by Lisa Alber
If he were a better Catholic, he’d have faith that her soul still resided inside her, that even a breath of life meant the soul was intact. That her life, however curtailed, was more sacrosanct than his concerns about the quality of the life.
“Detective Ahern.” One of Ellen’s regular nurses bustled into the room. “There are you. No kids today?”
“Not today. I’m here for work. Thought I’d grab my chance to visit Ellen for a few minutes.”
The nurse patted his arm as she scooted around him to check Ellen’s equipment. “A few minutes with her is better than nothing.”
Faint praise, indeed. While the nurse emptied the drainage bag, Danny flicked open the novel he was reading to Ellen. A classic that she’d sworn he would love: The Count of Monte Cristo.
One of the machines that tracked Ellen’s vitals dinged. With a frown, the nurse squinted at the monitor and exited the room with Danny following close behind. “What was that?” he said.
She ordered him to wait a moment; she needed to check with a doctor. Danny paced the corridor outside Ellen’s room. He no longer noticed the scuff marks on the hospital walls, and the sterile smell of the place had become second nature, like the smell of the Garda station. But this? An ominous ding from a cycloptic machine? Not normal.
The nurse reappeared. “Don’t be alarmed. Your wife has spiked a low fever.”
“Fevers and comas don’t mix,” he said. “Even I know that.”
She moved to the machinery and turned a knob. After a few more moments of what appeared to be random fiddling, she stepped back. “This is why we have antibiotics. A mild fever, no more. Didn’t you say you’re here for work? You’d best be about it before visiting hours end.”
She ushered Danny out of Ward 2B, his wife’s home away from home. The nurse’s parting words—“If we’re not worried, there’s no need for you to be worried”—grated on him as he wound down the stairs to the first floor.
Ward 1A, unlike Ward 2B, was a closed ward. Danny waited at the entrance for a nurse to escort him to Cecil Wallace’s room. In an effort to drag his thoughts back to the investigation, he pulled out a pad and jotted notes. Cecil Wallace. Cecil Wallace. He was in the house when EJ died, with six empty water glasses next to his bed.
The ward door opened to him at last. “A hardy old soul, that one,” this nurse said. “Rallied as soon as we got the fluids and food into him. He’ll need physical therapy, though.”
Danny entered Cecil’s room to find the patient slurping what smelled like homemade chicken soup. A young nurse with freckles and a braid hanging down her back tipped spoonfuls of broth into his mouth.
“Hello, Mr. Wallace, do you remember me from yesterday?” Danny said.
Cecil rolled his eyes toward the nurse. “Get him.” Then back toward Danny. “Of course I bloody well remember you.”
The nurse snorted. “All aggro, this one.”
“I’d like to speak to Cecil in private, if possible,” Danny said.
“Ay, have at him.” She held out the soup bowl. “You can feed him while you’re at it, but don’t tell anyone I brought the soup.”
Cecil winked at the nurse. “Ta, and give us a wiggle.”
“Bad, you are.” But she gifted Cecil an arse shimmy before turning into the corridor.
Cecil transferred his grin to Danny. “Eh, and what’s after you, clamp got your balls? What did you say your name was?”
“Detective Sergeant Ahern. I need to ask you some questions about Joseph Macy.”
“Downed like an old goat to slaughter, was he?”
Danny pulled a recorder out of his pocket. He held it up and Cecil nodded assent. After introducing the two of them, the location, date, and time, Danny began with the basics. Three months ago Cecil Wallace fell and broke his hip, and EJ was supposed to help him with physical therapy.
“He didn’t help you?” Danny said.
“If you call dragging me to the living room to watch the telly with him ‘physical therapy.’ He’d step me through my moves during the commercials. I suppose that’s something. I did the exercises on my own most days.”
“Do you have family?”
“Not so you’d notice. My wife died a few years ago. And the kids. Three of them.” He grimaced as he swallowed the spoonful of soup that Danny held in front of his mouth. “Two of them live the high life in Dublin now. They’ll waltz in to cry fake tears and ensure I haven’t signed my money away to a stranger. They have no use for the likes of me, and I refuse to see the oldest, the one who might have cared.”
