Whispers in the Mist (30 page)

Once again, Danny’s mind ricocheted back to Ellen, pale and limp in her hospital bed, the massive bandage encasing her head, the feeding tube chafing her nostrils, the catheter bag dangling beside the bed. Malcolm had fooled her with his charm.

But then, she’d been ripe for the fooling. Danny had left her to wander her own sad orbit alone.

Continuing where he’d left off with the Glenfiddich at Fox Cottage, Danny chugged a mouthful of Calvados, sputtering at its burn. He peered at a bulletin board hung beside the refrigerator. Snapshots showed Malcolm in the midst of his Lisfenoran life, smiling on the threshold of his shop, smiling on a plaza bench with newspaper folded over his knee, smiling at what looked to be a committee meeting for some local event, smiling in Alan’s pub.

The images centered on Malcolm and only Malcolm amidst random arms and legs. The star of his own Malcolm Show.

Danny tipped back a long, lingering sip of Calvados, now savoring its initial harshness and noting the earthy apple and cinnamon aftertaste. He decided that Ellen would like it.

He emailed John McIlvoy from his mobile.
Come out of hiding and meet me at Malcolm’s flat. I dare you
.

Within five minutes he had his answer:
Tempting, but I’m more for disappearing. —
The Talented Mr. McIlvoy

Danny tried the door to Malcolm’s workroom—double-locked—and settled himself on a rolling chair to gaze at the play of streetlight through the Waterford vase. The Calvados glided down this throat, stinging less than the nagging sense that he was missing a crucial connection.

FIFTY
-
TWO

M
ERRIT ROUSED HERSELF WITH
a jerk and stumbled out to the living room where Gemma slept on the couch next to the fireplace. She surveyed the lamp she’d left on as a nightlight, the banked peat fire, and Gemma curled under three blankets. All as it should be.

She checked her mobile. Dermot had texted. He’d decided to drive to Dublin in the middle of the night to fetch his Aunt Tara back to Lisfenora. Arrival sometime in the morning.

“Shoot.”

Returning to the bedroom, she sank onto the bed and tossed around for a while. But it was no use. There was no way she was falling back asleep now. She turned on the bedside lamp. A framed photo of the Ahern family in happier times stood next to the lamp. Laughing Mandy and Petey with a hugely pregnant Ellen. Merrit angled the picture toward the lamplight for a closer look.

Ah, jeez. She closed her eyes, pressing the picture against her chest. How much could a man like Danny take?

He had crashed out of the house hours earlier. She’d felt a peculiarly male steam coming off him, a mix of impotence and recklessness and determination. If he was thinking clearly, he hadn’t shown it.

And here she was, in his bed, precisely where the villagers had thought she’d been cavorting all along. How perfectly ironic.

A faint creak settling into the sound of the wind rattling the casement windows drew her out of bed again. Merrit peeked out the curtains but saw nothing but darkness. The inactivity, the waiting, the expectation of an answer gnawed at her. Gemma lay in the living room like a totemic cipher, inviting the rest of them to circle around her in prayerful desire for her to bequeath her secrets unto them.

In the living room, Merrit poked at the peat pellets until they glowed orange. There had to be food in the house besides the cereal she’d brought. A draft slithered around her ankles as she entered the kitchen. She froze at the sight of the back door creaking on its hinges. A long line of night stared back at her. Grey Man, she thought. Could be it was about to ooze inside and flip her off her feet and drag her away into the murk.

“Oh, stop it.”

She pushed the door to slam it good and shut, but the wood pushed back. Hard. Her face exploded in pain. She bent over and cupped her nose as footsteps shambled past her, none too steady, stealthy, or fast.

Catching her breath, she ran into the living room. She gasped at the sight of a man with hands encircling Gemma’s throat.

“What are you doing?” she yelled. “Seamus, stop!”

She grabbed Seamus around the shoulders and used her body weight to pull him away from Gemma. He fell on top of her in a fug of unwashed grief and struggled like a stuck beetle before rolling off her. Merrit scrambled to her feet, but as quickly as the violence had occurred, it died.

