“Jake, there are no divided loyalties. You and I, we shared one night, that’s all. Grandma and I, we’ve shared almost thirty years. Despite what may or may not be the truth, I love her. Always will.” Without hesitation, she lifted the second drink and sipped it. “You, Jake Bernstein, have used me. You exploited me to get to my grandmother. How can I ever forgive that?”
She stared at his handsome face. She’d been blinded by his beauty, swept away by his attention and their enjoyment of each other’s company. She’d felt such an immediate, strong connection with him that she thought he returned it one-hundred-percent. It was different now. He’d deceived her. Played her like a harp.
So the blinders were off and she could now see beyond the good looks of this man and the emotions he inspired in her? Lies. Deception. The reality pierced her like little dagger-stabs, made her bleed in a hundred places. Made her question everything he’d murmured to her last night, every look, every touch, every kiss.
Guilt and compassion suffused his sculpted features. Why should he feel anything for her? He’d done his job; it wasn’t personal. He was a federal agent, doing what he had been sent to do. The look he leveled on her now, though, was very personal. He cared for her, that was apparent, just not enough. Dammit! When was she going to learn? Even now, he could move her, pluck those damned heartstrings of hers.
What a fool she was!
“Maybe you can’t forgive me. I don’t blame you if you never forgive me. I hope you can, some day.” One big hand smoothed the side locks of her hair out of her face. It was a tender, apologetic gesture but she was inured against it.
“Please don’t touch me,” she said, hating the plea in her tone. As though she were actually yearning for his touch.
“I can’t stop,” Jake rasped, “God help me, I can’t shut off how I feel about you. I let this happen—”
“Don’t touch me,” she repeated, this time with bite, “or I’ll tell your superiors how you tricked me. How you seduced me to get information out of me. Isn’t there an FBI rule against doing that to a fellow American?”
Jake removed his hand, called the bartender over and ordered a Guinness. Warily, he turned back to her. “With undercover assignments, there are few rules,” he said evenly. “Survival’s primary, then you play it by ear and learn what you can. I’m doing my job, Meg. I just hadn’t planned on falling for you in the process. You think I wanted this? I need this complication like a bullet hole through the heart.”
Silence followed as they both downed their drinks. Though he sounded sincere, Meg decided she couldn’t trust him. This could be another lie, another ruse to entice her to help him crucify her grandmother.
“Meg, come with me. I’ve got an appointment with a woman, a Millie O’Loughlin. She’s retired but still works part-time at the cathedral rectory. She used to be Father Dillon’s secretary. Y’know, the priest Mary McCoy corresponded with all during the war. Well, this woman’s got a file of papers and photos you need to see. Maybe they’ll exonerate your grandmother; maybe not.”
Meg looked at him and frowned. What now? More ways to entrap her and her grandmother? “No fuckin’ way. You can dig dirt on my grandma all by yourself!”
Jake screwed up his mouth at Meg’s angry outburst. “Maybe we could get an early dinner afterwards,” Jake added somberly, as if he were inviting her to a funeral. “At The Muckross Stag. You could speak to the son of Mary McCoy’s first cousin, Mike McCoy. The old Irish guy you met in Texas about ten years ago. He came to your grandmother’s house. Do you remember him?”
A memory sparked. Yes, she recalled that strange afternoon after she’d arrived home from school. The tall, skinny Irishman with the charming lilt to his voice. He’d been looking for his cousin, also named Mary McCoy. From Killarney.
Meg frowned and squirmed on her bar stool. She looked away as the memories of that strange afternoon crystallized in her mind. She remembered feeling sorry for him. He’d traveled so far, only to be disappointed. Her grandmother wasn’t this Mary McCoy that the old man was looking for. He said the color of their eyes was different. His cousin had turquoise eyes; her grandmother’s blue eyes were dark, like sapphires. Like hers. He’d studied her grandmother’s face for a long time while he drank some iced tea. When he took his leave, Meg had walked him down the driveway and had seen him off in his rental car.
She recalled how strange it had seemed at the time. Meg’s brows pinched together and she nodded. “How do you know about that visit?”
