Top O' the Mournin' (16 page)

“I bet you’re related to Hitler,” said Ethel. “I wouldn’t tell anyone if I was related to Hitler.”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone if I was related to Jack the Ripper,” said Ernie.

“I wouldn’t tell anyone if I was related to Peewee Eck,” said Jackie.

A hushed silence ensued as all eyes trained on Jackie. Peewee Eck? Yeah. A real biggie in the annals of criminal history. “Peewee Eck?” I repeated.

“First baseman on my grade school Little League team,” Jackie explained. “We were playing for the city championship, and Peewee flubbed up and let a ball scoot right through his legs into right field. The other team scored on his error, and we ended up losing the game and the championship. Peewee was so despised, his family eventually had to move out of town. I think they had to go into the witness protection program or something.”

“You grew up in a real progressive town,” Ethel commented. “Co-ed Little League teams. Imagine. We never had anything like that in Brooklyn.”

I doubted they had anything like that where Jack grew up either, but why confuse the issue?

“That same exact play happened in the ’86 World Series!” Ernie enthused. “The ball rolled right through Bill Buckner’s legs, and the Mets ended up stealing the series from the Red Sox in seven. I bet that Eck kid was related to Buckner.” He puffed out his chest like a prideful pigeon. “I played a little ball before I got drafted. Batted lefty. Used to give the pitchers fits. What’d you bat?” he asked Jackie. “Righty or lefty?”

Jackie smiled with equal pride. “I was a switch-hitter actually. I could go either way.”

A definite precursor of things to come.

“All right!” Gladys sobbed in an agonized voice. “I can’t stand this any longer! The secrets. The guilt. I’ll tell you! But you have to promise that what I’m about to reveal will go no further than this table. Do all of you give your word of honor not to repeat anything I’m about to tell you?”

We all leaned back in our chairs, stunned by Gladys’s sudden turnaround. I guess this proved something I’d suspected for a long time: Some women would do anything to avoid a lengthy discussion about baseball. We nodded in agreement and hunkered low over the table to catch Gladys’s every word.

“Ira’s right,” she said in a confidential tone. “I never should have dug into my genealogy. I discovered I’m related to the most contemptible, the most vicious, the most brutal person ever to walk the face of the earth.”

“Oh, my Lord,” said Jackie. “You’re related to Joan Rivers?”

“Worse than that,” said Gladys. “I’m related to…Oliver Cromwell!”

Breath hissed through Jackie’s nostrils like air through a leaky valve. “That’s the son of a bitch who destroyed all the watchtowers and abbeys and churches with his son of a whore bastard troops…
bnnrk ig athwart.”

Ethel tapped my arm. “What’s ‘bnnrk ig athwart’?”

“I had no idea the man was so ruthless,” Gladys continued, “or that his name was so cursed over here. I thought he might have captured a couple of villages and treated the people according to the rules of the Geneva Convention, but that wasn’t his style. He leveled everything! Did you see all those ruins today? He left nothing standing! He was a monster. A monster! And I’m related to him! Honestly, I wish I were dead.”

“You better not tell our driver about this or you might get your wish,” warned Ernie. “You heard him on the bus today. He’s got a real grudge against Cromwell. I wouldn’t wanna be in your shoes if he finds out you’re related to the guy.”

The backs of my knees went weak. Oh, this was nice. I’m surprised the castle’s brochure didn’t read, “Welcome to Ballybantry, an equal-opportunity hotel, where you’re as apt to be knocked off by a ghost with webbed feet as by a bus driver with a grudge.”

A sick feeling roiled in the pit of my stomach. I scratched a sudden itch at the back of my neck. I pushed my plate of half-nibbled food away from me. There was only one way to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. “Dessert, anyone?”

“He picked up his key about ten minutes ago,” Liam informed me.

Thirty seconds later, I was standing in front of his door at the end of the hall.

“Missed you at dinner,” I said when he answered my knock. I did a visual scroll down the length of his legs. “Nice pants.”

He closed the door behind me and drew me into his arms, nuzzling my neck. “I thought you preferred me in a towel.”

“I’d prefer you in nothing at all,” I said, breathless and light-headed from being cocooned against him.

“That can be arranged.”

“When?”

“After I make one phone call.”

“How long will that take?”

“Far too long for what I have in mind for you this evening.” He lowered his hand to stroke my leg, found the slit in my dress, then glided his palm upward over my bare thigh to ride the curve of my hip. “Nice dress.” His lips lingered at my ear. His tongue made slow, teasing explorations of my lobe, arousing both a surge of desire and an irrational fear that my earring was about to become snack food. I never should have worn studs. Hoops would have been a better choice. They’re harder to swallow.

“I missed you today,” he rasped against my earlobe. “I had to hit three different towns before I found anything that resembled a men’s clothing store. I’m not sure how the natives tolerate having such limited access to goods and services.”

