Bresnahan, who was sitting in the passenger seat, now got out and approached the Audi, walking through the beam of the Merc’s headlamps. She glanced down at the bumper sticker that Ward knew from its shape said:
EIRE BANK
EUR BANK OUR BANK
Then she copied something into her notebook. Probably the plate number.
The driver’s door of the Merc popped open, and out stepped a man who looked enough like Bresnahan in height and build to be related. But for his black, wavy mane, they were a pair.
Bresnahan raced around to the other side of the Audi to copy the information on the tax stamp and to check the doors there. She then said something to the man, pointing to the empty slot beside the Audi. He parked the Merc, got out, and, taking Bresnahan’s arm, led her toward the hotel.
Some cousin? Some friend? Ward was so relieved that Bresnahan was not the woman who had entered Frost’s room that he was nearly dispassionate in considering who the tall young man might be. The owner of the car? No, he was around Ward’s own age and too young to be able to afford such an extravagant machine.
“What are you doing here?” A deep voice asked from the stairs below. It was Sonnie, carrying a tray with a wine bucket and the towel-wrapped neck of a champagne bottle protruding from ice.
Ward showed him the silver tray and envelope. “Mr. Feeney asked me to deliver a message.”
“Mr. Feeney went home hours ago,” said Sonnie skeptically. “But as long as you’re still here, go down to the kitchen and fetch the cart that’s been ordered for Mr. Frost’s room.”
“But I’m—”
“Nonsense, man. You’re in service now, and you should resign yourself to the idea that your time is no longer your own. And a piece of advice—when you’re to go home? Go Home. Don’t linger around.”
Sonnie swept by him, and knocked on Frost’s door.
Frost appeared, still nearly naked. He handed Sonnie a tip, took the tray, and closed the door.
Sonnie snapped a five-pound note before Ward’s face. “This from him is like a gold scapular from the pope. He’s drunk, I’d say, and there’s probably one of these in it for you, if you hurry.”
Enough said; Ward turned on heel.
O’Suilleabhain directed Bresnahan beyond the trapezoid of yellow light that was spilling from the main entrance of the hotel and the eyes of the doorman, whom they both knew.
In the shadows he pulled her to him. “Give us a kiss.”
“Are you singular tonight, or is there more than one of you, as usual?”
O’Suilleabhain smiled understandingly. “Fair play, but, you know, people can change.”
“And for the worse, as well.” Bresnahan had both hands on his chest, and she pushed herself back to look up at him. “Let me ask you something. How old are you?”
Working back and forth as though attempting to cast a spell, his green eyes fixed in hers. “You know as well as I. Two years older than yourself.”
“Thirty.”
O’Suilleabhain nodded.
“Don’t you think it’s time to stop playing games?”
O’Suilleabhain pondered that for a moment, then said, “But isn’t life one big game? Isn’t that what makes it fun?”
“Like hide-and-go-fetch?”
“Well, tonight I had in mind something more like tag.”
Bresnahan fixed his gaze and wondered how long, if he were to pursue her, she could avoid the lure that Rory O’Suilleabhain represented. In every way he was—or at least had been—so right for her, and after all the years she had pined for him, she could not keep herself from wondering what it would be like to realize those not-entirely-forgotten dreams. Perhaps Wilde was right and she could cure herself of the temptation only by yielding to it.
But it occurred to her as well that any such concession, no matter how slight, would be the death of her love for Hughie Ward. Or at least would begin the process. Things between them would become immediately different and…diminished. And yet she wished to live and experience and possess life in all its forms, especially that which had been most appealing to her for so long.
Perhaps she couldn’t have it both ways. She knew this: You had to pick and choose, and then live with your choices. But at what cost?
She reached up and seized O’Suilleabhain by his long, chiseled nose, which she squeezed. “Suffer, sinner.” And she broke away from him, stepping back into the light where she could be seen by the doorman.
O’Suilleabhain followed her. “Didn’t Martin Luther say something like that?”
