Death of an Irish Mummy

by Catie Murphy

  “I am,” Megan admitted, still smiling with surprise. “You snuck up on me.”

  “It’s the dogs,” the old lady said. “I’ve had a fear of them since I was a girl, so I hid and then I said to meself, Maire Cahill, I said, you’re seventy-eight years of age and not one of those creatures is higher than your knee, so what is it you’re afeared of? And the woman’s got them on their leads like a decent sort, so screw your courage to the sticking point and go on out there, I said, and so I did.”

  “Oh! I’m sorry! They’re friendly,” Megan promised. “And I don’t let them off their leads, but I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t know there was anyone out here to scare. And you’ve got a weapon,” she said with a nod at the bulky metal detector.

  Maire hefted it thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought of that so. And there’s not usually anyone here to be scared by,” she allowed. “What’s your story, young woman?”

  “My employers wanted to see the old house, and the gates weren’t locked . . .” At the old lady’s grin, Megan smiled back. “What’s your story, if you don’t mind me asking? Treasure hunting?”

  “Even an old lady needs hobbies,” Maire replied haughtily.

  Megan laughed, and the puppies, interested in the sound, came to wind around her ankles. Staying unentangled kept her feet busy while she talked to the old lady. “Any luck?” She forbore to mention that she was pretty certain using metal detectors for treasure hunting was illegal in Ireland, on the basis that Maire probably already knew, didn’t care, and wasn’t finding much anyway.

  “Eh. A bit of iron ore here and there, but all those Vikings and Normans don’t seem to have left a damn thing worth digging up. What good is a history of invasion if it doesn’t provide a treasure or two?”

  “Well, they had a lot of Ireland to bury things in,” Megan said solemnly.

  Maire cackled. “That’s true enough so. I can see what you’re thinking, though. What a way for an auld wan to spend her time, hm? Shouldn’t I be knitting things for the grandbabbies and having my sisters around for tea?”

  Megan, truthfully, said, “The thought never crossed my mind. Besides, think how happy the grandbabies will be when their nan makes the whole family rich.”

  “The sisters will be bitter over it, though,” Maire predicted and Megan laughed.

  “Family can be tough, huh? But treasure hunting seems like fun.”

  “It gets me out walking and at my age, that’s a good thing.”

  “At any age,” Megan agreed. The dogs finally gave up on winding around her and sat down in the damp grass with sighs of melodramatic patience. Megan clicked at them, encouraging them back to their feet, and smiled at Maire. “I think they’re telling me it’s time to go.”

  Maire clicked her tongue. “Here and I was going to ask them to do the digging for me if I found a bit of gold. Ah, well. Be careful driving out of here. The gardaí like to lurk and see if they can catch trespassers if they know strangers are in town.”

  “And I reckon all of Mohill knows we’re here.” Megan rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the warning. Good luck with the treasure hunting.”

  “I’ll give ye a gold coin if I find a trove,” Maire promised, and Megan, smiling, took the dogs back toward the house.

  CHAPTER 13

  Her phone buzzed with a message as she reached the car, and she paused to towel the dogs off and get them into their carrier before checking it. Just a note from Paul saying he’d keep an eye out for the diary, and had she learned anything interesting herself. Megan, reluctantly eyeing the walk up to the graveyard, tried to think whether they’d learned anything interesting enough in the house to mention having done a little breaking and entering. She could hear the sisters and their incidental escorts coming back toward her, and decided to spare herself the walk to the graveyard.

  “It’s a mess,” Jessie announced as soon as she was within Megan’s earshot. “I don’t know how you’d even know where was safe to dig. You might end up putting Mama in on top of somebody else.”

  “Jessie,” Raquel said in despair, but Sondra, walking awkwardly across the gravel in her tall heels, shook her head.

  “Jessie’s right, Raq, and you know it. Even if we convinced them we’re family, the work that would have to be done just to clean that space up enough to bury someone in it wouldn’t be worth it. And we have a plot at home where everybody is buried together, even Geepaw Patrick. I think Mom would rather be there than in some half-rotten churchyard in Ireland.”

