by Catie Murphy
“I don’t know. She liked my friend Brian just fine.”
“Maybe it’s gingers she doesn’t trust.” He offered his hand again, murmuring, “I’m not going to steal your puppies, girl. I’d love to give them a rub, hm? But not this time. You wouldn’t like that, would you?” This time Mama sniffed him more thoroughly but still didn’t look approachable. Bourke rose, a look of mild regret on his sharp features. “I’ll bet you her owner was a ginger bloke. I’ll win her over, though.”
“I thought you were a cat person,” Megan teased.
“I’ve recently had it told to me that cats and dogs aren’t opposites, and a body can like both.”
“Hah! Fine. You want a drink or anything? Tea? Whiskey? I know you’re here on business, but I have no idea what a detective’s work hours are.”
Bourke glanced at Mama, who watched him with wary brown eyes. “I wouldn’t say no to tea of my own accord, but I seem to remember she needed a walk and I’d say she wouldn’t want to go on one with me, so if you’ve got the USB to hand, I’ll be on my way.”
“Right. Sure.” Embarrassment crept up Megan’s cheeks in a red stain, although she had no legitimate reason to be flustered: Bourke was there for work, not a social call. She hadn’t meant to be flirting, but apparently her autonomic nervous system had other ideas. Megan unplugged the USB from her computer, hesitating as she handed it over. “It has hidden files.”
The detective’s attention sharpened on her again and her embarrassed flush turned to a guilty one. “What kinds of files? How did you find them? Are you a hacker, Ms. Malone?”
“I’m really not. I’m just the Elephant’s Child, with the power of the internet at my fingertips.” She looked at her hands. “Or my trunk, I guess, if I’m going to follow through on that metaphor.”
“Which, perhaps, you shouldn’t. Not a hacker but a Kipling fan.” Bourke smiled briefly, as if intrigued, but put it away for the topic at hand. “What’s in the hidden files?”
“The password for the hidden directory is buried in a folder called ‘just stuff,’ in another locked folder.” Megan shifted her shoulders uncomfortably. “I kind of feel like I shouldn’t tell you what I saw, in case I somehow interpreted it all wrong and end up sending you on a wild goose chase.”
Surprise creased Bourke’s forehead. “That’s not a bad thought, but I’ll be very interested, when all is said and done, to hear what you thought it was, Ms. Malone.”
“Maybe I’ll just have thought the same thing you’ll have thought.” Megan squinted. “I think my verb tenses got wrecked in there, but I’m going to pretend that didn’t happen and take Mama for a walk.”
“So she does have a name!” Bourke, eyes sparkling, let himself out.
Megan muttered, “ ‘Mama’ is a description, not a name” after him. The little dog relaxed as soon as he’d left, but Megan sat beside her, petting her neck and rubbing her jaw, for a few minutes before getting out the leash. “This isn’t some kind of secret sixth dog sense, is it, Mama? Bourke’s not a bad guy, is he? He’s ginger, but he can’t help that. I guess we’ll see if you warm up to him. Not that I’m keeping you,” she added hastily.
Mama blew a breath through her nose, more commentary than sneeze, and, having said her piece, got up for her walk.
* * *
Even a dallying walk around Belgrave Square, one of the nearby parks, didn’t keep Megan and Mama out late enough to justify going to bed. Mama settled back down with the puppies, who, approaching the end of their third day of life, were still blind and bumping around with no evident awareness of anything in the world except themselves and their mama’s warm milk. Not a bad way to be, Megan thought, but she sat down with her computer and scrolled through the files she’d copied from Elizabeth Darr’s USB to her desktop. Bourke hadn’t asked if she’d kept the files after all, and she wasn’t interfering with anything by having another look. And she didn’t think it was illegal to look at somebody else’s bank account information, at least not any more than it was to open someone else’s mail, which people did all the time.
Megan sighed. Obviously Niamh was right and she would be a terrible criminal. She didn’t feel like much of an investigator, either: Liz’s files didn’t tell her anything new as she dug through them a second time, though she kind of hoped there would be a red flag offering an obvious link between Simon’s illicit drug sales and Martin Rafferty’s bloody death.
