7 Sweets, Begorra

by Connie Shelton

  She had seen these three together somewhere. Her eyes darted back and forth, scanning the three images on the walls. Where?

  She stared so hard and so long that the memory began to blur. It was like trying to remember a name that was on the tip of her tongue, with the same frustrating result—the mind went blank.

  She faced away from the walls and watched Beau, sitting at a desk, his face scrunched in concentration. A tingle started in her fingers and a flash-vision of her wooden jewelry box came to her. When she closed her eyes she saw the three men standing in line at an airport check-in desk.

  “Beau! Detective Lambert! I’ve remembered something.” She kept her eyes closed, working like crazy to keep the memory from fading.

  “Sam? What’s the matter?” the detective’s voice said.

  She pretended to take a snapshot of what she was seeing. Memorized it. Opened her eyes. Gathered her thoughts to present it logically enough that Lambert wouldn’t think she was a nut.

  “I’ve seen those three men together,” she said, pointing toward the two areas of the crime-wall. “The two that you found in the lifeboat, they were with the other one—Farrell—at the airport. In New York, when we were checking in for our flight. They were in the other line, buying tickets.” She paused a moment, searching for additional details. “Wait a second—they didn’t actually buy their tickets together . . . They were at the entrance to that place where you line up, you know, where the sign says to enter.”

  She and Beau had paused to figure out where they needed to be, unfamiliar with the process for flying first class.

  “The older man—Farrell. He was pulling cash out of a thick wallet-thing he got out of his jacket. He gave money to the others. Once we found our own line to join, I saw that the three men weren’t together. They were all in line, but not together.”

  “And . . .” Beau said. “didn’t one of your suspects drop the name Quint?”

  “Possibly the same?” Lambert looked excited. He turned back to Sam. “You’ve quite the memory.”

  This probably wasn’t the best time and place to admit to having tingles and visions that came from handling an odd wooden box. “I guess I noticed because so few people pay with cash these days,” she said with a shrug.

  Beau, bless him, stayed quiet. He’d witnessed a few of her insights, and even though he wasn’t much into supernatural beliefs he’d learned to trust that she wouldn’t be making this up.

  “We know these two ended up here in Galway,” Lambert said, pointing at Furns and Greenlee. “They’re still in our custody. But what about the other, Quinton Farrell . . . Which airline were they checking in with?”

  “That’s just it. Aerlingus.” Beau spoke up while Sam searched for anything else she could remember. “We were on the direct flight from JFK to Shannon.”

  “I think they were, too,” Sam told them. “Once we’d gotten through security and were walking toward the gates, I saw them together again. They were sitting in a bar directly across from the gate where our plane would leave.”

  “Did you actually see Farrell on the plane?”

  Beau explained that they’d been in first class, boarding separately and waiting in the club lounge before the flight left. Lambert gave him an appraising stare, and Sam felt obligated to explain about the inheritance and the free flight. She couldn’t have him wondering how a small town sheriff and a baker had managed the expensive tickets.

  The detective nodded and she could see him processing all the new information. He got Aiden’s attention and motioned the younger detective over.

  “I’d like to have Greenlee and Furns brought to interrogation rooms. Separate ones.” To Beau he said, “Now that we have Farrell’s name, this could get interesting.”

  Beau glanced around the big, open room. “There aren’t any American authorities here to question them?”

  “Not yet.” He said it politely but the inference was there—he’d only learned of the possible connection between the three men, just minutes ago.

  “Sorry,” Beau said. “Didn’t mean to—”

  “No, actually . . . Would you like to interview them with me?”

  A smile spread over Beau’s face.

  “You see where I’m going with this,” Lambert said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Sam, you are welcome to watch from the safety of the side room,” Lambert offered.

  “Thank you, I’d like to.” She was intrigued to see what might happen next.

  Chapter 13

  Sam stepped into the room where Lambert instructed her to wait with Aiden and watch on a video monitor. Lambert entered the room where Hank Greenlee sprawled in a chair, posed nonchalantly although his fingers drummed on the table with contradictory nervous energy.

