A Turn for the Bad (25 page)

“You awake?” Gillian whispered from the doorway.

“Yup. Did you sleep?”

“Not really. Shall I make some coffee?” Gillian said in a more normal voice.

“Sure. We'll need it. I'll grab a shower.”

It was no brighter outside when they'd finished their sketchy breakfast, although the sky showed a narrow band of light toward the east. “Got your mobile?” Maura asked.

Gillian patted her pocket. “You?”

“Yeah. Should we go?”

Gillian cocked her head. “Well, we could sit here and worry, or we could sit there and worry. There might be more to distract us in the village.”

“We could go to church?” Maura said tentatively.

Gillian shook her head. “Mass isn't for hours yet. The
doors'll probably be open, if you want to sit
there
and worry. At least you could contemplate your immortal soul at the same time.”

“I guess not,” Maura said. “Then I guess we go to Sullivan's and wait. Maybe we could redecorate those upstairs rooms. Something.”

“Let's just go, shall we?” Gillian said gently.

The village was as quiet as when they had left it only a few hours earlier, and nearly as dark. The storefronts too were dark, as was the hotel across the road. As she parked, Maura wondered how many other unseen things were going on, like their odd mission to rescue John Tully. Unexpectedly, there was a light on in Old Billy's apartment at the end of the building. Maybe he was so old he didn't need to sleep. Maybe he was keeping vigil. Had Old Mick been involved in anything not exactly legal, and if so, how much had Billy known? Had he taken part, in his younger days? Old Mick had managed to weather the fall of the Celtic Tiger, but then, he'd owned the building—and more important, the liquor license—outright, so his needs were limited. And now she owned both, but that meant she knew how hard it was to make ends meet, and the world was
changing. Maybe in the past no one thought there was any harm in sneaking in a few casks of rum, but drugs had changed things; the money was bigger, but so was the impact, and it wasn't good.

Maura unlocked the door, and she and Gillian walked in. No surprise, it was cold and dark inside. The place looked shabby and bleak, and even turning on a light didn't improve it. But then, everything looked lousy before dawn, didn't it?

“What should I do?” Gillian asked.

Maura fought down a snarky comment about painting a picture. She wouldn't need many colors of paint for Sullivan's as it looked now, all muddy browns and greys, would she? “Let's get the fire going—that always makes me feel better. Can you find some more peat?”

“I can. Where would I be looking for it?”

“In back, I think. Mick would know—and Jimmy usually brings it in.” But Mick was somewhere out in the dark, either bobbing around on the harbor in a boat or pretending to be a drunk to fool a drug runner or bashing the guy so he and the gang could search the yacht. Or maybe Harry's damn boat wouldn't start and they were all standing around on the shore cursing. And Jimmy wouldn't be around for hours. “There should be a bag or bin or something, somewhere.”

“I'll go check,” Gillian said, and headed toward the back.

Maura was both surprised and not surprised to see Billy standing at the front door, and she went over to let him in. “A bit early for a pint, isn't it?” she said, joking.

“I thought you might be glad of the company,” he said simply. “Am I welcome?”

“Of course you are. Come on in. Gillian and I were about to get the fire going. How about some coffee?”

“That'd be grand.” For once Billy didn't settle himself into that shabby armchair, but lowered himself carefully onto a bar stool as Maura went around behind the bar to make the coffee. “They'll be all right, yeh know,” he said.

“No, Billy, I
don't
know,” Maura said, concentrating hard on measuring coffee and water and putting containers in the right places. “I am in so far over my head, and I don't even know how I got here. And now I feel like an idiot for letting myself think this was just a pretty, peaceful place.”

“Have you not read any Irish history?” Billy asked, chuckling. “We might have stayed out of the big wars, but we've been fightin' one thing or another as long as there've been men on this land. If we can't find an enemy, we fight each other. There's never been enough money nor land to go around, and then the English took most of it and demanded rent fer it. But we've also learned to hide things. Do yeh know, when the English said we couldn't go to our church, the priests served Masses on rocks in the fields? But the tourists bring in money, so we smile and put on the accent and talk about the rainbows and leprechauns and sell them more of the dark stuff and the crystal bowls and the fancy sweaters. But never forget that this country is more than a park for your American pals to take pretty pictures of and think they know Ireland.”