“L.L. Bean.” I stroked the back of his arm, holding him close. “They mail anywhere in the world, except maybe to some of the lesser known archipelagos in the South Pacific.”

Our bodies were fused together so perfectly that I could feel the rapid beat of his heart, the lean sinew of his body, the hard steel of his gun. Gun? The fact that he was packing heat inflamed me more, not to mention its opening up great opportunities for fantasy role-playing.

“I imagine your day was more exciting than mine,” he said as his mouth grazed the outer edge of my ear, causing my heart to pound, my knees to sag, my instep to tingle.

“It was pretty average,” I said in a breathless whisper.

“How average?”

I moistened my lips and rushed through the litany. “I got locked in the bus. Ashley had to be rushed to the hospital. Bernice thought the phone was going to explode. Ethel Minch has webbed feet. And Nana found another dead body in her room.”

He stiffened. His breath rattled in his throat. His voice grew strained. “Emily, darling?”

“Yes?”

“Are you suggesting that your grandmother’s finding a dead body in her hotel room is an average part of the day?”

“It seems to be an average part of
my
day.”

He held me away from him and searched my face, his eyes losing their fire to become darkly serious. “Who died?”

“The custodian. Archie. Nana found his body crumpled in the closet of her new room. There was no sign of foul play and no visible wounds, but he had a really terrified look on his face. His death looks just like Rita’s, except I didn’t see any evidence of bloody footprints anywhere around him.”

“Does anyone know why he was in the closet, other than the most obvious reason?”

There was a reason that was obvious? I thought about Nana’s theory. Had she been on to something? “The most obvious reason wouldn’t be that he was gay, would it?”

He regarded me oddly. “The most obvious reason would be that he was hiding from someone. Or some
thing.”

“That’s what Tilly said!”

He massaged the back of his head, looking distracted. “I wondered why the police cars were in the parking lot just now. I suspected they were here to follow up on Rita’s death, not to investigate a new case. Though I’m not sure how much investigating these village departments actually do. I paid a visit to the local Garda Station today and thought I’d stepped back into the last century. They’re understaffed, poorly equipped, and totally unreceptive to the idea of outside police help. The only reason I found out any information from them was that I happened to be standing there when the call came in from the lab.”

“Information about Rita?”

“Results from the blood samples they took from the footprints on the carpet. The blood wasn’t human. It was animal.”

The news calmed my nerves a small degree. I was relieved the blood wasn’t human, but I knew not everyone would share my relief. If the animal rights people ever got wind of the findings, they would
not
be happy campers. Better to face a malevolent spirit than a pissed-off PETA member. “So does this mean the ghost isn’t some centuries-old spirit who’s still dripping fresh blood?”

“That would be my guess. My instincts tell me that our ghost, if there is a ghost, is very human. All we have to do now is determine who the person is and why they’ve decided to target Ballybantry Castle.”

“I bet you anything it has something to do with ill will between the Irish who were kicked off their land and the Englishman who built this castle.”

He looked at me askance. “Who did you say has webbed feet?”

“Ethel Minch. One of the ladies on the tour from New York. She has relatives who emigrated from Ireland during one of the potato famines, but she claims she’s not interested in her family history, so she doesn’t know anything about them. I think she’s trying to cover up the fact that one of her relatives might be involved with the hauntings. She has webbed toes! I saw them this morning. And she admits her foot problem is genetic and that lots of people on her mother’s side of the family have it. Her maiden name is O’Quigley, and I’ll bet that’s a very popular name around here.”

His eyes flickered alertly, as if they were reacting to some internal flash going off in his head. “You could be right.” He walked to the desk and jotted a note on the castle’s stationery. “‘O’Quigley,’ you said. I’ll have someone look into it.” He flipped open the phone book, found a page, and ran his finger down its length. “Right again. If she needs accomplices, there’s at least two score to choose from in the area.”

I came up behind him and threaded my arm through his. “The front desk clerk told me that the castle has had a dozen owners since it was first built, none whose name he knows. But the current owners are a group of American investors and a family by the name of McCrilly. He also told me that Rita’s death was being attributed to natural causes.”

“How would he be privy to information about Rita?”

“His father is the local mortician.”

“So the police are going to ignore the bloody footprints altogether so the coroner can sign off on the cause of death.”

“Not only ignore. The custodian has already cleaned the carpet.”

He shook his head in disgust. “At least they took pictures of the prints. I conducted my own investigation of the castle this morning but got no farther than a padlocked door leading to what I suspect is the dungeon.”

“You didn’t try to open it?”

“I asked the front desk clerk to open it.”

“Liam?”

“It was a woman. Big-boned. Brown hair. Unusual name. Nessa, I think it was. She said she didn’t have a key. I asked her what was down there. She said she didn’t know because she’d never set foot through that door. I asked her why not. She said because there’s no electricity below ground level, she’s heard it’s full of spiders, she doesn’t like spiders, and she basically has no curiosity about dungeons.”

