Path into Darkness

by Lisa Alber

  Holy Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—or however the saying went. Danny. Here. At last he’d stepped foot over the threshold of Liam’s house. News of Liam’s health must have inspired him to do a very un-Irish thing: let go of the past. Forget Zoe’s so-called healing, this was the miracle of the week.

  Merrit retreated to open the front door and shut it again, louder this time. “Someone’s here!” Danny’s daughter Mandy called.

  Merrit pushed her way into the kitchen to see an array of desserts covering the kitchen island and a small crowd sitting and standing with laden plates. First, Liam. She scanned him up and down, noting his easy grip on his cane and his not-too-labored breathing. His wink roused Merrit’s suspicions. He was up to something.

  “Danny called, so I decided to make an occasion of his visit. Afternoon tea to help us eat all these infernal desserts.”

  “Look, I have three desserts on my plate,” Danny’s son Petey said.

  Merrit smiled at him. “You are one lucky boy.”

  “So am I, but a girl,” Mandy said without looking at Merritt.

  Danny leaned against the counter near the sink. Unlike the others, he didn’t have a plate in hand. He gazed at Merrit with that neutrality that she had come to detest. To her surprise, the other adults in the room included Nathan Tate with a woman friend—no Zoe in sight—and—

  “Marcus!”

  Merrit dropped the grocery bags on the counter and wrapped her arms around Danny’s father-in-law and her first, dear friend in Lisfenora. He’d helped her negotiate village life before he went to rehab, and now here he stood without the alcohol bloat and bleariness. His arms wrapped around her in a bear hug. He was strong enough to lift her onto her toes.

  “I heard you were back.” She managed not to glance at Danny when she continued, “I wasn’t sure of the best way to contact you.”

  “Never you mind, lassie. Understandable given the circumstances.”

  Merrit made her way around the island to Nathan and the woman. In her forties, she had a plain elegance that attracted Merrit. The black slacks and abstract-designed scarf knotted around her neck in the way sophisticated European women had perfected told Merrit that she probably wasn’t local either.

  Liam’s self-satisfied smile confirmed Merrit’s suspicions. This impromptu dessert party had many purposes besides welcoming Danny to feel at home again. Reuniting her with Marcus being one. Curiosity about Nathan being another. And it didn’t escape Merrit’s notice that he’d timed the dessert party to ambush her. His way of having fun, the blighter.

  “Too bad Zoe wasn’t available,” Liam said, “but Annie here more than makes up for her absence.”

  “I’m the tagalong,” Annie said. “Nathan was kind enough to invite me.”

  “Where’s Zoe?” Merrit said to Nathan.

  “At what she called an informational interview. Something to do with nursing.”

  “Nursing?” Annie said.

  “She started her college courses in that direction and wants to transfer her education from England to Ireland. Would like work experience.”

  He didn’t sound thrilled about his daughter’s aspirations.

  Annie set aside her blackberry cream. “I can talk to her about the field in general terms.”

  “That’s grand.” Nathan’s left eyelid twitched, and he picked at inflamed scabs on his knuckles. “But I don’t think she’s suited to nursing. Her mother and I thought she’d be good in business. Sales, customer relations, marketing, that sort of thing. Zoe’s too fearless for nursing.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” Merrit said.

  “Maybe if you’re a skydiver, or”—he nodded his head toward Danny—“a copper.”

  Danny turned an inquiring gaze toward them. “I’m wary of fearless Garda officers. They’re liable to put themselves and others at risk.”

  Annie agreed. “Fear is a healthy response—a survival mechanism—especially in response to danger.”

  “Perceived danger or actual danger?” Nathan said.

  “I’d be interested in knowing the answer to that, myself,” Danny said. “From a Garda perspective, we have to treat perceived danger as actual danger.”

  Annie perked up with this turn in the conversation. “Ah, Detective Sergeant, your situation differs from the usual person. For most of us, perceived danger stems from irrational fears and long—

  standing anxieties. They are imaginary”—Nathan frowned—“but still real in the mind of the person with the fear.”

