The Rising of the Moon

by Sheila Connolly

  Books by Sheila Connolly

  Orchard Mysteries

  One Bad Apple

  Rotten to the Core

  Red Delicious Death

  A Killer Crop

  Bitter Harvest

  Sour Apples

  “Called Home”

  Museum Mysteries

  Fundraising the Dead

  Let’s Play Dead

  Fire Engine Dead

  “Dead Letters”

  County Cork Mysteries

  Buried in a Bog

  (coming in 2013)

  Writing as Sarah Atwell

  Glassblowing Mysteries

  Through a Glass, Deadly

  Pane of Death

  Snake in the Glass

  The Rising of the Moon

  Sheila Connolly

  Beyond the Page Books

  are published by

  Beyond the Page Publishing

  www.beyondthepagepub.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Sheila Connolly

  Material excerpted from Buried in a Bog copyright © 2013 by Sheila Connolly

  Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs

  ISBN: 978-1-937349-54-7

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Contents

  “The Rising of the Moon”

  Excerpt from Buried in a Bog

  About the Author

  The Rising of the Moon

  Dinty’s Bar has occupied the same corner in Cambridge since before I was born. Not the Cambridge with the glitzy shops and exotic restaurants catering to parents dropping their little darlings off at the Big H, or the Cambridge filled with techy wonks. Dinty’s keeps a toehold in the back end of Cambridge, between Central Square and the river. Its patrons come from the neighborhood and they’re pretty consistent: blue-collar, mostly construction workers, a scattering of cops and firefighters, all Irish in some way or another. Somehow this little area called Cambridgeport has escaped the gentrification that has crept through the city, and that’s the way the people here like it.

  I’m the one who doesn’t belong. I was one of those pampered students, and when I graduated I didn’t know what I wanted to do, or at least I knew what I didn’t want to do. I wanted some time with no grades, no letters of recommendation, no internships and interviews to make a professor or parent proud. Nope, I just wanted to stick around for a while and breathe. My bewildered parents didn’t put up much of an argument, and as a graduation present they gave their baby boy enough cash to put a deposit on a top-floor apartment in a rundown triple-decker, with enough left over to buy a bed and a kitchen table with a couple of chairs.

  I heard about the opening behind the bar at Dinty’s through a friend of a friend, and I’d wandered in with no expectations and gotten the job. Just for the summer, I thought. Three summers later I’m still here. After one of those increasingly rare calls from my folks, I try to convince myself that I’m collecting information for a novel that I’ll probably never write. Mostly I’m drifting and watching. It suits me, at least for now.

  Places like Dinty’s have a rhythm of their own, a kind of internal calendar. Midweek business is usually slow, weekends busier; when the Pats or the Sox are playing, the place can be packed with fans; and forget about finding a square foot of open floor space on St. Paddy’s day. So on average it’s pretty much quiet about eighty percent of the time. After a week there I could recognize faces; after a month I could put a name to most of them. Not that we’re buddies or anything—we just nod at each other, but I know who’s who.

  It goes sort of like this: Guy walks in, looks at me; I look back. Me: “Pint?” He: “Yeah.” I pour whatever his usual is, he pays, and we go our own ways until his pint runs dry. Then we do it again. Few people drink mixed drinks here—none of that fancy cocktail stuff like what’s going on in Boston—although a straight shot of Bushmills or Jameson or even Paddy isn’t a rare thing. No sissy stuff like pinot grigio or merlot. Those are for the ladies, and ladies are few and far between in Dinty’s. The women who come in can match the men pint for pint and leave them under the table at the end of a night. Mostly they leave alone, or with a girlfriend. This is a clean place—no dealing in drugs or bodies.

  No smoking either, although between the decades of smoke soaked into the wood of the place and the guys clustered around the front door, sucking furtively on a cigarette held in a cupped hand, it doesn’t much matter, particularly on wet days or when the wind is from the river.

  This Monday looks like any other. Just past Thanksgiving, but before the Christmas craziness starts. The early crowd is mostly the construction workers—they start early in the day and shut down early on the jobs, so they drift in on their way home. There might be someone waiting for them there, or not. More than a few are in the country without the right pieces of paper, which makes it hard for them to marry or get sick or even leave the country to visit family back home in Ireland, since they can’t be sure they can get back in again. So mostly they work and eat and sleep and then do it all over again, stopping in at Dinty’s most days. The guys at the pub are as close to family as most of them have around here.

  Only one thing different this Monday: it’s a full moon. Scientists can argue all they want about statistical analysis, but ask any bartender or cop or ER doc and he’ll tell you that things get a little weird when there’s a full moon.

  O then, tell me Sean O’Farrell,

  tell me why you hurry so?