“MI5. After that visit, the old man, Mike McCoy, went to British intelligence and reported your grandmother. He started a file, an investigation, after that. Told them he suspected your grandmother of doing away with his cousin Mary and assuming her identity. All their biographical details fit, just not the eye color. He also said that his cousin wouldn’t have hesitated to acknowledge him, if they’d met up again. That old Irishman kept bugging MI5 for years. Determined old guy. Well, that man’s son, Mike McCoy, Junior, was the man on the ferry.”
“I don’t believe it,” Meg whispered.
“Meg, Mike Junior inherited his father’s half of The Muckross Stag. Mary McCoy of Killarney inherited half ownership also. Her parents, the ones who drowned mysteriously in Ross Bay, left the pub to the older gentleman you met in Texas and their daughter, Mary McCoy. Did your grandmother ever tell you that she was part owner of The Muckross Stag? She would’ve known this before leaving for London.”
At her surprised, open-mouthed stare, he gave her an ironic shrug. “Guess not. The real Mary McCoy would’ve known this.”
Meg half stumbled from her bar stool. Jake grabbed her and uprighted her. The strength of his arms reminded her of how tightly he’d held her during their night of lovemaking. As if he’d been afraid of letting her go. Her thoughts swirled around in a stew of emotions.
The gist of Jake’s remarks finally hit her in the face like a cold, wet gust of wind. “My God! You think Grandma killed Mary McCoy and stole her identity? So she could take her place at the War Office? So she could spy for the Nazis?”
“Yes, I do. So does MI5. Five days ago, I didn’t think so. Now I do. I’m sorry, Meg, but all the evidence points that way. I’m heading to the cathedral now. I need to see those papers.”
He paused, his dark eyes drilling into her. Challenging her. “Are you coming?”
Angrily, Meg brushed off his hands and stood balanced on her own two feet. Maybe she’d find something that would clear her grandmother of all suspicion. “Lead the way,” she snapped. She rocked a little from side to side.
His dark brows arched guardedly as he flicked her a small, crooked grimace. “We’ll take a cab.”
****
St. Mary’s Cathedral was situated on the corner of Port Road and New Street. Meg kept pace with Jake’s long strides as they skirted in silence the front and side of the enormous, neo-Gothic church. It was located on what appeared to be five acres of grassy grounds, bordered on all sides by a low, stone wall.
Jake apparently had scouted out the location of the rectory office, and minutes later they were standing in the threshold of the hundred-and-fifty year-old, gray-stoned building. The interior, an antechamber and sitting room, was dim, a small fireplace in the corner throwing off dancing firelight and dispelling the gathering chill in the air. Beyond those rooms, a short, middle-aged woman in a modern nun’s uniform—black skirt, black wool sweater over white blouse, black hose and clunky shoes—ushered them beyond the public rooms of the rectory into a large, well-lit office.
“Please wait here,” the nun said quietly, then left.
Odd, Meg thought; her grandmother had been raised Catholic, yet neither she nor Grandpa Snider had raised Meg and Jack as Catholics. In fact, they hadn’t been raised to follow any particular faith. Perhaps their grandparents’ wartime experiences had destroyed their religious faiths. God help her, but her curiosity was piqued.
Meg looked around the square-shaped office. Every wall was obscured by four-draw
er file cabinets, most of them metal, but some of the wooden ones appeared to qualify as antiques. Evidently, the office staff was clinging to old-school storage procedures, although Meg did spy one computer on top of a big, corner desk; an adjacent table held a printer and a small copy machine. A moment later, Millie O’Loughlin appeared through a side door.
“Good afternoon,” she said cheerily. While Jake made introductions, Meg sized her up. The plump pensioner wore her dyed-brown hair in a short, frizzy hairdo and her severe wool trousers and sweater loosely; her cherubic, plain face bore no makeup but held a kind, warm smile for her visitors.
Meg gave her a weak smile and shook her hand, wishing she’d worn something nicer than her cargo pants, bulky knit sweater and sneakers. Nevertheless, she sensed that the woman could be trusted to tell them the truth and that was the main point.
She sat in one of the wing chairs offered to her next to the receptionist’s desk, apparently the site of Millie’s part-time job. Jake took the wingback chair next to Meg and they both declined the hot tea that Millie offered them. The clerk went behind her desk, plopped down and folded her hands on top of a thin cardboard box, the size of an office-supply store’s hanging folders box.
