Whiskey Island (55 page)

“Rooney said he looked away, and he cautioned me to always pay attention.”

“It sounds like he’s trying to carry the burdens of the whole world.”

“Maybe not anymore. He said it was over.”

“
What
is over?”

Niccolo shrugged. “I wish I knew. It might solve the mystery.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“He said that you were like your mother, only stronger. And Casey…” He fumbled for words. “Casey was like him. She never did what she was told.”

“It must be Rooney. He’d be the one to know, wouldn’t he?” Megan swallowed again. The lump in her throat was basketball size.

“Did he say anything about me?” Peggy asked.

Niccolo shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“I guess I’m not surprised. He didn’t stay around long enough to know what kind of person I’d turn out to be.”

Megan covered Peggy’s hand. “He doted on you. But by that time he was drifting off, Peg. He’d hold you on his lap and sing to you, but then I’d go in and find him staring into space. He’d still be carefully holding you, but he was a million miles away. I’d speak to him, and he wouldn’t answer. But he never let you fall, never put you down where you shouldn’t be….”

Niccolo got up to refill Peggy’s cup. “Here’s what I think. This is a man who has struggled most of his adult life with serious mental illness, a good man who tried harder than anyone will ever know to fight it, because he wanted to raise his daughters and be a normal person. A good man who probably drank too much, trying to blot out the voices he heard and the impulses he felt. Unfortunately, the forces pulling at him were too strong, and he couldn’t resist. But even now, Rooney Donaghue feels responsible. He’s been struggling for years to protect someone or something, and even though we may not understand why, we can admire the man for fighting the odds.”

Megan couldn’t buy it. Not yet. She had lived too long with the image of a man who simply drank too much, grew tired of reality and escaped it. Left with her father’s burdens, she had been strengthened by her anger to take over the saloon and her family. She couldn’t let go of it now.

“I think it was easier to just go away in mind and body.” She picked up her glass, wondered how much alcohol had affected her father’s mental state, and set it back down again. “Damn, am I going to turn into Rooney Donaghue if I finish this?”

Niccolo made the decision and took her glass to the sink. “I don’t know how much, if anything, alcohol had to do with it. My guess is he drank to mask the symptoms of mental collapse.”

“And I think you’re too easy on him.”

“I’m going to bed.” Peggy stood. “I can’t stay awake another minute, and I want to be there if Ashley…Alice Lee wakes up. We can finish this in the morning, can’t we? At this point, why does it matter why Rooney left? We need to see what we can do for him now.”

Megan was torn between admiration and sadness that she couldn’t be as mature as her little sister. “Sleep well.”

Niccolo waited until Peggy was gone before he spoke. “He left behind three strong women. If he could see you for what you are, he’d be proud.”

Megan didn’t want to go anywhere with that. “Do you have any theories on what he might be protecting?”

He joined her at the table and took her hands. “I do. Want to hear them? Or would you rather wait until things have calmed down a little?”

“I’m listening.”

“The first time I went to Rooney’s shelter, I found an old newspaper article about James Simeon. On the night of the carjacking, I found James Simeon’s cuff link where Rooney could well have dropped it.”

“That was Simeon’s cuff link in our parking lot?”

“They found a matching one when they unearthed his body.”

“Have you told Jon that you have the other one?”

“Not yet. I didn’t want anyone tracking and questioning Rooney. I thought it might frighten him.”

She wasn’t surprised that Niccolo was protecting her father. “Let me finish for you. Now James Simeon’s body has been discovered not far from where Rooney’s been living.”

“I think it’s pretty clear that Rooney knew Simeon was buried there, Megan. He wanted the crew to stop digging. He told me as much. Until a few nights ago, I thought that Rooney had probably found the cuff link where the body was buried.”

“How would the cuff link have surfaced?”

“I thought the construction crew might have unearthed it in a preliminary scraping of the area. Rooney found it, made the connection to Simeon, since he was probably raised on stories of Simeon’s disappearance, and decided it was his duty to protect the body.”

“You say you thought this was true until a few nights ago?”

