The Parting Glass (56 page)

He was still half hidden by a hedge, but Glen was out in the open. Liam drew his gun, but from his protected position there were no good shots. In the split second when a choice was still left, he thought of Irene and Brenna, who deserved so much more than they had gotten.

He raced out into the open, planting himself between Glen and the approaching car, and fired in the driver’s direction. For a moment he was blinded by headlights. He heard Glen shouting, then the blast of shotguns. He spun under the impact and saw Glen dive for cover behind the door of his car.

Liam died without knowing that his body had blocked the worst of the bullets and saved his cousin’s life.

chapter 36

N
o one had added turf to the fire. No one had fixed tea. The sisters listened carefully and questioned Irene when details were hazy, but they didn’t interrupt beyond that. Now the only sound in the room was the snoring of one old dog who’d crept in earlier in the evening, withstood eviction and now slept contentedly at Irene’s feet.

“I’ve auditioned a dozen responses,” Peggy said at last. “But I still haven’t come up with one that does the trick. I guess ‘I’m sorry’ says it best.”

Megan’s own reaction was similar. “If your father hadn’t protected him, our grandfather would have died that night, and we wouldn’t be here.”

“I’m
glad
you’re here,” Irene said. “There’s no reason to be sorry you’re alive. My da made his choice, didn’t he? He didn’t want to die. I’m certain he hoped he wouldn’t. But he stood up for a man he admired, perhaps even loved. That’s not a bad way to leave this world. So many people leave it without ever having done one unselfish thing.”

Casey’s eyelids were drooping as jet lag deepened its hold. “Irene, how do you know so much? Your father didn’t live to tell this story. Who did?”

“Glen Donaghue tracked down my mother after my father died. He was in the hospital himself for a day, injured in the shootout, although not critically, but when they released him, he went looking for Mam and me. By then she had claimed my father’s body and wasn’t hard to find. He told her what my father had done, and he helped her bury him.”

Megan had to know. “Did our grandfather ever—”

“Ever know that Liam was his cousin?” Irene shook her head. “My mother didn’t tell him. She thought that was the way my father would have wanted it.”

“And she brought you back to Ireland? Here to this cottage?”

“Mam didn’t want to stay in the town where Da had died. There was little enough waiting for her here, but it seemed better than remaining in America. Life was difficult, but in Mayo she was among people who understood her. And there were people here who remembered that my father had fought for Ireland’s freedom, and they were willing to help her with whatever they could. She got by, and eventually she married a man who was both good and wealthy, at least by the standards of the day. Her later years were happy.”

“Got by…” Megan waited, but Irene didn’t take the bait. “What about the money?” she asked directly. “The rumrunners’ money? You said that Liam had it rolled in a sock. Did the police find it on your father’s body and figure out where it had come from? Is that why they didn’t give it to her? Or did the bootleggers get it back?”

“I can answer that, I think,” Casey said. “At least part of it. McNulty never got his money back, did he, Irene? Because he disappeared one night a month or so after the Whiskey Island raid, and nobody ever heard from him again. Jon did some research and told me that much. At first the police thought Tim had taken off for parts unknown, but that fall a fisherman found an expensive man’s shoe, of the type McNulty had specially imported from New York, not far from the lakeshore, and they discovered a bloodstained shirt they were almost certain had belonged to him, as well. His tailor swore to it.”

“And if he’d found the money, he would have paid off the gang in Chicago,” Megan said. “It’s unlikely they’d have killed him.”

Peggy spoke for all of them. “It sounds like he got what he deserved.”

“Cassidy got his, as well,” Casey said. “You’ve heard of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre?”

“You’re kidding.” Megan poked her sister in the shoulder. “Cassidy?”

“One of the casualties. Gone and forgotten.”

“Back to the money,” Megan said. “Irene, do you know what happened to it? It’s the final piece of the puzzle, isn’t it?”

“Well, they didn’t find it on my father’s body,” Irene said. “I can assure you of that.”

“Then you don’t know what happened to it?”

“I didn’t say that.” Irene seemed to be enjoying herself, now that recounting her father’s death was behind her. She didn’t look tired, although she should have been, after such an emotionally wrenching tale. But the story was new to
them,
not to her. She had said goodbye to Liam Tierney many years before.

“My mother spoke by telephone to my father just an hour before he died,” Irene said. “He told her he’d hidden the money, and he told her where, in case something happened to him. She didn’t want to hear that, of course, but he made her listen.”

“He hid it?” Casey asked.

“He was afraid he might be caught if he went looking for Glen, no matter how careful he was. So he hid the money, then went to find him. I’m sure his intention was to go back and get the money once he’d delivered his message, that he would have asked Glen to make that detour on the way to get us. But he’d learned to exercise caution in the IRA. And it served him well, I’m afraid.”

“He told your mother where he’d hidden it?” Megan was beginning to think her job in this conversation was to make everyone else focus. “Did she
find
it?”

“She never even looked.” Irene was nodding as if she understood her mother’s decision perfectly. “It was blood money, don’t you see? In her mind, my father died because of it. No matter how badly we needed money, she wouldn’t have any part of it. So we sailed for Ireland as poor as we’d arrived on Cleveland’s shores and as soon as she could buy the tickets.”

“And she never told anyone.” Megan paused. “Except you, of course.”

“Oh, she did try to tell someone, as far as that goes.” Irene took a deep breath, purely for effect, Megan thought. She was a pro when it came to heightening suspense.

“She tried to tell your grandfather,” Irene finished.

The sisters sat in silence, waiting.

“On the day they buried my father, my mother took your grandfather aside and told him that the money was his. She offered to tell him where to find it.”

“And he turned her down,” Megan said, as certain of that as she was that Irene was finally about to end her story once and for all.

“So that McNulty would look guilty,” Casey took up the story. “And in the end, that was probably his death sentence. That was why Grandfather let Liam keep the money in the first place.”

“It must have been a real moral dilemma.” Megan tried to imagine it. “He was a straight arrow, but he was also a man who’d seen his bride gunned down. So he acted against McNulty by not acting. I can understand it.”

“Grandfather went on to serve under Eliot Ness after Prohibition,” Casey told Irene. “He had a long and distinguished career in law enforcement. And I remember Aunt Dee telling us that the day liquor was legal again, he was the first one at the saloon waiting for his drink.”

“And that would be the whole story,” Irene said. “Told to me on my mother’s deathbed. She wanted me to know my father was more than a bootlegger and an IRA gunman. Your grandfather and my father, good people gone, and those left behind picking up the pieces of their lives. My mother found happiness, your grandfather married, and now you’re here because of it.”

“Grandfather had a good marriage, too,” Casey said. “I’ve been told Grandmother and Grandfather were very much in love.”

“Irene, did you instigate this reunion because you want us to look for the money for you?” Peggy asked. “Was that your purpose at the beginning? Do you need it?”

“Do I look like I need it, dear? I have everything I’ve ever wanted. And now I have you, all of you, the family I’ve always hoped for.”

“Then you’ve told us just because it’s part of our history?”

“I know you’re good women, and I know you’ll never tell anyone about my father’s part in the theft, although it was so long ago, I suppose it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”

Megan looked straight at Irene. “But that’s not the
whole
story, is it, Irene? You’ve left out something, haven’t you?”

“And what would that be?”

“The whereabouts of the money.”

Irene’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, I’ve told you where it is. Didn’t you listen closely enough? I’ve told you because I want you to have it, you know. You’re good women, and you’ll do good things with it. And that’s what I hoped for.”

“I’d rather hear the location directly from your lips.” Megan leaned forward and spaced her words. “Exactly where did your father hide the money?”

“Now, do you think I’ve left out something? I’ve told you where he was just before he was killed.” Irene paused for effect one final time; then she smiled. “The truth is as plain as brown bread, dear, as plain as cabbage and mashed potatoes. Da hid it in the next to the last place he went to look for your grandfather. The money is hidden at the Whiskey Island Saloon.”

chapter 37

M
egan and Casey hadn’t been gone for an hour on Tuesday morning before Peggy began to miss them.

