A Magical Trio

by A. A. Albright

  There was another reason I was eagerly looking at my mobile phone, and the reason was that I was a big fat liar.

  Yeah, I liked to write things shorthand in my little reporter’s notebook. I didn’t write down what people said in there, though. I only jotted down general impressions. But I did record what people said, just not in my notebook – I used my mobile phone instead.

  So yes, I’d lied to Greg about the notebook. I didn’t like being sneaky and underhanded (okay, maybe just a little bit), but I needed to throw him off guard. If he didn’t think I was recording anything, then he wouldn’t have any reason to try and sabotage my mobile phone.

  And no, I didn’t consider him above sabotage. I knew I’d done the right thing in secretly recording things throughout my day. And now that I was finally alone, it was time to find out – was I paranoid, or was this whole town out to get me?

  I played back my conversation with Miriam, stopping and rewinding, over and over, at the point where she said, ‘I mean, Gunnar looks shady I know, what with the Vlad’s Boys tattoo and everything. But I hope he’s not really like that. He couldn’t be, could he? Not deep down. He’s probably just easily led. He would never have killed–’

  No, I wasn’t paranoid. Miriam had said exactly what I remembered her saying, word for word. I listened to some more snippets from my first day in Riddler’s Edge, confirming that pretty much everything had been as weird as I’d thought at the time.

  But where was that going to get me? What was I supposed to do with any of this? Did they want me to figure out the town’s secrets by myself, and pass the trial that way? Or did they want me to prove I could shut up and take directions? I sighed. I’d never been one to shut up and take directions. And what sort of editor would want a reporter who didn’t butt in where they weren’t wanted? I mean, sure, that was exactly what John had wanted at the Daily Dubliner, but not every editor could be that short-sighted. Could they?

  I took a stroll towards the French doors, and trained the telescope on the lighthouse. Detective Quinn’s car was there, and there were lights on inside. My eyes widened. No. No way in the world could he live at the lighthouse. He had to be there for some other reason. Like … he was just visiting the sexy barefoot man who did carpentry in his spare time.

  I gritted my teeth. He did live there. I knew it the same way I knew Monday was the longest day of the week. I knew it the same way I knew I’d never look good in hot-pants. And that whole thing I said about lighthouses being sexy? Well, maybe I was changing my mind. I mean, they were just tall, skinny, badly proportioned buildings. Nothing alluring about them at all.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter why the detective’s car was parked at the lighthouse. The point was, if his car was there, he was there. I’d been keeping my mouth zipped for hours now, and I was sick of it. It was time to start behaving like myself, and get the answers I wanted. And who better to give them to me than the man who had the same mysterious condition as Bathsheba?

  I glanced at my watch. It was just after seven, and the light was fading fast. I should have hired a car for the journey to Riddler’s Edge, but I’d always hated driving. I was never quite sure how I passed my driving test. Any time I had to drive for work in Dublin I’d done so in an automatic, and even that was dicey.

  Still, I thought as I pulled my boots on again, a walk in the dark couldn’t be all that bad. Not when I had a lighthouse to guide my way.

  ≈

  Halfway along the road, I realised that a no-longer-operational lighthouse isn’t much good at guiding the way, so I pulled my little torch from my bag and switched it on. The closer I drew to the lighthouse, though, the less my torch seemed to see. I banged it about a few times, pulled the battery out and put it back in again. I tried the torch app on my mobile phone, too, but I still couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me.

  Somewhere in the near-distance, I could hear noise picking up. There was a line of trees on the horizon, a line I hadn’t noticed earlier on – maybe those trees were what was covered by the haze? The noise seemed to be coming from there. Voices were chatting and laughing. Something was howling. Seriously? Howling?

  ‘I feel the need to swear,’ I muttered. ‘The very strong need to swear. And then to flee. To flee while swearing profusely.’

  I banged a few more times at my torch, and even switched the battery out for the spare one I kept in my purse, but the new one seemed to be totally fried.

