Malarkey

by Sheila Simonson

  I said, "Tommy abandoned the two of you to die of thirst?"

  Jay was silent.

  I felt a wave of nausea. It could have happened. If we hadn't known of the folly's existence...no, surely not. Too many people knew of the hideaway. Someone would have come forward, but would they have come forward quickly enough? It doesn't take many days for a human being to die without water.

  I gripped Jay's hand almost as fiercely as he had held mine.

  "Well, well, my money was on young Stein." Mahon heaved a huge sigh. "I'd best make a telephone call. We'll have to put a guard on McDiarmuid's room and bar visitors. Tommy Tierney's in custody, but we were set to release him on bail Monday."

  A nurse bustled in at that moment and ordered Mahon out. Perhaps she'd been eavesdropping. It was time, she announced, for Jay to eat. I was astonished I hadn't thought of feeding him. I'd been feeding people compulsively since I arrived in Ireland, and here was my husband starving. I expressed myself.

  It seemed they had fed him toast and broth earlier, before they called me to his room, and were about to administer cream of asparagus soup. Jay doesn't like cream of asparagus soup. I noticed that he ate it to the last drop. And drank a glass of juice. And ordered a steak, medium rare, when the nurse returned. She laughed as she whisked the cart from the room and promised a midnight snack.

  I was rather hungry myself by that time and thought longingly of pizza. However, Mahon would return at any moment and I was not going to leave Jay with the story untold. In fact, I was not going to leave him at all. I was explaining that to him in a low voice because I didn't want Gardai witnesses, when a crash sounded in the corridor.

  Jay's muscles contracted. I turned.

  Toss Tierney ripped the privacy curtain aside and stood swaying at the foot of the bed. He was drunk but by no means incapable of mayhem. I could see that in his eyes. I stood up slowly, but Jay kept a hard grip on my hand.

  "Liar!"

  Jay said nothing.

  "May God damn ye to hell telling lies about my son."

  "What lies, Mr. Tierney?" Jay's voice was cool, almost detached.

  Toss blinked. "And that hoor, Maeve Butler, wheedling and telling the missus she ought to betray Tommy. She's a traitor herself, the wee sassenach bitch. We know fine how to deal with traitors." He smacked the footrail and the bed shuddered.

  I said, "Teresa didn't betray anyone, Toss, and neither did Maeve."

  He called me unsanctified names in a spray of spittle. Jay squeezed my hand harder, holding me at his side.

  I softened my voice. "I know you love your son. That's probably why you showed him how to enter the folly. He showed others." I started to say he showed Artie and bit back the name. Why get Artie into trouble?

  "Others? What others?"

  "Does it matter? You were the one who betrayed the secret."

  His lower lip stuck out, I swear, like a pouting baby's. His eyes shifted, and he let out a baffled roar, shaking the bed. "Liar! I say he's innocent. Tommy's innocent."

  "He didn't kill Slade Wheeler," Jay murmured.

  Toss caught himself in mid-roar. "Whazzat?"

  "I said he did not kill Slade Wheeler."

  Toss shook his head like a fly-tormented horse. "Ah, shite, wasn't he after telling me he did?"

  I held my breath.

  Jay shook his head slowly. No. He held Toss's eyes.

  "Jaysus!" Toss sank onto the constable's chair. Great wrenching sobs shook his body. I don't think he noticed when Mahon and the constable, nightstick in hand, reentered the room. They handcuffed Toss and led him away, still sobbing.

  Jay flopped back against the pillow.

  I sat with a thwack. "You can let go of my hand."

  He released it finger by finger. "My dear and darling wife, do not ever try to reason with a drunk. He was ready to tear the limbs from your body."

  I shook my aching hand. "I wasn't trying to reason with him."

  "Then what did you have in mind?"

  I rose to my feet. "System overload."

  He squinted up at me. "Say again?"

  "I was trying to paralyze his central nervous system."

  Jay let out a long breath and wriggled his shoulders. "You came fairly close to paralyzing mine."

  "Anyone for pizza?" My father stood in the door holding a flat grease-blotched carton. The smile that wreathed his features faded. "What's the matter?"

  I said, "Just Toss Tierney. He's gone now."

