned out—a router. “Is there a wifi password?”

  “Oh. Yeah, it’s on the router behind the TV. The network is ‘nofastsuchfurious.’”

  A little smile twisted the corner of Heather’s mouth. “Internet service is the same everywhere, huh?”

  “Ain’t it though. Look, I’d better get the car back and face Orla’s wrath. I’ll be back in a while.” Megan left Heather behind and drove the final two minutes to the garage, pulling in where she was directed to park and getting out of the car with a sigh.

  To her complete surprise, Orla flew from the office with a mixture of fury and concern creasing her features. “Jaysus, Megan, are you well?” She embraced Megan and stepped back, anger taking precedence once she saw Megan was unhurt. “What the hell happened? One moment I had that sorry gobshite roaring in me ear about paying for a service and you being a bitch, and then the line went dead and I couldn’t ring you up again! Neither would himself answer his own damn phone, so I’ve been out of my mind with worry!”

  “Mr. Walsh threw my phone on the ground and destroyed it.”

  Orla’s snapping blue eyes went dead with rage. “Are you well?”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine, Orla. Honestly. There was a minute there when I was picking up the pieces of my phone—I wanted to make sure I kept my old SIM—where I thought he might try kicking me or something, but he didn’t, and then I drove off without him.”

  “Good.” Orla’s teeth bared in a brief snarl. “He’ll pay for every minute of the service we’re contracted for, and a new phone for you besides. What happened to the wife? Why did she walk away from him?”

  Megan, with feeling, said, “Oh my God,” and flung her hands in the air.

  Orla laughed sharply. “That bad, was it?”

  “You have no idea. Look so, it started this morning with tripping over another body . . .”

  Orla shrieked, and Megan threw her hands up again, this time preventing the inevitable tongue-lashing. “I promise nobody but the police know I found him. Look, just listen, okay?” By the time she’d recounted even half the day, the entire garage crew had given up on even pretending they were working and had gathered around her in a semicircle, with Orla standing over them all on the step up to the office. When she reached the climactic revelation about Saoirse and Martin, Cillian, who had come in late, recoiled.

  “Forget I ever called that bastard my cousin,” he said in disgust. “What a gobshite. She can’t be even half his age.”

  “She’s not,” Megan agreed. “Look, this is all—don’t gossip about it, okay? Saoirse’s going to have a hard enough time of it with all her friends hearing the whole sordid story. She doesn’t need us spreading the gossip, too.”

  “Sure, but one will get you ten that it’ll be all over the sporting news by tomorrow even if we don’t say a word,” Cillian predicted.

  “Maybe so, but don’t let it come from us.” The chill warning in Orla’s tone was enough to make Megan’s spine straighten, and Cillian looked abashed. Megan finished up with Martin’s street-side temper tantrum and the destruction of her phone, which drew any remaining humor from Cillian’s square-jawed face. Orla finally released Megan from her audience—without, a little to Megan’s surprise, any kind of lecture—and returned to the office, presumably to charge the rest of the Walshes’ bill to Martin and excoriate him if he dared object.

  As soon as she was gone and everyone began drifting back to work, Cillian stepped in closer to Megan, dropping his voice to ask, “Are ye well, Megan? Do you need someone to come around and check up on you tonight? I can stop by around half ten, before my late job.”

  Amused, Megan shook her head. “No, I’m fine, Cill, I’m grand so.” Worry wrinkled his dark eyebrows together, and a thump of charmed affection ran through Megan. “It’s nice of you to check.”

  “It’s not that I don’t know you can take care of your own self,” he said hastily, color rising in his cheeks. “It’s just a thing like that can creep up on you and leave you needing someone there without knowing it’s happening. Not that ye need me, although it’d be grand if ye did. I mean, having someone you could count on beside ye. You could count on me.” By the time he finished speaking, he’d turned scarlet, and a penny slowly dropped in Megan’s mind, leaving her fighting off a flattered smile.

