7 Sweets, Begorra

by Connie Shelton

  Beau gave a short explanation that included an explanation of the ways Sam had helped him in the past with his own cases. It sounded better than ‘she was feeling a little blue so I let her come along.’ Sam decided he was just being kind because, after all, it was their honeymoon and they’d ended up going off in different directions much of the time.

  Aiden drove and Beau turned around in his seat to give Sam a short briefing.

  “The old man I told you about, he said that Quint had come around with a blond woman, and that the two of them had left together. Doesn’t sound like Quint was quite as tight with the Travellers as we’d thought, or that they are harboring him.”

  “We believe that Quint and the woman are still together, that he’s using her to help him get around,” Aiden said.

  “If Deirdre has gone home, it’s possible that Quint may be there too. Or neither of them may be there. Until we know his location, it’s not worth calling out all the forces. We don’t plan to apprehend Quint ourselves, unless he should give up easily. Our job is to locate him, then we’ll call in extra men, maybe even an armed Emergency Response Unit depending on the situation, to actually bring him in.”

  “Interesting, why would Quint come back to Galway at all?” Sam said. “You’d think he would want to put some distance between this town and himself.”

  “There has to be something,” Beau agreed. “What’s Quint’s strongest motivation?”

  “The money, the diamonds?” she said.

  “Are you sayin’ that Quint might have hid the loot somewhere nearby after he escaped the Glory Be, and now he has to come back for it?” Aiden kept his eyes on the road as he joined the conversation.

  Beau spoke up: “It makes sense. Quint gets off the boat but it’s the dead of night and he’s washed up on a shoreline, God knows where. Maybe he’s hurt—Sam, you said he was limping when he came in the pub to meet Deirdre last night.”

  “He was. So, maybe when he washed up on the shoreline he lost track of the bags containing the money and diamonds and he’s come back to look for them. Or he stashed it all somewhere. Maybe the Travellers took him in and he thinks they took the gems.”

  “He went to the Traveller camp in Tuam, according to Cian and his father, but no one else we talked to actually admitted seeing him there.”

  “There’s a fairly well-known fencing operation within the Travellers,” Aiden said. “It’s quite likely that Quint heard of it and wanted them to buy the diamonds.”

  He cruised slowly down a narrow lane of dingy gray row houses with small windows. Most looked small and dim, uninviting in the shadows cast by gathering clouds.

  “Number twelve, just there,” he said to Beau, pointing ahead. He guided the car to the curb, staying about three houses away.

  Sam felt the energy level in the car escalate.

  “Stay in here,” Beau instructed her. “We don’t know what we’ll find.”

  Aiden glanced over his left shoulder, verifying that she wouldn’t give them trouble over the order.

  Sam nodded, only slightly impatiently.

  The two men got out and closed their doors quietly. They crossed to Deirdre’s side of the street and edged toward her door, Aiden taking the lead. They stood on either side of it before Aiden reached out and knocked. Thirty seconds went by. He knocked again; this time Sam could hear it.

  Nothing.

  Beau edged past Aiden and approached the unit’s small window, cupped a hand around his eyes and looked in. He said something to Aiden, who twisted the center-mounted doorknob. It opened.

  Both men edged in, staying sideways to the opening. Sam caught herself holding her breath.

  After one of the longest minutes of her life she saw Beau come back out, jogging toward the car.

  “Deirdre’s been beaten—can you come help?”

  Chapter 24

  The front door opened into a hallway so narrow that Sam had to follow Beau. A small living room was on the right and she could hear voices.

  “. . . back soon.” Deirdre’s voice sounded thick.

  When Sam stepped into the room, she saw why. The woman’s lower lip looked like a balloon and one eye had swelled nearly shut. She sat in an old armchair, clutching a washcloth to the puffy side of her face.

  “She says Quint went out for food. He’ll be coming back,” Aiden said to Beau. “We need to get her out of here.”