Instead, her phone rang, and one of the other Leprechaun drivers, Cillian Walsh, said, “Could I get you to do a half nine airport run for me?” in the most apologetic Irish tenor possible.
As if the very idea meant she’d stayed up past bedtime, Megan yawned enormously in Cillian’s ear and finished it with a kind of garbled, “Why, what’s going on?”
“My sister’s just after having her baby.”
“What?” Megan sat bolt upright and had to snatch her computer back from falling off her lap. “I thought she wasn’t due for another month!”
“She wasn’t. Apparently she fell off a chair and next thing she knew . . .”
“She fell off a chair? From sitting or standing?” Megan put her computer aside and went into the bedroom, setting the phone to speaker and starting to change into her work uniform. Cillian said, “Standing,” and Megan, through her shirt as she pulled it over her head, asked, “What was an eight months’ pregnant woman doing standing on a chair?”
“Rearranging the fairy lights over the cot. Everything’s fine. The baby’s only a little small, but her lungs are strong, they’ve said, and they’ll have her on a respirator if she needs one, but—”
“Go,” Megan said, pulling on her work blouse. “Go, text me the details, I’ll get the client. Go see your sister. Give her all my love and best wishes.” She didn’t know Cillian’s sister well, but they’d met, and she would wish anyone with a new baby love anyway. “I don’t usually work on Sundays, but if you need me to cover for you—”
“No, I’ve already sorted tomorrow. Micheál is driving for me, but thanks for asking. You’re brilliant. He’s on a job tonight or I’d have had him do this run.”
“No worries.” Megan finished changing into her work uniform and grabbed a brush to do something less catastrophic with her hair. “Text me and let me know how your sister’s doing.”
“I will. Thanks very much. I owe you one, Megan.”
“I’ll call in the marker,” Meg said cheerfully. “G’night.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The run took Megan until nearly midnight—the plane was late and the clients were staying in Drogheda, forty kilometres north of Dublin—but a picture from Cillian of his very tiny, very red, very scrunchy-faced niece went miles toward making the night worthwhile. By the time Megan returned home, changing out of her uniform was a nearly insurmountable effort. She managed it but certainly didn’t have another look at her computer and only fell into bed to sleep the sleep of the just.
Mama woke her up around half five needing to pee, and Megan staggered out with her blearily, barely remembering to bring her keys so they could get back in again. The morning air revived her quite a bit, and upon getting home, she threw on her gym clothes and ran across the street for a quick workout. When she arrived, one of the girls behind the counter cocked an eyebrow at her, tapped her—watch-free—wrist and shook her head in mock scolding for being late. Megan grinned and sulked, dramatically, around to the exercise bikes, which she regarded as the least taxing of the various cardio machines, and sat cycling with her gaze fixed on the copper dome of the Rathmines church without much of a thought in her head.
Saturday hadn’t been a long day exactly—she was often up around six and busy until ten at night—but usually her long days consisted of driving around a lot, not running back and forth around town, and certainly not discovering acquaintances had been brutally murdered in a friend’s restaurant. It turned out that kind of thing drained a person’s energy, enough so—it turned out—that after twenty minutes on the exercise
bike, she’d only managed about five miles of distance. Megan gave a groaning laugh and heaved herself off the bike, wiped her face with a towel, and barely avoided running into Jelena, who had stopped to greet her.
Jelena put her hands on Megan’s shoulders, steadying her, and gave her a laughing smile. “You look terrible.”
“It’s been a completely mental few days,” Megan admitted. “How are you?”
“I am well. Perhaps you could tell me about it at the coffee shop next time we both are here?”
All of Megan’s fatigue fell away under a splash of delight. “That’d be great! I’d love that!”
“Let’s exchange numbers.”
Megan handed over her phone and Jelena put in her number, then gave it back.
“Now we can text each other and set up when we will each be at the gym for workouts and time for coffee afterward.”
Megan laughed. “Look, I have to go light on the weights today because, apparently, my brain is empty, but if you don’t mind spotting me, that’d be great.” She texted an It’s Megan! to Jelena’s number as they headed for the weight room, and over the next forty-five minutes got a better workout than she expected, given how poorly she’d done on the bike. By the time she got home, had a light breakfast and some coffee, and took Mama for a walk, she felt fit for the day, which she hadn’t expected an hour earlier.
