St. Patrick's Day Murder

by Leslie Meier

  Lucy vowed to keep that thought as she struggled against the wind, grabbing hold of the railing to haul herself onto Miss Tilley’s stoop. When she opened the storm door, she had to struggle to keep the wind from taking it and slamming it against the railing while she knocked and waited for Rachel to open the front door.

  “Look what the wind blew in,” exclaimed Rachel when Lucy stepped inside the little Cape Cod–style cottage. A glance at the hall mirror showed her the wind had tugged her hair out from under her hat, had tangled her scarf, and had reddened her cheeks. No matter. Lucy went straight to Miss Tilley, who was sitting in her usual place, in the rocker next to the fireplace. It was too windy for a fire, but Rachel had placed a little heater on the hearth, and Miss Tilley’s hands were warm when Lucy grasped them.

  “She’s brought the cold with her,” complained Miss Tilley. “You should feel her hands. They’re like ice.”

  “You’re nice and cozy in here,” said Lucy, taking the opposite chair.

  “Give her some of Papa’s brandy. That’ll warm her up,” said Miss Tilley.

  Puzzled, Lucy glanced at Rachel, who responded with a shrug. “We don’t have any brandy, only sherry,” said Rachel, handing Lucy a glass.

  “Well, you better get some brandy,” said Miss Tilley. “Papa has to have his brandy.”

  “Not a good day,” mouthed Rachel, retreating behind Miss Tilley’s chair. “I’ll have lunch ready in a minute,” she said out loud, then retreated to the kitchen.

  True to her word, they were soon seated at the antique cherry drop-leaf dining table, where a copper lusterware pitcher held a bouquet of supermarket daffodils, and Rachel dished out helpings of Irish stew.

  “This is delicious,” said Lucy, tucking right in.

  “Be sure to save some for Papa,” said Miss Tilley. “It’s one of his favorite dishes.”

  “Don’t worry. There’s plenty for Papa, too,” said Rachel.

  Lucy was surprised that she didn’t attempt to reorient the old woman in the present by reminding her that her father had been dead for nearly fifty years.

  “He can have his later,” continued Rachel, watching anxiously as Miss Tilley slowly picked up her fork and began to eat. Turning to Lucy, she said, “Miss T hasn’t had much appetite lately.”

  “I just want to make sure there’s something left for Papa,” said Miss Tilley, clearly lost in the past.

  “There’s enough for everyone,” said Rachel. “There’s a big pot of stew in the kitchen, so eat as much as you like.”

  “It is very tasty,” admitted Miss Tilley. “But not quite as good as Brigid’s. Papa likes Brigid’s Irish stew, but she’s not here anymore.” She leaned across the table and put her hand on Lucy’s arm, ready to share a choice bit of gossip. “She went to the ambassador’s house, and I hear there’s mischief afoot up there.”

  After getting a nod from Rachel, Lucy decided to play along. “Really? What sort of mischief?”

  “All sorts,” replied Miss Tilley. “There’s no woman in the house, you see, except for Brigid, since Mrs. O’Donnell died of cancer.” She clucked her tongue. “They say she suffered terribly all alone there, with the ambassador away so much and the boys too busy with Brigid to pay her any mind.”

  “I didn’t realize the O’Donnell boys lost their mother,” said Lucy. “Maybe that explains why Mikey Boy turned to crime.”

  “Cormac’s no better,” insisted Miss Tilley, as if she were sharing something scandalous. “He’s a Democrat, you know.”

  “Being a Democrat isn’t quite the same as being a gangster,” protested Rachel.

  “It’s worse,” said Miss Tilley, prompting both Lucy and Rachel to laugh.

  “You can laugh,” chided Miss Tilley, “but you’ll see. Nixon’s going to beat that Kennedy boy.”

  Lucy smiled at this, but when she glanced at Rachel, she noticed she was brushing away a tear. She felt a surge of sympathy for her friend. She had been caring for Miss Tilley for years, stopping by casually with a plate of food or a bunch of flowers after the old woman was involved in a tragic automobile accident and gradually taking on more and more responsibility. Now she even got paid, after a social worker from Elder Services visited and decided she qualified as a home health aide. Rachel had never viewed caring for Miss Tilley as a job; she was simply helping a friend. And now she must be terribly worried that she was losing that friend.