“Remember I told you on our walk this afternoon that I’d come across mention of a woman named Lena Tierney in Father McSweeney’s journal and wondered if it was your Rosaleen?”

“Go on. I’m trying to make the connection here.”

“Lena became McSweeney’s housekeeper, but I didn’t tell you that her former employer was James Simeon. McSweeney says in the journal that something happened there, something that made her leave. And that’s why he hired her.”

“Aren’t you reaching a little? We don’t have any real proof that Lena Tierney has anything to do with my family. Unless you found something else? Something further on?”

“That’s the problem. The journal stops there. Midstory.”

“Well, that’s a piece of bad luck.”

“Think hard, Megan. Did Rooney ever mention anything to you about James Simeon, a family scandal or secret, anything else about Rosaleen or Rowan Donaghue?”

“Are you implying that our family had something to do with Simeon’s disappearance?”

Niccolo sat back. “I’m trying to put a puzzle together. That’s all.”

She attempted a smile. “Well, we Donaghues have never exactly been adverse to bending the law a little when it suits us. Take Casey.”

“Can you remember anything at all?”

She tried. She sat in silence and let herself remember the stories Rooney had told, but that had been so long ago.

She looked up. “He used to say that, as the oldest girl, I’d be the keeper of the secrets. He meant Rosaleen’s recipes, and he did give them to me. None of them had ever been written down, of course. He didn’t hand them over. He just taught me a little of this and a little of that when I helped him cook. Whenever he was willing and able.”

“Could he have meant something else?”

“Who knows what he meant? I always assumed he was talking about the recipes.” She tried to remember anything else Rooney might have said that seemed promising, but she had buried memories of her father, and unlike the body of James Simeon, they would not resurface.

Niccolo made a tent of his fingers. “Iggy says there may be another journal of McSweeney’s in the archives. He told me if I want to search for it, he’ll help me.”

“Are you going to?”

He looked at his watch. “He’ll still be up. Maybe I’ll give him a call.”

“Now? Does the man sleep?”

“Not much.”

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“Probably, but I can’t.” His eyes glowed with warmth. “Besides, how much sleep am I going to get knowing that you’re down the hall in the guest room?”

“As much as I’ll get,” she admitted.

“I think I’ll call Iggy. If he’s not up, his answering machine will take a message. I won’t wake him.” He got up to do it, and she watched as he left the room. She wished that
she
had something to keep her busy that night other than her thoughts.

35

I
ggy was up, just as Niccolo expected. By the time he arrived, the priest had brewed coffee and set out a platter of sandwiches. Niccolo, who hadn’t even realized he was hungry, dove in.

Iggy sipped from his own cup. “I know we have some letters from McSweeney’s final years. I’ve looked through them before. They’re theological in content, exchanges with another priest who sent them in for our archives after McSweeney’s death. I believe there are also some notes on meetings held and budgets approved.”

“But no journal?”

“The archives haven’t been well cared for until now. We’re still sorting and cataloging. There are entire crates that were sealed away for decades. We’re only just getting to them. It’s possible we’ll find his journals there.”

Niccolo set down his cup. “I’m ready to start.” He hesitated. “Iggy, do you know anything that might help?”

“Has someone confessed secrets to me about the murder of James Simeon?”

“That or anything that might touch on it?”

“There’s nothing I can tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“A little of both, I’m afraid. I was Rooney Donaghue’s confessor, so I witnessed firsthand his disintegration. At the time, he said a number of things that made little sense. I don’t remember much about them. What little I do remember is subject to the distortion of years. What little I’m sure of, I can’t reveal.”

“Did you pass on Patrick McSweeney’s journals in hopes I would be able to put a very old mystery to rest? Did you already know some of what I’d find?”

Iggy’s smile was leprechaun shrewd. “I know more about you than I do about anything that happened on Whiskey Island over a hundred years ago, Niccolo. I knew you wouldn’t stop digging until you found some answers. And with Rooney Donaghue recently back from the dead, I thought that answers might be a very good thing for everyone.”

