Irish Stewed (16 page)

“Alimony,” Tina said.

“Child support,” Jill admitted.

“Anything and everything,” Deb put in. “That man didn’t abide by anything in the divorce decree. He was supposed to make my mortgage payments.”

“And never did,” Tina said. “Mine, either. And he was supposed to pay for Jill’s kids’ private school.”

“And never contributed a penny,” Jill said.

It was a no-brainer, but as long as they were being so brutally honest, the least I could do was be just as aboveboard. “So, what you’re telling me is that each of you had reason to hate Jack Lancer.”

“Absolutely.” Jill nodded.

“With a fiery passion.” Tina grinned.

Deb took a drink. “With all my heart and all my soul.”

“Did one of you kill him?”

Another round of laughs made even the old guy at the bar sit up and take notice.

“I wish!” Tina drifted a finger through the wet ring left on the table by her glass.

“If only I’d thought of it myself,” Jill mumbled.

“We didn’t do it.” It was amazing that Deb could sound so stone-cold sober when it counted. “Not me, not any of us. And we didn’t somehow work together to do it, either. It’s kind of nice, though, isn’t it, girls . . . ?” She looked at her friends. “It’s kind of nice to know someone thinks we’re clever enough to actually pull off a murder!”

I gave them a smile I hoped conveyed my apologies. “I never actually thought—”

“Of course you did!” Deb squealed. “And that’s fine, really. That cop, that Detective Oberlin, he talked to us, too. Seems to me he didn’t find anything suspicious about any of us, because we haven’t heard from him since.”

“So, if not the three of you, who?” I asked.

Jill shrugged.

Tina shook her head.

Deb poured another margarita.

“What about his work?” I waded into the subject carefully. I didn’t want to put thoughts in their heads or words in their mouths. “Have any of you talked to Jack recently? Do you have any idea what he was working on?”

“I called him last week,” Jill said. “The youngest needs braces. He blew me off.”

“I talked to him last week, too,” Tina said. “We shot the breeze for a while but he knew all along what I was calling about. He owes me a bundle of money and as soon as I mentioned it, he suddenly got all busy and had to go.”

“You think his murder had something to do with a story he was working on?” Deb asked.

I had to admit I didn’t know for sure. “I just wondered . . .” I grabbed another couple nachos. “Did he ever mention working on a story about the food pantry over at St. Colman’s Church?”

Deb’s eyebrows shot up while Tina and Jill exchanged looks.

I sat up like a shot, afraid to hear more, afraid not to ask. “He did? He really was working on a story about—”

“Even if he did . . .” Tina waved away the idea with one hand. “What difference would it make? Somebody leaves donations at the food pantry once in a while? That’s worthy of a news story?”

“No way that could have anything to do with his murder,” Deb said. “If you ask me, there’s only one explanation for that.”

Jill pushed the plate (now empty) from the onion rings
away so she could fold her hands on the table in front of her. “Maxine,” she said.

“From the funeral home?”

I guess my question was a no-brainer because two sets of eyes were rolled toward the dingy ceiling.

Tina was even more direct. “Of course it was Maxine.”

“But she told me stuff,” I said, thinking back to what I’d learned over at Worth’s. “About how their souls were entwined and their hearts—”

“Beat as one.” It wasn’t the margarita that made Deb pucker. “Whatever! That little tramp can say whatever she wants about how much she loved Jack—”

“But they’ve been seen duking it out,” Jill confided. “More than once and—”

“Not that long ago,” Tina added. “Why, it was just—”

“A couple weeks ago, remember?” Deb knew her friends did, so she went right on. “We were out to dinner. Our monthly Jack Lancer bashing. And who shows up in the restaurant but Jack and that little—”

“Well, we weren’t about to get up and leave,” Jill told me. “Not even when they were seated just a few tables away. And you’d think they’d actually have tried to behave, knowing we were there, but—”

“No.” Tina somehow turned the word into two syllables. “They had a couple drinks. Then a couple more. Then that Maxine started in on him.”

“About?” I asked.

“Everything. As far as we could tell,” Deb said. “Something about Jack cheating on her. Jack cheating on her! Like she expected anything else from that low-down scumbag?”

I took a moment to process all this. “So, you think—”

“Maxine. Yep.” Jill spoke, but all three women nodded in unison. “Maxine Carmichael definitely murdered Jack.”

*   *   *

I will confess, I did not return directly to the Terminal after my meeting with the Jack Lancer Haters Club. The margaritas made me sleepy and, besides, I wanted some quiet time alone to process everything the women had told me.

