Death of an Irish Diva (A Cumberland Creek Mystery)

by Bryan, Mollie Cox

  “Annie . . .” His voice lowered. “We need to talk.”

  She took a deep breath. “Go on.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been so stressed out, and it seems like . . . this attraction between us . . . I just could not avoid it. It was way out of line. It won’t happen again.”

  That was not what she had expected to hear. A mature, sensitive Bryant spoke to her. She wished it were that way for her. She had been seriously tempted by him. A big part of her, her ego, to be sure, wanted to hear him professing his undying love for her. Could she just walk away and pretend the attraction didn’t exist, that it didn’t shake her to her core?

  “I, um, ah—” she began.

  “You don’t have to say anything. You never did. Why start now? We kissed. I’m an idiot. I thought there was something there. Sometimes you seem so unhappy with Mike. I thought I had a shot. My mistake. Could we just please drop all of it . . . ?” he said, his face turning bright red.

  She looked away, feeling the breath leave her. He was hurt. She had hurt him. But she had done nothing to lead him on, had she? What could she say to him? That yes, she had thought about him? Lusted after him? Was shaken by him? But. She loved her husband. She loved her children. The life they had created. It was worth fighting for.

  “So, let’s move on to the case. I’ll run a background check on Reilly. We pretty much know all there is to know about Bill Ledford, but I’ll run a check on him, anyway,” he said and smirked.

  “There’s something else. Might not be worth mentioning. But I thought it was strange,” Annie said. “The Greenbergs are still hanging around.”

  He jumped to attention. He sat more erect, looked more alert. What was going on?

  “I’ve been talking to Rachel a lot. She’s painted quite a picture of her daughter. From her point of view, Emily had a fabulous family life, growing up on the commune. When she found out she was adopted, she went kind of berserk and rebelled. They think she was still rebelling.”

  “At her age?”

  Annie nodded.

  “But she also admitted that Emily was difficult and was a loner. Rachel is still on a quest to find her daughter’s lover. She thinks his first name begins with the letter L.”

  Adam bristled. “I can’t get into that with you right now.”

  Annie’s stomach sank. There was that feeling again. Her gut instinct pulling at her. There was no shaking it.

  He knew way more than he was telling her.

  Chapter 58

  Vera loved her naps with Lizzie. Sundays were all about playing and napping and eating. She lay snuggled in the bed with her daughter. She had never been happier. Being a mother was the best thing that had ever happened to her. It was also the hardest. How could that be?

  She listened to Lizzie’s breathing. Rhythmic. She thought about the conversation at one of the last crops that focused on genetics. She wondered about the mixing of her and Bill’s blood and genetics in their daughter. Lizzie was the only good thing that had ever come of that relationship. Why had she spent all those years with him? Almost all of her youth was spent on him. It was maddening. She tried not to think about it.

  Then his girlfriend had been stalking her. Lovely. Kelsey had preyed on her by trying to make her feel like she had lost her mind. Trying to set her up for murder. What kind of a person did that? And what would Bill see in a person like that? She meant it when she told Bill that sometimes she wondered if she knew him at all.

  They had met in college in New York City and had been astounded that they had grown up not fifty miles from one another. His family, like hers, had been in the area for generations. He could trace their roots back to the Mayflower. She could never be bothered. Who cared about all that? What was important was the here and now.

  She brushed a piece of Lizzie’s red hair off her face. For a moment, she swore she could see Beatrice in her daughter.

  That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? Beatrice would be a great role model for any young woman, and this one had her genetic code in there somewhere. Vera had often thought that if her mother had been born a little later, she’d be queen of the planet by now. As it was, she had still accomplished a great deal in her life. Vera was proud of her. Maybe Lizzie would inherit some of Beatrice’s intellectual prowess.

  Later that afternoon Detective Bryant stopped by.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Certainly,” Vera said, opening the door.

  “What do you want?” Beatrice said when she saw him in her foyer.

  “I just wanted to touch base with you about a few things,” he said.

  “Well, come in,” Vera said and led him to the couch, where they both sat. Beatrice stood with her hands on her hips.

  “Can I get you anything? Iced tea?” Beatrice said.

  “That would be fine. Sans poison, of course,” he said as he grinned at her, referring to the time Beatrice was poisoned and threw up all over Tina Sue and Zeb’s front porch.

  “Don’t tempt me,” she muttered, walking off into the kitchen.

  He didn’t look well. It looked like he hadn’t shaved in days, and she wondered if he had been showering at all.

  “Everything okay?” Vera asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I just need to clarify a few things with you.”

  She smiled and leaned forward.

  “You are still under suspicion for Emily’s murder. I know you think Kelsey did it, but she has a rock-solid alibi. So you are it at this point,” he told her.

  Her heart pounded. She swore he could probably hear it. Sweat rushed to her forehead. “I thought I had been cleared because of the hypnosis walk-through.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I was there, and I’m still uncertain about what you saw or what you think you saw. Was it someone else? Or was it you seeing yourself? And I found out that we need an unbiased expert to witness it for the court.”

  “Oh,” she said, now focusing on breathing.