  ‘I’m not giving up,’ I said, muttering again. Hey, I was hearing things, seeing things, and still convinced that almost everyone in town was holding out on me, so I might as well talk to myself, too. ‘I’m going to that lighthouse.’

  As soon as I said it, the beam on my torch began to work. ‘Well, would you look at that?’ I gave myself a self-congratulatory pat on the shoulder, and picked up my pace. As I neared the lighthouse, though, I paused again. I had to, because … wow.

  Okay, so I know that you totally bought that whole thing about me no longer finding lighthouses sexy. I also know that you’ll be completely surprised to read that I was having a sudden and profound turnaround on that thought.

  I was in love with this place. Truly, madly, deeply. There was no point in denying it anymore. This really was the house of my fantasies. It was just a pity about the guy inside.

  I only had one foot on the shingle driveway when Detective Quinn yanked open the front door and shouted out, ‘Who the hell is there? Show yourself or I’ll shoot.’

  Yip, there he was – the man I loathed.

  ‘It’s me, Detective Quinn,’ I said. ‘Ash. Aisling Smith.’

  He was illuminated in his doorway, standing a little back from the threshold. In his hands he carried a pair of sunglasses. I had an amazing view of him. So amazing that I could see the way his lip curled as soon as he heard my voice.

  ‘For the love of the goddess,’ he said. ‘And there was me thinking you couldn’t possibly get any more annoying. Listen, I’m off duty. Whatever you have to say, you can say it at the garda station tomorrow.’

  I made my way up the shingle driveway and stood in his view. ‘I would do, if I thought it’d make a difference. No, I think I’ll say it to you now. Where’s Gunnar Lucien, Detective Quinn?’

  His sawed his jaw. ‘He’s in the land of none of your business. It’s just adjacent to the land of get the hell off my property.’ He moved further back inside, and slammed the door.

  Here’s the thing. You might not have noticed it yet, but I really am a stubborn person. Some say I’m stubborn to a fault, but I say I’m stubborn to a purpose. So I did what any stubborn to a purpose woman would do. I banged on his door and shouted through his letterbox. ‘What’s Vlad’s Boys, Detective Quinn?’

  No answer.

  ‘What’s this condition you’ve got, Detective Quinn? Something similar to Bathsheba Brookes? Last I heard, you couldn’t contract a nut allergy. What’s with the sunglasses after dark? What’s with the lies? What’s with this whole godforsaken town?’

  He ripped open the door. Oh my. I hadn’t noticed the first time he opened the door, but he was barefoot. A barefoot, dark-haired man in a lighthouse.

  I really wished his toes could have been weird. Not because I have a fetish for weird toes (but each to their own). More because I wished that this man had at least one flaw in his appearance. He had plenty in his personality, though, so I guess that would have to do.

  ‘Come in before you wake the whole town up, you crazy witch!’

  ≈

  Well, it didn’t exactly help to discover that inside the lighthouse was even better than outside. The kitchen had the perfect blend of old and new – natural wood countertops mixed with modern appliances. The living room was circular for criminy’s sake. Not shag-pad circular like Grace’s apartment. More statement interior design circular.

  There was a spiral staircase at the side of the room, and I could see a lit-up deck outside, leading all the way down to the beach.

  Gulp.


  There were a few photos on the walls and on a shelf by the TV. All of them featured a woman with chestnut hair, sallow skin and dark brown eyes. In some she was kissing Detective Quinn. In others she was smiling coyly at the camera. In all of them she looked amazing. And in the ones where she was wearing hot-pants? Well, I guess some women really do have it all. Maybe if I did more lunges and squats I’d have thighs like that. Did I say more lunges and squats? I should have said any.

  ‘She your wife?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s none of your business is who she is.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘You definitely belie the myth that people in small Irish towns are friendly. You also belie the myth that we don’t pay our public servants enough. This place must have cost a fortune.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘I inherited the lighthouse. Not that it’s any of your business. Not that any of this is any of your business. For some reason I can’t quite work out, Arnold decided to give you a trial. But trust me, a trial is all it’s ever going to be. You’re not cut out for this place.’