He huffed, but Danny caught fear beneath his bravado. “When do you last recall seeing Joe?” he said.
Cecil bunched up his bushy eyebrows in thought. “The day before your lot appeared, in the morning. I’d had a bad few days. Couldn’t get out of bed on my own. He helped me that morning, but after that, he didn’t come when I rang the bell.”
“Did you hear anything?” Danny said.
“Well—” He hesitated. “The telly was always on in the background. Sometimes all night when he couldn’t sleep. But I thought I heard footsteps, sneaky like.”
“Sneaky like?”
“Not Joe, in other words. Someone prowling around, checking on things.”
Danny tapped the spoon against the bowl. Cecil was mentally spry, true, but he’d been bedridden in the back of the house. Danny doubted his hearing was perfect, and besides, homicides were often quiet affairs. Surprisingly quiet. According to Merrit, the television was on when she arrived. With the sound blaring, Cecil wouldn’t have heard odd noises from the living room.
“You heard the prowler outside your room?” Danny said.
Cecil nodded.
“Okay. How often did Elder Joe leave you alone?”
Cecil swallowed more soup. “All the time.”
But of course he must have, because EJ frequented the Plough almost every night.
“Did EJ have visitors? Anyone you heard arguing with him in the weeks leading up to his death?”
Cecil waved away the bowl. “Ay, but I can’t recall when this was, mind you.” He burped with fingers over his mouth. “There used to be more of us there. The last one to go had the room next to mine.”
“Do you recall his name?”
“Her name. She was a she, but I never knew her name. I didn’t know she’d died until the day I heard yelling.”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“Voices. EJ’s and the other’s. Whoever he was, he cared mightily.” Cecil’s wrinkles deepened as he shook his head. “Poor woman. No one to take care of her to the end.”
On that dismal note, Danny’s thoughts veered back toward Ellen alone in her room. He’d take care of her to the end. The question was what kind of end that should be.
seven
In the Plough and Trough Pub, wall lanterns cast a warm glow over shabby wingback chairs and the mourners who had gathered to toast Elder Joe’s life and early death. Merrit stooped to pet the pub’s mascot, Bijou, a drooling French mastiff with the personality of a lap dog. Next to them sat a pile of antique farm implements and faded photos of dour farmers from County Clare’s real plough and trough days. Normally they hung on the wall above Bijou’s dog pillow, but Alan Bressard, the pub owner, was sprucing up the place with a new coat of paint.
Merrit shuddered as she shifted a mean-looking pitchfork so its tines faced toward the floor. She hadn’t slept well the previous night, what with images of Elder Joe’s injuries beating against her inner eyelids.
“You found EJ, did you?” Alan said.
Merrit nodded and scratched under Bijou’s jowly chin while Alan observed her in his usual laconic way. French-born, he said much with his expressions, and right now his highly Gallic frown of distaste irked her.
“I didn’t find him on purpose,” she said. “And you can wipe that look off your face.”
With a shrug, he returned to the bar where the crowd congregated around the taps, growing larger by the second. L
iam had educated Merrit about what to expect: enough singing and cheering to bring down the rafters. The Irish had a beautiful array of “drunk” phrases to choose from. Liam had used a new one to Merrit: “off their bins.”
Off their bins or not, Merrit didn’t feel comfortable within the crowd. Even from her stooped position against the back wall of the pub, she could see the curious glances that flicked in her direction.
She’d often seen Elder Joe here in the pub, in the center of it at the bar. One of those garrulous, red-faced men with a quick tongue and not a care in the world. His soulless view of a gravel quarry told a different story, though, and his invitation to tea still didn’t make sense unless his loneliness had overcome his reticence toward Merrit. It might be that simple.
With a final pat on Bijou’s head, Merrit stood. Across the pub, Nathan Tate, another relative newcomer to the village, entered and paused to prop the door open. A young blond woman bounced in after him and clapped her hands as she looked around the room. She wrapped her arm around Nathan in a quick side hug before stepping ahead of him toward the thick of it near the taps.