  This night Sean comes in with a bunch of his friends, regulars all. They take their usual table in the corner, and Sean nods to me, and I nod back: the nod that means a round for the table, a pitcher of whatever’s on tap, most often Guinness. I fill the pitcher and carry it and the glasses over, handing them out quickly and with no fuss. The guys don’t even stop talking, but it’s not unfriendly. I know they’ll pay, and I long since stopped expecting tips. We’re all fine with it. They pull off gloves, jackets, caps, and settle in for a couple of solid hours of drinking. I go back to the bar and polish glasses. Like I said, Mondays are slow.

  The second wave usually shows up between six and seven, when the people who work regular jobs come in. They’re a more mixed lot, more varied in age and ethnic origin. Some of them know each other and might end up at the same table. Others make a point of keeping to themselves, content to nurse a pint for an hour or two before heading home, and everybody knows to leave them alone.

  But this night, something’s different.

  It’s full dark outside and the bar’s maybe half filled when some strangers walk in. They stop at the threshold, their eyes darting around, scoping out the scene. The guys scatte
red around the room avoid looking at them, but you can feel the atmosphere in the place ratchet up a notch. Strangers aren’t always welcome, especially not more than one at a time. It was like what some prof had described in one of my undergrad courses, on behavioral psychology, about how packs of wolves react when two packs meet—I think he called it posturing. Not that any of these guys is about to roll over and bare his belly, but the mood kind of feels the same. The regulars somehow close ranks, even though nobody actually moves, and the newcomers walk into the room in a defensive vee formation, with one guy in the lead and a pair of flankers watching his back. I make sure the length of pipe I keep behind the bar is in easy reach—and hope I don’t need it.

  The moment passes, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. The leader nods toward an empty table near the back, and his pack stalks toward it, while he heads toward me to order drinks.

  “You got Sam Adams?” he says.

  “Yeah. All ’round?”

  “Yeah.”

  He turns to join his friends, and I started pulling pints. They’re not Irish, from the look of them. Not quite Hispanic, either. Maybe Portuguese? Doesn’t matter to me, as long as they pay. And don’t make any trouble.

  But when I deliver the pints to their table, they all fall silent. The lead guy hands me a wad of damp bills, and I don’t stop to count it. Back behind the bar, I keep an eye on the scene, with an uneasy feeling in my gut.

  Another man comes in, looks around, then heads toward the back table. He’s got to be the alpha of his pack—he’s not big, but everybody at the strangers’ table shrinks back a little when he gets there. Then they all take turns looking at Sean’s table. And everyone at Sean’s table ignores the other guys, but I can tell they’re watching them. This silent standoff goes on until the latecomers drain their glasses, exchange glances, then rise as one and saunter toward the front door. I notice that Sean is watching them openly now, and he keeps his eyes on them until they’re out the door. When they’re gone, he gets up and comes over to the bar. “Another round.”

  Get you ready quick and soon

  For the pikes must be together

  At the rising of the moon.

  “Okay.” I started pouring again. Only this time Sean doesn’t go back to his buddies.

  “You seen that bunch in here before?” he asks me.

  “The guys that just left? No, I don’t think so.” I hesitate a moment before asking, “Why?”

  Sean glances around, but there’s nobody near enough to hear. “You don’t want them here—they’re dealers.”

  “Drug dealers?” I whispered, feeling like a wimp. For three years at Dinty’s I’d been lucky that I’d never had to handle anything more serious than a scuffle, and I didn’t want to start now, especially with a bunch of drug dealers.

  “Tryin’ to move into the neighborhood, sniffing around at the local places. We’re looking to let them know they’re not welcome,” Sean tells me.

  “Uh, okay.” I don’t miss a beat filling glasses, even though my mind is spinning like a hamster wheel. What did he mean? “Not here?”

  “Right. They’ve kinda settled in at a place a few blocks from here, close to the river. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Much as I want to believe him, I’m worried. Am I supposed to do something, tell someone? But in fact I didn’t know anything to tell, or anyone to tell it to. And there are enough cops hanging out here to take care of anything really bad—aren’t there? I pass the pints across the bar to Sean, and he grabs them all and ferries them back to his buddies at the table.

  A few other people come in, and after serving them I look up and I see Sean leading his pack out the door.

  O then tell me Sean O’Farrell

  Where the gath’rin is to be?

  In the old spot by the river,

  Well known to you and me.

  I should feel relieved, right? The strangers are gone. Only now Sean and his pals are gone too, all at once, and if I had to guess I’d say they were following the first bunch. That worries me. But what can I do about it?

  I’m still waffling when another guy comes in, and I recognize him as one of Sean’s buddies. He takes a quick look around and doesn’t see what he wants, and then he comes over to me. “You seen Sean?”

  “Yeah, he just left. They all did.”

