Death in D Minor

by Alexia Gordon

  “It’s almost closing time and you’d like to get home. Forgive me. I’m so—distraught—over what happened to Olivia, I haven’t been able to get her or her collection out of my head.” She laid a hand on the tapestry. “I’m going to get this. Frankie’s right, it will go nicely in the music room.”

  Andrew’s shoulders relaxed. “I’ll be happy to wrap it up for you.”

  “Mr. Perryman—”

  “Andrew, please.”

  “Andrew, I almost forgot. I think I found something that belongs to you.” She held out the button.

  “What’s that?”

  She held it closer.

  Andrew paled. He started to reach for it but pulled his hand back. “Not mine, I’m afraid. Too bad, it’s lovely.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t yours? I found it at Mrs. McCarthy-Boyle’s.” No need to mention finding it near her body.

  “In that case, I’m certain it’s not mine. I’ve never been to Essex House.”

  “Not once, not even on the grounds?”

  He shook his head. “I deal in contemporary textiles. The late Mrs. McCarthy-Boyle collected strictly antiques. We orbited different spheres.”

  Gethsemane tossed the button on her palm. “I could have sworn this came from you.”

  He held up his arms so she could see the sleeves of his suit jacket.

  “All buttons present and accounted for. None missing.”

  “My mistake.” She put the button away. “I’ll turn it in at the police station—”

  “Garda station,” Frankie mumbled.

  Gethsemane elbowed him. “It looks like real silver. Someone’s bound to claim it.”

  “No doubt.” Andrew’s hands shook as he rolled up the embroidery.

  Gethsemane paid in cash. She hadn’t gotten around to replacing the stolen card she canceled. Andrew took the money and disappeared with the embroidery. A few moments later he returned with a brown paper package and a handwritten receipt.

  “You have such nice handwriting, Andrew.” Gethsemane read the receipt. “Mine bears a strong resemblance to the deranged scratching of a drunken chicken.” She held the slip of paper up for another look. “This reminds me of someone else’s handwriting. I can’t think of who.” Where had she seen similar writing?

  “Must’ve been someone who studied penmanship, like I did,” he said. “Gives your handwriting a characteristic style.”

  Gethsemane accepted the package from the gallery owner. She turned toward the display window and let out a staccato scream. A face glared at her from the other side of the glass, a face with a scar.

  “Ronan Leary. What’s he want?”

  Andrew brushed past her and burst out onto the street. Ronan had gone.

  “Feckin’ gowl,” Andrew muttered as he came back into the gallery.

  Gethsemane fidgeted with the button on the drive back to Dunmullach. “I’m sure this belongs to Andrew. I saw his expression when I showed it to him. His heart practically stopped. So why’d he deny owning it?”

  “He didn’t want you to know he’d been to Olivia’s.”

  “But he denied it even before I told him where I found it.”

  “He knew where you found it because he knew where he lost it.”

  “Why didn’t he want me to know he’d been to Essex House? Tons of people go there. He’s an art dealer, regardless of whether he deals antiques or not. He could have a hundred legitimate reasons for visiting Olivia. And why didn’t he ask me how I knew the button was his?”

  “You’re like a four-year-old with the why, why, why.”

  “Here’s another. Why was Ronan Leary lurking outside the gallery? Guy gives me the creeps.”

  She dropped the button. She twisted in her seat and rummaged on the floorboard to find it.

  “What are you going to do with that? I doubt Andrew will follow up on your suggestion to claim it from the gardaí.”

  “I guess I’ll give it to O’Reilly, tell him where I found it and what we learned from it.” She paused. “I could give it to Yseult.”

  Frankie stiffened. “If you do decide to confide in my ex, I’ll thank you not to mention my name to her. But you should give it to O’Reilly.”

  “May I ask what happened between you and Yseult?”

  “No, you may not.”

  “C’mon, Frankie, talk to me. This woman holds my life in her hands.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “At least tell me if I can trust her. Answer as a logical mathematician, not a burned ex.”

  “Answering as a logical mathematician—trust O’Reilly.”

