Irish Stewed (9 page)

“Just need to go over things again,” the detective said.

“Sure.” I motioned him toward Sophie’s one and only guest chair, then realized it was piled with papers. I gathered them up and set them on the floor, then invited Gus to sit.

“Not staying,” he said. “Just wanted to ask about that umbrella stand.”

The office was tiny and Gus took up most of it. Since he didn’t sit down, I didn’t, either, and we stood toe-to-toe. Or more precisely toes of his scuffed black loafers to toes of my snakeskin flats.

“Somebody could have put it there after the murder,” Gus said.

It wasn’t like I was wedded to the theory, so I admitted he was right.

Gus made note of this.

“Except . . .”

He froze, pen to notebook.

“Well, if you saw the ring of dust around the base of the umbrella stand . . .” I assumed Gus already had when he’d stopped in the day before to look things over, but just in case, I led him out of the office. We ignored the surge of reporters who darted toward us and stepped into the kitchen.

“See.” I pointed to the umbrella stand and the floor around it. “Those scuff marks are from where I moved the stand. If someone else had—”

“They could have moved it exactly like you did.”

In the great scheme of things, he was right, but even Gus
knew it was well nigh impossible. He scratched behind his ear with his pen.

“I just wanted to make sure,” Gus said. “We got pictures yesterday, so now if you want to move the thing, you can.”

I saw no reason for it, but I did notice that out the window where George passed food through to the waitresses, the gaggle of reporters waited for Gus with bated breath.

“You want to escape through the back door?” I asked him.

Gus considered it, but gave up the idea with a grumble. “I’d still have to get through that pack of hyenas out front,” he said, and massive shoulders squared, he marched toward the swinging door that led into the restaurant. He punched it open, then looked over his shoulder toward the grill—and George. “We need to talk, Porter,” he said.

George flipped a burger, his back to Gus. “You know where to find me.”

*   *   *

The rest of the day was much the same.

Few customers who wanted to order, and those who did weren’t interested in either quinoa salad or salmon.

Reporters who hung around looking for quotes or gossip or any hint of anything that would feed the frenzy that was the media’s response to Jack Lancer’s murder.

By the time five o’clock rolled around and it was time to close up for the day, I couldn’t have been more relieved.

I told my staff I’d see them in the morning, and rather than stick around and work on the day’s books, I packed the receipts (there weren’t many of them) in my purse so I could enter them into the accounting program on the computer at Sophie’s. When I turned out the lights, locked the door
behind me, and was outside on the sidewalk, I drew in a breath of chilly evening air and worked a kink out of my neck.

In the distance, I heard a motorcycle engine roar to life, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. At least not until I was in the parking lot and a sleek cycle rounded the corner and purred to a stop beside me.

It was vintage, and beautifully restored, too. The painted fenders and center panel that said
Harley-Davidson
were a yellowish olive green outlined with maroon and highlighted with black and gold. The chrome shone. The headlights gleamed.

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised when I looked up and saw that Declan was driving.

“It’s Wednesday,” he said, above the birr of the engine.

“And thank goodness it’s over.”

He sat back on the leather seat. He’d probably come from right across the street, but already the wind had tangled his dark hair and he scraped a hand through it. “So now . . . ?”

I stepped toward my car. “It’s been a long day. I’m thinking a bubble bath and early to bed.”

“Actually, it was what I was thinking about, too, except we only just met. I guess I’m old-fashioned, but it’s probably a little early in our relationship for that.”

When my mouth fell open, he laughed. “Just kidding. Except not about how it’s Wednesday. Did you forget? We’ve got a date.”

My mind flashed back to the day before and Declan’s dinner invitation. My head snapped up. “You weren’t serious.”

His smile was in direct contrast to his words. “I’m always serious.”

“But I . . .” I looked down at my black pants and the pink and white silk mock-wrap blouse that was a little wrinkled thanks to the fact that I’d worn an apron over it much of the day.

“I’m in no shape to go to dinner.”

His smile inched up. “You’re in great shape.”

I ignored the smile and the heat it caused to spread through me like a California wildfire. “I can . . .” I took another step toward my car. “I can meet you somewhere. Say, in an hour or so.”

“Oh no! Because then you’ll call me and tell me you’ve changed your mind.” He patted the way-too-small patch of seat behind him. “Come on, you don’t want to miss the opportunity to ride on this baby, do you? This is a 1926 JD classic, and there aren’t many others like it still on the road and none, I bet, that have been as lovingly restored. Seventy-four-cubic-inch engine, three-speed transmission, electrical lighting. Might not sound like much these days, but back when it was built, this was the crème de la crème.”

“It’s nice,” I admitted, because it was, and talking about the motorcycle meant I didn’t have to think about that picture that flashed through my mind and refused to budge. Bubble bath and early to bed.

“Hop on.”

This time the image I shook from my head made my cheeks heat.

“Hop on,” he said again. “Time’s a-wastin’ and we’ve got a reservation.”

I’d been on a motorcycle before. In fact, I’d driven a few in my day. I could take a corner like a pro and I wasn’t afraid to rev the engine and crank up the speed even in France, where the back roads were often twisting and dangerous.

That didn’t stop me from eyeing the seat where Declan kept his hand. “There’s not much room there for a passenger.”

“You’re small. You’ll fit.” He patted again. “Besides, we don’t have far to go. Unless you’re chicken, of course.”

I hitched my purse up on my shoulder and climbed aboard.

T
ired, disappointed with life, and disgusted with fate or not, there was something about looping my arms around the waist of a handsome man, holding on tight, and feeling the wind in my face that went a long way toward cheering me up.

For exactly forty seconds.

That’s when Declan stopped the motorcycle and cut the engine.

Right in front of Caf-Fiends.

“You’re kidding me, right?” I sat back on the leather seat, my fists propped on my hips. “This is where we’re having dinner? These guys are the enemy.”

When Declan looked over his shoulder at me, his gray eyes gleamed. “Exactly!” He dismounted and offered me a hand and we stood side by side in front of the coffee shop. “You can’t know what you’re up against if you don’t check them out,” he said in a stage whisper that was totally for
show since there was no one on the sidewalk but us. “I thought we could do a little reconnoitering.”

“Reconnoitering.”

“It’s not exactly dishonest and besides, it’s for a good cause. It’s all in the name of saving the Terminal.”

Just because I thought the Terminal was . . . well, terminal . . . didn’t mean I was happy that it was public knowledge.

My shoulders shot back. “What makes you think the Terminal needs saving?”

Declan’s steady gaze moved beyond the brightly lit front window of Caf-Fiends, where a gigantic yellow coffeepot shared space with oversized paper flowers, a couple kites shaped like butterflies, and a half-dozen Beanie Baby stuffed bees that hung from the ceiling on fishing line to make them look as if they were buzzing through the scene.

He leaned closer and, like it was some big secret, he said out of the corner of his mouth, “They have customers.”

I responded with a grunt. “We had customers today.”

“How many?”

I raised my chin. “I didn’t count. But look”—I dug in my purse—“receipts I need to enter into the accounting program. That proves we had customers.”

He made a move to grab the receipts and I had no doubt he would look them over and comment on the orders: coffee, pie, one lentil quinoa salad, some of our usual daily fare—and nothing else.

Before he could get ahold of them, I stuffed the receipts back in my purse. “We don’t need a trendy cutesy display window to bring in customers.”

His dark eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “We?”

I twitched away the implication of that single, loaded word. “You know I was referring to the Terminal.”

“Your restaurant.”

“Sophie’s restaurant, and not a smoothies-and-wraps kind of place. I have plans to make it a little more upscale than that. Fresh food from local growers. Dishes that push the limits beyond smoothies, if you know what I mean. This place . . .” I looked over Caf-Fiends. Like the Terminal, it was housed in a building that had been here long before smoothies were invented. It had a redbrick facade and what looked to be apartments on the second floor with flower boxes outside each of the four windows that faced the street. At this time of the year those flower boxes were empty, but in another month or so, no doubt they’d be bursting with pansies and brightly colored marigolds.

“It’s cute,” I admitted, and then to make it perfectly clear that this was not necessarily a good thing, I was sure to add, “In a cloying sort of way. I guess that draws a certain kind of crowd.” I tipped my head and gave the front window another look. “What they really need is a few teddy bears.”

“You could loan them a couple.”

My stiff smile told Declan I was only kidding.

“Come on. It can’t hurt to see why people are attracted to the place.” He tugged my arm. “Besides, I hear they’ve got pastrami today.”

Pastrami is too fatty, too high in calories, and altogether too salty. I happen to love it.

