Dead in Dublin

by Catie Murphy

  “It’s almost certainly nothing.” Megan scrubbed her hands over her face. “It’s just bothering me, you know? With two people dead, I just . . . I can’t even imagine how she might be caught up in it all, but I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

  Cora smiled suddenly. “Americans, huh? Always trying to fix other people’s business.”

  “Oh, God. Not necessarily one of our better traits, honestly.”

  “And yet also one of your—our—most charming. I grew up there, though I’ve been back in Ireland almost fifteen years. I got a business degree in the States and the Celtic Tiger was booming, so I thought, why not come home and make my mark?”

  Cora smiled, as if suddenly embarrassed at bragging, and Megan shook her head, admiration in her voice as she said, “That’s a big change, a big risk. That’s amazing. Good for you!”

  Delight fought with shyness in Cora’s face at the praise. “Thank you. My mother was furious with me, actually. She never wanted anything to do with Ireland again, and she didn’t care much that I’d done well. Coming home to a country that had done badly by her was unforgivable.”

  “Ireland’s been a hard country for women for a long time,” Megan said quietly. “It’s getting better.”

  “Everywhere’s getting better. Not fast enough, but nothing ever does, does it?” Cora moved her hands like she might wipe away tears, though none had fallen or even shone heavily in her eyes. “Well. Enough of that. Tell you what, I’ll give the O’Donnells a call and see if Cíara’s home.”

  “Oh, you’re brilliant. Thanks very much.” Megan politely looked away as Cora got up to use the phone, as if by turning her attention out the window, she had magically turned her hearing off, too. Cora’s brief conversation ended with a thanks, and she came back to the couch frowning.

  “Her da says she’s not home, which I wouldn’t normally think anything of, but now you’ve got me worried too.”

  “I’m sorry,” Megan said, meaning it sincerely. “What a thing for me to do, just turn up on your doorstep to make you worry about someone else.”

  “Americans,” Cora said dryly.

  “Yeah. Look, I’ll give you a call when I find her, okay? Just so you don’t have to be fussed about it. I’m sure she’ll turn up soon.”

  “Ah, you’re very good. Thanks—it’s Megan, right? Thanks very much, Megan.”

  “No worries. Thank you for your time. I know this was a weird thing to have fall into your lap.”

  “Not at all.” Cora escorted her to the door and Megan waved as she trotted down the steps and struck off back toward the boardwalk.

  The minute she was certain she was out of sight—and an overblown sense of paranoia meant she’d gone three blocks and around two corners to achieve that certainty—Megan stopped to lean against a wall and press her hands against her stomach.

  Cora Kelly had known who Micheál Hayes was. Known well enough that she’d corrected Megan’s American pronunciation of the name—Mykul—to the Irish Mee-hall—without even thinking about it. Everything else she’d said—details Megan bet she wouldn’t have given an Irish-born person—lined up with what Uncle Rabbie had remembered of Cora Byrne and the mother who had left Ireland decades earlier. Whether Cora had a finger in the family pie or not, Megan would lay money on the Hayes family being the connection between Martin and Liz’s deaths.

  When she trusted her voice, she took out her phone and called Paul Bourke. His voice mail picked up immediately and she stomped her foot like a three-year-old, then held her breath behind her teeth until his message stopped and hers could begin. “Hi, Detective Bourke, this is Megan Malone. I’m out in Bray looking for Cíara O’Donnell and I just—look, it’s probably nothing, except I just spoke with a woman named Cora Kelly, one of the investors in—ah, jeez, this takes a lot of explaining. Look, can you give me a call as soon as you get this? I’ll explain then.”

  She hung up, but, phone still in hand, she put “joseph edna o’donnell bray” into the search engine and spent a minute swearing at the European Union privacy laws that meant that, unlike in the US, she didn’t get a hit on a home address—or, more likely, an option to buy a pass to a website that would give it to her—immediately. Normally, she approved heartily of making it more difficult to find people online, but without the resources of an actual police department, at the moment she found it a real bother. The internet generally agreed that, yes, indeed, Joseph and Edna O’Donnell lived in Bray, but wouldn’t go any farther than that. Finally, exasperated, Meg stomped back down to the boardwalk near the closed-down restaurant and started waylaying passers-by with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m looking for Joe and Edna, who used to own the Sea and Sky? I was supposed to visit, but I wrote their address down wrong . . .”

