“But you don’t dislike him.”
“No one dislikes Hardy. Except Poe, but she dislikes her own shadow. I like him in a general ‘here’s a guy I work with’ sort of way. Truthfully, I seldom think about him. He’s just there. You look up and you see Hardy and you wonder how long he’s been standing in front of you.”
Convenient to have around in case you need a designated driver or designated church-goer. “He and Poe seem to have an odd relationship. Odder than usual for Poe.”
“They both used to drink a lot and smoke like fiends. Something happened, before my time with the team, and Hardy cut back. Poe didn’t. Kent won’t allow smoking on set—on location shoots or in the production booth, I mean—but off-duty, I’ve seen Poe tear through a pack of smokes and a fifth of whiskey single-handed and still come out swinging the next morning. I gathered she didn’t want Hardy to come on this trip, but Kent overruled her.”
“If Poe owns part of the production company, doesn’t she have some say in who’s on the team?”
“Ghost Hunting Adventures is Kent’s show and no one else’s,” Ciara said. “He conceived it, nurtured it, turned it into the phenomenon it is. He controls it. He may have to negotiate funding, but when it comes to creative decisions, his word is law.”
“He’s the boss of all bosses.”
“About the only place where he is.” Ciara winked and continued up the stairs.
Fourteen
Sweeney’s served the best breakfast in Dunmullach. Locals as well as guests crowded the lobby area around the entrance waiting for a spot at the bar or a coveted table. Gethsemane found Kent seated near a window with his back to the other diners. He read a newspaper. A waiter swept away an empty plate and crumpled napkin from the place opposite.
“Morning.” Gethsemane slid into the vacant chair. People lined up gave her the side-eye.
“Jumping the queue.” Kent didn’t look up from his reading. “Poor form.”
Gethsemane waved away a menu proffered by the waiter. “Nothing for me. Oh, except a cup of coffee. Cream and sugar.”
Kent folded the paper and laid it aside. He crossed his arms and waited.
“I, um…” Want to know if you flew Bernard Stoltz all the way to Ireland so you could kill him. “Wondered if you guys planned to film anymore up at Carraigfaire.”
“After you convinced us the activity centered on the Athaneum? After you said—”
“The activity does center on the theater. You were there. You saw for yourself.”
“I grant that murder counts as activity. I meant the paranormal variety, however.”
“I referred to Maja’s ghost. Saoirse saw it. Saw her.”
Kent frowned. “Saoirse?”
“The little girl who screamed from the balcony?”
“Oh, right, that Saoirse. Impressive show. A little hammy, but not bad for a kid. It was all for show, wasn’t it? Histrionic displays by pretty girls make for good television, right?”
She’d underestimated Kent. He’d known Saoirse faked her sighting. A sharp mind lurked under that perfectly messy blond hair. “What about Poe?”
“What about her? Poe saw nothing. Poe never sees anything. She just rants on about blood and gore and evil. Children clutch their mothers tighter when Poe’s in the room. She’s kind of psycho.”
“Why not fire her?”
“Why not tell me what you’re after? You don’t give a damn about my staff model. If you want my promise we won’t invade your precious cottage, you’ve got it. I wish I’d never heard of this damned village. I wanted to do a stakeout in Portugal. ‘S what I get for doing a favor.”
“Favor? Favor for whom? Billy?”
Kent gathered his newspaper. “We’re tying up a table.”
Gethsemane followed him from the restaurant. She called after him, “Konrad!”
He stopped, hesitated, kept walking.
Gethsemane cursed his leg length advantage as she hurried to catch up. She caught him at the foot of the stairs. “Who’s the favor for, Konrad? I assume Konrad is the correct name to use. I mean your legal one. Kent Danger sounds a bit like a comic book superhero.”
“It fits the theme of the show.” He stepped around her.
She blocked him. “C’mon, Konrad. Who set you on to me? My landlord?”
Kent’s shoulders slumped. He leaned against a wall. “What the hell, it doesn’t matter now. No, not Billy McCarthy. Although he bought into the concept pretty quick.”
