by Catie Murphy
Fionnuala Canan blurted, “Meg,” in relief and flung herself out of her seat and into Meg’s arms. Meg grunted, catching her—Fionn stood a good four inches taller than Meg, and was strongly built to boot—and she squeezed hard.
“I’d ask how you are, but I assume everything’s awful.”
“Oh, God, Meg, you’ve no idea.” Fionn stood back a bit, her usually clear green gaze muddy and worn. Normally, Meg would call her striking, even after an evening sweating over cooktops in the kitchen, but right now the other woman’s coppery hair hung limply around her heart-shaped face, dragging its lines down. Blotches of heat shone on her cheeks, and she’d abandoned her chef’s coat for the olive-green vest—what Americans called a tank top—she wore beneath it. Even it looked bedraggled, and at odds with Fionn’s black-and-white-checked chef’s trousers. “I’ve sent most of the staff home. Syzmon and Julian are good lads and stayed to clean up what we can, mostly the front of the house—” she gestured at the tables—” but we can’t clean the kitchen until the health inspectors arrive, to see if we’re at fault.” Her jaw tensed. “We’ve passed every inspection we’ve ever had with flying colours, Meg, and that seafood was still flopping when it came in this afternoon. We can’t have poisoned that poor woman. We can’t have.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Meg said, meaning it sincerely, but Fionnuala shook her head.
“No, you don’t understand. Do you know who’s liable in Ireland, if someone comes down with food poisoning?”
Megan turned up her hands, indicating bewilderment. Fionn’s lips tightened. “The chef. Not even the restaurant, but the chef is liable. And I was cooking tonight. I know it’s not the food.” Frustration glimmered in her eyes, one blink away from tears. Her voice rose in pitch, though she kept it low enough as she spoke more and more quickly. “I know it’s not, but I’m still going spare. If it is the food, and if they prove it is, it’ll ruin me. It’ll ruin the restaurant. Even if it’s not the food here, even if it’s not the restaurant, Elizabeth Darr was one of the most popular food bloggers in the States. Do you know how many tourists follow her restaurant recommendations for dining out just here in Ireland alone? Thousands, every year. She could make a restaurant, or break one, did you know that? So no matter what, that she walked out my front door and died is going to be almost impossible to recover from. If it’s actually food poisoning? We’re finished. Canan’s is done. We might be able to reopen as Rafferty’s, but it was my business, my dream, and having someone else’s name on it—”
“Fionn. Fionn.” Megan put her arms around the other woman again, holding her until her shaking subsided. “Look, I can’t actually help, but I’ve got to go to St. James’s to get Mr. Darr tonight anyway. Maybe I can see if there’s any news about Liz’s death yet. Maybe it’ll be really easy to tell that it wasn’t food poisoning and you can get ahead of the news cycle somehow. You guys do social media, right?”
Fionnuala sagged with gratitude. “You’d do that? That would be—that’d be deadly, Meg. And yeh, we do social—oh, feck, I’d better get on that, I’d better—I don’t know what to say.”
“Condolences for the tragedy, admiration for Elizabeth’s blog, restaurant will be closed a few days, I don’t know, something like that. Look, I’ll text you if I get any news from the hospital, okay? I probably won’t, but I’ll try.” Megan hugged Fionn again. “Where’s Martin?”
“On his way. He wasn’t supposed to be in tonight, but obviously I called—There he is.” Fionnuala jumped up and ran to hug her business partner, a big man who always looked worried, as he came through the door. Unsurprisingly, he looked more worried than usual, deep lines furrowed into his forehead and around his mouth. He shook Meg’s hand absently and spoke over Fionnuala as she began to explain what had happened.
“That ginger detective caught me up and cross-examined me outside. Jesus, Fionn, this is desperate altogether. How long will we be closed?”
“At least three days.”
“And at the weekend?” Rafferty asked, horrified.
Megan ducked her head and pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t let herself say that given that it was Thursday night now, yes, three days would definitely mean they’d be closed at the weekend. Martin Rafferty brought out that impulse in her, but she worked to keep it muted because she liked Fionn, and Fionn had been business partners with Martin far longer than she’d known Megan.
