by Catie Murphy
It weighed a ton and moved about three inches, rather than flying across the room like she’d imagined it would. Megan yowled as its weight pulled at her shoulder socket. A series of squeaks and whimpers in front of her were half-drowned by Fionn’s semi-frantic laughter. “That looks a lot cooler in the movies.”
“I guess they have wires in the movies.” Megan rotated her shoulder, trying to get it feeling normal again, and this time shoved the rack back on its wheels like a normal person, using her own weight as counterbalance and flinching when the whole thing slammed and rattled back to the floor. More whimpering, and a growl, came from under the counter. “That’s not a rat.”
“A rat would have run by now,” Fionn agreed. She edged forward, peering over Megan’s head as she crouched, the frying pan still held aloft as a weapon.
Brown eyes and bared teeth looked out at her from deep under the counter, as far into the shadows as a small dog could get. She was dirty white with a brown patch over her eyes like a mask, and although she growled again, low and menacing, her tail thumped frantically on what had, probably as recently as the night before, been a chef’s jacket.
Megan lowered the frying pan. “Congratulations, Fionn. You’ve got puppies.”
“What?” Fionnuala elbowed Megan aside, sticking her own head beneath the counter. “What? I can’t have puppies! This is a professional kitchen! I’ll—they’ll—how’d they get here?”
“The usual way, I suppose.” Megan caught herself as Fionn pushed her over, then pushed a few pots out of the way, put the frying pan on top of them, and sat, cross-legged, to peer at the mama dog and her puppies. Two of them, barely big enough to fill Meg’s hand, lay obliviously behind their mama.
Fionn, exasperated, said, “I know how they got here. I meant, how did they get here?” She gestured wildly at her kitchen, then rose and went to test the back door, which was locked. She unlocked it and opened it to stare down the alley outside. “God, there’s a dozen places out here a dog could have been hiding.”
“She must have slipped in during the ruckus last night. Even with people in and out, it’s warmer than the street, and she found herself a nice little hidey-hole. I want to know how she knocked over that rack; it weighs a ton. And whose sandwich is that?”
“Syzmon’s. He doesn’t like eating while he’s cooking, so he saves a sandwich for after his shift ends. She must have climbed up and caught the balance just right somehow. Or just wrong.” Fionn knelt up to gaze at her counters in dismay. “I’m going to have to scrub everything with bleach.”
“Don’t you kind of do that anyway?”
Fionnuala gave Megan a look that said she wasn’t helping and sat back down to stare at the puppies. “I can’t have dogs in here, Megan.”
“Well, call Dogs Trust or the SPCA.” Megan took the meat out of the sandwich and crouched, offering it to the mama dog. Her tail thumped harder, though she stayed where she was. After a few seconds, Meg tossed the meat toward her. She lurched forward, snapped it up, and gobbled it down, her tail wagging harder still. “Is there something in the fridge I could give her?”
“You can’t feed a dog in my restaurant!”
“It’s not like I’m setting her a place at your best table.” Megan went to the fridge, which, being nearly as large as her apartment, had plenty of food she could feed to a hungry dog. She took some cold grilled chicken and chopped it into smaller pieces, then stuck it in the microwave for a few seconds to take the chill off, all while Fionn watched in dismay. A minute later, the little dog wolfed it down and, more trusting, edged toward Megan and Fionnuala. “There’s a good girl,” Megan cooed. “Can we see your puppies, huh? What a good job you did. Such big, strong pups. And all by yourself, huh? It’s hard work, isn’t it? I’m glad you found somewhere safe to have them.”
“My kitchen isn’t sa—”
“Well, yeah, it is. It’s not ideal for you, maybe, but it’s terrific for her and them.” Megan offered the back of her hand and the mama dog sniffed it carefully, then gave it a tentative lick. “There’s a good girl. Fionn, call the SPCA, see if they can get somebody to come take these sweeties away. Yes, you’re a good girl, aren’t you? Smart mama, finding somewhere warm and safe to have your babies. Can I see them? Hm?” She petted the little dog—she was a Jack Russell, short-furred and clever—and offered some more of the chicken. Fionnuala, face still disbelieving, got up to call animal rescue. By the time she’d returned, Megan had a lapful of mama and puppies, the latter of which were squirming with warm, happy puppy delight while Megan chortled over them.