“Oh, that would be the daughter,” Mrs. O’Brien, local matriarch, said. She spoke to one of her church lady friends and hadn’t noticed Merrit come up behind her. She had an ample figure and enough money to buy shiny black dresses custom-made to fit her amplitude. “Zoe. Looks a lovely thing, no thanks to that deadbeat father of hers.”
Merrit imagined Mrs. O’Brien eyeing Nathan with the same curl of lip she bestowed on Merrit on a regular basis. The resemblance between Nathan and the woman, Zoe, was evident now that Merrit knew to look for it: both slight of build—Nathan compact, Zoe willowy—and with the same wide-set eyes and small noses. Nathan was small-boned for a man. On his daughter the same features had resulted in a woman of exceptional beauty.
Merrit tended to discount obvious beauty as a sign of superficiality, but that wasn’t fair. She scrutinized Zoe in an attempt to read her as Liam, the showman, had taught her when it came to his chosen profession, matchmaking. He called it “absorbing.” She was supposed to allow her instincts to take over, to let the essence of a person sink into her. Try as she might, she couldn’t get a feel for what he meant.
All she saw in Zoe were the romance-novel clichés: blond hair bouncing against her shoulders in soft waves, full lips, wondrous skin, crazy good figure. Her beauty drowned out everything else about her. So much for Merrit’s instincts. Liam insisted she had the makings for a good matchmaker, but Merrit had her doubts.
Mrs. O’Brien’s next comment caught Merrit’s attention again. “You watch, that Nathan Tate is hiding something. I’ve heard the rumors about him, anyhow.”
More like he’s guarding something, Merrit thought. His bloody privacy.
“Would you look at Zoe?” Mrs. O’Brien didn’t bother to lower her voice. “She could charm the hiss out of a snake. I’ve never seen anyone pull off a white coat like that, and at this time of year, too. Why, she could be Our Lady of the Spring leading us toward summer. I’m sure she would like to help with Liam. I shall ask her to join Team Liam.”
What the hell? “Excuse me.” Merrit stepped forward to stand beside Mrs. O’Brien. “I couldn’t help but overhear you. What are you talking about?”
Mrs. O’Brien rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “What else? Liam’s illness. Caretaking shifts.”
As ever, the way news spread through town caught Merrit off-guard, as if it travelled with the breezes that brushed over drystone walls and wended their way toward Lisfenora, gathering strength to blow the latest gossip into everyone’s minds at the same time.
“We don’t need help yet,” she said. “It’s premature. You should have consulted me.”
“Liam didn’t mind the idea when I talked to him.” Mrs. O’Brien smoothed down the front of her dress and turned toward her friend. “What was I saying? Oh, Nathan. He abandoned Zoe as a child, that he did. And his wife dead, too. An accident. Now he must face up to his paternal obligations at long last.”
Merrit stood there, feeling an unaccustomed sense of helplessness, as if she banged on glass walls, the community around her visible yet beyond reach at the same time.
Time for her to go. She’d round up Liam or arrange a lift for him, then she was out of here. She scooted past Mrs. O’Brien’s unyielding form and weaved her way through the crowd, catching a toast: “Cheers to EJ’s endless supply of ugly bow ties!”
“Sláinte!”
With a grumble, one of the regulars edged sideways so Merrit could squeeze in between him and Liam at the bar. Another Joe, nicknamed Joe Junior to differentiate him from Elder Joe. He was in his forties with weathered skin and white squint lines that radiated from the corners of his eyes.
“You found Elder Joe, eh?” he said.
“Sure did. Do you have something to say about it?”
He rocked back on his stool. “There’s plenty I could say, but never you mind.”
“Fantastic, thanks. If you really want to know, I was picking up eggs, that’s all. Organic eggs.”
“You’re a lippy one today. I don’t give a rat’s arse that you were the one to find him. Someone would have eventually.” He started to say something else but clamped his mouth shut and stared into his beer.
“Time for a distraction,” Liam said. “Meet Zoe, Nathan’s daughter.”
Hearing her name, Zoe excused herself from another conversation. Merrit turned and leaned back against the bar. Liam did likewise. Zoe held out her hand, the pressure of her palm against Merrit’s firm—a quick squeeze—and fleeting.
