FATED TO THE PURPOSE (Richard and Morgana MacKenzie Mysteries Book 2)

by Jack Flanagan

  “Richard, I don’t care about them, but I really think we should get Mrs. Prosper out of here.” Morgana came close to my ear and whispered to me. “We can’t have her bothering people about ghosts at a time like this.”

  “Well, why don’t you take her away from here,” I said being a little annoyed by Morgana's request.

  “She won’t go with me. I tried. But if you ask . . . she likes you. She'll take your advice over mine. As a man, you can make her feel safe and secure. She’ll leave with you, I’m sure.”

  Morgana punctuated her request with that bothersome look of hers that almost always gets me to reconsider whatever it was I had planned or decided on. It is a look that gets me thinking there is a grain of truth in what she says and gets me second guessing myself. And so, Morgana bulldozed me into assisting her to spirit Mrs. Prosper away. The problem was that the old woman just didn’t want to leave, God only knew why. Coming to our aid, the nervous Irish Setter looking woman. She joined us, and it was she who somehow convinced Mrs. Prosper that it would best for all of us to leave. Morgana concurred, Mrs. Prosper agreed, and I complied.

  Abandoning Foley’s room, we returned to the dining hall. The women decided to make camp at the table closest to the fireplace. I suppose for my companions the soft warm glow of the crackling logs offered a bastion against the growing chill in the building and the dark unpleasantness on the second floor.

  The Irish Setter revealed that her name was Moira when Mrs. Prosper gently questioned her like a doting grandmother. It was Moira who suggested that a cup of tea was in order and generously volunteered to be our impromptu waitress. In preparation for another with sit down session with Mrs. Prosper, I decided that I would be better fortified with something stronger than tea. So I asked for a Scotch, unblended, of course, on the rocks.

  “Richard, must you? It isn’t even noon yet,” remarked Morgana.

  “Don’t be too hard on him, Morgana,” said Mrs. Prosper, unexpectedly coming to my defense. “Why, Fred, my late husband, always had a small glass of bourbon right before lunch every day since we were married. He told me that it helped him to get through the day.”

  I gave Morgana a Cheshire cat grin. “If it was good enough for Fred Prosper, Morgana, then it is good enough for me.”

  “Under the circumstances, I think my Fred would have certainly joined you if he were still with us. Though I always thought that his midday libations made him sleepy. Many times, we would be in the middle of a conversation during lunch, when he would nod right off. Why once he fell asleep while eating a bowl of soup as I was talking to him — it was a little embarrassing. We were in Mashhad at the time . . . .”

  Morgana did not pursue with her objections; she couldn’t. Mrs. Prosper kept on talking. Moira left the table to procure the tea and my Scotch, and I, well, I decided to tune out the ongoing lecture on Fred’s drinking habits. Instead, I quietly sat taking in the autumnal ambiance of the room and let my mind go adrift.

  My mind had barely left the dock when I began to feel uncomfortably hot. Morgana soon remarked that she found the warmth from the nearby fireplace comforting and cozy. Prosper agreed. With the fire directly behind me, I just smiled grimly at their assessments, and thought to myself that I had made the wrong choice in the seating arrangements. I foresaw that I’d be sweltering like a grilled sausage in a few minutes if I remained where I was. I grabbed a chair from the next table over and plopped myself down next to Morgana.

  My abrupt seating change startled Mrs. Prosper and sparked Morgana to say with a smile, “You can’t get enough of me, can you?”

  “The two of you make such a lovely couple,” said Mrs. Prosper, who then started on with some story about when she and her Fred were living in Ireland. “We were sharing a seat on a crowded bus going from Acton to Belfast when — ”

  Fortunately, for me, the saga was interrupted when Moira came back to the table with our refreshments. The woman’s hands shook as she poured the tea for my wife and our loquacious companion. The octogenarian must have taken pity on Moira and asked her to sit down with us. Moira was reluctant at first. But both my wife and Mrs. Prosper insisted and convinced her — saying that Mr. Hograve wouldn’t mind if she sat down with us and shared a cup of tea. The skittish woman soon relented. I offered her my seat next to Morgana. Moira snatched a cup from a neighboring table and slipped into the chair. I, once again, sat down in my previous seat and once again began to sweat.