Could Maxine have murdered the Lance of Justice?

Honestly, to me, she didn’t look smart enough to plan and cover up a murder, but I hoped it was true. If Maxine was our culprit, that meant Sophie was off the hook. Of course, that also meant figuring out how Maxine—who didn’t seem to have the brains God gave a hamster—could have gotten a key to the Terminal, gotten Jack there, and covered up her crime with enough panache to keep the cops guessing.

I might actually have had time to consider the possibilities if, when I walked into Sophie’s, a couple things didn’t happen.

The first was an attack by a flying furry black-and-white creature who came screeching at me out of nowhere the moment I opened the front door. I ducked out of the way of Muffin’s slashing claws, but not before the nasty critter caught and snagged the sleeve of my linen blazer.

I barked out a curse designed to get the feline version of Godzilla to back off and that’s when I heard another noise out in the kitchen.

Like the back door banging open.

Yeah, yeah, I know what everybody says at the movies when some brainless heroine goes into a dark basement. Or
a kitchen when she’s home all alone and she’s sure she’s heard something she shouldn’t have heard.

I should have known better.

I shouldn’t have done it.

But if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have seen that the back door was wide open.

And I wouldn’t have caught just a glimpse of a person in dark clothes just as that person slipped out of Sophie’s backyard and took off running.

I
called the cops, who told me that, unfortunately, they saw this kind of thing all the time. Some bad guy checks out houses, finds the ones where everybody’s working and nobody’s home, and sees what he can scoop up. In fact, they informed me, if I read the police blotter in the local newspaper, I’d realize there was something of a crime spree going on in Hubbard at that very moment. They were hot on the trail of a burglar who was making off with everything from flat-screen TVs to computers to cell phones, things he could carry away and easily fence. Quick money, that’s what the cops called it, though what kind of quick money some crook hoped to find at Sophie’s modest bungalow was beyond me.

I am not easily frightened, but I’m not stupid, either. I had the two nice police officers check out the house from top to bottom and after they gave me the all clear and assured me that I was lucky (a) to have arrived home just in
time to scare off the intruder and (b) that he
was
scared off by my yelling at Muffin and didn’t decide to confront me, I called a locksmith and had dead bolts installed. On Monday, I’d get a security system put in, too, and tell Sophie it was a thank-you for letting me stay in her home.

By the time it was all over and the adrenaline had pumped its way out of my system, I felt like a wet rag. I changed into shorts and a T-shirt and set the alarm on my phone. I’d allow myself an hour’s nap, then get back to the Terminal.

It was a great plan, but stress—and those early-afternoon margaritas—had a funny way of messing with my head, and in the end, the stress won out. I slept right through the alarm, and by the time I opened my eyes, the shadows outside the house were long and low, and I had been MIA from the Terminal nearly all day.

I have never been a slacker, and I wasn’t about to earn that reputation now. I jumped out of bed, showered, changed, and headed back to Traintown as quickly as I could.

Once I got there, I wondered if I was still asleep, and dreaming to boot.

The street outside the Terminal was packed with cars, and not just the news vans that had made the place their permanent home since the murder. It was a sunny, warm, early evening and there were people everywhere. They strolled from Carrie’s art gallery to John and Mike’s bookstore. They gathered for pictures around the marker in front of the Terminal that declared the building a historic place. They wandered in and out of the restaurant, and in that moment between the time the door opened and when it slapped shut again, I heard music.

Boisterous, rousing, foot-tapping, blood-stirring, heart-pounding music.

Irish music.

Just inside the front door of the Terminal, I froze and listened to the cadence of a muffled drum, the strum of a guitar keeping the beat, the jaunty song of a tin whistle, and the way a fiddle picked up the tune and ran with it. Through the doorway that led into the restaurant, a couple whizzed by, caught up in the rhythm of the dance.

Dancing?

In the Terminal?

I was just about to march in there and see what was going on when Inez dance-stepped her way over to the cash register. “Oh, good. You’re here.” She didn’t sound like she held it against me that I had not been there all day. In fact, her words bumped to the beat of the music. “We called in Judy, and she’s been great, but we can use all the help we can get.”

With that, and with some customer’s change in hand, she danced back in the direction she’d come.

The song ended and a round of applause and cheers went up. Curious, I edged into the restaurant, almost afraid of what I’d see.

The first thing that caught my eye was Declan, wearing a tailored charcoal suit, a white shirt, and a green tie with shamrocks all over it. He smiled, waved, and headed my way.