  “Can’t leave,” Deirdre mumbled. It sounded more like cad leeb. “Quint comin’ back for me.”

  He did this to you and you want him back? Sam stared.

  “Bringin’ me diamond—”

  “Don’t try to talk,” Sam said gently, kneeling beside the chair. “We’ll see about the diamond later. Right now, let’s think about getting you to a safe place.”

  Not the car. Quint, returning, would easily spot her there and Deirdre wasn’t doing much to protect herself. She would probably leap out and go with him.

  Aiden left the room, saying he would check on something.

  “Did you see the diamonds, Deirdre?” Beau asked. “Did Quint leave them here?”

  She shook her head but the motion made her flinch.

  “Do you know where they are?”

  Another shake, smaller this time.

  “Deirdre, Quint is a very dangerous man. He beat an old man badly enough to put him in a coma. He probably killed two others. We need to get you out of here.” Beau spoke gently and Deirdre paid attention.

  Aiden came in, and Sam heard someone else out in the hall.

  “Your neighbor says you can come to her house, dear. Let’s get you going,” Aiden said, stepping over to take her arm.

  Sam could tell that both lawmen were edgy, expecting Quint to come walking in. She stood and took Deirdre’s other elbow, helping her to stand. She was a little wobbly on her feet for the first few steps.

  “Shouldn’t we be calling an ambulance for her?” Sam whispered to Beau.

  “Don’t want to alert Quint. We’ll get her to a hospital soon.”

  A young woman was standing in the hall. “Deirdre, what’s happened?” She looked at Aiden. “I’d drive her to hospital myself but I’m late to pick up my kids at school and take ’em to their football practice.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “If we can only let her rest at your house until the danger’s passed?”

  The woman blanched a little at the policeman’s warning of danger. She dropped a key into his hand and scurried out.

  “Sam, if you don’t mind . . . I’ll ask you to sit with her?” Keep her from rushing back over here into the arms of Quint Farrell, he meant.

  Sam accepted the house key and tried to get Deirdre to pick up the pace. She kept clutching at her side, and since she could only see out of one eye, taking the steps became a little tricky. It only took two minutes to get safely behind the neighbor’s door, but the time in full view on the street felt like an hour.

  Sam closed and locked the door immediately. The floor plan looked the same as the one next door, although the furnishings were a degree or two nicer. Sam left Deirdre standing in the hall while she checked the place. The hall led to a kitchen at the rear of the house, where a back door gave way to an alley full of trash cans. Sam checked that the kitchen door was securely locked. Stairs led to a second story, presumably where there were bedrooms. Back in the living room, Deirdre had seated herself on a sofa, but Sam noticed that the drapes were fully open to the view of the street. She pulled them closed.

  “Can I get you some water?” Without waiting for an answer she went back to the kitchen, pulling the shade over the one window before filling a glass.

  Deirdre’s copper-blond hair hung in strings around her face, and she brushed them back without making much difference before accepting the glass. While the woman sipped clumsily at the water, Sam stepped to the side of the window and moved the curtain a tad. Not a soul was moving on the street.

  Her imagination threatened to take over. Quint was armed. Beau was not. She
’d noticed that uniformed police officers here didn’t carry guns, only a strong truncheon. But both Aiden and Lambert, as detectives, did have guns. She could only pray that they could surprise and subdue Quint before gunfire became inevitable.

  Deirdre perked up a little after draining the glass. She got up and walked over to a mirror on the wall, groaning when she saw her face. She’d brought her washcloth and Sam offered to wet it again.

  When she returned from the kitchen, Deirdre was gingerly touching the sore spots that, by morning, would be horrific bruises.

  “Did Quint Farrell abduct you?” Sam asked. “Force you to drive him?”

  She knew better, even before Deirdre spoke. She’d seen the woman greet Quint with a smile in the pub last night.

  “He promised me a diamond the size of me thumb,” she said, dabbing at dried blood on her chin. “Said he’d be selling a bunch of ’em but he’d save me the best one. Do you know what that would be worth? I could have meself a grand ring made, or I could get the money and pay off all me bills and buy a new car as well.”