“The pounds and animal rescue places say they’re overflowing,” Fionn said grimly. “Apparently it’s been an especially good summer for kittens and puppies. One of them said they could take them, but only for twenty-four hours, and they’d have to put them down after that. A couple of others say if I can just hold on to them for three days, maybe a week, they’ll have room. I can’t have dogs in my restaurant for a week, Megan!” Her voice rose until it broke.
“Seriously?” Megan held up one of the puppies, a girl, whose fat pink tummy had only the faintest blur of fur over it. “Seriously, you can’t have this darling in your restaurant for a week?”
“Megan!”
Megan cackled. “I know, I know, but she’s adorable, isn’t she? Look at her head.” The baby’s white muzzle led up to a streak through the rusty-brown patches over her eyes and ended with a heart-shaped spot between her ears. “Maybe her name should be Amor.”
“That’s a terrible name.” Fionn reluctantly rubbed the puppy’s tummy and started to smile as her tail wagged. “She’s an Irish dog. She should be Agra. That means love.”
“I can’t give them Irish names. I don’t know any. I’d have to call this fat wee fellow Cúchullainn. It’s the only dog-related name I know.” Megan picked up the other puppy, distinctly fuzzier than his sister, and with only a halo of white around his nose; otherwise, his face was dark brown and the rest of him entirely white. “Maybe he should be Dip. He looks like he’s been dipped in chocolate.”
“Cúchullainn was the Hound of Ulster,” Fionnuala half-roared. “We’re in Leinster! Just call him Cú; it means dog, you can have Dog and Love and . . . you could take them.”
“What? Orla would skin me alive. There’s a clause longer than my arm about pets in my rental contract.”
“She won’t either. She needs you to drive. Besides, it’s just until the dog rescue people can take them.”
“You could be Thong,” Megan said to the girl puppy. “Then we’d have Dip Thong.”
Fionnuala said, “Megan,” in a perfectly horrified tone, and Megan laughed until tears came. The mama dog sat up and licked her face in concern, making Megan laugh harder. Finally, she petted the mama into lying back down, wiped her face, and giggled at the appalled expression Fionn had maintained.
“No? I thought it was good. Yes, all right, of course I’ll take them home, Fionn. You can’t have dogs staying in your restaurant, and you don’t need the extra stress of babies at home either. Just text me the information on who can take them and I’ll deal with the rest of it. Orla will skin me,” she warned the chef, but Fionn bent over and hugged her, puppies and all.
“You’re a star, Meg. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’d eat all that melting gelato by yourself. Bring it in here, I want to finish it, but I can’t get up.”
“Pinned down beneath the terrible half-kilo weight of puppies. I know how it is.” Fionn nodded solemnly and went to get the ice cream.
She came back barely a minute later, a young woman trailing behind her. The girl had thick, sandy blonde curls pulled back in a bushy ponytail, and a face red and swollen from crying. “Meg, this is Cíara. She needs ice cream, too. And maybe puppies.”
“Oh, they’re darling.” Cíara knelt beside Megan to brush a tentative finger over the male puppy’s back, but her eyes filled with tears as she looked up at Fionn. “Ms. Canan, I don’t know how th
ey could have sneaked in here. I’m sure they weren’t in here during dinner last night.”
“I’m sure not,” Fionn said wearily. “There were a lot of people in and out. I expect their ma took advantage of it and slipped in. Cíara was the Darrs’ server last night, Meg.”
Meg nodded. “I remember her. You helped me up off the flagstones yesterday evening,” she reminded Cíara. She hadn’t recognized the girl’s black slacks and white shirt as part of the standard server’s uniform the evening before—the blouse had been fashionable enough to pass for ordinary wear—but now that she knew Cíara had been working at the restaurant, it seemed obvious.
“You were being so helpful,” Cíara whispered. She sounded like she’d been crying for hours. Megan bet she needed water more than ice cream but didn’t say anything as Fionn handed her a bowl of gelato. “I saw you talking to that police detective last night. You made it look easy. I thought it was terrifying.” Tears welled in her eyes again. Storm-blue eyes, a pretty shade with a lot of grey, though at the moment they also were bloodshot, salt-rimmed, and watery. “I’m afraid I killed her somehow. I’m afraid her husband will die. I didn’t sleep at all.” The tears spilled into her ice cream.