“No, he said, ‘Sin bravely.’”
“And look what it got him. Another religion.”
And centuries of religious strife that had not yet ceased, at least in Ireland. Life was too complex to be reduced to riposte or a dalliance for all the right reasons.
“Well—how do I get home?”
She was tempted to tell him on his two feet, but she had no reason to be angry with him. He was who he was, and there was no changing that. “You have the key to my car. I’ll need it again tomorrow, before the Power funeral.”
“Are your folks going?”
“Of course. Wasn’t his eldest sister maid of honor at my mother’s wedding?”
“I’ll give them all a lift, then.” Together with his mother, he meant.
So, he was serious; their parents’ presence would make tongues wag and seriously curtail any protracted “sparking” he might be engaged in at least locally.
“Michael,” she said in greeting to the doorman, sweeping by him.
“I see Rory’s found you, Ruthie.”
“Did you think he wouldn’t?” she asked.
“They say he’s got radar.” He canted his head to add confidentially, “A word to the wise.”
Bresnahan raised an eyebrow, thanking him, and walked into the lobby, which was empty. But she had no sooner climbed the deeply carpeted stairs to the second floor, when she saw Hughie Ward, pulling a laden cart down the hall. “Can I give you a hand with that, waiter?” Like a matador(a), she opened the fire door and tilted her smiling face to him as he wheeled the cart through.
Ward caught a glimpse of her gray eyes, which the red illuminated Exit sign flecked with bite of ruby light. Jesus, how had he gotten himself into such a mess? He punched the Up button on the elevator that would take him to the second story and Frost’s suite. He glanced up at the lights of the floor monitor; he couldn’t look at her while deciding, but he had to face this thing straight on and then act according to his determination.
This was—he took a deep breath and then abandoned himself to his fate—love, for Christ sake, and love was trust, sharing, and mutual respect. Love was help, encouragement, and support. Love didn’t go around suspicious, distrustful, and bitter. Having only his hard self to guide him and the sorry history of his past, failed affairs—all of them 100 percent ruined by design—Ward didn’t rightly know how to proceed, but he suspected it was a matter that couldn’t and shouldn’t be planned.
Instead he’d wing it. He’d speak and act, not think, and see what came out. The point was to be light, not heavy. Any time a woman had become serious with him, he had split, especially when he had had a choice. He thought of the tall, dark, handsome man who had brought her home.
The elevator slid open. Ward put a foot in the door and turned to her. He smiled and let his eyes roam her powerful body, every inch of which he knew perhaps better than his own; Ward was nothing if not an attentive lover. “So—how went your day? Make Gladden’s press conference on the bridge?”
She nodded and told him how Gladden had painted Power as martyr and himself as scapegoat in a government cover-up led by McGarr. “He also didn’t seem to know much about Paddy Power’s note cards. It was as if he never really read them thoroughly. When the Power proposal for the debt was brought up, he stormed off. You know, swapping debt for equity.”
“Brought up by you.”
She smiled, wondering if perchance Ward had been r
unning some message in the village for Sonnie and had seen her and O’Suilleabhain, and she felt almost guilty. “In a roundabout way.”
“I’d be careful of him, were I you. Gladden’s no fool, and more dangerous than he appears. He’s bent, I’d say.” On his midday “break” of two hours Ward had skimmed Paddy Power’s note cards in McGarr’s room.
“Mossie Gladden? Come now, he attended at my birth.”
“Proof positive,” Ward continued in the same jocular vein.
“Anyhow—I’ve solved the case, and it wasn’t Mossie.”
Ward’s eyebrows arched.
She told him about the balance of her day—interviewing old cottiers and small farmers along the Waterville Road—and the description of the country gorsoon who climbed out of the car by the Rathfield ruin to doff greatcoat and hat. “A rough complexion and long gray-blond hair. Driving a new Audi with an Eire Bank bumper sticker. Sound familiar?”