  Lucy decided it was time to change the subject. “Are you coming to the show?” she asked. “I’m in the chorus, and Rachel has a real part.”

  “A small part,” said Rachel, smiling wryly.

  “I’ve heard her practicing the songs,” said Miss Tilley. “She has a beautiful voice.”

  “I know,” said Lucy. “She’s the understudy for the star, so maybe—”

  “No chance of that,” said Rachel, beginning to clear the table. “I have no doubt that if Moira were dead and buried, she would rise from the grave to take the stage.”

  “Like Mikey Boy,” said Miss Tilley, smacking her lips when Rachel set a dish of ice cream in front of her.

  “Mikey Boy died?” asked Lucy.

  The old woman popped a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, and another, before she answered. “They said he did when they were going to put him on trial for murdering an FBI man. They had a funeral and everything, but then it turned out, he wasn’t dead at all. He went into hiding, and he’s been hiding ever since, but sometimes you see pictures of him in the paper, in Spain and places like that.”

  “The family had a funeral?” asked Lucy, wondering how accurate the old woman’s information could be.

  Miss Tilley nodded, scraping her bowl and licking the spoon. “I hope there’s ice cream for Papa, too. He loves ice cream.”

  When she left, Lucy felt her mind was in just as much turmoil as the weather. The wind was picking up dry leaves and old candy wrappers and whirling them around, much like the fragmentary ideas she couldn’t seem to grasp. She knew Cormac O’Donnell was the good brother, the public servant everyone admired. And she knew he had a brother who everyone considered evil, a sort of bad seed, who had also risen to prominence in organized crime and made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. But she had always understood that the O’Donnell family, and Cormac particularly, had made every effort to distance themselves from Mikey Boy. In fact, she clearly remembered reading quite recently in the Boston Globe that Cormac had appeared before a grand jury and been questioned about his brother but had maintained there had been no contact for many years.

  Well, maybe it was true, she thought, fighting against the wind at the corner of Main Street. But if what Miss Tilley had told her about a fake funeral was true, it certainly seemed there had been some sort of family collusion in Mikey Boy’s flight from this country to Europe. Maybe Miss Tilley was on to something. Maybe there wasn’t that much difference between organized crime and politics, at least in the O’Donnell family. Maybe the brothers weren’t that different, after all.

  By the time she had struggled a couple of blocks down Main Street, fighting the wind every step of the way, Lucy was looking for shelter. Pausing for a moment in the lee of a big old tree, she noticed she was in front of the police station. It occurred to her that Barney might be there, and he might have heard something about the O’Donnell brothers. It was worth asking—even if it only got her out of the wind for a few minutes.

  But when she battled her way inside, forcing the door open against the wind and then hanging on to it with all her strength when the wind caught it, she forgot all about Barney and the O’Donnell brothers. Her attention was immediately caught by Moira, whose hysterical screams rang against the concrete walls and bounced off the reinforced steel doors and even seemed to rattle the bulletproof Plexiglas protecting the officer on reception duty.

  He tried several times to ask what was the matter, but Moira ignored him, throwing her head back and tossing her wild red hair and beating on the Plexiglas barrier with her fists. Finally, he came t
hrough the steel door and grabbed her by her elbows.

  “Lady, you’ve got to calm down and tell me what’s the problem. Okay?”

  At his touch, Moira seemed to subside, withdrawing inside her black cloak. Then, slowly, with exquisite grace, two white hands emerged from its folds and grasped the officer’s navy blue shirt. “You have to help me,” she said between sobs. “My Deirdre’s disappeared!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Lady, how the hell am I supposed to know who Deirdre is?” asked the officer. “Is it your cat? Dog? When did you last see him?”

  “Her,” said Lucy, answering for Moira, who had seized her with both hands and was hanging on to her for support and sobbing into her shoulder. “Deirdre is her daughter. She’s nine years old.”

