The Postman Always Dies Twice (Movie Club Mysteries, Book 2): An Irish Cozy Mystery

by Zara Keane

  I gave an unladylike snort. “Yeah…when it doesn’t need to be jump-started.”

  Lisa choked on a laugh.

  Annoyance flickered in Jack’s eyes but his smile never wavered. “Nonsense. You’re probably not used to driving a stick.”

  “I drove a stick for years, Jack. We do have them in the U.S., you know.” I turned to Jack’s companion. “Do you want to join us, Lisa? A bunch of us have seats in the corner. I’m sure we can squeeze in one more.” I was being rude but I didn’t care. And when even snooty Lisa jumped at the lifeline I’d thrown her, my opinion of Jack sank lower.

  “Thanks,” she whispered when we walked toward the others. “I’d been trying to come up with an excuse to get away from him.”

  “He seems pretty fond of you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Trust me, the feeling isn’t mutual. I never liked Jack Logan. Even his own family isn’t fond of him.”

  “Seriously?” I feigned surprise. “His grandfather doesn’t seem to mind him.”

  “Oh, Gerry likes all his grandkids. I meant that Jack’s cousins don’t like him.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Jack has no class,” Lisa continued. “He even propositioned me on my wedding day—to his cousin. Seriously, who does that?”

  We reached the others, and Julie and I pushed our stools together to make space for Lisa. Despite her red lemonade containing nothing stronger than sugar, Lisa became more animated the more she drank.

  After warming her up with small talk and low-grade island gossip I’d gleaned from the café, I cut to the chase. “I hear Carl got bail today.”

  Lisa swallowed and took a gulp of red lemonade. “So I heard. The idea of him killing anyone is just plain crazy. He’s not the violent type.”

  “Hopefully, all charges will be dropped soon,” I said, “once the police figure out the dead man’s identity and find the killer. I’m convinced Carl was framed.”

  Lisa was silent for a moment. “I know. I’ve been turning it over in my head. For someone to go to such lengths to pin the murder on Carl, they have to have a serious grudge against him.”

  “Can you think of anyone who falls into that category?”

  Lisa gave me a sly smile. “Apart from me, you mean?”

  “Well…you are his ex-wife.”

  “Estranged wife,” she said softly, “not that the distinction makes much difference. But no, I didn’t frame Carl, nor would I want to. And why would I kill a man I’d never met?”

  “We don’t know who the man is. Maybe you had met him.”

  “I doubt it. And I certainly haven’t killed anyone.”

  She was convincing. I had to give her full marks for presenting her defense. However, I couldn’t shake the sensation that Lisa wasn’t being entirely honest with me. She was holding something back. Now maybe that something had no bearing on the case, but I wanted to know what it was. “Can you think of anyone who’d like to see Carl go to jail?” I asked. “Anyone with a grudge?”

  Lisa shook her head. “I’ve thought about it since Carl was arrested. He’s got a hot temper but he’s all bluff. I can see him insulting someone, but not enough for them to form a grudge that strong.”

  Now that I had Lisa talking, it was time to steer the conversation in the direction of the other mystery that I was nowhere close to solving. “Between Carl’s arrest and the ghost, there’s been a lot of drama at the Whisper Island Hotel lately.”

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Lisa’s gaze flickered in the direction of the group around the table, all deep in conversation about football results. The movement was too quick for me to guess who Lisa had been looking at, but there had to be significance to that eye movement right after I’d mentioned the hotel ghost.

  I got straight to the point. “Who do you think is behind the hauntings?”

  This time, Lisa’s eyes remained on her glass. “Someone who doesn’t want the new extension built.”

  “I’d guessed that much,” I said dryly, “but there appear to be a number of contenders. The Folklore and Heritage people don’t want the fairy tree cut down, and apparently, archaeologists want to excavate in that area.”

  “All sound reasons not to want the Greers to build there,” Lisa said in the bland monotone she’d briefly lost during this evening’s conversation.

  “Can you think of another reason someone would want that land left alone?”