“When you called, Mr. Bernstein, I took the liberty of retrieving the McCoy file and made photocopies of everything in it, including the photos. You’re both the first visitors to this file since old Mike McCoy came here, asking for it—oh, nine or ten years ago.”
“Thanks, that’s kind of you,” Jake said. Meg could tell by the earnestness in his voice he intended to get down to business quickly. “Meg’s grandmother is Patrick McCoy’s daughter and is now a naturalized American citizen, as I told you on the phone. Mary McCoy Snider is, as you can imagine, an elderly woman and is resting at our hotel. So it fell upon her granddaughter to collect all the information in that file. Of special importance is the deed to the pub, The Muckross Stag, a point of contention since Mary Snider is half owner and might consider selling her portion to the other co-owner and present manager, Mike McCoy, Junior.”
“Yes, of course.” Millie lifted the box and passed it to Meg. “I know poor Young Mike, as we call him. His father, Old Mike, passed on a couple of years ago. Young Mike’s always having a devil of a time with his bipolar disorder. When he goes off his medication, he gets a little…uh, squirrelly. Usually ends up in a stew of trouble. But then he gets back on the pills and rights himself. Father Donovan was a good friend to him, tried to encourage him to keep his spirits up and not get depressed over his affliction.”
“Yes, I spoke to Mike at length,” said Jake, “and he’s looking forward to getting this pub deal squared away. He made a commotion at the hotel last night and was arrested, but the Garda let him out today. We’re going to see him as soon as we finish up here.”
Millie’s plump face split into a wide smile.
“Oh, good. Young Mike’s a decent sort of man when he’s on his pills. Resolving that pub ownership problem has been his life’s goal, it seems. His spirits will rise once that problem’s taken care of.” The woman looked over to Meg for confirmation. Meg nodded in assent. “Now, Mr. Bernstein, you said you had a few questions about Father Dillon’s letters to Mary during the war. This is very curious, your interest. Old Mike was the only other person who wanted copies of those wartime letters. I remember Father Dillon telling me about it one day, shortly before he died almost five years ago. By the by, that’s him on the wall over there.”
They looked over at a large black-and-white framed photo of a pleasant-featured, dark-haired man in a priest’s collar and black shirt and trousers. He was smiling at someone off-camera. Meg stared. So that was Father Dillon, the only man her grandmother had written to during the war. The only one Meg knew about, anyway; they must’ve been very close, the two of them. Yet, her grandmother had made no mention of Father Dillon when he died. That would’ve been about four or five years after the old Irishman had come to visit them. That visit at their home near Dallas with old Mike McCoy seemed to be key to this entire mystery. Such an opportunity, yet her grandmother had never asked the old man from Killarney about the pub or anything about her favorite cleric, Father Dillon. That was bizarre.
Meg reminded herself that they’d already established the fact that her grandmother was not the old Irishman’s cousin. Meg had assumed there’d been another Mary McCoy he was looking for. Meg frowned, deeply perplexed.
“As I said, Father Dillon stated that one day people would come looking for those letters. He’d kept them, tho’ I can’t be certain why, but he was a clever man, always one or two steps ahead of everyone else. He said to me, those letters were very important and some day the authorities would need them. What he meant by that, he didn’t say and I didn’t ask. But as you’d have it, before Father passed on, Old Mike came by and asked for them and everything else in that file. He said he was sharing them with MI5. True or not, I gave him copies, of course, since he was kin. What he did with them, I do not know.”
Meg knew. Jake told her old Mike McCoy had sent copies of everything to MI5. Now, years later, they’d begun their own investigation.
Millie handed a tied, small bundle of coarse, yellowed-paper envelopes to Jake. Meg eyed them with concern. She decided to open the box then and there and peruse the contents. The letters, she’d look at later. Another possibility nagged her.
“My grandmother’s birthdate is June twelfth, 1920. Was there no other Mary McCoy born in this parish that same year? Or even a year or two later?” she asked the woman. Her grandmother had always been a little vain. Maybe she’d fudged on her birth year.
