Malarkey

by Sheila Simonson

  "True, or to a hotel."

  "Do you want to?"

  "No."

  I didn't either, though I didn't like the feeling of vulnerability the burglary inspired. And Joe's comments about the sinister associations with the woods echoed in memory.

  We had gained the road. There was no traffic, though a couple of cars remained in the church lot; I could see two little girls in school uniforms peering through the back window of the Toyota.

  They fell into giggles as we approached.

  "Good morning, ladies," said my father.

  The giggles intensified.

  "Eh, missus, there's a wee corpus in the boot." The speaker, a pink-faced dumpling with a tangle of orange curls, held her hands out, measuring the dimensions of the supposed body.

  I unlocked the hatchback and removed the anorak. Jay's computer lay there in its soft-sided nylon case. "It's only a suitcase," I announced in tones of disappointment.

  The girls seemed disappointed, too, but Dad gave each of them a pound coin for guarding the car, and they bounced off looking pleased with themselves.

  "Playing hooky," I murmured.

  Dad had squeezed in the passenger side. He fastened his seatbelt. "A natural curiosity. Still, one could wish their fantasies were less ghoulish."

  I started the engine and, when no cars materialized in either direction, made a reverse turn. A lorry roared past in the direction of Killaveen. I swear it scraped the side mirror.

  When we reached the Y, I looked down at Stanyon. The Steins' Mercedes stood in front of the house, and a knot of women on the verandah suggested the data processors were taking a smoke break. A regular working day.

  I rolled down the window as we approached the rhododendron arch. "They've shut off the alarm." The silence reverberated. Maeve's van was still parked behind Joe's car. A police van, doors open, nosed onto the turf.

  "Looks like a convention of cops," I muttered. "That must be the evidence team from Stanyon." As I spoke one of the men approached the tiny front porch and began taking photographs. He was wearing paper booties over his shoes. Evidence crews wear the shoe protectors to avoid introducing foreign material to the scene of a crime.

  I didn't want to box everyone in, so I pulled onto the turf on the other side of the lane. Joe stood by the police van, conferring with the other plainclothes technician. He flipped his hand our direction and went on talking. I saw no sign of Jay and the other Gardai. As I unhooked the seatbelt and opened the door to get out, though, Constable Byrne trudged up the slope from the potting shed. The discouraged set of his shoulders suggested he was thinking of his sins.

  Dad said, "I'll wait here."

  "Okay." I walked over to Maeve and tapped on the glass.

  She rolled her window down.

  "What's happening?"

  "Damnall. Your husband's in the house. There was no sign of entry downstairs, so Joe sent Jay and Declan in down there." She grinned. "The others headed off to the woods. Noses to the ground like a pair of beagles."

  "When did the alarm stop?"

  "Thirty seconds ago. My ears are still ringing." She brooded, eyes straight ahead. "Time for me to head north."

  "Uh, before you go, Maeve, I have a couple of questions."

  She blinked at me as if I had startled her. Perhaps her mind had strayed to the upcoming tutorial—or to Joe Kennedy.

  "What do I do with the garbage?"

  She blinked again.

  I sifted through my vocabulary. "The trash. Rubbish. Litter. It's mounting up." My voice trailed. "I suppose I ought to ask Barbara Stein."

  "I daresay." She sounded mildly indignant, as if mentioning garbage was in poor taste.

  I felt my cheeks flush. Perhaps I had violated a taboo. "Sorry," I muttered.

  "You said you had several questions."

  I cleared my throat. "Uh, yes. The woods. Has anyone done an archaeological survey of Stanyon Woods?"

  She stared then began to laugh.

  I felt my temper rise and straightened to walk away, but she reached out the window to touch my shoulder.

  "Free association, right?"

  "I beg your pardon," I said stiffly.

  "It's okay. Most archaeological digs involve sifting through ancient middens."

  "Rubbish is rubbish," I muttered.

  "Why do you ask?"

  "I saw what I thought was an incised or inscribed stone in the woods." I wasn't sure of the correct term.

  The laughter died from her face. "Do you say?"

  I described the double spiral design.

  She gave a low whistle. "I've never heard of megalithic remains on the estate, but that doesn't mean anything. If the OPW did an early survey there will be records. Where did you see the stone?"

