The Trust

by Ronald H. Balson

  “I’ve listened long enough to this whodunit bullshit,” he said. “We all know you’re a detective in Chicago, but this ain’t Chicago. We don’t have any gangsters here. This wasn’t done by some corrupt politician. Janie’s no more a coordinator than the man in the moon. Everybody knows she can’t even coordinate her own relationship. Why don’t we hire a real private detective, one who works here in the North? An Irishman. To be frank, Uncle Eamon, I’m not ready to forgive Liam for betraying my father and the family. I’d just as soon he board his plane and get his two-faced ass back to Chicago.”

  Robert interrupted him. “That matter is closed, Conor, and we’ll not bring it up again. If you don’t want to participate, we’ll move on without you. But we’ll accept no interference and they’ll be no more insults thrown in Liam’s direction.”

  With that remark, Conor threw down the rest of his whiskey and said, “Then you can all play your make-believe detective games and be junior coppers, but I’m looking into getting us a professional. In my business, I know plenty of them.” He turned and walked toward the door. “And don’t give me this participate crap. I’m his oldest son, you’ll not cut me out. If anyone’s calling the shots, it’s going to be me.” And he walked out.

  In a booth along the inner wall, Aunt Deirdre sat alone. She held a white handkerchief in her hands and frequently covered her eyes. As Conor left, she hissed and said, “Good riddance.”

  Janie leaned over and spoke softly to me. “She’s in bad shape. She and Uncle Fergus were together for more than forty years and now she seems lost. She doesn’t accept any solace and she doesn’t want to open up to anyone.”

  Although thinner than I remember, she was still very lovely and every inch a lady. “I always loved her,” I said. “For six years she was my mom. Truth be told, she was warmer to me than my mom ever was. I’ve missed her dearly. I’m ashamed that I haven’t called her, but I always assumed she felt the same way as my uncle and I didn’t know how to start the conversation.”

  “You’re going to have to get over that. They both loved you. You need to go to her.”

  Robert watched Conor leave, and sadly shook his head. Then he turned to the rest of us and announced, “My brother’s solicitor, Malcolm O’Neill, will be reading the will tomorrow at two o’clock. He’s in the Union Building on Railway Street. If any of you want to attend, you’ll be welcomed. Liam, we’d like you there.” With that, the meeting ended.

  In the parking lot, I asked Janie if I could get into Fergus’s home. She shook her head. “It’s cordoned off. There’s yellow tape around it and they’ve padlocked the doors.”

  “Have they posted a guard?”

  Janie shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Good. I’m going to head over there tonight.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  I smiled at her spunk. “It’s better that I go alone.”

  “Well, be careful. The PSNI officer in charge of the investigation is Inspector Farrell McLaughlin. He’s a stickler for the rules. He’ll lock you up if he catches you in there. He’s an old-timer, a wise, shrewd type. When you talk to him, you know that there’s a lot going on behind those eyes. He can be gruff, but he’s not a bad guy. I met him years ago.” She smiled and tilted her head. “His grandson always had a fancy for me.”

  I had to chuckle, and thought to myself, what young Irishman wouldn’t? I gave her a hug and headed off to check into my hotel in downtown Antrim.

  FOUR

  IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when I pulled up to Fergus’s farmhouse, a country cottage of wood and stone nestled beneath a canopy of oak and poplars, set back a couple hundred yards off the road. The area was pitch black but for the faint glow of a crescent moon. As Janie had described it, I found the house cordoned off with yellow tape. The windows were dark and I walked toward the front door holding a small flashlight. It was padlocked.

  A walk around the house confirmed that the windows were all locked and the back door had been padlocked as well. Then, remembering my childhood, I went around to the side facing the pasture. Behind the evergreen bushes I found what I was looking for, the metal covering on the abandoned coal chute. I lifted it open and lowered myself into the basement.