“You mean Gretta Osbourne without any makeup on her face?”
“Precisely. She had every opportunity to steal the note cards and unlimited access to Power’s medical cabinet.”
“And she had a hell of a motive,” said Ward.
Bresnahan waited.
“I overheard Shane Frost…speaking to Nell Power about Osbourne inheriting Power’s share of Eire Bank.”
“Voilà!” She glanced down at the food, which smelled delicious. She lifted the cover off one of the oval plates. It was an entrecote of beef topped with a bordelaise sauce. Suddenly she was famished, and she thought briefly of ordering something from room service on the chance Ward could be sent on the delivery. But no. That would be wrong; she had her parents to think of.
“But why would she have delivered the cards to Nell Power dressed up like Gladden?”
“To cast suspicion on him, of course. How many men go around like he does, these days? And to rub the wife’s nose in Power’s poor opinion of his marriage and her. A woman’s thing altogether.”
Ward was glad she said that, not he.
“The giveaway was her expurgating any negative cards that Power might have written about herself, while including the full stack about Nell.”
“Where’d you learn all this?”
“After I found out about the Audi and the long blond hair, I phoned the Chief and got Noreen.”
Who, of course, provided Bresnahan with an inside scoop, woman to woman. “Why the cards to Gladden, then?”
“Don’t you see that she stole the cards before Power was actually murdered, most probably on Friday night or early Saturday morning when he went into the village for a session with his old friends at the Sneem Inn. She didn’t have much time, but the point was to make it appear as if Gladden had murdered Power to get ahold of the note cards that she knew he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from making public. It was just the chaff that he had been waiting for these last three years, what he could and would use to gain media attention and smear O’Duffy.
“But the photocopies took time. Editing the “Gladden” heading—there had to be one; every other important person in Power’s life is mentioned, and there Gladden was keeping Power alive—well, that was easy. All she had to do was grab the stack and chuck it into one of the fires that’re burning in all the public rooms all the time. That way, if or when the cards or the photocopies were examined, no Gladden heading would be found, and further suspicion would be cast on the daft doctor. As I said, her removing the derogatory cards from her own stack was her mistake and probably an afterthought.”
“So the point was to pin it on Gladden.”
“Who better? Certainly not Frost, with whom Osbourne was—is, I’d hazard—having an affair.”
Why is? Ward wondered. Could a woman tell by looking at another woman?
“And not Nell Power, who is also a significant shareholder in Eire Bank, which Frost not more than a few hours ago sold to the Nomura Bank of Kyoto for—are you ready for this?—over four hundred and twenty million pounds.”
Ward’s head went back. It was obviously more sororal insider information that she had gleaned from Noreen. How could a lowly waiter compete?
“Paddy Power, you see, didn’t want to sell. Motive enough, I’d say.”
Ward nodded and struggled to hold his smile. But he could not keep himself from thinking about what he had just heard—Gretta Osbourne telling Shane Frost that she did not want to sell her majority share of Eire Bank to the Japanese.
Also, there was a reference in Paddy Power’s note cards—one of those that had been found beside his body—to Power’s having looked for and not found Gretta Osbourne’s red Audi in the Parknasilla car park. It was on Sunday morning, exactly at the time that the sack filled with the photocopies of the cards were being delivered to the Waterville Lake Hotel. But Gretta Osbourne was still at Parknasilla. Power had asked her for the keys and had then gone directly to the car.
But Ward said nothing. His last wish was to deflate her buoyant mood.
“And that’s all you want-ed?” She pulsed her eyes at him. “To know about my day? I’d ask you about yours, but I know you’re too considerate to bore me with all the thrilling details of pouring whiskey and beer, And the point is now moot, is it not?”
“Case closed, you mean?”
She nodded.