“Bought in or was sold on? You paid him.”
“Quite a lot of money. Usually, our location owners give us free access. They want the publicity.”
“Who funded this stake out? I won’t let up until you tell me, so you may as well tell me now.”
“My uncle.”
“Bernard Stoltz?”
“No, not Bernard. You think I’d admit to being related to that tick? There’s a reason no one’s sad he’s dead.”
“What’s your reason?”
“Stoltz used to stay at my uncle’s hotel when he visited New York. He seduced the concierge, sweet woman, too trusting. Also, my godmother. She believed Stoltz loved her. He used her to get access to personal information on some of the VIP hotel guests, information that later ended up in his reviews. As soon as he got what he wanted from my godmother, he dumped her. Broke her heart and sent her into depression. She had to quit work. Was even hospitalized for a while.”
“Who’s your uncle?”
“An acquaintance of yours. Hank Wayne.”
“Bloody hell. Hank Wayne who tried to destroy Carraigfaire? Hank Wayne who’s the reason my landlord is making me put up with you guys? That one?”
“Hank Wayne who made a legit deal to own Carraigfaire only to have the piss scared out of him and years frightened off his life by a music teacher and her pet ghost. Uncle Hank’s my dad’s brother.”
“Making you Konrad Wayne.” No wonder he hadn’t told her his real name. “And I don’t have a pet ghost. I do have a gorgeous historic cottage that your uncle would have ruined in the name of money. A lot of money, but still…”
“Uncle Hank and I don’t agree on everything. Turning that cottage into a hotel would have bordered on criminal. But what you did to him—”
“He had it coming. I won’t apologize.”
“Nor will I. Hank’s family, and when someone goes after family—”
Gethsemane finished his sentence. “Family gets even. What was the plan? To make me look like a raving lunatic on camera, a lonely, unstable spinster who talks to nonexistent ghosts? Or to convince the world that Carraigfaire is a paranormal paradise and leave me overrun with tourists? Or was the plan just to annoy the hell out of me by being underfoot and in my face everywhere I turned?”
“The last two. Uncle Hank knew the ghost was real.” Eamon had shown Hank, up close, just how real. “And I believe in ghosts,” Kent said, “though I’ve never personally seen one. I wanted to find proof, incontrovertible proof, of the persistence of life after the physical body dies.” He smacked the stair rail.
“Once the gardaí clear out, you can go back to the Athaneum, try to collect your proof there.”
“We both know the theater was a decoy to get us away from Carraigfaire. The girl—what’s her name?—Saoirse didn’t see a ghost.
“Just because she didn’t see one doesn’t mean none were there.”
“You saw something? Honest?”
“You saw it, too. Tangible evidence of it, at least.”
“What did I see?”
“The sickness. You saw how many boys fell ill. My friends, too.”
“The cop and the teacher.”
“And Hardy, your own crew member. You heard the guys who got sick all complain of smelling pepper and grease, didn’t you?”
“I thought it was a gas lea
k or something.”
“Then why didn’t you get sick? You weren’t holding your breath the whole time. Why didn’t I get sick or any of the other women?”
Kent said nothing for a moment. “You’re right. It just hit me. No women got ill and only some men? How could I miss the significance of that?”
“How many older brothers do you have, Konrad?”
“Kent, please. I have two. How’d you guess I had older brothers?”
“Niall, Inspector O’Reilly, the garda who got sick, has three younger sisters. Frankie Grennan, the math teacher, has no siblings. Saoirse is Colm Nolan’s little sister. Colm’s one of the sick students.”
“All sick, all firstborn sons.” He drummed his fingers on the stair rail. “I’ll put Ciara and Poe on it. They’ll hate working together, especially Poe, but Maja might communicate more with women than men.” He started up the stairs. “I have to go. Arrangements to make.”
Gethsemane called up after him. “Where does Bernard fit into this? Was he going to write an article on the investigation?”
“I told you I had nothing to do with Bernard.”