I was starting to see a pattern with this lack-of-curiosity thing. I guess this explained why the quest to discover the New World had been turned over to an Italian.

“Something peculiar is going on in this place,” he allowed, “and I’ll wager the answer to the whole affair is in the dungeon. I need the key to that padlock. The custodian probably has one.” He looked across his shoulder to the door. “What room did you say his body is in?”

Uh-oh. His police inspector genes had kicked in big-time, which didn’t bode well for a romantic end to the evening. I needed to divert him, and fast. “Speaking of affairs.” I waltzed two fingers up his arm. “Do you suppose you could make your phone call so we could get started on ours? I have the room to myself, the whirlpool accommodates two, and there’s a decanter of bubble bath just waiting to be poured.”

That got his attention. “Bubble bath? I’ve never taken a bubble bath.”

“Not even with your first wife?”

“Especially not with my first wife. Our apartment didn’t have a tub. It only had a shower.”

“Trust me,” I whispered in a sultry voice close to his ear. “You’re in for a treat.”

He smiled with anticipation. Cupping his palm around the back of my head, he covered my mouth in a long sizzling kiss before he deliberately set me away from himself. “I’ll make my phone call. You fill the tub.”

“And don’t forget. There’s something you want to ask me.”

He trailed a knuckle down my cheek and regarded me with his electric blue eyes. “I’m not likely to forget.”

Okay, I wasn’t going to win any awards for subtlety, but if we
did
decide to plan a life together, we had some serious issues to discuss, like living arrangements, jobs, children. Would he want me to move to Switzerland with him? Living in Switzerland might be romantic. Switzerland had Alps, lakes, castles, chocolate. But Iowa had something Switzerland couldn’t offer—Blimpie’s Grilled Chicken Sandwich. Could I survive being separated from my family
and
edible meat products at the same time? I didn’t know. I mean, it could prove to be unbearable. We had
so
much to sort out.
Unh.

I headed for the door, turning back to face him when my hand touched the knob. “Can I ask a favor?”

He opened his arms in a palms-up gesture. “Anything, darling.”

“When you come down to the room, will you bring your gun?”

“I’m not carrying a gun.”

“You’re not?” My voice sank with disappointment. So much for fantasy role-playing. “Then what’s that thing in your front pocket that feels like a gun?”

He slid his hand into his right pocket and withdrew the item in question. “My wallet. Sorry to disappoint you.”

I smiled brightly as I watched him slip the wallet back into his pocket. “I’m not disappointed.” What I’d felt had been in the
other
pocket. Hoochimama!

I hurried back down the corridor, pausing outside the room where Nana had found Archie. The sound of fiddles blared in the hall. The dancers’ rhythmic foot-stomping vibrated the floor. I could hear muffled conversation on the other side of the door, but the music drowned out the words. If Archie was still in there, I hope they removed his body before everyone returned from the dining room. One death was bad enough. The guests might get really creeped out and want to go home if they learned there were two.

I unlocked my door, flipped on the overhead light, and set to work. I rushed into the bathroom and turned on the water full force in the whirlpool. I ran back into the bedroom and stopped short when I noticed that one of the four boudoir chairs in the sitting area was missing. Huh. Had someone moved it to another room? Shrugging off the disappearance, I hurried toward the bed, only to stop short again.

The chair wasn’t missing. It was angled close to the window, as if someone had wanted a comfortable chair in which to sit while they kept vigil over the castle grounds. Choosing to ignore what Tilly had revealed about the ghost’s penchant for furniture rearranging, I told myself that maybe the maid had moved it earlier and I’d been in too much of a rush to notice. Furniture got moved around all the time in hotels. This meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I dragged the chair back to the hearth area, then threw myself back into my preparations. I folded down the bed-covers, plumped the pillows, and spritzed the whole place with the Strawberry Shortcake room freshener Nana had given me. I inhaled deeply. Nice. It smelled like real strawberries. I thought about the odor on our bus.
Hmm.
Locating my shoulder bag, I stuck the canister in one of the outer compartments for future use.

Darkness had gathered beyond the windows. I drew the drapes halfway to create a more cozy atmosphere, switched on the bedside lamps, turned off the overhead, then returned to the bathroom. I set out two fluffy bath towels and a bottle of scented body oil on the vanity. I arranged a cluster of votive candles on the ledge of the tub and unstoppered a container of lavender bubble bath that sat perched on the same ledge beside a dish of seashell soaps and bath salts. When the tub was full, I set the single power/timer switch for thirty minutes and stood for a moment watching the circular jets shoot streams of air into the water, stirring up the surface like monsoon winds.

HRRRRRMMMM! Water bubbled. The jets roared, reverberating off the ceiling and tiles. I frowned. The whirlpool needed a muffler. If Etienne decided to whisper sweet nothings into my ear, I hoped I could hear him. HRRRRRMMMM!

As I reached for the little plastic scoop in the bubble bath container, I noticed the handwritten label attached to the jar: