She was startled when he called out to her, ‘‘Aunt Mary, someone’s standing in the doorway.’’
As she turned to see the man, he greeted her, ‘‘The top of the morning to you!’’
‘‘Oh, my God,’’ she muttered. It could have been Donel with his make-believe Irish, but it was not.
He was holding an open wallet for her to see his identification. When she reached him she saw little except the government insignia, for her heart started to pound. She thought he was from Immigration. She’d never lost the fear of being sent back.
‘‘What is it you want, mister?’’
‘‘My name is Spillane. I’ve orders to search the premises for corn whiskey, ma’am. You’ve nothing to fear if you’re clean, Mrs. O’Hearn.’’
He stretched his neck to see behind and beyond her into the cavernous barn and he took a good look at Dennis when he came up. Whoever he was, his pale eyes had no warmth in them and he had stoked her fear. She disliked him on sight.
‘‘What kind of name is Spillane?’’
‘‘It’s Irish, as Irish as yours.’’
‘‘And you a Revenue man,’’ she said with scorn, the full use of her tongue restored.
He put the wallet back in his pocket. ‘‘So you’re one of those Irish women,’’ he said. ‘‘I have a warrant in the car if you want to see it.’’
‘‘Never mind. Take him around, Denny. And be sure to show him the still.’’
‘‘Where, Aunt Mary?’’ Denny had missed the point.
‘‘Oh, for the love of God, go where you like, Mr. Spillane, and take care you don’t miss my bedroom.’’
He did not miss much. He went to his car and brought a flashlight. A touring car with the windows all open to let out the stink, Mary thought. He’d be losing his authority soon. Maybe that was what ailed him. But he made Denny lift the cover from the mouth of the well. He searched its depth with the beam of the torch. He looked up at Mary where she watched from the back stoop and he’d have heard her laugh. He reached out and snatched the cup from where it hung by the pump and threw it into the well.
‘‘May you die of thirst,’’ Mary shouted and went into the house.
When he was gone, Mary poured herself and Denny cold tea from what was left in the breakfast pot.
‘‘What did he mean by one of those Irish women?’’ Denny wanted to know.
‘‘Why didn’t you ask him?’’ Mary snapped. She’d known exactly what he meant: They should never have been given the vote. Not, of course, that she had ever used it.
‘‘He didn’t talk much. I didn’t like him either, Mary.’’
‘‘Did he say anything to you at all?’’
‘‘Yeah.’’
‘‘Well, what?’’
‘‘ ‘Where’d you get those great, big beautiful eyes?’ ’’
‘‘The bastard,’’ Mary said.
‘‘Yeah. Now can we call Donel?’’
Donel came in the afternoon. He heard them out, but he shook his head. ‘‘Did you have to make an enemy of him, Mary?’’
‘‘Was I to make a friend of him, then?’’
‘‘It’s what I’ve been doing all my life, and I eat three square meals a day.’’ He dropped his voice. ‘‘They’re all over the place, so do me a favor, Mary, if he comes back, give him a cup of tea.’’
‘‘I know what I’ll put in it then, him pouring the last drop in my bottle down the sink.’’
‘‘You’ve had worse things happen to you.’’
He was out of patience—short of time, she realized, and he hadn’t offered to replenish her holy water. She saw a glint of anger in his eyes. She wouldn’t want him for an enemy, either.
‘‘And I’ve had better!’’ In spite of herself, she couldn’t yield the last word, but she rang a good change on it with a nod toward Denny. ‘‘Till this one.’’
Denny grinned. ‘‘Donel,’’ he said, ‘‘I got the loan of the gun.’’
Donel grunted as though to give his memory a jog.
‘‘I plan to clean it up myself,’’ Denny went on, ‘‘and be half-ready at least, when we can go hunting.’’
‘‘That won’t do at all,’’ Donel said. ‘‘It’s not a musical instrument. It’s a weapon.’’
‘‘I know,’’ Denny said.
‘‘You think you know. That’s worse than not knowing at all.’’
‘‘I’ll learn.’’
Mary was proud of the way he said it.
Donel said, ‘‘That’s better. Let’s have a look at it while I’m here.’’
