by Maddy Hunter
Close by, a cell phone started chiming the first bars of “New York, New York.” Ethel picked up. “No, I’m not having a good time. Why? I’ll tell you why. There’s no toilet on the bus and something stinks. How should I know if your father can smell it? Just a minute. Ernie, can you smell it?”
“I can smell it, Ethel.”
“He smells it.”
Another cell phone began beeping a digital rendition of “The Sidewalks of New York.” “Hello?” answered the man across the aisle. “What? WHAT? YOU’LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP. I CAN’T HEAR YOU.”
I leaned back in my seat and scratched my neck, my ear, my jaw. I sidled a glance at Bernice to find her sitting with her eyes shut, smiling beatifically. Some people had all the luck. What I wouldn’t have given to be old and deaf right now.
Ballybantry Castle might have had a little something for everyone, but by the time we arrived, it was too dark to tell. The Golden Irish Vacations tour guests trooped into the lobby like defeated soldiers and collapsed all over the plush furniture while Ashley and I took up our post at the front desk. The clerk was a freckle-faced, redheaded man in his mid-twenties whose name tag identified him as Liam McEtigan.
“The tour group, are you?” he inquired in his cheery brogue. “We were expecting you this morning. But no harm, is there? You’re only eleven hours late. Take a wrong turn, did you?”
Ashley leaned an elbow on the desk and stared him straight in the eye. “I want our keys, and I want them now.”
“Yes. Brilliant. If I can trouble you for your passports. I’ll be needing to check them before—”
“Y’all can check passports in the morning. Right now, I want keys.” She flashed him a barracuda smile. “I’m not having a good day, sugar. Trust me. Y’all don’t want to make it any worse.”
Liam hesitated for only a split second before he grabbed a box filled with envelopes and shoved them at her. “Names and room numbers are on the envelopes. Keys are inside. But I’ll still be needing to check passports in the morning.”
My brother was right. Men find it impossible to refuse drop-dead-gorgeous blondes with big chests. Maybe I needed to change my hair color.
Ashley grabbed the keys and headed for the lobby. “If he has any questions, answer them,” she called to me over her shoulder. “And find out where to get the bus repaired.”
“That would be Dooley’s,” Liam said to me. “Two villages over. But they’ll be no good to you this week because the garage is closed. Death in the family.”
If the garage was located two villages over, it would do us no good anyway. Michael Malooley would get us lost trying to find it. “Tell me, Liam,” I said, leaning over the desk in a conspiratorial fashion. “Why are there so few route signs posted on the roads around here? And why, when there are signs, are they stuck behind trees, behind overgrown shrubbery, and on buildings behind creeping vines?”
Liam shrugged. “The locals are knowing where everything is, so they’re not needing signs. And if you’re not local, me da would say, you’ve no business being here in the first place, so why tell you how to get here?”
I guess that’s why most of the signs ran parallel rather than at a right angle to the road. The only way you could read them was to crank your head around and try to eyeball them over your shoulder as you zoomed past. Ireland had progressed from a nation of leprechauns with clay pipes to a nation of speed-readers with whiplash.
As I sauntered into the lobby to look for Etienne, I noted some of the interior touches of Ballybantry Castle. Suits of armor standing like sentinels around the perimeter of the room. Military shields with coats of arms displayed above a massive fireplace. Huge faded tapestries hugging the walls in an attempt to add warmth to the cold granite. Nana appeared at my side as Ashley continued to call names and distribute room keys.
“That was some day we had today. Went pretty good. I didn’t even need my umbrella.”
I eyed Nana warily. “You do realize we were lost all day.”
“I know, dear. But we got to see lots that wasn’t on the itinerary. I shot some real nice pictures.” She whipped a half-dozen or more out of her bag. “Here’s that pretty stone cottage that was built so close to the road in that one little village. I thought the thatched roof and all the window boxes were nice touches.
“Here’s the hole in the cottage after we took out all its window boxes when we cut the corner too close.
“Here’s the hole in the bus after the window boxes took out our side mirror.
“Here’s the mirror lyin’ in the gutter after we backed over it.
“This is a good one a Ashley. This is where she’s waggin’ her finger in Michael’s face, callin’ him a moron. Look how pretty her nails are. I wouldn’t mind havin’ my nails done up like that sometime.
“Here’s that pretty stone fence that circled the pub where we ate lunch.”
Her next photo showed a shiny sculpture twisted into a series of sinuous angles and curves. “This is different,” I observed. “I don’t remember seeing this.”
“That’s a closeup of the bus’s rear fender after we rammed the stone fence. Here’s another good one a Ashley. This is where she’s standin’ next to the fence callin’ Michael a stupid twit.”
I was pretty sure she’d called him a stupid shit, but Nana’s hearing isn’t what it used to be.
“This last one didn’t come out too good ’cause we were goin’ by too fast. Can you make out that crumpled thing on the pavement there? That’s the door we sheared off the car that was stopped in the middle a the road when we rounded that blind curve.”
