Bonnie started by reciting Cheyenne’s rights, the whole Miranda thing. Patrick wanted her to hold out for a lawyer, but his daughter was determined to get her crime off her chest.
“So, Cheyenne.” Bonnie took a small notebook from her jacket pocket. “You say you murdered Colette O’Rourke.”
The girl reared back. “What, are you nuts? Grandma O’Rourke had, like, a stroke.”
“Well, you said it was your grandma, so…”
Bonnie and I frowned in unison as we mentally wrestled the facts into a new and intriguing reality. Patrick’s inheritance. His key to the house. His daily visits.
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh,” I said.
“Seriously?” Martin looked at Patrick.
Patrick said, “I kinda expected someone would figure it out before now.”
I examined Patrick with fresh eyes, looking for some physical similarity to Irene—and found it, in the shape of the mouth and the light brown eyes.
I’d wondered why she’d asked Dom to hire Patrick. Mystery solved.
“Sten Jakobsen’s the only one who knew?” Bonnie asked.
Patrick nodded. He squeezed his daughter’s hand. “I never even told my family that Irene was my real mom, not until after Sten called to tell me she was gone. I didn’t know myself until last June after Dad passed. Mom let it slip then,” he said, referring to Colette. “She didn’t mean to, she meant to take the secret to her grave.”
“But why did Irene give you up?” I asked. “How did Colette and Burt end up raising you as their own?”
Patrick sighed. “Irene had plans, big plans, from the time she was a kid. No way was she gonna follow in her mom’s footsteps, marry some blue-collar guy from the neighborhood and raise a bunch of brats in Bay Ridge. That might be good enough for the other girls, but she wanted something more.”
“A rich husband,” Dom called from the foyer, where he could hear the whole conversation as he cleaned up the mess.
I looked at Martin and knew he was thinking about his grandparents, whose marriage Irene had wrecked to fulfill her goal.
“But then Irene got pregnant,” Bonnie said, and Patrick nodded.
“She was only seventeen,” he said. “Mom was her best friend. They were closer than sisters back then. Mom wasn’t holding out for a sugar daddy, though. She and Dad were in love. He gave her a ring before he went to Korea. But he got wounded over there and, well, they told him he could never father kids. He offered to let Mom go, to let her find a man that could give her a family, you know? But her and Irene, they came up with a different plan.”
“Colette would take care of Irene’s problem,” I said, “and Irene would take care of Colette’s.”
Martin spoke up. “By giving her the child she and her husband couldn’t have.”
Patrick said, “Mom and Dad get married quick. Irene goes away for a few months and Mom pads her dresses. Then she supposedly gives birth, and no one the wiser.”
“I didn’t know Mrs. McAuliffe was my real grandma. Not until after I—” Cheyenne choked back a sob. “I didn’t mean to, I swear. She wanted me to make her sick, not dead.”
“Who, Cheyenne?” Bonnie reached across the coffee table to hand the girl tissues. “Who wanted you to make Irene sick?”
Cheyenne looked at her father, who glumly nodded. “Go on,” he murmured.
“Grandma O’Rourke.” The girl honked into the tissues. “She… she wanted Mrs. McAuliffe to get sick so she’d stay home from the poker tournament and Grandma would win. She—” Another sob racked her. “She paid me to help her. She gave me some of the money from Grandpa’s life insurance.”
Well, that explained the fancy new purchases. Not drug dealing, after all, but murder for hire. Or rather, indigestion-gone-bad for hire.
“Mom wasn’t herself,” Patrick said, “ever since Dad died. In some ways she kinda went a little nutty. I didn’t know about this scheme of hers till a couple of days after Irene passed. That’s when Cheyenne finally told me what she did.”
“That would be last Friday, right?” I asked. “After she ran out of Janey’s Place so upset?” The result, I now realized, of a guilty conscience.
Patrick and his daughter said, “Yeah,” in unison.
“So the next day,” I said, “when I found you going through the fridge here, you were searching for that last smoothie cup. You wanted to get rid of anything that could link Cheyenne to Irene’s death.”