  Gethsemane watched the passing landscape as they neared Dunmullach. “How drunk would you have to be to tell me the entire story?”

  “Murphy’s not got enough liquor in the whole of the Rabbit.”

  “How ’bout Bunratty’s Off License?”

  Frankie didn’t laugh.

  “All right. No more questions about sketchy ex-wives. Drop me off at the garda station, please. You reminded me I have to check in with Niall.”

  The station’s front-desk officer informed her O’Reilly had gone to lunch. Lunch meant the Mad Rabbit, as they had the best food in Dunmullach.

  She chuckled when she saw him sitting in the same booth he’d sat in the last time she interrupted his meal. Had it only been a month? It felt like a lifetime.

  She slid into the seat across from him. “How’s my favorite cop? Garda?”

  “Guard.” He finished a bite of fish and washed it down with a swig of Guinness. “Fine, thanks. How’s my favorite felon?”

  “Not funny.” Her eyes narrowed and her face grew hot. “You know damn well I had nothing to do with stealing that sampler or with Olivia’s death. Neither did Jackson.”

  “You’re right. I apologize. You had nothing to do with any of this. You’re no criminal.” He raised his glass to her. “A pain in the arse from time to time, but no criminal.”

  “You say I had nothing to do with any of this. Does that mean you think Jackson’s involved?”

  “Can’t picture it. Your brother-in-law seems too—what’s the word?—earnest about fighting art crime to perpetrate it.”

  “Apology accepted. But you owe me a drink and half your fries.” She snatched a crispy golden potato wedge from the pile on O’Reilly’s plate.

  “When will ya learn to speak English? They’re chips.” He pushed the plate toward her and signaled the barmaid. “Have ’em all.”

  “All of them? You really are sorry.” She ordered a Bushmills, helped herself to the fries, and watched O’Reilly read his newspaper. She really ought to hand him Andrew’s button. She ought to hand it over, leave art crime to the gardaí and Jackson, forget about wealthy widows falling over balconies and stalkers with scarred faces, and concentrate on calling Eamon back in time to save Carraigfaire. She reached into her pocket. Her fingers closed around the cold metal.

  Without warning, a twenty-something woman wearing a hipster hat and holding her smartphone like a tape recorder pushed her way onto the seat next to Gethsemane. “Finn Conklin, Dunmullach Dispatch.”

  Gethsemane froze with her hand half out of her pocket. She let the button go and rested her hand on the table.

  The reporter held her phone an inch from O’Reilly’s face. “Is it true, Inspector, that Olivia McCarthy-Boyle, late of Ballytuam, was mixed up in an art fraud scheme?”

  O’Reilly muttered a string of unprintable words. His eyes darkened to storm gray.

  “Where the devil did you hear that?”

  “Confidential sources close to the investigation.” Finn persisted. “Is it true that most of her world-renowned textile collection is fake?”

  Gethsemane offered O’Reilly her Bushmills. “You look like you need this.”

  He shook his head and glared a
t Finn. “I wouldn’t want tomorrow’s Dispatch headline to read, ‘Guard Drinks on Duty.’”

  “Give me a break, O’Reilly. I’m just doing my job.” She tried again. “Did one of Mrs. McCarthy-Boyle’s accomplices push her off the balcony to keep her from giving evidence?”

  O’Reilly closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. Gethsemane counted ten seconds before he spoke. “Where the hell did you get this information, Conklin? Who are your,” his hand balled into a fist as he practically snarled the word, “confidential sources?”

  The reported sniffed and looked hurt. “Do you think I’d give them up?”

  “I think you’d better go away from me in the next twenty seconds or I’ll arrest you for interfering with a guard.”

  Gethsemane hid a smile behind a sip of whiskey.

  “Give me one comment and I’ll saunter on,” Finn said.

  “All right.” O’Reilly held her phone near his lips. “For the record, may the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat.”

  She snatched her phone and stood. “Maybe I’ll do a story on lax security and loose lips at the garda station.” She stomped to the door.

