by Catie Murphy
“But she did,” Megan said quietly. “She’s been tracking his finances for years. I think she might have confronted him about it last year, because it stopped. But then, when they came here, it started up again. I don’t know if he knew someone, or if there was just an easy market he couldn’t resist . . .”
“Is that why she’s dead?” Mrs. Dempsey gasped around a sob. “Did he kill her because he knew she’d take him to the police this time?”
“I don’t know,” Megan said again. “I want to find out. You—I think it would be all right if you went home. Laid your daughter to rest. You’ve had an impossibly hard few days. I just wonder if you could leave the laptop here? I’ll ship it back to you, but I want to figure out who’s posting those blogs, and it’d be easier with—well, with Liz’s password, but I don’t know what that is, and the account is already logged in on this computer.”
Mrs. Dempsey’s violent nods answered Megan long before she’d finished asking. “Take it. Take it, I don’t care if I never see it again. She loved this job so much, but all I know now is it took her away from me forever.” Her husband pulled a card from his wallet, offering it to Meg. Not a business card but a personal one: It had their home address and phone number on it. Megan nodded and tucked it into her phone case, then she packed up the computer, and hesitated before she left the room.
“What you said about the real estate being a front, Mr. Dempsey. Do you mean, like, money laundering?”
“I never believed he was investing with the money he took from their accounts,” Liz’s father said bitterly. “I couldn’t prove it, but I always thought he was gambling it away. I’d believe that he started selling drugs to cover it, when he got in too deep. And I doubt that was the half of it. All the traveling they did? He could have been buying diamonds and smuggling them back to clean his filthy money, or meeting with offshore accounts lawyers . . . Liz never wanted to believe the worst of him.”
“No,” Megan murmured. “I suppose she didn’t.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Megan rarely carried a bag—her phone and cards fit into her jeans pockets—so she headed home on the Luas with Liz’s laptop tucked under her arm, and the power cord with its converter scrunched in her hand. It felt like she’d already stuffed a full day’s activity into the four hours she’d been up. The morning had warmed up nicely, and though almost three years living in rainy Ireland wasn’t quite enough to beat the Texas out of Megan, she admitted privately that the locally outrageous twenty-eight degree weather felt pretty darn hot. The sunshine warmed her unprotected hair until she smelled hints of coconut and jasmine from her shampoo as she walked from the tram station to her apartment.
She was struggling with the laptop and her keys, trying to get her front door open, when her phone set her butt to humming and buzzing. Key in the door, she turned it, grabbed her phone, and said, “Yeah?” without looking to see who it was.
“My fairest American cousin!” replied a jovial voice. “It’s Rabbie, Megan. What’s this nonsense about you needing a solicitor?”
“Oh, thanks for ringing me back, Rabbie. I don’t need a lawyer,” Megan stressed. She got in the door, bumping it closed behind her as two inept puppies struggled to lift their comparatively massive heads and figure out where the breeze was coming from. Mama knocked them over, licking them thoroughly, and Megan, who had been looking “puppies and peeing” up on the internet, dropped the laptop on the couch and hurried to get all three of the dogs onto the pee mat. “Someone I know, another American, does, though. A criminal lawyer? He’s just been arrested for murdering his wife. Or maybe just drug running, I don’t know.”
“Jesus, Megan.” The good humor didn’t exactly drop from Rabbie’s voice—he always sounded cheerful, as if putting on a performance to sell the quintessential Irishman to the world—but he became considerably more serious. “You’re after not calling around for months and then you ring me with this? Are you well?”
“Honestly, I’m fine.” Mama Dog had licked her babies into bowel movements, an act that Megan regarded as unsanitary in the extreme, and had collected them again to drop them back into their bed. The entire activity had apparently worked up an appetite and they whined and yipped and sniveled as they worked their way around to nursing properly. Megan, mesmerized by them, said, “Do you remember a Paul Bourke, ginger with blond eyebrows, who worked for you one summer?” to her uncle.