  “It could be the other way around.” Nathan flexed his injured hand. “An actual danger that you refuse to believe is real, that you talk yourself out of believing to maintain your sanity. What’s that called?”

  Mandy and Petey’s sugar-powered antics broke into their conversation. Danny circled away from them, saying as he went, “Self-delusion?” He grabbed for the children but they made a run for the back door and within seconds were outside yelling in the rain.

  To Merrit’s surprise, Danny tossed Mandy’s rain slicker at her and requested her help wrangling the kids. She grabbed her coat on the way out. “Walk with me,” he said as soon as the door closed behind them.

  After outfitting the children in their coats, he took off down the track toward Fox Cottage while the kids cavorted ahead of them. Danny tilted his head toward the sky, closed his eyes, and walked along that way for a few strides with rain droplets sliding down his cheeks. He didn’t look at her when he opened his eyes again.

  “I might have an issue with you,” he said, “and I’d prefer to avoid that complication if possible.”

  “Seriously? What have I done now?”

  “It’s not what you’ve done. It’s what you might do, seeing as how, of all the people in our fair county, you were the one to find Elder Joe. There’s also this business about Nathan and Zoe Tate. The healing.”

  “Who told you that? Oh, wait, Alan. Right.” She stopped and pulled on his arm to halt him, too. “So you’re not here to visit Liam, after all?”

  Danny called to Petey not to wander too far away. “I think we’ve had this conversation before, but let me repeat that you can’t meddle in a murder investigation. You’ve got Alan interested in Nathan, and Liam appears to be interested, too. Leave off with the amateur inquiries.”

  “Wait just a second.” She continued walking. Danny kept pace on her right. “I love how you jump to conclusions. Liam is the ringleader, not me, and he’s curious about Zoe more than Nathan. She says she’s a healer, so of course he’s interested. Nathan is a byproduct of that, and besides, what does all of that have to do with your investigation?”

  Danny continued past her. Dang, the man was a stubborn sod. She considered the word sod but dismissed it as good enough for the moment. She caught up with him in front of Fox Cottage. Paint flaked off the shutters and moss covered the roof. The cottage needed help.

  “Did Elder Joe ever mention Nathan to you?” Danny said.

  “Is Nathan a suspect?” she said. “Do you think he’s the person I saw outside EJ’s house?”

  “Answer the question, please.”

  So Nathan had landed in Danny’s sight lines. “No, EJ never mentioned Nathan. He sold me organic eggs, and I obliged him by picking them up on Saturdays.”

  She was still looking at Fox Cottage, at all the many ways it displayed its neglect. She felt Danny observing her in his Garda detective way.

  “Why did you oblige him?” he said. “He could have left the eggs for you at the pub.”

  “True.” She pushed at an ancient garden gate until the hinges squealed. “I suppose I wanted to prove a point.”

  “What point?”

  “Does it matter? Maybe it felt like the insider thing to do, to pick up eggs from his house.”

  She didn’t want to elaborate on Elder Joe’s cryptic last words to her about lambs and sheep, or that he’d thought of her as the snobbish type. The type of person who was “that way,” he supposed, because she’d begged off his tea inv
itation.

  Changing the topic, she said, “Who’s taking care of his chickens?”

  “That’s sorted. No worries about the chickens.”

  “I’ll buy eggs from whoever owns them now.”

  Danny grunted. “We’ll see.” He called the kids and turned back for the return walk to Liam’s house.

  “About Nathan,” Merrit said. “He seems rattled, doesn’t he? And distracted. Ever since Zoe arrived.”

  “Now who’s making assumptions?”

  “No, that’s a theory. There’s a difference.” The rain had lightened to a fine mist. A mossy, verdant scent saturated the air. She let Danny’s silence stand for a moment, then continued. “I had no idea you were interested in Nathan. Now that I know, I’ll keep my ear out.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Or how about this? A deal. I shall ignore everything about Nathan or anything else I think might be of interest to your investigation if you agree to continue visiting Liam. He misses you.”

  “Bloody hell, woman. You’ll tell me what you happen to remember or see or overhear or learn, but leave Nathan be—and Zoe, too, for that matter. The man’s confused enough without you muddying the waters.”

