by Lisa Alber
“First off.” Sheehy handed a folder to Danny. “Just in.”
Danny flipped it open, grimaced, and handed it off to O’Neil. Benjy’s report on Annie Belden’s cause of death. Danny hadn’t attended the autopsy because he’d run to the Ennis hospital to ensure that Ellen was settled. The doctors at the Limerick hospital had deemed her well enough to be transferred to the local facility once again. No one had bothered to call him until after she’d arrived in Ennis.
“Eileen Browne, her therapist, predicted an insulin overdose,” Danny said, “and she was correct. She also thought suicide, which might have stuck if we’d found her medications in the house.”
“Conspicuous in their absence.” Sheehy wrote insulin overdose on the whiteboard.
“Odd that,” O’Neil said. “If you’re trying to get away with murder, why pilfer the one item that could lead to a suicide verdict?”
Once again, Danny pondered the nonsensical aspects of the crime scene: Annie’s face covered with due respect in sharp contrast with the dead flowers. “What do we know about the bouquet?”
“Nothing yet,” Pinkney said.
Sheehy grumbled under his breath, then said, “O’Donnell, you’ve got flower research.”
“Our first priority for the Belden case,” Danny said, “is to find a man named Cedric Gibson.”
Sheehy raised his chin at O’Neil, and O’Neil nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Sheehy wrote the task assignment on the whiteboard. Danny breathed a sigh of relief. They might make progress now that they had enough men for proper division of labor.
“There’s another man, Nathan Tate, who’d recently taken up with Annie. I’m circling around him. He needs a light touch because he’s none too stable.”
Sheehy wrote Danny’s name next to Nathan’s on the whiteboard. He pointed to the paper piles amassed on the incident room table. “Will I find memoranda from her neighbors in that mess?”
O’Neil spoke up. “Yes, all there. Somewhere.” He leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head. “The last sighting we have of Annie is late Thursday afternoon, when the neighbor across the lane saw her setting out the rubbish for the bin men. Pinkney and I got an earful from her. Annie’s security lights are bright enough to read by, according to the neighbor. She nattered on about having to buy black-out curtains for her bedroom, on and on and on, until I got out of her that on the night in question, the lights triggered at 12:30, 1:43—not 1:45, mind, but 1:43—2:18, 2:37, and 5:18. More than usual, according to her.”
“The neighbor wrote it down?” Sheehy said.
“Indeed. Quite the long list of offenses she had against Annie Belden.”
Sheehy added Irate neighbors? to the whiteboard list.
“Cats, badgers, possums, or foxes could account for that,” O’Donnell said.
“Any joy tracking the missing mobile?” Sheehy said. “What about family?”
“Joyless thus far,” O’Neil said. “Her brother who lives in Spain arrived to see to her affairs. Next of kin scattered for both EJ and Annie, and either alibied or living too far away to be interesting.”
Sheehy tapped his marker on EJ’s side of the whiteboard. “I found the report about the turf cutter that killed Joseph Macy. When did the tool go missing?”
“There’s when it went missing and when Alan Bressard, the owner, noticed that it went missing,” Danny said. “He said the pile of antiques sat on the floor for a week. He noticed the sleán missing when he went to hang it back up, about three days after EJ’s death.”
“The sleán didn’t jig its way out of the pub on its own,” Sheehy said.
“Alan’s dog lies back there.” Danny had thought about this, about how he’d pinch a turf cutter other than by breaking into the place. “It’s toward the back of the pub near the corridor that leads to the toilets, kitchen, and back door. Anyone could have stooped to pet Bijou and tucked the cutter into a coat, then strolled out the back door.”
“Awkward,” Sheehy said.
Danny nodded. Bloody awkward.
Sheehy tilted his head back to peer through his glasses at yet another piece of paper. “Nathan Tate again. The murder weapon was found with his painting supplies at—Fox Cottage, is it? And he warms a stool same as EJ did at the Plough and Trough. I’d say he needs to be brought in for a more formal chat.”
“Not yet,” Danny said. “Trust me on this one. If we push him too hard, he’ll shatter.”