“What on earth . . .” I looked around at the tables, loaded with patrons, and the four-man band that had set up outside my office door. “What’s going on here? Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be at that first communion party?”

The band started into another rousing song. I guess that’s why Declan thought it was necessary for him to lean in nice and close so I could hear him. “We brought the party here,” he shouted.

“But . . .” I saw Ellen Fury at a table over near the
windows that looked out over the train tracks. She waved and so did the bearded man next to her, who I assumed was Declan’s father, Malachi. “But you were getting ready for the party at your mother’s and—”

“Truth be told . . .” If I thought he was standing close before, I was wrong. Because now Declan inched even closer and the scent of bay rum filled my nostrils and messed with my head. So did the way his words brushed my ear and tickled through my bloodstream. “Word is out, I’m afraid. My mother, she heard your stew is better than hers. She had to come try it, and then my father said of course, he’d come, too, and then Kitty and Pat agreed to ride along, and then . . .” He raised his arms and glanced around, taking in the scene in all its glory.

There were at least four dozen people—elderly men and women, others Declan’s parents’ age, teenagers, young children—at the tables that had been decorated with orange, white, and green Irish flags, sparkling rainbows, and those little pots of gold Declan had brought over earlier in the day. As I watched, a dozen of the patrons headed to the makeshift dance floor, a spot right in front of the band where the tables had been pushed back and the chairs cleared. They swung through the tiny area, feet stomping, hands clapping, and some of the people who sat and watched joined in on a song I didn’t recognize, but they obviously did.

Still stunned by it all, I couldn’t help but blurt out, “But there’s a band!”

“And they’re good, aren’t they?” Declan laughed. “That’s my brother, Seamus, on the fiddle. You met him at Mom’s yesterday. And my cousin Jerry on the whistle. He plays the bagpipes, too, but I asked him to leave those home today. Bagpipes, it’s my considered opinion, are a lot like bicycles—better outdoors than they are in.”

“And the drummer and the guitar player?” I asked.

“My cousins Dan and Martin. Great guys. You’ll like Dan and Martin.”

“But . . .” I wasn’t sure what I was going to say so I struggled with the words. “But how . . .”

“Never ask how or why. Not when the music is playing and the food is delicious and the beer is flowing like water.” When he saw the look on my face that clearly said that was impossible since the Terminal didn’t have a liquor license, Declan laughed. “Sorry, just being poetic. That’s what happens when I listen to Irish music. That, and the uncontrollable urge to dance.”

He didn’t ask if I wanted to, he simply slipped a hand around my waist and pulled me onto the dance floor.

For a second, I was too surprised to do anything but stand there like an idiot, but when the first wave of our fellow dancers closed around us, I had no choice; it was move my feet or get mowed over.

“I don’t know how to dance!” I yelled to Declan; this close to the band, the music was louder than ever.

“You’re doing fine,” he assured me, and as if to make sure of it, he tightened his hold and closed his left hand over my right.

He was a good dancer, and in spite of myself, I couldn’t help but be caught up in the moment and in the effortless way he guided me around the floor. By the time the song was over, my head was whirling like the ceiling fans that turned above our heads.

He grinned. “Another dance?”

I fought to catch my breath. “I can’t. I haven’t been here all day and we’re busy and—”

And what? I could possibly tell him that one more minute snatched up in the crook of his arm and inhaling the heady
scent of his aftershave and I’d be a goner. Instead, I beat a hasty retreat and pushed open the swinging kitchen door.

George should have had plenty of warning that I was coming. After all, with the door open, the sounds of the crowd out in the restaurant flowed into the kitchen like the River Shannon. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he just wasn’t fast enough. Whatever the reason, just as I walked in, I saw him down a glass of amber-colored liquid. I saw the bottle nearby, too, that Irish whiskey I’d bought to add to the stew.

Even when he realized I was there, George didn’t apologize or offer any excuses. He didn’t look embarrassed, either. In fact, all he did was wipe the corner of his white apron across his lips, cap the bottle, and put it back up on the shelf. That is, right before he reached for one of the red and white mints like the ones we kept out at the register and popped one in his mouth.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, George admitted to having a drinking problem thanks to the Lance of Justice, and he said that he was trying to handle it by attending AA meetings at St. Colman’s. There was no use making him feel any more guilty for giving in to temptation than he probably already did, and as I’d learned from sharing a couple of foster homes with a couple of alcoholics, there was no amount of pleading, lecturing, or shaming that was going to help, anyway.

Later, I would casually mention St. Colman’s and tell him that if he ever needed a ride to a meeting, I’d be happy to take him. For now, my gaze swung from the bottle on the shelf to George. “Do we have enough stew?”