  To my surprise, she nodded. “It’s quite obvious when you think about it.”

  “Uh, it is?”

  She cast me an amused look. “The island’s farmers have been plagued by animal rights activists pulling ridiculous stunts. What’s more ridiculous than wailing like a banshee and clanking chains?”

  “The tree,” I whispered. “It’s not the fairy tree legend they care about. It’s the tree itself.”

  “That’s my bet,” Lisa said.

  “You might very well be right.” I leaned back in the stool and scanned the faces around the table. Günter was into hiking and healthy living. Sven and Marcus had extolled the virtues of using natural beauty products. Bernadette specialized in the hotel’s vegan and vegetarian menu options, but being vegan didn’t automatically make her an activist. Zuzanna had told me she’d studied archaeology and therefore had a potential interest in the archaeological site. My gaze slid to the woman beside me. Julie was right. Lisa did have brains. If she were the one responsible for sabotaging her ex-lover’s business, she’d cleverly put me off her scent.

  At eleven-thirty, the pub’s manager announced it was closing time and we all filed out into the cold night air. Julie and I walked in the direction of the Movie Theater Café where we’d parked our cars.

  “I’m looking forward to tomorrow.” At my blank expression, my cousin added, “Our trip to the mainland? Are you still on for that?”

  Oh, heck. I’d forgotten all about the broken projector and Lenny’s plan to deal with it and question his black market tech pal on the same day. My stomach clenched at my lack of progress in the two cases, but I read the disappointment on my cousin’s face. “Sure,” I said brightly. “I’ll be there. We’re catching the one o’clock ferry from Carraig Harbour, right?”

  She nodded, her expression happier. “That’s right. I’m looking forward to a relaxing day out.”

  My smile felt rigid. Relaxing was the last thing I felt capable of doing.

  “By the way, Mum said you’d emailed her about ordering an archaeology journal.”

  My mood brightened. “Yeah. Did she find it?”

  “Sort of. They don’t have a copy on Whisper Island. She could request an interlibrary loan, but it would be faster if we went by the university library when we’re in Galway tomorrow.”

  “That’s a great idea. Thank you.”

  “No problem.” Julie shifted her purse to her other shoulder. “I’d better get going. I’ll see you on the ferry.”

  “See you then. Sleep well.”

  After Julie had jogged down the street to where she’d parked her car, a voice called out, “Hey, Maggie. Can I catch a ride with you?” Günter lumbered up to join me, his blond hair white under the street lamp.

  “Sure. Are you still staying with my aunt and uncle?”

  He nodded. “For the moment. I’m looking for a place to rent.”

  I cast an amused glance in the direction of Julie’s car. She lived several houses down from her parents’ place. He could have easily asked her for a ride. “Hop in,” I said. We drove the short distance from the café to my aunt and uncle’s house on the outskirts of Smuggler’s Cove. “I think Lisa had fun,” I said to break the ice.

  “Yes. The crowd from the hotel is always a laugh,” Günter said. “I asked Sven and Marcus about Eddie Ward, back when we all thought he was the murder victim, but neither of them knew anything interesting. Now that the dead guy turns out to be someone else, I guess it’s not relevant.”

  “I guess not.” I slowed the car and turned onto my aunt and uncle
’s street. “It must be nice for you to speak German with Marcus.”

  “Yeah. There are only two people on the island who speak German well enough to chat with me in my native tongue.” Günter grinned. “But Marcus’s German amuses me.”

  “What do you mean? He’s German, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, no,” Günter chuckled. “He told me he was from Bavaria, but that’s nonsense. His Bavarian accent is terrible.”

  My heart lurched in my chest. “Are you saying he can’t speak German properly?”

  “Define ‘proper.’ We have many dialects in Germany, and even more in German-speaking countries like Austria and Switzerland. Marcus speaks High German with me and tries to flavor it with a Bavarian accent. My bet is that he’s from Switzerland.”

  My mind turned over this new information. “Why would Marcus lie about where he’s from?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted a clean slate when he moved to Ireland. I know I did.”