Patrick nodded. “The damage was done. There was nothing I could do for Irene. I had to protect my daughter.”
I caught Bonnie’s eye. See? He really was here that day.
Patrick addressed Cheyenne. “You never shoulda called the cops with that BS about Jane trying to frame me. I had everything under control.”
“I got so scared when the detective came to the shop to talk to you,” Cheyenne said. “I didn’t want them to throw you in jail. They woulda done it, too, ’cause you got a record. My story was solid, it was totally believable. But then you had to run over here to confess. I couldn’t let you take the blame for me.”
Martin spoke up. “But you had no problem letting Jane take the blame.”
The glance Cheyenne flicked my way was unreadable. I couldn’t tell whether she felt contrition for falsely implicating me or frustration that her father had ruined her plan.
“Not to mention,” Patrick added, “you spin a lame tale like that to the cops, nine times outta ten it falls apart. And then who do you think they’re gonna be taking a real close look at?”
She stared at him long seconds as if the question were a stumper. “The person that told the tale?”
Dom joined us in the living room, prompting his fiancée to peer into the foyer to assess the job he’d done. The floor was spotless. She might have been surprised, but I wasn’t. Among my ex-husband’s many impressive talents—okay, I’ll wait till you stop snickering—is the ability to make a floor sparkle in record time. It took years for Janey’s Place to take off and spread like organic kudzu through the tri-state area. Meanwhile, the founder and CEO was also chief cook and bottle washer. You should see him balance a ledger sheet—the pencil is a blur.
“We’ll get back to the various tales that were spun,” Bonnie promised, giving Cheyenne’s lying dad a significant look, “but for now, I want you to tell me exactly what happened, Cheyenne. Start at the beginning.”
“Whaddaya mean?” Cheyenne sat twisting a strand of hair.
“When did your grandma O’Rourke first talk to you about Irene McAuliffe?”
“She was always talking about her,” Cheyenne said. “Mrs. McAuliffe was, like, this really snotty rich bitch. I mean, I’m sorry I killed her and everything, but she made Grandma so upset. Always showing off how much money she had, all her fancy stuff.” She tossed her hand to indicate our elegant surroundings. “Rubbing Grandma’s nose in it.”
“But that’s nothing new,” Bonnie said. “That situation had been going on forever.”
“I’m not finished,” Cheyenne said. “After Grandpa died, Daddy started spending a lot of time with Mrs. McAuliffe. I didn’t know she was his real mom then or anything, and Grandma didn’t tell me, she just said Mrs. McAuliffe was, like, lying to him and stuff to get him to love her and not Grandma.”
“It was nothing like that,” Patrick said. “When I found out Irene was my real mom—my whatchamacallit, biological mother—her and me connected, you know? Well, not at first. At first she was pissed that Mom let the cat out of the bag. But then she kinda loosened up and we got close. Like long-lost relatives.”
“But Grandma raised you, Daddy,” Cheyenne said. “She’s the one that used to bail you out and make you go to rehab and stuff. And then Mrs. Rich Bitch McAuliffe comes along after all the bad stuff is over and, like, steals you from her.”
He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I know that’s how Mom saw it. I think it’s what tipped her over the edge. She was so… fragile after Dad passed.” To Bonn
ie he said, “I just don’t want you thinking my mom was some kinda crazy lady going around poisoning anybody that looked at her wrong.”
“Noted,” Bonnie said.
“Did you know that Mrs. McAuliffe used to cheat at poker?” Cheyenne gave a confident nod. “It’s true. That’s how she won all those tournaments.”
Dom and I exchanged a look. No one who’d known Irene would believe that. In many ways she’d been a hard woman to love, but she was no card cheat. I was sure Colette hadn’t believed it either, no matter what she’d told her granddaughter.
“So me and Grandma were talking about how to keep Mrs. McAuliffe out of the tournament this year,” Cheyenne continued, “and Grandma says she can’t play if she’s sick. And I say how do we get her sick ha ha, like a joke, you know, but Grandma, she takes it serious. Maybe we can put something in her food, she says.”
“Then what?” Bonnie asked.
