Irish Stewed (20 page)

And, in hindsight, I guess that was a very lucky thing.

That meant I was still outside and the door was still locked when an arm went around my waist and a gloved hand covered my mouth.

“Open the door,” a man’s hot, wet voice hissed close to my ear. “You make one funny move, and you’re dead.”

My breath caught behind a ball of panic in my throat at the same time an idea burst into my head with all the subtlety of a Fourth of July rocket.

One funny move and I was dead, huh?

No funny moves, and I’d be alone in the house with a stranger, and the door would be closed behind me.

Before I could tell myself it was probably a very bad idea, I cocked my elbow and jabbed it as hard as I could into the guy’s ribs.

Years of working in restaurants lugging trays laden with glasses and dishes had done a lot for my muscles. And I had the added advantage of surprise.

Chalk one up for funny moves. He was just surprised enough to loosen his grip and step back an inch or two, far enough away from me to allow me to twist out of his grasp.

But not for long.

A second later, his knee slammed into the small of my back. Pain shot through my legs and radiated up my spine and I let out a yelp. While I was at it, I kept right on yelping, too. I had yet to meet any of Sophie’s neighbors, but this seemed as good a time as any. I turned to face my attacker and, with the clarity that often comes at times like this, I evaluated the situation and the man whose eyes burned at me from behind a black ski mask.

Five-ten. Whip thin, but plenty strong.

Jeans. Dark sweater, hood up and over a ball cap. A logo on it I couldn’t see because of the dark.

And something in his right hand. Something sharp and shiny.

I didn’t need to see any more. I screamed until my lungs hurt.

“Shut up!” He tried for a backhand slap, but, hey, years in the system and some really bad placements had taught me to be quick on my feet; I ducked under his arm. That’s when I remembered I still had my keys in my hand, and I poked them up through my fingers, and closed my fist around my key fob. The next time he got within striking distance, I jabbed the keys into the man’s stomach.

He let out a grunt and made a grab for the keys. He wanted me in the house, and I knew I had to do everything in my power to make sure he never got the door open.

When he gripped my arm, I kicked and punched and when I finally managed to squirm away far enough so that I could get a good windup, I threw the keys as far away as I could. They landed in the shrubbery, the geraniums, and the petunias outside Sophie’s living room window.

My attacker looked at the dense undergrowth and he knew exactly what I knew: it would take too long to find the keys.

With a curse, the man slapped me across the face. Then he turned on his heels and ran.

*   *   *

Even though the pulsing lights of the police car roll bar flashed in my face and practically blinded me, I knew when Declan arrived. The whole vibe of the scene out on Sophie’s driveway changed. I recognized him immediately silhouetted against the light, all rigid shoulders and raised chin and a jaw held so tight, even before he was in my face, I had a feeling it just might snap.

“What the hell!” He grabbed my shoulders, which wasn’t so great an idea considering that I’d just been attacked by a stranger and so wasn’t in the mood for close contact. Not with anyone.

Which made it perfectly justifiable for me to haul off and punch him in the nose.

“What the hell!” Declan jumped back and fingered the bridge of his nose, but, truth be told, there wasn’t much damage; I was pretty worn out from all the fighting I’d done with the man who tried to get inside Sophie’s house.

“Hey, you two!” Gus Oberlin stomped over. “Is there a problem over here?”

“No problem.” Declan knew better than to try for another hold on me. He backed up a step, gave me a quick once-over, and glanced at Gus. “Just making sure Laurel’s okay.”

“Laurel’s more than okay.” I thought Gus would have known better; he clamped a hand on my shoulder.

I wiggled out from under the hold.

“She fought back like a trouper,” Gus told Declan. “Not always the smartest thing for a woman to do, but in this case, it worked.”

“He wanted to get in the house.” My throat was raw, my voice was hoarse. “If he just wanted my purse or the car, he could have taken it. But he wanted . . .” When I gulped, my throat protested. “He wanted to get inside the house.”

“Just like someone wanted to get inside last Saturday?”

The question from Declan made my head snap up. “How did you know . . . ?”

“A better question,” he growled, “is why didn’t you tell me?”

“You?” This time, I snapped my gaze to Detective Oberlin. “You really think you should share that kind of information with—”

At one time in his career, Gus must have been a traffic cop. He stopped me with arm extended and his hand out. “Hey, it’s all public record and, besides, I thought it was
only fair to let Declan know what was going on. Chances are, it’s one of his relatives behind this burglary ring.”