“I looked at the cathedral’s ledgers from 1915 to 1925,” Millie said, glancing at Jake, “since Mr. Bernstein asked the same question when he called. There were a few other McCoy families in County Kerry at that time but no girls with that exact name were born or baptized here at St. Mary’s during that time period. The ledger for 1920 confirmed that a Mary Lewis McCoy was baptized in St. Mary’s parish in August of that year. She was the two-month-old daughter of Patrick and Elizabeth McCoy, of Killarney. June twelfth was the birth date given.”
Okay, some things matched. Birth date for one, Meg thought. She exhaled a breath of relief, felt her pulse slow a bit. She felt vindicated. Gran hadn’t lied. Jake’s eyes met hers.
You see.
For a few minutes, she and Jake pored over the different items in their laps. Meg rifled through birth certificates; a copy of the cathedral’s banns for Patrick McCoy and his betrothed, Elizabeth Lewis; a marriage certificate; the coroner’s report and death certificate of Patrick McCoy and his wife—listed as accidental drownings; the deed of purchase and the subsequent bill of sale for the house on Countess Road, the same for the “petrol store”, or gas station, that Patrick McCoy once owned; Mary McCoy’s matriculation records…
After looking briefly at three black-and-white photographs of Patrick McCoy, his wife and young daughter, and one very old, tattered, sepia-toned snapshot of Patrick and his tall, younger brother, Mike, Meg came upon the secondary school graduation portrait-photo of the daughter, Mary.
Meg gasped.
Jake looked up. Millie half-stood.
“That’s the same photo the old Irishman, Old Mike, showed me,” Meg cried, “that day in Texas. I remember studying it closely and telling him—” She stopped, her hand flying up to her mouth. Shut up!
Jake looked over at the photo, not realizing that ten years ago Meg had declared the photo was absolutely not that of her grandmother. Similar in some ways—the facial features and coloring, yes—but not the same person. To a casual observer, an elderly Mary Snider could indeed be the younger Mary McCoy. But not to someone who knew her as well as Meg did.
Meg leaned forward and speared Millie with an intense glare. “Are you sure that this is Mary Lewis McCoy, the daughter of Patrick and Elizabeth McCoy?”
“Quite sure, Miss. That was the photo Mary gave to Father Dillon upon her matriculation. He said he looked
at the sweet girl’s photo every time he wrote to her in London.”
Meg’s heart stopped. Her eyes unfocused. Gran’s not this woman. Not this Mary McCoy.
Then who was her grandmother?
“What did you tell Old Mike McCoy about that photo, Meg?” asked Jake.
She pulled herself together rapidly. “I-I think I said something about it being like all high school senior poses.”
Their gazes met for a split second; from Jake’s expression, he knew she was holding back something. She had to deflect his attention from the photo. All the while, she couldn’t ignore the sinking, roiling feeling in her stomach.
Her mind was spinning. She felt sick but fought to hold together her composure. “Those letters Grandma wrote to Father Dillon?” she asked shakily. “Anything?”
He nodded grimly. “Oh yes.”
So there it was, their standoff. If she wasn’t sharing, neither was he.
“Is Patrick McCoy’s will in there, Meg?” Jake asked, his eyes hooded. “Concerning the heirs to the pub?”
Meg shuffled a few more papers in the box and found them. The handwritten Last Wills and Testaments of Patrick McCoy and his wife, Elizabeth Lewis McCoy. A thought struck her: Her grandmother never claimed to have a middle name; yet it seemed to be an Irish tradition.
She handed them to Jake. Then she shuffled the papers and looked back at the birth certificate of Patrick’s and Mary’s daughter. Mary Lewis McCoy. Her grandmother did have a middle name. Lewis, her mother’s maiden name. Now, why would she—
No one ever forgot their middle name, did they? How could someone forget such a harmless thing as a middle name?
Except—as the photograph proved—her grandmother was not Mary McCoy. Not the Mary McCoy, whose family history they were now poring over, like voyeurs.
A sick despair overcame her. Her stomach revolted although she hadn’t eaten all day. Willing it down couldn’t keep the terrible truth from erupting out of her throat. Meg shot to her feet, spilling the contents of the box, choked out what she hoped was an apology to Millie, and ran out of the rectory office. She made it to the cobblestone pathway outside before vomiting into the nearest bush. Wave after wave of nausea swept up and out, purging her of her last shred of hope. Until all she had left were dry heaves.
A Bodyguard of Lies Page 23