  I hadn’t been in my uncle’s house in sixteen years, but I knew where everything would be. There were tools hung against the wall and storage boxes stacked beside the furnace. Same boxes in the same places. I climbed the stairs and opened the door to the kitchen, surprised at how time had managed to stand so still. Was I opening the door to 1998? To my right was the long wooden table where Aunt Deirdre would serve her family dinners. Where I’d first met Annie. And standing right before me was the spirit of my uncle frying eggs and sausage for my breakfast, standing tall, his suspenders over his white T-shirt, a proud smile on his face. A vision that disappeared when I smelled cigarette smoke. Someone was in the house.

  In the darkness of the living room, off in a corner, I could barely make out a solitary figure.

  “Well, well, Liam Taggart, I should have known. You startled me, son.”

  “Aunt Deirdre.”

  “Came in through the coal chute, eh? Pull up a seat,” she said in a voice weakened from crying. She struck a match, lit a candle and emerged from the shadows. She was settled deep into a tufted wingback chair, her legs crossed, a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail glass in the other. An open bottle of Bushmills sat on the end table. She picked up another tumbler, poured it quarter-full and handed it to me.

  I threw my arms around her and hugged her like I was ten years old. And there was never a doubt that she’d hug me back just as strong. Even when I was a child and I’d crossed the line, broken a rule, I could always return to her embrace and it was never withheld. Tears were flowing and she whispered, “I’ve missed you so, son.”

  “Please forgive me, Aunt Deirdre. I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive and you’ll not bring it up again.”

  She was that kind of woman.

  “What are you doing out here tonight, Aunt Deirdre?”

  “What am I doing here? I live here. This is my home. Has been for forty years.” She was still wearing the same black dress she wore at Doogan’s. “No inspector’s going to tell me I can’t sleep in my own bed.”

  I nodded and took a sip of whiskey. In a fight between McLaughlin and Deirdre, my money’s on my feisty aunt.

  “I’m guessing you didn’t jump down through the coal chute,” I said.

  She chuckled. “The back window. It never locked right. I suppose you’re out here to look around for some clues or something?”

  “Are there any here?”

  She shrugged. “Might be, if I knew what to look for. But you’re better off coming during the day when you can see what you’re looking at. Can’t see crap at night. They turned off the electric.”

  I laughed a bit. “I brought a flashlight.”

  “Come during the day. No one cares. McLaughlin’s a good cop, but the PSNI’s not going to waste any time looking into Fergus’s homicide. We don’t kid ourselves. They don’t give a damn. Fergus is just another republican casualty. A statistic. Today they’ll say isn’t it a shame, and tomorrow they’ll go on about their business and Fergus will just be someone who used to be.” She covered her eyes and her intermittent sobs made her shoulders twitch. I sat down on the edge of the couch.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now, Liam. I don’t have anyplace to go but here. Truth is, I need to discuss it all with Fergus. He’d have the answers for me. He’d tell me what to do. I could always turn to him.”

  She took a healthy swallow of whiskey, set the tumbler down hard on the table and glared at me defiantly. “Stop looking at me like I’m some pitiful old woman. I’m entitled to my grief. I’m allowed to wallow if I want to.” Then her lips morphed into a grin and she let out a husky laugh. “Bet you didn’t expect to find all this when you decided to come out here tonight.”

  “No, I
didn’t and that’s for sure. I really didn’t know what I’d find. I was hoping just to get a feel for what was going on in Uncle Fergus’s life before he died. Maybe I’d come across something that would give me some direction.”

  “I’m looking for the same thing. Some direction. We’re two blind fools in the dark.” She sniffled. “It’s been a long life for Fergus and me. You know, I first met the man more than forty years ago, the very day I was released from jail.”

  “Jail?”

  She raised her eyebrows and grinned. “Yep.” She poured another two inches of whiskey into her glass and swirled it around. “It was July, 1970. The Brits had put Falls Road under a twenty-four-hour curfew. ‘Indefinite curfew,’ they said. ‘Indefinite.’” She put the glass to her lips, took a sip, leaned back to let the memories come to her, and addressed her words to the room as a whole, like I wasn’t sitting there. “Twenty thousand Catholics living in the Falls and no one was allowed to go outside the house for any reason. People couldn’t go to the store, couldn’t get food, couldn’t get bread, couldn’t get milk. Babies were crying. Anyone who dared go out on the street risked being arrested or worse.