  The officer looked at them suspiciously. “Say, you look familiar. Weren’t you in here a couple of weeks ago with some missing kids?”

  “That was a misunderstanding,” admitted Lucy, who was convinced Moira was telling the truth. Her whole body was shaking, and she was crying real, wet tears, which were staining Lucy’s new winter coat with fur trim, which she’d bought last month at an end-of-season sale.

  The officer wasn’t convinced. “Lady, do you know what it does to the tax rate every time we have one of these false alarms?”

  Lucy knew only too well. Last summer she’d written about an extensive search for two hikers who had wandered off the Adirondack Trail, right into a cozy—and secluded—B and B. But there was no denying the drama queen was genuinely upset, so upset that her mascara was running in ugly black streaks down her face.

  The steel door leading to the offices beyond opened, and Lucy was relieved when Barney Culpepper came into the waiting room. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Deirdre Malone is missing,” said Lucy.

  “Again?” asked Barney, incredulously.

  “No,” snapped Lucy. “For the first time.” Moira was a slight woman, but even so, her weight was beginning to be more than Lucy could manage. She led her to the row of battered plastic chairs set against the wall and sat her down, taking the seat beside her.

  “I know you’re upset,” she said, stroking Moira’s curly hair. “But you have to tell us what happened. The police need as much information as you can give them.” She took hold of both of Moira’s hands and looked her in the eye. “Can you help us?”

  Barney and the desk officer shared a glance.

  Moira sniffed—it was really more of a snort, providing yet more proof that she was genuinely distressed—and took a deep breath. “She had a playdate, and Sadie’s mother was supposed to drop her off at the house at one. I was running late. I got there at a quarter past, and there was no sign of her. At first, I assumed Sadie’s mom was also running late, and I was relieved. But when there was no sign of them after fifteen minutes or so, I gave her a call. She said she’d dropped Deirdre at the house at five past.”

  Now Lucy was beginning to have some doubts. “Juanita Orenstein wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t leave a child she was caring for in an empty house.”

  “She said she didn’t want to do it, but she was running late and Sadie had a doctor’s appointment and Deirdre had insisted it would be all right.” She looked at Lucy with enormous eyes. “She’s gone. There was no sign she’d even been in the house. No coat, no shoes. Nothing.”

  Lucy didn’t like the sound of this at all, especially considering what had happened to Old Dan and Dylan, but the officers remained skeptical, even Barney.

  “Mebbe you better get an incident report form,” Barney told the desk officer. He raised an eyebrow meaningfully. “CYA, if you know what I mean.”

  When the desk officer returned with a clipboard and began questioning Moira, Lucy took Barney aside. “Something’s going on,” she told him. “Somebody’s out to get the Malones. First it was Old Dan, then it was Dylan, and now it’s Deirdre. It’s a blood feud. There’s no other explanation.”

  Barney looked doubtful. “Like the Hatfields and the McCoys?”

  “Something like that,” said Lucy as a suspicion blossomed in her mind. She turned to Moira. “Who was your husband’s mother? What was her name? Her maiden name?”

  “What on earth does that have to do with this?” demanded Moira.

  “Possibly everything. Who was she?” said Lucy.

  “Her name was Brigid, Brigid Heaney,” replied Moira.

  Lucy felt as if she’d put the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly, everything made sense. “I knew it,” she said. “It’s not the Hatfields and McCoys. It’s the Malones and the O’Donnells. They go way back. Miss Tilley told me that Brigid Heaney, Old Dan and Dylan’s mother, worked for the O’Donnells years ago, until she left in a hurry and went back to Ireland and married her old boyfriend. A child, probably Old Dan, was born soon after.”

  “Hold on, Lucy,” protested Barney. “You’re jumping to conclusions here. Think about it. Do you really think that Cormac O’Donnell would risk his future in politics to get even with…who? A maid or cook or somebody who hasn’t been seen or heard from for years and years?”

  Lucy had to admit it was a bit of a stretch. But then she remembered Cormac wasn’t the only O’Donnell brother. “Not Cormac,” she said, slowly. “It must be Mikey Boy.”

  Barney shook his head, and his jowls quivered. “No way. He’s gone. He’s been out of the country for years.”

