There You'll Find Me (23 page)

“Me too, dear.” She strolled off with a grin. “Me too.”

Chapter Twenty

From: [email protected]
Subject: Big News

Hey, sis, guess what? You’re going to be an aunt! Lucy and I just found out we’re having a baby. If it comes out screaming, we’re
naming it after you.
Much love,
Alex

W
hy am I going with you again?”

“Because I don’t want to visit the MacNamara sisters by myself,” I said as Erin counted out her money and handed it to Anne Daly, the proprietress of the Daly Read, a narrow scrap of a bookstore sandwiched between the carnation-pink flower shop and McQuarry’s pub. Sean said if a man had one too many at the pub, he could stumble over to the flower shop and bring his wife home some please-forgive-me posies.

“Here’s your change, dear.” Mrs. Daly placed the coins in Erin’s outstretched hand, then tucked her hardback book safely in a cream-colored bag. “Had to special order that one.”

“I don’t know why.” Erin pulled her book from the bag and ran her hand over the unremarkable white cover. “It hasn’t been out long, but it’s bound to be a best seller. Should be sitting up front, standing tall and proud in its own display.”

Mrs. Daly smiled. “I must admit, I did get the same shiver when I touched it as when I first held
Twilight
.”

“What’s it called?” I asked.

Erin lifted it up for my inspection. “
Hair Cell Micromechanics
.”

“I should probably make room on the shelf for its sequel,” Mrs. Daly said. “Fine afternoon to you both. As always, Miss Erin, we thank you for your . . . eccentric purchases.”

Erin led the way outside, where we hopped on our bicycles.

“Did you hear the way she said
eccentric
?” Erin placed her book gently in her basket. “Like I’m as crazy as the MacNamara sisters. Like I’m destined to grow up with a house of creepy petri dishes and hairy hordes of cats.”

“None of that is true.” Well. Maybe half.

We pedaled past McGann’s Pub, the wind lifting our hair like streamers as our wheels carried us over the bridge. Erin turned at the second driveway in a row of sloping homes, lined up like colorful birds on an electric line. The MacNamara place was old, and I immediately knew it would smell damp and musty inside. It was a two-story thing and looked to have been formed of white plaster, with green trim around each crooked window. Droopy curtain panels hung from half of these windows, barely hanging upright, as if they had given up the fight years ago.

I wasn’t sure what I’d find inside, but I feared it was one of those horror movie houses that let teenagers in, but never spit them back out.

Erin had to knock seven times before the door finally opened. It creaked just a few inches wide, enough to see one green eye staring back at us through the crack. “Are you friend or foe?”

With a sigh Erin turned to me. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“Friends,” I called over her shoulder.

“Then go round back,” came the gnarled voice. “Only salesmen and robbers come through the front door.”

Okay then. The side of the house was decorated with broken flowerpots filled with silk roses, their leaves faded and frayed by the elements.

“What is that?” I pointed to the red tailgate sticking out of a leaning outbuilding.

“The sisters’ BMW.” Erin climbed the concrete steps to the back door. “They buy a new one every year.”

“And drive it?”

“On Sundays.”

It only took three knocks this time for the door to open once again. Same droopy-lidded eye peered back at us. “Are you Sean O’Callaghan’s daughter, then?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Erin said. “And I’ve brought a friend. We’d like to talk to you if we could.”

“A visit?”

Erin nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

The door sprang wide open, revealing a grinning old woman no taller than my shoulder. “I’ll put the kettle on. Sister will show you to the parlor.” She cupped her hand over her mouth and bellowed into it like a megaphone. “Hilde!”

A carbon copy woman popped out, as if conjured by our host’s indelicate tone alone. “Do we have guests, Lavena?” The two were clearly twins, matching from the top of their dyed short black hair to their denim dresses and brown sensible shoes.

“Are you blind, Sister?” Lavena asked as we traipsed through her kitchen and meandered toward the parlor. “Are they not standing right here? Did I not say I would get the tea?”

“You’re so snippy today.” Hilde’s voice dropped in a stage whisper. “’Tis no different than any other day. Come sit a spell, ladies.”

The parlor was decorated in the style of
Alice in Wonderland
meets Jane Austen. Sun-bleached paisley wallpaper covered the walls, plastic covered the Victorian couch. Cats covered the plastic.

They were everywhere. Orange cats. Calico. Persian.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Hilde picked up a Siamese and plopped it in her lap as she sat. “Such good companions. Feel free to pet them. They won’t scratch.” The plastic beneath her thin arm was shredded to strips. “’Tis a pleasure to have such fine company today. What shall we talk about?” She tapped a red fingernail to her lip. “The terrible prices of beef that new butcher has brought us? The scandalous way Mrs. Clarke hangs her knickers on the line in the front yard? The fact that
Mr
. Clarke was seen—”

“Actually,” Erin interrupted, “we came to ask you a few questions about—”

“Where that new librarian has been spending her evenings?”

Erin blinked twice. “No.” She slid me a glance and covered up a giggle with a poor excuse for a cough. “Before we get to it, Finley, maybe you’d like to show them your picture?”

I reached into my bag and, after some digging, pulled out the journal. “Have you seen this cross?”

Hilde reached into her blouse and pulled up glasses tethered to a gold chain. “Let’s have a look.” She took it from my outstretched hand, and one of her cats jumped up to sniff and inspect. “Looks like Ailfred McCarthy’s. Yes, that’s the one.”

