“Faith? If it's to do with my new necklace, I can assure you I am only a fraction of a percent—”
“It's not yer faith I'm banging on about. It's me own faith. Ye're a classy bird, Zoë, aye, but ye're only thinking of yerself and yer business. Fionnuala and me...we've nothing, but we've love.”
“Excuse me, from what I've seen, shrieking like a mad thing and beating the children—”
“We beat them cause we love them.”
“You...you...”
“Not lately, I must admit, but aye. Who hasn't?”
Zoë knew, somewhere deep in her heart, Paddy was right. Business might make strange bedfellows, politics might, but love never did. Except if you considered Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett, but even they had since gone their separate ways. She would've had to contend with his cigarettes, his alcohol, his swallow tattoo that, for all she knew, signified a former life of violent and seedy crime. It had excited her. But then logic seeped into her fevered brain.
Her instincts had been right: Paddy was a good catch after all. An excellent catch. But the catching had been done decades before and not by her
As Zoë now cried for her child that would never be, she thought about Beeyonsay and Greenornge. She felt her heart swell with love for them. Even as she was repulsed by their names. She'd have to ask Dymphna what their middle names were. Hopefully they were something sensible. Then Zoë could start calling them by these sensible middle names.
She hoped the drink wouldn't bring the truth out of Paddy Flood one night. One thing Zoë knew is that secrets were usually shared. The new anxiety she now felt was worse than any she had ever felt before. The thought of being Public Enemy Number One to Fionnuala Flood. She'd have to get a better alarm system installed at home, which would be difficult because at the moment she had the best. She might even have to move the headquarters of Riddell Enterprises to London, or maybe to the South, Dublin. Or preferably to the States, as she knew US visas weren't granted to those with police records, and Fionnuala Flood, even before her arrest for public disturbance and horse theft today, had one that must be pages long.
She'd figure everything out once she was released and after she had mourned over her lost child.
Zoë turned off the light and wrapped herself in the crisp white sheets.
Fionnuala knew nothing. Yet.
The interrogation was over. All had been revealed. Joe O'Day was hauled down to the cells. The charge: armed robbery and manslaughter.
McLaughlin, obviously in high spirits, had invited D'Arcy to the local copper pub for a pint of lager. A celebratory beer.
They had clinked glasses, and after D'Arcy had taken a sip and McLaughlin had downed half of his and wiped the foam from his mustache, she searched his face. She was perplexed.
“Perhaps I'm a little slow, sir, but...?”
“Aye, D'Arcy? What is it?”
“I don't understand why this crime was committed. I know I was sitting beside you at the table in the interview room, but perhaps it was the perp's accent. I'm struggling to understand why he needed to commit that robbery. What the fake ticket and itinerary had to do with it.”
“Aye, he was speaking quickly, so he was. Blurting everything out, and crying as he did so. I had to strain to understand him meself. But this is it. His great aunt, Mrs. Ming, finally got all her funds together for her dream trip. To Kenya. She wanted to go on safari. Had done all her life, apparently.”
“Yes, that I gathered.”
“She didn't, but, know how to go about it on the computer. And she had a walker. It was difficult for her to get about. She couldn't go to a travel agent. Or, she could have, but why should she? When she had a layabout grand nephew just sitting there gulping down the drink before the telly every day. So she gave him the money, and told him to get the ticket and the hotel and the safari for her.”
“But he didn't?”
“Naw. What he spent it on we can only imagine. But he had a fancy woman, that Myrtle Flannery ye might have heard us mention.”
“Yes, the one who works at the Palace Hotel.”
“Aye. And that's how he knew about the contract with Final Spinz, and about all the cash that would be there and when. Myrtle told him.”
“Why did she need to tell him, though?”
“Joe spent all the money, and, I don't know, typed up that fake ticket and itinerary. He felt bad he had wasted the old woman's money, collected over ten years. Wasted it on two weeks worth of drink for him and his fancy woman, I guess. He knew he'd have to get together about three thousand pounds of his own to—”
“To finally buy the real ticket and hotel rooms and such?”
“Aye, exactly. But the days kept passing, and Mrs. Ming kept counting down the days on the calendar. It was almost time for the trip, and she still didn't have a ticket. Yer man Joe felt worse and worse. He couldn't dash the woman's dreams. So he robbed the dry cleaners to give Mrs. Ming her dream holiday.”
“Only the woman happened to be in the dry cleaners at the same time. Shoulda stayed at home.”
“And how did that old woman, her sister, know it was Joe? From the group at the church?”
“His trainers, his Fahrennight, and the fact that his best mate Tom runs that stall. Tom, by the way, we've picked up as the person who carried the tongs. We've got a search out for the trowel perp. Another friend of Joe's.”
“And what was that smell the cleaning lady talked about?”