  The second person she stopped laughed, patted her shoulder, and said, “You’re not far wrong. They’re just down the street there, d’you see the red door? Two doors past that.”

  Megan, in her most American accent, said, “Oh my God, thank you so much,” and got another laugh that sent her on her way.

  Three minutes later, holding her breath, she knocked on their door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Joseph O’Donnell looked very like his daughter, with the same broad face and strong jaw beneath a headful of thinning but enthusiastic blonde curls. His hair was worn much shorter than Cíara’s and made the paleness of his blue eyes that much more startling in a tanned face bruised with weariness and defeat. He looked like he’d be at home in a business suit, though at the moment he wore jeans and a T-shirt that emphasized he was still graced with a youthful build, but with its strength chipped away until the very act of opening the front door took a mustering he hardly had left in him. He simply waited for Megan to speak with no particular curiosity or interest on his face.

  Megan’s heart twisted in sympathy: losing a business he’d poured his life into must have been devastating to leave a man not yet fifty in this condition.

  Megan said, “Hi,” gently. “Mr. O’Donnell? My name is Megan. I wondered if you had a minute to talk?”

  Mr. O’Donnell shrugged one shoulder, not much of an invitation, but not, at least, an outright rejection. Megan nodded her thanks and took a breath, expecting to engender anger with her next words. “I have a few questions about your relationship with Elizabeth Darr.”

  To her utter surprise, O’Donnell slumped with absolute despair, obviously using the doorframe for support. “God, I wish she hadn’t died. I knew someone would come, after she did. What are you, a guard? A reporter?”

  “No, neither. Liz was a friend of mine. I’m trying to figure out what happened to her.” Megan hesitated, lip caught in her teeth, then plunged ahead. “You’re sorry she died?”

  “Jesus, yes, what kind of monster do you think I am? Oh.” A bitter note came into his voice. “Oh, you thought ah, sure, the O’Donnells, they’d want her dead for ruining their restaurant. All I wanted was the place back. We might have opened again under a new name, if we could scrape the capital together. But with her death? No. No, that finishes us. There’s too many people like you, who’ll put it together that she died after the place closed, and they’ll decide we had something to do with it, whether we did or not. Nobody can make a go of it with that kind of rumour dogging them.”

  Megan nodded. “A friend of mine runs the restaurant she died outside of and said something similar.”

  “Canan’s at St Andrew’s?” Joe O’Donnell nodded heavily. “And the owner died yesterday, didn’t he? They’re fucked,” he said bluntly. “I’m sorry for them, but they are.”

  “I hope you’re wrong. I think—” Megan looked for the words. “I know Martin was the money man for Canan’s. It must be just about impossible to find financing these days, with everyone wanting a sure thing. I’m afraid my friend, Fionn, the woman who runs the place—I’m afraid she’ll end up taking money from the wrong people, to keep the restaurant afloat.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.
My wife handled the money. Said I had no head for numbers. My job was to be good-looking and cook, is what she said. Said they were the only things I was good at.”

  Megan offered a little smile. “I don’t know, you must have been a pretty good dad. I only know Cíara a little, but she’s a lovely young woman.”

  Surprise filtered through Joseph O’Donnell’s blue eyes and he cracked a smile that looked lost and uncertain on his lips. “Thanks. She’s my good girl. She worked at the restaurant while she went to university, got her degree. I thought she’d take over. Not cooking, but like her mam, running the place.” Whatever pleasure he’d had in the thought faded. “But that’s all gone now.”

  “I’m really sorry.” Megan meant it. “Cora Kelly said Sea and Sky was a good investment and she’d been sorry to see it close. Maybe she could be convinced to invest again.”

