“Move your foot.” Sheila’s hazel eyes flashed, and I could see red creeping up her neck.
“Just a few questions. You were her flat-mate. You knew her, and you knew Eoin, didn’t you?”
Sheila Carney nee Fogarty, now widowed, brought her heel down sharply on my instep. So much for first impressions. I yelped in pain and moved it, but I heard her answer before she slammed the door in my face. “Yes.” Damn the woman, did she know no other word? There’s another reason I’m not called on to do face-to-face interviews very often: no sixth sense about when I am about to get into trouble. Tom Patterson would have sweet-talked his way in and would be sitting in that little drawing room having tea and cakes.
I stood on the doorstep with not much to show for my efforts but a throbbing foot and a heart currently residing on the ground somewhere near it. Just like at home. A poor few facts for Eoin, so many against him. It reminded me why I like morgue work so well. It’s much more concrete. If it’s knowable at all, I can figure out a way to know it. And demonstrate it. Trial work — and, as it was turning out, criminal investigation — was not to my liking. Much more a matter of questions than answers, less about being sure than about being willing to work with what is at hand and take the consequences. I like finding the facts and leaving the arguments to someone else.
“Thank you!” I yelled at the door, certain that Sheila could not hear me and would not respond if she could, but equally sure that her upstairs neighbor could. I glanced up to see a face disappear from sight and the lace edge of a curtain fall back into place. I toyed with the idea of walking — limping, really; Sheila had planted her heel ferociously — up the stairs to have a go at the neighbor, but before I could leave, the door to the upstairs flat, next to the one that had just slammed in my face, opened and a disheveled woman with canny eyes and a soiled dress beckoned me in. “No sense talking to that one, it’s biscuits to a bear,” she said. “Known her all my life, I have, and Eoin and Fiona, too.” Before I could wonder about how she knew the subject of my inquiry, she added, “Not earwigging; the window was open a bit to air the place, and I was cleaning the bedroom.”
I looked around at a cluttered hall and a sitting room so overrun with papers and magazines that the woman had to clear a seat for both of us. It occurred to me that perhaps the dooryard wasn’t Sheila’s province after all. I started to sit in a threadbare wing chair, but the woman shooed me off. “That one’s a bit banjaxed. You sit here.” She indicated a wooden ladderback chair, and I sat down.
“I’ll be back in a sec,” she said and disappeared into an adjoining room. The kitchen, I thought to myself, and began working up plausible excuses for refusing food and drink, given the condition of the room. I might have made my way into a living room to pursue my inquiry, Tom Patterson style, but I needed to work on the details. I’d been in barns that were tidier than this sitting room.
The woman returned with a tray containing a pot, cups, and cookies in a tin, for which I gave silent thanks. She handed me a chipped cup full of steaming tea, hot enough, I noted, to sterilize anything that might have remained in the cup, and proffered the cookies. I took a chocolate-covered one.
“M’name’s Moira Haggerty. I’ve known Eoin Connor all my life. Fiona ever since he has. What are you wanting to know?” She sipped from her cup, but her eyes never left my face.
What did I want to know? It suddenly occurred to me that I’d started this inquiry with not the least idea of what I wanted out of it. And it occurred to me that it might be just as well to say so. “I’m not certain. I just need to know whether Eoin Connor is guilty of killing Fiona or not. Everything — well, almost everything — I’ve found out seems to indicate that he did, but I have a sense that I am missing something, something important.”
“But you’re hoping you know it when you hear it, is that it?” Those canny eyes twinkled. “Tell me, why the interest? Are you Connor’s mot? Girlfriend?”
I was glad for the translation. In the few minutes I’d been in this woman’s presence, my capacity for contextual interpretation had been given a workout, and I was not sure I was keeping up. I pondered my answer. “I suppose I am, or at least, he thinks I am.” I hoped that would suffice.
“That will do. I can understand wanting to know, then. The advances of a murderer would not be so welcome now, would they?” Another sip, eyes still focused but understanding. I was warming to this woman.
