The Marlboro Man: A Moira McElvaney Mystery

by Derek Fee

  Moira asked for a mojito and moved to join Brendan, who was watching the sun setting over the mainland. Shea came and stood beside them, ‘I never tire of that view.’

  The scene in front of them was like something out of a magazine. The red ball in the sky cast a ray of golden sunlight across the waters between The Vineyard and the mainland.

  ‘What an incredible place you have here,’ Moira said. ‘Have you owned it long?’

  ‘About seven years,’ Shea said. ‘I bought it with my first bonus cheque.’

  Moira let the next and most obvious question die on her lips as that really would be intruding. Her line of thought was broken by the butler extending a silver tray with a single glass on it in her direction.

  Shea turned to Brendan. ‘Your partner has been snooping on me. I caught her in my study going through my things.’

  Brendan gave Moira a reproving look. ‘Once a cop always a cop.’

  Moira blushed. ‘I told him it was an occupational hazard.’

  ‘Thanks for coming out this weekend.’ Shea extended his glass in a toast, and the three touched glasses. ‘You haven’t told Moira about me?’

  ‘Only that you’re an old buddy. She was just short of giving me the rubber hose treatment, but I told her she would enjoy the process of teasing out every bit of information from you.’

  ‘You are the one who is doing the teasing here. Come on, tell me what the hell you two are up to?’ Moira punched Brendan playfully on the shoulder.

  ‘Nothing,’ Brendan said. ‘Well at least I’m up to nothing. I’ve never known Frank to do anything without a reason, and I’m as intrigued as you to know what’s going on. But I’m prepared to enjoy the weekend and wait until Frank is ready to let us know.’

  ‘It’s simple,’ Shea said. ‘There’s someone I want Moira to meet, but that can wait until tomorrow. I hope you like seafood. Justin is a marvel at preparing lobster.’

  Moira tasted her mojito. It was one of the best she’d ever had. ‘Is there anything he’s not a marvel at?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  J ustin certainly lived up to his advance billing. The boiled lobster, Marie Rose sauce and Caesar salad were of the highest standard. They ate on the terrace with views of the ocean directly in front of them. Initially, Moira felt left out of the conversation, which centred on reminiscences between Brendan and Shea of a childhood spent together. She watched the interaction between the two men and saw that it was not only the comradeship of two young boys but also the mutual respect and friendship of two mature adults. The exchanges over dinner, and several glasses of an excellent New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, gave her a warm feeling and by the time the two men had moved on from stories of their past she knew that she liked Frank Shea. It wasn’t only in the academic sense that he was smart. He guided the conversation as much as Brendan and he used subtle jokes to bring Moira into the conversation, if only as an audience. When the butler had cleared away the dishes after a dessert of chocolate brownie, which Moira was sure added two thousand calories just to look at, Shea turned and looked at her. ‘What did you learn on your little snooping trip?’

  ‘Not much.’ Moira sipped a Sambuca, which had been offered as an after-dinner drink. ‘Well, not much that I hadn’t already learned from the Internet. In fact, I learned a hell of a lot about you from the Internet. Do you have any idea how many pages are dedicated just to you?’

  Brendan spluttered into his drink. ‘You knew that our host for the weekend was Frank?’ He turned to face Shea. ‘Honestly, Frank, I never mentioned your name.’

  ‘It’s OK, Brendan.’ Shea looked at Moira. ‘Are you going to tell us how you knew you were coming to my house?’

  Moira was happy that she had sparked Shea’s interest. ‘Brendan told me that we were going to spend the weekend with an old buddy who had a house on Martha’s Vineyard. I cross-checked the property register with Brendan’s college and school yearbooks and there you were.’

  Shea laughed. Brendan had told him that Moira was beautiful and smart. He’d been right on both counts. Her beauty had classical features, pale Irish skin, high cheekbones, a pert nose, two fabulous green eyes and a wild thatch of red hair. It was quite a combination. ‘And what did you learn on the Internet?’