“Sure, skinny as the day was long, but strong,” Rabbie said immediately. “He was driving his mam spare, getting into trouble with the guards, nothing serious, but it could have been, and she sent him to her sister’s best friend for the summer to straighten him out. They were strictly Catholic, so they were, and Paulie was after getting himself out of the house however he could, even if it meant sweating and sunburning on the docks all summer. I never thought he was much to look at, but the girls would get giggly over yer man’s smile.”
A grin worked itself across Megan’s face. “Well, I never. He’s the arresting detective on my friend’s case. Really, he was in trouble with the guards as a kid?”
“Nothing serious,” Rabbie said again. “Just being a gobshite, as lads are. I’d heard he grew up to be a guard. Good on him, that’s a good lad. I can ring and tell him there’s all been a mistake—”
“No!” Megan laughed. “God, no, Rabbie, let the man do his job. But even he said to get Simon a lawyer, and when I said you were my uncle, he said you’d know someone. Ugh.” The last was to the pee pad, which really wasn’t all that disgusting, because all the babies had to expel was liquid, but an ugh still seemed in order as she collected it for the rubbish. Rabbie, somewhat distantly due to her phone having slipped, inquired as to her well-being, and she got the phone again to say, “No, I’m fine, I’m just . . . babysitting . . . some dogs. Puppies.”
“Send me a picture so,” Rabbie demanded, and when they were off the phone, promises of a lawyer ringing her, she did. Rabbie responded with an aww ADORBS are you keeping them!? that reminded her of teenage girls, not dock workers in their sixties. His next text was a more sedate I’ll have Gareth ring you about your friend, as if they hadn’t established that in conversation. She sent an absolutely NOT! about keeping them and a series of love hearts for his help, and fell onto her couch to open Liz’s laptop.
Her phone rang again immediately and she stared at it accusingly, but then answered, because it was Fionnuala, who sounded tired and stunned. “Oh my God, Megan, I’m just after waking up and seeing your texts. Liz was poisoned?”
“Murdered, yeah. So, I mean, the good news is it definitely wasn’t Canan’s. I don’t know how it all ties in with Martin, though.”
“I’ve been wracking my mind, trying to think—who do they suspect did it?”
“They arrested Simon Darr this morning, after I texted you.”
“What? Oh no! Do you think he did it? He seemed so nice!”
“I don’t know. His in-laws—well, they wanted me to prove him innocent, but he’s been selling drugs, too—”
“What?”
“. . . it’s been busy since I talked to you last.” Actually, Megan supposed, she’d known about the drugs before she’d last spoken to Fionn, but they’d had breaking and entering to discuss at the time, and it hadn’t come up. Caught between amusement and horror at what the past few days had been, she shook her head, smiling a little, at Fionn’s reaction.
“I’d say! Drugs?”
“Illegal prescription drugs, yeah. Anyway, his father-in-law, at least, apparently suspected he was in to something shady, so I don’t know. Did you sleep?”
“I slept a treat. You?”
“All right, but the dogs woke me up early. Orla found out about them,” Megan said with a roll of her eyes. “She’s going to skin me and make fur coats of them. Have you heard back from the rescue people?”
Guilt filled Fionn’s voice. “I haven’t even tried calling them, Meg. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, because you didn’t have anythi
ng else on your mind or anything. Don’t worry about it. It hasn’t been a week yet anyway.”
“Still, I’ll call them this afternoon. Maybe some space has opened up.”
“If you have a chance,” Megan said. “There’s a lot going on right now.”
“Jesus, but isn’t there though.” Fionnuala hung up and Megan, glancing at the time, decided she’d better take Mama for a walk before getting caught up in whatever the videos might show her.
When they got back, she set up Liz’s computer on the floor next to the dog bed so she could play with the puppies a little while watching the video again. After a minute, she got her own computer so she could replay her own copy of the video side by side with the posted version.
They were identical, save for the addition of the song on the posted video. Megan closed her eyes, listening to it again, then, eyes still half-lidded, searched for software that would isolate the music track. Everything she found was so far beyond her needs and skill set that she wailed and flopped over with the puppies. Mama Dog startled, then gave Megan’s hair and forehead several firm licks, as if to assure her things would be fine. One of the puppies put its paw up her nose, which merged pain and hilarity perfectly and, giggling through tears, Megan fumbled for her phone to get a picture.