  “So I wondered if we might try it again. Maybe this time it would be clearer. Maybe you’d remember.”

  “I just don’t know,” she said, suddenly feeling tired. So tired she swore she could sink in the couch and sleep sitting up.

  “What’s going on?” Beatrice said, walking into the room with a pitcher of iced tea and several glasses.

  “We’d like Vera to do it again,” the detective said.

  Beatrice poured the tea. “Do what?”

  “Go through the hypnosis,” he said.

  “Absolutely not!” Beatrice said. “You saw what happened to her.”

  “I did,” he said. “And I wouldn’t ask it, except that I’m getting pressure to make an arrest. All the evidence leads to Vera still. I don’t know what else to do to try to clear her. We have hired a specialist, a forensic hypnotist, to work with your doctor on this.”

  Beatrice handed him a glass.

  Vera was afraid her mother would pour it on him and was happy to see that she didn’t. Not that it hadn’t happened before. With teachers. With other parents. Even with her teenage friends.

  “What do you think, Vera?” Beatrice said.

  “I think I don’t have much choice, Mama,” Vera said.

  Beatrice’s brows knit as she turned to Bryant. “I want you to know that if anything happens to her, it’s your balls. I’m holding you responsible.”

  “Understood,” he said.

  “Oh, Mama,” Vera said and waved her off. Had her mother just said “Balls” to Detective Bryant? That thought warmed her. Same old Beatrice.

  A huge smile cracked on Bryant’s usually stern face. DeeAnn was right. He was a handsome man. But only when he smiled, which wasn’t often.

  Chapter 59

  “Well, you have to wonder who the outsiders are,” Beatrice said.

  “I’m not too thrilled to know the police want a few other people there to watch the hypnosis. I’ll feel like I’m on display,” Vera said. “But what can I do?”

  “I hope you�
��re under and things are in hand before they bring the others in,” Beatrice said, pulling out a cherry cobbler from the oven, its scent filling the kitchen and making both of them nearly swoon.

  “What do I smell?” Jon said as he walked into the kitchen with Lizzie on his hip.

  “Dessert for dinner tonight. A cherry cobbler. Nancy gave me a bunch of cherries. This recipe is actually from Willa Rose’s book,” Beatrice said, then turned away from Vera, who looked surprised.

  “A recipe?”

  “Oh yes,” Jon said. “There were several.”

  “Difficult to follow, though,” Beatrice said. “No measurements to speak of.”

  “Mama, why are you keeping this book? You know, it really belongs to the state.”

  “They have everything else,” Beatrice said.

  “They won’t miss it,” Jon said, shrugging.

  “So? What will you do with it?”

  “I don’t know. And here’s the thing.... That book is special. I can’t explain it. But I feel like I have it for a reason. I sort of feel a connection to it. A connection to Willa Rose, too,” Beatrice said. “Well, that needs to cool off. I need to sit down for a bit, and then I’ll get supper.”

  “Lizzie and I can do that, Mama. Go relax,” Vera said and waved her off. Beatrice shrugged and went outside.

  Out in the garden, or what was left of it, Beatrice was finally alone with her thoughts. These days she liked to daydream about Willa Rose, what they knew about her and what they didn’t. She was born before the Civil War into a family that helped settle this area. They owned an inn at one of the busiest crossroads. She somehow managed to impress enough politicians or soldiers so much that they trusted her, a woman, to help spy, carry valuable information from one place to the other. Remarkable.

  Most remarkable, though, was that she somehow fell in love with Ez. But maybe it wasn’t that remarkable at all. Young women and men had been falling in and out of love for generations, most of them not caring whether their families or their culture supported it. But to be a white woman in love with a black man during the Civil War and shortly after it, well, it was so romantic. And also dangerous. As it turned out, very dangerous for Ez.

  What was he like?

  What was she like?

  How did they meet?

  How deeply had they loved one another?

  These thoughts rolled around in her mind. I am an old romantic fool. And this is one of the many things Jon has done to me. She smiled. Beatrice was in love for the second time in her life. Blessed twice.

  Now, if she could only see that for her daughter, she’d die a happy woman. Poor Vera. First, there was Bill and all his shenanigans. Then this Tony character in New York, whom Vera had never even brought back to Cumberland Creek. Now there was this doctor, Eric. He was a nice guy, and Vera seemed to like him, but she didn’t seem to be smitten. Oh, well, time would tell.

  Truthfully, the only person Vera had ever seemed smitten with was Lizzie. Land sakes, maybe that was enough. Who said you had to have a man in your life to be happy?

  Love was good, but it was also the cause of pain, turmoil, and sometimes death. Look at poor Ez. A man who fought against slavery. A man who was given freedom by the government, only to be lynched by his community for loving a white woman, she thought before she sank into her chair and dozed off.

  She woke up, startled. Oh, damn. She’d been dreaming about Willa Rose, hadn’t she?

  A thought came to her as crystal blue as the sky. This book belongs to her family. Were the Greenbergs still in town? Was Emily’s birth family the McGlashens who were spawned by Willa Rose and Ez? It certainly looked that way, but Paige was still researching.

  “Well,” Jon said as he walked up to her, “are you ready for supper?”