“Useless as tits on a nun he’d be then,” O’Neil said. “I second that.”
Sheehy looked mournful as he gazed at the whiteboard. “In other words, we’ve got feck all.”
“About the size of it,” Danny said. “Except for Cedric Gibson.”
“We’ve assumed the cases are unrelated,” Sheehy said, “but for the sake of argument, suppose we were to find a connection between Annie and EJ, something that led to both of their deaths—”
“Nathan was friendly with both of them,” O’Neil said.
“Just so.” In Sheehy’s precise printing, Nathan’s name straddled the divide between the cases.
Danny sensed Sheehy’s wheels chugging toward the obvious answer, the easy answer: Nathan Tate. Not that Nathan didn’t intrigue Danny, but there was something to understand about Nathan that still eluded him.
“We need to look into who else knew both Annie and EJ,” Danny said. “It could be that Cedric Gibson has a connection to EJ that we don’t know about yet.”
Sheehy pointed at Pinkney. “Gibson’s connection to Joseph Macy, anyone’s connection to both Annie and Joseph.”
Danny grabbed coffee and settled in for the rest of the afternoon of paperwork and phone calls. His mind kept returning to Nathan. He knew a fact about Nathan that he hadn’t reported yet: the horrific scar on his side, a scar that devoted Zoe had surely tried to heal with the cure. Danny ignored the voice that taunted him about his growing interest in Zoe as a wannabe healer.
fifty-two
The coffeemaker’s burble soothed Nathan, as it did all day, every day. He cracked open a window and stuck his head out. The breeze tingled against his skin and lessened the pressure inside his head. Since Annie’s death, the intermittent buzz he struggled to ignore had turned into a constant background noise, more of a static and crackle. The desperate pitch of it accompanied him everywhere, and exhaustion added its gritty whine to the mix.
His mind was a traitor. He knew this as surely as he heard the soft can yoouu coo call from a dove perched on his firing shed.
Can yoouu kill, can yoouu kill
Chilled, he eased the window shut with a soft click. He poured himself a cup of coffee and entered his studio. The static and crackle gained volume as his thoughts wandered to the work tasks for the day. He had thirty pots to trim.
Setting aside his coffee cup, he pulled the bottom drawer all the way out of his toolbox and dug beneath needle-nose pliers, wire strippers, and random nails. He pulled out a rolled length of fishing line left over from his angling days in England. He’d kept it all these years. It was supposed to be more proof, along with his scar.
The static and crackle eased off. He closed his eyes, savoring the internal quietude. He wasn’t sure why holding the fishing wire calmed him, only that it did.
Can yoouu kill, can yoouu kill
He didn’t remember the time after Susannah’s death well. Fleeting images and dark feelings and fear, the blurred terrain of his nightmares. Commonly known as a mental breakdown. Clinically known as a psychotic break.
No way in bloody hell he’d let that happen again. He’d as soon obliterate someone else as let himself go that route. He squeezed the fishing line as his thoughts wandered down what could only be a doomed path. To find the man who had killed Annie, who had played a game with text messages and a sickening bouquet. Maybe Nathan could save himself this time.
He tucked the fishing line into his jeans pocket and pulled out his mobile to peer at an image that he’d snapped before the guards a
rrived at Annie’s house. He was pretty good with flowers. He recognized the yellow carnations and the less obvious purple monkshood. The bouquet maker had gone to some trouble to find the monkshood. That struck Nathan as significant.
An Internet search provided the information Nathan sought. The Victorians had sent yellow carnations to indicate disappointment—as in, you have disappointed me—and rejection. Monkshood said beware, danger is near. And, as he’d overheard the pathologist say, the withered flowers symbolized unrequited love.
Nathan tapped the mobile screen. If he was correct, the person—probably a man—who took Annie’s mobile also had Annie’s journal. This person now knew the names of all the players in Annie’s life. If she’d disappointed this person in love, it stood to reason that he might come after the rival for Annie’s affections. The monkshood said danger was near, which could mean that Annie’s killer still lurked in the vicinity.