  O’Reilly stood and tossed euros on the table. “Hate to cut this short, but the fellas in Ballytuam need to know they’ve got a leak that needs plugging. I’ll tell ’em you checked in like you were supposed to.” He winked and smiled his dimple. “That is why you came to have lunch with me?”

  “Nope.” Gethsemane held up a potato wedge and returned the wink. “I came for the chips.”

  She watched the door close behind O’Reilly and remembered the button. She wouldn’t chase after him. He’d be too preoccupied with Finn Conklin and the news leak to be anything other than annoyed with her for disturbing a crime scene.

  She raised a hand to signal for a refill, when her empty glass refilled itself. A Bay Rum-scented breeze brushed her cheek. “That has to be the coolest ghost trick ever,” she said. “Thank you, Captain Lochlan.”

  She found the ghost waiting for her outside the Rabbit. “May I carry your parcel?” he offered.

  Gethsemane glanced around. None of the few people on the street noticed her. “Thanks, but a bag floating in mid-air would probably attract unwanted attention.”

  “You’re right, of course.” He walked beside her, his appearance as solid as Eamon’s when the spectral composer was in a good mood.

  “Thanks, again, for the drink.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Why didn’t you come inside? O’Reilly wouldn’t have noticed. He doesn’t see ghosts.”

  “Not because I would have minded the company, I assure you,” the captain said. “Alas, your fine tavern is too new. I died long before the Rabbit poured its first libation.”

  “How’d you manage the trick with the whiskey and the,” she leaned toward Captain Lochlan and took a deep breath full of orange, clove, and bay leaf, “Bay Rum breeze?”

  “I patronized the establishment that preceded the Rabbit on occasion. Or two. Certainly, no more than a half dozen times.”

  “I’m going to regret asking what type of establishment, aren’t I?”

  A wistful smile played across the captain’s lips. “Mrs. Rourke’s, the finest school of Venus—” His aura darkened to a shade of pink that matched the flush on his cheeks. He bowed his head. “Apologies, Miss Brown. I forget myself. A testament to the ease I feel in your presence.”

  “How are you holding up?” Gethsemane asked.

  “Holding up what?”

  “I mean, how are you doing? Finding out the supposed Patience Freeman sampler was a fake upset you.”

  A sad yellow aura surrounded him. “I remember the day Patience finished it. I’d got to chatting with a fella named Jefferson at the Market House—”

  Gethsemane interrupted him. “Jefferson? As in Thomas?”

  “Aye, that’s him. He boarded at the tavern while he read law. Do you know him?”

  “Heard of him. But go on. You were telling me about Patience.”

  “She was so excited. School had just let out, she hadn’t even been home yet. She stood off to the side, near the magazine, bobbing from foot to foot, doing her best to wait until Mr. Jefferson and I finished jawing. I thought she was like to burst, so I called her over. You should have seen her smile when she showed us. She was rightly proud of her work. Some of the finest stitching I ever saw. Most women twice her age couldn’t sew half as well. She impressed Mr. Jefferson, too. He wrote her a letter recommending her for an apprenticeship with a mantua maker.” The captain’s aura dimmed to yellow and he dematerialized until the bricks of the buildings they passed showed through his chest. “She never got the chance to use it.”

  “Sissy.” Frankie’s voice carried across the village green.

  Gethsemane cringed at the nickname.

  “A certain math teacher is damn lucky I’m in enough trouble with the law or I might be tempted to commit the crime I’m suspected of.”

  “Easy, lass.” Captain Lochlan solidified again. His green aura, as well as the grin fighting for control of his lips, belied his stern voice.

  She called across the green, “What, Francis?”

  “It’s Francis, now, is it? After all I’ve done for you.”

  “Consider yourself fortunate we’re not back to a last-name basis.”

  Frankie relaxed into a lean against his car. His lopsided grin brought out the dimple in his left cheek. Was every man in Dunmullach intent on teasing her?

  “You haven’t done enough to call me Sissy,” she said.

  “What if I drive you up to the cottage? May I call you Sissy then?”