‘‘I have to keep it at Norah’s,’’ Denny said, ‘‘but I’m to have a key.’’
Mary’s eyes and Donel’s met, for they shared a deep and silent association with the words. When Mary had run away to Chicago, she found a haven and employment with a friend of Donel’s to whose house Donel had a key.
‘‘He’ll make friends at Murray’s Hardware,’’ Mary said. ‘‘They’ll get him started.’’
Donel looked at his watch. ‘‘I’ll take you in town with me now and introduce you to Murray. If you can bring the gun, he’ll know what you’re talking about.’’
‘‘I will,’’ Denny said. ‘‘I’ll ask Aunt Norah. It’s a single-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun.’’
‘‘It’ll do,’’ Donel said without enthusiasm. It was one of the cheaper guns on the market. ‘‘And where in hell did you get the shirt you’re wearing?’’
Norah made a quick choice of where to hide when she saw Rossa stop and wait in the truck for Denny to come to her door. She wasn’t ready yet. She listened as Denny rapped and called out her name. The note of concern was endearing. She sat on the cushioned lid of the toilet and waited to hear the truck pull away. In a snatch of memory she heard Mary’s cackle: ‘‘God save the queen.’’
The bathtub, she thought, staring at it, was big enough for him to flop over in. He’d splash and grin. She thought of getting a bar of Lifebuoy soap.
Denny knocked on her door again late in the afternoon. He had come back on foot carrying a brand-new canvas knapsack.
‘‘I must have heard you in my sleep,’’ Norah lied. ‘‘I lay down with a headache after my lunch, and wasn’t I dreaming of you?’’
‘‘What was I doing?’’
‘‘You were playing the piano,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s just come back to me now.’’
‘‘You were dreaming, all right,’’ Denny said.
They went down through the house to the cellar, and Norah pointed out a workbench near the coal bin he could use.
‘‘Couldn’t I take it over there to work on?’’
‘‘You could not.’’
While she watched him unpack the knapsack she listened for a telephone call from Mary or the rap of her stick on a window. ‘‘Isn’t Mary feeling well?’’
‘‘She’s all right.’’
Which told her nothing. ‘‘I wondered if it was a doctor I saw stopping in this morning.’’
‘‘Not for Aunt Mary. She thinks they’re all quacks.’’
He’d been given instruction, Norah thought, on what he could say and what not. She was furious, not so much at what she might be missing, but at the idea of Mary’s taking advantage of his innocence. She had made up her mind from what she’d seen of Mary’s visitor that morning that he was on a mission from Donel Rossa. He might even be bringing her the monthly holy water. He looked like a bootlegger and his long-nosed car suited the notion.
‘‘Will you save your tin cans for me, Norah? Donel says I should set them up on the fence posts in the far field and practice.’’
‘‘You know this is all my property, Dennis.’’
‘‘Oh, I do. Donel said I should ask you.’’
‘‘I’ll save you the tins.’’
‘‘Thank you, Norah.’’ His smile was like honey.
It would do for the day, she thought. ‘‘You’d better go now. She’ll be waiting for you.’’
‘‘
She will. She’ll want to hear.’’
‘‘To hear what, Denny?’’
‘‘About Donel’s construction business. Mr. Murray shook hands with him. It’s going to be great for Hopetown—for the whole valley.’’
Norah smiled. ‘‘How nice!’’ she said.
‘‘Mary! Come outdoors quick!’’
‘‘Quick!’’ she mocked.
And when she got to the stoop: ‘‘Look!’’ he insisted.
‘‘I can hear them,’’ she said.
Fading fast into the morning mist even as their cries grew dimmer, the Canadian geese were going south.
‘‘Would God they were coming back.’’ She drew her shawl tighter. ‘‘For God’s sake put your shirt on, Denny. You’ll catch your death of cold.’’
‘‘I won’t.’’ He still washed, naked to the waist, at the pump by the well. He shaved at the kitchen sink.
They had eggs for breakfast that morning, and though she knew he was only half listening, she told him, and probably for the second or third time, she thought, of how as children she and Norah waded in the stream at home, groping the sand with their toes for duck eggs. Whoever found one got the top when her father opened it for his breakfast the next morning.