Even across the serving cart with its rapidly cooling edibles, Ward could catch the inviting scent of the distinctive and obviously priceless perfume that Gretta Osbourne also wore, which reminded him of the Merc and Bresnahan’s new designer costumes. His glowery mood threatened to return, but he fought it off. “Oh, I dunno—I just wanted to share a few words, I guess.” With his foot still in the door he pulled the cart onto the elevator.
“You mean, your sole reason in waylaying me, like this, was…communication?”
Ward hunched his shoulders and scanned the control panel for the Up button. Waylaying who?
“Nothing else?”
His mouth formed an inverted U; he shook his head.
Well now, thought Bresnahan, this was different. Perhaps something had changed or changed him. But what? The job of work here in the hotel? Had it given him a bit of perspective, such that he realized how lucky he was back in Dublin and in love with herself, though he couldn’t bring himself to form the words? Were they getting close and, once said, how would that change things? Ward was so…elusive—she believed the word was. Dodgy, skittish, particular—that she wondered if it needed to be said. Or should.
Bresnahan had been leaning against a jamb of the elevator, and she now straightened herself up from the cart and looked down on her small, square, fine man with his dark good looks. What she wouldn’t give to see him all done up, like one of the bankers, and part of a conference, such as this, where his quick mind could show. Maybe that was the problem he was having. Maybe he—or at least one of them—should now resign, and begin something else, like banking. It was the proper thing to do, now that they were semipublic knowledge.
“Look—I thought of trying to pull you away last night. For a drink. But I figured you would be—” She tried to find a word that would bruise his masculine pride least.
“Shattered,” he prompted.
What was this? Ego honesty? Once, after having sustained a concussion in the ring, Ward had admitted to being “a bit dizzy.”
“—from the work, and then a drink was probably the last thing you needed. Right?”
“Ask me the first thing.”
“And that too. Country people, as I told you, are keen observers. If I dragged you into a pub, they’d know. If we pretended to meet at the bar and then left together, they’d think even worse of me. If we even merely met on the road and somebody saw—” She shook her head. “And, trust me, people around here see. Think of Gretta Osbourne in the Rathfield ruin. Can’t we pretend we’re on holiday from each other? Surely you can get through a week.”
Ward canted his head and smiled at her, his eyes moving down her body and then up again. “It would be one
thing, were we actually on holiday, but with you around and looking so…”
Bresnahan waited. “Go on. So—?”
“Do I have to say it?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Delectable. Sexy. Smart. Provocative.”
“That’s all?” She turned from the cart and began a model’s strut toward the stairs.
Seen from ward’s perspective, she was all long, shapely deep brown legs. The flared jacket. The nip of her waist. Those shoulders. The wild, unlikely hair. “What?” he asked. “No kiss?”
It was the same question that Rory O’Suilleabhain had asked, and Bresnahan wondered if they could be merely different, handsome forms of the same exploitive, machosexist personality. “Blow me a kiss from across the serving cart, Give me your service tux to cry on,” she sang, paraphrasing one of the pop records that her mother—a devoted country-and-western music fan, like so many farmers’ wives in the West of Ireland—had played over and over in their farmhouse kitchen before television had arrived in Sneem.
“You sound like Bernie,” Ward observed in a different, disconsolate-but-resigned tone.
At the stairs she waited.
“You know—life as a sudsy, sardonic, upbeat ditty.”
Bresnahan tilted her head, considering. Drop the sudsy, and there was little wrong in that. From all she could know, it was the way people were, at least in Ireland. And Ward usually as well. There was nobody more…buoyant, when he was in good form.
“Can I ask you something?” he went on, adjusting the fit of the serving cart in the elevator. He was behind it but still had managed to keep his foot in the door. “Is the vent of that jacket tacked or just, you know, open-to-hand?”
Bresnahan’s brow furrowed. She twisted around to see what he meant by open-to-hand, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him perform a remarkable feat. In one movement Ward vaulted over the height of the serving cart and pulled it forward, such that he landed squarely on the carpet out of the elevator, and the cart jammed between the closing door.
The Death of Love Page 23