  Sam waited.

  “All I had to do was take him out to see the Travellers. But then the man he wanted wasn’t at Tuam and he found out they was moved back here to Galway. So then I had to bring him back. He got real nervous about that, with the cops looking for him here. Said if I’d let him stay at my house he’d make it two diamonds. Two diamonds! I never had such.”

  Sam didn’t point out that she didn’t exactly have them now, only a collection of bruises.

  “Why did he hit you?”

  Deirdre gave a few more dabs with the cloth. “Ah, you know men. Least little thing sets ’em off. I had no food in the house and he got upset over it. What was I thinkin’? Course I should’ve stocked up some things a man would want.”

  Sam would have bet money that the thing Quint wanted from Deirdre wasn’t limited to food. Or a safe place to stay. She didn’t say anything.

  “How long was he here?”

  “Couple of days. He’s eager to get this business deal finished.”

  The Glory Be had been towed in more than a week ago. Where had Quint Farrell been all that time? Sam remembered his limp.

  “Was Quint injured when you picked him up?”

  Deirdre turned too quickly and flinched. She adjusted to smaller steps and made her way back to the couch.

  “He’d a nasty gash on one leg. Some stitches in it that looked homemade. Bruises on his shoulders and ribs.”

  “How did he get those injuries?”

  “He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.” Deirdre sat down with a groan. “Could I get some ice for my lip?”

  Since it was difficult trying to understand the woman’s speech through the fat lip, Sam chided herself for not thinking of the ice sooner. She headed back to the kitchen and tried to piece together the sequence of Quint Farrell’s movements as she searched drawers for a plastic bag and the small freezer compartment for cubes.

  The trawler had gone out with three passengers and two crew. Somewhere out at sea, the three Americans had killed and dumped the crew. Who did the shooting was still a matter for the police to figure out, but it seemed clear that it was at a later point in the trip when Greenlee and Furns ended up in the lifeboat. And Quint? At some point he abandoned the trawler and came ashore. How? And where?

  The coast guard had reported the trawler coming very close to the rocky shore, saying it probably would have been dashed on the rocks a few hours later. Maybe Farrell had thought he could judge the tides correctly and slip over the edge, swimming to shore when the tide was low enough to be safe. If he’d planned incorrectly, he might have been bashed against the rocks himself. Lucky for him, he didn’t die in the effort.

  She carried the ice pack to Deirdre and paced to the window again. It was still very quiet next door. She remembered something.

  “Deirdre, someone hinted at the idea that Darragh might have been in league with the Americans, might have been trying to help them get away, and they turned on him.”

  The woman had to move the ice pack aside to speak, but the look on her face affirmed Sam’s earlier feeling that Darragh had known nothing of the robbers’ intentions when he took them out to sea.

  She peeked out from behind the curtain again, still nothing. She felt antsy.

  Apparently, Deirdre was feeling the same way.

  “This is crazy,” she said. “I told him the nearest market is only a few blocks away. He should have been back by now.”

  “Maybe he went to a pub.”

  “And not come back with food for me, too?” She sounded incredulous, but settled into the realization that it could be true. Quint was proving to be not quite the gentleman Deirdre had imagined.

  Sam watched the emotions cross her face, not wanting to bring up the possibility that Quint had simply stolen her car and was miles from the city by now.

  “What’s your phone number?” Sam asked. “I’ll call over there and ask the men if anything has happened.”

  “I only have me cell,” Deirdre said, pulling it from her pocket.

  Sam sighed, wishing Beau would tap on the back door or something. She thought of doing that—going out the back door of this house and tapping on the window at Deirdre’s—but it didn’t seem like a good idea to take the chance of messing up their capture. He would let her know when they considered it clear.

  Meanwhile, although she’d been able to learn a lot from Deirdre, she half wished she’d stayed at the hotel to finish going through her uncle’s papers.