  “Mr. Greenlee, good morning.”

  The young black man answered with a chuff.

  “It’s customary to say good morning here,” Lambert said.

  Greenlee’s posture stiffened almost imperceptibly. “Morning. When’m I outta here?”

  “Well now, I suppose that depends.”

  A ridge deepened between his eyebrows. “On what?”

  “What can you tell us about Quinton Farrell?”

  “Say who?”

  “The man who gave you cash to purchase your plane ticket to come to our fair country.”

  “Don’t know whatcha mean.”

  Lambert turned on him, slamming his palm onto the table top with a whap. Greenlee flinched and pulled his own arm tighter to his body but he gave Lambert a disdainful stare.

  “You and your friend Trucker came to Ireland with Quinton Farrell, accomplices to a very large robbery. You’re in for some very serious prison time, you little punk. Don’t bullshit me.” Lambert hovered over the suspect, his hands balled into fists.

  On cue, Beau tapped at the door and walked into the interrogation.

  “Detective, the sergeant needs you for a minute,” he said.

  Greenlee watched him with hooded eyes, clearly wondering.

  Beau waited until Lambert had left and closed the door before turning to Greenlee. He acted relieved to be left alone.

  “They treating you all right?” he asked.

  Greenlee shrugged. “Not really. Who’re you, anyway? You sound American. You like a ambassador or somethin’?”

  Beau didn’t directly answer the question, simply took the other chair and leaned in toward the prisoner. “I’m trying to find out the truth. With any luck we can get you out soon.”

  “I ain’t done nothin’ and they can’t be holding me here, can they?”

  “They said you and your friend hired a fishing boat. Next thing anyone knows the boat is drifting at sea, the crew is missing and you two are floating around out there in the lifeboat. Sounds pretty cold and scary to me.”

  The younger man said nothing about the fact that he’d been taken to the hospital with hypothermia.

  “Look,” Beau said. “They just need to know what happened. This guy, Quinton Farrell, he’s really behind all this, isn’t he? He paid for the plane tickets, probably the charter boat too. He’s the one they really want. Tell them that and you’ll probably be out of here pretty quick.”

  Hank’s eyes shifted back and forth. The offer was tempting.

  “Look, man, I don’t know nothin’. I don’t like fishin’ so I just sat down in the back and I fell asleep.”

  Beau let a long moment go by. “Uh-huh. And the next thing you know you’re out there in the dark in that lifeboat, freezing your ass off and you have no idea how you got there? Did Farrell go out on the boat with the rest of you?”

  Greenlee’s eyes shifted then he sat back and sighed deeply. “Quint—he’s smart. Way smarter than Trucker, way-way smarter than me. I don’t know what all he done. He said he’d give us a share of all this money if we’d help get some diamonds or some such shit from some old man in Manhattan. I just needed me some cash and that’s all I signed on for. Man, I just want my money and to see t
he other side of this damn building.”

  Beau nodded, as if agreeing with that sentiment.

  “So, where’s Quint now? The police really need to find him.”

  “Hell if I know.” He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest.

  Lambert came back in and exchanged some kind of signal with Beau, who left the two alone. When Beau stepped into the viewing room, Aiden asked, “Do you believe him, then?”

  “Parts of it are probably true. Parts are clearly a matter of his saying what he thinks we want to hear.”

  Sam offered him a bottle of water she’d been sipping and he took three long pulls on it.

  “Guess I’m up next in the ‘Yankee-cop-Euro-cop’ game with the other guy, Trucker,” he said. “You don’t have to hang around here, darlin’. I can meet you somewhere later, if you want.”

  Aiden busied himself by setting up a second monitor and bringing up a camera in the room where Trucker Furns waited.

  Sam thought about going to the bookshop to see what was happening but felt torn. Until she fully committed to signing the papers and accepting that she would own the place for the next two years, she couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to put in long hours there. “I’ll stay here,” she said to Beau. “I came to Ireland to be with you.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “I’m sorry, darlin’. I don’t have to be here. We can go get the car and take another drive.”

  She turned toward him and gave him a quick kiss. “You are loving this. A big case that’s made international news—you don’t get the chance to get in on that every day. Go. Interview. When you’re finished you can take me shopping for gifts to take home to everyone.”

  He pulled out a chair for her. “You can watch again. You always come up with good ideas—partner.”

  Once again Sam found herself seated in front of a monitor, watching Beau walk in and confront a suspect.

  Ted Furns—Trucker—sat in a metal chair at a metal table, casually grooming his nails by scraping under each one with the zipper pull on the jailhouse jumpsuit he wore. The tattoos on his arms were a vivid mix of fantastical myth and what Sam supposed were prison gang symbols. Skulls seemed to feature prominently. He didn’t look up when Beau entered.

  “Mr. Furns,” Beau said, taking the seat across from him. “I just spoke with Hank.”

  “You American?” Finally, Trucker looked up.

  Beau nodded. “Your partner says Quint Farrell planned this whole thing, talked you guys into going along with it.”

  Trucker regarded him coolly. “I don’t know no Quint.”

  “You were all seen together in the airport. We know you were on the same flight.”

  A shrug. “Lot of people on them big airplanes. I don’t know them neither.”

  “True.”

  Sam felt a shiver go up her arms. They’d been on the same plane. What if either of these bad guys remembered them? Recognition could work against them as well as in their favor.

  “Your buddy Hank says he fell asleep on the fishing boat. Doesn’t know what happened to the captain and the mate. You weren’t asleep. What did happen? Where are they?”

  “I want a lawyer.” He dropped the zipper pull and folded his arms at the edge of the table.

  “This isn’t America,” Beau said.

  “It’s a civilized country. They got lawyers.”

  “You don’t have any rights here. You’re not a citizen.” Beau let the air fill with silence. After a full three minutes he said, “I suppose I could call the American embassy for you. Get you a quick ticket home on a Con Air flight.”

  A flicker of uncertainty crossed Trucker’s face. He quickly masked it and stayed quiet.

  “It’s okay. The police here are liking you for piracy and murder in Ireland. They really don’t want to send you back across the Atlantic anyway.”

  Beau stood up and walked out of the room without looking back. The instant the door closed, Sam saw Trucker’s face twist into a mask of fury. He slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand.

  “You got to him with that last part,” Sam told Beau when he walked into the observation room a minute later.

  Beau looked at the interrogation room monitor but Trucker glanced up at the camera mounted high on the wall, gave a tiny smile and settled back into his seat. Detective Lambert walked into the room where Sam and Beau were standing.

  “I’ll let himself cool his heels for awhile, let him think we’re printin’ out his entire history, then I’ll get in there with more questions. Would you both like to pop out with me for a little lunch?”

  Beau glanced at Sam. “I promised my wife that I would take her shopping this afternoon.”

  “Unless you need him here,” Sam said. “He’ll certainly have more fun grilling your suspects than he would looking at sweaters with me.”

  Lambert chuckled. “It’s your call. I don’t mind your bein’ here, though. You’ve a better feel for how the American criminal mind works.”

  The words were hardly out before he realized how they sounded. Beau assured the detective that he understood what was meant—and agreed.

  “How about this? While you’re having lunch we’ll hit the shops. Then I can come back. Sam can do whatever she wants . . . more shopping, the bookstore, the hotel . . .”

  As it turned out, Sam found everything she wanted in two places. She came away with thick Aran wool sweaters for her daughter, Kelly, and friends Zoë and Darryl Chartrain; they loved to cross-country ski. Beautifully woven scarves worked perfectly for Jen and Becky at Sweet’s Sweets, for her friend Riki and her buddy Rupert Penrick who had helped her out of more than one scrape in her life. Julio, her one male employee, would like the black stone beads with the Harley Davidson emblem (okay, not really Irish), and she would get Ambrose to recommend something in the shop for her bookstore-owner friend Ivan.