  She sipped her drink to give her time to organise her thoughts. ‘You were very recently a guest of the US Federal Government. Sentenced to five years and served three. I’m not up on finance, but the case hinged on you having insider information on some proposed merger. Apparently, you made a lot of money illegally.’

  ‘The charge was bullshit,’ Brendan interjected.

  ‘What else have you learned?’ Shea asked.

  ‘You’re some kind of whiz-kid financier. You set up your own hedge fund when you were twenty-seven, which made you incredibly wealthy, but also greedy, which led to your incarceration.’

  ‘What would you say if I told you I was innocent?’ Shea asked her.

  Moira smiled. ‘I’d say the jails are full of innocent men.’

  ‘Do you know much about the US legal system?’ Shea asked.

  Moira shook her head.

  Shea leaned back. ‘It’s heavily based on the plea bargain. Four years ago the Feds picked up a scumbag who worked for one of my competitors. He was a total pain in the neck who was making millions of dollars in his job but wasn’t satisfied with that. On the side, he was passing inside information to other people who were making millions of dollars, possibly even hundreds of millions, illegally. The Feds had him bang to rights. There was only one way he could squirm out of the charges so he offered to hand over his “co-conspirators” in exchange for a lesser sentence. He named me as one of his co-conspirators. I’d never even met the asshole. The Feds raided my office and took away boxes of paper. They didn’t find one shred of evidence of my business doing anything illegal. We didn’t need an edge, we just worked harder than everyone else at making money. I was arrested and requested to roll over and name others involved in the scam. Since I wasn’t involved myself, I refused to offer any names. Meanwhile Mr Scumbag gets two felony charges laid against him and skates away with a two-year suspended sentence. We have a saying here “you can’t beat City Hall”. That goes double for the Feds. I concluded a plea bargain that cost me a hundred million dollars in fines and five years in jail. If I’d fought the case, it would have cost me every cent I had. I hoped to save the business, but it was gone. And so was I. Part of the plea bargain was that I would never work in a financial fiduciary capacity again. I’m not even allowed to invest in the stock market.’

  ‘What hurt the most?’ Moira asked. ‘The money, the prison sentence or the lost business?’

  Shea thought for a moment. ‘It was never about the money. I’ve got more money than I could ever spend in ten lifetimes. I took a lot of positives from my time in prison. But I’m bitter about the loss of the business. Not for myself, for the forty good people who lost their livelihood because a scumbag did the crime but couldn’t do the time.’ He looked out over the ocean, the sun had set behind the landmass of the North American continent and the water now looked dark and foreboding. Moira had had a glimpse of the pain Shea’s lost life as a financial genius had cost him. Although she was no genius at what she did, she could sympathise with his sense of loss. She was feeling it herself.

  She decided to lighten the mood. ‘Enough about me, Brendan was regaling me about some of the cases you worked on together in Belfast. Maybe you could expand on them?’

  Moira looked at Brendan. ‘Worked on together?’ She couldn’t see the colour of his face in the half-light, but she hoped that he was blushing. She was reluctant to talk about her previous life but Shea had opened up to her and she felt an obligation to respond. She braced herself. ‘I can remember the first day I walked into Tennent Street station in the centre of Belfast . . . ’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  M oira hadn’t slept well, unlike Brendan who was still snoring happily when she rose at six o’clock. A part of
her was wondering what surprise their host was going to spring on them, while another just wanted to enjoy a weekend away from Boston with good company. She walked to the picture window and saw that the sun was already up over the horizon and light was flooding the golden sands a hundred yards away. She dressed in her jeans, t-shirt and sweater and tiptoed out of the bedroom. Recounting the stories of the cases she had worked alongside Wilson had been painful for her. She longed to return to her previous life, but also knew that even if she did return it would never be the same. Time moves on and hankering for the past is a useless exercise.