  “Fine.” Merrit crossed her fingers behind her back. “Deal?”

  He walked two steps ahead of her back to Liam’s house. Before opening the back door into the kitchen, he paused long enough to say, “Deal. I’ll visit Liam again soon.”

  “What about Elder Joe?”

  “What about him?”

  “Don’t you have more questions for me?”

  “We’re square.” He squinted at her. “You didn’t forget to tell me something, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Hmm. Well then, you arrived for eggs and entered without invitation—which didn’t surprise me—and found his corpse. Except for inviting you in for tea the week before, he didn’t say anything unusual to you. You’re not a person of interest.”

  “Good.” But Merrit felt oddly let down.

  seventeen

  Two hours after talking to Merrit at Fox Cottage, Danny barricaded himself in his tiny office to stare out the window at the parking lot. The rainclouds had drifted away, leaving a sharp blue sky and a rainbow. He’d lifted his self-imposed ban on visiting Liam, and by association Merrit, and felt nothing but ambivalence as a result.

  He tossed his pen toward the pen holder. Ambivalence would have to satisfy him because he had more pressing things to think about. Like Nathan. His comment about perceived and actual danger intrigued Danny. Some fact—or some perceived fact—scared him. The question was whether his fear was related to EJ’s death.

  A knock sounded on the door and O’Neil poked his head into the room. “We’re ready for you.”

  The door clicked shut. Danny leaned back in his swivel chair and stretched out his legs. Think about it logically. Nathan lodged at Elder Joe’s house for a short while, and they were decent friends as far as that went for loner types. Nathan had spent the afternoon with EJ fishing. Maybe they fought.

  Nathan wasn’t a likely candidate for murder, but then, he hadn’t explained his injured hand either. Not to mention his twitchy, spacey behavior when Danny talked to him at his house. And Zoe’s statement about his secretiveness.

  He rocked the swivel chair backwards and forwards. What about Zoe? He had trouble reconciling the conventional young woman he’d met with her claims that she was a healer. The notion disturbed Danny, although he understood the temptation to believe in such things.

  Another knock. To Danny’s surprise, O’Neil entered and closed the door behind him. “A word before the meeting?”

  “Have at it.”

  “It’s like this, between us, man to man.”

  Danny straightened. “‘Man to man,’ for the love of Christ? This should be good.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I’m after your opinion about Merrit. Since taking her statement I’m thinking she might be fun for an outing or two. Get the lay of it, so to speak.”

  Christ almighty. Only O’Neil would take Merrit’s statement and come to the conclusion that she’d be good for a night out. Couldn’t keep his prick to himself.

  “Seeing as how you have a relationship with her—” O’Neil continued.

  Danny held up a hand. “I have nothing to do with her social life.”

  “Brilliant. I wanted to satisfy myself, is all.”

  Danny heaved himself out of his chair. “What she does, what you do, is your own business, except that she’s connected to the case. In other words, leave off with satisfying yourself for now.”

  O’Neil leaned against the door in a relaxed pose with his hands in his pockets. He jiggled loose change. “She’s not all that connected. Found the body, wrong time, wrong place, that was all.”

  “Know that for a fact, do you?” Danny said.

  “Don’t you?”

  “As your superior officer, I’ve told you what I think. Enough said. Whatever you do, don’t talk about the case—and she’ll ask you, believe me.”

  Danny had no illusions about Merrit’s promise not to meddle. He followed O’Neil to the office where the DOs worked, trying not to think too hard about O’Neil’s “man to man” reveal. Before Ellen’s coma, Danny had been separated from her long enough that some eejits had assumed he was interested in acting the bachelor, satisfying his needs. He wasn’t immune to the temptation, but with Merrit?

  He adjusted his thoughts for the impromptu meeting, thankful that Superintendent Alan Clarkson was on extended Easter holidays into April. With luck, they would solve EJ’s murder before Clarkson’s return. He had a brilliant way of destabilizing their good working order when he decided to oversee a case himself.

  “Where are we?” Danny said as he entered the office.