“And you think that’s what happened here? An attempted burglary?” I had to give Declan credit; though his voice simmered with anger, he ignored Oberlin’s dig and went straight to the heart of the matter. “Think again, Gus. From what I’ve seen, none of the other reports say anything about the burglar confronting the homeowner. Why should he? He comes in when people are out of the house, he rips off whatever’s worth taking, then he disappears. There’s less chance of getting caught that way, less chance of being seen. What happened here—”

“It fits the pattern.” When one of the uniformed officers called Gus over to the front door, he turned and walked away. “You’ll see, counselor. When all the pieces fall into place, I’d bet any money we find a Fury at the bottom of this burglary ring.”

“Son of a . . .” Declan scraped a hand through his hair. That is, right before he said, “Sorry. For . . . you know . . . for grabbing you like that. I should have known—”

“Knee-jerk reaction,” I told him. “You want to come in the house? We’ll get some ice for your nose.”

Since the cops were still busy poking around out front—they found my keys, hurray!—we went around to the back door.

“Looks like he tried to get in here first,” Declan said, checking out the scratches on one side of the jamb.

“But not tonight.” A block of ice formed in my stomach. “The other day . . . I heard a noise . . . I thought it was the cat.”

“So, someone’s been trying to get into the house for a few days?” This time, he placed a hand gently on my elbow
and I didn’t fight back. We walked into the kitchen and I flopped into the nearest chair.

Declan turned on the ceiling fan and the second the light was on, I saw a black-and-white flash head out from under the table and down the basement steps.

He dropped into the chair next to mine and I saw the red blotch on the left side of his nose. At least there was no blood.

I popped out of my chair, got ice from the freezer and put it in a sandwich bag, then wrapped the whole thing in a kitchen towel and handed it to him.

He accepted the icy package but he didn’t put it up to his nose. Instead, he laid it on my cheek.

I winced. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten my attacker had slapped me.

“You sit here for a couple minutes and catch your breath.” When I lifted the ice pack from my face, Declan put his hand over mine and put it—and the ice—back on my cheek. “Then you can gather up some things and we can get going.”

“Going? Where?”

“You don’t think I’m going to let you stay here another night, do you? You’re going to my mom’s house.”

It was the smart thing to do. I knew that the moment he suggested it.

Just like I knew I wasn’t going to budge.

“No.” I got to my feet, the better to stand my ground. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“Hey, you’re the one who called me.”

“I did.” It was too late to tell him it had been a mistake. Besides, the way he was acting pretty much proved it. “I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t know anyone else in Hubbard and—”

“And I’m glad you did.” He stood and took the ice pack out of my hands. “And, believe me, I’m not trying to butt in and I’m not trying to take over. I just want to help. My mom won’t mind. She’s got plenty of empty bedrooms. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

“Thank you.” Why did those two words always seem to stick in my throat? I cleared away the uncomfortable feeling with a cough. “But I’m staying here.”

“I can’t let you.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Laurel, you don’t have to prove how tough you are. You already did that. You fought off the guy who jumped you. You gave the police as good a description as you could. You’ve already been a hero tonight. You don’t need to prove yourself again.”

“No, I don’t.” I backstepped away from him, gathering my thoughts. “But see, here’s the thing, and maybe you won’t understand, but it’s the truth so just hear me out. I’ve spent my whole life being shuffled from one family to another, from one home to another. I’m not going to let it happen again. Nobody’s going to push me around. Not anymore. Nobody’s going to say where I can live and where I can’t and where I can sleep and where I can’t. Nobody’s going to make me stuff everything I own in a big, black garbage bag and drag it along to another place. Not anymore. I’m staying, Declan. I’m staying here. No guy in a ski mask is going to make it so that I can’t.”

He gave in with an almost imperceptible nod and grabbed his phone and walked into the living room to make a call. Within fifteen minutes, his cousins Martin and Dan showed up along with brothers Seamus and Brian, and Declan informed me that they’d be stationed outside the house all night long.

I protested. Long and as loud as I was able to, considering the condition of my throat.

Martin, Dan, Seamus, and Brian didn’t even bother to listen. They went outside to let the cops in on what Declan had planned.

“You guys can’t stay outside all night!” I insisted.

“Those guys can!” Chuckling, Declan strolled into the living room, fluffed the pillows from the couch, and plopped right down. “I’m the one who thought of the plan. That means I’m the brains of the operation. I’m sleeping right here!”

I suppose I could have argued but, truth be told, I was dog tired. I got a pillow and a blanket and a sheet and I made him move so that I could lay it out on the couch. I put the pillow on the couch and dropped the blanket next to it.

