7 Sweets, Begorra

by Connie Shelton

  The women came forward and Ambrose draped his forearms over the ancient brass cash register, facing Sam.

  “I’ll admit that I’m not quite sure what to do first,” she told them. “Did my uncle spend much time in the shop in recent years?”

  Keeva spoke up. “Not a lot, actually. The poor dear had so many troubles. Health, you know. In his last years he . . .”

  “Terry came round every week,” Ambrose interjected. “Up until his last few months.” He stared at Sam. “He cared a great deal for this shop. He loved every book in this room.”

  “Was business better in the days when he spent time here?”

  “Well, aye. Business was better before the recession hit the whole world, better everywhere, as I’m sure you’re knowin’ from your fancy cake shop.” Ambrose’s fingers flexed, as if they wanted to curl into fists.

  Sam nodded. “You’re right about that.”

  Bridget spoke up. “Our regular patrons, the ones who’ve come in from times past, they’re still comin’ around.”

  The others gave firm nods.

  “Mr. Ryan seemed to think that all the business records are here.” She slid her gaze over to Ambrose. As guardian of the register, he must surely have access to the bills and receipts as well. The gray haired man looked like he wanted to make some kind of remark but he merely turned toward a short file cabinet to his right.

  “And meanwhile, can I help with the dusting or something?” Sam said. “It would help me see what we have in stock.”

  Keeva motioned Sam toward the back, where she supplied a dust cloth.

  “I wish I’d known my uncle better. My mother remembers him fondly,” Sam said as the two of them worked on a section of popular fiction.

  “He was a good man,” Keeva said. “Hard worker in his younger days. He took over this shop under odd circumstances, you know. Won it in a wager.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, aye. Used to say if it weren’t for a jack of diamonds, he’d never’ve set foot in the place.”

  That didn’t seem like an auspicious beginning.

  “He wasn’t much of a reader, then?”

  “Oh, he became avid. Mostly took out books about the war, got into some heated political discussions, he did.” Keeva pushed two Ian Rankin titles closer together to make space for a couple of Ruth Rendell’s books.

  “Your uncle didn’t need book studies to be a smart man,” Ambrose called out from the other side of the room. “He had a brilliant mind for business.”

  Sam smiled toward him but questioned the statement. Obviously, a shop run by someone with a brilliant business mind would be doing better than this one was. She still hadn’t seen a customer today.

  Almost in answer to that thought, a woman pushed the door open. Walking directly to the counter, she asked Ambrose if her order had come in.

  “So anyway,” Keeva continued, “the story goes that Terrance walked in here green as could be and ripped out everything the previous owner had done.”

  Ambrose’s customer had wandered over to the cookbooks so he joined back in on the conversation.

  “That’s not exactly true, Keeva,” he said. “He did change the name of the shop and had his own sign put up right away. That’s the one, it’s out there now. I was here that day. Me, about Bridget’s age and knowin’ hardly more.”

  Bridget gave him a wounded look.

  He didn’t notice. “But inside the shop, Terry gave us free rein. He knew I read a lot, and the old woman who worked here at the time—former librarian, she was—she knew every writer and every title in this place. Could put her finger on any book a person might want.”

  Despite the man’s hard shell, Sam knew that he would make a valuable ally. If only she could break through.

  The customer chose a book from the shelf, added it to the one she’d special-ordered, and pulled out her wallet. While she paid for her purchases Sam gazed at the full shelves—how would she ever learn every book in a place like this?

  When the lady had gone, Sam said, “I bet Uncle Terry was really missed around here.”

  Ambrose’s face softened momentarily. He pursed his lips, then said he needed to go out for a smoke. Bridget offered to handle the register if anyone came in. The older man buttoned his jacket and walked out.

  Sam watched him cross the cobblestone mall before she turned to the women. “I wonder if there’s anything we might do to attract more of the tourists. There seem to be a lot of people walking around out there.” How to handle this lightly? “Perhaps more color in the window displays? Maybe a selection of books about Irish folklore? Something like that?”