Fortunately—or not, depending on how she looked at it—the puppy seemed totally content with its paw in her nose, so she snapped the shot, extracted the paw, and sent the picture to more or less everyone she knew. Wiping her eyes—and her nose—she sat up again and turned up the volume on Liz’s computer, trying to hear only the song.
It wasn’t any of the well-known recordings of “Molly Malone”—certainly not Sinéad O’Connor’s distinctive voice rendering an impossibly gorgeous cover, and she was the best-known contemporary female vocalist to have recorded it, as far as Megan knew. She listened again, then, frowning, flipped through the videos on her own computer, looking for one she knew she’d heard in the past few days.
The Galway vlog had it—a couple of lines as Liz stopped at a fishmonger and enticed the straw-haired woman to sing a few lines of Liz’s favourite song with her: “crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh.” Liz held up a handful of black-shelled mussels as she sang, and the amused fishmonger dug in for a handful of the small, tan-striped cockles to show the world as well. Megan listened to it twice, then to the new vlog, and sat back, lips smashed together in thought while Liz did kissy-faces and hand hearts at the shellfish.
The vocals on the new vlog were Liz’s own. In fact—Megan leaned forward again, scrolling down Liz’s blog page to find and listen to the other two posthumous vlogs. She held her breath, listening, head tilted so her ear was nearer to the speaker, as if an extra centimetre or two would make all the difference.
And maybe it did, because after listening to them, Megan felt confident that the same recording had been used for all three vlogs. Liz, like a ghost, sang in the background of all three vlogs, and she obviously hadn’t done that postproduction work herself.
Neither, though, had Simon. Although—Megan shook her head, muttering, “No jumping to conclusions,” either to herself or the dogs, who didn’t care. Just because Simon Darr currently resided within Dublin’s penal system didn’t mean he hadn’t produced the videos and set them to upload. “Except I looked,” she said, definitely to the dogs this time. Mama thumped her tail once, as if tolerating Megan’s commentary without paying attention to it. “I looked, and they weren’t . . .”
Feeling like she might be losing her mind, Megan checked the blogging software’s dashboard again, as she’d done a couple of days earlier with Simon watching. As before, there were definitely no posts pending, though the most recent one, she saw with a shock that ran chills into her fingertips, had come from a different IP address than the last several.
Her phone rang, startling her badly enough that Mama Dog lifted her head to eye her in astonishment. She whispered, “Sorry,” picked up the phone, saw Fionnuala’s name, and answered with a little laugh. “I think I’ve half-convinced myself there are ghosts, Fionn.”
“You’re in Ireland, Meg. Of course there are.”
Megan waited a moment for the laugh or vocal shrug that would indicate Fionnuala was kidding, but none came. Eyebrow lifted, a shiver running down her spine, she said, “That wasn’t the reassurance I was looking for.”
“Is it Liz Darr haunting you? She’s got every reason to be, doesn’t she? Haunting all of us, not just you. I had a loan out from the bank for Canan’s, but Martin had investors. That was his side of the business and I never asked much about it. I’m thinking that was a mistake, now. There are loads of people I have to talk to, and—it’s not that it’s all a foreign language.” Fionnuala sighed heavily. “There’s classes, you know. Part of the culinary school I did taught you how to run a business and all of it. But it was so much easier to let Martin deal with the financial side. He loved money. I just love to cook.”
“You said you’d thought the business was doing well but that the books said it was much closer to the margin than you’d thought, right?”
“I’ve been over them a hundred times since Thursday night. I thought—I’d seen the numbers before, Meg. A thirty percent intake over costs is doing really well for a restaurant, and Martin had been so damn pleased we’d been making more like forty, forty-five percent. But the books say we’re operating at eighteen or twenty percent now, and I don’t understand. That’s just for the restaurant. The nightclub was taking in barrel loads, it turns out.” Fionn made a bitter sound. “I shouldn’t have bothered learning to cook and just practiced mixing drinks.”
