“A few, mebbe. Do you know of the fairy tree?”
“Huh?” She’d never heard of such a thing, but maybe people who visited pubs didn’t talk about trees.
“Yeh’ve no doubt seen a few without knowin’ it. If you see a tree standin’ alone in a field or along a fence, yeh leave it be, fer cuttin’ it down would bring bad luck—yeh’d anger the fairies. Do yeh know a magpie when yeh see one?”
“They’re those black-and-white birds? Kinda big?”
“They are. If yeh see one alone, it’s said to bring bad luck, and yeh need to speak to it to prevent that. There’s an old poem about the magpies that starts, “One for sorrow, two for joy.” Goes back centuries, I’m told. And watch what yeh do with yer salt.”
“I’m guessing there’s more?” Maura asked.
“Sure and there are plenty of old sayin’s. But don’t worry yerself, Maura—they’re mostly forgotten now.”
“Are there any sayings or traditions about keeping death away? Because I seem to keep attracting it here.” Not at her house, thank goodness, although that could come next. Did she have a fairy tree? Did Bridget? She wasn’t planning to cut any trees down. But what if they fell down on their own?
“It’s said that there are things yeh can do to bring good luck, but I wouldn’t put too much faith in ’em. The best I can tell yeh, Maura, is to go on wit’ yer life and keep yer eyes open.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. You ready for a pint now, Billy?”
“That’d be welcome, although it should be me last of the day.”
“Coming up.”
She slid back behind the bar, where Mick was already filling a glass. Maura nodded toward it. “Billy’s?”
“You have to ask? He have anything important to say?”
“No, mostly we were talking about folklore—and if there’s a way I can keep trouble away from this place. You know any good charms?”
“I’m not the one to ask. Bridget might have some ideas. Yeh’re still worried about a killer roaming about? And now yeh’re looking for a charm to ward off a killer?”
“I know it sounds silly. Here I am, giving the Albertsons happy talk, and I don’t know what I think myself. Tell me, does it seem weird that the poor guy has been dead for two days now and nobody knows who he is and where he came from yet?”
“It’s out of the ordinary fer this place, I’ll give yeh that.”
“Maybe a friend or relative picked him up somewhere and drove him here. Or he came by boat.”
“Has no hotel or B and B or hostel reported anyone missing?” Mick asked.
“Not that Sean or the sergeant has told me. Maybe he was sleeping rough? Is that the right term? It’s warm enough.”
“Could be. Hard to prove, though.”
“Would he have bled a lot when he was stabbed? Nobody’s reported a mess of blood anywhere.”
“There’s plenty of fields to bleed into, and no one would know.” Mick leaned back, crossed his arms, and stared at her. “Maura, where are yeh goin’ with this?”
“I don’t know!” she said, more loudly than she intended, and a couple of people at tables turned to look at her. She lowered her voice to answer Mick. “I was feeling safe, even though I’m living out in the country somewhere and it’s pretty dark, though there are people around. And dogs who bark at people. But now there’s at least one person who’s a killer. I know, there are hundreds who aren’t, and they’re all very nice, but it takes only one person to kill someone. I don’t like feeling afraid. I don’t want to let myself feel afraid, but I don’t want to get killed because I was being stupid and pretending there wasn’t a problem.”
“Why would anyone kill yeh, Maura?”
“Maybe they think I have money, or Old Mick left me a pile of cash buried under the fireplace. Maybe just because they can—they like killing. I don’t pretend to know what goes on in a killer’s head. But I want to get past this. I want to go back a couple of days, when everything seemed happy and cheerful.”
Rose had been sitting with Billy while Maura and Mick talked, but now she came over to the bar. “A friend at the cookery school asked if I wanted to stay over with her tonight, fer I’ve got an early class there. Do yeh mind? At least you won’t have to worry about me.”
Maura said, “Certainly, dear, as long as you go to bed early, make sure your doors are locked, don’t talk to strangers, and brush your teeth.”