I’d found it odd that the driver had left his vehicle with the door wide open on an unshouldered road boxed in by hedgerows. You had to figure it was a cultural thing. Americans liked their cars without roofs. The Irish preferred theirs without doors.
Nana shook her head. “Poor Michael. He seems to be havin’ a run a bad luck on the road. Speakin’ a which—” She lowered her voice. “Bernice tells me you got some real whiners back where you’re sittin’. How’d you survive the day?”
I mined my skirt pocket and opened my palm. “I remembered I had these in my shoulder bag.”
Nana squinted at the two short rubberized tubes that were the circumference of No. 2 pencils. “Erasers?”
“Earplugs. Once I got them in, I couldn’t hear a thing.”
Nana held up the earplugs with jealous regard. “You think it’d be okay to use these in my nose? There’s an awful smell in that bus and I didn’t think to bring nose plugs.”
“It’s the driver,” said Tilly Hovick, joining us. “Unlike the rest of us, he doesn’t feel the need to disguise his natural body odor with artificial sprays, colognes, and deodorants. I find it entirely refreshing. A man living outside the strictures of convention. He’s to be admired.”
I didn’t agree with her about the body odor thing, but I thought it was pretty admirable that a guy who demonstrated no skill at driving or reading maps could land a job where his primary responsibility was to drive and read maps.
Tilly handed me an envelope. “Ashley asked me to give you your room key.”
I peered over Nana’s head toward the crowd that was rapidly dispersing in the lobby. “Has anyone seen Etienne?”
“He volunteered to help Michael unload the luggage from the bus,” said Nana. “Ashley said there weren’t no bellmen on duty tonight.”
Okay. This wasn’t so bad. I’d have time to run to my room and freshen up before he came knocking at my door.
“Refresh my memory,” asked Tilly. “Etienne is the black-haired mesomorph with the stunning blue eyes. Is that right?”
I wasn’t sure what the correct definition of mesomorph was, but I suspected it might be anthropological for “stud muffin.” “Right,” I said.
“There’s another interesting specimen on the tour,” Tilly continued. “Have you noticed? A young woman with exquisitely applied makeup and huge feet. I don’t see her right now, but her skeletal
structure and musculature indicate she might be something other than—”
“Shall we head for our rooms?” I interrupted. I had to discourage Tilly’s anthropological observations. Too bad she wasn’t a retired geology professor. Then the only thing she’d notice about Jackie would be the size of the rock on her ring finger.
I threaded my arms through theirs and dragged them along with me. “Early start tomorrow, ladies. We need our beauty sleep. What’s your room number?”
Their room was three doors down from mine on the first floor, so I said good night to them at my door and raced into my bedroom. I don’t know what the castle had looked like before the renovation, but the end result was stunning. My room was the size of a basketball court with a bank of windows occupying one wall. Two queen-size beds dominated the space, the headboards covered in the same rose-and-mauve flower-garden fabric that was repeated in the drapes and counterpanes. Four velvet boudoir chairs were arranged around the stone fireplace, and hanging over the mantel was a gilt-framed oil painting of some ancient lord astride a horse, surrounded by sleek hounds and barefoot children poised to dip their toes in a babbling brook. There was a mirrored double dresser, an armoire with a television inside, mirrored panels on the closet doors, and a host of other wall paintings that depicted thatched cottages, stone towers, and elaborate Celtic crosses.
I rushed into the bathroom. Wow. Whirlpool tub. Glassed-in shower. Marble tile. Aromatic candles. Jars of bath salts and bubble bath. Little bottles of shampoo, body lotion, and massage oil. I held up the massage oil. Maybe I could heat it over the candle. Oh, boy. This day might not be a complete loss after all.
I pulled the turtleneck of my sweater down to examine my neck. Okay. It didn’t look too bad. No new welts had formed. If I applied more powder, Etienne might not even notice, especially if he was looking at me by candlelight.
A light tap at my door. Speak of the devil. I threw the door wide and smiled my most seductive smile.
“I’m sorry to bother you, dear,” Nana apologized, “but do you suppose you could come down to our room?”
“Right now?”
“You’re probably expectin’ your young man. I’m sorry. You take your time then and come down when you can. There’s no hurry.”
“Is there a problem with your room?”
“Just a small one. There’s a dead body in it.”
Chapter 4
The deceased was a spindle of a woman dressed in a chambermaid’s uniform and lying on the floor in front of the mirrored closet in Nana’s room.
“You didn’t touch her, did you?” I asked as I inched close to the body.
“’Course I touched her, dear. I had to check for a pulse.”
She had curly salt-and-pepper hair, pale, wide eyes that stared fixedly at the ceiling, and thin lips that were drawn apart as if in a silent scream. I placed her at well beyond retirement age.