Seamus approached Gemma again. He raised his hands, but this time his shaking fingers grabbed at air before landing on Gemma’s shoulders. Gemma opened her eyes and stared into space.

Merrit despaired of her. If Seamus’s hands around her neck weren’t enough to wake her up, then what would?

Merrit grabbed Seamus by the arm. He almost went down again, but she managed to prop him up and push him toward the bedroom, picking up a wrought iron fire poker on the way. She let go of Seamus and pointed the poker at him.

Seamus buried his face in his hands. His Hail Marys and Holy Fathers lacked conviction, as if he knew it was too late for him.

“Have you gone insane?” Merrit said.

Seamus was too caught up in misery to heed her, now muttering that he didn’t know where it had all gone wrong.

“Seamus!” She nudged him in the arm with the poker. “You had to know someone would be here with her. What were you thinking?”

He raised a bloodshot gaze toward her. His face crumpled. “My son.”

He curled into a ball on the bed, mumbling something about not caring anymore.

Merrit grabbed her mobile off the dresser. “I need to call the guards now.”

“I know what you’re thinking, lassie, and you don’t know the half of it. You don’t know anything.” He curled tighter into himself and buried his hands between clenched thighs. “All I wanted was to ensure Brendan’s future.”

Seamus’s attempt at a smile was nothing but a ghastly effigy. “In for a step, in for a mile to hell.”

FIFTY
-
THREE

B
Y THE TIME
M
ALCOLM
arrived home after his fancy date, Danny had finished the Calvados and let his senses relax into a mellow swirl of impressions and half thoughts. It helped that the alcohol had diluted his anger. Without the excess emotion, he thought things might make sense. But they didn’t. He’d have to go with his instinct when it came to talking to Malcolm.

Malcolm appeared with welcome smile prepared. He wore a slim blue suit and a mauve tie with a faint sheen of silver threads sewn into the weave. His woo-the-lassies tie, no doubt. A little bold but sensitive at the same time. He was like a standard poodle, showy and sociable.

“McIlvoy warned you I was here,” Danny said. “Nice of him.”

Malcolm checked his watch and glanced around the place. His gaze landed on the empty Calvados bottle. “Danny, Danny, Danny, is this perverse payback for my
liaison
with Ellen? I might have to get you fired. You know that, don’t you?”

“I admit to a
perverse
pleasure in breaking into your place, so let’s call it even for shagging my wife. I do have some bad news, though.”

Humming a little, Malcolm slid the jacket from his shoulders. “Honestly, Ellen and I had a fine friendship through the auction fundraising committee. I didn’t realize I was leading her on. But then she began showing up at my place.” He held the jacket up, gave it a shake, and laid it carefully on the kitchen countertop. “I swear, sometimes I think I ought to check my charm at the door. Gets me in trouble I’m sad to say.”

Danny counted to three and exhaled. “Women can be tricky. I feel for you.”

With gentle tugs Malcolm loosened his tie and drew it from around his neck. He held it up so the two ends dangled at exactly the same length, gave it a shake as he had the jacket, and folded it in half before laying it on top of his jacket. “Versace. Silk. Available in Dublin, but then you don’t get there often, do you?”

“Too true,” Danny said. “But then I don’t have a good income from a jewelry business, do I?”

Malcolm wagged a playful finger in Danny’s face. “Now, now. I’ll fix us tea. A nice green tea sent over from Harrods of London.”

Danny transferred himself to a bistro-style table that sat opposite the sink. Despite himself, the more he observed of Malcolm, the more fascinated he became. It was a special breed of fascination tinged with loathing.

“There now.” Malcolm set a tea tray on the table and slid into place across from Danny. He poured hot water into loose-leaf tea strainers that perched on their teacups. “Milk, sugar, lemon?”

“I’m fine without,” Danny said. “You’re not the least bit curious about the bad tidings I bring?”

Malcolm stirred milk into his tea. “You’d be a likeable fella if you weren’t so tedious.”