“And in this weather?” He looked worriedly toward the fading light, tinting gold through the stained glass, the last vestiges of what had been one of an unusually glorious run of summer days. The weather had been good for every business in town except maybe tanning booths, with cheerful, sunburned Dubs happy to be out and spending money. “There must be some way to open up again. If I talk to my local councillor or get a TD down from the Dáil to have a—”
Megan shook her head at the reliance on an old-boys-network that made so many people—men especially—think they could lean on the government to bypass regulations and laws. Fionn obviously felt the same way, her voice rising as she said, “Martin, they’ve got to do a health inspection, they have to run tests on the food, they have to do an autopsy, for God’s sake. The Taoiseach himself couldn’t change that. We’re going to have to—”
“The club, at least,” Martin said with increasing strain. “Surely they can’t close Heaven because of what’s gone on in Canan’s—”
Megan touched Fionn’s arm, murmuring, “I’m going to go over to the hospital to see what I can learn,” under her frustrated explanations to her partner. “You hang tight, and call if you need anything, okay?”
Fionnuala gave her a distracted nod and Megan headed for the door just as Detective Bourke strode in. He looked bigger in the restaurant than he had outdoors, broader of shoulder, though Megan would bet he’d never worn a suit that wasn’t skinny cut in his life. Well, maybe he had: he was at least her age, forty, maybe older, and clothes had been large and floppy when they were young. Still, she bet he’d been pleased about the advent of skinny suits. He noted her presence without much change of expression but paused to look between the women when Fionnuala, suddenly, said, “Megan.”
Megan looked back, surprised at the fervor in Fionn’s voice, and then the brightness in her eyes. “Thank you, Meg. It’s me life you’re saving.”
CHAPTER TWO
It’s me life you’re saving.
Fionnuala’s words kept playing in Megan’s mind as she drove up to St. James’s Hospital, barely a mile—a couple of kilometres—up from where Liz had fallen. If only she had saved a life. If only she’d somehow—but she couldn’t even finish that thought. Moving faster wouldn’t have saved Liz. Warning her not to—not to what, eat the shellfish? Megan shook her head, watching the street corner for a traffic light to change.
A few years of driving in Dublin had mostly accustomed her to the lights being on corners instead of above the streets, though she would never really adapt to street names being posted on the sides of buildings. It made navigating hard, for Americans. Maybe for everybody; Megan had had an Irish cousin visit once, and he’d exclaimed over how easy it was to read the American street signs. She hadn’t understood until she’d come to Ireland and discovered the signs there were all on the corners of buildings, and mostly grime-covered so they were hard to read even if she knew where they were.
It’s me life you’re saving.
The cadence of it sang in her head again, soft and generous as a tune. Megan didn’t believe for a minute that dodgy shellfish had been the culprit in Elizabeth’s death, and not just because that laid the consequences at Fionn’s feet. The light changed, traffic rolling forward quickly enough at this hour: just before ten now, with the sun dropping behind the horizon to bring twilight to the long summer evenings. Dublin Castle’s grey stones were cooled by blue shadows, touched by the last drips of sunset gold at the top.
Megan hadn’t saved Liz’s life, wasn’t really saving Fionnuala’s either. Helping, at best, althoug
h if the restaurant dinner wasn’t at fault . . . a strain of song slipped through her mind: She died of a fever, and no one could save her, singing cockles and mussels, sweet Molly Malone.
Elizabeth had seemed fine when Megan dropped the Darrs off for dinner, and no fever Megan knew about settled on somebody and killed them in three hours. Neither did food poisoning, though, at least, not typically. Allergies, maybe, but Elizabeth Darr had been a food critic. She wouldn’t have eaten something that would make her sick.
Not deliberately, anyway.
She beat her fingertips against the steering wheel, then reached out to touch the leprechaun figurine on the dashboard, as if he could lend her some luck. Not deliberately skirted too near a thought she was trying to stay away from: that maybe someone had murdered Elizabeth Darr. Every food critic had industry enemies, although Megan didn’t think they generally resorted to killing one another. Now that she’d let the thought loose, it seemed preposterous.