  Cillian Walsh had to be at least a dozen years her junior, but that apparently hadn’t stopped him from developing a crush. She lowered her own voice, leaning in to murmur, “I didn’t want to tell Orla for fear she’d come wring the payment out of her, but I’ve got Heather Walsh staying at my flat tonight, and maybe for a few nights. I think we’ll be fine, but thank you, Cillian. It’s very good of you,” and realized that didn’t sound one single bit like she was shooting him down.

  And maybe she wasn’t. A little unrequited lust made most jobs less boring, and Cillian, with his dark hair and light eyes, the classic black Irish look, was as handsome as they came. And, at the moment, flushed with pleasure, too, which wasn’t a bad look at all. Megan winked at him and, despite the chaos of the day, slipped out of the garage feeling absurdly good about the world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  She went by Brian’s house first to collect the puppies, much to his surprise. All three dogs rolled indolently out the door with the fat bellies of animals who had successfully deployed puppy dog eyes at a defenseless human. They stopped for takeaway as they headed home, Megan picking up a heap of burgers and chips, figuring that although Irish burgers weren’t quite like American ones, the familiarity might give Heather some comfort.

  Heather didn’t seem to have moved in the hour or so Megan had been gone, although when the puppies came swarming in, she slid off the couch and let them introduce themselves all over her new, expensive black dress. Tiny white hairs went everywhere, and she buried her face in their kisses. Muffled, she said, “They’re adorable,” and Megan chuckled.

  “Yeah. I didn’t mean to keep them. I’m not keeping all of them. Thong is going to go live with—”

  “Thong?”

  “The chocolate-nosed one is Dip, his sister is Thong, together the—”

  Heather lifted her gaze to give Megan a positively severe look. “Diphthong. Shame on you.”

  Megan cackled. “See, at this point I can’t change their names because I love making people give me that look. But Thong is going to go live with Fionnuala, the chef you met earlier today? Oh, crap.” She looked vaguely north, in the general direction of the MacDonald house. “I’ve got to go get her platters. Well, not tonight. Anyway,
they were born in her restaurant—”

  “They were what? Didn’t she get penalized for that?”

  “It kind of paled in comparison to the murders, so, uh, no.” Megan, listening to herself, had a moment of wondering what she’d done in a past life to end up casually mentioning multiple murders in this one.

  Heather stared at her over the wiggling puppies, then said, “Nope,” and put her head back down, clearly not ready to hear whatever story went along with that sentence. It seemed like a not only valid, but fundamentally wise choice to Megan, who didn’t try to press the details on her.

  “Anyway, she’s adopting Thong and swears she’ll change her name. I should—” Megan made an aborted move toward her ruined phone, then drooped. “Never mind.”

  “No, you’re right, you should. Use mine.” Heather took her phone from her purse, thumbprinted it on, and opened the camera so Megan could take a picture of her, glammed up but sitting on the floor covered in dog hair, with Thong snuggled beside her cheek. When Megan handed the phone to her so she could see the picture, Heather sighed and held it against her chest, eyes closed. “When I look back on this absolute shit day in my life, I’m going to use this picture to remind me that at least there was puppy love in it. If I send it to you, will you get it?”

  “I’ve still got my SIM card. I’ll get a new phone in the morning.”

  “And expense it to my”—Heather visibly edited a word from the sentence—“husband?”

  “That’s the plan, yeah.”

  “Good.” She went quiet a minute while Megan finally put the takeaway bags on the kitchen counter and started unloading them on to plates. “It wasn’t bad at the start,” she said over the sound of Megan unpacking. “It was great, at the start. He was so charming.”

  “People keep saying that. I haven’t seen a lot of it myself.”