  “Supper? How long have I been sleeping?”

  “A few hours,” he said, shrugging. He sat down. “Are you feeling well?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine. I was dreaming about Willa Rose.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t remember much about it,” she said. “But I awoke with the thought that I’d like to get this book in the hands of her family.”

  “We need to prove that the McGlashens are indeed her family.”

  She nodded. “I never really cared for Emily McGlashen. She was so mean to Vera. It was unnecessary, and I’ve always thought there was more to it than the dance studios competition.”

  “What do you mean? What could it be?” Jon said.

  “I’ve no idea,” she said. “But even so, it was a cruel way to die. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

  Jon nodded. “Quite right.” He paused. “Has there been any break in the case?”

  “I don’t know. The last I heard, Annie and Bryant were up to something. God knows what.”

  Chapter 60

  Annie was working on deadline. The first draft of her book on the NMO was due next week. Files and papers were scattered all over her bed. Taxes, taxes, she thought. Where did I put the tax file? She searched all over her bed and finally found the folder she was looking for. Okay the NMO was a nonprofit and tax exempt. She scanned down the forms in front. Suddenly the word Alicorn leapt off the page.

  “What?” she said out loud, even though she was completely alone in the house.

  The name John Reilly was listed with the other board members.

  She dialed Bryant.

  “Yeah?” he said into the phone. “What’s up, Annie?”

  “I can’t believe I overlooked this. I have evidence of a link between Alicorn and the NMO.”

  “We knew that was the case,” he said. Suddenly his voice was crisper, more alert. “Nothing wrong with that. I mean, nothing illegal about it.” But then he grew quiet on the other end of the line. “Do me a favor and copy that for me,” he said, then breathed into the phone.

  “Have you checked out Reilly?” Annie asked.

  “Yep,” he said.

  “And?”

  “Annie, this part doesn’t concern you,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I can’t tell you a thing about what I’m finding out these days. It’s all conjecture at this point. What I have is hunches. Scattered pieces of information and evidence. I’m looking for that moment when everything comes together. Or that moment when something clicks. Right now I feel like we are building a strong case, but I have no idea where it’s leading,” he said.

  “You can’t tell me about Reilly?” she asked.

  “No, I can’t. But feel free to dig around yourself. Well, knowing you . . . you’ll do that, anyway. I’m surprised you haven’t,” he said.

  “Well, I have found out that he was on the board of the lab. The same time as Emily McGlashen was on the board of the foundation,” she said, looking at the papers scattered all over her bed, which was her makeshift office. She was met with silence. “I’ll try to get you a copy of this soon.”

  “Good,” he said and hung up.

  Bryant was not behaving in a copacetic manner. He wasn’t his usual prickly self, nor was he coming on to her with sweet and sexy words, for which she was grateful. But he seemed reticent, and it troubled Annie. Her gut told her he was hiding something, but she didn’t have the time to follow up, with her deadline closing in on her. It was all she could do to feed and bathe her boys. And forget about cleaning. As soon as she finished this book, she was going to clean her house. Top to bottom.

  So close to finishing this book. Well, it couldn’t hurt to do a brief Google search on Reilly.

  U Va. Professor of Business Receives Prestigious Marketing Award.

  “The Links between Old-Time Appalachian Music and Irish Music,” by John C. Reilly.

  Annie eyes scanned farther down.

  “On the Irish: Always Superior,” by J. W. Reilly.

  Was J. W. Reilly John W. Reilly? She clicked on the article. No photo. But the bio stated he was a professor of business. It must be him. She read over the article.


  He wrote about literature, art, and so on and sort of poked fun at the idea of any one group of people being referred to as superior, even though the Irish clearly had their act together, according to him.

  Well, that was a relief.

  Just then her doorbell rang.

  When she answered the door, half expecting to see the postman, she was surprised to find the Greenbergs.

  “Hi. Come on in,” Annie said, embarrassed that her house was such a mess. Toys were scattered about; books and papers were piled on tables and in corners. At least the kitchen table was relatively clear.

  “Thank you,” Rachel said.

  “Please sit down,” Annie said. “Can I get you something?”

  “No thanks,” Rachel said, sitting on the couch. “We just came by to thank you for helping us out a few weeks back. We’re getting ready to leave.”

  “Today?” Annie said.

  “No,” Donald replied. “Probably by the end of the week.”

  “Do you know if the police have any leads?” Rachel asked.

  “Not really,” Annie said. “But I do know they are working on the case. Have you found anything else in Emily’s papers?”

  They looked at one another and shifted in their seats.

  “We found another hidden journal,” Donald said.

  “We’d rather not talk about it,” Rachel said, taking a deep sigh. “Emily was never an easy child, and she grew into a complicated woman. She was hard on us. She was hard on everybody. We wonder as her parents . . . what we could have done differently . . . but there comes a time . . . when you just have to accept that people are people, and there’s not much you can do, even as a parent.”

  Where was this conversation going?

  “But we loved her and would have continued loving her if she had given us a chance. We would have been more a part of her life. She assumed that we couldn’t deal with it,” Rachel said.

  “I don’t understand,” Annie said.