Rose looked startled until she realized that Maura was joking. “Yeah, Ma. But I was also thinkin’ maybe you could come over in the mornin’ and have a chat with Sinéad before she gets caught up with the café lunch. I talked to her about doin’ it, earlier.” Rose turned to Mick. “Mick, Maura was worried that you’d have to handle the pub all by yerself. Think you can manage it?”
He smiled at her. “I’m pretty sure I can. Not like it’s the first time. Yeh’ll be back by noon?”
“If Maura could be there and bring me back.”
“I think I can do that,” Maura told her. “What time should I be there?”
“Ten, say? I’ll tell Sinéad to expect you, and that’ll give you an hour or so before the meal—she opens at noon.”
“Sounds like a plan. So, okay, you’ll be with a friend tonight, I’ll meet you tomorrow in Skibbereen at the café at ten, talk to the owner, and bring you back here after. Is there anything I should or shouldn’t say? Like you want fewer shifts here so you can work around your classes? Oh, and is it rude to ask her what she pays the staff and how she figures out how many she needs?”
“Don’t worry—she’s pretty up-front about her place and how it works. Ah, there’s Niamh.” Rose waved at a girl standing outside the door. “Mind if I leave now? I can make up the time tomorrow, when we’ll be busier.”
“Fine, go. And keep your mobile with you.”
Rose joined her friend at the door, and they went out chatting like magpies. Hmm, she must have magpies on her mind. She wasn’t even sure what kind of sound they made. Did they talk to each other?
With Rose’s departure, that left Billy, who looked like he was dozing, and a couple of other guys with half-empty glasses in front of them. Seamus and his gang were conspicuously absent, and she hoped they had spread out among the other pubs in the area to ask their questions. Any bar fights? Anybody thrown out before a fight could blossom? Any strangers lurking in corners? Anybody asking odd questions? Anybody who looked even remotely suspicious? Maura, you’re grasping at straws. Plenty of things went unnoticed all the time, and nobody could see that the wrong word to the wrong person could end up with a death.
It was a slow night indeed. Maura hoped that the gardaí would come up with some answers about the death by tomorrow, or it might put a damper on the rest of the week. She turned to find Mick watching her. “What?”
“Yeh look worried.”
“I told you I was. Maybe I’m going all psychic and I sense evil, only I can’t see it.”
“Would you know evil if you saw it?”
“I’d like to think I’d feel it, even if everyone around me looked perfectly ordinary.”
“Even in a crowd?”
“You mean, like when we’ve the music here, and there are lots of strangers? I’ve never thought about it. But I guess I feel safer in a crowd, even if I don’t know the people. Like nothing bad could happen in a room full of witnesses.”
“Will yeh be wantin’ company tonight?” Mick asked quietly.
“A bodyguard? Or something else?”
“Yer choice.”
“Yes, I think I would,” she said carefully.
They closed up the pub a little early, and no one was disappointed. Outside they argued briefly about which car to take. Maura had promised to meet Rose at the café in Skibbereen at ten, but Mick had to be at Sullivan’s to open. Two cars, then, so they’d have to drive to her place in Knockskagh in their own cars. No big deal, although occasionally Maura was a little spooked by driving in the dark—where it was true dark. The only
things she ever saw, on the back road to her place, were one or two passing cars, and the eerie glow of some small animal’s eyes when her headlights caught them.
Was she getting soft? She’d always been independent, mostly out of necessity. She hated to ask people for help, much less emotional support. Now she had someone in her life who offered both, although cautiously. But between them, the relationship, whatever it was, moved forward slowly and erratically. Add to that that she was unsettled by the idea that she had been involved in solving more than one crime and she didn’t know how that had come about. It was nothing she had looked for, nothing she wanted. And more, she had to admit to herself that she wanted Ireland to be a safe and welcoming place, to let her figure out what she wanted from her life and what her choices were. She resented being distracted—why did she have to have been the one to find that body? Of course, it had been more or less on her property, or had at least been hauled across it, so somebody would have pointed a finger at her in any case. But why? What had she done to deserve it?