Billy's voice was mild, but Maura sensed an anger under his words. In his eighty-odd years he must have seen a lot of changes, both good and bad. “Then tell me this, Billy, will you? Who's behind the drugs here?”

“Yer askin' if they're Irish? To that I'll say no, or not many. English, mebbe. The real market is to our east, not here, in Europe—we don't have enough people or enough money to make it worth any smuggler's efforts, although I
won't say there's no dealin' goin' on in the cities like Limerick or Cork or Dublin. But mostly we're just a stop along the way from somewhere else.”

That made Maura feel a little better. “If Harry and Mick and Gerard mess this up and they get caught, will the gardaí be hard on them?” Maura didn't even want to think about any of the other agencies up the line. What would the Irish navy do with a bunch of mad locals in a wooden boat?

“Depends. I can't say no, but they mean well. As do you. Maura, there's the law, and then there's doin' what's right. I think our Skibbereen men know the difference, and pray it goes no farther than that.”

A knock sounded at the door. Maura looked out to see Brendan, and he was carrying some bags. Maura let him in. “You couldn't sleep either?”

“I could not,” Brendan told her. “May I join you? I brought some bread and butter—it was the best I could do. I told Anne Sheahan last night I wanted to go after the fish early.”

“And she believed you?”

“No, for even I know there's no fish to be had right now. But here's the bread.” He held up the bags.

So maybe Anne too had picked up some rumors or whispers about what was happening. Lots of odd comings and goings over the past few days, and she had the perfect place to watch, from across the street. “Come on in. Coffee's on.”

Brendan came in and doffed his tweed cap to Billy. Gillian emerged from behind the building dragging a half-full bag of peat, and Brendan hurried over to take it from her.

“What is this, a party?” Gillian asked. “For God's sake, it's not even six o'clock in the morning!”

“The best time of the day. A man can hear himself think,” Brendan said as he knelt by the fireplace and started scooping out the ashes from the night before.

Fire burning, coffee made, they settled themselves around a table in the corner behind the fireplace, as if by unspoken agreement half hiding from any curious eyes. What reason could they give for getting together in the pub before the sun came up? Yet it seemed they were reluctant to hide out in the back room, in case . . . of what? In case the gardaí came to the door and demanded to talk to them? Or in case the lads stumbled in, having failed at their task? Or maybe, just maybe, they'd all appear at the door with a grinning John Tully, saved from the evil drug lords, hale and hearty. Maura wasn't betting on the third option, but she certainly was hoping for it.

So they huddled together and ate their bread and drank their coffee and talked of nothing in particular, and the time passed, very slowly. After Maura had cleaned up after their makeshift breakfast she said, “Gillian said yesterday that I should have beds here in case somebody wanted or needed to crash. I know when we got the music going, the guys who used to play here said Old Mick had something like that set up, where the musicians could stay, but as far as I can see, nobody's touched the upstairs here for a decade or two. Maybe we could take a look and see what the possibilities are?”

Brendan was out of his chair quickly, and Maura guessed that he was tired of just sitting, killing time. “A grand idea. Were you thinking of renting the rooms? Like a bed-and-breakfast? Or merely having them ready as a courtesy?”

“Brendan, I don't know. I haven't thought much about it, since I've had plenty of other stuff to worry about. But if it's this slow all winter, it might be a good time to clean the
rooms out and see what we could do with them. Billy, you want to come up?”

Billy waved his hand at her. “Go on, the rest of yehs. I'm happy where I am, and I'll be here to welcome anyone who stops by, wonderin' what we're up to. Or turn them away, if that's what's called for.”

“Give us a shout if you need us, then,” Maura told him, and led the way up the stairs. “Brendan, I guess you've noticed that this place is kind of built against a hill, so the back is higher than the front.”

“So what you're saying is,” Brendan began, “you've the front room where your bar is, and you've the room behind it where the music goes on, which is higher inside, so there's rooms along the front, upstairs?”