“Why?” I asked him.

Declan spread the blanket out. “Why . . . what?”

“Why here? What’s so special about Sophie’s house that a guy . . .” I couldn’t help myself, even though I knew that the police were still out front, that Martin and Dan and Brian and Seamus were on guard duty, I looked over my shoulder at the front door. “Why was he so dead set on getting in here?”

“That’s what we’ve got to figure out.” Declan sat down and patted the patch of couch next to him. I sat down, too.

“Someone tried to break in here three times that we know of.” I told him about the first time when I’d heard the noise in the kitchen and figured it was the cat. Then about the attempted break-in the Saturday before. “Three times—that’s no coincidence. They were looking for something. And it can’t have anything to do with Jack Lancer’s murder. Or with Kim Kline’s. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t, but you know . . .”

I knew what he was going to say. I must have. Otherwise, my blood wouldn’t have run cold. I put a hand on Declan’s arm.

“That day at the Terminal. That’s what you were going to mention, wasn’t it? You were going to remind me about that day someone went through the Dumpster.”

Declan nodded. “I sure was. Somebody’s searching for something, Laurel. And it looks like they’re willing to do anything to find it.”

I
knew for a fact that the man who attacked me outside Sophie’s house wasn’t George. He wasn’t tall enough to be the Terminal cook. He wasn’t bulky enough. He didn’t smell like fried onions.

No way was my attacker Maxine, the late, great Jack Lancer’s most recent girlfriend, either, and besides George of the phony alibi, she was the only other person on my way-too-short list of suspects. It was a man’s voice that warned me I’d better not make any funny moves, a man’s strong arm that grabbed me around the waist, a man’s hand that left an angry red mark on my cheek that still stung the next day.

I was back to square one, or at least I would have been if I could start thinking about the case dispassionately and stop thinking about everything that happened out in front of Sophie’s house the night before and everything it meant.

Was the masked man the same one who’d gone through the Terminal trash?

And why?

Was he the same man who killed Jack Lancer? And Kim Kline?

And was I next on the hit list?

I promised myself I wasn’t going to obsess about it, but sitting in Sophie’s office at the Terminal, I just couldn’t help it. Less than twenty-four hours after the attack and my knees still felt rubbery and my heart fluttered around in my chest.

If I hadn’t fought back. If I hadn’t thought to throw the keys where the man couldn’t find them. If I hadn’t been lucky in a way neither Jack nor Kim was . . .

The very thought made my stomach do flip-flops, and in the hopes of getting it to settle down, I did my best to concentrate on the stack of receipts in front of me, the ones I had yet to enter into the computer program Sophie used to keep the business of the Terminal in order. She’d be disappointed when she found out the truth—I’d been so busy concentrating on the investigation, I’d been ignoring the day-to-day details that were so important to keeping a restaurant going.

“No more,” I vowed, and I grabbed the pile of receipts and got to work.

The distraction was successful. At least for a little while. Not only did I get caught up, but I was gratified to see that my ethnic foods idea was starting to pay off. In the last few days, we’d sold lots of Irish stew and our colcannon orders outweighed the ones for french fries.

I was just about finished with the receipts when there was a knock on the office door.

George toed the line between the restaurant and the office.

“Can I . . .” He looked up at the ceiling. Down at the floor. “I wondered if I could . . .” He cleared his throat. “It’s Tuesday and it’s almost four thirty and we close in just a little while. I was thinking . . .” He scrubbed a finger under his nose. “Can I leave a little early today? I’ve got something special going on, an extra sort of . . . an extra sort of meeting.”

I am not a hard taskmaster, but I’m not a pushover, either. I was just about to remind him that there was no telling what kind of business we’d get between now and when the Terminal closed at five and then relent and let him leave when George spoke up again.

“I gotta . . .” He shuffled his feet. “I gotta get over to my AA meeting at St. Colman’s.”

That nice speech I had prepared froze on my lips. An AA meeting at the church, huh? The AA meeting that did not now and never had existed? The one that was George’s alibi?

In a split second, I came up with a plan.

Was my smile convincing? I liked to think so. After all, I’d learned phoniness in the phony capital of the universe. “Of course you can leave early, George. Your meeting is important and I’d hate to see you miss it.”

I paused here and gave him a chance to come clean, and when he didn’t, I kept my smile firmly in place. “As long as there’s enough Irish stew ready in case anyone orders it.”

He assured me there was and backed out of the office.