She arrived back only a minute or so before Mick. Bridget’s cottage was dark, no surprise. On her small lane, her house was flanked by abandoned buildings, which were falling down. Not exactly welcoming. When she got out of the car, she could hear small animals rustling in the weeds and dead leaves. In Boston they would be rats, but here she had no idea what they might be.
Mick pulled his car in behind hers and turned off the lights, then got out. He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close. They stood that way for a couple of minutes. Finally he said, “Yeh’re safe. I’ll make sure of that.”
He understood. She fought back tears and said, “Thank you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Nothing went bump in the night, as far as Maura could recall when she woke up. On a bright summer morning, things looked better than they had at midnight on a dark night. Finding out who the dead man was and why he had died was not her problem. She knew she didn’t know him and she hadn’t done anything to him, and she was pretty sure none of the people who worked for her had. She stifled a smile at the mental image of Billy stabbing someone to death and carrying the body away to dump it. Although he knew the lay of the land better than anyone. Maybe Billy had had an accomplice. Or maybe he—or they?—had killed the man to protect her, or Rose, or because he oozed evil and had to be gotten rid of.
Ridiculous, Maura! she told herself. She could hear Mick moving around downstairs—he was surprisingly quiet for a tall man. Neither of them had to be anywhere soon, although she should allow enough time to get to Skibbereen and park her car for her ten o’clock meeting. She felt kind of weird about talking with someone she didn’t know about how to hire people, but she honestly didn’t know where to start. This woman was working in the—what did they call it?—the hospitality trade, like Maura was, and most likely handling both food and drinks, offering meals throughout the day. Maura couldn’t begin to imagine dealing with both at once, but Rose seemed interested in the idea. She owed it to her to learn more about what it took.
She pulled on the bare essentials in clothes and loped down the narrow staircase. “I smell food. I didn’t know I had any.”
“Good mornin’ to yeh too, Maura. I don’t know how you keep a cockroach alive in this place.”
“Easy—I don’t spend much time here and I don’t eat here very often. And I certainly don’t have company. I can fix a cup of tea, assuming the milk hasn’t gone sour, but that’s about it. Although from what I’ve seen, a cuppa covers most social occasions. There might be a tin of cookies—biscuits—hiding somewhere.”
“Yeh have heard of things like flour, have yeh not?”
“That white stuff that comes in bags?” Maura grinned at him.
“Ah, so yeh have seen it! Seriously, if I’m gonna be spending time here, I’d like to eat. And yeh need to eat as well. Yeh’re on yer feet twelve hours a day, and yeh can’t do that forever without takin’ care of yerself.”
“Got it. Note to self: buy food. The Costcutter has most of the basics, so that’s easy. What do you like to eat?”
“Will yeh throw somethin’ at me if I say ‘meat and praties’?”
“Praties?” Maura cocked her head at him.
“That’d be potatoes to the likes of you. Yer headed fer a restaurant this mornin’, are you now?”
“I am, or at least, I’m talking to someone who runs one. And cooks, I assume.”
“Then pay attention, why don’t yeh? If somethin’ smells good or looks good, ask what it is and what’s in it.”
“Jeez, Mick—I’m already talking with her about finding staff and salaries. Now you want me to talk about recipes too?”
“If yeh found food yeh liked, you might eat more.”
“How about I ask Rose to be my spy? And I’ll volunteer to be her guinea pig.”
“That might do. Tell her to share her recipes.”
“Can I ask her to pick up the ingredients too?”
“Yeh’re pushin’ yer luck, lady.”
They found enough to eat, mainly a sad frozen loaf of soda bread in the small freezer, then set off on their separate ways. As she drove toward Skibbereen, Maura reflected that neither of them had said anything about spending the night together. It wasn’t exactly a regular thing—more spur-of-the-moment. And it was always at her place. Maybe Mick lived in a cave, or a barn with the livestock (although in that case he would have smelled rather odd). Or maybe he just valued his privacy, much as she did. This relationship stuff was tricky.