“That was the stench of the sewer water from Joe's job, of course. In the sewers. We sent SOCO back in. They took some swabs, and I'm confident it will match the sample from the bottom of Joe's Reedock trainers. An open and shut case, D'Arcy.”
He finished his pint. “Shall we have another?”
“Yes. I'll get this round in, sir.”
“You do that, D'Arcy.”
As he waited for her to return from the bar, the rap music on the jukebox ended. “The Last Waltz” came on. A fitting ending. McLaughlin leaned back in the nook, hands around the back of his head, and smiled. But it was a bit rueful. He hummed along.
A few years later, Fionnuala Flood got it into her mind to visit her daddy's grave. It was the 15th anniversary of his death. She lurked outside the Sav-U-Mor, where bunches of slightly wilting flowers were wrapped in plastic and displayed in buckets. She waited until nobody was about, then she stole a bouquet.
After crying for a few moments at her father's grave, Fionnuala made her way out of the graveyard. She was almost at the gate when she happened to notice out of the corner of her eye the words EIBHLEANN MING on a tombstone. She stopped. She looked down. GONE TO HER INDIA it said after the dates of her birth and death.
“Eejits!” she muttered under her breath. All these years on, and the Mings still thought Mrs. Ming had always wanted to go to India. As if that was the only foreign country in the world! Fionnuala knew better. It had been Kenya.
She thought for a moment. Her eyes swept over the grave. There were a few scattered remnants of flowers that had been placed on the grave years before. It didn't seem right.
Fionnuala thought about the bouquet she had placed on her daddy's grave. It was terrible far away, and her feet were aching. She should have worn different shoes. She didn't want to walk all the way over there, get the flowers, and walk all the way back. She looked around at the other, closer graves.
There was a beautiful bouquet of lilies on an adjacent grave. She tiptoed over. She read the tombstone as she snatched them up. “Sorry, Mrs. Murphy.”
Fionnuala placed the lilies on Mrs. Ming's grave. She bowed her head.
“Ta, Mrs. Ming, for all yer kindness,” Fionnuala said. A tear rolled down her face. “I hope they've a Kenya up there in Heaven for ye. And I hope to get to Greece and all. If I do, I'll take ye along with me. Don't be alarmed, now. I don't mean yer bones or whatnot. I mean...take ye along in me heart. I know it wasn't yer country, but it'll be better than nothing. Ta again, Mrs. Ming.”
She wiped away the
tear, squared her manly shoulders, then took the bus back home to her family.
****
Thanks from the bottom of my heart for getting this book. If you enjoyed it (and I hope you did!), why not review it on Amazon? Reviews are so, so important for us authors, and we are always grateful for them—not to make us feel better, but to let other readers know they can trust our work. I’d appreciate it so much if you posted a review here. I’d love to hear from you! And keep in touch with all my activities, freebies and special offers! Sign up for the mailing list here. Follow Gerald Hansen on Twitter, visit the Gerald Hansen website and please 'like' my Facebook page.
Thanks so much again for reading this book! Gerald
Did you love Static Cling? Then you should read An Embarrassment of Riches by Gerald Hansen!
“A Masterpiece!” Colin Quinn
When Ursula Barnett and her husband Jed win the Irish lottery, they think their troubles are over. But they are just beginning.
Ursula coerces her Yank husband to retire in her hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland, hoping to atone for her youthful sins as a collaborator with the IRA in the 1970s. At the first sniff of Ursula’s lotto win, however, her chronically greedy sister-in-law Fionnuala Flood rallies the family against Ursula.
Fionnuala’s life is a misery. She is married to a boozing fish-packing plant worker and raising seven seedy hooligans, from a convict son to an eight-year-old devil-daughter who will resort to desperate measures to secure the perfect Holy Communion gown. Between two part-time jobs, Fionnuala still finds the energy to put into motion plans which pit husbands against wives, daughters against mothers, the lawless against the law and Fionnuala against anyone fool enough to cross her path.
Family saga and black comedy, love story and courtroom drama, An Embarrassment of Riches will take you on a journey to Northern Ireland and beyond, where Protestants and Catholics wage battle daily, and where crossing family with finance leads to passion and tragedy, heartache and hilarity.
Read more at Gerald Hansen’s site.
Also by Gerald Hansen
The Irish Lottery Series
An Embarrassment of Riches
Hand In The Till
Fleeing The Jurisdiction
Static Cling
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set
Standalone
Emergency Exit
Watch for more at Gerald Hansen’s site.
About the Author
Gerald Hansen lived for years in his mother's hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland and attended Dublin City University. As a Navy brat, he grew up in California, Thailand, London, Iceland and Germany. His debut novel, An Embarrassment of Riches was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel semifinalist in 2010. The sequel, Hand In The Till came out in 2011, Fleeing the Jurisdiction in 2012 and Best Served Frozen in 2014. Gerald now lives in New York City.
Photo by Marcin Kaliski
Read more at Gerald Hansen’s site.
Static Cling Page 33