  I don’t need to tell him who “they” are, because usually he’s one of them. He looks vaguely surprised. I lean over the bar and say, “He said something about a place near the river?”

  Light dawns in the guy’s eyes. “Oh, yeah. Thanks.” He turns to leave.

  “Hey, don’t you want a drink?” I call after him.

  He half turns, without stopping. “Later.” And then he’s gone.

  Great. I still don’t know anything. But then, it’s none of my business, is it?

  There beside the singing river

  That black mass of men were seen,

  High above their shining weapons,

  flew their own beloved green.

  “Death to every foe and traitor!

  Forward! Strike the marching tune.

  And hurrah my boy for freedom;

  ’Tis the rising of the moon.”

  A few more people drift in, and I take care of them. A pair of them I recognize as cops, off duty, and I feel relieved. Then a couple of on-duty cops in uniform. Together they scan the room, then they come over to me. They aren’t looking for drinks, I know.

  “Hey, you seen Sean Farrell tonight?” the first one asks.

  “Yeah, he was in earlier, but he left maybe half an hour ago.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “No, there were some other guys with him.”

  “You know where they were headed?”

  I shrug. “They didn’t tell me.” That was the literal truth, but should I tell them about the other group? Whose side am I on, Sean’s or the law’s? Or are they the same?

  The head cop gives me the eye, but I meet his look without flinching. Much. I’m saved by the squawk of his walkie-talkie. He listens for a moment and his face hardens.

  “Problem down by the river,” he tells the other cop. “Let’s go.”

  They take off like bats out of hell, and I hear a siren start up outside. Moments later the off-duty cops at the table get a call, and they head out too. Must be serious stuff. I look around the bar: minus Sean and his crew and the cops, there are maybe three people sitting in dark corners. Something’s happening, but not here.

  Well they fought for poor old Ireland,

  And full bitter was their fate,

  Oh what glorious pride and sorrow,

  Fills the name of ninety-eight!

  Yet, thank God, e’en still are beating

  Hearts in manhood burning noon . . .

  Who would follow in their footsteps,

  At the risin’ of the moon.

  Two hours later Sean’s crew starts trickling in, in ones and twos, and they head for the table where they had sat earlier. They looked excited—and the worse for wear. I wait until a few have settled themselves around the table before I go over and ask, “What’re you drinking?” Up close I can tell they’ve been fighting, what with the bruises, the scrapes, and some ripped clothes.

  They grin at each other. “Make it a bottle of Jameson, will ya? And glasses all around.”

  “Sure.” So they’re celebrating something? I couldn’t remember a time when they’d ordered a bottle of the good stuff. Maybe never.

  I’m pulling the bottle from under the bar when Sean Farrell walks in with a bit of a swagger. He’s with a couple of other guys, and he’s grinning like a fool. His jacket’s torn, he’s sporting a bruise on his cheekbone, and he’ll have a great shiner in the morning. The guys at the table hoot and yell, and make room for him. I hurry to collect glasses while Sean makes his way to the table. By the time he’s seated, I’m ready with the bottle and glasses, so I take it over to the table.

  “What’s your name, son
?” he asks. He’s never asked before.

  “Me? Davy Sullivan.”

  “Will you join us now, Davy Sullivan?”

  I look around and realize there’s nobody else there—whatever customers there had been had wisely cleared out. Why not? I sit.

  There’s blood, on his hand, on his sleeve. As I look more closely at the others around the table, I realize they’re all sporting similar stains here and there on their clothes. So there’s been a fight, down by the river, I guess.

  Sean grabs the bottle, opens it, and splashes an inch of the whiskey into each of the glasses. Hands reach out to grab them, and Sean pushes one toward me.

  He raises his glass, and everyone around the table follows, including me.

  “Dhéanamh go maith, mo buachaillí! Sláinte.”

  Irish, I’m guessing—I hear it now and then in the bar, mostly when the guys don’t want others to know what they’re saying. But this sounds more like congratulations to me. Sean downs his drink. So does everybody else, including me. What the hell.

  And then they all seem to forget that I’m there. I sit like a mouse, listening to the words pour out of them—more than I’ve heard them string together in any past year altogether. That Jameson packs a punch, and after one drink I can only follow snippets of their conversation. “Didja see . . . ?” “That was a good one!” “He went down . . .” “We won’t see their faces around here . . .”

  The front door opens again, and the two uniformed cops who’d been in earlier come in. I feel a moment of panic: if they were here for Sean and his guys, I was sitting among them. Then I realize that none of the men at the table seems bothered. In fact, Sean waves them over to the table. The cops nod, and one of them turns the dead bolt on the door and flips the door sign to “Closed” before coming over to join us. They sit, then one nods at me and asks, “He okay?”