On their final afternoon together, and after some telephone sleuthing, the sisters had driven to a small parish cemetery near Castlebar to visit the grave of Maura McSweeney. They’d gazed at the grave with its plain chiseled headstone, each silently thanking the woman whose letters had helped them piece together the puzzle of their pasts. Then they had laid a bouquet of daisies there and gone off to lunch for one final conversation.

This morning, Peggy had been tempted to go back to Cleveland on their flight. The list of her failures in Ireland was already too long. She knew she had accomplished so little with Kieran that there was almost no point in continuing the program she had so carefully set up. Now she questioned every decision she had made for him.

She questioned, too, her relationship with Finn. What had possessed her to become involved with a man who was so immersed in his past that there was no possibility of a future together? She hadn’t set out to fall in love with Finn O’Malley. She had struggled against it, knowing that he was not ready to love again and might never be. But her struggles had drawn the emotions that bound them tighter and tighter.

Perhaps she’d seen qualities in Finn that weren’t really there. Perhaps the healer inside her had been drawn to his wounded soul. Whatever she had fallen prey to, on the evening he refused to help Kieran, she had been struck by a greater truth. Finn cared less for her and for Kieran than he did for his own guilt and shame. She should be glad she had finally seen the truth.

She wasn’t glad at all.

She remained in Ireland, of course, despite the temptation to go home. She had agreed to be Irene’s companion for a year, and Irene had taken such care in the arrangements, never complaining about Kieran’s behavior, his crying or tantrums. Peggy owed her too much to leave.

In the short run, there had been no chance of leaving with her sisters anyway. Kieran was still sick and in no condition to fly. He had been listless since his trip to see the doctor in Westport, with a low-grade fever and loss of appetite. And sound sleep, which had once been his salvation, eluded him.

“He’s not feeling better yet, is he?” Irene, leaning on a cane, stood in the doorway as Peggy rocked her son, who had awakened moments ago from his morning nap.

“Whatever it is, he just can’t seem to shake it completely.”

“He’s so pliable when he’s sick. Almost snuggly.”

Peggy was not glad her son was ill, but she was taking advantage of this very rare opportunity to hold him close and comfort him. In fact, the only silver lining to his illness was the way he seemed content at last to be part of the general human race.

“I’d take him back to the doctor if I thought it would do any good,” Peggy said.

“You might give him a call and tell him Kieran’s no better.”

Peggy had tried that already, but her call had been intercepted by a snippy nurse who relayed the doctor’s opinion that the virus simply hadn’t run its course. Peggy hadn’t told Irene about the call, but now her expression did.

“You could speak to Finn again,” Irene said.

“Finn made his decision perfectly clear. I’m not sure he’d treat Kieran if the poor kid was convulsing at his feet.”

“You sound bitter.”

Peggy hadn’t meant to. Irene and Finn had been friends long before Peggy entered the picture. “I’m sorry, I know he’s been good to you. It’s just such a shame that he refuses to help anyone else.”

“Even you.”

“Especially me.” Peggy looked up from smoothing Kieran’s hair away from his hot little forehead. “I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s never lied about the way he feels. I guess I just thought we were special enough that he would make an exception.”

“You’re very special to him. I’m sure of it.”

“But not special enough for him to take a risk with his heart.”

“He’s a complex soul, our Finn.”

“Not
our
Finn, I’m afraid.”

Irene looked sad. “I’d hoped for something better between you than resentment.”

“It’s not something you should be worrying about, Irene. There are some things that even the kindest, most well-intentioned soul can’t change. I know you sent Finn to pick me up at the airport hoping that the long trip here would be the beginning of a romance.”

“How can you believe such a thing of me?”

Irene’s words lacked conviction. Peggy tried to smile. “Because it’s true. And who knows, maybe if things had been different, if he had been able to put his past behind him, you might have ignited a bonfire. As it is, whatever flickered between us?” She shrugged, hesitant to put it into words.

“Extinguished?” Irene asked.