  O’Donnell’s expression turned quizzical, shoulders rising and chest caving, as if he was asking a question. Megan frowned. “Cora Kelly? She called a few minutes ago—well, maybe half an hour now—to ask if Cíara was home?”

  If he heard her, Joe O’Donnell didn’t show it, his attention going beyond Megan to someone on the street. Megan followed his gaze to a woman of about his age with a mothering face and a cloud of soft curls unlike either Joe or Cíara’s corkscrews. By the time she looked back to Joseph, he’d shrunk back into the doorway, shoulders hunched. “I’d best be getting back inside. Dinner’s not ready, and herself likes it to be on the table when she gets home.”

  As he spoke, the woman called down the street, her voice light and teasing. “What are you doing out here, talking to pretty women, Joe? Is my tea ready? Get inside wit’ yis, and let me sort this out.” Though she sounded cheery, a few more steps brought her close enough for Megan to see that she looked weary and walked like every step ached. She had on a coat despite the evening’s warmth, and heavy white shoes with serious support, the kind worn by people who had to spend all day on their feet.

  Megan offered a smile. “Mrs. O’Donnell? My name is Megan. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You too, chicken. What can I do for you?”

  “I was just here to ask after Cíara. Work’s been closed, but I hadn’t heard from her in a few days, and I wondered if she’d come home after all the fuss.”

  Joe O’Donnell stopped in the doorway, his whole big body going still. His wife took her coat off and handed it to him; his hand snaked out, took it, and came back in as if he was afraid of the sunshine touching him, though his tan, bearing deep shadows in the sunlight, said he spent plenty of time outside. Edna wore a tired-looking nurse’s uniform that explained her heavy-duty shoes, and glanced down the road toward the restaurant. “Cíara? No, love, she hasn’t been home in days. Joe, is my tea ready?”

  “Almost.” Joseph cast Megan a startlingly desperate look, then disappeared into the darkness of the house.

  “You know how girls are,” Edna O’Donnell said to Megan. “Once they’ve grown up a bit, there’s no coming home, or calling, or any of it, for fear they’ll have their wings clipped.”

  “I suppose all kids are like that.” Megan smiled at Mrs. O’Donnell and tilted her head toward the house. “I’ll let you get your tea. Sorry for the intrusion.”

  “Not at all, love. Tell Cíara to call home, when you see her.”

  “Of course.” Megan waved and wandered off down the road, away from the O’Donnells’ house and the restaurant alike.

  Half a block later, at the next corner, she turned toward the seaside and took the next block back, the strains of “Molly Malone” playing loudly in her mind, and the segue between Liz Darr’s segment on the Lifestyle Show and the following section about domestic abuse filling her vision.

  Joe O’Donnell’s strong arms had not been shadowed by evening sunlight but by fading yellow and green bruises.

  * * *

  One side of the boarded-up Sea & Sky restaurant faced the beach, where dozens of sunburned Irish families were splashing in the cold seawater and playing on the rocks and the brief stretch of sand. At this southerly end of the beach, there were fewer families, but more hikers on the road and path leading up to Bray Head. The other long side of the building faced the hill where the train ran by, and the two shorter sides of the building faced, respectively, an open parking lot and a derelict hotel with houses, including the O’Donnells’, overlooking it. It left nowhere Megan could conceivably break in at seven in the evening without someone being likely to notice. But Edna O’Donnell had looked at the restaurant when Megan asked where Cíara was, and Edna O’Donnell worked at a hospital, where she could have gotten the slow-acting poison that had killed Liz Darr.

  Breaking in to private property, she would explain to Detective Bourke later, seemed like a good idea at the time.

  She had to go back to the car for a crowbar and—given that the walk back was nearly a mile in length—she drove it down to park near the restaurant, instead of walking back along the waterfront with a crowbar in hand. She parked on the road, rather than draw attention to herself by using the otherwise-empty car park, and had nearly left the car behind when she thought of the footmats and went back to get one.

  A minute later, she found that nobody seemed to notice, or care, that she was striding up to the restaurant with a crowbar in hand. She’d learned in the military that acting as if she knew what she was doing, and as if she was supposed to be doing it, went a long way, but it always surprised her when it worked. She stopped at the windows on the restaurant’s far end, as far as possible from the O’Donnells’ house, and partially blocked from a view of the beach by the restaurant itself.