And if it wasn’t, Detective Paul Bourke would figure it out, because unlike Megan, he had been trained and got paid to determine whether there had been foul play. Megan only liked to talk to people and find out their stories, which meant driving a limo was about the perfect job for her. It also made her adore the Irish query “what’s the story?” which meant anything from “how are you” to “what’s going on?” She always wanted the answer to that question, and listened well enough that people often told her.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket again. Megan didn’t even take it out this time: getting caught driving while on the phone meant points off your license and whoever it was could wait.
The underground car park at St. James’s smelled faintly of hops, courtesy of the Guinness brewery just down the road. Some days the malty odor could be smelled all over the city centre, but she hadn’t noticed it earlier. The wind had probably been wrong. She wrinkled her nose, got out of the car, and hurried toward the hospital’s main entrance.
The stainless-steel border between the sliding doors offered just enough reflective surface to surprise Megan with her own appearance. Someone she knew, however casually, had just died in a public display. She felt like she ought to look frazzled, stressed out, coming apart at the seams. Instead, the brief reflection showed a woman with her dark hair in a tidy French twist, her black-and-white driver’s uniform crisp, her light makeup still in place. She didn’t even look tired.
The doors swooshed open and Megan entered, tucking her chauffeur’s cap under her arm. Maybe looking sharp and professional would encourage someone to tell her that Fionnuala’s restaurant was off the hook, although realistically, she couldn’t imagine why anybody would share that information with her. Perhaps her sparkling gaze and winning smile would do the trick, but even if they wouldn’t, she still had a responsibility—albeit only a self-assumed one—to Simon Darr. Getting him home, and seeing whether she could find anything out for Fionn, were the only two things Megan could do right now, so she wanted to. Being able to take some kind of useful action in a crisis was always better than being helpless. That was part of why she’d become an Army medic.
There were no receptionists at the desk this late. Megan tapped a tattoo on the desk for a few seconds, looked around, then found an older man in a custodial staff jacket and asked for directions to the A&E—Accidents & Emergencies, what would be the ER in the States—and he smiled, a light South Asian accent was sympathetic as he asked, “Is everything all right, miss?”
Megan shook her head, smiling awkwardly. “No, but it’s not my loss. Thank you.”
Her guide nodded and told her it would be easier to get to the A&E by leaving the building and going around the outside. Megan hurried outside and down the sidewalks until she reached the pedestrian entrance and took a breath upon seeing the crowd inside as she pushed the door open.
At a glance, it was clear that the fifty or so seats held people suffering mostly from contusions and various degrees of intoxication, but the dim fluorescent lights made everyone look sicker than they were. Crowded as it seemed on a Thursday night, she knew it would be worse on a weekend.
Simon Darr wasn’t amongst those sitting there. Megan patiently waited in line until she reached the admitting nurse, who snapped, “Details?”
“I’m looking for a friend or her husband. Elizabeth Darr. She would have come in around nine or nine fifteen. Her husband is Simon. Elizabeth may have been dead on arrival. I’m here to drive Simon home when he’s ready.”
Not even a hint of sympathy flickered in the nurse’s eyes. “The mortuary is by the James Street entrance.”
Megan nodded. “Thank you for your time.” She stepped aside, making way for a lumbering man holding a flap of his forehead in place. The nurse, as unsympathetic to the blood caking his face as she’d been to Megan’s tale, barked, “Details?” at him, and Megan slipped away to the mortuary.
* * *
Simon Darr sat alone in a corridor that could have been purposely built for a grim film scene: both ends were swinging double doors and a series of plastic chairs sat beside another single door in the hallway. Even the chairs seemed sad, like they’d held the weight of too many broken hearts, and Simon’s was only one more in a long and unhappy line. Only hours earlier, Megan would have described him as a runner, fit and athletic. Now his thinning hair was limp and his shoulders bowed beneath clothing as rumpled and unkempt as Megan had expected hers to be. She’d noticed when they’d first met that his nails were beautifully manicured, but they were rough and ragged now, his reddened knuckles swollen as his hands encased his face.