“I probably would have been more frightened talking to a cop if I’d thought I might have accidentally had something to do with somebody’s death, too.” Fionnuala made a horrified face at Megan and she made a pained one back. “That sounded better in my head. I just meant . . .”
To her surprise and relief, Cíara blurted a wet laugh. “No, I understand.”
“You almost certainly didn’t, you know,” Megan said as reassuringly as she could. “I just saw Simon and he’s fine, so whatever happened to Liz probably isn’t going to happen to him. I mean, it doesn’t seem likely to have been food poisoning—”
“It couldn’t have been anyway,” Fionnuala said ferociously. “Everything’s off at the lab for tests now, but it couldn’t have been. All that fish was fresh. I bought it myself from Wrights out in Howth at half eleven yesterday morning, and they’d only just come in off the trawlers themselves.” She sounded like she’d said the same words a thousand times in the past fifteen hours.
Meg, firmly, said, “It’s going to be okay. Listen, Fionn, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to finish the ice cream, I’ll take the puppies to my place, and we’ll get this sorted out. All right?”
Fionnuala slumped, caught Cíara’s expression of dread, and pulled herself together. “Okay.” She hesitated, then offered a lopsided smile. “But I think you should have brought more ice cream.”
* * *
She should have brought more ice cream. Enough to justify sitting there all day eating it, instead of furtively sneaking a dog and two puppies, still wrapped in the somewhat gross chef’s jacket, into her apartment. They had to be snuck; otherwise, Orla would lay her out in lavender. But if Orla simply never knew there were dogs in the flat, she couldn’t object. And she’d never see the new dog bed, one that Megan had stopped to buy on the way home. Or the dog food, a food dish, a water dish, some weird smelly pads the puppies were supposed to want to pee on, a couple of chew toys . . .
“This is a lot of stuff for a week,” she told the three of them, puppies and mama alike, as the mama rooted around in the jacket-on-the-bed and made it comfortable enough for her babies. “I guess I can donate it to the rescue people when they collect you.”
One set of soulful brown eyes and two squinty-eyed baby faces turned toward her mournfully. Megan waggled a finger at them. “Stop that. I’m anthropomorphizing. You are not sad. Go to sleep.”
She filled the bowls and put them down near the bed while the mama dog did just as she’d said, curling up with her babies for a rest.
“Well, it’s been a big day for you,” Megan murmured and rubbed the mama’s head as she drifted off. She’d need a bath, but not just then. The same could probably be said for Megan herself, after having a lap full of newborn puppies, but that would have to wait, too.
She threw herself onto the couch, decided she was in real danger of falling asleep if she stayed there, and stood again to call the office, hoping to catch anybody but Orla answering the phone. But it was her boss’s affected, RTÉ-Irish voice that answered. “Leprechaun Limos, Orla Keegan speaking.”
“Hey, Orla, this is Megan. Simon Darr wants me to collect his in-laws at the airport at four. Is that a problem?”
The RTÉ accent dropped instantly in favor of Orla’s natural brassy tones. “Jesus, haven’t you cut us loose of that mess yet? What’re you doing with your time?”
Megan could think of no acceptable answer in the few seconds Orla gave her before speaking again in the tone of a long-suffering maiden aunt. “Far be it from me to turn down money in the bank. Get them if you have to, but I’ve got a half seven pickup tomorrow for you, to go out to Howth.”
“Can you give it to Cillian? I’d like to be on call if Dr. Darr needs anything.”
“I will not.” Orla gave a good impression of outrage at having even been asked. “You’ll drive as little for those people as you can. I don’t like our name being dragged through the mud. We could be on television!”
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity?”
Orla barked derisively and hung up. A few seconds later, a text with the who-when-and-where came through for the next morning’s client. Megan sighed, glanced at the clock, and went to wash up thoroughly before pulling on her chauffeur’s uniform. She clunked her knuckles on her business card case and, reminded, took Detective Bourke’s card from it. It carried his scent, just faintly: warm and a little spicy, not like the vague, sickly sweet smell of most deodorants. Megan, smiling, tapped the edge of the card to her lips, then decided she’d better call Niamh to make her confession, rather than just text.