Can yoouu kill, can yoouu kill
Sighing with what even he recognized as sick gratification, Nathan bent over the mobile again. The purple ribbon could mean royalty, wisdom, and spirituality but also mourning, cruelty, and arrogance. Two sides of the same coin in which Annie represented the side of wisdom and the bouquet maker the side of cruelty.
Nathan knew this was the truth just like he knew that his dreams represented reality.
fifty-three
Merrit rang Nathan’s doorbell. She had waited until Zoe arrived at Liam’s house, full of springtime and vigor, to plead errands as an excuse to visit Nathan. She needed to talk to him about Zoe.
She rang again, and after several minutes the door opened. Merrit clamped down on her shock at Nathan’s appearance. Don’t react, she told herself; not so much as a twitch in response to his sallow skin and sunken eye sockets. Clay-encrusted jeans hung like the low-riders she remembered teenage boys wearing in the States. Only Nathan didn’t appear to be wearing boxers beneath them. He led the way into the kitchen, where the smell of burnt coffee overpowered Nathan’s gamey odor. He poured what remained in the pot into cups and sat down at the table.
“You need to eat,” Merrit said.
“It’s hard to eat around Zoe sometimes. She chatters too much when I’d prefer quiet. For the past few days she only talks about the Easter Festival.”
“A week from today and counting. There’s too much to do, but maybe that’s a blessing in disguise. I don’t have as much time to dwell on Liam or Annie or Elder Joe.” She paused. “I’m sorry about Annie.”
Nathan shook his head without looking at her. His gaze wandered over the tabletop, restless, agitated.
“Let me fix you something to eat.”
Merrit set about finding eggs and a pan. Five minutes later she placed a mound of scrambled eggs in front of Nathan. While he ate, she threw out their coffees, scrubbed the pot, and started the coffeemaker burbling afresh.
She sat down across from Nathan. He shoveled eggs into his mouth and chewed in a mechanical manner. She tried not to stare at the play of muscles and tendons in his neck when he swallowed.
“To be honest,” she said, “I’ve been curious about Zoe for a while, but I’m especially interested now that she’s holding hands with Liam all the time. That’s why I’m here. To ask you about that.”
“I’m not surprised,” Nathan said.
“She didn’t mention that she’s ‘curing’ Liam?”
“She wouldn’t have. I want nothing to do with it.”
Merrit rose and fetched fresh coffee for him. She’d heard something in his clenched tone that she couldn’t decipher. She returned to her seat. “Why don’t you want anything to do with it?”
Nathan pulled something out of his jeans pocket and fiddled with it on his lap. “I’ve lived with Zoe and her healing since she was a girl.”
“So she’s always been—?” Merrit didn’t want to say delusional, not to a man who wavered on the rocky edge himself, and she didn’t want to hint at what could pass down through the family lines either.
Nathan understood her well enough. He smiled, at last. The hollows under his eyes deepened with the effort, a ghastly effect that faded immediately. “Was she always inclined that way? Yes. Around twelve years old, she started up with it.” His voice clenched again. “Healing birds. I don’t know where she first got the idea she could heal.”
“Is it real?” Merrit said. “I’ve heard many fantastical things since I moved to Ireland, so I have to ask. I have to know for Liam’s sake. He’s hopeful. Too hopeful.”
Nathan stood and walked into a small bathroom off the kitchen. His retching tore at her. Too much food, eaten too fast. When he returned, he waved away her sorries. He steadied himself against the counter. “Is Liam feeling better?”
“He says so, yes.”
“If he’s better, you have your answer.”
“Jesus, Nathan, are you saying she’s for real?” Merrit said.
Nathan slipped into his chair as if he couldn’t bear his weight any longer. “I don’t want to know. I’m sure Liam knows how to manage Zoe.”
True. Liam said he was experimenting, plus Zoe provided a novel distraction. On the other hand, even astute people deluded themselves when faced with their mortality.
Merrit still felt uneasy. Nathan’s ambivalence about his daughter didn’t do her cause any good. “Nathan,” she said to capture his attention. “This is an odd question and none of my business, considering she’s your daughter, but why are you letting her stay with you if you don’t—”
“Enjoy the company?” He caught Merrit’s eye. “I can’t give her the boot. All I can do is leave myself, which is probably what will happen.”