A nurse or mortuary assistant—a professional dressed in hospital blues at least—exited the double doors beyond Simon, opposite the ones Megan had just entered. She gave him a brief, compassionate glance that became guarded with inquiry as she met Megan’s eyes. Megan indicated Simon with a twitch of her fingers, and the nurse, relieved of that duty, strode past her with no further communication.
Megan sat on the edge of the chair beside Simon’s, putting her hand on the arm of his seat. He shifted, then lifted a dull gaze to her without a shred of recognition in it. “Megan Malone,” she said quietly. “Your driver. I thought I’d come take you back to the hotel when you were ready.”
The man’s eyes cleared and he shuddered. “Megan. Right, of course. I’m sorry, I should have recognized you.”
“No, it’s okay. Are you—” Megan stopped herself from asking the obviously stupid question, but a terrible, broken smile darted across Simon’s face.
“All right? No, but—” He drew a shuddering breath and passed his hands over his face. “I’m probably in shock. I don’t quite believe she’s dead. I’m expecting her to—” He made a sharp, clumsy motion toward the mortuary doors beside them. “To walk through and laugh at me for believing this was real, or to yell for me to come hold her hair while she pukes because she drank a little too much. Or to hear her singing that god-awful song again. She hasn’t stopped singing it since we got here.” His face spasmed. “Hadn’t.”
“ ‘Molly Malone?’ ” Meg asked softly. “I saw her singing it on the RTÉ Lifestyle Show. She had a lovely voice.”
“She studied opera at college, but she got nodes.” Simon gestured loosely at his throat. “They healed, but she lost some of her upper range. Then she got involved with a chef and decided she liked writing about food more than singing for her supper.” The same terrible slash of a smile creased his face, cutting deep lines around his mouth and nose. “That’s what she always said when her parents complained about not having a prima donna daughter. I think they forgave her when her first foodie book came out, though. It was something they could . . .” He gave a short, harsh laugh, a sound of grief barely disguised by humor. “Something they could dine out on. I have to call them. I don’t know what to say.”
“What did the paramedics say? Was it food poisoning?”
“It can’t be ruled out until the autopsy is done, but I tried some of her dinner and I’m fine.” His expression
crumpled again, this time beyond salvation. Megan, uncertain but not wanting to leave him entirely alone in his grief, put a careful hand on his shoulder. If Leprechaun Limos didn’t have procedures for comforting a bereaved client, Megan’s boss would no doubt have them in place by morning, along with an itemized list of how Megan had handled it wrong.
After a minute, Simon put his hand on top of hers, acknowledging her effort. Her fingers were short and blunt compared to his.
“Do you want to stay?” she asked when the worst of his sobs had passed. “I don’t know what their rules are, but I’m sure they’d let you sit with her if you want to.”
“I won’t do her any good,” came his bleak reply. “They promised they’d hurry up the autopsy, but even if I could stand it, they won’t let me be there for it, and it won’t get done before morning anyway.”
“Do you have any friends here?” Megan asked. “Someone who could come to your hotel, or whose house you could go to?”
Simon laughed hoarsely. “I’m supposed to say ‘Elizabeth didn’t make friends’ now, right? Except she did. People—fans—wanted to meet her. They’d feel like they already knew her, from her blog and reviews, but then they’d learn how funny and kind she was and they’d become friends. Most of them. There were people who didn’t like her, people whose restaurants she’d reviewed badly, but . . . I don’t know who I would call. We’ve been traveling around too much. God, we loved it, though. She was always ready to get back home after a long trip, but this time she—we—thought we might want to stay. I even interviewed at several of the Dublin hospitals, looking for work. But we hadn’t made any close friends yet.” Another of the terrible, anguished smiles slashed his face. “I’m afraid you might be the closest thing we have to a friend here right now. We’ve seen you more regularly than almost anyone else.”