Irish Stewed (19 page)

“You okay?”

If I hadn’t been toughened by a lifetime of empty promises and by hoping to see the best of people and then seeing those hopes squashed by reality over and over, I think I actually might have shed a tear.

“She was awfully young.”

He settled next to me, his hip brushing mine, and slipped his arm around my shoulders. “If it’s any consolation, Charlie Martin, the guy I was just talking to, he says it looks like she was hit from behind. Her skull was crushed.”

I had enough presence of mind to give him a scathing look. “That’s supposed to be consolation?”

“Charlie said she went fast. She never knew what hit her.”

“What did hit her?”

I felt rather than saw his shrug. “Something big and heavy, and whatever it was, it doesn’t look like the murderer left it behind.”

“How long—”

“They don’t know yet. Not for sure. But I heard one of the techs tell Charlie that he figures it’s been about an hour.”

Honest, I didn’t mean to sigh with relief.

“What?” Declan unwrapped his arm from around me and took a step forward so he could pivot to face me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I could have denied knowing what he was talking about
but, hey, we’d just found a dead body together. We owed each other something, and we might as well start with the truth.

“It means you didn’t do it,” I said.

He bit back whatever words were going to fly out of his mouth and chewed them over for a moment before he asked, “Did you really think I did?”

“No.” That was the truth, too. “But, hey, it doesn’t hurt to eliminate suspects.”

“And I was a suspect.”

“You know you were. Not a serious one,” I added quickly when he made to walk away. Just to be sure he didn’t, I put a hand on his arm. “But I had to consider all the possibilities. You have to admit, you were acting mighty fishy the night I found Jack Lancer’s body.”

“I explained that. Sophie and I were talking. About business.”

I nodded my understanding. “And I believed you. But this . . .” From inside the house, we saw the paramedics lift the body and put it on a gurney. “This sort of seals the deal.”

“It did for Kim Kline.”

“Do you suppose . . .” The thought had been niggling around inside my brain since the moment we saw the blood and the body, and now I took a moment to let it settle. “Whoever killed her, I bet he saw the same promo spot we heard about back at Rockworth. She said she was going to reveal who killed Jack Lancer.”

We watched the paramedics wheel the body to a waiting ambulance. “Looks like somebody didn’t want that to happen.”

“S
o I know you didn’t kill Kim, because we were together last night at the time of the murder, and I know Sophie didn’t kill Kim. And before you ask,” I added, glancing across the stainless steel counter in the Terminal kitchen at Declan, “I know this for a fact because I called over to Serenity Oaks last night and double-checked. According to the woman at the front desk, Sophie was in the lounge all evening for oldies night. With that guy. The one with the fancy mustache. She never left so she couldn’t possibly have killed Kim.”

“Well, I’m relieved to know we’re officially off your suspect list.” He’d brought something all wrapped in foil into the Terminal with him that Monday morning and he set the roundish package on the counter and unwrapped it.

“Bread?” I leaned over for a better look and, while I was at it, I took a deep breath of the wonderful aroma that only fresh homemade bread has. “What kind?”

I would have thought an attorney was beyond the whole rolled-eyes thing, but apparently Declan felt he had just cause. “Soda bread, of course. You really need to add it to your Irish menu. I made a couple loaves when I got home last night and—”

“You bake bread?”

“I bake Irish soda bread.” The way he said it made me realize that in his mind, there was a very real difference. “I couldn’t sleep last night and—”

“You, either, huh?” I wasn’t going to mention it because really, if I did, I’d have to admit that every time I tried to close my eyes the night before, all I could see was that pool of blood soaked into Kim Kline’s carpet and Kim in the middle of it, her eyes staring up at the ceiling.

I wrapped my arms around myself. “It’s hard to get that kind of thing out of your head.”

“Which is why I resorted to baking.” He found a bread knife and sliced into the squat, round loaf. “There’s no yeast in soda bread so you don’t have to wait for it to rise, but still, it took me a couple hours to get all the ingredients together and get it mixed and baked. It was better than thinking about—”

“Yeah.” I wished I’d thought of baking. Instead, in the hours when I couldn’t sleep, I’d paced Sophie’s living room, dodging Muffin’s bared claws and ignoring Muffin’s disapproving meows. As if to prove it, I stifled a yawn and checked out the thick slab of bread he put on a plate and handed to me. “No raisins?”

“Not in my recipe!” He made it sound as if just asking was an insult, but since he smiled when he said it, I didn’t take it too seriously. “However . . .” With the tip of the knife, he pointed to the incision at the top of the loaf. “I always follow the tradition of putting a cross in the top of my soda
bread,” he told me. “Some people say it helps the bread grow. Others believe the tradition started either to ward off evil or to let the fairies out.”

I slathered butter on my bread and took a bite. It was soft and crumbly, the best soda bread I’d ever tasted. “Which do you believe?” I asked him before I took another bite. “Are there fairies?”

