Death on the Green

by Catie Murphy

  “Well,” Megan said as gently as she could, as she got into the Lincoln’s front seat, “I suppose we’d have to think about how we would feel if someone wanted to just take a finger bone from our grandfather’s hand.”

  “That’s just it!” Mrs. Williams proclaimed. “He is my grandfather! Or one of them is. The last Earl was my great-grand-uncle, so it’s his father who was my direct ancestor.”

  “But your immediate grandpa. The one who was married to Grandma Elsie.” Megan pulled out into traffic, albeit not much of it. The River Liffey lay off to their right, beyond the light-rail Luas tracks, and she forbore any mention that Mrs. Williams would probably get to Rathmines, where her appointment with the vital statistics office was, faster on the tram than in Megan’s car.

  “No one would want Granddaddy’s finger!” Mrs. Williams replied, shocked. “What a horrible idea, Ms. Malone. What on earth could you be thinking, suggesting somebody go and steal Granddaddy’s finger?”

  “My apologies, Mrs. Williams. I can’t imagine what got into me.” Megan crossed the tracks and pulled onto the quays (a word she still had trouble pronouncing keys), and offered bits of information about the scenery when Cherise Williams had to pause for breath while scolding her for the imaginary sin of violating the sanctity of her poor sainted grandfather’s body. “Here’s Ha’penny Bridge, it was the first bridge across the Liffey, and cost a ha’penny to cross—up there is Trinity College. I suppose it’s possible the Earls of Leitrim were educated there—entering the old Georgian center of Dublin, made popular when the Duke of Leinster moved to the unfashionable southern side of the city—”

  “To be a duchess,” Mrs. Williams sighed. “Now wouldn’t that be something?”

  “Countess is more than most of us can hope to aspire to.” Megan smiled at the woman in the rearview mirror, and Mrs. Williams, her anxiety evidently assuaged, listened to the rest of Megan’s tour guide spiel in comparative silence. Half a block from the clunky-looking statistics office building, Megan broke off to say, “Now I just want to verify, Mrs. Williams, that I’ll be bringing Ms. Williams back to your hotel, and you’ll be meeting us there? You’re certain you don’t need me to collect you here at the office?”

  “I’m sure, honey. You go get Raquel and I’ll see you tomorrow morning when we drive up to Lyetrum.”

  Megan, wincing, said, “Leitrim,” under her breath and pulled in under the ugly statistics building to let Mrs. Williams out. “You have the company’s number if you decide you need a lift. Don’t be afraid to use it.”

  “Thanks, honey. Oh! And you take my extra room key, so Ray-Ray can go right in.” Mrs. Williams handed the key over, despite Megan’s protestations, and disappeared inside the building. Megan, letting out a breath of relief, drove out to the airport in blissful silence, not even turning the radio on. Raquel Williams’s flight was almost an hour late, so Megan got a passably decent coffee and a truly terrible croissant from one of the airport cafes, and sat beside Arrivals to wait for her client.

  She would have known Raquel as Cherise’s daughter even if Raquel hadn’t waved when she saw Megan’s placard. She was taller than her mother, with rich auburn hair that didn’t match her eyebrows, but with the same strong facial shape that Cherise had. She wore her hair in a much looser, more modern style than Cherise’s hair-sprayed football helmet, but otherwise she was her mother’s younger doppelgänger, down to the pronunciation of Leitrim. She swept up to Megan, said, “Hi, I’m Raquel Williams, the heir apparent to Lyetrum, and I just can’t wait to see this whole darn gorgeous Emerald Isle.”

  “Megan Malone. It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Williams. I’ve dropped your mother off at—”

  “Oh my gosh, you’re American too! Are you from Texas?” Raquel leaned across the barrier to hug Megan, who stiffened in surprise and found an awkward smile for the other woman.

  “I am, yes. From Austin. And here’s your room key, from your mother.”

  “Oh, wasn’t that nice of her? And woo-hoo! Keep Austin weird, honey! I live there now myself, but Mama’s from El Paso. Who’d have ever thought an earl would settle in Texas, huh?” Raquel Williams tucked the key in a pocket and came around the barrier rolling a suitcase large enough to pack three-quarters of a household into, and wrangling a huge purse along with a carry-on. “Not that he did right away, of course. It was New York first, but when his son died in the war, he took sick and Gigi Elsie—that’s his daughter-in-law, our great-great grandma Elsie—took him down to El Paso, where she’d always wanted to live, and heck fire, here we are. How’s Mama?”

  Megan smiled. “She’s just fine. Visiting the statistics office now in hopes of getting permission to get a DNA test done on one of the mummies. I’ll take this, if you like, ma’am.” She nodded toward the enormous suitcase.

  “Oh heck fire, sure thing, but you’d better call me Raquel or you’ll have me feeling old as sin.” Raquel swung the suitcase Megan’s way and smiled. “I’ve never been out of Texas before, this is all a big old adventure for me. How did you end up here?”

  “I had citizenship through my grandfather, so they couldn’t keep me out.” Megan smiled again and gestured for Raquel to walk along with her as they headed for the hired cars parking lot. “Not quite as fancy as a connection to the Earls of Leitrim, but it’s worked for me.”

  “Leetrim? Oh my gosh, is that how they say it here? We’ve had it all wrong all this time! Won’t Mama have a laugh!” Raquel chattered merrily, her Texan accent washing over Megan in a more familiar, friendly way than her mother’s did, as they reached the car and drove back to Dublin. Raquel peppered her with questions about the scenery, Leitrim’s history—Megan wasn’t much help there—and whether the Irish were really as superstitious as she’d heard.

  “It’s not that they’re superstitious,” Megan said with a smile. “It’s that you wouldn’t really want to build a road through a fairy ring, would you?”

  Laughter pealed from the back seat. “Gotcha, right. Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but are we almost there? I forgot to use the ladies’ before I left the airport.”

  “Just a few more minutes, and you can run right in to use the toilets while I get your luggage,” Megan promised.

  Raquel breathed, “Thank goodness,” and, a few minutes later when they arrived, did just that. She met Megan in the lobby with an apologetic smile afterward. “Thank goodness for public restrooms. Would you mind helping me bring the luggage up? I hate to bother—” She nodded at the bustling lobby, full of people already doing jobs.

  “I don’t mind at all. It’s room 403.” They took the lifts up, Raquel in the lead as they entered a narrow hall with dark blue carpeting.

  “Oh, isn’t this terrific, it’s so atmospheric, isn’t it?”

  “A lot of Dublin is. Old buildings, lots of history. It’s one of the reasons I love Dublin.”

  “I can see why.” Rachel slipped the key in the door, and, pushing it open, smashed the corner into her dead mother’s hip.

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