“More or less, I think,” Maura said. “Billy's got two rooms at the other end, one up and one down. Mick let him use them, and I'm not about to throw him out. I think he may bring me luck. But that's separate—he has his own door. On this end I'd have to work out how to get to the upstairs rooms, and make sure there's at least one bath up there.”

They reached the top of the stairs and Maura flicked a light switch, which controlled a single feeble lightbulb in the narrow hall that ran the length of the building. She counted four doors, and from what she could see, one led to a bathroom and the other three to bedrooms, all facing the street. As they walked the length of the hall, they peered in through each door, and it appeared that the bedrooms were crammed with dusty boxes, everything draped with ancient cobwebs.

“Needs a bit of work, wouldn't you say?” Gillian said, grinning.

“Maybe Mick hid treasure here somewhere,” Maura
replied dubiously. “But it looks like he hadn't been up here in a long time.”

Brendan had bravely ventured into the first bedroom and pulled back the flaps on a box. He was leafing through the contents, which to Maura looked like irregular piles of grimy paper. “Maura, I wouldn't be too quick to toss these out—looks like every band that ever played here left a bit of their promo stuff, posters and the like. Could be worth something.”

“Can you see me opening an eBay account and peddling this stuff online, Brendan?” Maura asked, with a smile to soften her comment. “But thanks for the heads-up. I'll set them aside and figure it out later. What about the rooms?”

“I don't see much in the way of furniture under all the boxes,” Gillian commented, “so you'd have to factor that in. I'm sure Donovan's furniture down the road could give you a hand with that.”

“I'll think about it. Anybody brave enough to check out the bathroom?”

“Stand back, ladies!” Brendan took the lead and poked his head into the room. He walked in cautiously and tried the taps, which made some ominous gurgling noises before producing a stream of rusty water, then he flushed the toilet, which appeared to be working. When he emerged, he said, “I'd guess this has seen some use more recently than the bedrooms. Needs a good cleanup, but it works.”

“Good to know,” Maura said. “Anything structural? I don't see any water stains on the ceilings, so that's good, isn't it?”

“Slate, the roof is,” Brendan said. “Built to last.”

Maura was drawn to the window in one of the bedrooms. Peering through the years of grime on the window, she caught a glimpse of the harbor through the bare trees on the
other side of the road. Which reminded her that the others were somewhere out there on a boat, possibly risking their lives. Whatever distraction exploring the unused rooms had provided evaporated quickly. “We should go back down. Thanks for helping me check this out, though.”

“Shall we look at the kitchen?” Gillian said gamely.

Maura shook her head. “Not now. We can think about all that later. And you can try to convince me that I'd make a good manager for a B&B. I'd probably scare off anyone who stopped in by snarling at them.”

“Ah, the visitors expect a bit of an attitude—you'd be fine. It'd bring in a bit of cash, without you having to do much, and mostly in the summer,” Brendan pointed out, “or you could put up some of your musicians, like you said Mick did.”

“I know, I know. Later.”

They trooped back down the stairs and found Billy dozing in his chair. Lucky man, Maura thought, sleeping through the empty hours. Maura felt wired and anxious, and it wasn't due to the coffee.

The day gradually brightened outside, and traffic began to trickle by. In desperation for any kind of distraction, Maura said, “So, Brendan, want to check my inventory and tell me what I should order?”

Brendan saw through her ruse, but was willing to play along. “Happy to, Maura. Can you show me where you store your supplies? And would you be wanting to stock both the front and the back bars?”

“Let's cost it out and see what works, okay? Follow me.”

Maura and Brendan were returning from the basement when Maura heard Gillian's phone ring. They exchanged a panicked glance, as Gillian mouthed “Harry.” Gillian pushed
a button to connect and listened intently for a moment. Maura found she was holding her breath, until Gillian looked at her and gave her a thumbs-up signal. “Bring him here and we'll work things out from there.”

She signed off and with a huge grin she announced, “They've got him. Tired, hungry, and filthy, but alive and well. The gang'll bring him here as soon as they land at the manor.”