  I confessed my disorientation.

  "Pity. Roughly in the middle of the woods?"

  "That's my guess. There's a hill or mound. I walked upwards. The stone lay in a small glade."

  "Sounds promising. I'll look it up, shall I?"

  "If it's not too much trouble. It's nothing to do with this business." I waved a vague arm in the direction of the Gardai who were now doing things in the porch area. "I'm just curious."

  "So am I." She started her engine. "I'll get onto it straightaway, and I'll ring you in a day or so to report."

  "Thanks." I stepped away from the van as she backed up. She made a neat reverse and chugged off along the lane. I returned to the Toyota and slipped into the driver's seat.

  Dad said, "Where's Jay?"

  "In the cottage, according to Maeve. Shall we drive to Arklow for lunch?"

  "Without Jay?" He sounded reproachful.

  I drew a breath to point out that my spouse could take care of himself, and that he'd probably be playing games with the evidence crew for several hours, when Jay walked up the flagstone steps beside the cottage. He was carrying a crumpled pair of paper booties in one hand and light polythene gloves in the other—very professional. I had the feeling Constable Byrne had been left outside on sentry duty while Jay went in alone to silence the alarm and survey the damage. What if the burglar had still been inside? I felt my temper heat up. The damn fool.

  Jay came over to the car and bent down to me.

  I said, through my teeth, "Your computer's safe. How's the house?"

  He shrugged. "There's a mess in the living room. I think the alarm rattled the burglar."

  I pointed forward across the steering wheel. "That lot will be at it for a while. Shall I drive Dad to Arklow for lunch?"

  "Hang on a minute and I'll come with you. I need to say a word to Kennedy."

  Jay went over and handed one of the technicians the gloves and the crumpled booties. By the time I had got out and flipped the seat forward so he could climb in, he was coming back to the car. I noticed that he walked on the gravel this time instead of the turf. The evidence crew must have worked fast. Joe Kennedy gave a casual wave and ducked in through the front door.

  The drive to Arklow took fifteen mostly silent minutes. I was letting my temper cool. I don't know why the men didn't talk.

  I had had my eye on a riverside pub for several days. The car park, a municipal lot on two levels, required a turn across traffic in the High Street, but I negotiated it, parked, and led the two men down to the river. It was too damp and chilly to sit outside.

  Our entry caused a momentary lull in the lunch hour roar, but we found a table free in one corner of the saloon bar. Dad and I occupied it, and Jay went off for beer. He returned with two pints, a glass of bordeaux, and a menu card. By that time the other customers had turned back to their own pints and their conversations.

  Dad lifted the glass of wine and sipped. "Not bad."

  "Cheers." Jay sat and took a large swallow. "Ah, Murphy's. Good stuff."

  I sipped and read the carte. Lots of chips. "I'll have the ploughman's lunch."

  "Is that cheese?" Jay licked foam from his upper lip.

  "Cheese, bread, pickled onion, and chutney, usually. And
they throw in a leaf of lettuce for decoration."

  "I'll stick to hamburger."

  "Better you than me." Foreign hamburgers incline toward eccentricity. I once ate one in England that I swear was ground ham. Whereas local cheese is almost always trustworthy and sometimes interesting.

  "Fish and chips," Dad said.

  I stood up. "I'll get it."

  The bartender took my order on a lined pad. "Where are yez? Ah, over there. I'll bring it when the chips is done." He rang up the order.

  I thanked him and paid.

  He handed me my heavy change. "You're visitors then?"

  "From the States."

  "Are you enjoying your holiday?"

  "It's grand," I said politely. Clearly he hadn't recognized me, which meant he hadn't attended the inquest. I was glad I'd decided to brave the Arklow traffic instead of driving to Killaveen. Blessed anonymity. When the evening news rolled around we would be the cynosure of Arklow eyes, too. I decided I'd better cook dinner at the cottage.

  Dad had vanished by the time I returned from the bar.

  "He went to find the gents," Jay explained. "There's a problem, Lark. The burglar trashed his notes."

  "Dad's?" My voice squeaked with dismay. I took a gulp of beer. "Have you told him?"