  Jay said, "Hello, George. Did somebody mention pizza?"

  Dad's smile came back full force. His laid the carton on the bed and took Jay's hand. "My dear boy, we were so worried."

  Jay's cheeks reddened. "So was I."

  Maeve poked her head in from the corridor. "Is it safe? Grand. We brought clothes and a razor, Jay." He needed a razor.

  He smiled at her. "And pizza."

  So Jay and I shared the pizza while Dad told Jay about Maeve's campaign to enter the folly and Artie's last-minute rescue.

  I munched bland, cheesy pizza and watched my father. His voice was clear as a bell, no slurring, and his motions vigorous. Considering Dad had done every possible thing he shouldn't have done since I arrived, including breakfasting on scrambled eggs, I thought Ma was going to be pleased when she saw him. I was more than pleased. The session with Maeve's students had been tonic, clearly. He liked students. They kept him young. Maybe he needed to teach a class now and then. I'd suggest that sometime—some other time.

  "Sure, it's a council of war," Joe Kennedy said from the doorway.

  "Join us." Jay licked a bit of mozzarella from one finger. "It's good to see you. I hear you pulled the tape off my mouth. Thanks, buddy." They shook hands.

  Joe was blushing. "Ah, I couldn't help myself. Yon evidence johnny would have photographed you from a dozen angles and taken blood samples before he touched the tape—or the ropes."

  "No sense of priorities."

  Joe rubbed the back of his neck and grinned. "That's it."

  He was wearing jeans and a heathery blue pullover, so I gathered he was off-duty.

  "Pizza?" Jay lifted the carton, which was balanced on his stomach. Dad and Maeve had brought the largest pizza in the province of Leinster.

  Maeve handed Joe one of the paper plates Jay and I had ignored, American style, in favor of eating with our hands. "Don't tell me you're hungry."

  Joe helped himself. "I can never tell you anything that you don't already know, Miss Butler."

  Maeve's eyes glinted, and her jaw thrust out.

  "Hey," I said, swallowing pizza. "Truce. You two have been at daggers drawn for days now. It's exhausting to watch. Besides, you make a splendid team even when you're quarreling. Think what triumphs of archaeology and criminology you'd achieve if you cooperated."

  Both of them looked sheepish, so I pointed out Mrs. O'Brien's daffodils on the pseudo-altar by way of distraction, and told Joe I appreciated the gesture.

  We chatted about one thing and another. Maeve was taking her team to the motorway site the next morning. Joe was going fishing. Dad said he'd called Mother and the Dean. Ma was flying in to Dublin the following Saturday. Jay lay, eyes half-closed, yawning from time to time, but obviously comfortable and interested.

  However, when he heard I intended to stay the night he told me point-blank to forget it. My feelings were hurt. I'm afraid I had been romanticizing my role as noble wife ministering to sick husband—and sleeping at his feet, more or less. It's easy to create foolish self-images.

  Jay said, "Mahon's coming back. After that they'll knock me out again. I guarantee it. Come in the morning, Lark."

  "But—"

  He jabbed a thumb in the direction of my father who was asking Joe something about trout fishing.

  "Oh." I am sometimes slow on the uptake. Jay didn't want me to leave Dad alone in the cottage. Tears stung my eyes. I bent down and gave my good man as thorough a kiss as I should have, given his sore lip. "Well, if you insist. Dad and I will come for you rig
ht after breakfast."

  So we went away. Dad let me drive home. Maeve and Joe were standing in the car park talking when we left.

  Chapter 20

  Oh, when my back began to smart

  'Twas like a penknife in my heart,

  And when my heart began to bleed,

  Then that was death, and death indeed.

  Children's song

  Liam McDiarmuid died early that morning. Alex called at half past seven. He told me the news, his voice trembling, and asked if he and Barbara could come to the cottage to talk to my father. Dad was in the shower, but I said yes. A week earlier I would have tried to shield him.

  I brewed a fresh pot of coffee. When he came upstairs, I told him what had happened. Though he was sad, he was not as devastated as he might have been. We had talked for a long time the night before, unwinding, putting things in perspective, and I had told him of Jay's revelations. Now he agreed to let Alex and Barbara know, if Mahon had not told them, that their friend and colleague had probably committed murder. I thought it would come better from Dad than from me.