  I sipped my drink and observed Moira's hand trembling as she poured herself some tea and brought the half-filled cup to her lips. Our waitress had a frail, sad, deeply troubled look about her. I had encountered that same look on some my students who had suffered some deep emotional trauma, but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, reveal what it was to anyone.

  My attention drifted to Moira’s flat and shaggy hairdo which did nothing to brighten up her appearance. As I mulled over possible hairstyles that would look better on her, I noticed that Moira had a thin crease — a scar. It started just at the hairline on the right side of her forehead and continued for about a half inch before it disappeared under the cover of her hair.

  Her eyes suddenly locked onto mine as I was staring.

  “Thank you for bringing me the Scotch,” I said clumsily and swirled the cubes in my glass. “Very, eh, very good.”

  But strangely, Moira paid me no heed. She flitted her soft brown eyes from side to side as if she expected trouble to enter the room at any moment.

  Mrs. Prosper asked, “Moira, you’re new here, aren’t you?”

  Moira nodded her head and mumbled something to the effect, “I never expected this to happened, not this.”

  “Well, Moira, don’t take what happened to Mr. Foley to heart,” said Mrs. Prosper to comfort the woman. “Only God knows what terrible things were going on in that poor man’s mind. Why the wretched soul wanted to . . . ah —” Mrs. Prosper stopped in mid-sentence. It was as if she couldn’t think of the word ‘suicide’ for the life of her.

  Morgana attempted to pick up the ball. “What Mrs. Prosper is trying to say is . . . ah, Mr. Foley’s death . . . was a — ”

  “Suicide,” I blurted. “We will probably never know why he did it. Things happen. All that we can do now is to say a prayer for his soul and carry on the best we can.” A terse response, I know and one which earned me unsettling looks from all the women at the table. But cutting down Foley’s almost lifeless body didn’t do much for my piece of mind either.

  I had another sip of Scotch. It was getting uncomfortably again, and it wasn’t just the heat.

  “Moira, you aren’t from around here, are you?” asked Mrs. Prosper, taking control of the conversation. “I detect a slight — ”

  “Accent, Mrs. Prosper? I probably do sound like a foreigner at times. I was born in Boston. However, I lived in Ireland until the age of seven. My father worked for the foreign service; he was attached to the American consulate in Belfast for some time. No doubt, I picked up an Irish manner in my speech, and apparently I haven’t lost it.” Again Moira brought her cup to her lips, cradled the vessel briefly while she softly blew away the near invisible vapors hovering above it.

  “Is your father still in government work?” asked Mrs. Prosper.

  Moira had taken another sip of tea before she spoke. “No, he’s dead. In fact, both of my parents are dead. They were killed when I was a child.”

  That was a piece of news that I didn’t need at that moment.

  “We had a terrible mishap in the car while we were in Ireland. They died on the spot. I survived.” Moira looked over her cup and into another time and place. “After the incident, I was raised by my Aunt Monica, just outside of Boston, and I muddled through. Though sometimes, I must confess, that terrible day on that back road in the Irish countryside feels like it was yesterday.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Morgana articulating what I was feeling. On the other hand, Mrs. Prosper sat quietly, almost pensively.

  “Don’t be. It was a lifetime a
go,” said Moira. “Can you believe it? In this chilly room, the tea is still quite hot.” The younger woman’s attempt to change the topic wasn’t lost on me, nor, do I believe, on anyone else at our table.

  “How long have you been working at the inn, my dear?” asked Mrs. Prosper.

  “I started about two months ago. I work here part-time and go to school the other part. I attend Stark Monument College.”

  “Really? Oh, I'm a graduate of S.M.C. and so are the MacKenzies. You may have seen Dr. MacKenzie on campus,” piped up Mrs. Prosper as she gestured to my wife. “She is presently the temporary chairperson of the English department. I on the other hand — ”

  Mrs. Prosper paused, whether because she wanted to clear her throat or to prepare the table for some factoid about herself, I didn’t know. And I didn’t care to find out. I saw an opportunity, and I took it.