“But you called him a tick. You must have some reason to think that.”
“Public knowledge.”
“The public Bernard is a—was a—music critic. Merciless but fun to read. Bernard kept his tickhood private. What’d he do, write a scathing review of the show?”
“I doubt he ever saw our show. I know what he did to other people, what he did to Aed. Scant room in the reporting business, or the human race, for jerks like that.”
“If that’s how you feel about him, why pay his way here?”
Kent rejoined Gethsemane at the foot of the stairs. “I didn’t. Why do you think otherwise?”
“Someone purchased Bernard’s plane tickets with a credit card issued to your company, Verschreken Productions. They used the same card to secure a hotel room.”
Kent swore. “Poe. That little—”
“Why would Poe pay for Bernard’s trip?”
“Who knows? Did I mention she’s psycho?”
“Regardless, bringing Bernard to Dunmullach seems random. She must have had a reason, even if it only made sense to her.”
“It’s one of her power plays. Pay Bernard to write an excoriating review of the show. He’s talented, even if he is a jerk, and he still has connections, people who don’t care what he did in the classical music world, people with secrets he can leverage. Post his venom on some blog or social media account and watch our ratings tank. Push me out the door, fire me from my own show—my own show—and reboot it with her as host and she can take it in any direction she wants. That’s what she thinks.” He took the stairs two at a time and paused on the upper landing. “She thinks wrong.”
Gethsemane debated. Stay and wait to see if Poe arrived at the inn or go try to track her down? Either way, she’d be riled up. Kent would call or text her. Tell her off or warn her. The “Poe’s a psycho” routine could be as phony as Saoirse’s ghost spotting. Maybe Kent and Poe were in it together. Maybe Bernard explained Poe’s bitterness. He devastated as many women as he had careers. Maybe Poe convinced her business partner to partner up in killing him.
A dark cloud cover followed by steady rain convinced Gethsemane to choose option A, stay and wait. She sat in an oversized club chair, so deep her feet dangled if she sat back, and tried to read a paper. She glanced at the door so often the words failed to register, so she quit and got up to read captions on historic photos of the inn.
A mail carrier walked up to the front desk and handed a bundle of letters to the desk clerk. The clerk’s yell halted the mail carrier at the door. “You can take this one back.”
The carrier examined the envelope. “Says room forty-two, don’t it?”
“Yeah, but he’s not in room forty-two anymore.” The clerk lowered her voice. “He’s the one who got murdered.”
“No concern of mine,” the carrier said. “Envelope says room forty-two so I delivered it.”
Fifteen
Room forty-two. It had to be Bernard’s room. How many of Sweeney’s guests got murdered? Gethsemane chewed her lip. Should she do it? One last survey of the lobby revealed no signs of Poe. This might be her only chance.
A large American couple with large American children and loud American voices stopped at the front desk to ask for maps and dinner recommendations more suitable for “young people” than the hotel’s three-star offering. Gethsemane took it as a sign. While her countrymen monopolized the clerk, she stole upstairs.
The fourth-floor hallway sat deserted except for a maid’s cart at one end. Gethsemane tried the handle of number forty-two. Locked, of course. She needed Frankie. He’d helped her break into more than one dead guy’s room. She hadn’t heard much about his condition. Riordan kept tight reins on information flow. “To avoid scandal,” he’d said in the text he’d sent the faculty asking them not to talk to the press. Who cared about scandal when Frankie might—
She pinched herself. No time for that thinking now. Now was the time to figure out how to get into Bernard’s room. Had scandal, or the fear of it, gotten him killed? Ruining lives seemed to be Bernard’s stock and trade. People had killed for less.
She moved along the hallway, trying to think of a way to get past Bernard’s locked door. Fingers crossed his stuff remained where he’d left it. The gardaí didn’t concern her. They’d arrested Aed, a man with a known motive and opportunity to kill, so they had little reason to confiscate Bernard’s effects as evidence. The inn, however, might have decided they needed room forty-two and moved Bernard’s things to storage while they located his next of kin. Go in now and hope for the best. She wouldn’t get another chance.