  Cranking the plywood off the bottom of the window wasn’t very hard, but she ended up climbing onto the sill, precariously, to get the top free. It came loose with a screech that stood her hair on end, and too late, she realized she was holding the plywood for balance. It, and she, fell backward and crashed to the asphalt, Megan barely cushioning her own head from cracking against the ground.

  The crowbar clanged as it fell beside her, but, lying breathless and in pain beneath the sheet of plywood, she thought that at least the board had fallen on her and hadn’t clattered to the hard ground. On a personal scale, she would have preferred it hit the ground, but in so far as she was trying to be sneaky, it landing quietly on her comparatively soft self was better.

  She squirmed out from under the board and stood—staggered—to sit on the roadside kerb for a couple of minutes, trying to catch her breath and waiting for the body-wide pain to fade. Nothing had broken, but her whole spine ached, and her tailbone hurt a lot more than just an ache. She didn’t feel at all ready to get up, but she made herself do so anyway, and levered the blue shutters open with the crowbar. Then, seeing no other option, she shattered the window with it and cleared as much glass as she could with the crowbar.

  The thick, rubber footmat went over the jagged edge. Megan chopped a couple of rough holes into the plywood with the crowbar’s business end and leaned the wood up against the building’s wall to give herself something to climb. She propped the crowbar by the wall and, a few seconds later, flung herself into the restaurant’s cool, dark interior like a seasoned criminal.

  She landed on glass, most of which, fortunately, lay flat, and came away mostly unscathed but cursing, then called, “Cíara?” in a soft voice that still carried through the silent building.

  No answer except a faint, electronic hum. Megan got up, teeth gritted against aches and cuts, and—unheroically, she felt—went and washed her hands in the enormous kitchen sink, getting bits of glass out of them before finding some bandages in the first aid kit situated above the sink. Blood welled through them, but it was better, and more sanitary, than bleeding all over the building. Megan flexed her hands a couple of times to be sure of her ability to use them, then returned to the restaurant’s patron area, searching behind counters and under tables, and down a set of stairs that led to the toilets and rooms marked “private.” They were loc
ked, and Megan banged on them, raising her voice to say, “Cíara?” loudly enough, she hoped, to be heard inside, but not outside, of the building.

  The back of her mind told her she was being absurd. Aside from the window she’d just shattered, the restaurant didn’t look like anyone else had broken in, and presumably only the estate agent would have keys to the massive steel door that had been installed. The logic of that didn’t do anything to soothe the worry in Megan’s belly, or the instinct that said Edna O’Donnell hadn’t glanced toward their old restaurant coincidentally. Feeling less heroic and more criminal, Megan found a fire extinguisher and used its blunt end to smash the knobs off all the downstairs doors, breaking the locks so she could get in.

  There were paper towels and cleaning supplies, from bucket and mops to window squeegees, and the toilets had an old, musty, sewage scent, but Cíara O’Donnell wasn’t tied up dramatically, like a damsel in distress, behind any of the doors. Megan put the fire extinguisher back and, as an afterthought, gave it a half-hearted wipe to remove fingerprints. As if Detective Bourke wouldn’t figure out she’d done all this herself, after the message she’d left him.

  She prowled through the rest of the restaurant upstairs, finally returning to the kitchen to lean against the sink and frown across pot racks at the enormous steel wall taking up half of the kitchen’s back side. A rankling sensation said she was missing something, but she’d explored the whole of the restaurant, finding nothing out of place.

  It took an embarrassingly long time to realize the wall across from her was a tremendous freezer door, and that the freezer’s engine was the source of the quiet hum that sat in the bones of her ears. Megan lurched forward, banging against the pots and pans, and found the door handle, hidden behind another of the tall kitchen racks. A heavy kitchen ladle was stuck through the handle, effectively locking it. Megan threw the ladle away, yanked the door open, and gasped as a cloud of frost whooshed from the opened door. “Cíara?”