I smiled in agreement. “They would not. Tell me what you know about Eoin and Fiona. Everything.”
“Ah, now that will take some time,” she replied. “I’ve known them for donkey’s years.”
I stretched out my legs, even though the chair would not let me lean back. She chuckled outright and started to talk.
Two hours, three pots of tea, most of a tin of cookies, and a visit to the cleanest bathroom I have ever seen in any house, I had a little more to work with. Moira was a fount of information with the Irish knack of telling a story. Fiona’s indiscretions, it seems, were common knowledge in Belfast, but Eoin, fresh from the family farm, would not have known. According to Moira, at least, he had been angry over Fiona’s deception, and there had been angry words between the two in public more than once. It was not a happy match, though back then, there was no way out of it.
Divorce in Northern Ireland was a difficult matter then, granted mostly for adultery, and as wanton as Fiona was, Eoin could not prove her adultery with the Italian she’d been seen about town with until she decamped with him, and by that time, he was on the lam, as well. As for the Church, Moira confirmed that it was also common knowledge that the Church had held the marriage valid, though there was grumbling in the ranks at the injustice of it all. All old news to me, but it was nice to have it validated. But she did have one bit that came as quite a surprise to me. Fiona, Moira told me, was pregnant, this time for certain, when she ran off with her lover, by which time Eoin, too, was gone. She wasn’t sure he had ever heard about it. Given that Fiona was supposedly bedding two different men at the time, there was some question whose child it was. The locals were betting on Eoin, for no particular reason, she admitted, other than Fiona was one to hold her favors until she’d gotten what she wanted. And until she ran off with the Italian, one Enrico Rossi, she had not gotten what she wanted: escape from Northern Ireland. And another bit of information that was a surprise to me: she’d been accompanied by another Connor, Eoin’s sister, Deirdre. A sister Eoin had never mentioned but one who was enchanted with Fiona and who had followed her in pursuit of the good life, far away from Ireland. Moreover, Moira had heard rumors that Deirdre was back in Belfast these days, once again in the company of Fiona but this time as minion and not friend. If, indeed, she had ever been.
In all the research I had done, there was no mention of a child and no mention of Deirdre Connor, if, indeed, that was still her name. Moira’s last words to me played over and over in my mind as I walked back toward my hotel in the gathering dusk: “Eoin was over and done with Fiona and Deirdre, as well. But if he knew she’d deprived him all these years of a child, God help her.” A full day’s work and all I had to show for it was a bruised instep and another motive for murder.
***
Tom Patterson, Mike Delatorre, and Father Matt sat in Patterson’s office, poring over the fax that had just come in from Belfast. Twenty-five pages. Investigative reports from the Police Service of Northern Ireland, an autopsy report, toxicology, photographs, and news clippings.
“Nice to know it’s the same drill everywhere,” Mike said. He was reading the autopsy report, marking notes in the margin.
“Anything interesting?”
“She was dying of a brain tumor.”
Father Matt put down the clippings he was sorting through.
“What did you say?”
“She had a pretty well-advanced brain tumor. A bad one. It would have killed her. I’m surprised she didn’t have symptoms.”
“It’s a good bet that Eoin Connor didn’t know tha
t. No need to kill a dying woman,” said Tom Patterson. “The police report says that she was poisoned with a pesticide. Eoin Connor’s prints were on the bottle, and it was found at the scene.”
“Let me see that.” Mike scanned the report. “Not just a pesticide. An old-fashioned one. Not sure where you’d get it these days. It’s banned just about everywhere.”
Father Matt chimed in. “That makes no sense. Eoin is a crime writer. He’d never be that stupid, to leave the bottle there for the police to trace.”
Patterson smiled as he took the report back and passed it to Father Matt. “I rely on stupid criminals all the time. And the brighter they are in one way, the dumber they are in others. What’s bad about this is that poisoning like this means premeditation. There’s no death penalty in Ireland, but murder means mandatory life sentence. Premeditation would be a solid argument against early release. Eoin Connor may not see the light of day as a free man again.”