  ‘Really?’ I sat down into a squishy couch, trying to appear casual. ‘I’m not cut out for a tiny town that’s going through a mysterious spate of nut-allergy related deaths? Well, it’s a good thing I wasted all those years training as an investigative journalist, then.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘Which part? The part where I said I was an investigative journalist or the part where I said a spate. Well, yeah. I’d call four deaths in as many weeks a spate. Wouldn’t you?’

  He moved into the kitchen, and I shuffled around in the seat so I could watch him. He was at the coffee machine, pouring himself a small shot of espresso.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t offer you one.’

  ‘Oh, I know – but I thought I might just help your manners along. Detective Quinn, I’ve been a journalist for over eight years. I’ve travelled to plenty of small towns to ask questions when there’s been a murder. Never one as small as this, mind you. But the funny thing is, very few of those places had a permanent detective in their station. Few of them even had a station anymore, thanks to cutbacks. So how come Riddler’s Edge has its very own detective?’ I glanced at the holster on his back. The holster that was accentuating his toned physique a little more than I would like. ‘Do you find you need to use your gun a lot around here?’

  He fixed a second espresso and carried them both over, setting them on the coffee table. ‘You ask a lot of questions for a reporter on a small town paper,’ he said. ‘You know you’re only going to be writing about school fairs and the church choir’s latest fundraiser, right? And that’s if you get the job. This isn’t the big city, Miss Smith. There’s no major crime here. Today a woman died because she didn’t bother to ask if there were going to be nuts in her muesli. That’s right. I said muesli. Because that’s what Bathsheba had to eat. This is a silly, senseless death. But it’s not a murder.’

  I picked up my coffee and sipped. Then I pushed it away, and decided that one sip would have to do. It wasn’t bad – quite the opposite. But if I was going to keep on disliking this man, then the last thing I needed was his delicious coffee in my hands to sway my decision. Just to make sure I drove the message completely home, I glanced at the photos. Because if there was anything that was going to turn me off a man, then it was the knowledge that he was already attached.

  ‘You can stop with the formality,’ I said. ‘Call me Ash. Oh, and you can stop with the obfuscations, too. You keep talking around me, swerving a hundred miles from the subject, not actually answering any of my questions. And by the way, I sat with Bathsheba in the dining car. She did not have any muesli.’

  He knocked back his coffee and stood up, crossing the room and pulling on a pair of shoes that were sitting by some sliding doors. ‘Like I told you earlier on, I’ll include any information that the newspaper needs to know in my report. Now come on, I’m driving you home. There are no lights along the road back into town. I don’t know how you got here without falling into a ditch.’

  I pulled my torch from my bag and waved it in the air. ‘I used this crazy new invention to find my way here, so I think I can use it again on the way back.’

  His eyes seemed to be looking in far too much interest at my torch. Maybe the cutbacks in An Garda Síochána were even worse than I thought. The poor things weren’t even given torches these days, judging by the look of confusion on his face.

  ‘You … used a torch?’ he asked.

  ‘I did. And like I said, I’m perfectly capable of using it again. I mean don’t get me wrong, I was a little put out by the howls coming from that forest over yonder. But I can always stick my headphones on to drown them out.’ I gave him a tight smile, stood up, and prepared to leave. ‘I’ll look forward to your report, Detective Quinn. I’m sure it’ll be totally uninformative, just like every conversation we’ve had so far.’

  I had just reached my hand towards the front door, when I felt his palm wrap around my wrist.

  10. Can’t See the Woods for the Mist

  ‘What did you just say?’ he asked, his voice intense, his eyes blazing.

  I shook his hand away. ‘I would have thought that a garda detective would be aware it’s not appropriate to go grabbing onto women out of the blue. And you heard perfectly well what I said.’

  As I pulled open the door, he stood back in the shadows. ‘Please, Miss Smith. I apologise for grabbing onto your wrist. I just … I thought you said you saw the forest. Which forest? The one to the south of the church?’

  ‘No. The one to the north of here.’

  The intense look still hadn’t left his eyes. ‘Maybe Arnold was right about one of you, at last. Wait a second, will you? Please. I want to show you something.’