  “What is your major?” I asked.

  “International relations,” Moira replied shyly.

  “Professor Thomas is the chairperson of that department,” quickly chimed in Mrs. Prosper. “So, you’re following in your father’s footsteps, so to speak.”

  Moira gave us a sad, awkward grin and a gentle nod.

  “Do you like our school, my dear?” continued Prosper.

  “Very much, even though I’m older than most of my classmates. You see, it is only recently that my life is such that I am able to attend college. . . . I always wanted to go to college, but circumstances prevented me from doing so until recently. So, here I am. I thought it better go late in life than not at all.”

  Mrs. Prosper affirmed, “A wise choice, my dear, a very wise choice. The more you know, the better you are. That is what I always say.”

  I smiled, gently nodded in agreement and thought, “You say that and much, much more.”

  Morgana peered over my shoulder and whispered, “That silver haired cougar is coming our way.”

  Before I understood her reference, I felt someone grab each of my shoulders from behind me and kiss me on my left cheek.

  “How are you Richard? It’s been a very long time and no see.” Bo seemed to have materialized a chair and with it, claimed a spot for herself between Mrs. Prosper and me. Morgana’s eyes became wide as saucers as she watched our uninvited guest sit down. I finished my Scotch in a gulp and waited for the train wreck.

  “Mrs. Prosper, how are you? I’m so sorry that I didn’t talk with you earlier. First it was the weather, then my car and that business upstairs—”

  “Say no more about it. The weather has been horrible. Not many people will be attending, I’m afraid. And with that poor fellow upstairs, well, what can I say, we are all lucky that you got here when you did.” Mrs. Prosper sounded relieved.

  “You must be Morgana, Richard’s young wife. I’m Serena Boswell. I am on the fundraising committee,” said my once-upon-a-time significant other as she extended her hand to my wife who, with some brief hesitation, reciprocated the gesture.

  “I’m confused,” muttered Morgana. “You know Richard and Mrs.Prosper? . . . And you are on the fundraising committee?”

  “Oh yes,” said Mrs. Prosper. “But Serena is often too busy to attend the meetings herself. It is so good to see you again.”

  “I’m sorry, Agent Boswell,” said Morgana, grappling with this trove of new information, “but I didn’t see your name on the committee list.”

  “Please, you can call me, Serena.”

  “Then Serena, it is. You can call me Morgana.” Morgana gave me a grin that could only be interpreted as — I definitely want to speak to you later.

  “Good, well as to answering your questions, it’s a long story,” said Bo, “but I’ll make it short. I work for the government, the FDA.”

  “The Food and Drug Administration and you have a gun?” remarked Morgana.

  “Like I said upstairs, I am a special agent for the Department. Presently, I’m on . . . ah, vacation, and when I have free time, as Mrs. Prosper knows, I like to help out my old alma mater. I represent the Mabel Taylor Fund, a major contributor to Stark monument College. It is a multi-million dollar trust fund that my grandmother set for the college many years ago.”

  “I remember your grandmother, a fine woman she was,” commented Mrs. Prosper.

  “I see,” muttered Morgana.

  “And, ah, oh yes, Richard and I knew each other, quite well, back in college. Didn’t we, ‘Old Sport?’”

  My mind raced back to my literature course on F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was there that I first met Bo and where she tagged me with Nick Carraway’s moniker, “Old Sport.”

  “Yeah, that we did,” I said, forcing a smile and tipping my glass to get Moira’s attention, but to no avail; her focus was on Bo.

  As the conversation proceeded between my past and present inamoratas, the situation was rapidly becoming one of those occasions that if I were a child, crawling under the table would be a perfectly logical and acceptable course of action. But since the table refuge idea was out of the question, another Scotch on the rocks would have to do. I gulped downed the watery remains of my drink, and I swirled the ice in my otherwise empty glass until it almost made a ringing sound.

  Moira finally got the hint and asked, “Ladies, shall I get more tea and another drink for you, sir?”