  "No. There's paper all over the living room and some of the photocopies were ripped up."

  "Vandalism?"

  "No."

  "Poor Dad..." I broke off as my father drifted back from the loo. He paused to peer at a photograph on the wall near the bar, said a word to the bartender, then looked at us and smiled.

  Jay said, "I'll break the news."

  Dad took it quietly. "I see," he murmured, downcast.

  I said, "There's bound to be a stationer's somewhere in Arklow. I'll buy a bunch of Scotch tape, and we can all work on reconstructing the torn bits."

  He sighed and sipped his bordeaux. "The photocopies contain records of the Dublin Meeting. I was working on 1845."

  "Better get folders, too," Jay said.

  I dug in my handbag for a pen and pad. "And scissors. I haven't seen scissors in the cottage, have either of you?"

  They shook their heads. When the bartender arrived with our food, Jay asked him whether there was a photocopying facility nearby. After some virtuoso paraphrasing on my part, the man's face brightened, and he directed us to an establishment in the High Street.

  There we laid in enough folders, labels, and tape dispensers to start a small business, and Dad cheered up. When we got back to the cottage, the evidence van had left. Joe Kennedy was conferring with the three uniforms. The two men from Stanyon had searched the woods without result, he told us, after he had sent them and Constable Byrne off in their respective patrol cars. Joe led us into the cottage. "I'd like the three of you to take another look at what's missing."

  "Maybe nothing's missing." Jay laid his computer on the kitchen table and gave it a pat. "I think that was the target."

  Joe raised his eyebrows.

  "They usually aim for electronics, don't they?" Jay said mildly.

  "Ordinary B & E, yes. If this was ordinary."

  Jay said, "The time of the inquest was well-known, and a watcher could have spotted the Toyota leaving."

  My anxiety level went down a couple of notches. "Like funerals?"

  Jay nodded. Canny burglars have been known to read the obits and time their break-ins by scheduled funerals. The thought reassured me, oddly enough. They?—he—whoever had waited until we left together. That made him sound less like a maddened killer on the loose and more like a dispassionate professional. However, the dispassionate professional had not expected the burglar alarm to be set. Otherwise, when he didn't spot the computer or find a television or a boombox, he would have gone downstairs, removed our cash, traveler's checks, and passports from the dresser, and made a swift exit through the downstairs door.

  Authentic American passports bring a juicy sum on the blackmarket.

  Dad listened to our chatter then slipped out to the living room. I heard him draw a sharp breath and went in to him. My complacence evaporated. The conversation corner near the fireplace was strewn with loose papers, but the desk area looked as if it had been touched by a tornado of pure spite.

  Dad knelt and started gathering the torn photocopies.

  I had the paraphernalia from the stationer's under my arm. I knelt beside him and pulled out the packet of folders. "Shall we do this methodically?"

  He shot me a grateful look and handed me a sheaf of papers. They had been ripped in half. "That's the one I was working on."

  "Your man was wearing gloves," Kennedy observed from the door arch.

  "Good thing, too," Jay added. "Otherwise everything would be dusted with fingerprint powder." He slid past the sergeant and joined us on the floor. "Any shoe prints in here?"

  Kennedy said, "He was wearing trainers."

  "Sneakers," I translated.

  "Sneakers and gloves," Jay mused, sorting a ripped article.

  "And carrying a key to the cottage," Joe said dryly.

  Dad stared up at him. "A key?"

  "There's no sign of forced entry."

  "And we definitely locked up," Jay said. He sounded as if he were repeating an assertion. Well, we had locked the doors.

  I squirmed to a more comfortable position on the floorboards. The idea of that loose key wandering around raised my level of discomfort again. I wondered whether we ought to call in a locksmith.

  Kennedy said abruptly, "I shall have a word with Tommy Tierney when he flits home tonight, like a wee pigeon to the coop. His da had a key. Toss swears the lad never touched it, but Toss lies to us as a matter of habit. Tommy could have made a wax impression and had Toss's key duplicated."

  "The same might be said of the key at Stanyon," I murmured.

  "True for you."

  Silence weighted the air.