  “You’d rather be there,” Raquel snapped. “Mama had a more romantic soul than you do.”

  Sondra’s nostrils flared and Megan saw the young men exchange wary glances. Apparently forty minutes alone with the Williams sisters had made allies of them, which—honestly—Megan sympathized with. She wanted to imagine their strife came from shock and heartbreak, but she kind of doubted it.

  Jessie said, “I am so tired,” with a note that belayed Megan’s instant suspicion that she was just trying to head off another spat between her sisters. “Was it actually only this morning that we got in? Has Mama really only been dead for a day? How is this even happening? I want—” Her voice wobbled. “I want to go home. I want this to not be happening.”

  Reed tried to step in and offer comfort, but Sondra got there first, enveloping Jessie in a weary hug. Raquel came to join them, and they all sort of crawled into the car without letting go of one another, like an amoeba of Williamses. Megan closed the door behind them, found the two young men looking to her for guidance, and shrugged. Even she felt it had been a terribly long day, and she didn’t have the weight of grief and jet lag pulling her even farther down. She got in the Bentley herself, waved to Reed and Flynn, and left them to figure out their own ways home as she drove the Williamses back to Dublin.

  Rain started falling at the Leitrim border, and once the tears had subsided, Megan’s only companions in the drive back were the hiss of tires on the wet roads and the occasional soft snore from the back seat. She turned the heat up to keep the exhausted sisters warm, and watched Dublin’s amber glow brighten on the horizon as the night grew darker and the drive took them nearer. It was absolutely lashing in city centre, and she got an enormous umbrella from inside the hotel before waking the sisters up to walk them to inside. None of them looked like they even knew where they were, although Raquel gave her a sudden, hard hug as she left them in the Gresham’s lobby.

  The streets glittered black with water that rushed past overfilled gutters as Megan drove across town to drop the dogs off at her flat, then brought the car back to the garage. The cleaning crew was swamped with vehicles all coming in wet at once, so she took half an hour to detail the Bentley herself. Tymon waved gratefully and she nodded, then went into the main office to get a glass of water, but stopped short just inside the door.

  The outside curtains were drawn and the front door’s OPEN sign had been turned to CLOSED, although normally Orla kept the shopfront open and blazing with light until 9 pm. Tonight, though, the reason for closing up early came in the slim, well-shouldered form of Detective Paul Bourke, whose sandy red hair had undergone a neat trim since Megan had last seen him. He’d gotten Orla out from behind the counter somehow, then put himself between her and the way back behind it, leaving her in the space near the door. Although the door provided an obvious escape route, Orla had the aura of being a trapped animal, with her shoulders high and her body language shrinking away from Bourke.

  The detective lifted his gaze from the notepad he wrote on and acknowledged Megan with a short nod. She said, “Oh, hi, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” and scurried to the far wall, where a water cooler sat in a recess. She filled a cup, mumbled, “Sorry” again, and hurried back to the garage, where she all but seized Tymon and hissed, “What’s going on in there?”

  “We don’t know, we were hoping you’d find out! He’s your friend and all!”

  “Yeah, but he’s a cop first. It’s not like he told me he was coming out to talk to
Orla. Why’s he talking to Orla?”

  “Because Orla can’t keep her gob shut.” Cillian Walsh, who was tall, black-haired, strong-jawed, and, at twenty-eight, much too young for Megan to be interested in, got out of the vehicle he was pulling into the garage just in time to hear the end of their conversation. “She’s after telling everyone that one of her clients is a countess of the old blood. You know some of her mates are IRA from the old days, and they don’t care for the idea of an heir turning up. There’s folks still alive who remember when the old earl died.”

  “They must have been kids,” Megan protested. “He died in 1952. Well, okay, I guess some of them could have been adults, but there can’t be many left.”

  “It’s not how many they are, but how bitter. And some of those lads, it’s not themselves doing the killing anymore, but their sons and grandsons who’ve been radicalized.”