  I thought about it for a second or two. Sure, I hated this guy with a ridiculously deep loathing. But I did want answers, and whatever I’d said about the woods seemed to be cracking his exterior. ‘Fine. But hurry up. I want to get an early night.’

  He rushed to the coat stand and pulled on a hooded sweater, wrapped a scarf around his face, slipped his hands into gloves, then popped on his sunglasses. ‘I … I think I’m coming down with a cold,’ he said. ‘You can never be too careful.’

  ‘Sure.’ I arched a brow. ‘A cold. I mean, if it weren’t for the sunglasses it might almost be convincing.’ I marched towards his car, and he opened the door with a button on his keyring. Quite right, too. I mean, it wasn’t as though I would have preferred him to open the door himself. This wasn’t the fifties. I mean, it sure seemed like the fifties in the Daily Riddler office, but you know what I mean.

  The car turned out to have an automatic gearbox. My many short-lived relationships had told me that Irish guys preferred manual transmissions. But Detective Quinn wasn’t exactly the typical Irish guy. He sped a little past the lighthouse, then took the left turn that I’d seen him take earlier. By now, we were in a heavily wooded area, on a dirt road only wide enough for one car.

  ‘You still see the forest?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, I do,’ I answered. As soon as I said it, though, I shook my head and took another look out the window. A second ago, tall trees had been everywhere. Now, all I could see was mist. ‘Um … revise my earlier statement,’ I said. ‘It’s gotten so misty now that I can’t see a thing.’

  He stopped the car, right there in the middle of the dirt road. ‘You see mist? Right now?’ He scratched his chin. ‘No forest anymore?’

  I looked away from him. The way he was acting made me fear I might be in the middle of a mental health intervention. But I knew what I’d seen before, and I knew what I saw right now. First, there was that far too familiar kaleidoscope-haze over this area. Then there was forest. Now there was mist.

  ‘And your torch?’ he pressed. ‘It didn’t … act up? Along the road to my house?’

  I resisted the urge to turn to him and scream What the heck? Every word he uttered was proving to
me that I wasn’t some paranoid conspiracy nut. And just as I felt surer of that fact than I ever had before, a buzzing sensation began to work its way through me. Something was going on in this town. Something big. Something that Detective Quinn knew all about.

  I turned in my seat. ‘I think you know more about my torch than I do,’ I said. ‘I think you know more about everything than I do. So why not just spit it out, Detective?’

  He let out a sigh. ‘I … the thing is … well … this is a trial, Miss Smith. It’s up to Arnold to tell you all of this if you get the job.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ I held my hands up, and a grunt of frustration escaped. ‘Look, if you’re not going to tell me where Gunnar is, then for the love of God, tell me what is up with the outfit.’ As I heard the words come out of my mouth, I had a sudden recollection of something Detective Quinn said when I arrived. ‘Wait a minute. When I got to your place, you said “For the love of the goddess.” I’ve heard that before. From you earlier, sure, but from other people, too. I was interviewing people about some murders in Dublin last summer. Weird murders. Murders that the gardaí in Dublin palmed off with some stupid excuse. A stupid excuse like the one you’re trying to get me to buy right now.’

  I got the sense that, behind those sunglasses, he was blinking rapidly. ‘I don’t … I can’t … look, do you actually remember these weird murders? Do you remember people using phrases like “For the love of the goddess”?’

  ‘Of course I remember. A guy killed an old woman in St Stephen’s Green with a tennis racket, and a candle shop owner was murdered with a candlestick. Who wouldn’t remember a thing like that? Although I’m sure you’re the sort of sexist jerk who’d like to think all women have brains like sieves, we don’t.’

  ‘I’m not sexist. Why would you say I’m sexist?’

  ‘Oh, gee, I wonder now … would it be because you’ve been treating me like a great big dummy all day? Or calling me Miss Smith? Or refusing to answer a single question I’ve asked, because why should you have to answer the dumb blonde’s questions? Oh, or maybe it was because you thought it was perfectly okay to just cop a feel of me without even asking first?’