  Joe heaved a sigh. "May I ask you to leave the papers for a minute or two, Mrs. Dodge? Look about you and see if anything's been taken from this room."

  I creaked to my feet. Joints seizing up. I was definitely going to have to return to my daily run.

  My survey of the room revealed nothing obvious missing. To tell the truth, I hadn't paid much attention to the decor of the living room. We had been living in the bedrooms and kitchen. The burglar could well have made off with a doodad or two without my knowing it.

  When I had reassured Joe that I'd found nothing missing, he left. Dad and Jay and I worked in companionable silence for the next hour, and we made progress. I sat my father down at the kitchen table with a cup of hot tea and one of the tape dispensers, and set him to putting the photocopies back together. Jay and I gathered loose papers.

  I was puzzling over a set of notes in Dad's crabbed hand when the phone rang. It was Barbara Stein. She sounded distraught, and she didn't dally for small talk. She wanted to speak to my father.

  I carried the phone in to Dad, kicking the long cord aside. "For you. It's Barbara."

  He nodded and murmured hello into the receiver. I went back to helping Jay. We were trying to flatten papers that had been wadded and sort them by subject.

  Dad brought the phone back and laid it carefully on the desk. "Barbara wants us to come for cocktails."

  I stared at him. "They're having a happy hour?"

  He gave me a wan smile. "Not exactly. More like an emergency meeting. Barbara thinks Mahon will arrest Alex tomorrow, and she wants my advice." Perhaps he sensed that I was about to protest because he said wearily, "I told her I'd come."

  "We'll come with you." Jay didn't pause to consult me. "Mahon may know something that Kennedy doesn't, and they'll want to interrogate Alex again, in any case, but I don't think an arrest is likely at this point."

  Dad ran a hand over his face. "Then reassure them, by all means. I believe I'd better take a nap before we go."

  He took the words right out of my mouth.

  Chapter 12

  A man of words and not of deeds


  Is like a garden full of weeds

  Children's song

  Stanyon Hall was a compound of memory and current horror. My mental picture of Kayla descending the long stairway was so vivid I half expected her to appear above us as we entered the foyer.

  Barbara had met us on the porch. When Dad gave her a hug, she began crying. He soothed and patted, which he does very well, and she recovered her composure almost at once. Even so, her dread shook the air.

  She led us again to the sitting room. Tracy Aspin and Liam McDiarmuid stood off in one corner, talking low-voiced, and Mike Novak hovered next to Alex at the drinks trolley. Their greetings were subdued, and, having poured for us, Alex took my father aside for a mournful conference. Barbara deserted us without apology to join Dad and her husband.

  Jay and Mike sipped beer and watched each other. I checked an impulse to walk over and throw the window open. Without Kayla's cigarettes, there was no reason to open it, nor was the room warm, but the atmosphere was thick with anxiety.

  "You did a star turn at the inquest." Mike took a morose gulp of beer.

  My wine tasted sour. "Glad you enjoyed it."

  "Rumor, dear lady. I didn't attend. After three hours of interrogation at the crack of dawn, I was too squeamish to face the details of an autopsy, even Slade Wheeler's." He knocked back the rest of his beer and poured himself another from a tall brown bottle. "Besides, somebody had to hold down the fort with cops crawling all over the second floor. The data processors were set to mutiny, and that baroque disk has to go to the distributor next week."

  Tracy drifted over, Liam at her elbow. "Are you still griping about missing the inquest, Mike? I volunteered to stay here and supervise, remember?"

  "I didn't," Liam said with relish. "I wanted to see Toss Tierney with the egg fresh on his beaming face."

  Jay chuckled. "Toss was a pillar of rectitude."

  Liam's mouth twisted. "'Yes, your worship, thank you, your worship.' Jaysus, the shuffler."

  "My money's still on Toss," Mike said.

  "And wee Tommy, the darling twister." Liam was drinking Perrier. He raised the green bottle in mock salute.

  "According to my landlord, Toss has connections." Tracy sounded tipsy.

  Silence thickened. No one was going to comment on Toss's republican associations. That was the second spring of the IRA's eighteen-month truce, when there was still hope for peace in the north. Everyone seemed to be tiptoeing around republican sensibilities. Except clumsy Americans like Tracy.