  “Right, but—wait. Are you telling me Cherise Williams might be dead because Orla couldn’t stop bragging to her old militant friends about the heiress to an Anglo-Irish earldom and they just couldn’t stand the idea of somebody like that being around?”

  Cillian gave a shrug that meant basically, yeah, and Megan’s voice rose with urgency. “But doesn’t that mean that her daughters are in danger too?”

  “Shite. I guess it might?”

  Megan’s hands turned themselves into claws that she rattled toward the office. “I swear I could kill her, if that’s what’s happened!” Detective Bourke walked past the main garage doors and Megan shouted, “Paul!” after him. He paused, obviously not surprised, and waited for her to catch up.

  “You know I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, Megan.” He flipped the collar of his trench coat up, protecting himself against a northerly wind driving the rain hard.

  “I’m not asking you to. I’m asking if the Williams girls are in danger and if anything is being done to protect them.”

  “That is, in fact, commenting on an ongoing investigation.” Bourke sighed and lowered his voice. “I have people watching them, all right, Megan? Does that satisfy you?”

  “On the one hand, no, because I’m desperate for details, but yes. Yeah.” Megan put her hand on his arm. “Thank you, Paul.”

  “It’s my job, Megan, and you might not end up thanking me if your boss goes down as an accessory to murder.”

  “Wouldn’t that mean she helped move the body, or something? Gossip isn’t accessorizing.” The warmth drained from Megan’s body. “Oh my god, she didn’t help move the body, did she?”

  Bemusement flickered over Bourke’s face. “When did you get so familiar with the details of what different terms mean?”

  “I’ve had a weird year, Paul.”

  “I suppose you have, at that. Just stay away from it, Megan. For my sake, if you can’t keep your nose out of it for your own. My boss is spitting nails.”

  “All right, well, I’m probably driving the sisters around some more tomorrow, if that’s any use to you and your protection detail.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “But I’m going to anyway, so there we are.”

  “There we are.” Bourke sighed, turned the collar of his coat up again, and left Megan behind on the sidewalk. She watched him for a moment, all drama with his long stride and the trench laden with rain, then shivered hard and went back inside the garage as a fresh deluge of fat raindrops started to splash down.

  The company staff descended on her like locusts and looked collectively skeptical that she’d learned nothing in her chat with the garda detective. Megan said, “Do you know how much trouble he could get in for telling me anything?”

  “He’s done it before.” Cillian scowled after Bourke. “I thought he fancied you.”

  “Bourke? I don’t know why he would. He’s dating Niamh O’Sullivan. Besides, even if he did, he can’t go around telling me everything about his job.”

  Cillian’s gaze went back to where Bourke had disappeared down the street. “Seriously? That . . . guy . . . is dating Niamh O’Sullivan? He’s nowhere near her league.”

  “And yet you think he’s appropriately into me, which means I must not be anywhere near Nee’s league either, doesn’t it?”

  “What?” Colour rushed to Cillian’s cheeks and he shook his head, flustered. “Uh, no. No, that’s not what I meant at all.”

  Megan said, “Uh-huh,” with all the admonition she could muster, and walked off. To be fair, she didn’t consider herself in Niamh’s league, either. There was a reason Niamh was a movie star and Megan wasn’t. Granted, she liked to think that at least part of that reason was that it had never even crossed her mind, whereas Niamh had wanted to act since childhood. Still, she felt Cillian had deserved the nose-tweaking. She went into the office, mostly because it took her out of sight, and she thought after that withering conversation, a full-on exit was the only appropriate final commentary.

  The shades were still drawn and the door still had the CLOSED sign turned outward. Orla sat on the couch, hands clasped tightly at her compressed knees. Her head was lowered, making her look hardly bigger than a child, although she lifted her gaze when Megan came in and rose, suddenly flushed with relief. “Megan. That detective there thinks I’ve something to do with the murder.”

  “Have you?” The chill in Megan’s own voice surprised her and took Orla completely aback.