“There’s no guarantee I’ll find any, you know.”

“Luckily that’s never stopped you from looking.”

Megan had intended to go right to sleep. She wasn’t one to lie in bed and worry about things she couldn’t change. She had never made a late-night decision that held up in the light of day, so she’d stopped making them years before.

Tonight, all the events of the day were crashing through her brain like the giant Finn MaCool, hero of so many of her father’s folktales.

She had struggled her entire life to keep everyone else on track. She had given up high school to keep the Whiskey Island Saloon in her immediate family. She had struggled to give Casey an education and Peggy the stability and love their mother would have offered. Now Casey was facing charges for taking the law into her own hands, and Peggy was facing single motherhood.

No matter how she looked at it, Megan could see that, in a way, she was responsible for both. Right from the beginning, she’d set an example for Casey. Do what you think is right, and the heck with what everyone else believes. Despite every obstacle, even Casey herself, Megan had kept the saloon in the family. In turn, despite every obstacle, Casey had protected Alice Lee from her abusive father.

And Peggy? Megan had set aside her own life for her sisters. She had shown Peggy that if you worked hard enough and sacrificed, you could have most of what you really wanted.

Score two for personal example.

Yet even while part of her cringed at the role she might have played in her sisters’ futures, part of her rejoiced. How could anyone argue with their underlying values? Doing what was right. Fighting for the rights of children. Placing family first. Working hard to achieve a goal.

Casey and Peggy were grown now. Megan had done what she could, made a thousand mistakes and chalked up some important victories. But her sisters were finished products. They would always need her love and support, just as she would need theirs. But they were no longer hers to mold. They were not her children but her sisters. And she was lucky to have them.

Her future stretched out before her like a hallway lined with a series of doors. Some were closing, but others were opening. When she closed her eyes, she saw Niccolo standing in one doorway, neither beckoning nor resisting her entrance.

Unfortunately, her father, a veiled figure dressed in too many layers of dirty clothing, stood in another.

When sleep refused to come, she got up and left the room she was sharing with Peggy and Alice Lee. She didn’t think Niccolo had returned from St. Brigid’s, but she went in search of him anyway. If he had discovered a missing journal, maybe she could help him find the answers to his questions. She doubted he was going to uncover any Donaghue family secrets, but at this point there was no other entrance into her father’s world.

As she had suspected, Niccolo wasn’t home. The tea she had refused earlier sounded good now, and she put the kettle on to make a pot while she waited for him to return.

A noise on the back stoop alerted her that she wasn’t alone. Her first thought was that Niccolo had forgotten his key to the front door. Her second, when she realized the figure on the stoop was of smaller stature, was that someone was trying to break into the house.

The third was that the man standing at the top of the steps was her father.

For a moment she was paralyzed. She couldn’t act or even think clearly.

“Megan?”

She spun around to find Josh in the kitchen doorway. He’d made one brief appearance when she’d arrived with Peggy and Alice Lee; then he’d gone back to bed for the night. She hadn’t seen him since.

“I heard a noise outside,” he said, his voice low. He passed her and peered at the man on the back steps. “Oh, it’s him.”

“Go on to bed.” Somehow having Josh there had brought the moment back into sharp focus. It no longer seemed like a dream. She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll handle it.”

“Nick says he can come in whenever—”

“I know, Josh. He’s my father.”

Josh’s silence said it all. The man on the stoop stood as if he’d been cast in marble.

Megan started toward the door. “You go on to bed. I’ll be fine. But thanks. You’re a good kid. I’m glad you’re here.”

Josh mumbled something, significant only for its lack of clarity. He disappeared back the way he’d come.

Megan took a deep breath and unlocked the door. Cold air rushed inside. The man standing in the darkness didn’t move away. “Hello, Rooney.” She opened the door wider, ushering in the chill and the man. “Why don’t you come inside?”

He didn’t seem surprised to see her, and he didn’t seem to experience any of the emotions that suffused her. He passed her and settled himself at the kitchen table, as if sitting there was his right.