  So I fixed him a quick breakfast and went downstairs for my own shower. I dawdled afterwards, making the beds and running a batch of laundry. The swoosh-swoosh of the washer was oddly comforting. The spin cycle whined away, and I had set up a drying rack in the hallway, when I heard the Steins' knock. I took my time festooning the passage with a week's worth of damp underwear. When I had tossed a colored load into the washer and set it going again, I crept upstairs.

  Barbara was sniffing into a handkerchief, and Alex gave me a dispirited flap of the hand by way of greeting as I entered the kitchen. I poured myself a cup and warmed the coffee in the three other mugs.

  Barbara blew her nose. "I can't believe it. Not L-liam. Jay must be mistaken."

  She was very properly upset, so I didn't leap to Jay's defense. Dad kept quiet, too.

  "It's horrible."

  It was horrible. It was also puzzling.

  Alex said hesitantly, "I think the Bosnian experience was more traumatic for Liam than he was willing to admit. He was taken by one of those roving bands of Serbian guerrillas, you know. They kept him prisoner a while."

  I sat down. "You mean he was a hostage?" That was an irony, and not a nice one.

  Barbara plopped a second lump of sugar into her mug. "They didn't hold him for ransom or anything like that, and he got away from them after a week or ten days, but they confiscated his camera equipment and forced him to travel with them."

  "He said they made him witness their atrocities."

  I frowned. "I thought that sort tried to conceal their activities."

  Dad said, "The senior military officers would."

  Alex said, "This bunch was on its own, roving the country- side, chasing down Moslems and beating them to death. Lee said they were proud of what they were doing. They enjoyed it, and they believed in 'ethnic cleansing.'" His mouth twisted. "As far as Lee was concerned, those so-called patriots were a bunch of teenaged thugs." He pushed his mug away untouched. "And the business of digging up other victims for the U.N. commander, that haunted him."

  "The Serbs who captured Liam made a game of killing." Barbara began to cry again. "Poor Liam. We liked him so much."

  I had liked him, too. He was a charming, witty man and a fine photographer.

  I said, "I didn't stay to see the paramedics bring him out of the folly, Alex, but last night Mahon seemed to think he'd survive. What happened?"

  Alex sighed. "Pneumonia. He was running a high fever by the time we left the hospital, and they pumped him full of antibiotics, but I guess the combination of blood loss and hypothermia were too much. The doctor who called me said Liam died around dawn." He shivered. "I still don't believe it."

  Barbara turned to her husband. Her frizzy red hair crackled with earnestness, as if emotion had given it an electrical charge. "We knew he'd had a hard time, Alex. We should have been more sensitive to his feelings. We should have stopped Slade's stupid games."

  Dad took a reflective sip of coffee. "But the wargames were already well under way by the time Liam came to work for you, weren't they?"

  Barbara scrubbed at her eyes. "Yes, and he knew they were. He made wisecracks about them all along. You know his style—it was hard to tell when he cared about something."

  "Humor can be a defensive weapon," Dad murmured.

  Barbara leaned forward. "Do you think we should move the company, George?"

  "Heavens, no. You like it here, don't you?"

  She gave a snort. "I wish I was in California cursing the smog and the Simpson trial." 0.J. Simpson had been charged with murder. "At least American violence is familiar."

  "But violence is everywhere. You can't run away from it." Dad meditated over his cup. "And you have an obligation to the community, don't you? Your employees rely on you. I don't think you should give up and go home. I think you should find Irish partners, if possible, and hire other Irish artists and technicians."

  "Make amends and mend our fences." Alex was smiling at him. "I told Barb that's what you'd say."

  "Ask Maeve," I said. "She'll know what to do."

  They left shortly after that, saying they knew we wanted to get to the hospital as soon as possible.

  The news of Liam's death had shaken Jay. I was conscious of the weight of his silence in the back of the car as I drove home. In fact, I was so preoccupied I forgot to disable the alarm system when I unlocked the door. Jay and Dad must have been distracted, too. They didn't remind me in time to stop the hideous clangor. I shut the device off while Jay called the Garda station.