  “I’d never! You know that!”

  “What I know right now is that you kept mocking the ‘countess’ and mouthing off to everyone about her pretensions, and that you fired me for even being in proximity to her death. I could see how a person might get suspicious about that. Maybe I saw something that would tie her death to you.”

  “But you didn’t! And you’ve got to prove it!”

  Genuine anger rose in Megan’s chest so hot and fast that she spread her hands on the welcome desk and leaned in on it, eyes closed while she breathed through the spurt of fury. When she trusted her voice again, she said, “Why on earth would I have to do anything for you?” in as mild a tone as she could manage.

  Judging from Orla’s flinch, it was mild enough to be frigid. “I’ve given you a job and a home—”

  “You hired me to work for your company, and I rent my apartment from you as my landlord. ‘Give’ implies that I haven’t offered anything equitable in exchange, like my skill as a driver or my rent money. It also tries to shift a burden of guilt and responsibility onto me, as if I owe you something. I don’t owe you squat.” Megan had seen so many low-ranking military kids try to pull something like this over on people beneath them in the pecking order, and it made her angry every time. Orla nominally had more power over her, in fact, than those young troops had over each other, but there was nothing Orla provided that Megan couldn’t equip herself with if necessary. Even if she couldn’t, being the target of a power play was enough to make her prepared to burn it all down.

  Orla’s cheeks paled as she recognized the genuine anger in Megan’s voice. She lowered her gaze, pressing her thin lips together, and looked up again with an expression Megan had never seen before, at least not on her. She’d seen her boss do contrite (not very convincingly, but she’d tried), and she’d certainly seen her do manipulative. This time, though, vulnerability shone in Orla’s blue gaze, and Megan actually believed it. “All right,” Orla said stiffly. “I’ve treated you unfairly, and I’m sorry. I need your help.”

  Megan, thinking of the decent apology Reed had offered, said, “Would you be sorry if you didn’t need my help?”

  Irritation flashed in Orla’s eyes, but to her credit, she said, “Probably not,” with sufficient honesty that Megan huffed angry laughter.

  “And what do I get for helping you?”

  Orla’s irritation turned to outright ire. “You’re already getting paid contractor rates for this damn job. What more do you want?”

  “My regular job back? The threat of eviction lifted? A fifteen-percent raise for the whole staff? For you to not fight back when we unioniz
e?” Orla’s face grew increasingly outraged as Megan went on, and the last prompted a burst of wordless indignation. Megan smiled. “I think if we can agree on all that I might be willing to try helping you.”

  “That’s extortion!”

  “Mmm, no. I’m pretty sure extortion involves threats. I’m not threatening anything. I’m bargaining. I have something you want, and I also have terms that need to be met for you to get it.”

  “But a union?”

  Megan shrugged. “Up to you. I’ve got to get home. You can give me a call when you make up your mind.” She got her winter coat, which she rarely wore while actually on duty, off a rack behind the counter, and pulled it on as she brushed past Orla toward the exit.

  She was nearly out the door when Orla’s answer, half-shouted, came after her. “All right, fine! But you’d better clear my name, d’yis hear me? You’d better clear my name!”

  CHAPTER 14

  Megan, with a sigh, glanced at the time and closed the door again. “I have things I need to do, so you’d better just tell me who you’ve been talking to and what kinds of connections they have.” At Orla’s shifty look, she shrugged. “It’s your neck, Orla. What is it—are you IRA yourself?”

  “I’m a republican, so I am,” Orla said stoutly, almost defiantly.

  Megan’s sigh turned to a groan. The word republican carried a completely different meaning in Ireland than it did in the States. It meant supporting a united Ireland, one in which the northern counties were no longer part of Great Britain, but instead part of the Irish Republic. That in itself wasn’t especially controversial, but the violent splinters of the long-since disbanded Irish Republican Army were considered terrorist groups by the British, and sometimes other, governments. “There’s a world of difference between being a republican and being IRA, Orla, and you know it. Don’t be fucking coy.”