“Let me see that.” Lavena limped into the room, took the journal, and held it to her face. “You’re as blind as a bat. Anybody with eyes can see it’s Fergus Fitzpatrick’s.”

“Is that right? And how is that when his stone got knocked over in the storm of sixty-three?”

“Well, it’s sure not Ailfred’s,” Lavena said, as if her sister had suggested that two plus two was five. “He died in 1856, at the age of eighty-one, leaving behind one wife and three girlfriends.” She handed me back the journal. “Mrs. McCarthy bought him the plainest marker she could find. Then spit on it the rest of her days.”

“We don’t know whose it is,” Hilde said.

“No, we don’t.” Lavena marched back to the kitchen.

Another dead end. But at least it had been an entertaining one.

“My friend Finley here has been spending quite a bit of time with Cathleen Sweeney,” Erin said.

“Oh.” Hilde’s drawn-on eyebrows lifted toward her forehead.

“Cathleen Sweeney. She’s trouble, that one.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lavena returned, carrying a tray of cookies. Two cats curved around her ankles. “Cathleen Sweeney was a friend of mine, and you best be watching yourself before you say something mean.”

“Friend?” Hilde snorted. “Borrowing a pencil from her in school when you were six does not make you friends.”

“What can you tell us about her husband?” I asked. “What happened between them?”

“He died of a broken heart, he did,” Hilde said. “Everyone knows that. Cathleen stole him from his first true love with her trickery, then after the ring was on her finger, her true colors came out, sure they did. Then he realized what a terrible person he’d married. But it was too late. Cathleen had the baby, then left poor Mr. Sweeney. Wouldn’t even let the man see his own son. Now what kind of woman is that, I ask you?”

“A smart one,” her sister snapped. “That man was bad through and through. You could see it in his beady eyes. Didn’t he have eyes like a snake? Sure he did. The two would be about town together, and Charles wouldn’t let Cathleen out of his sight.”

Hilde ran her hand down the back of a cat bigger than her lap. “Cathleen was a cold woman. A snob. Married that fancy man, then wouldn’t talk to any of us anymore, like we weren’t good enough.” She clicked her tongue as she regarded me and Erin. “She didn’t have a single friend.”

“Because she wasn’t allowed any!” Lavena sat down in the chair beside her sister and glared right through her. “She couldn’t go anywhere without him, couldn’t talk to anyone. He was a possessive man.” Turning toward us, Lavena paused for dramatic effect. “One time the baby came down sick. She never left that house without her husband, but he was at work. She walked into the chemist’s, with a little hat perched on her head. It had a tiny veil that covered part of her face, very fashionable.”

“Charles’s money bought it.”

“Quiet with you, Sister!” Lavena barked. A kettle whistled from the kitchen, but the two ignored it. “Where was I? Cathleen, Charles, chemist, me daft sister being wrong, oh yes. As I was saying, she walked to the chemist’s, and I was working that day behind the counter. I saw her slink in, that veil covering her face, that sick baby on her hip. She stands there and waits for her medicine, and you could tell she was in a terrible hurry.”

“Because she was afraid she’d have to speak to someone,” Hilde said. “Never wanted to make eye contact with the likes of us.”

A black cat stood near my feet and stared up at me, eyeing my legs for landing space. I reached down and scratched its ear and listened to its solid purr.

Lavena ran her red nails through her close-cropped curls. “So there Cathleen was, waiting her turn for that medicine, and her baby started crying something awful. She bounced him and cooed but nothing would do. He cried and cried. Then he reached out and grabbed her hat right off her head.”

“And snakes came out?”

Lavena ignored her sister, her eyes trained right on me. “And that’s when I saw the bruises. On her cheek. Round her eye. That man did it to her, he did. And
that’s
why Cathleen Sweeney wasn’t allowed to associate with the towns folk. Because she’d married a horrible, jealous man.”

“And so she left him?” I asked.

“Och, of course she did. Moved herself across the river,” Lavena said. “What a scandal that was. We never saw her then. Her husband knew herself would keep quiet, so he told everyone who would hear how heartbroken he was, how he walked the floor every night, waiting for his missus to return home. He made more loans at that bank than ever.”

“He deserved his success,” Hilde said.

Lavena shrugged a bony shoulder. “Then . . . he died.”

“And everyone blamed Mrs. Sweeney,” I said.

“Sure they did.” Lavena picked a wad of cat hair off her denim sleeve. “He had a heart attack. Dropped dead in his office whilst giving Jimmie McBride the money for his chickens.”

Hilde shook her head. “Jimmie named his first chicken Charles.”

“Everyone said he died of heartbreak,” Lavena said. “But I knew better. And then three months later, that boy of theirs passed away from the fever. So if anyone had the heartbreak . . . it was Cathleen Sweeney.”

Chapter Twenty-One

God has written me quite a story in Ireland. Every day here, there’s something new to discover . . .

—Travel Journal of Will Sinclair, Abbeyglen, Ireland

W
hat do you think you’re doing?”

At ten o’clock Saturday morning, Beckett got out of his truck just as a rickety taxi pulled up to the O’Callaghans’ house.

A gray-haired old man stepped out of the cab and tipped his cap. “Good morning.”

Beckett thundered toward me. “I asked you what you’re doing?”

I glanced at the aging cabbie, who’d apparently left his dentures at home. “Going on a hot date.”

Beckett crossed his arms, the dark prince staring down his next victim.

“Fine. I’m going to Galway. To see Mrs. Sweeney’s sister.” What was Beckett doing here? He should’ve been working.