I gathered up my purse and, since it was chilly, a light jacket, and waited for George to leave the restaurant. When he did, I left instructions with Inez and Denice, hopped in my car, and followed him.

Whatever I had expected, it wasn’t the building where
he stopped his clunker of a Pontiac and went inside, the one he walked out of an hour and a half later.

When he did, I was waiting at the door.

“Oh.” George’s cheeks were flushed and the golf shirt he’d put on instead of the white T-shirt he usually wore in the kitchen had traces of sweat on it. “What are you . . .” The hard-soled shoes were a new addition, too, and he shuffled them against the sidewalk. “What are you doing here?”

“I guess that’s the question I need to ask you. You told me you had an alibi for the night of the murder, George. You told me you were at St. Colman’s. But that was Monday night, and this is Tuesday night. And this sure isn’t St. Colman’s.”

“Last week? I was at the church. Sure. Yeah. Of course I was. My meeting was at the church last Monday, and today . . . well, like I told you before, this is something special, something extra.” I don’t think I’d ever seen George smile before, which made it all the more disturbing. “I just stopped in here today. You know, to see a friend.”

I backed up a step and looked at the window of the establishment he’d just walked out of.

“Jerome’s Dance Studio.” Since the neon sign glowed at us from not three feet away, I really didn’t need to read it, but I figured it proved my point. “Ballroom dancing lessons.”

I swung away from the sign to pin George with a look. “What’s really going on?”

There is nothing more pathetic than the surrender of a really big guy. George’s wide-as-a-barn shoulders sagged. His smile wilted and the color in his cheeks intensified.

“I couldn’t tell you the truth,” he muttered. “I couldn’t let anybody know I was taking . . . you know, dancing lessons. That’s why I said I was going to an AA meeting.”

Grinning would be an insult, so I controlled myself. “Dance lessons are nothing to be ashamed of.”

“People, they’d make fun of me if they knew. If they knew why I wanted to.”

I thought the probing look I gave him would have been enough to get my unspoken question answered, but when it wasn’t, I pressed him. “Why are you taking dancing lessons?”

George squeezed his lips together. That is, right before he let out a long sigh. “It’s Denice,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to . . . that is, I’ve been sort of thinking about . . . I thought maybe one of these days I might—”

“You want to ask her out on a date.”

He was so relieved at not having to say the words himself, this time, his smile was genuine. “I know she likes to dance and I thought if I could . . .”

I almost told him it was sweet but the way I figured it, George wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted to hear things like that.

He wasn’t the kind of guy who lied about his alibi because he’d killed Jack Lancer, either, I realized, and smiling, I told him to have a good night and went on home, humming the tune of a waltz and picturing George out there on the dance floor, Denice caught up in the crook of his arm.

*   *   *

That Tuesday morning before I’d left for work, I told Declan I didn’t need him or his family at the house that night.

I did not tell him—at least not in so many words—how comforting it was when I was up in bed on Monday night and knew that his family was stationed outside and he was down on the couch. I had felt cared for a time or two in my
life, mostly by Nina, who’d waded through the minefield of my teenage years with me. I had felt valued, too, at one time, for my skills as a chef and for my ability to juggle Meghan’s diet regimen with her obsessive-compulsive need to fit into the smallest bikinis and the tightest of tight evening gowns.

I had never felt truly safe.

Not that I was about to confess all that to Declan. I thanked him, of course. I told Martin and Dan and Seamus and Brian to stop into the Terminal anytime for a meal on the house.

To me, that meant the matter was over and done with. Not so with the Fury boys.

They were all waiting for me when I got home from Jerome’s Dance Studio that Tuesday.

“You can’t,” I said the moment I was out of the car and my feet touched the driveway. “You can’t all stay here again.”

“It’s not like we really want to.” Seamus poked his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Yeah,” Brian added, “it’s not like we think it’s the best idea in the world.”

“But Declan here . . .” Like I didn’t know Declan was standing there grinning at me, Martin looked his way. “The way we figure it, if he’s alone in the house with you—”

“Well, you’re new in town and you don’t know the boy’s reputation,” Dan told me, shaking his head as if it really was a pitiful confession. “It’s not you we’re here to keep an eye on, it’s him!”

It was hard to argue with logic like that.

Rather than even try, I made grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone and since it was late and I didn’t know I was having company, I managed strawberries and fresh whipped
cream for dessert. While my outside guests got settled in their sleeping bags, Declan helped with the dishes.

“You can’t keep doing this,” I told him.

“Drying the dishes? Why not?”