  “I was living with my mother on Andersontown Road, a dozen blocks away. As the curfew was going into the fourth day, a buzz started going from house to house. ‘Something’s got to be done to help those folks,’ my mother said. ‘We can’t let those children starve.’ And we knew it had to be us. The women. ‘Ladies, come out of your kitchens! Grab a box of eggs, a loaf of bread, a quart of milk. We’re going to the Falls and no one’s going to stop us.’”

  Deirdre smiled, a proud smile. “So, one by one, we came out of our houses, just women and children, carrying milk and bags of food and we gathered together in the street. Thirty, forty of us to start, and then we were hundreds, I’m telling you hundreds, all walking toward the Falls. You’ve never seen anything like it. Rows of women and children marching straight into the Falls, chanting, singing, all carrying groceries.”

  She knocked back a solid swig of Bushmills. “The Brits tried to stop us, you know. The soldiers stood arm-in-arm and made a barrier across Leeson Street. Helicopter blades were churning overhead. Rifles pointed. Loudspeakers blaring. Truth is, those young soldiers were more scared than we were, but what were they going to do? Shoot the whole lot of us—women and children? Ha! We had ’em in a fix. They parted and let us pass.”

  She bit her lip and nodded proudly. “The women broke the curfew that day, Liam. But they arrested over three hundred of us. Threw us all into the center courtyard of the prison. They didn’t know what to do with us. It was a nightmare for them, the whole thing, so they let us all go. We had a street fair that night, a celebration, and that’s when I met Fergus. Drop-dead handsome, he was.” She stopped. Her tears were flowing more freely now, breathing came in gasps and she held a cloth to her eyes. “Forty years. What am I supposed to do now? Tell me. Where am I supposed to go?”

  I shook my head. I sincerely hoped that Fergus had made provisions for her in his will. Maybe he left her the house and the farm. Riley and Conor were successful businessmen. They didn’t need it.

  Then abruptly, she stood, set her glass down and beckoned me to follow. “Bring your flashlight. There’s something I have to give you.”

  She led me into an alcove off the back bedroom that Uncle Fergus had used as an office. “The police haven’t searched the house yet,” she said. “They’re supposed to come by on Saturday. They locked the house to prevent anyone from disturbing the evidence.” She held up her fingers to put the phrase in quotes.

  In the bottom drawer of an old battered desk, she extracted a walnut box. The size of a cigar box, it was highly polished with an inlaid flower design on the top and a brass keyhole on the front. “Fergus kept his important papers in this box,” she said, holding it out. “He told me that if anything were to happen, I was to give this box to you.”

  “What do you mean ‘if anything were to happen’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “For some time, Fergus has been on edge. He was like a Doberman that sensed an intruder and stood ready with his ears up. At first I thought he was being foolishly paranoid, maybe a leftover from the old days. But he was serious. You’ll ask me why and I’ll tell you I don’t know. Fergus shut me out when it came to anything dangerous. He said it was for my own good.”

  She held the box out for me again.

  “Why me? Why did he tell you to give this box to me?”

  “Of all the people in the world, he trusted you the most. He said, ‘If something happens, give this box to Liam.’” She thrust the box into my hands. “The key is on a hook in the basement.”

  “What’s in the box, Aunt Deirdre?”

  She shook her head, shrugged her shoulders and turned to walk back to her Bushmills. She was finished with this conversation. She had done her duty.

  I followed her. “Why me, Aunt Deirdre? Why not Riley or Conor or one of Uncle Fergus’s brothers?”

  She scoffed when I said Conor and receded into the darkness of the living room.

  “Seriously, why me? The last time Uncle Fergus and I were together…”

  “I know. I was there. ‘You best be off.’ It hit him hard, Liam, and he wept for days. Many times he thought about calling you, but he didn’t know how to start the conversation. Stubborn bunch, you Taggarts. He even reached out to Annie. You know, the two of them have stayed pretty close through the years, but she said she hadn’t been in touch with you either. So now you ask ‘why me’? Because he loved you like no other.”