  The light outdoors began to dim. Deirdre woke from a little doze on the couch, giving a mighty groan when she tried to get up. She got to her feet and hobbled down the hall in search of something for the pain. They really needed to get out of here before the neighbor and her kids came home. About the time Sam was ready to break her word and find Beau, she heard a tap at the door. Beau stepped inside when she answered.

  “We’re calling it off,” he said. “Quint has either figured out we’re there or he’s skipped. He may never come back.”

  “Never?” cried Deirdre. Neber, with the puffy mouth. “My car! He’s stolen my car?”

  Chapter 25

  “I need to get out and do something,” Sam said when Aiden Martin dropped them off at their hotel. “Too much sitting around.”

  They’d gotten Deirdre settled back in her home, cautioned her to double-lock everything and not to let Quint Farrell back inside, no matter what he promised. Beau had very little hope she would comply, but there was only so much they could do.

  “We could take a walk,” Beau suggested.

  It was getting dark but the streets were crowded with people on their way home from work or going out for the evening. It wasn’t nearly as late as it felt to Sam. After the emotion of the morning and the boredom of the afternoon, she couldn’t be sure what she wanted. They circled the dock area and found themselves meandering along the water’s edge, following the park-like berm, crossing the bridge, walking out to Nimmo’s Pier.

  A breeze came onshore, bringing fresh air and an assortment of detritus that collected along the shoreline. Although she’d wanted to put everything out of her mind, Sam found herself relating Deirdre’s conversation to Beau.

  “She said he had a gash on his leg and someone had stitched it up. Homemade, I think was the way she put it. I wondered who would have done that, and then I got to thinking about Quint’s actions. He was with the Travellers in Tuam at some point and then he got Deirdre to drive him to the newer encampment here. Do you suppose he came ashore, injured, and the Travellers found him and patched him up?”

  He pondered that. “Except that Tuam isn’t on the coast.”

  “True.” She looked out across the water. “But one of them might have been driving along, saw an injured man by the road . . .”

  “I suppose it’s possible.”

  She felt on a roll. “He wakes up in somebody’s camper, sees or hears something that leads him to believe they could fence
the stolen jewels.”

  “Except that would be pretty iffy. He steals all these diamonds in New York and comes to Ireland, on the off chance he would accidentally run into a reliable fence?”

  Hmm. She chewed at her lower lip.

  Beau spoke up. “But let’s say he came to Ireland because he arranged with someone to meet him here. For some reason, this is a place the police wouldn’t immediately think of looking.”

  “He’s going to meet them in Shannon, where the plane arrived, and then hop another flight right away. But how would he plan to end up in Galway, chartering a boat?” she asked.

  “The FBI agent in New York told Lambert that Quinton Farrell had posed as a jewelry wholesaler when he boarded the plane, giving him a reason for all the diamonds and to carry a weapon. The gun had to be checked but he had a legitimate-sounding reason for it and apparently created the right documents.”

  “Okay, so posing as a jewelry dealer he flies into Shannon, gets to Galway and charters the boat. He was meeting someone. It had to be that.”

  “Makes sense to me,” he said, as they started the long walk back toward the bridge. “But who? And where would this meeting be taking place?”

  Sam shrugged. “No idea.”

  “I have to give it some thought. For now, though, what would you like for dinner?”

  “Room service and our big comfy bed?”

  He took her hand as they walked. “You got it.”

  Beau placed the food order while Sam took a quick shower. Snuggled into her silky gown and robe, she decided to get some details out of the way before completely calling it a night. Ambrose answered his phone right away and assured Sam that he and the funeral director were managing arrangements for the services. There would be a viewing the following evening, with Mass and burial the day after. And there would be the wake at Terry’s house afterward, as they had already discussed.

  Considering her involvement in Beau’s search for Quint Farrell, Sam couldn’t imagine having the time to get the house ready and make the requisite sandwiches and desserts. She called Keeva.