Cíara wished he’d get on with his story. She managed a surreptitious glance at her wall clock, struggling not to roll her eyes or drum her fingernails on the desk. She'd have to leave soon if she was to make it to Waterford in time to suss out the heiress's fiancé.
But Frank went on. “I've often wondered why Peggy chose me, when she could have had any man in the county. She's a lovely, energetic, intelligent woman and in twenty-five years, she's stood by me.” Cíara softened when she saw that his eyes were wet.
Still, she wished he'd get to the point. If having a bit of a crush on a famous person were a crime, about eighty per cent of the grown women in Ireland – and 100 per cent of the teenaged girls – would be in jail.
The paragon Peggy had stood by Frank when farming was down and he’d had to make the painful decision to sell up. She’d worked part-time herself to support him through some college courses, and had been a major cheerleader for him when he’d gone to work as a real estate agent. And faithful all those years, he could swear it.
When he'd finally been driven to ask her about her day, she'd blushed and said she'd been out and about with Ruth. Never a word about seeing Winters. And then she'd sat watching her favorite soap opera and humming an old tune: “My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose'.
“I tell you, Miss Somers, I was about ready to go and rip all those innocent rose bushes out of our garden! And I'd called in at the library the next afternoon and who should be there but Winters, huddled up over some book in the reference section with my Peggy! And they were laughing!”
“Mr. O'Keefe, don’t you think maybe you're taking this all a little too seriously?” Cíara asked. “Why not just wait it out – your wife is sure to get over this soon enough.”
“Oh, but that's not the worst of it. I woke up last night to hear Peggy calling his name 'Jonathon…Jonathon…' and she was smiling. Just like a woman who's…who's…well, you know!”
Like a woman who's just had very satisfactory sex. The unspoken words hung in the office and Cíara nearly laughed out loud. Having wet dreams about a man you fancied wasn't exactly a crime, either. But Frank's next words wiped the smile off her face.
“So I got out of bed – she didn’t even wake up – and went down the hall to the gun cabinet and got out my hunting rifle!
“Oh, I know, I know. These days you don’t just go shooting someone because he's having an affair with your wife. Civilized people didn’t do things like that. Besides, the gun's old and it hasn't been used in years. I think there's a good chance it would jam and explode in my face – leaving Peggy a widow who could do as she pleased. So I came here, instead, to ask you to sort this out.”
“Well, Mr. O'Keefe – first things first. Give me the key to your gun cabinet!”
* * *
By the time Frank had written out a retainer check and handed over the gun cabinet key, Cíara was thinking they were both over reacting. Frank for thinking his wife was having an affair, and she for thinking this mild-mannered man would actually shoot the notorious writer.
But better safe than sorry, she muttered, grabbing her overnight bag and rushing out into the early afternoon rain.
Harry had promised her a loaner car while the MG was in surgery, so her first stop was at the garage.
“Are you sure about this, Harry?” she asked as they stood in the dusty gloom inside Harry’s garage and eyed the elderly compact three-door hatchback. Bright orange where the primer managed to overcome the dull rust tones that prevailed everywhere else, the car showed every minute of its 15 years of life.
“Ah, no, darling, you know I can trust you to take care of her,” Harry had replied. Which wasn’t exactly what she'd meant. What she’d been trying to ask, looking at the geriatric car was: ‘Do you think it’ll even make it out of Dublin?’ But given Harry’s doting look at the Beast, as she instantly christened the ugly old car, she clamped her lips shut and, instead, issued a prayer to St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers. And she threw in an extra little prayer to St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless cases, for good measure.
But to give the devil his due, Harry knew cars. The ugly Beast purred all the way down from Dublin, through the sweep of road alongside the River Slaney at Enniscorthy, warbled through the tight, tight bends on the New Ross Road, and sang all the way down to Waterford City on the long, straight stretches where she opened up the throttle and let the car have its head.