  I plugged in the electric kettle. "Would you mind if I took Jay off for a drive, Dad? If he feels up to it. I need to talk to him."

  He smiled. "An excellent thought. Maybe I can get some work done on my notes today."

  "You have had an interruption or two."

  Jay wandered in. "I talked to Joe. He said Mahon didn't reach the Wexford hospital in time for a formal interview before Liam's fever ran out of control. Still, Liam said enough while he was delirious to satisfy Mahon that my version of things was accurate." Mahon had talked to Jay again early that morning and broken the news of Liam's death.

  "Then the Gardai are closing the Wheeler cases?"

  "There are loose ends, and they'll need to take a deposition, but I probably won't have to return until they bring Tommy Tierney to trial."

  The kettle shrieked. I unplugged it. "Another intercontinental flight? Oh, Jay, I'm sorry."

  He took the steaming kettle from me and gave me a peck on the cheek. "You can come with me, help me hold the plane up."

  The kiss was very promising. I asked him if he felt well enough to take a drive through the countryside.

  "Absolutely." He wiggled the still protesting kettle. "Does anybody want tea?"

  None of us did. I had boiled water reflexively, as a response to men in the kitchen, a habit I'd have to break.

  Jay and I piled into the Toyota and took off. I wasn't aiming anywhere in particular. Jay didn't talk. I thought he deserved time to brood. When I'd driven some distance through the Vale of Avoca, I saw a sign for Avondale House and followed a coachload of German tourists to the car park.

  "The guidebook says the grounds are extensive—lots of exotic trees. The Forestry Department runs a school here." I was chattering. "The house is supposed to be a museum. It was Charles Stewart Parnell's ancestral manor."

  "Let's go for a walk." Jay got out, locking the door on his side.

  I slid out and locked my side with the key. "Where to?"

  "That looks like the path."

  The mostly elderly tourists milled on the asphalt. We cut off through the trees, avoiding the house, and were soon alone in a quiet glade of tall evergreens. The sun, though not warm, shone fitfully, and the ground was dry. Jay removed the anorak the hospital laundry had cleaned for him and spread it on the needles. We sat down, holding each other, not talking.

  Finally, he said, "I thou
ght a lot about you while I was stuck in the dark."

  "I thought about you."

  "I know. I wanted to tell Liam not to worry, that my wife was organizing our rescue."

  "You're making fun of me."

  "No," he said. "It kept me sane, believing that."

  I touched the white dressing on the side of his head. "I didn't do anything. Maeve was the one who figured out where you were and forced the Gardai to let her dig." My hand dropped, and my eyes filled. "She was the one who thought of calling Teresa Tierney."

  He stroked my hair. "You mean that wasn't just Toss's imagination?"

  Sniffing, I explained about the jungle drums.

  Jay chuckled. "I'm damned."

  "You never met Artie."

  "Or the inimitable Grace. I'll have to thank them in person."

  I sat up and dabbed my eyes with a tissue. "Artie you may meet. Not Grace. She's far too dangerous."

  He touched my face. "Not to you, love. Will you listen to me while I confess my sins?"

  I blinked at him. "Confess?"

  He nodded. "You were right. I made a very dumb mistake coming here. I knew it the minute I saw your face at the airport, and I've been driving myself nuts ever since trying to figure out how to retrieve my error."

  "But Jay—"

  He touched my lips, hushing me. "When you didn't call me after you found the body, I panicked. That's the truth with no bark on it."

  "Panic? You don't panic."

  He kissed me. "My sweet innocent, I freaked out. I couldn't teach, I couldn't grade papers, I couldn't sleep. All I could think about was that our marriage was in danger, and I wasn't doing anything about it. I need you, Lark. Believe me, only the thought of losing you would compel me to sit in a jumbo jet for eleven hours with little bits of Greenland breaking off into the Atlantic thirty thousand feet below me."

  "It wasn't anything you did. It was the baby."

  "Yes, I know."

  "What if I can't give you a child?"

  "A child is not a box of chocolates. If we can't have a baby ourselves, we'll adopt one. Or not. Your choice."