Traffic was light in the morning in Skibbereen, and Maura had no problem finding a handy parking space behind the supermarket. She walked the half block to the corner where the café was located and saw Rose standing outside the front door waiting. Maura checked her watch quickly, but she was right on time—the class must have just ended.
“You’re here!” Rose crowed as Maura approached.
“You thought I’d bail out on you?”
“I was afraid you might. Come on—Sinéad is a very busy woman.”
“Lead the way,” Maura told her, with more confidence than she felt. She seldom talked business with anyone, much less another woman who was running her own business. Which was dumb, she knew, because she could learn a lot from them. But she was embarrassed by how little she knew—she was kind of making things up as she went. And combine that with food, which as Mick had pointed out she knew next to nothing about, and she was worried she’d look like an idiot and people would laugh at her.
Rose must have sensed her dismay. “Maura, the woman doesn’t bite. Just ask yer questions.”
Maura sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”
The ground floor of the corner restaurant was simple and appealing, with windows on two sides and a bar against the inner wall, and chairs and tables between. The location was good, too, on a very visible corner in the center of a busy town. Smart choice, Maura had to admit. “Where’s the kitchen?” Maura asked Rose in a low voice.
“Upstairs. Alanna, where’s Sinéad?” Rose called out to a woman at the other end of the room who was setting up tables.
“In the kitchen. Go on up,” the woman replied.
“Thanks,” Rose said. “Come on, Maura, follow me.”
The stairs were narrow and ran up along the back wall. Maura had trouble imagining how anyone could go up and down with loaded trays of food without regular disasters. On the other hand, the servers would certainly be in good physical shape.
The second-floor room was the same size as the room below, but one end was taken up by a kitchen full of gleaming stainless steel. Even though lunch wouldn’t start for another two hours, there were several people busily chopping and slicing and preparing who knew what.
“Sinéad?” Rose called out.
“Hang on a moment.” The obvious leader of the pack, a wiry middle-aged woman with an air of authority, barked out some orders to the others in the kitchen, then turned and joined Rose and Maura at the far end. �
�Welcome. I’m Sinéad Lynch. Rose said you had some questions about how to manage staffing at your place? That’s the old pub in the center of Leap, is it not? Oh, please, let’s sit down. You want coffee?”
Maura couldn’t swear that the woman had taken a breath since she started talking to them. “Coffee would be great.”
Sinéad turned and issued an order to someone, who nodded and reached for two cups. Then she turned back to Maura and Rose. “You’ve been running the place, what, a year now?”
“Almost exactly. Before you ask, when I started I had no experience running anything, although I’d worked in pubs before, back in Boston. Luckily the staff—like Rose here—stayed on and helped me through it, so I survived. Thing is, since we’re doing better now, I need more staff, and since I’m not from around here I don’t know where to look. How do you manage it?”
Sinéad didn’t seem put off by her ignorance. “You don’t have a kitchen yet, right?”
Maura shook her head. “There is one, but it’s old and I’m not sure everything works. If we were serious about food, we’d have to gut it and start over there. That’s one reason why we haven’t made a decision. Your kitchen here is beautiful, but it’s about twice the size we have to work with.”
“That’s not necessarily a problem. If you can’t expand the space, you shrink your menu.”
“How many people—cooks, I mean—can you have working here at once, like for dinner?”
“Up to six at a time. And now you’re wondering why they all don’t trip over each other all the time. It’s because we plan carefully, and I show the staff how to make it work. Take a look at the people in there now—what do you see?”
“Uh, three … kids, I’ve have to say. They’re all young. I don’t mean to offend you, but you’re the oldest person in the room.”
“I am, and I’ve plenty of experience in running a kitchen, starting when I was their age with my parents’ place. I thought long and hard about how I wanted to do things when I was planning this space. What equipment we needed. What we could manage, given that the only place for the kitchen was upstairs. But I thought the location mattered more, so that was another reason to hire young servers who could manage the stairs with heavy trays. I’ll admit it’s not easy.”
The Lost Traveller Page 10