She was lucky with the day. Nature had decided to display the rich colors of an Irish Spring in a dappled sunshine design, and Cíara had enjoyed the trip. There’d been one tense moment when she’d been involved in a hostile staring contest with a current year Mercedes Benz driver over who got the right of way at the intersection just entering New Ross: A contest she'd easily won, because when you drove a vehicle that looked like the Beast, other drivers with spanking new paintwork backed down first, she soon learned.
Walters' client, heiress Serena McLaughlin, had suggested the ‘test’ of her fiancé’s fidelity quotient should be done while he was at a jewelry convention in Waterford. The rusted Beast drew disdainful glances from the doorman of the posh hotel where the convention was to take place. And, in a show of solidarity with the hotel’s high standards, Nature’s good mood vanished just as Cíara parked, and the heavens opened in a heavy rain shower that in moments had the gutters running with water and debris.
She had no choice but to make a run for the hotel foyer under the openly disapproving gaze of the doorman, her overnight bag held aloft but giving scant protection to her uncovered head. The end result was a lithe redhead in a wet tee shirt who dripped her way across the foyer to an accompaniment of lecherous glances or contemptuous looks, depending on the gender and the inclination of the onlookers. She ignored them all to fix a laser stare on the desk clerk.
“We’ve no rooms left, I’m so sorry.” The heavily made up blonde behind the desk didn't sound the least bit sorry. “There’s a jewelers’ convention here this weekend.”
Cíara groaned inwardly. Had she really been so dumb as to expect to sashay into the hotel and get a room knowing her prey was at a convention in the same hotel?
“Do you know of any place that might have vacancies?” she asked imperiously, hoping to stare the desk clerk into submission. The woman smirked, then brightened as she said: “I could call the Osprey’s Nook for you.” Cíara’s face must have registered her reaction to the name – how could any place called the Osprey’s Nook even have inside bathrooms? The clerk added maliciously: “It’s probably the only place not booked up. This is a very busy weekend for conventions and festivals.”
Cíara nodded, making a snap executive decision that she didn’t want to spend the night slumbering in the Beast. Moments later she was heading out into the downpour with an address and a confirmed booking at the Osprey’s Nook. She tried to forget the nasty little smirk on the desk clerk's face as she had handed over her directions. Just how bad can it be for a couple of nights? she muttered to herself as she battled the late afternoon traffic.
Passing the historic ruin of Reginald’s Tower for the third time, she stopped to ask a harassed-looking young woman struggling with a briefcase and bulging plastic grocery bags for directions to the Osprey's Nook. She hoped the pitying look the woman gave her was just down to a trick of the light. Ten minutes later, she was turning the Beast onto a leafy laneway under a small wooden sign announcing The Osprey’s Nook, Bed and Breakfast. Through the trees, she could see a tall, forlorn looking Victorian house wrapped in the air of the motel house in Psycho.
With an envious glance at the nearby pub, where a ‘No Vacancies’ sign in red neon mocked her, she gingerly guided the Beast up the rutted driveway. Standing on the front steps listening to the clanging of an old-fashioned doorbell echoing deep in the cavernous regions of the house, she looked back towards the car and thought it suited the house – sort of rusted and past its prime. Both maybe ready for the wreckers.
“Lookin’ fer someone?” She hadn't he
ard the big front door open behind her and jumped at the raspy cigarettes-and-whisky voice. Part of her mind rejoiced that some maintenance work obviously took place because the hinges of the door hadn’t squealed, while the other part was trying not to gasp as she took in the woman who peered shortsightedly out of the opening.
Small and as wide as she was tall, Grace Muldoon sported crimson hair, orange Spandex bike shorts, and a man’s bright yellow shirt that stretched alarmingly over her bosom. To complete the ensemble she wore white ankle socks and tiny black court shoes with two-inch heels. A cigarette with an inch-long ash clung precariously to her red-painted bottom lip. Cíara swallowed over the constriction in her throat, and asked: “Mrs. Muldoon? The desk clerk at the Tara Bay Hotel called and booked a room for me – Cíara Somers?”