  Captain Lochlan’s full throaty laugh sounded in her ear. “I’ll bid you good day and leave you to the gentleman’s care.” He vanished before she could comment on whether he handed her over to a gentleman.

  She looked back and forth between Frankie standing by his open passenger door and her boot-clad feet. Carraigfaire meant a long walk, even in comfortable footwear. “Yes, Frankie, you may drive me home. No, you may not call me Sissy. Move a mountain for me, and I’ll think about it.”

  Jackson met her at the door as soon as she returned to Carraigfaire. “Sissy, where’ve you been? Are you all right? I was worried. You really need to get a cell phone.”

  Caught off guard, Gethsemane stalled by taking extra care hanging up her coat. What could she say? Not that she’d run off with a possible piece of evidence in a criminal investigation and launched her own investigation by trespassing in someone’s private files. Jackson fell into the law and order camp. He would not be okay with her actions. She groped for words, then seized upon the first thing that offered a plausible explanation. She held up her package from the Perryman gallery. “Shopping.”

  “Shopping? Now?”

  “Sure. Why not now?” Shop ’til you drop had never been her mantra, but she enjoyed a good sale as much as anyone and often took her nieces and Jackson’s son out on mini-sprees when she visited. “What’s wrong with shopping?”

  “With everything that’s going on, the auction, and the Freeman sampler, and Olivia’s death…”

  “Retail therapy. I needed to get out and do something to take my mind off things. You know me, I’m no good at moping around feeling sorry for myself or huddling in a corner to ruminate. I need to do something. In this case, there’s not much I can do—” she uttered a mental prayer for forgiveness for lying, “—so I shopped.” She handed Jackson her purchase and led the way to the study.

  “I’ve been uncommunicative the past few days, wrapped up in my own issues. Finding Olivia like that, it can’t have been pleasant. I’m sorry I haven’t been much of a shoulder to lean on.”

  “Honest, Jackson, I’m fine. I’m not going to wilt like a delicate flower or have a nervous breakdown or anything.” Her tone sounded harsher than s
he’d intended. Her brother-in-law dropped his gaze and toyed with the wrapping on her wall-hanging. She’d hurt his feelings. “I didn’t mean to snap. I know you’re worried and trying to help.” She hugged him. “But I’m hanging in.” She hated to admit it, but after what she’d been through in recent weeks, finding dead bodies and ghosts no longer made her list of life’s strangest events. “How about you? How’re you doing? You come all the way over here to purchase a piece for the museum and end up wrapped up in theft, fraud, and death under suspicious circumstances.”

  “Nothing’s gone as expected, has it? But I’m managing. I—” His voice cracked. He sank into the couch.

  She sat next to him. “Just remember if you ever need a shoulder to lean on, I’ve got two. You’ll just have to bend way, way down to reach them.” She clasped his shoulder on the way to the bar. “I’ll pour. Laphroaig?”

  “Oh, the reason I was waiting for you.” He pulled a folded note from his pocket. “A messenger delivered this while you were out.”

  “For me?” She took the sheet of paper.

  “For me. A summons—” Jackson shook his head. “Let’s call it a request. Summons sounds too much like it involves a trip to the police station.”

  “‘Your presence has been requested’ sounds too much like an invitation to a garden party.” She read the note. “Olivia’s will? Isn’t it too early to read her will? I thought they waited until after the funeral to do that.”

  “Maybe the police asked for the reading to be moved up. Maybe they’re hoping to find out who benefits from Olivia’s demise.”

  “You mean find out who had a motive to help her over that balcony rail. But why are you invited?”

  “Apparently, I’m a beneficiary. Olivia left me something in her will.”

  Half of Ballytuam crowded into the solicitor’s office for the reading of Olivia’s will. Gethsemane stopped counting at twenty-two. She recognized Curtis Boyle, several of Olivia’s staff, including Ray and Maire, and a few of the party guests. She also recognized Sergeant Heaney, as surly as ever. Heaney skulked the crowd’s periphery and signaled occasionally to three men in uninspired suits. Fellow gardaí, Gethsemane assumed. Maybe the police were behind the early reading of the will.