“You sound like you’ve convicted him.”
“The evidence is pretty strong. He was seen leaving her rooms shortly before her assistant found her dead. They had an argument the day before, loud and public. He left here fit to be tied and there wasn’t much love lost here, either. Motive, means, opportunity — and no other suspects mentioned in the reports.”
“Maybe they didn’t look for any,” Father Matt said.
He was rewarded by pitying looks from both Tom Patterson and Mike Delatorre. It was the latter who gave voice to the reason. “Maybe they didn’t have to.”
“Well,” said Father Matt, “maybe they should have. Look, what about this assistant? This Dee Matthews. What about her? She found the body. She took care of Fiona. Maybe she had a grudge.”
Mike Delatorre stabbed his forefinger at the page in his hand. “No good. She also told the investigators that Fiona was ready to write Eoin Connor out of her will. Another motive for murder.”
He handed the papers over to Father Matt, who looked at them a long minute, a puzzled look on his face. “Wait a minute. Going to write him out of her will? Why would Eoin care? He’s rich enough. How would he even know about the will? And why in the world would Fiona leave her estate to Eoin? She hadn’t seen him for years.”
There was another long minute of silence as the professionals in the room digested this observation. Then a grin split Tom Patterson’s face. “Well, I’ll be damned! Out of the mouths of babes. You’re right! Why would she leave money to a man who wanted nothing to do with her? Maybe our Irish colleagues gave up too soon.” He turned his attention to Mike Delatorre. “How are your research skills?”
“Have internet, will travel. Maybe we ought to start with this Deirdre Matthews? I wonder, when was that will changed, and who was in it before?”
“I wonder, too,” Tom Patterson said. “And I wonder if there’s any way to get a hold of that information. I would think that it ought to be available to the defense attorney.”
“If he thought of it,” said Father Matt. “From that report, maybe he didn’t.”
Patterson nodded in agreement and looked at his watch. “Too early to call over there just yet.” He disconnected a laptop from his monitor and handed it over to Father Matt. “Here’s portable internet. What say we go get a pizza and a beer and start a little nosing around of our own? There just might be more to this than meets the eye.” There was just a fraction of a second’s pause before he added, with more emotion than he wanted to show, “I sure would like that hard-headed Irishman to be innocent.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
January 22
At six straight up, I got out of bed, accompanied by a splitting headache, the product of an incipient cold and a restless night, punctuated by dreams of Eoin Connor. Eoin battering my door. Eoin breaking a man’s jaw with a punch. Eoin discovering he had a child. Eoin’s hand holding a decrepit bottle with a red-and-black label. Eoin’s face the first time I met him and the last time I saw him. My energies were getting me nothing, apart from a growing conviction that the man I loved — I had to admit it now — was quite possibly a murderer. Shaking my head to dispel the thought and immediately regretting it, I pulled on some clothes, ran a brush through my hair, pulled it back in a bandeau, and headed downstairs for breakfast.
Irish breakfast will cure what ails you, and my server, recognizing me as being a bit under the weather, promptly brought me a pot of dark tea and a plate of assorted breads. I lightened the tea with cream so rich it was almost yellow and sweetened it with two small cubes of raw sugar. It warmed me all the way down, and I followed it with some wheaten bread studded with soft, yellow raisins. As I chewed, I thought.
Perhaps I was using the wrong side of my brain. I was used to following cases as a medical examiner, with all the ultimate facts in hand, having only to cast about among the possible solutions to find the one that fit. Now I was without any of the information — or any of the tools — I was accustomed to having. All I knew is that Fiona McLaughlin had died of a dose of Black Leaf 40 that had come from the Connor family farm.