  Morgana and Mrs. Prosper said yes. Serena responded by asking me, “What have you been drinking, Old Sport?”

  “Unblended Scotch on the rocks,” I said flatly.

  “I’ll have the same . . . and a cup of yogurt with mixed fruit if you can manage it,” ordered Bo.

  Moira dutifully left to do her errands. Morgana leaned forward and unflinchingly gazed at me. Mrs. Prosper leaned back in her chair and became unusually quiet, all of which left Serena to carry the burden of leading the conversation.

  “Yes, Rich and I were very close during our college days; weren’t we, Rich. He influenced my career choice about going into government work. And, I like to think, I had some small part in his vocational choice of teaching high school and to abandoned his plans for residency in the ivory tower of academia. How did that work for you? Did living in the trenches of secondary education make a difference in the world?”

  “I like to think so. But I’m retired now for about two years.”

  “Really! Well, good for you. I still have a few years to go, but not many.”

  Before Mrs. Prosper had an opportunity to commandeer the table conversation with some stultifying monolog about herself and her “dear late husband,” Bo sprang to her feet. “May I have a private word with you, Rich? It will only be a couple of minutes. Please excuse us.” Caught short for words, I hadn’t a chance to inquire the nature for the exclusive tete-a-tete before Bo added, “It is important . . . official business, so to speak. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Before I knew it, I was out of my chair and following my ex-girl friend. As I glanced back at our table, I saw Morgana watching me leave with the intensity of a German Shepherd guarding its food bowl.

  Bo steered us into the lobby towards a cushy chair and a small sofa situated by the television. Bo went for the chair, leaving me the sofa. We sat across from each other with a magazine littered coffee table between us.

  “What can I do for you, Serena?” I said unwittingly.

  “So nice of you to ask. Do you have anything particular in mind?”

  Bo leaned forward. The top two buttons of her blouse had come undone. I couldn’t help but to notice that her cleavage had become a bit more pronounced since I last saw it — an inviting sight which revealed where she hid her middle-age weight gain. Then the reasons and the emotions of our break-up came flooding back like a tidal bore. My roguish curiosity turned to something else. “Serena, I didn’t —”

  “Call me Bo, Old Sport, like in the old days.”

  “Serena, I hope that you didn’t drag me away from my wife . . . eh, to reminisce about —”

  “A fire that had been put out long ago?”

  “Ah, yeah.”<
br />
  With a wistful and knowing smile, she leaned back into her chair. “Why no . . . absolutely not. But . . . since you mentioned it, wouldn’t you agree that we had one hell of a fire going. The heat from that blaze kept us warm during many cold semesters, don’t you think so?”

  “Ah . . . ah, yes, I guess so . . . .”

  Bo tilted her head to the side; the inviting glow in her eyes disappeared; her manner became businesslike. “I overheard you upstairs to say to your wife that you wanted to help.”

  “Ah, I did tell Morgana that if — ”

  “Good. Now what I want is your car.”

  “Uh, my car?”

  “For official purposes, naturally,” replied Bo.

  “Why would you need my car?”

  “Hograve mentioned to me that you own the gold station wagon in the parking lot.”

  “You need my station wagon?”

  “Technically, I want to use it; Hograve needs to use it, not me.”

  “But you said something about official purposes.”

  “Well, since I’m the only law enforcement official here and no one is able to make communication outside of this inn, it may be necessary, and I want to stress that it is only a remote possibility, that we may need to use your vehicle to transport Mr. Foley.”

  “You’re going to move him? Are you allowed to? Isn’t some type of on-site investigation supposed to be done?”

  “Well, I did that, Old Sport. Besides, with this tempest raging outside, the local authorities, state police, and first responders may have their hands full at the moment. They may not get here for a day or two. How long do you think Foley is going to last before he starts to — ”

  “You want my car for a hearse! Why my car?” I knew seeing Bo again would bring trouble. Wherever she went, a wake of troubles and unrest followed.

  “My, my Old Sport, don’t get so hostile. You were the one that said you wanted to help me.”

  “I only said that to Morgana so . . . never mind.”