  Detective Pinkney picked lint off his jacket as he spoke. “Plenty of people saw EJ at the Plough on Friday night, sunburned and waxing on about the trout he hadn’t caught.”

  “Where did he fish? Did anyone see him with Nathan Tate? How did he get home from the pub?”

  Pinkney wrote a note on his pad to follow up on these questions.

  “Where’s the list of people who were at the pub over the weekend?” Danny said. “Since the Plough was EJ’s local, we can hope someone has an insight or two. His regular crew were useless.”

  Pinkney handed over a sheet of paper. Danny scanned past the names of the usual Guinness-drinking regulars, and stopped at one name in particular. He tapped it. “I’ve got this one.”

  He handed back the list and Pinkney made another note.

  “On with the canvassing then and fun for all,” Danny said to the sound of groans. “Have Cecil Wallace’s kids deigned to appear yet?”

  “As soon as they heard their dear da was out of danger,” Pinkney said, “they decided to take their time.”

  “I have an update on Elder Joe’s daughter,” O’Neil said. “Róisín. Met up with her again today.”

  “I bet you did,” Pinkney said, along with various snickers and catcalls. “Took a little ride up around Galway yourself, eh?”

  “Sod off, youse-alls.” O’Neil grinned and cracked his knuckles as if readying himself for a bare-knuckle knockout. “Lucky’s the girl who ever called me her boyfriend.”

  “O’Neil?” Danny said.

  O’Neil mock-glared around the room. “Where was I? Right. I showed Róisín the paperwork we found that detailed Elder Joe’s wee side business. She recognized a few names but couldn’t tell us anything. She didn’t recall any troubles with the few she’d met. I confirmed her alibi, too. In Dublin partying with her hen friends.”

  “How far did EJ go to take over their finances?” Danny said. “Was he the beneficiary for any of them? Any suspicious deaths under his care?”

  “Don’t know yet. He was clever. Kept it small and transferred most of his lodgers to hospitals when their health worsened.”

  Pinkney tapped his pencil. “Maybe he acc
identally on purpose let some of his lodgers die. Could be he was a—what’s the bloody name—an angel of death?”

  “Hey ho,” O’Neil said. “Mention that outside this room and next we’ll see it headlined in the Irish Times.”

  “I’m interested in whether he’d been made beneficiary,” Danny said. “First priority would be those who died under his care.”

  “Speaking of which, I’ve left the best for last,” O’Neil said. “Cecil had mentioned the adjacent lodger who died and hearing an argument after that death. The deceased’s name was Frances Madden.”

  Danny raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  “Get on with your fair self,” Pinkney said.

  “Frances Madden is none other than the other Joe’s—Joe Junior’s—beloved auntie.”

  eighteen

  Friday, 19-Mar

  Fact: Once again, I’ve been questioned about a murder.

  Fact: Once again, I’m two degrees of separation from the victim.

  You must be shaking your head at my expense, reflecting that we relive the same lessons until we catch a bloody clue. If we were in the same room together, I’d say “eff off” before you had a chance to say it aloud.

  It wasn’t a serious questioning, thankfully. The detectives are gathering statements from everyone who went to the pub over the weekend before and after Joseph Macy’s death. Makes sense, I suppose, but I was surprised that DS Ahern (I’d met him before while he was off duty—he’s a good father) chose to speak to me personally. He honed in on Nathan, wanting to know when I met him, how long I’ve known him, and what I knew about him.

  From the DS’s questions, it’s obvious that Nathan knew the victim. What could I say? I don’t know Nathan well enough to venture opinions to the Garda about his state of mind. Not like I did with PatientZ.

  This time around I can’t help or hinder the investigation.

  Fact: Once again, the man I’m attracted to is my connection to death.

  nineteen

  Nathan lifted the block of magnesium carbonate, otherwise known as chalk, off the back of his truck, staggering even though it only weighed fifty pounds. A blustery wind bent the grass tussocks and yanked the breath out of him.

  Zoe appeared on the minuscule porch, dancing from side to side on her toes. She still wore her pajamas. “There you are. You were up and out early today.”