A click of the tongue should have told him all he needed to know, but if there was one thing I’d learned about Declan, it was that he sometimes needed to be hit over the head with the obvious. “You know what I’m talking about. You all can’t keep staying here. Don’t your cousins and your brothers have jobs?”

“Of course they do. What do we look like, riffraff? And we’re not going to stay here forever. Just until we figure out what’s going on and why someone keeps trying to get into the house.”

I finished with the dishes, rinsed down the sink, and told myself that before I left town, I would order a state-of-the-art dishwasher for Sophie. “It doesn’t make any sense,” I grumbled.

“Them working? Or someone trying to get into the house?”

Since he knew exactly what I was talking about, I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I got a glass of ice water for myself and poured coffee for Declan, who said he didn’t mind the caffeine because he’d want to stay alert all night, anyway.

And that only made me feel more guilty about having him there.

I turned and leaned against the sink. “Do you suppose it all has anything to do with the murders?”

He finished with the last of the dishes and draped the red-and-white-checked cotton dish towel over the counter. “I wish I knew.”

“Maybe if we watched those tapes of Kim’s again . . .” Inside my head, it had sounded like a good suggestion, but
the moment the words were out of my mouth, I couldn’t help but think how lame it was. “We watched them once. We didn’t see anything useful.”

“Which doesn’t mean we can’t give it another try.”

We went into the living room together and Declan tossed aside the pillow he’d used the night before so we could sit side by side on the couch when he got out his iPad. For the second time, we watched Kim’s reporting of Jack’s murder.

“It’s all the same old, same old,” I said halfway through. “Photos of Jack. Kim looking somber, reporting the facts.”

“And that crazy segment with her secretly taping you.”

We were just at that particular segment and together, we watched the action unfold on the screen in front of us.

“There’s Denice walking in with Ronnie,” I said, my voice as dull and heavy as the dead-end feeling in my stomach. “There I am handing out the menus with the Irish stew special.”

“And Kim is going to place two orders.”

We watched her do it.

“I’ll give it a try,” Kim said. “Denice . . .” She called the waitress over. “I’ll try the stew and, Dustin? Make that two.”

There was nothing there. Nothing unusual. Nothing telling. Certainly nothing suspicious.

I asked Declan to replay the segment anyway because as weird as it seemed, that nothing felt very much like something.

Again, we watched the scene.

“I’ll give it a try,” Kim said. “Denice . . .”

I sat up like a shot. “That’s it!”

Declan paused the video. “And it is what?”

“Back it up a little,” I instructed him, and when he did, we watched Kim and Dustin get settled. “Kim said she’d never eaten there,” I told Declan. “I swear she told me that.
But when Denice arrived she called her by name.” We watched it all happen again.

“Your waitresses wear name tags,” Declan reminded me. “It all makes perfect sense.”

I wasn’t so sure. I asked him to back up the video again and this time, to enlarge Denice when she came on the screen and to play the tape in slow motion. “She’s running late. Her shirt isn’t even tucked in. And look!” This time I didn’t bother to point, I poked my finger into the screen right at the spot where the Terminal was embroidered on Denice’s shirt, and Declan saw what I saw.

Denice hadn’t put on her name tag yet.

Declan sat back and looked at where he’d paused the video, right on Denice. “What do you think it means?”

“For one thing, it means Kim was lying.”

Declan’s nose was hardly red at all. Still, he fingered it, no doubt because he remembered what happened the last time he said something he shouldn’t have. He inched away from me. “Maybe she just didn’t want to admit she’d eaten at the Terminal before. You know, on account of the restaurant’s reputation for—”

“What?” I demanded.

“Good food. Great service.” His smile didn’t convince me.

Exactly why I didn’t acknowledge it.

“Let’s watch the rest of what they caught on tape that day,” I suggested instead. “Maybe there’s more.”

And guess what, there was, though on first glance, it sure didn’t seem like much.

Dustin the cameraman had kept the hidden camera rolling through dinner and though I enjoy good food and appreciate other people’s love of a well-cooked meal, I can’t say it was especially interesting to watch Kim slurp down
the Irish stew, even though she commented more than a time or two about how delicious it was.

“He’s a good kid.” In the background of the scene, Denice zipped by with a tray on her shoulder. I think she was talking about her son, Ronnie. “And it’s not like he’s taking up a table where customers would be sitting. Well, not usually, anyway. Am I right, Marvin?” She raised her voice enough to be heard by Marvin, who was seated two tables away. “My Ronnie, he’s a good kid, right?”