  The house was quiet as she descended the staircase and made her way out onto the terrace where they had eaten the previous night. She shivered as the cold air hit her and she hugged the loose sweater close. Although the sun was up, its heat hadn’t yet penetrated the early morning chill. . She climbed over the grass-covered dunes in front of the house and veered right when she hit the beach. The sun was already turning the colour of the ocean from slate grey to blue. She began to enjoy the sea air as she marched at a steady speed along the sand. The smell of the ozone coming off the ocean reminded her of the smell of the Irish Sea as it penetrated the River Lagan. Before long she was lost in thoughts of home. It was her first long period of time away and, despite Brendan and his family’s best efforts, she was experiencing homesickness. She thought of her father and mother, her cousins, the camaraderie of the PSNI and, of course, her former boss, Detective Superintendent Ian Wilson. For a time she had been infatuated with him, but in retrospect it had been more like a schoolgirl’s crush on the dishy geography teacher. A tear came to her eye as she realised how much she missed that damn man.

  Maura found that she had walked several miles without noticing. The sun was beginning to warm up the air and she felt like taking a rest. She moved up into the dunes and sat on a patch of grass. The tide was in fully and waves were breaking on the beach. She watched the ocean and thought about the new world into which she had been cast. Harvard, the Guilfoyle mansion in Boston and the nine-thousand square feet of the Shea beach house were light years away from her life in Northern Ireland. She looked to the left and saw in the distance a man running along the beach in her direction. She smiled at the thought that it might be Brendan. Her partner had to be dragged to the gym two times a week. He wasn’t quite a couch potato, but he certainly wasn’t a workout fanatic either. As the figure came closer, she recognised it as Shea. He was dressed in a singlet and shorts and he ran with an easy style. His body was lithe and muscular. He cast his eyes to the right when he passed and waved his hand in salutation but continued straight on. Moira watched him grow smaller as he powered along the beach. Her gaze returned to the ocean as her body relished the heat from the sun. After a short time, she rose and made her way back onto the beach. She was feeling peckish and wondering what tasty morsels Justin would be conjuring up for breakfast. She was almost halfway back to the house when she heard the sound of feet behind her. She turned and saw that Shea was coming up fast. He slowed and fell into step beside her. She turned to face him. ‘Hey, don’t stop because of me.’

  He smiled, his singlet was wet with sweat. ‘Four miles fast paced, I’m done. The walk back will act as a cool down.’

  ‘I wish I could get Brendan to run four miles at any pace.’

  ‘Brendan doesn’t need the exercise. He’s in great shape.’

  She looked him up and down. ‘So are you, but you’re up early running.’

  ‘Like I said last night I took a lot of positives from prison. When I entered Devens, I weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. When I left, I weighed one seventy. And it wasn’t just the food. When I ran the firm I had no respect for my body. I worked so much that there was no time for exercise. That’s the kind of stupid dope I was. Maybe the Feds saved my life.’

  ‘Maybe every prisoner should have that outlook.’

  ‘You and I have one thing in common.’

  ‘We have?’

  He laughed. ‘We both had to give up something we loved. I take some positives from my loss, but from the way you talked last night I don’t think that you’re there yet.’

  Maybe because what I lost wasn’t taken from me, she thought. I just threw it away. ‘If you say so.’

  They cut off the beach and made their way towards the house. Brendan was sitting on the terrace cradling a cup of coffee. He looked up as they approached. ‘You two were up early.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Moira said. She thought she could see a tinge of the green-eyed monster in Brendan’s eyes.

  Shea jumped in, ‘I was out for a run and ran into Moira on the way back. Justin is rustling up breakfast and I’ve got to take a shower. The reason for inviting you will be here in about an hour.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  A s they were finishing breakfast on the terrace, the doorbell sounded in the distance. Moira and Brendan both turned their heads towards the living room, wondering who or what was about to arrive. Shea had certainly succeeded in building up the suspense. They were a little surprised when Justin ushered a middle-aged lady onto the terrace.

  Shea immediately stood up and embraced the woman. ‘Brendan, Moira, this is my cousin, Jean Gardiner.’ He pulled back a chair and the woman sat down.

  ‘Pleased to meet you both.’ She extended her hand first to Brendan and then to Moira.