Together, we stepped up to the door and Declan paused there, his hand on the knob. “With any luck, they won’t know who you are. You can ask about the food and the service. You know, like a spy.”

I laughed. It was actually not a bad idea.

At least it wouldn’t have been if the moment we stepped inside, the welcoming smile didn’t vanish from the face of
the middle-aged woman behind the cash register. “Oh, it’s you.”

She wasn’t talking to Declan.

My cover—such as it was—blown, I extended a hand, introduced myself to the woman who said she was Barb, and threw out a few compliments on the decor that was (truth be told) what we in Hollywood would have described as positively ho-hum.

Faux hardwood floors, and not the good kind.

Aquamarine walls that didn’t even come close to matching the touches of color in the fabric curtain in the doorway below the
RESTROOMS
sign and the cloth napkins piled on a nearby buffet.

Framed prints lined like soldiers on either side of the long, narrow room, each picture featuring coffee in some way, shape, or form. Coffee beans. Coffeepots. Coffee drinkers.

Barb showed us to a table and I tried (not very successfully) not to notice that despite the ambience, there were more patrons in Caf-Fiends than we’d had at the Terminal all day. A couple in the corner munched decent-looking salads. Other patrons were scattered here and there among the twenty tables, sipping coffee, eating wraps, enjoying brownies that looked both decadent and delicious.

“Two pastrami sandwiches,” Declan said the moment we sat down. “And I’ll have an espresso. My date . . .” He grinned at me across the table. “Something tells me she’s the iced green tea type.”

“Iced green tea will be fine,” I told Barb, and when she walked away, I added, “though I could have ordered for myself.”

“Just being the perfect escort.” Declan sat back and looked around. “So, what do you think?”

“Does it matter? What do you know about restaurant operations, anyway?”

“I know what I like. And I know where I like to spend my money.”

“Fair enough.” I nodded. “Here or at the Terminal?”

Lucky for him, I may have put him on the spot but he didn’t have to answer right away. Another woman hurried over. She set a tall plastic cup with my green tea in it on the table in front of me but she never looked at me once. She was too busy staring, dewy-eyed and practically drooling, at Declan.

“Nice to see you again, Declan.” The name tag that was handwritten in pink Sharpie and pinned to her blue and white blouse said she was Myra, and Myra twinkled down at my dinner date for all she was worth. “You haven’t been here in a while.”

“I’ve been kind of busy.”

Myra’s hair was the color of a chestnut and pulled back into a ponytail and she wore blusher that was a little too plummy for her olive complexion. Even so, I watched her pale. “You mean on account of the murder. Isn’t it awful?” In a better, more perfect world—one that was not running strictly on the hormonal overdrive that had clearly taken over Myra’s senses the minute she laid eyes on Declan—she actually might have asked the question of me, seeing as how I was the proprietor (temporary or not) of the place where the murder had taken place. But Myra had eyes only for Declan.

She put a hand on his arm and—I swear this is true—batted her eyelashes. “It must be horrible for you. I mean, your store being so close to where the murder happened.”

“It’s worse for Laurel.”

When Declan looked my way, Myra’s smile wilted. He
brought it back to life when he leaned just a little closer to her. “She found the body.”

“Oh. My. God.” As if there were cooties associated with the discovery and I was still carrying them around, Myra stepped back and away from me. Which, coincidentally, put her just a little closer to Declan. “You must be, like, grossed out! We’ve got hand wipes,” she announced, because I either looked like I needed them or she thought that the remnants of Jack’s murder could be so easily cleaned away. “I’ll go get you some.”

Big points for Declan: he waited until Myra was gone before he broke into a grin.

“She likes you,” I said.

Barb brought over his espresso and Declan added sugar and stirred. “Myra’s not my type.”

I couldn’t possibly pass up an opening like that. “So what is your type?”

“Irish,” he said quite simply. “If I ever dated a woman who wasn’t Irish, my family would disown me.”

Let’s face it, he had to be kidding so it was perfectly all right for me to laugh.

At least until he said, “Are you Irish?”

I sipped my green tea. A little sweet, but not half-bad. “I have no idea,” I admitted. “I don’t know anything about my biological family.”

He considered this for a moment. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to not be clued in on a couple hundred years of family history.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“It’s”—he lifted a shoulder—“it’s just the way things are in my family. A lot of us live close together and even the ones that don’t are always passing through. We visit. We talk. Constantly. There’s never a moment in a day when
somebody’s not talking to somebody in the family. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. My cousins and I, we grew up together. We went to school together. We got in trouble together!” There was that easy smile again. A second later, it faded. “Do you ever feel . . .”