“Ah, you’re the one that snotty bitch down there called me about, are you? And me in the middle of me dinner, too. Well, don’t just stand there like leftovers, come on in, girl.” The woman turned back inside the house, leaving Cíara contemplating escape. Maybe sleeping in the Beast wouldn’t be so bad, after all.
But fifteen minutes later, she was seated at a broad polished dining table littered with quilted fabric panels in various stages of completion, and was breathing in the scent of savory stew so incredible she thought she might faint from pleasure. Her overnight bag was safely stowed away in a sparklingly clean room with crisp white real linen sheets and a pale green candlewick bedspread. The kitchen which adjoined the dining room was so scrubbed that surgery could have been safely performed on the gleaming counter tops.
“Betcha ya were like all them others. Ye took a look at the house and thought, it’s rubbish?” Grace said without rancor as she plopped a pretty Arklow Pottery plate piled with beef stew down in front of Cíara, and another side plate with moist brown soda bread slathered in real butter to go with it. Gratefully, Cíara noted the woman had removed the cigarette that had earlier dangled from her bottom lip, but now she prepared to light up again.
“Stop me if it bothers you,” Grace challenged. Cíara wondered if any guest had ever actually had the balls to object to the landlady’s nicotine habit. She doubted it. Grace picked up one of the half-finished quilt panels and, squinting through the cigarette smoke, began to pick at the fabric with the tiniest, neatest stitches Cíara had ever seen.
“Don’t you ever get ash on the fabric?” Cíara dared to ask as the stew disappeared and she began to feel more like herself again.
“Gawd, no, my love, I'm really careful not to do that. I learned quilting when me and my hubby, God Rest His Soul.” The little woman, paused, crossed herself and rolled her eyes heavenwards. “We lived in the States for a time, and these beautiful quilts were all the rage. I went to buy one from an old lady who lived down the road from us out in this little town in West Virginia. She looked at me, big with our eldest, and gave me such a talking-to. ‘You shouldna be buying a quilt, Missy,’ she told me. ‘You gotta make your own if you expect to have a happy family.’
“Well, me Ma had taught me mending and such, but I’d never thought of needlework as art. That old American lady taught me, and now I sell them to tourists here and make enough to help me get by. I Love doing it, too. Sure, it relaxes me, so it does.”
Cíara had watched her throughout the speech, amazed that the woman’s fingers never faltered, that no stitch dared get out of line as she worked and talked. There was no doubt that appearances could be deceiving, if walking contradictions like Grace Muldoon were anything to go by.
The meal over, she was summarily dismissed to her room. Grace announced that she was cleaning up and going for a nap, and ‘woe-betide them that disturbs me rest’. At a loose end and hoping to summon some of the excitement she thought should be the grace-note on which a case starts, she pulled out the file folder she had received from Walters and an itinerary for the jewelers’ convention that she had purloined from the Tara Bay Hotel under the disapproving gaze of the desk clerk.
If the studio photograph was anything to go by, Anton Wallace, fiancé to Walters’ client, was a good-looking man. A little effete for Cíara’s taste – she’d always held the conviction that any man with nicer hair than her own was definitely out of the date stakes – but she could see why his fiancée had some anxieties. The man was built on the slender side, with thick blond hair teasing his shoulders and swept luxuriously back over his forehead like a young Adonis, as the old movies used to say. He looked boldly at the camera, deep emerald eyes taunting the viewer to make the first move.
And Cíara was certain lots of women would be happy to make the first move, although personally she felt that laying your ego on the line like that was probably foolish. Rejection was one thing, rejection by Adonis too painful to consider.
Unable to resist, she also flicked open the file folder that contained the information that Frank O’Keefe had given her. She remembered the bitter note in the older man's voice as he'd explained that the man he suspected of cuckolding him was a famous writer. She'd done her research; in fact, had bought one of the J. V. Winters' books from a vast display at a local store. There was no photograph in the file, and the one on the book's back cover showed a broad shouldered, sun-glassed figure with a cowboy hat who could have been Quasimodo for all that was visible of his face. But an impression of sensuality seemed to reach out from the picture and caress her – Cíara sucked in a sudden breath and shook herself.