Tilly hovered near the woman’s feet. “I looked her all over and found no blood. No trauma to the body. My guess is stroke or heart attack. These people can’t expect to eat full Irish breakfasts every day and not suffer the consequences. Fried eggs. Fried potatoes. Sausage. Bacon. Black pudding. Even the Samoans have switched to Special K.”
“How long do you think she’s been here?” I asked. As upsetting as this was, I was thankful the deceased wasn’t a member of our tour group.
Nana sank to her knees for a better look at the body. “There’s fixed lividity. See here. All the blood’s settled at the back a her arms and legs, makin’ ’em that purplish color. Her lips and nails are real pale. Her extremities are blue. Her eyes are startin’ to flatten ’cause a lack of fluid. And her skin’s real cool. My guess is, she’s been here between six and eight hours.”
I regarded Nana in astonishment. How did she know that?
“Very impressive,” said Tilly. “You’ve been overly modest about yourself, Marion. Were you a former medical examiner?”
“Nah. I just watch a lot of them forensic shows on the Discovery Channel on Tuesday nights.”
Considering the scope of my grandmother’s knowledge, it was now apparent that I might have learned more from a constant diet of TV than from four years of higher education at the University of Wisconsin. I guess that said a lot about the quality of cable programming these days.
I heard a rush of footsteps in the hall and a cry of alarm as the front desk clerk burst into the room. “Oh, Jaysuz. This is terrible. She didn’t sign out today, but I was thinking she’d simply forgot. Rita’s getting on in years, you know, and her memory’s failing. Is she going to be all right?”
Liam McEtigan obviously never watched the Discovery Channel on Tuesday nights. I patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Liam, but she’s no longer with us.”
“Are you sure? Her color’s not too good, but she uses off-brand cosmetics, so her color’s never that good.”
I shook my head. Liam’s face crumpled. “This is terrible. Terrible. What am I going to do?”
“You might want to call the coroner,” I suggested.
“No, I mean, we only have one other chambermaid. Yours is the only group booked into the castle for the next few days, but one person can’t be cleaning all the rooms. We were hardly managing with two.”
“Only two maids?” I marveled. “Maybe you need to improve your benefits package.”
“We have good benefits. We even include dental. It’s—” He stopped short, looking as if another word would be one too many. Perspiration beaded his upper lip. He wrung his hands in nervous agitation. “I’d best call me da. He owns the local mortuary.”
As he made to flee, Tilly thumped her cane on the floor. “Not so fast, young man! You can’t expect us to sleep here tonight. We’ll be needing other accommodations.”
Liam wheeled around, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. “Of course. I’ll be seeing to it right away.” He sniffed suddenly, as if he were just now remembering to breathe. “I apologize for the smell, ladies. Jaysuz, this is terrible.”
“It’s not so bad,” said Nana. “You should get a whiff a our bus.”
“You’d better make your first phone call to the police,” Tilly instructed. “We don’t know if this woman died from natural causes or from more nefarious means. A thorough investigation must be conducted.”
Liam shook his head. “Everyone will know what killed Rita. Bad heart. She was living on borrowed time, but she wasn’t one to sit at home to wait for the Grim Reaper. She wanted to keep working until the end. And look at her. That’s exactly what she did.” He blessed himself with a quick sign of the cross. “If you’d be good enough to accompany me, ladies. I’ll see about relocating you.”
As Tilly and Nana hurried toward the door, I remained hovered over the corpse for a long moment. I wasn’t entirely convinced Rita had died from a heart attack. Judging from the look in her eyes, I’d have guessed she’d died of fright.
My arms itched. My throat itched. The roots of my hair itched. Scratch scratch scratch, as I unlocked the door to my room. Scratch scratch scratch, as I flipped on the light switch.
“This is awful nice a you to put us up for the night,” Nana said as she followed me into the room.
“A poorly run operation,” said Tilly, thumping her walking stick for effect. “Imagine! A castle of this size and they haven’t one room available for emergency occupancy.”
I scratched my arms. My throat. My scalp. Nana was philosophical. “With only two maids to clean this place, I’m surprised they’ve got rooms available at all. Did something bite you, Emily?”
“I think it’s hives.” I rolled up my sleeve to discover a fresh crop of welts on my forearm.
“That’s not good,” said Nana. “Bernice’s husband died from hives. Maybe you need medical attention.”
I rushed into the bathroom for a better look at myself in the mirror. The welts peppered my arms and throat, but they hadn’t reached my face yet.
“Did you eat somethin’ you was allergic to
?” Nana asked.
“I’m not allergic to anything.”
“Hives can sometimes be activated by stress,” said Tilly. “Are you feeling stressed by anything?”
I thought about my life over the last twenty-four hours…and scratched some more. “Not that I know of!” I lied. And what was worse, the more I thought about Rita, the more creeped out I was getting that she’d seen something that had literally scared her to death. What if Ashley had told the truth about the castle? What if it really was haunted?
“If she’s not stressed out, I think we should tell her,” I heard Tilly say.
When I didn’t hear Nana reply, I poked my head out the bathroom door. “Tell me what?”