“Related to Firebird Designs, I’m afraid.”

Danny made a show of rifling through his pockets. He placed the opal necklace that he’d borrowed from Nathan alongside the matching earrings that Merrit had retrieved from Gemma’s jacket pocket. “As you can imagine, I didn’t notice the workmanship on the earrings when I found them in my wife’s jewelry box. So kind of you to give them to her, I’m sure. But I wonder at anyone breaking up a set like this.”

The teacup tinged against its plate as Malcolm set it down. His hand crept toward the necklace. Danny slapped it away. “Now, now, I may be an unimaginative member of the Gardaí, but even I know a good story when I hear one. And there’s no use telling me these aren’t a set, a special set made for Siobhan McNamara, because we’ve got corroboration and all that boring Garda shite.”

“Of course these are Firebird. That goes without saying,” Malcolm said. “I’d vouch for them myself, but as to anything else—”

“McIlvoy must have panicked after he killed Siobhan because he didn’t take the time to grab her earrings as well as the necklace. That was quite the sorry mistake on his part, wasn’t it? Imagine, years later, they appear on a boy named Toby Grealy—McIlvoy’s own son. And no mistaking it this time. They were stolen off him well and good.”

“I wouldn’t say John was the panicky type,” Malcolm said, “and, anyhow, you’re farting in the wind with your conjectures. But entertaining, I must say.”

“Oh, I’m sure. The bad news for Firebird Designs is that now we have to investigate the business. In depth, you see. Who knows what we’ll find?”

“This is preposterous.”

“Indeed. Preposterous that our lost boy’s mother’s earrings went from his earlobes to my wife’s jewelry box. You gave these tainted things to Ellen, so that gets me wondering how the devil you got them.” He raised his hand. “I know it. You were with my wife the night Toby Grealy died, and I’ll be the first to admit that my imagination hasn’t plumbed that oddity yet.”

“Because there’s no oddity about it.”

“Then there’s this necklace, found on the itinerant Sean Tate, Nathan’s father.”

Malcolm sniffed and sipped. “Nathan. He’s not one of us.”

And you are?
Danny didn’t say.

“Planting the necklace on Sean Tate was a handy way to unload a piece of incriminating evidence in the Siobhan McNamara murder case.”

Malcolm reacted by cocking his head like an inquisitive—what?—cocker spaniel? Danny wondered what it would take to bring out his inner pit bull.

“Altruistic of you to befriend Sean Tate on behalf of McIlvoy. Whether you or McIlvoy, we know—”

“Please don’t talk about us as if we’re interchangeable.” Malcolm shuddered. “You can’t imagine how that irks me.”

Danny paused. “I imagine so, because you’re the real brains behind the operation, aren’t you?” He was feeling his way in, trying to get at the heart of Malcolm. “What you’d love most of all is your picture on the artist’s statement in your shop.”

“And why not?” Malcolm said. “I’m the face of the brand, after all.”

“You like to deflate others and inflate yourself, don’t you? That’s not a healthy recipe for seeing reality clearly.”

Malcolm’s lips thinned, sharp as ice chips. “You talk to me about reality, when you’re sitting here telling ridiculous stories to take your mind off your almost-dead wife. But if it helps you cope, who’s to say what’s healthy and what’s not healthy?”

Danny steadied himself by squeezing his knees. “We have a theory about why you faked McIlvoy’s death. We call it the Golden Goose Theory.”

Malcolm merely raised his eyebrows and checked the water level in the teapot.

“You help protect McIlvoy in return for a greater share in the business. I imagine your share has grown over the years. You’re a persuasive fellow when you want to be.”

“That’s the closest you’ve come to an astute thought since I arrived.” Malcolm gazed down at his fingernails and gave them a quick buff against his trousers. “But still, there you sit looking like you know what’s what. But how could you? You don’t know how I’ve languished under his name. I’m the proper figurehead, but you can’t just go changing a brand, not one as well-respected as Firebird. I’m after maintaining its brand integrity, and that’s meant living with McIlvoy—”