“Made another batch. It’s going like hotcakes.”

“What else are they ordering?”

He pointed to a soup pot on the stove. “That Declan Fury,
he said we should do something called”—George consulted the printed recipe hung nearby—“colcannon.”

I nodded. “Mashed potatoes and steamed cabbage.”

“And kale.”

I remembered Declan’s secret ingredient. “And kale.”

“And corned beef and cabbage. That Fury fellow, he said it would sell, even though it’s not a traditional Irish meal. Not in Ireland, anyway. Except I always thought it was.” Considering this cultural conundrum, George rubbed a finger under his nose. “He was right. We’ve already gone through three corned beefs. Sophie, she lets me order from our supplier when we’re low on things or when I need something special. Figured you wouldn’t mind.”

I didn’t, and I told him so. After all, Sophie was the one who made the rules around here. I was just the bookmark, the person designated to keep her place until she was able to return and take control. And besides, from the looks of the orders lined up and waiting for George to plate them, the corned beef and cabbage was a mighty popular entrée.

“Don’t need no desserts.” As I’d already learned, George could only look me—or any woman—in the eye for so long, and it was usually about two seconds. He stared down at his shoes. “That Fury family, they brought the biggest sheet cake I’ve ever seen. Said to serve a piece of it to anyone who comes in and wants one. But that Declan Fury . . .” The way George’s lips folded in on themselves, I couldn’t tell if he approved or disapproved. “He says not to give anything else away, to make them all pay for their dinners, even himself and his family. Even though they brought their party here. I tried to tell him that, you know, that maybe they should get a discount or something, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Before I could remind myself to control the reaction, I
felt the edges of my mouth lift into a smile. “He never listens.”

“So, you’re okay with all of it?” George asked. “The cake and the corned beef and . . .”

I was, and I told him, then headed into my office to catch my breath and take a look at the day’s receipts.

But not before I grabbed that bottle of Irish whiskey and took it with me to lock in Sophie’s desk drawer.

*   *   *

I have never been a fan of traditional music of any kind, not because I think it’s terrible, but because growing up, I’d never been exposed to it. Hip-hop, reggae, country. I listened to whatever kinds of music my foster families listened to and I never realized that traditional music—something I’d always pictured as being sung by men with beards and women with stringy hair—could be quite so infectious.

Or so memorable.

Even the next morning, the beat of the songs Seamus and his cousins had played still buzzed through my bloodstream, and when I got out of my car at St. Colman’s Church, I was humming the tune of the last song they’d played the night before and thinking that I’d keep my Irish specials on the menu another week and invite the band to come back both the next Friday and Saturday nights.

Moving to the beat, I went around to the back of the car to open my trunk and while I was at it, I looked over the church. There was nothing grand about St. Colman’s, that was for sure. It had been built of giant blocks of wheat-colored stone more than one hundred years earlier, and in spite of its vibrant stained glass windows and the army of purple and yellow pansies planted along the side of the
building that faced the parking lot, the church looked tough and solid, as if it grew right out of the rough-and-tumble, seen-better-days neighborhood that surrounded it.

I grabbed the first of the cartons of food I’d brought along for the pantry and went inside, where one staircase led up and into the church and another led down. From upstairs, I heard a choir singing. The food pantry, I decided, had to be down.

I found it along a dimly lit corridor where there was a
WELCOME
sign outside an open door and a stack of plastic grocery bags nearby.

“Grab a bag,” a voice called from inside the room, “and come on in. We’ve got a good selection today.”

I hoisted the box I was carrying. “Not here for food,” I told the middle-aged woman stationed behind a table and in front of shelves that weren’t exactly overflowing. “I’ve brought a donation. From the Terminal.”

Her hands flew to her cheeks. “You’re Sophie’s niece! She told us you were coming to town. Come on, honey . . .” She patted the table in front of her. “That box looks heavy. Put it down here.”

I did, and went back to the car for the second box George had packed.

When I returned to the pantry, the woman already had the first box open. “I’m Jennifer,” she told me, and stuck out a hand. “Can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see this many cans of tuna. People love tuna. It’s a nice, quick meal, and nutritious, too. Now, if only we had a couple dozen loaves of bread and some mayo.” She looked up at the ceiling. Even from here in the basement, we could hear the baritone rumble of the priest’s prayers and the voices of his congregation as they responded to him. “When Mass is finished, there will be a line out the door. It would be nice
if we could give them all the ingredients so they could make sandwiches.”