“Lovely to meet you,” Zoe said. “I was just after telling your father that I’d heard about him about two seconds after I arrived in Lisfenora. And you, too, of course. The local celebrities.”
A few snorts greeted the last statement, and Zoe blinked in confusion. She didn’t need eye makeup, Merrit noticed, what with her thick fringe of eyelashes and violet blue eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Zoe said, “did I hear it wrong?”
“I’m not a celebrity,” Merrit said. “Far from it.”
“You will be.” Liam jabbed a finger at each of the snorters. “You mark me. And sooner rather than later, too.”
Silence settled around the group.
“Oh dear.” Zoe tossed a swath of hair over her shoulder and held up her wineglass. “Enough of this. I’m new to town, and I’m here to meet my father’s friends. To new friendships. Sláinte!”
“And old friendships!” someone called out. “May Elder Joe rate a mansion in Heaven!”
“Have you moved here?” Merrit said to Zoe over the noise of the crowd.
A few feet away, Nathan leaned with elbows against the counter. He tilted his head in their direction with gaze fixed on the whiskey bottles that adorned the wall in front of him.
“Could be.” Zoe grinned. “I’m keeping my father in suspense, aren’t I, Dad?” She reached past Liam and hooked Nathan’s arm. She pulled him into their circle with a good-natured tut. “He moves around so much it took me ages to track him down. So I should at least give that decision some thought, right?”
A circle of welcoming nods met her question, but Merrit was struck by the tension around Nathan’s eyes, their black circles and veiny reddened irises.
“Dad, how could you not tell me how nice your friends are? You gentlemen will have to share him with me, you know that, don’t you?”
Joe Junior piped up. “Easy enough if you join us at the pub. You can fill in for Elder Joe, God rest him.”
“I accept your invitation,” Zoe said. “With pleasure.”
“What, nothing out of you?” Joe Junior said to Nathan.
Nathan’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Zoe is the life of the party, not me.”
“Aw, you weren’t so bad back in the day,” Zoe said. “When Mum was alive.”
Nathan slid out of the group. “Bladder the size of a pea, excuse me.”
“Stupid me. He’s a sensitive
one, my dad.” Zoe stepped closer to Merrit, creating a small circle just for the two of them. “My mother died when I was thirteen, and then Dad … pfft”—she flicked her fingers—“gone by the time I was fourteen.”
“That sounds rough, but Nathan was friends with Elder Joe, right? Maybe that’s why he’s sensitive today.”
Zoe considered Merrit’s statement. “You’re right, of course. I only met Elder Joe once, when he grabbed up Dad for a jaunt to Galway and left me alone all day.” Her gaze clouded. “Anyhow, I was going to say—about my mother—that it was a terrifically difficult transition after she died. She was English. We lived in England at the time.”
“That must have been hard,” Merrit said.
Zoe adjusted her shoulders and swung her hair about in an exaggerated shake. “Don’t mind me. Everything’s grand. It’s nice that Elder Joe had so many friends, don’t you think?”
Merrit’s mind wandered back to the abandoned quarry in front of Elder Joe’s house. No neighbors or sheep or picturesque drystone walls or even the bright green of new growth. Instead, yellowish grass lumps under a grey sky and limestone terrain marred by gravel dunes. She hadn’t told Danny and O’Neil that she’d picked up eggs from him every week because, despite not wanting to share tea, she’d felt an odd kinship with him. And now she didn’t comment to Zoe that drinking buddies weren’t the same as true friends.
eight
Tuesday, 16-Mar
The night before last, I forced myself out of this old house of mine. Fancy that, the shut-in emerges—kidding. I’ve mentioned the local murder. (And, remember the “niggle” I also mentioned? I still haven’t figured that out.) At the pub where the mourners gathered, I made myself comfortable near the fireplace, glass of wine in hand, and people-watched. Too vigilant, you say? Ay, but I’m glad I went. I saw a few people I know. I felt safe enough.
As an aside, I met a man named Nathan. He escaped the crowd and dropped into the empty armchair next to mine with a soul-unburdening sigh. We chatted a bit, as one does. He, reluctant; me, socially desperate.