  This was the closest Günter had ever come to confiding in me. “But you didn’t lie about where you’re from.”

  “True. All I’m saying is that I can understand someone wanting to forget their past, so I’ve never pushed it with him. If he wants to say he’s German, okay.”

  “I guess.” I stopped in front of my aunt and uncle’s gate. “Night, Günter.”

  “Bye, Maggie. Thanks for the lift.”

  After he’d disappeared into the house, I drove home to Shamrock Cottages, deep in thought. What was the significance of Marcus’s odd accent? Günter had mentioned a fresh start as a potential motivation, but Marcus lying about where he came from was extreme. Was the subterfuge just another oddity in my ever-growing list of weird coincidences, or did it have any relevance to the murder?

  19

  I worked my last shift at the hotel on Thursday morning. When noon rolled around, I knocked on the Greers’ office door. This time, Melanie sat behind the desk while Paul paced in front of the office’s floor-to-ceiling window.

  “So you’ve made no progress.” Melanie’s tone held no rebuke, and her expression was so forlorn that I felt rather sorry for her.

  “I wouldn’t say no progress. I found that speaker, remember?”

  “But not who put it behind the wall.” Her lips twisted. “We need to know who is behind this nonsense.”

  “I know, and I’m working on it. I’m going to the mainland today, and I intend to use the opportunity to check a few facts.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “The grapevine tells me your trip is a shopping trip.”

  I held my head high. “Yeah, but I can do both. The clothes shopping part won’t take long.”

  A smug expression wiped the worry off Melanie’s face. “Given your lack of fashion sense, I’m sure it won’t.”

  I bit my tongue to stop myself from lashing out at her. Where Melanie was concerned, each tentative step we took toward building a neutral relationship was destroyed by her seeming inability to refrain from making snide comments.

  “To sum up,” Paul said, turning from the window to face me, “you don’t know who’s behind the hotel ghost, and we’ve wasted two thousand euros on your so-called expertise.”

  “I still have until midnight to crack the case,” I reminded him. “That’s another twelve hours.”

  Paul loosened his tie and returned his gaze to the window. “It’s hopeless. You don’t even have a suspect. I don’t see what you can discover on the mainland.”

  “Maybe nothing of relevance, but I’m optimistic.”

  “At least one of us is,” Melanie said tartly. “As far as I can tell, we’ve wasted a lot of money hiring you and we’re no closer to knowing who’s sabotaging our business.”

  I took a deep, calming breath. Melanie wasn’t wrong. I had no idea who was behind the hauntings. All I had to go on was the hope that Lenny’s black market pal could be persuaded to tell us who’d purchased similar equipment recently—assuming our ghost had made his or her purchase from him. It was a slim possibility, but it was all I had. “I’m confident I’ll have answers for you by tonight.” I held up a hand. “No, I won’t share details before I’m sure, but I will say it’ll come as a surprise.”

  It’d certainly come as a surprise to me. I hoped I exuded a confidence I wasn’t feeling.

  Paul and Melanie exchanged dubious glances. “Fair enough,” he said finally. “Do your thing and report back to us by dinner time.”

  “By midnight,” I corrected.

  Paul sneered. “That sounds dramatic. Do you intend to wake us up to update us on your lack of progress?”

  My fingernails dug into my palms, but I willed myself to stay calm. “I’m just reminding you that I have until midnight to crack the case. We had a deal.”

  Melanie sniffed. “A deal I’m not convinced you can make good on.”

  “We’ll see about that.” I stood. “But now, I have a ferry to catch.”

  In contrast to my last trip on the ferry, the sea was smooth as glass, and we made good time. When Julie went in search of a drink, Lenny took me to one side. “I had another look at the surveillance footage from the hotel. It looks like the footage from the times of the hauntings was spliced with footage from another day. It was a clumsy job, but it would fool an eejit like Pat Inglis.”

  “So the real footage from the times of the hauntings was wiped out and replaced with old footage?”