“Well, Daddy would bring Mrs. McAuliffe stuff from the shop once in a while when he was going to her place straight from work. Like soup and stuff—nothing too, you know, health-foody, ’cause she wasn’t into that. So one day he, like, packs up some soup for her and then he, like, goes to the bathroom. So I, like, grab the can of roach powder from the back and stir some of it into the soup. Mushroom barley flavor. The soup, not the powder. I don’t know what flavor the powder was.”
“Did you measure the roach powder?” Bonnie asked.
Cheyenne’s expression asked how dumb the detective was. “It wasn’t, like, a recipe. I just used, you know, enough.”
Okay, I’ll bite, I thought. What’s “enough” insecticide when you’re trying to make someone sick but not dead?
“What then?” Bonnie said.
“Then the next day after the soup, Daddy says Mrs. McAuliffe’s stomach was bothering her. So I, um, I say let me make her one of those, like, stomach smoothies. With ginger and stuff? And I did and he brought it to her.”
“And you put roach powder in the smoothie, too?” Bonnie asked.
“Yeah. When Daddy wasn’t looking.”
Patrick closed his eyes briefly, hearing the sad tale of his unwitting complicity in Irene McAuliffe’s murder.
“When was this?” Bonnie asked. “When did you start poisoning her?”
“It was, like, the Sunday before Easter,” Cheyenne said.
“And every day your father brought Irene a smoothie that you’d doctored?”
“‘Doctored’?” Cheyenne said. “You mean poisoned?”
“Yes. Poisoned.”
“Uh-huh.” More hair twisting. “Well, not after Easter. Grandma told me to stop on Easter. I think she felt, um, bad about what we were doing. And then she passed the next day.”
I wondered if Colette’s fatal stroke had been triggered by the stress of a nagging conscience.
Cheyenne turned to Martin. “Grandma called it off before she passed, so God can’t be too mad at her, right? I mean, she’s not in hell now, is she?”
“Umm…” Martin awkwardly patted Cheyenne’s hand. “Why don’t you talk to your parish priest about that.”
“Cheyenne,” Bonnie said, “how much did your grandma O’Rourke pay you to poison Irene?”
“Two thousand bucks. In advance. More than I take home from Janey’s Place in a month.” She stood. “Can I go now? I left Bradley alone at the shop, and he loaned me his car.” The very car that had left red paint and gouges on all of our vehicles. Bradley was about to learn that no good deed goes unpunished.
Dom said, “Bradley the trainee? Isn’t this his first day?”
“Yeah. So?”
Bonnie started to speak—no doubt to inform Cheyenne that the only place she was going was the police station—but was interrupted by vigorous pounding on the front door. Whoever was there had dispensed with the knocker and was using his fist. SB woke with a yip. I held him close to keep him from hurtling himself at the door.
“Patrick O’Rourke!” Boom! Boom! Boom! “Get the hell out here, you son of a bitch!” It was a man’s voice. “The kid at the shop told me you’re here, so don’t try sneaking out the back.”
I stepped into the foyer, followed by the others, and opened the door. Mal Wallace, Nina’s husband, stood on the porch, his features dark with fury. He spied Patrick and bulled past me into the house.
“Where is she?” He threw himself at Patrick, who stumbled back, arms raised.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patrick said. “Where’s who?”
“You know who—my wife!” Mal shoved Patrick against the wall with bone-rattling force. “What did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do any—”
Mal’s fist connected with Patrick’s jaw.
Cheyenne screeched, “Leave my dad alone!”
Dom, who was nearest to them, tried to intervene, but Mal threw him halfway across the room, pumped with adrenaline as he was. SB barked nonstop, trying to squirm out of my grasp and join the brawl.
“Back off, Mal.” Bonnie yanked at his arm. “Now!”
Patrick tried to squirm away and Mal threw him to the floor. “What have you done with Nina, you bastard?” He landed a couple of savage punches to Patrick’s ribs before Martin was able to wrestle him off of him.
“That’s enough, man,” Martin huffed, pinning Mal facedown on the floor with his arms behind him. Mal struggled but couldn’t break Martin’s hold. “Settle down and tell us what the hell’s going on.”