  “Honestly, it didn’t last very long. I don’t think I realized it had gone bad for a long time, though. Not until we came to Ireland for a six-month holiday and I actually—” She gave a broken laugh. “I started having fun again. Lou was a riot, and we got on like a house on fire. Martin had stopped golfing with me when Saoirse quit the game. Oh, God.” A hard, hiccuping cry, almost like a laugh, broke from her chest and made Thong stand up in her lap to lick her jaw with concern. “God, I’m so stupid. I didn’t realize until just now when I said it. Martin stopped golfing with me when Saoirse quit. I just thought—I didn’t think anything! Not about that.”

  “You had no reason to,” Megan said quietly, more to the chips than Heather herself. Heather went on as if she hadn’t heard Megan, and maybe she hadn’t. “So I’d been out on the course alone, or with caddies, which was fine for the serious stuff, but not for a casual game. Lou played with me, though, and we would laugh until we couldn’t hit the ball. We actually got thrown off a green once. It was wonderful.” She lifted her chin, gaze empty on the far wall. “But by that time the Golfing Walshes were a thing, you know? A brand. And there were people—Lou was one of them—who were trying to use that to break down some of the barriers in the game. Men and women competing together, old golf clubs with bylaws like the Royal Dublin’s got. And I was getting better while Martin was . . .”

  “Petering out?”

  “Not quite.” Heather turned her profile toward Megan, as if remembering she was there. “But he wasn’t improving, which meant I was coming up fast on him, and in terms of being poster children for a fair, equal playing field between men and women, that . . . worked.” She put the puppies down and got up, making a futile attempt to brush dog hair away as she came around the couch to the kitchen area. Dip and Thong followed her hopefully, while Mama, who had gone straight to her bed, rolled on her back and stuck her tongue out. “Then a PT finally got Martin’s shoulder straightened out, and he thought he had one last shot at the PGA Tour. He’s been doing well, but there’s been all this focus on us, and he needs the money from the double win, if we can pull it off, and I thought . . .”

  Her gaze went blank again, and she started eating fries mechanically, one after the other. Megan, not wanting her to feel alone but also not wanting to spill ketchup on her own uniform, ran into her bedroom, changed into a dark red T-shirt and jeans, and returned to eat her burger at the counter, like Heather did with the fries. By the time Megan came back, Heather had worked her way through a considerable portion of the equally considerable pile that Megan had set aside for her. Then she paused long enough to say, quietly, “I thought I could leave after that. If we won. So I pretended I didn’t notice, or care, that he was getting more and more controlling, because if only he got this money he’d be satisfied, and I could get out.” A shiver went through her, and she began eating again, methodically, one fry at a time. “Lou knew I was going to leave.”

  The pile of chips diminished until it was gone. Heather licked salt from her fingers, then wiped her hand neatly on the takeaway’s paper napkins. “Lou knew I was going to leave Martin for him.”

  * * *

  Megan choked on the Coke—actually a Sprite, but she was Texan—she’d just picked up to sip from and put it down again, wiping her eyes. “You and Lou were . . . oh my God,” she finished more softly as she put it together. “Oh, no, honey. You knew it was Lou, didn’t you? When you ran into the clubhouse and collapsed on Wednesday? You knew it was Lou, not Martin, who was dead. Pretending you didn’t know, pretending you thought it was Martin, was the only way you could mourn as much as you needed to right then, wasn’t it? Oh, Heather. I’m sorry.”

  She suddenly had an armful of sobbing golfer, Heather Walsh wrapping strong arms around her back and holding on as she cried like her world had ended. Megan sighed quietly and hugged her back, stroking her hair with burger-greasy fingers and figuring Heather wouldn’t much care. “I’m so sorry. What a terrible, terrible mess. I’m sorry, Heather.”

  Heather pulled away, wiping her entire forearm across her face to ineffectually remove snot and tears. “You shouldn’t be, I did an awful thing, I cheated on my—” Her sobs suddenly turned to rage, and this time she didn’t edit herself, bellowing, “my asshole husband!” loudly enough to startle Megan and frighten the puppies.