Merrit gathered herself to leave, but Nathan reanimated with a start and grabbed her arm. “The text messages we received.”
She let her arm remain in his grip. It wasn’t so much that he held her as that he clung to her. “What about them?”
“I believe the man who killed Annie left the bouquet and texted us.”
“Man?”
“Because of the bouquet. Unrequited love.”
“That’s right.” She’d overheard that, too. “I’ll play that game with you, but you’re assuming she was killed.”
“I’m sure of it. I can tell by Danny’s interest in me. I suppose I’m a suspect.” He unclasped her arm. “I must find the man who killed her. I rang her mobile, forgetting like, that she”—he waved the words away—“and someone answered.”
Now Merrit wanted to clasp his arm. “What did he say?”
“Nothing, not a peep out of him before he hung up.”
“He’d have to be daft to keep the mobile, wouldn’t he?” Merrit mused. “Have you told Danny yet? He should know.”
Nathan’s gaze clouded over again. He slouched against his chair. “Ay, should do.”
She’d lost him again. He returned to fiddling with whatever he held on his lap. She hoped for his sake that he didn’t find the keeper of Annie’s mobile.
fifty-four
Nathan sat for a while after Merrit left. Outside, budding fuchsias bent double with the force of the wind. He placed the rolled-up fishing line he held on the table next to his coffee cup and let the whistle and howl of the wind bat at the edges of his faulty memory. The sublime scent of river mold that wafted up from his waders. The spray from the garden hose that misted over him as he sluiced river silt off of them.
He’d returned from a fishing trip the day Susannah died. Filleted bass stored in the freezer, and his fishing gear due for a good scrub. He was in fine form, whistling as he went about his business, while Susannah puttered about the kitchen with the ingredients for a new recipe laid out on the counter. She loved nothing better than a Sunday afternoon trip to the outdoor market, followed by sipping Italian red while she considered how to improve a recipe she’d never tried before.
That day, what was it to be? Something ridiculous that you’d only order in an overpriced restaurant. Something to do with quail eggs.
That day,
Susannah’s favorite aria from Madame Butterfly blew around on a slight breeze. Nathan stood near the front door in view of the entryway and the stairs leading up to the bedrooms when she appeared with wineglass in hand. The last words she spoke to him were a joke between them, her detesting the fishy smell of him. “What shall it be for you today? I think the lemon balm soap. Come drink wine with me after your shower.”
He admired her in her slim capris as she trotted barefoot up the stairs to set out a fresh bar of soap for him. He turned away then to clean the rods and reels, losing time in a pleasant way. Thirty minutes later, in the garage, he paused in reaction to a muffled sound. A thump? A squeal? Perhaps nothing and memory supplied the details for the moment his life changed forever.
Whatever he sensed propelled him into the house to find Zoe bent over Susannah. Nathan froze at the sight of his wife sprawled, as limp as one of Nathan’s dead fish, at the bottom of the stairs with her head at an odd angle.
“I’m healing her.” Zoe’s intensity stained her cheeks red as she pressed her hands over her mother’s heart. “You know I can.”
“Stop it.” He ran forward and pushed at her. “Haven’t you called Emergency yet?”
“I can save her, I can.” She spread her hands on Susannah’s chest and closed her eyes, infuriating Nathan further. As he reached out to grab her away, Susannah’s eyes fluttered open. Her mouth opened and closed, and Nathan recoiled at its similarity to the fish he caught.
“See, Dad?” Zoe said.
Nathan dropped to his knees in time to see Susannah’s gaze turn blink-less.
“I did it, though, didn’t I?” Zoe scooted closer and repositioned her hands. “For a second, but it worked. Maybe if I keep—”
“Stop.”
“—trying. She should be okay—”
“Stop!”
He pushed her, too hard this time, so that she sprawled backward with a stricken expression. Immediately her young skin smoothed out and she crowded in on him with a hug. “I love you, Dad, and I’ll take care of you. You adored Mum, I know. She was so dear.”