  Keeva chewed at her lip, thinking. “I don’t know . . . Mr. Terry didn’t always take to buying a lot of new stock.”

  “Keeva, sadly, he’s gone. We have to figure out something.”

  Sam glanced around the room. “Of course, before we can think of adding new inventory, I’ll need to know if there’s any money. I don’t suppose Terry shared that kind of information?”

  Both Keeva and Bridget looked shocked. Of course he wouldn’t. Sam would have to find this out for herself.

  Outside, she could see Ambrose pacing back and forth across the way. He paused and stared up at the bookstore’s sign for a minute, then dropped his cigarette and crushed it against the stones. The open door brought a hint of moisture when he came back in.

  “Could you please pull out the financial and sales files for me before I go, Ambrose? I’ll look them over tonight and bring them back.”

  He ignored the request, walking over to a shelf of history books and rearranging them.

  Okay, I won’t let this become a battle yet. But I am the boss here, like it or not.

  Her inner dialog diverted when the door opened once more and pair of women came in. They greeted Bridget and Keeva familiarly. One headed for the disorderly stack of books on one of the tables and began poking through them. The older lady openly regarded Sam with curiosity. Keeva introduced her as Mrs. Flannery. She wore a wool skirt and thick black stockings, with a heavy sweater-coat and a knitted cap nearly covering her short gray hair.

  “Sam is Terry’s niece,” Keeva said. “She’s here on her honeymoon.”

  “Ah, the new one.” Mrs. Flannery tilted her chin up so she could see Sam better. “It’s fittin’ I say. A new business venture always goes hand in hand with a new phase in your life. It’s good that you’re here.”

  Sam kept her smile in place, wondering how the woman knew so much about her, concluding that Galway was no less a small town than Taos and word must have gotten around. The other woman had obviously picked up bits of the conversation. She came over and was introduced as Noreen.

  “Hi, howarya?” Noreen said. “Enjoying your stay in Galway?”

  “We just came in yesterday. I hope to get out and see more.”

  Noreen regarded Sam critically. “You didn’t wear nothin’ green at your weddin’ did you?”

  Puzzled, Sam shook her head.

  “And was it rainin’ on the day?”

  “No, we had beautiful weather . . .”

  “Ah, that’s good. Very lucky.”

  Keeva piped up to explain. “There are lots of Irish superstitions, you’ll be finding, and a whole bunch of them to do with marriage.”

  “Ah.” Sam nodded slowly.

  “You wouldn’t want to break a glass that morning, or drop your wedding ring before the ceremony.”

  Their wedding had come together after a flurry of upsetting events, and Sam couldn’t honestly remember if she’d dropped anything before the ceremony. She kept silent and the conversation turned to family. Sam figured out from the context that Noreen was the older woman’s daughter and that the two were sneaking away from their household chores to get some shopping done while the nice weather held. Sam left Noreen and Keeva to talk, walking over to the large tables of books to see if she could figure out why they weren’t shelved but were sitting there in seemingly random piles.

&nbs
p; Meanwhile, Mrs. Flannery had wandered to the other side of the shop, where Ambrose was still rearranging books, stacking some of them to one side while he fiddled around with others.

  “Say, Ambrose,” she said “Did you ever get rid of that one what was causin’ you so much trouble?”

  Wondering if the woman might possibly mean her, Sam tuned her ears that direction.

  “Well, in case it’s a ghost, I brought ya some holy water. Where was he now? Over in that back room?” She rummaged deep into her bag and came out with a stoppered vial about three inches long. “Just sprinkle this around when you get ready to go home for the night. He won’t dare enter a room with the power of holy water warding ’im off.”

  Ambrose turned away and muttered, “ ‘Scuse me now, I’ve got some files to locate.”