Luck struck near the elevator. A blue plastic keycard, decorated only with the hotel name, lay partially obscured by a planter. Someone must have dropped it. It might open any room. Even forty-two. She scooped it up.
She’d tried the key in the lock a half-dozen times before the maid noticed her.
“May I help you, miss?” the young woman asked.
“Yes,” Gethsemane said. “I seem to have demagnetized my key. I’m sure this is my room.” She pointed to the brass plaque engraved with “42.” “I knew I shouldn’t have put it so close to my cell phone.” She inserted the key into the lock a seventh time and turned the handle. Nothing.
“It happens, miss.” The maid took out her pass key and opened the door. “They’ll make a new one for you at the front desk.”
“Thank you so much,” Gethsemane said. “I feel quite stupid.”
“No worries, miss. Like I said, happens all the time.”
Gethsemane closed the door behind the maid. She flipped the deadbolt as an afterthought. No reason to risk being caught. Bernard’s room revealed him to be a pig in more than one sense of the word. Clothes draped over furniture and hung out of suitcases. Newspapers and takeout containers littered any convenient surface. No laptop. Had someone taken it? Or did Bernard not have one? Maybe he used a tablet or his phone. Or maybe he’d left it in the car he drove to the Athaneum, in which case, the gardaí had it now. Probably password protected, even if she found it. The drawers. She opened them to find socks, underwear, ties. Then she pulled open the small drawer in the bedside table. No Gideon Bible or phone directory. Much better. Better than a laptop. Papers. Not password protected. Receipts for restaurants, sundries, laundry—had he planned to expense them? Would O’Zamboni’s Irish-Italian Pizzeria have shown up as a charge on Verschreken’s account?
She sifted further. A brochure of Cork city attractions. A couple of postcards, both unsigned and blank. Didn’t he have anyone to write to?
Someone had written to him. She held up a letter.
Dear Mr. Stoltz,
Rare opportunity to review Aed Devlin’s new opera. Pays top rates to freelancers.
Th
e letter head looked legit, but the letter bore no signature. It purported to be from Aria magazine, a small but respected publication that specialized in operas. She held the letter to the light. A faint, almost imperceptible black line marched across the top of the paper, between the masthead and the body of the letter. A tell for a photocopy. A cut and paste job. A good one. If she hadn’t been looking, she wouldn’t have noticed the line. Someone lured Bernard to Dunmullach under pretext of reviewing Aed’s opera. A lot of trouble to go to in order to kill him. Who’d done it? She examined the letter again. Venus’s contact who helped people reinvent themselves might do this kind of work. When you helped people create new lives, you probably did a lot of cutting, pasting, and photocopying. She shoved the letter in her pocket. It wasn’t theft, it was evidence gathering. She’d turn it over to the guards. Eventually. Maybe Niall would be—Don’t go there, not now.
Something caught her eye as she returned the other papers to the drawer. A strip from a photo booth, its corner caught under one of the drawer’s side panels. Four photos, not much larger than postage stamps. Bernard, with his tortoise shell glasses perched on his head. Perched on his lap? Poe. She sported pink hair, but no mistake. The world’s angriest photographer and the world’s sleaziest reporter. His hand on her thigh, her arm around his neck.
Hardy bumped into her as they crossed the lobby in opposite directions. The rain had kept up. Hardy’s wet hair left damp spots on the back of his t-shirt. He looked terrible. Sunken eyes, pale skin, sunken cheeks, giving his head a skeletal appearance. Niall had looked better when the emergency technicians had loaded him into the ambulance.
“Should you be in the hospital, Hardy? Or at least in bed?”
“I have things to do.”
“Hardy, you look bad. Worse than bad. If you auditioned for a part in a zombie movie, they’d turn you down for being too realistic. Whatever you have to do, delegate.” Riordan shut down an entire school over this outbreak. What could be important enough for Hardy to risk his health?
Killing in C Sharp Page 16