I wasn’t sure if he was searching for the right word or wondering if he’d gotten himself into a conversation he didn’t know how to get out of, so I finished the sentence for him. “Alone? No.” It was a lie, but rather than give him time to notice, I was quick to ask, “Don’t you ever wish you could have some time without your family smothering you?”

“It’s not so much smothering as it is intense interest. In everything each of us does. I think it’s true of the Irish in general—the importance of family loyalty, the need to communicate and share. But it’s more so with us. We’re Travellers.”

I guess my blank stare said it all. Smiling, Declan leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Some people say that Travellers are Irish Gypsies, but that’s not technically right. We’re not related to the Romany people in any way. We’re Irish, through and through. The Travellers are an itinerant people; we have been for as long as anyone can remember. In fact, there are those who claim we’ve been separated from the settled community for more than a thousand years.”

“So you . . .” The concept was new to me, and I turned it over in my head. “Travel?”

“Well, some of us do. My immediate family—my parents, Uncle Pat, and his family— we’ve been settled here in Hubbard for going on sixty years now. There are whole communities of Travellers in the U.S., some in Texas, some in South Carolina.”

“Where Owen is from.”

He nodded. “A lot of the Travellers keep to the old lifestyle, even in this country. They settle down for the winter, then go on the road in the warmer months doing any work they can find. A lot of them do home repairs, yard work, maintenance. That sort of thing.”

“But not your family.”

“Not my
immediate
family. They’re all my family.”

“And the Travellers, they’ve been doing this forever?”

“Well, it depends which legend you believe. Some say that the first Travellers were the tinsmiths who made Christ’s cross. They were cursed to travel the world until Judgment Day. Another theory is that the Travellers are the descendants of the people who were made homeless by Oliver Cromwell’s military campaign in Ireland in the 1650s. I’m more inclined to believe that we can trace our roots back to the poets and minstrels of the Middle Ages. They traveled the country telling stories and singing songs and they were much admired.”

A gene pool that included the entertainment industry. It explained his glib tongue and maybe even the smile that never failed to make me feel as if Declan and I were the only two people in the world.

He used it on Myra when she brought over our sandwiches and I practically saw her melt beneath the heat of it. I was appalled to think I looked as starry-eyed when Declan looked at me that way, and vowed that I’d never let it happen.

I couldn’t help but notice that his sandwich was considerably bigger than mine.

“I love my family to pieces,” he admitted, unrolling his silverware from a not-quite-aquamarine napkin. “There’s no use even trying to fight being in the middle of them. They’ll never back off!”

Myra had yet to walk away, and seeing that Declan was
ready to eat, she set the wipes down on the table near my plate. “If you need anything else”—she smiled down at Declan—“you know where to find me.”

“You know where to find me.”

It was exactly what George had told Gus Oberlin, and, thinking about it and the murder, I pushed my plate away.

“Oh no.” Declan already had his sandwich in one hand, but he shoved my plate closer to me with the other. “This is quality stuff, and you’re not going to waste it.” His wink would have been comical if not for the fact that his smoky gaze had a way of drawing me in and making me feel as if my feet didn’t touch the floor.

I shook away the thought and grabbed my sandwich.

He bowed his head for a moment before he took a bite and chewed. “So?” he asked between bites. “How does it compare? To Terminal food, I mean.”

“Oh no. You’re not going to get off that easy.” I took a bite, chewed, and sat back. “You never answered the question I asked you before. Where would you rather spend your money, here or at the Terminal?”

He’d just chomped into his sandwich and he held up one finger to tell me I’d have to wait for his answer.

Yeah, like a stall tactic like that was going to distract me.

“Well,” I said, the second he’d swallowed, “which is it? This place? Or Sophie’s?”

“Depends what’s on the menu,” was his answer.

“Comfort food or trendy wraps?”

“Depends on what I’m in the mood for.”

I refused to let him get to me. “But if you were just walking in off the street, if you didn’t know anything about the restaurants or the owners or anything else, which would you choose?”

“It’s awfully good pastrami,” he said, then because he
apparently saw the flare of anger in my eyes, he added, “but the espresso’s nothing to write home about.”

“We don’t serve espresso at the Terminal.”

“Maybe you should.”