Mal was flushed, breathing hard. “Nina’s missing. I haven’t seen her since yesterday and I can’t get ahold of her.”
As Cheyenne helped Patrick sit up, he asked, “What’s that got to do with me?”
“I know about you and Nina. I know about the baby.” Mal tried again to get at Patrick, but Martin had him immobilized. “I never should’ve let a junkie ex-con like you anywhere near my family.”
“My dad’s not a junkie.” Cheyenne tried to kick Mal, but Patrick restrained her. “That was a long time ago.”
“What,” Patrick said, “you think there’s something going on between me and Nina? That’s nuts.”
“I was the last to find out. It’s all over town. Let me up,” Mal told Martin. “I won’t kill him. Not yet.”
Martin looked to Bonnie, who nodded. She said, “They teach you those moves at the seminary, Father?” Her wry smile told me she was on to him. Fortunately, she had more urgent concerns at the moment than a counterfeit priest.
Martin released Mal and placed himself between the two combatants as they got to their feet.
Bonnie turned to Mal. “Did Nina tell you she’s having an affair with Patrick?”
“She didn’t mention him by name. She said she’s in love with someone else and that she…” He paused to gather his composure. “She’s having his baby. She said she’s leaving me and taking the kids.”
“Daddy?” Cheyenne gave her father a look that said, Eww, you didn’t, did you?
“It’s not me, I swear,” Patrick said. “We’re friends. Her and my mom were friends. Nina gave me work when I needed it. That’s all.”
Mal tried to get in his face. Martin blocked him. Mal said, “Yeah, well, everyone in town seems to think it’s you, O’Rourke. I only learned that after I started asking around today, trying to track her down.” He stabbed a finger toward Patrick. “If you hurt my wife, I promise you I will find you and I will kill you.”
“All right, Mal, dial it back a notch.” Bonnie got her notebook out again. “When did Nina tell you all this?”
“Wednesday night, after the kids were in bed.”
“That must have come as a shock,” she said.
“To put it mildly. But I didn’t lose control, if that’s what you’re getting at. It was all very—” he made a face “—civilized.”
“When did you last see her?”
“The next morning, before I left for work. That was yesterday, around six-forty. I take the seven oh-two train to the city. She was getting the kids up for school
.”
“Did you speak with her after that?” Bonnie asked.
He shook his head. “The girls got home from their after-school activities at four-thirty. Julia called me—she’s my fifteen-year-old. She said Nina wasn’t there, and I figured, I don’t know, I thought maybe she was with him.” He gave Patrick a disgusted look. “She probably was, but not by choice.”
“When did you get home yesterday?” Bonnie asked.
“Around eight,” he said. “I had a meeting that ran late. Nina still wasn’t home, but that didn’t worry me because her book club meets the second Thursday of every month. Only… well, she always bakes something for book club and it didn’t look like she’d done any baking yesterday.”
“What does it look like when she’s been baking?”
“It’s more like how the house smells,” he said. “Like fresh-baked whatever. But not yesterday. Plus there were no baking pans in the dishwasher, no crumbs.”
Bonnie might not comprehend the significance of Mal’s words, but I did. Nina wouldn’t go for so much as an oil change without bringing home-baked goodies.
“No sign of a struggle, I take it?” Bonnie asked.
“No, nothing like that.”
“Was her car there? Her wallet and purse?”
He shook his head. “Her car’s not parked at the Historical Society or in a municipal lot. Sometimes Nina and a couple of the others go out for drinks after book club. I was beat, so I went to bed early. I didn’t begin to panic until this morning when I saw she still hadn’t come home.”
“Didn’t you think that maybe she went ahead and left you,” Bonnie asked, “without waiting for a formal separation?”
“No way.” Mal shook his head. “Absolutely not. Nina would never have left her girls. She wouldn’t have done anything that could be construed as abandonment or jeopardize her getting custody. Plus she didn’t take any clothes or jewelry or even her damn toothbrush.”
Undertaking Irene Page 19