  Lenny nodded. “Whoever did it must have known that Pat—and whoever else works as a security guard at the hotel—doesn’t watch all the cameras. If they knew what time the system was due to show certain live footage, they could plan where to stage a haunting. In the chaos after, it would be easy enough to slip into the security room and play the doctored footage over the original.”

  “It’s still taking an enormous risk.”

  “This whole business smacks of someone in it for thrills, Maggie. They probably get an adrenaline kick out of it. If they were a true tech pro, they could doctor the footage remotely, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here.”

  When Julie returned with her bottled water, we switched to neutral topics, and half an hour later, Julie, Lenny, and I drove into Galway city.

  It was my first trip to Galway since I’d moved to Whisper Island and I was excited to see how much it had changed since I was a teenager. The city was home to eighty-thousand residents, almost a quarter of whom were students at NUI Galway, one of the constituent universities of the National University of Ireland. According to Lenny, the Two-Thousands had seen an influx of immigrants, most of whom had come from Poland and other central and eastern European states. This gave the city a cultural flair that Whisper Island lacked, but during our drive from the harbor to the city center, I saw that Galway had lost none of its native charm since my last visit.

  We parked in Eyre Square Centre, right in the heart of the city, and strolled across the square to a strange fountain with rusty triangles arranged in a pattern that I didn’t recognize. “I remember this fountain. What’s it called again?”

  “The Galway Hookers,” Lenny said with a grin. “You’re in the Wild West now.”

  My jaw dropped. “Seriously? How is it meant to represent hookers?”

  “Don’t mind Lenny,” Julie said. “A Galway hooker is a type of sailboat. The triangles represent the shape of their sails.”

  “That’s not half as exciting as Lenny’s explanation.”

  “To be fair, it was more of an insinuation than an explanation, but it was fun watching you leap to the wrong conclusion.” Lenny checked his watch. “Want to meet back here at five? You girls can go shopping, and I’ll deal with the projector and the purveyor of black market tech.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Want to grab a bite to eat before we catch the ferry home?”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Lenny shifted the bag containing the projector to his other shoulder. “See you later, ladies.”

  Julie and I hit the pedestrianized—and aptly named—Shop Street, Galway’s main s
hopping thoroughfare. I recognized a few of the chain store names, but most were new to me. Thankfully, my cousin navigated us through the various stores with ease, and I was soon in possession of a spring wardrobe that hadn’t completely bankrupted me.

  “You’re a shopping whirlwind,” I said, when we emerged from a brightly lit store with particularly penetrating hip-hop music blasting in the background.

  “I’m a functional shopper. I know what I like and I go straight for it.”

  “A woman after my own heart.” I checked the time. “We still have plenty of time for me to go to the library and look up that article.”

  “You can’t just stroll into the library, Maggie,” Julie said with a laugh. “You need to apply for a card and state a reason why you want access.”

  My buoyant mood deflated. “Will that take long to sort out?”

  “I’m not sure, but I can offer to go in for you.” She whipped a card out of her purse. “I use it for research for the master’s in education I’m doing online.”

  “Julie, that would be awesome. How far is it to walk?”

  “Not far. Ten or fifteen minutes, depending on how fast we are.”

  I grinned. “After all the training we’ve done, we can move fast.”

  We took off at a rapid pace, speeding down Shop Street to Mainguard Street, Bridge Street, and then reaching O’Brien’s Bridge. We crossed the River Corrib and strode up Nun’s Island Road. “Are there actual nuns living on Nun’s Island?” I asked my cousin as we speed walked our way toward our destination.

  “Yes. Fewer now than there used to be, but there’s still a community of enclosed Poor Clares living on the island.”

  “You’re going to have to translate that for me. What’s an enclosed Poor Clare?”

  “The Poor Clares is an order of nuns. ‘Enclosed’ means they don’t leave their monastery except for emergencies.”

  I stared at her, horrified. “You mean they stay locked up in their nunnery?”

  “More or less, yeah.”

  I shuddered. “I can’t imagine living that sort of life.”

  “Nor can I, but they chose it, so I guess it works for them. Whatever floats their boat.”