The puppies had leveled up again since the night before, lifting their heads more confidently and starting to realize that they each had a sibling to paw at clumsily. Megan took pictures and sent them to Fionnuala, whom Megan reckoned could use the boost when she awakened, and to Niamh, because she’d be accused of playing favourites with Fionn otherwise. She said, “Be good,” to the puppies, who had gone back to sleep already, and went forth with an implausible confidence in the thought that she would accomplish a lot that day.
A brisk walk brought her back to Cíara’s apartment and to the dismaying, but not surprising, information that the neighbour still hadn’t seen Cíara and furthermore thought Megan was an unprintable unprintable for having awakened them at half seven on a Sunday morning. Megan, who, having spent twenty years in the military watching coworkers who never really adjusted to a 6 a.m. reveille, generally held with not making people get up outside of their personal circadian cycle, got very quiet and stepped into the neighbour’s personal space, dropping her voice to say, “You want to call me that again up close where I can hear you better.”
The kid, who stood an easy six inches taller than Meg, went grey under stringy hair and stuttered an apology that Megan didn’t accept. “I’m concerned about Cíara,” she said in the same low voice. “I don’t care what time it is. I will inconvenience you, I will inconvenience your friends, I will inconvenience anybody I have to, at any hour I have to, in order to find that young woman and make sure she’s safe, and you will learn to have a little decency and respect for your fellow human beings. Are we perfectly clear?”
“Ye-yes, ma’am.” The neighbour slunk back into his apartment, tail between their legs, and Megan, now riding a fresh burst of outrage, stalked back down to the street and looked up and down it for a fight. There was virtually no one up at that hour, much less belligerent and looking for a fight, though—at least, not on Rathmines Road. She could probably find plenty of people fitting that description in other parts of town; Megan took her phone out and texted Simon to check up on him.
To her surprise, he texted back less than a minute later. Megan, wincing, thought, well, at least he hasn’t been arrested yet, and, driven by a sense of responsibility toward him, agreed to drop by when he asked if she could. She caught the Luas over to the Shelbourne and went up to his room, which smelled a little rank, and the bed still looked as if no one had slept in it.
Simon’s eyes were bloodshot and his hands shaky as he offered her a seat. “I heard someone else died at Canan’s.”
“One of the owners was murdered. Did you know a Martin Rafferty?”
Simon’s expression indicated that not only had he not known Martin, he couldn’t imagine why he might have. Megan sighed, putting the vague—hopes?—of a conspiracy away. “I didn’t think you would, but I wondered. How are you doing?”
“Terrible. I can’t sleep and I—” He sniffed, as if catching his own scent. “And I probably need a shower.”
Megan commented only with her eyebrows, but that was sufficient. Simon offered a small, pained smile. “Sorry. They released Liz’s—Liz’s body to us yesterday afternoon. I’ve been arranging to fly . . . to fly her home. This is all—” He shook his head, no longer even able to stumble through sentences, and put his face in his hands.
Megan sighed and stood. “How about you take a shower and I’ll meet you downstairs for breakfast? You should eat. Do you know if the Dempseys are awake yet?”
“I don’t think they’ve slept any more than I have,” Simon replied hoarsely. “Ellen kept saying how grateful she was for your help. You could knock, maybe.”
“It’s not even eight o’clock.”
As she spoke, a defeated-sounding knock, nothing like the brisk efficiency of a housekeeper, tapped at the door. Megan answered it and found the Dempseys there, both of them looking as wrung out as Simon did. She stepped out of the way and Mrs. Dempsey hugged her on their way in. Peter sat heavily on the bed and, without preamble, said, “We finally found an airline that would bring her home tomorrow afternoon. We thought we’d fly with her. We all should, Simon.”
Simon closed his eyes, shoulders rounding in acceptance. “All I want to do is get home and . . .” Megan thought he wanted to say forget this ever happened or move on, but neither of those things would happen, not really, and not for a long time. “Maybe being home will help.” He didn’t sound as though he believed it.