“Of course there are fairies and don’t you believe anyone who tries to tell you there aren’t. But this loaf . . .” He took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “When I cut that cross, I thought about warding off evil. The way things have been going around here lately, I’d say that’s our best bet.”

“You got that right!” I finished my piece of bread and accepted another one when he offered it.

“So?” he asked. “You going to add soda bread to the menu?”

“Are you going to give me your recipe?”

He whisked the already typed-up recipe out of his pocket and handed it to me.

“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” I told him.

It was very early and the sun was just starting to creep through the windows high up on the wall to my left; the kitchen was filled with shadows. Declan’s smile brightened each and every one of them. “One thing I’ve never been accused of is a lack of self-confidence.”

This, I was sure of.

I got us cups of coffee and when he offered another piece of bread, I was tempted. I opted for half a piece, instead, at the same time I hoped he was planning on leaving what was left of the loaf at the Terminal. I was already dreaming of soda bread along with an afternoon cup of coffee.

“So . . .” I broke off a piece of buttered bread and popped
it in my mouth. “If Sophie didn’t kill Kim and if you didn’t kill her, who did?”

He brushed crumbs from the front of his black T-shirt. “Good question. And here’s another thing to think about. We can be reasonably sure the story Kim was going to break on the eleven o’clock news wasn’t the story about the Food Pantry Robin Hood because Sophie and I are the only ones who would have cared if that news came out, and since you’ve so graciously”—he gave me a quick little bow—“eliminated us as suspects, there has to be something else Kim was about to reveal.”

“About someone else who didn’t want the story to get out.” I scooped up our dishes and took them to the sink along with the knife he’d used to slice the bread. “She said she was going to break the case wide open, right? She said she was going to reveal who the killer was. If it wasn’t you and it wasn’t Sophie, then it was someone else.” That was obviously a no-brainer, and thinking about it, I drummed my fingers against the counter, and the noise they made against the stainless steel added a thrumming beat to the pounding already going on inside my head.

“What we really need to do,” I said, “is look through Kim’s reporting of the murder. Maybe she said something somewhere along the line. You know, gave some sort of clue that no one paid any attention to because it was small and didn’t seem to matter. I wonder if the station would let us look through their tape archives.”

“I wondered the same thing.” Along with the soda bread, he’d brought his iPad into the kitchen with him, and now Declan tapped the keyboard and crooked a finger so that I would come around to the other side of the counter and stand next to him where I could see the screen.

There was Kim Kline’s face, right at the center of it.

“You got the tapes of Kim’s reporting?” I shot him a look. “How?”

He tried hard not to smile. “I know a woman who works down at the station. In accounting. And she knows people in production. She’s pretty persuasive.”

“I’m sure you are, too, and I’m not going to ask what you promised in return for these.”

“Hey, it’s not like they’re top secret or anything. Most of this stuff is what’s already been on TV. Although there is one segment . . . Well, you’ll see.”

Like Declan, I stood and watched the recorded segments. There was one from right outside the Terminal the night Jack Lancer died. Another the next day with Kim looking as if she hadn’t gotten much sleep. A little shorter story from the next night. All of them pretty much reported the same thing: Jack Lancer, hero of the people, was dead. There was mention of Owen’s arrest and later, of his release. There was talk of a reward for information, of dead ends when it came to suspects, of all the good Jack had done for the community and how much he would be missed. There was footage of his wake and the crowds of people outside the memorial chapel.

In the midst of it all, reporting and commenting and looking suitably morose, was Kim Kline.

“Poor Kim.” I shivered. “It’s hard to watch. I mean, with what we saw last night.”

“Shhh! This is the part I think you’ll want to see.”

He was right. The next segment on the tape was one that hadn’t aired on TV. I knew this for a fact because there was no setup, no banner with Kim’s name on it across the bottom of the screen. Instead, it opened with a shot of Kim asking her cameraman if he was ready, he said he was, and then she—

“She’s tucking a little camera in his lapel,” I said, pointing
to what was happening like Declan wasn’t looking exactly where I was looking. “It’s a little surveillance camera. And then they’re walking into—”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“That was the day she came in here for dinner!” This time when I pointed at the screen, my finger trembled. “She’s . . . she’s taping me!”

“My guess is she had something up her sleeve. Like maybe doing a story about you somewhere down the line, you and your Hollywood connections.”

“If I knew that,” I grumbled, “I might have killed her myself.”

Side by side, Declan and I watched the rest of what the cameraman had caught with his hidden camera. If you asked me, it wasn’t much and it sure wouldn’t have made for interesting TV viewing. The cameraman (I remembered his name was Dustin) turned briefly toward the front door when Denice raced in, apologized for being late, and tucked her Terminal polo shirt into her black pants. Just like I remembered, her son, Ronnie, was with her, and he sauntered by and went to sit at a table along the far wall to wait for his daily supply of free coffee.