‘‘Did you and Norah fight over it?’’ He was listening after all.
Donel stopped on his way into town. He was a little early, due at the lawyer’s office within the hour to sign the final papers. The teacup trembled in his hand. He put it down. ‘‘I’ll be glad to get this over with,’’ he said.
‘‘Will you have a drop from my bottle to settle you?’’ Mary said.
‘‘Not on your life, macushla.’’
He had brought her the last ‘‘smile.’’
He stretched out his hand and held it steady, but his teeth were clenched. He took up the cup again. ‘‘I’m clean, Mary.’’ He toasted her—or himself—with the lukewarm tea: ‘‘Slainte.’’
Let Norah ridicule him all she liked, Mary thought, but they would never know a man more Irish.
Norah was on the lookout. She had been from the moment she heard Rossa’s car drive into the yard. The family car, no less. He sometimes drove her and Mary to Sunday Mass in it. Lately he’d been driving it into Hopetown. It was more befitting a businessman than the Ford truck. She knew Denny would be going back to the farm with him—to shuck corn and then to go hunting with him in the morning.
He would come soon for the gun and take it away for the first time. And what would she have left? A bag of tin cans with holes shot through them. She caught a whiff of her cologne. She’d used too much of it. And dreamed too much. She’d worn out a paltry thrill remembering it. Only once had she come even close to telling him she loved him.
He’d been at the cellar workbench that day, his back to her, and what she told him was of her love for music and how beautiful she thought his voice was. When he seemed to stiffen, she thought it safer to talk about the piano and how she’d hoped someday to even play it herself. She’d been pleased at the moment for what she said then: ‘‘But it’s my heart and not my head that’s musical.’’
And Denny, looking around to her in the expectant silence: ‘‘Couldn’t you sell the piano?’’
‘‘I don’t need the money, Denny.’’
‘‘Aunt Mary would have,’’ he said.
Denny came out from the barn with Rossa. He put his knapsack and a box of Mary’s preserves, no doubt, in the rear seat of the sedan. He stepped back and watched Rossa drive off. Without a glance her way, he went back in to Mary.
He would not come till the last minute, waiting for Rossa to return and hurry him away.
She watched the traffic coming into town, not a car a minute, but picking up these days. She couldn’t believe it had anything to do with Donel Rossa’s new enterprise, Hope County Construction. County no less.
She moved away from the window and then went back to straighten the curtain. By sheer chance she saw the black long-nosed touring car drive past the house and on into Hopetown. When she thought about it, she wasn’t a bit surprised.
In the late morning she heard Dennis open the cellar doors. She called down to him to leave them open, that she would close them when the sun was gone.
‘‘I didn’t want to bother you,’’ he said at the bottom of the kitchen stairs. ‘‘Donel didn’t think he’d be this long. Mary says it’s the lawyers that’s holding things up.’’
‘‘Ah, yes, what Mary says.’’ He was like a silhouette between her and the shaft of daylight. ‘‘I’m coming down,’’ she said.
‘‘You don’t need to, Aunt Norah.’’
He didn’t want her to. He wanted to go off, gun in hand, without even a thank-you-very-much. ‘‘I’m coming down.’’
He lifted the storeroom door for her when she went in to switch on the lights. ‘‘I was going to fix this for you, wasn’t I? When I come back from Donel’s.’’
She followed him to the workbench. ‘‘What if Rossa doesn’t come, if something happened to change his mind?’’
‘‘He’d let us know,’’ Denny said. He took the gun from the rack he had built for it and broke it to be sure the chamber was empty.
‘‘You are such a foolish boy, Dennis. You believe everybody. The Revenue agent in the rain that morning: I could have told you the truth about him. But Mary spat at me when I even mentioned him.’’
‘‘That bastard,’’ Denny said.
‘‘No, Denny. He’s worse. He’s a gangster. I would take my oath on it. And isn’t he back today for the celebration?’’
‘‘He’s back?’’ Denny questioned as though he didn’t understand her.