  “That’s what everybody thinks, but nobody actually knows his whereabouts. He could’ve come back, slipped in from Canada or something. Think about it. Remember that FBI guy that Mikey Boy killed. His body was mutilated, wasn’t it?”

  “No head or hands,” admitted Barney. “Typical gangland stuff so the body couldn’t be identified.”

  “Maybe,” said Lucy. “But I did some research on that brain ball thing, and I found that ancient Celtic warriors used to make them and carry them around for bragging rights.”

  Barney looked at her as if she were crazy. “I’ve heard you come up with some pretty crazy ideas, Lucy, but this takes the cake. You think Mikey Boy has come home like some sort of Celtic warrior to avenge an old wrong? He’s risking his freedom, maybe even his life, to wipe out the Malones?”

  Moira, who had finished answering the desk officer’s questions, suddenly spoke up. “And he’s doing a fine job of it, too.”

  Barney’s head snapped around. “Do you think it’s Mikey Boy?”

  “I have no idea,” said Moira. “I never heard of him ’til the other day. But somebody is out to get us, and it’s somebody who knows the old Irish tales.”

  “Moira,” said Lucy, taking the woman’s hands in her own, “can you think of anyone who wants to harm your family?”

  “On the contrary,” she said, lifting her chin up proudly. “We are the darlings of Irish theater. I thought everyone loved us.”

  Barney shook his head and grabbed the incident report, which he quickly scanned, then told the desk officer to take it to the captain. He was soon back. “Captain wants to see you,” said the desk officer, pointing at Moira. When Lucy got up, too, he shook his head. “Just her,” he said, ushering Moira through the door.

  Lucy looked at Barney. “What’s going on?”

  “Captain wants to be sure before he calls the state police and requests another AMBER Alert.”

  “Will he do it?”

  “I don’t think he’s got any choice. The mother says her kid is missing, and it seems more’n likely she was abducted, probably snatched before she even set foot in the house. The crime-scene guys will go over the house. We’ll know more then.” He sighed. “You don’t s’pose she coulda wandered off on her own?”

  “She’s an imaginative little thing and believes in fairies and all sorts of magical creatures, but it doesn’t seem likely. She’s not an outdoorsy kid, and it’s awfully cold today. And it still gets dark pretty early this time of year,” said Lucy, who was feeling guilty for forbidding Zoe to play with Deirdre. If she’d been at their house, this migh
t never have happened. “She’s pretty self-sufficient. I have a feeling she’s used to spending a lot of time by herself. I think she would have gone into the house and made herself comfortable with a book until her mother got home.”

  The door opened, and the desk officer was back with orders for Barney. “Captain wants you to take a look-see at the house. It’s on Bumps River Road.”

  “I know where it is,” said Barney, following him through the door and leaving Lucy alone in the waiting room.

  She sat for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. Her first impulse was to stay put. She didn’t want to abandon Moira, who might need emotional support, or just a ride home. But as she sat in the empty room, listening to the tick of the big clock on the wall as the minute hand lurched its way through the hour, she began to have second thoughts. She knew how the police operated, and she was pretty sure Moira was undergoing some pretty intensive questioning by investigators following strict procedures. They would insist on questioning Moira alone; they wouldn’t want a companion confusing the issue. And if Moira needed a ride home, they had plenty of cars.

  In fact, she realized as she left the building, there were signs that the captain was taking Deirdre’s disappearance very seriously. She could see through the window that the parking lot beside the station was filling up with official vehicles, including several from the state police and neighboring towns. And when she got in her car and started it, the AMBER Alert was announced on the radio.

  Just hearing the description of Deirdre as “a nine-year-old, with freckles, wearing a pink parka and white snow boots” made Lucy feel as if a tight hand was squeezing her heart. Too often she’d read about innocent little girls who got into cars with neighbors or strangers, uncles or family friends, who promised them ice cream and treats but instead gave them something they’d never expected. After using them up, they threw the little girls’ broken bodies away in the woods or along a deserted road, like so much trash. And if Deirdre was in Mikey Boy’s clutches, there was no limit to what he might do.