Another knock on the room door, much sharper this time, made everyone jerk in surprise. Simon lifted his voice to say, “No housekeeping today, please.”
“I’m afraid it’s not housekeeping,” a man’s voice replied through the door. “This is Detective Paul Bourke.”
Simon Darr jerked to his feet and went to his in-laws at the announcement of the detective’s name, all of them suddenly haggard with anticipation. None of them moved toward the door, standing together in a clump instead and staring, vulturelike, as if waiting for it to open on its own.
Megan, hesitantly, rose and answered it, earning a nonplussed blink from Bourke, who clearly didn’t expect a limo driver to be hanging out with a bereaved family at eight in the morning. He merely said, “Ms. Malone,” though, and she said, “Detective Bourke,” in response, and ushered him past her into the room. “Simon, I’m going to leave—”
“No,” the doctor said sharply. “Please stay.”
Meg grimaced at Bourke’s shoulders and got caught as he turned, again mildly surprised, to glance at her. She made an I-don’t-know face at him and said, “I think maybe I sh—”
“Please stay,” Simon repeated. “You’ve gotten me through the last few days. I’d rather you stayed.”
Detective Bourke shrugged almost imperceptibly and returned his attention to the family. “I wanted to thank you for your patience waiting for the autopsy and coroner’s report. I know it must have seemed like a long time, but I have a few answers for you now. Unfortunately, the answers I have bring more questions to light. Perhaps you should all sit down.”
Mrs. Dempsey gasped. Only her husband’s grip kept her from falling. He and Simon helped her to the bed, then sat down on either side of her, the three of them balanced at its end like children waiting to receive a punishment. Simon made a shaking motion toward one of the chairs. “Maybe you should sit down, too, Detective.”
“Thanks very much.” Bourke suddenly looked all elbows and knees, his long limbs becoming more evident as he sat. “I don’t know if you’re aware of the usual process with an autopsy. An unexpected death like Mrs. Darr’s, who was young and fit, means there’s one triggered automatically. Hers was done Friday morning, as you know.�
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Megan hadn’t, but the family all nodded. Mrs. Dempsey held her husband’s arm with a white-knuckled grip. Simon’s own hands were so tightly wound together, his fingertips looked red and swollen. Bourke’s voice remained calm and steady. “Her autopsy showed some unusual symptoms. The truth is, I should have spoken to you about them immediately, but because of Mrs. Darr’s celebrity status, the toxicology report was prioritized and I was made aware immediately after the autopsy that we’d have the report within forty-eight hours. I waited because I didn’t want to distress you unnecessarily.”
“How could we be any more distressed?” Mrs. Dempsey cried. “What could be worse than our daughter dying?”
Paul Bourke sighed. “Unfortunately, I’ve an answer for that, ma’am. I’m afraid Mrs. Darr was poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” Mrs. Dempsey’s voice shattered on the word, breaking with fear and disbelief and the terrible knowledge of what it meant. “My daughter was—” She couldn’t say the word and Detective Bourke didn’t make her.
“The poison used wasn’t commonly available,” he replied gently. “It took special access, and specialized knowledge to administer it. I’m sorry, Mrs. Dempsey. Elizabeth was murdered.”
“Who—why—?” Mrs. Dempsey could go no further, losing speech to the agony of loss. Her sobs and shrieks, bordering on screams, tore the air. Mr. Dempsey pulled her against his chest, tears and rage straining his face. His every breath came through clenched teeth, deep, rasping sounds beneath his wife’s uncontrolled weeping. Beside them both, Simon sat like a man emptied of his soul, his face that of someone who understood but could not comprehend what he had heard. Megan shuddered, knowing she didn’t belong in the midst of that maelstrom of grief, and slipped out as quietly as she could.
She had to stop in the lobby, her heart hammering so hard she’d seen stars as she hurried down the stairs into the hotel lobby. She’d known the truth—or imagined it—on some level since the beginning; she thought Simon and the Dempseys must have, too. People didn’t normally collapse of food poisoning seconds after leaving dinner. Fewer still died of it so quickly. Allergies might have killed her that fast, but Detective Bourke hadn’t said Liz had died of an allergic reaction. He’d said poisoned.