‘‘You don’t forget an automobile like that, Denny. When Donel left here this morning, it came by right after him. What an odd coincidence, I thought at first and then I realized: Of course, they’re going to the same place.’’
Denny groped his jacket pocket and brought out a cartridge. He loaded it into the open gun and closed it.
She was a second or two understanding what he had done. ‘‘He doesn’t need you, Denny. He’s one of them.’’
‘‘You’re crazy,’’ he said.
He edged her aside, when she tried to block his way to the door. ‘‘It’s Mary needs me, don’t you understand?’’
‘‘No, I don’t understand and I never will. You can’t have the gun, Denny. It’s mine. I want it back.’’
She tried to take it from him, but he was by far the stronger. She tried to twist it free.
The explosion rocked the house. Smoke and debris clouded the air. She knew she was losing consciousness, but now she couldn’t let go of the gun. It was frozen in her hands. And her hands were wet with blood, her sleeves, her breast saturated. She could taste it. So much blood.
Then nothing.
When the girl, Lainie, got home from Denny’s funeral, she put the Mass card in the box of clippings she was saving from the Hope Valley News. It didn’t belong there, and yet it did. It would always carry her remembrance of the lone high voice from the choir loft singing the ‘‘Dies Irae,’’ Day of Wrath, and the single sob it brought from her aunt Mary.
For as long as she lived, Norah would say that she had killed Denny—in spite of the coroner’s finding that his death was most probably caused by a bullet fired from the cellar doorway an instant before or an instant after the gun in her and Denny’s hands exploded.
Mary swore she had seen Spillane when she started over at the sound of gunfire. So she, too, bore willing guilt. But it was Donel who could beat his breast the hardest.
Norah had been right. Spillane was a low-level member of the Chicago gang Donel had been in business with for years. He had thought he was breaking away from them that fall. ‘‘The boss’’ thought so, too. He suspected at first that Donel was tying in with another gang and using Mary’s place for storage. Spillane investigated even the well. Donel no more than Mary doubted his claim to be a federal agent.
When the news of t
he construction business came out—Hope County Construction—‘‘the boss’’ wanted a part of it. Donel refused. As he told Mary, he was clean. He thought he was, but Spillane caught up with him before he reached the door of the lawyer’s office that morning. The boss expected him to postpone the contract signing and expand the partnership. The boss promised he would get well paid, whichever way he played it. Donel told him to go to hell.
Why Denny and not Mary if Spillane was his killer? It was probably the boss’s decision. Denny was Michael O’Hearn’s nephew, and Michael had been killed—in the line of duty—in an exchange of gunfire that also killed a young and promising member of the gang those many years before.
Spillane was never found, dead or alive.
About the Authors
P. M. Carlson
P. M. Carlson taught psychology and statistics at Cornell University before deciding that mystery writing was more fun. Her novels have been nominated for the Edgar, the Macavity, and the Anthony. Two Bridget Mooney short stories were finalists for the Agatha. Her latest novel, featuring Deputy Sheriff Marty Hopkins, is Crossfire (Severn House). She was president of Sisters in Crime in 1992-93.
Barbara D’Amato
Barbara D’Amato has won the Carl Sandburg Award for Fiction, the Agatha twice, the Anthony twice, the first Mary Higgins Clark Award, the Macavity, and others. She is a former president of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime (1994-95). She and her husband have written several musical comedies, which were produced in Chicago, London, and Toronto.
Dorothy Salisbury Davis
Dorothy Salisbury Davis was born in Chicago in 1916. Author of twenty novels, thirty-some short stories; Grand Master, Mystery Writers of America, 1985; Lifetime Achievement Award, Bouchercon, 1989. Member of original board of Sisters in Crime.
Susan Dunlap
Susan Dunlap has written nineteen novels and numerous short stories. Her series feature Berkeley police officer Jill Smith, forensic-pathologist-cum-private-investigator Kiernan O’Shaughnessy, meter reader Vejay Haskell, and, most recently, stunt double Darcy Lott in A Single Eye. Her day jobs have ranged from social work to legal assisting, teaching hatha yoga, and being part of a death penalty defense team. She was president of Sisters in Crime in 1990-91.
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