You've been too long without a man in your life, she thought and then allowed herself a few moments to fantasize, wondering if maybe he had some terrible deformity that allowed him to write beautiful love stories but prevented him from ever showing his face in public for fear he could never be loved. A sort of literary Phantom of the Opera.
Probably just adding to the attraction by playing hard-to-get. What a pity guys like him took their own myths so seriously, that their attitude extended to helping themselves to other men’s wives. Despite the funny little quiver that ran on hot feet up her spine, she knew the man was no good. No one who understood women well enough to fulfill such feminine needs in his writing yet willingly jeopardized marriages like good, decent Frank O’Keefe’s could be worth a moment’s thought.
Dismissing J.V. Winters and the slight unease she felt about the man, she returned to the convention schedule. She was looking for an evening get-together where she could observe her prey in a social environment and see how he interacted with other people involved in a similar line of work. Tonight she intended to just watch – tomorrow, Saturday, there was to be a real knees-up dinner and party at the hotel for the conventioneers, followed by breakfast meetings Sunday morning and then it was home time for everyone.
She dug her phone from her bag and lying back on the soft, comfortable bed, pressed a familiar number. Granny Somers answered after a few rings, demanding to know what her darling girl was doing out of the city and down south, where everybody knew there were only savages. Cíara grinned at the feisty old woman’s sharp tongue, explained that she was on a case and expected to be back in Dublin late Monday if all went well, Tuesday otherwise.
She repeated the name of the bed and breakfast she was staying in – which brought a hoot of laughter from the other end of the phone – and waited as Granny wrote down the phone numbers, admonished her to be sure to eat her roughage and not talk to strange men unless they were really rich and attractive.
Grace Muldoon and Granny Somers would probably be the best of buddies, Cíara thought and then shuddered at the prospect of having the two of them running her life, and she made a mental note to never let the pair meet.
Next, she phoned the Walters agency and left a message for her client that she was in Waterford and the investigation was underway. Lying back on the bed was a mistake. The comfort level was too high, the siren call of a quick nap too strong to resist. Two hours later she awoke with a start, the room in semi-darkness and her limbs chilled as the temperature dropped. Two sounds had brought her back to consciousness – the irritable clan
king of elderly radiator pipes warming up as hot water traveled through them, and another, less comforting sound that froze the blood in her veins.
Grace Muldoon was an opera fan. At least, when she was singing herself. Her rendition from La Bohême jolted Cíara into full and ungrateful wakefulness. Checking her watch, she had just enough time to tart herself up and head back to the Tara Bay Hotel to join a bunch of wealthy jewelers in a night out on the tiles.
She slipped quietly down the darkened stairs, not wishing to interrupt her landlady in full flow of an aria, when a sudden silence made her pause on the bottom step. The silence didn’t last – a voice bawled: “And where do you think you’re going, all dolled up like that? What would yer mother say if she could see her girl child going out half-naked?”
And suddenly Cíara felt like a fourteen year old sneaking out for a first, illicit date. She slowly turned to face a glowering Grace Muldoon.
“Well, girl?”
“It’s all the fashion rage at the moment, Mrs. Muldoon – and it’s really quite decent,” Cíara said, twirling around to show off the more modest of the two evening dresses she’d brought with her. This one was a little black number – with the emphasis on little – with tiny cut-out triangles at strategic places and a tight skirt with a side slit that stopped decently just below her high-cut briefs.
“That’s all the rage? It’s positively indecent, it is. And where would you be going?” the older woman demanded, eyes still flashing.
Cíara considered making a story up on the spur of the moment. Something nice and safe, involving a fiancé and a clutch of protective friends and maybe future wedding bells. But looking at her landlady, now dressed in shocking pink silk with a green baseball cap turned around on her orange hair, she gave up. Most women would find her real mission incredible and would settle for the fairy tale security. Not Grace Muldoon.
Winters & Somers Page 3