  They dropped their packages off at the hotel and went by a fish and chips stand where they got food to go and nibbled at it as they walked back to the station.

  “If you’re serious about wanting my help, I’m here,” Beau told Lambert when they found the detective staring at the computer screen on his desk.

  “I do. Never made it out for any lunch,” he said. “There’s a new case, out toward Salthill, and now I’ve got the pressure from above to wrap up this one.”

  Sam handed him the paper wrapper of fish and potatoes she hadn’t finished. He reached for it and ate while he talked.

  “If I could only get these two to admit something about what happened to Darragh O’Henry. We’ve got their fingerprints all over the boat. There’s the blood, which doesn’t match either of theirs. And that one shell casing. But no bodies.”

  “Darragh’s family say there’s no way he would willingly abandon the Glory Be,” Sam offered.

  “Aye, that’s true enough,” said Lambert. “Me own dad was a sailor. He’d have never surrendered his ship without a fight.”

  The detective performed a few mouse clicks and a printer across the room began spitting out pages. Among them were photographs, apparently from surveillance cameras at JFK airport, which showed the three men together and a printed list of names.

  “Farrell traveled under his own passport,” he told them, “but we aren’t sure what names the others used. I want to get that information out of them.”

  “Let’s switch off our good-cop, bad-cop roles and see what happens,” Beau suggested, taking one set of the printed pages with him.

  Once again, Sam watched as Beau entered an interrogation room. Hank Greenlee rested his head on folded arms at the table, and it seemed he’d fallen asleep. Beau kicked one leg of the chair, sending the young black man to attention.

  “What’s that for, man?” he grumbled.

  “I want the whole story, and I want it now.” Beau’s voice went hard, a tone Sam had never heard before. “Start with the robbery of that diamond wholesaler.”

  Greenlee stuck out his lip, deba
ting. Beau flashed the sheets of paper in the suspect’s face, nearly ruffling his eyelashes with them.

  “Now!”

  The belligerent attitude receded. “I don’t know what you want, man.”

  “I want to hear what happened to Jacob Goldman in New York, and I want to hear what happened aboard that fishing boat here in Galway.” He jerked a metal chair into place across from Greenlee; it clattered to a standstill and Beau sat and stared.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about the dude in New York. Quint and Trucker went in there. I waited in the car outside. They come running, I take off. Quint yells out what to do. I go to this parking garage.”

  Beau jotted notes and continued his silent stare.

  “In the back seat, Quint’s putting stuff into bags—I don’t know what all. Then we get outta that place and suddenly he’s all, like, now we gotta go to Ireland. What’s with that? But he’s taking us out to the street, grabbing a cab, then we’re at the airport buying the tickets and he’s got passports all set for us and everything. So then I figure we’ll get here and get our money, but then he’s all, ‘okay now we need to get this fishing boat’.”

  “How did he get the gems and cash through airport security?”

  “No idea. He had all that stuff with him. Trucker and me, we just had suitcases with, like, some clothes and stuff.”

  “What about a gun? Did you see one?”

  “In a airport? Hell, no.”

  “Okay, you get on the flight with a fake passport. What name was on it?”

  Greenlee rubbed at his temples. “I don’t remember . . . I show it a couple times at the airport, then to some uniform dude when we get here . . . then Quint takes the passports back from us after that.”

  Quint must have some darn good connections to get fake passports, Sam thought. A lot of planning had gone into the jewel heist—a lot more than Greenlee was letting on.

  Beau spoke again. “So you get to Ireland. Did you check into a hotel? Where’d you stay?”

  “Nowhere, man. We ride some bus from the airport to here. Quint’s making phone calls right and left. Like, he’s trying to reach some uncle or somebody. I don’t know.” His voice rose in a tired whine.