  So this was the reason they were invited for the weekend, Moira thought. She looked across at the new arrival. Jean Gardiner’s face was paler than death and the bags under her eyes had bags under them. The red rings round her pupils indicated continuous crying. Her whole demeanour was one of sadness and depression. Her blonde hair had been given a cursory comb and her lipstick looked like it had been applied with the aid of a two-inch paintbrush. She had an hourglass figure and bore absolutely no resemblance to her cousin. If Moira were asked to guess, she would have said that Jean was in her early fifties. Whether through too much exposure to the sun or bad genetics, her facial skin was already quite lined. When she was younger she would have been considered pretty rather than handsome. But now, to put it mildly, she looked a mess.

  ‘Jean’s husband disappeared two weeks ago and she wants me to look for him,’ Shea announced as he retook his seat. He could see from Moira’s face that she recognised how distressed his cousin was. The Jean Gardiner that he knew had always been fastidious about her person, but today she appeared to have thrown on whatever clothes came to hand and paid zero regard to her appearance.

  Moira leaned forward and poured herself another cup of tea, then realised that both Shea and Brendan were looking at her. She turned her gaze on Jean. ‘I’m sorry,’ she empathised. ‘How did your husband disappear?’

  Jean took a deep breath and sniffed, apparently on the point of tears. ‘He went on a business trip to Caracas in Venezuela.’ A bout of sniffles. ‘He caught the plane back. It had a single stop in Miami, but he didn’t catch the connecting flight from there to Boston. Nobody has seen him, or heard anything from him, since he got off the plane in Miami. The local Miami police have him on CCTV at the airport, but they have no idea where he may have gone to.’

  ‘You reported him as missing to the police?’ Moira asked.

  ‘Of course.’ There was indignation in Jean’s voice. ‘We have two children and, like me, they’re worried out of their minds.’

  ‘What’s your husband’s name?’ Brendan asked.

  ‘Gregory, but we call him Greg.’

  ‘And how long have you been married?’ Brendan again.

  ‘Twenty-four years. We met when we both worked at Peat Marwick Mitchell – it was a big-five accountancy firm but they changed the name in the meantime. I was a secretary and Greg was a trainee accountant. We went out for two years before we married. Greg was a stickler for being organised and he wanted to have the deposit on an apartment first. That’s why I’m so worried. Greg has always been so organised and, I suppose, predictable. His disappearance is totally out of character.’

  Mo
ira was sure that the police would already have told Mrs Gardiner that every disappearance is totally out of character. ‘I’m sorry if my question seems intrusive,’ Moira said. ‘But how is your marriage?’

  ‘We get on.’ She gave a strained laugh. ‘I suppose the magic went out several years ago, but we still love each other.’ She looked at Shea for confirmation and he nodded. ‘I don’t think that there was anyone else. Greg could have been used as the model for the staid accountant. When the children were growing up, he was home before seven every evening to have dinner with the family. He never took a holiday without us. He was a dedicated husband and father.’ The last statement led to an outbreak of crying.

  Moira took a fresh handkerchief from her bag and passed it to Jean. She wondered why she was playing along with this charade. Gregory Gardiner had been missing for two weeks. In that time Miami PD, with all its resources, had found no trace of him. What the hell could an amateur like Shea add to that process? It suddenly dawned on her why she was present on the terrace.

  ‘Again, please forgive me if you feel I’m intruding,’ Moira said as soon as the crying stopped. ‘You’ve obviously checked your bank accounts. Is there any money missing?’

  Jean pulled herself upright. ‘We’re very comfortably off and there hasn’t been a cent withdrawn from any of our accounts. The police also checked Greg’s credit cards and none of them have been used since he disappeared.’

  ‘Where did Greg work?’ Brendan asked.

  Jean blew her nose into the handkerchief. ‘He has his own small accountancy practice. Most of his clients have been with him for years. He concentrates on doing the accounts for small businesses.’

  ‘So what was he doing in Caracas?’ Moira asked.