Maybe I needed to think like a lawyer instead. Law was the second, and less preferred, of my professions. Lawyers deal too much in possibilities, and the system rewards those that can best massage facts into compliance with an outcome they — not necessarily the situation — determine. On the other hand, I was beginning to see the merit in the “reasonable doubt” approach to things. Given that I did not like the certainty my current venue of investigation was creating, a change in tactics seemed appropriate. I could revisit the God’s-honest-truth of the matter when I had more to work with. Maybe I needed to concentrate on who else might have had a motive to kill Fiona — that number seemed legion — and also had access to an out-of-date, banned pesticide.
In the meantime, I needed to throw a bone to my medical side. Come hell or high water, I had to get a copy of the investigative file on Fiona’s death and Eoin Connor. It was too early to call home and rustle up the reserves, but I could start on a list of possible suspects. The last few days had proved anyone who spent much time in Fiona’s orbit was likely to end up with a reason to dislike her; her current list of contacts seemed as good a place to start as any. I pulled out my ever-present notebook, cadged a pen from the waiter as he passed, and started the list.
By the time my server returned with a plate of scrambled eggs, sausages, streaky bacon, beans, potato bread cut in quarters, and black pudding, I had a respectable place to start. I said grace, refreshed my tea, nudged the black pudding off to the side, and began to look over the list, adding notes between bites. By the last bite of egg, I had a decent starting point, though little idea of motive or access to the troublesome bottle of poison with Eoin’s fingerprints on it. But it was a start.
On the way back to my room, my mood evaporated. The poison. I’d forgotten to figure that in. Whoever killed Fiona needed access to that poison. Not only access, he’d need to know it even existed. That narrowed the list of people with means considerably, at least at first blush. And all of a sudden, the helpful and congenial Terry was at the top of the list. I wondered who else had been to the Connor family farm in the last few weeks as I opened the door to my room.
There was only one way to find out. I sorted through the file on my desk once more to find out where the farm was located: Rathlin Island, a place I’d never even heard of. I called down to the desk to speak with the ever-helpful Charles to help me figure out how to get there.
“Certainly, Madam,” he said. “I’ll arrange for a car for you, if you’d like. A driver, too, if you don’t want to try managing on your own.”
I considered this for a moment. “Is Rathlin Island a common destination? I have no idea where it is.”
“It’s just off the northern coast. Two hours’ drive. A desolate spot this time of year, but a nice destination in the summer, though the crossing can be rough.”
“I think I’ll go on my own,” I said. “Can you have a car delivered here?”
“Of course, Madam. The firs
t ferry over to Rathlin is at half past eight in the morning this time of year, and the last one back to Ballycastle at half past four in the afternoon. With the short days, I think you may prefer to take lodgings in Ballycastle rather than drive in the dark?”
“I would. You certainty know the timetables. I suppose it’s all part of the job.”
I could hear him tapping his keyboard in the background, probably making reservations for my car, and distracted. Otherwise, he’d never have let go the tidbit of information he did. “Quite so, Madam, though I just arranged a similar trip for the Countess last week. There. Your car will be here at a quarter to eight in the morning. You can catch the ferry at half past ten and be back to Ballycastle by five in the evening. I will arrange rooms for you at the Bushmills, quite a nice place. Shall we hold your room here, as well?”
“Of course. Thank you, Charles.”
“Paul will be up with your confirmations shortly. May I use the credit card?”
“Please.” I wasn’t usually in the habit of paying for a room I didn’t occupy, but considering the nugget I’d gleaned in the process, it was well worth it. So Fiona had gone to Rathlin in the days before she died. I wondered why. Perhaps Terry Connor hadn’t been as forthcoming with me as I thought. After all, it seems every man who knew Fiona had a reason to despise her. Why should Eoin’s brother be any different?
***
Sadie stomped the snow off her boots as she pushed through the door of the Steaming Bean. The Bean was usually crowded during the day during ski season, but today there were only a few people enjoying the warmth and the coffee. Sadie put it down to the fact that there was nearly half a foot of fresh powder on the slopes, and the snow was still coming down, hard and steady. The hotdogs were out on the slope, and the bunnies slept in.
Dying for Compassion (The Lady Doc Murders Book 2) Page 18