“Darling!” the actress proclaimed. “How did your talk with our bereaved doctor go?”
“Remember when people answered the phone with ‘Hello’ and ‘Hi, this is Megan’ because our phones didn’t tell us who was calling?” Megan wondered idly.
“I refuse to answer on the grounds it may incriminate me,” Niamh said. “And you are older than I am, darling. We young people use vone apps now.”
“Vone? Video phone? That’s a stupid word.”
“If we can have vlogs, we can have vones. I’m going to make it happen. Next time you can vone me.”
Megan rolled her eyes so hard it hurt. “Anyway, I didn’t bring up the affair. At least, not with Simon. I ran into that detective I told you about, Paul Bourke? He’s a fan of yours.”
Niamh airily said, “Who isn’t,” but sounded pleased. Then, the implication of Megan knowing Bourke was a fan caught up with her, and the pleasure changed to an aw-maaaan dismay. “Wait. You mentioned me?”
“Only in passing, and then when I mentioned Elizabeth might have been having an affair, he put who I heard it from together. He wants to talk to you. I’m supposed to text you his number.”
Niamh’s tone changed to slyly teasing. “You got his number? Fast work there, Major. Is he cute?”
“I—yes? No? Kind of? He’s the type that grows on you.”
“So does mold,” Niamh said dryly. “All right, give me his number. You’re sure this is legit, he’s not just trying to get an actress’s number to impress the lads?”
“He’s a cop, Nee. I’m sure. I’ll text it in a minute. Look, if you get a chance, drop by the restaurant? Fionn’s in bits. A dog had puppies in her kitchen this morning.”
Niamh’s pealing laughter soared, a rich, delightful sound. Megan had thought for years—long before they’d met, back when Meg herself had been just a fan—that Niamh O’Sullivan might have made it in the movies on the basis of that laugh alone. It ended with a wheezing giggle, like Niamh was wiping her eyes and recombobulating herself. “I shouldn’t laugh. That probably violates all kinds of safety and cleanliness laws.”
“I think it violates all of them. Anyway, I’ve got the puppies—”
&n
bsp; “OmyGod,” Niamh said breathlessly, “you’re adopting puppies? How many?”
“I am not adopting them. I’m keeping them until the rescue people can pick them up. Two. A boy and a girl. Dip and Thong.”
Niamh burst out laughing again. “You can’t do that to defenseless puppies!”
“Thus proving I’m an unfit dog mother and won’t be keeping them. Anyway, do go over if you can, okay? She needs some moral support. And there’s honeycomb gelato in the freezer.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? I’m on my way already. Any other social activities you’ve arranged for me today?”
Megan smirked at her phone. “I’ll let you know.”
“Good woman.” Niamh hung up and Megan, amused, went to collect Simon’s in-laws from the airport.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Dempseys, a kind-looking but clearly devastated couple in their late fifties, had little to say to Megan. She greeted them with sympathies and drove them to the Shelbourne in silence, foregoing the genial patter about the route through the city that she often gave to new visitors. They looked bleakly out the windows, not speaking to one another, though they held hands tightly and once Mr. Dempsey pressed a kiss into his wife’s hair. Losing a child had to be the worst kind of grief, so encompassing Megan couldn’t really imagine it, though she’d known enough parents who had faced that loss within the military.
She opened the car door for them outside the hotel and, to her surprise, Mrs. Dempsey took her hand in a crushing grip as Megan helped her from the car. “Simon told us how kind you’ve been to him in the past twenty-four hours, and how much our daughter liked you. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“I’m glad to have been a little help. I liked Liz very much, too. She favored you.”
Mrs. Dempsey’s eyes filled with tears, but she managed a tremulous smile. “She did, didn’t she? She called me her mini-me, once she outgrew me. She got all that height from Peter.” Her husband stepped out of the car to put his arm around her waist, and she turned against his chest, muffling sobs. Mr. Dempsey met Megan’s eyes over his wife’s head and nodded, a quiet but important benediction. Megan smiled a little, returned the nod, and got their baggage from the car’s boot. Mr. Dempsey looked torn, but she shook her head, waving off his impulse to assist her, and he walked his wife into the hotel with Megan taking up the rear.