  Chapter 4

  By noon Sam felt more stymied than ever at the daunting task of learning the store’s inventory. She kept telling herself it wasn’t important. If she kept the place, she had three good employees whose jobs it was to know all that. If she followed her instincts and bailed out, it wouldn’t matter anyway. She gathered the two manila folders Ambrose handed her, along with a handwritten check register and a tall leather-bound ledger, which he claimed would give her all the information she needed.

  When she’d inquired about computer printouts or a disk where records might have been saved, he looked at her as if she’d come from another planet.

  “Terrance O’Shaughnessy never put any store in trusting machines with his finances, and I don’t either.”

  That, it seemed, sealed the fate of any computer that might have ever worked its way into the business. She fumed at his obtuse attitude but there was no changing it so she would work with what she had.

  Bridget gave Sam a sympathetic look, but a shrug told her that’s just the way it was. She noticed that the street outside was damp again, so she bagged the records in a plastic sack and pulled out her umbrella for the walk back to the hotel.

  In their room, Beau sat in a chair, a scattering of brochures on the desk in front of him.

  “How did it go this morning?” he asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “About the same. There’s dust on every surface, even though Keeva and I worked on some of the shelves. Bridget is very sweet, nice as can be and great with the customers, but I just don’t see her hustling about and accomplishing much. Ambrose wants everything to be exactly as it was thirty years ago when he and Terry ran the shop as a team—probably right down to having the very same books on the shelves. I didn’t see anything in there that looked new. Even the popular fiction is all four and five years old. In general, the shop is like a ship without a captain and it was all I could do not to jump in and start cleaning and tossing old stuff out.”

  He sent her a cautionary look.

  “A couple of interesting patrons came in, though. I learned that it was lucky I didn’t break a glass the morning of our wedding.”

  He sent her a puzzled look and she recapped the visit of the superstitious woman who’d come into the shop. By the time she got to the part about the holy water warding off ghosts, she was chuckling.

  “What would have happened if, say, you had dropped the wedding rings?” he asked.

  “Who knows? I grew up in the Southwest. What do I know about Irish superstitions?” But she did know a little something about other unexplainable things. That mysterious wooden box, now sitting in the hotel room safe with her jewelry in it, had shown Sam some things that certainly didn’t fit the realm of everyday reality. And who was to say that the old woman who’d given it to her wasn’t truly some kind of a witch?

  He let that subject go. “I picked up a couple of maps,” he said, “and some brochures. There’s a little walking tour of the town that we could do this afternoon and—that big park we passed coming in?—it says they have events there all the time. We might catch some music or something.”

  Sam opened a dresser drawer while he talked, finding a spot to tuck the business files under some T-shirts.

  “Lunch first?” he asked.

  “I passed a pub on the way back, just a couple blocks from here. Something really smelled good in there. Bring your umbrella—there was a light sprinkle.”

  They found O’Reilly’s, another gray stone building that rose directly from the narrow sidewalk as if it had simply grown up on the spot. Above the stone foundation small, divided windows looked in on a large room of dark woods and glowing yellow light fixtures. A menu was written in chalk above the bar. They ordered Guinness and sandwiches that came piled high with meat on a heavy, dark bread. Sam moaned a long ummm as she took the first bite.

  Beau nodded as he pinched off a bite of the bread and stuffed it into his mouth. They didn’t manage much conversation for the next few minutes. He went back to the bar for a second glass of the draught and came back to tell Sam to look outside.

  “Doesn’t look like a long walk or the park will be on the agenda quite yet,” he said.

  Rain streamed down the windows; she’d hardly noticed it as the pub filled with people.

  “So, we’ll go back to the room for awhile. I can look over those folders I brought back.”

  He gave a large yawn. “After this lunch, I think I feel a nap coming on.”

  They finished their sandwiches, listening to the rise of Irish accents all around. As the laughter increased Sam found her thoughts drifting to the uncle who’d chosen to leave his dilapidated little shop to her and wondering why he’d done that. Nothing about it made sense. He could have left it with the employees and it would continue to operate as it had, probably for another fifty years. Why had his American niece been brought into the picture? And why Sam?—there were surely other relatives closer than she. Beau had stood up.