  When I heard all that, my legs went weak. I wiped the tears with the back of my sleeve. It felt like a golf ball was stuck in my throat and I stood there, numb.

  I could have made amends after all. It would have been easy. For either one of us. It could have been done anytime with a simple phone call. And then it occurred to me. There never was a need to make amends. When you love someone that much, bad words, hurtful words, are like a covering of snow. They’ll melt away in time.

  “Are you going to stand there all night?” she called from the dark. “Or will you have a drink to your uncle?”

  We clinked our glasses until we emptied the bottle. I stood to leave, a bit off balance, and Deirdre said, “One more thing.” She handed me a white envelope with no writing on it. “I found this in our mailbox the day Fergus was killed.”

  I opened the envelope and a photograph slipped out and fell to the floor. It was a photo of the remains of a redbrick townhouse, severely ravaged by a fire. I shrugged. “Do you know what this is?”

  “No idea. It looks like a place in the old neighborhood, but it obviously burned down.”

  I studied the picture. Terrace house, two up, two down. Just the shell of a house, just the carcass. It didn’t mean anything to me either.

  I turned for the door and Deirdre took my hand. “Don’t punish yourself, Liam. He loved you strong. There’s an old Irish proverb: ‘May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten.’”

  FIVE

  I DON’T RECALL EXACTLY how I found my way back to the hotel. The next morning I awoke fully clothed with my arms around the inlaid walnut box and my head throbbing. It took me a few moments to get my bearings, remember what bedroom I was lying in and why I had this box sitting on my chest. What was it about the contents that were so important that they could only be entrusted to me? Why not Deirdre? Or Riley, or Conor, or one of my uncles? Why did she laugh when I said Conor? How did Uncle Fergus even know I’d come back to Antrim? Maybe he shouldn’t have taken that for granted. Maybe he should have called me and made amends, just to be on the safe side. I wonder if any of those scenarios went through his mind before he died.

  The box remained locked and the key was in my pocket, though I don’t remember going to get it in the basement. I was certainly in no condition to examine the contents the previous evening, having been grossly over-served in the dark of the living room. I leaned ove
r to check the clock. Ten thirty a.m. I was scheduled to meet Janie for lunch at noon, and then walk with her to the solicitor’s office for the reading of the will.

  I was curious to see what was in the box, but I had to clear my head first. A hot shower, two cups of black coffee, and three aspirins later and I was ready to tackle the mystery. I set the box on the desk and opened it. No genie, no maps of buried treasure, no star sapphires. Just groups of papers bound with rubber bands: bank statements, deeds to the farm and the adjoining rural property, stock certificates and yearly investor statements from Global Investments, Inc. I went through a few of the recent bank statements and learned that Uncle Fergus was not just some humble farmer. He had done all right. His bank balances were solid. The farm was owned free and clear. I couldn’t tell what his investments were worth, but he appeared to be well off.

  There were records of purchases and repairs on farm equipment, some doctor and pharmacy receipts, contracts with local grain storage companies and receipts for delivery of grain sold to breweries. On the bottom of the box was a sealed envelope. “Liam” was written on the face. I opened it to find a handwritten letter.

  Liam:

  It’s been too many years and I deeply regret our separation, though I have never doubted for an instant that our hearts are bound together for eternity. No recriminations will be allowed, my son. We are two hardheaded Taggarts and we’ll leave it at that.

  If you are reading this, I am dead. Over the past several weeks, I have become alarmed over certain things that I have heard and seen. At first, I thought it was impossible. Now I’ve come to believe that I’m onto something, a danger that threatens everything I value, the entire treasure of a man’s life. I pray that I’m wrong, and for that reason, I’m not going to name any names. I dare not slander an innocent person. But I intend to find out if my suspicions are correct and stop it in its tracks. God help this family if I fail.