Not knowing I was being recorded, I handed Kim and Dustin the menus I’d handwritten, the one that featured my new brainstorm, ethnic foods.

“Irish stew?” Kim crinkled her nose.

I darted a glance across the street toward the Irish store. “A neighborhood family recipe,” I told her, and added, “Though I’ve changed it up a bit, made a few modifications.”

“The Fury family?” Kim sat up and looked across the street, too. “All right, I’m game. I’ll give it a try. Denice . . . I’ll try the stew and, Dustin . . .” She looked his way and the picture wobbled when he nodded. “Make that two.”

“That’s pretty much it.” Declan stopped the videos. “I don’t know about you, but to me, there doesn’t look like there’s anything there worth killing for.”

My mind working over the problem, I kept right on staring at the blank screen. “I don’t suppose while you were charming your way into your TV station friend’s heart, you managed to get a look at Kim’s story files?”

“You think I can be charming?”

It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Not what we were talking about.”

You wouldn’t know it from his grin. “But we could.”

“Except we shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

I was so busy hating the fact that I let out a sigh, I didn’t have time to consider if it was one of annoyance or surrender.

“I don’t do relationships,” I told him.

“Because . . . ?”

I threw my hands in the air. “Because I don’t. Because I never have. Because I don’t know how. You, you’ve got all that . . . family . . .” I’m not sure how I thought throwing out my arms and wiggling my fingers in the direction of the Irish store explained either his family or what I thought of the crazy, wonderful, musical lot of them and how much they terrified me at the same time they made me as jealous as hell. “You’ve got all those people around all the time and you always have and so you know how to relate to people. And me, I’ve . . .” I dropped my arms to my side. “I’ve never had that. I never will. And it’s fine, really,” I added quickly when he stepped forward and I got the sneaking suspicion that he actually thought it might be a good idea to hug me. “But what it means is I don’t do relationships and, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking that’s the only thing you do. Relationships. You’re not a one-night-stand sort of guy.”

Too bad the kitchen was such a mishmash of light and shadows. Otherwise, I might have been better able to read his expression. It was too rock steady to be considered bittersweet, and besides, he wasn’t the bittersweet type. He raised his eyebrows. “I could learn to be.”

I had a feeling he was half-serious so I played it cool and boffed him on the arm. It was that or admit that just the thought made me feel as if all the air had been forced out of my lungs.

“There you go,” I said, “trying to be charming again.”

“And it’s”—his shoulders sagged—“not working.”

“It’s not going to.” I was so sure of this, I lifted my chin. I pointed to him. “Relationships. Family. Stability.” I swung my finger around to myself. “Not so much. I can’t give you what you’re looking for, Declan, and you, you’ve got too much to give me. Besides, once Sophie gets back, I’m outta here. And, admit it, the last thing you want is an outta-here kind of girl. Isn’t that what you told me? You’re one of the settled ones.”

He let the message sink in, then stood tall and inched back his shoulders. “That’s good. That’s great that we’re clear about all that. It’s good to get that sort of thing out of the way right from the start, don’t you think? It’s like—”

“Like something they’d ask you on one of those surveys from an online dating site,” I put in and, yeah, like his, my voice was a little too light and airy and my smile was a little too broad. “It’s one of those things that exes out two people from ever being a couple.”

“Absolutely.” He grabbed his iPad and went to the door.

“Positively,” I called after him.

He backed up to the door and bumped it open with his butt. “Glad we got it out in the open.”

“Me, too. Thanks for the bread. And the recipe.”

“Anytime,” he said, and he was gone.

And me? I was thrilled, right? Well, of course I was. I knew everything we’d just said was true, and like Declan, I was grateful to get it all out in the open.

I told myself not to forget it and while I was at it, I grabbed the salt shakers that needed to be filled and got to work. A moment later, I realized the sun had inched up enough over the roof of that nearby factory to stream through the windows and flood the kitchen.

Funny, though, it felt as if those long, dark shadows were still all around me.

*   *   *

It was that kind of Monday. We were reasonably busy for lunch and dinner and for that, I was grateful, but not nearly as grateful as I was to finally get home that night. It was nearly eight and already dark by the time I pulled into Sophie’s driveway, and I braced myself for what was sure to be another ugly encounter with Muffin.

I dragged to the front door, poked my key into the lock, and when it didn’t slide in easily, I grumbled a curse.

“New locks,” I reminded myself. “Wrong key.”

Though I thought I’d left the front porch light on when I left that morning, I had apparently been in too much of a hurry. It was dark there on the stoop, and I fumbled to figure out which key on the Swarovski crystal keychain I’d gotten from the salesman when I picked up my BMW Z4 was the one given to me by the locksmith on Saturday.