  “Getting crowded,” he said. “Someone else might need the table.”

  Sam gathered her jacket, backpack and umbrella and they started toward the hotel. In the room, Beau immediately pulled off his jeans and stretched out on the bed with the duvet covering him.

  Sam brought out the files and turned the desk lamp on low, adjusting the shade so it wouldn’t disturb his rest. She hadn’t seen a hand-written ledger in ages, surely not since she’d started working for old man Sanchez before she and the other young secretary convinced him to give computers a try. Transferring the ledger entries to their first accounting program had been a lot of work, but after that the reports were much easier to generate and read. She sighed and began to flip through the leather-bound book.

  The handwritten headings and numbers might have come out of another century. She had to remind herself that Uncle Terrance was probably in his nineties when he died. He actually had grown up in another century, when penmanship received a grade in school and ciphering was done in neat columns. At a glance, she had to give credit—the entries were neatly done and the math seemed accurate.

  However, Ambrose’s assertion that the ledger and checkbook would tell her everything she needed to know—that was a little off the mark. According to the dates, months would go by when no sales were recorded. Surely that couldn’t be right—deposits were being made into the bank account all along. The ledger entries covered roughly five years, but toward the end it really became sketchy and for the past six months there wasn’t a single entry. No wonder Ambrose hadn’t wanted to show her this. He’d done no bookkeeping at all since Terrance passed away.

  The check register wasn’t much better, although he had taken the time to record the balance, apparently from a statement provided by the bank, at the end of each month. Although there wasn’t a lot of money in the account, it did seem adequate for the necessities, like paychecks. Surely this wasn’t the entire record; next time she talked to Daniel Ryan she would ask him. Perhaps an accountant had a more complete set of records somewhere. After all, certainly Ireland must require businesses to report income and pay taxes like every other place in the world.

  She set the ledger aside and rubbed at her eyes. Beau was snoring
softly and that bed looked really good. She crawled under the duvet with him and let herself drift into sleep.

  When he stirred, bringing Sam out of a muddled dream, she realized that most of the afternoon had gotten away from them. She got up and looked out at the graveyard across the street. The rain had stopped and, for once, there were no heavy clouds roiling in off the sea.

  “We’re going to have to adapt to this time zone,” he said, “or we’ll be up all night and sleeping all day.” He gave a little eyebrow-wiggle that told her that, in some ways, he wouldn’t mind being up all night.

  She laughed and tossed a pillow at him.

  “It’s really nice out now. Let’s take a long walk to wake ourselves up.”

  She slipped her jacket on, picked up her pack and pretended impatience as he took a minute to brush his hair while she waited by the door.

  “Be nice to me, wife, or I’ll make you buy dinner.”

  “What—with my huge inheritance?”

  She told him about the ledger and checkbook as they rode the elevator to the lobby. A crowd had gathered there, apparently tourists fresh off a bus, who were waiting to receive keys to their rooms. It was a retirement-age group, chatting away with precise British accents.

  Outside, the breeze was warmer than before. They turned away from the marina and found themselves on a street bordered on one side by the hotel’s parking garage and on the other by a row of warehouses and huge storage tanks. When it became clear that only commercial dock traffic came this way, they reversed course, crossed a street and came out near the entrance to the cemetery that Sam had seen earlier from their windows. A shadowed narrow entry in the high stone wall didn’t look terribly inviting so they walked on, soon becoming hopelessly turned around.

  “Let’s try this again,” Beau said. He backtracked until they returned to the open area where the small boat harbor was surrounded by hotels and apartments. The walkway led past some open parks and they could see a pavilion on a wide grassy swale across a narrow stretch of water.

  “I think that’s the River Corrib,” Beau said. “Looking at those brochures earlier, it said there’s a water taxi to the other side. They hold events over there. Looks like a little carnival is there now.”