“You’ve lost a twenty-five percent profit margin?” Megan’s voice sharpened so much that Mama Dog shook herself loose of the puppies, climbed out of their bed, and crawled into Meg’s lap, a warm, comforting lump. Megan felt her heart grow three sizes and rubbed the little dog’s head until she put her chin on Megan’s thigh and relaxed.
“I don’t know how!” Fionn wailed. “Meg, the restaurant does steady business. Two seatings a night, between the early birds and the late diners. We average eighty percent full from Wednesday through Saturday, and fifty to sixty percent capacity the rest of the week, with the specials we run and all. The Monday Mollycoddle is a huge success—”
Megan laughed quietly, as she always did at the name. Monday nights were notoriously slow in the restaurant business, and Fionn had, with the opening of Canan’s, introduced Mollycoddle Mondays, where prebooked reservations got diners 15 percent off their meals and a bottle of wine at half-price. Groups of women, especially, would come in together, calling it Mollycoddle Mammy, and have an evening away from their families and responsibilities. It had started out popular and had grown so successful that people booked weeks and months in advance. Fionnuala, thinking of that, cried, “And I’ve got to rebook everyone who won’t be able to come in tonight, ah, shite—!”
“Up the discount by five percent and throw in an extra bottle of half-price wine,” Megan suggested. “And invite them to reschedule for Tuesdays or Wednesdays in the next six weeks, so if you get the restaurant open again by Monday next you won’t have two times as many customers trying to come in as will fit.”
“You’re very sensible.” Fionnuala didn’t sound pleased.
“It’s so much easier to be sensible about other peoples’ crises. If it was my own, I’d be in a useless panic.”
Some of Fionn’s irritation faded in a sigh. “Then I need you to come over and be sensible for me, as I’m a wreck without a thought in my head. I wish I could get hold of Cíara. She’s got a sweet voice for talking people into things and she’d charm them all into the Tuesdays and Wednesdays.”
“You haven’t heard from her?” Megan’s tone sharpened again and Mama performed a very large, dramatic sigh, as if asking what all her hard work was for if Megan was just going to keep getting upset about things.
“Not a word, and she was supposed to work today if we were able to open. How am
I to run a business with that sort of thing going on?”
“I don’t know.” For a moment, Megan was grateful that Orla, and not she, handled the operations of Leprechaun Limos. She’d never had any urge to own a business herself, and watching the tribulations of those who did would put paid to any notions that came creeping along. “Do you know where Cíara’s from? I mean, where she grew up?”
“I haven’t the faintest, sorry. She wasn’t at home, then?”
“No, but her neighbour is now equal parts furious at and terrified of me.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Hey!”
Fionnuala laughed. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it. Look, Megan, I’ve got to go. I’ve an accountant coming to look at the books to see if she can figure out the discrepancies—”
“Right, hey, um, look, did Martin have any, um. Unsavory acquaintances?”
She heard a world of prejudices and snarky comments about the wrong-side-of-the-tracks area where Martin Rafferty had grown up in the silence before Fionnuala sighed and said, “No, not that I know of. Why?”
“I just—I’m trying to put together why Liz and he were both killed. What they could possibly have had in common besides Canan’s. And I’ve been finding out some stuff about Simon Darr that could . . . I don’t know. It might explain those differences in the books that you’re seeing.”
“You think Simon and Martin knew each other? Can’t you just go ask Simon?”
“I don’t see how they could have. It’s just that Simon—well, even if he didn’t murder Liz, apparently he sold prescription drugs under the table, and his father-in-law thinks he might have been into money laundering.”
This time Fionn’s silence carried thunderous horror. Her voice sounded thin when she finally spoke. “You think Martin was using Canan’s to launder drug money?”
“I have literally zero reason to think that except the discrepancy you mentioned.” Megan folded herself over Mama Dog, who remained a comforting bundle in her lap. “I didn’t think anything of it at all until I found out about Simon,” she said, almost into the dog’s short fur. “I want to say I’m sure I’m wrong, but obviously I’m not sure.”