  Their whines and sharp little barks brought Heather back to herself, and she dropped to her knees, extending her hands toward them in apology. Being puppies, they forgave her instantly and rushed forward to lick her fingers while Megan sighed. “I’m not going to cast any stones, Heather. You did what you could to be happy while trying to stay safe.”

  “But if I’d just left him, Lou would still be alive.”

  “Not if he’s dead because he got the spot on the PGA team that Martin wanted,” Megan pointed out, maybe a little too callously. “That didn’t have anything to do with you.”

  Heather stared at her for a moment, then bowed her head over the puppies, shoulders slumped. “I guess you’re right about that. But whether it was me or the tour, I don’t know how he did it, but I’m sure Martin killed him. I’m sure he . . .” She shook her head.

  Megan slid down the cupboards to sit beside her, tipping her head back so her chin pointed toward the ceiling. “Everybody thinks he did it, but I don’t see how he could have. He was with fifteen people when Lou died. I was one of them. Granted, I didn’t know yesterday that rogue golf balls could kill people, but he never lost a ball while we were out there. He was being all man-of-the-people about it, finding his own balls in the rough—” Her inner twelve-year-old surfaced, and she choked back a laugh.

  Heather met her gaze with wet eyes and a lopsided smile. “You wouldn’t believe how careful we get sometimes, trying not to say things like that. Some days we can all get through it like it’s not some sort of stupid, juvenile double entendre, and other days we’re snorting and smirking like teenagers.”

  “I’d believe it,” Megan assured her. “Anyway, Martin never had a chance to kill Lou out there on the green, as far as I can tell.”

  “Then he paid someone to do it,” Heather said, bleakness
returning.

  A chill sluiced down Megan’s spine, and she straightened. “Oliver Collins, maybe?”

  Heather’s jaw fell open, but if she had a protest, it never made it farther than the workings of her throat. Megan got to her feet, suddenly full of nervous energy. “Was Collins a decent golfer? Yes, Martin said he was. Could he have? Would Martin have killed him, to keep him quiet?”

  “Or to keep from paying him,” Heather said with a curled lip, then shook herself violently. Dip, looking delighted, did the same, and fell over on Thong, who put her paw in his eye as retaliation. Dip nipped at her, and an instant later they were both running around the apartment, yipping wildly at each other. Megan and Heather both stared after them, faintly dumbfounded by the normality of their behavior. Heather, after a moment, smiled weakly. “And there’s life, going on regardless of what we have to deal with.”

  “At least it’s cute life.” Megan bent and picked Thong up as she ran headlong toward Megan’s ankles, kissed the squirming puppy on top of the head, and put her back down to chase her brother. “Do you think Collins would have killed someone? That he would have killed Lou?”

  “I’d think he’d have rather killed me and kept girl cooties out of his clubhouse, but . . . yeah, he might have. He was a weasel. Good at his job,” Heather said grudgingly, “but a weasel. And I’m dead sure”—she winced at the phrase—“that Martin would kill somebody to shut him up, or to avoid paying him, if he thought he could get away with it. God, why did I marry him?”

  “All right. Okay, I have to call P—” Megan turned a dismayed gaze toward the fragments of her phone and sighed. “Paul. Um, crap. Do I still have . . .” She went to look through a junk drawer, hoping she would find the card Paul Bourke had given her months ago, with his phone number on it. “Maybe it’s on my dresser. Are you okay here for a minute, Heather?”

  As she asked, the puppies, having exhausted themselves, staggered back to collapse on Heather’s lap, dropping more short, white fur on her black skirt. She nodded, and Megan collected the bits of her phone, trying to work a piece that impact had welded in place off, so she could get to the SIM card. It snapped open just as she went into her bedroom, sending pieces flying again. Her next step centered itself on a wedge of plastic and she fell onto the bed, hissing and growling with pain, but she got the card out and snarled at it triumphantly. Not that it did her any good, she realized a heartbeat later: the phone was the first she’d bought in Ireland, so she had no old spares lying around.