An Early Wake (14 page)

B
y the time Sean finally arrived it was late in the afternoon, although Maura had been so rushed that she hadn’t noticed the time. As she had told Bridget, there were more curious people who wanted to hear about the music and the death, which apparently made an appealing combination. It was fairly quiet when Sean walked in, during the lull between the lunch crowd and the predinner crowd. He looked tired.

“Hey, Sean,” Maura said when he came over and leaned against the bar. “You look like you could use a coffee.”

“Could yeh make it a tea, please?” He settled himself on a stool.

“Coming up.” She filled a pot with hot water from the coffee machine’s spout, added a pair of Barry’s tea bags, and set it down to steep before turning back to talk to him. “So, did you talk with Tim?”

“Couldn’t find him,” Sean said. “This morning, I checked at the Keohanes’ where he’s been stayin’, and Ellen let me in. His things are there, but there’s no sign of him. Hasn’t come back either, or so she says—I was just over there again.”

“Damn,” Maura said, more to herself than to Sean. “He promised he’d talk to you. Maybe he went on a long walk to clear his head and got lost.” Not that city boy Tim had seemed like much of a hiker to her.

“I hadn’t the time to hunt for him earlier, what with the meeting at the station this mornin’. I thought I’d stop by and see if he’s here.”

“I haven’t seen him yet today. How’d the meeting go, if you can tell me?”

Sean glanced around the room, assessing the crowd, which was made up of Old Billy, chatting volubly to a stranger, and a small group of thirtyish guys near the front window, talking about sports. Apparently he decided it was safe to talk. “We’ve learned a bit more about Aidan Crowley, not all of it good.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Well, he’s lived in Cork city or thereabouts the last few years. But he’s been all over. We’ve had no luck finding his family, since we don’t know where he came from. Doesn’t seem to have had a fixed address. We don’t know if he was employed. It’s a wonder Niall stumbled on him when he did. Have you seen Niall today?”

“No, I haven’t. Hold on.” Maura turned to ask Mick, who was swabbing off tables and seeing to the fire. “Do you know if Niall’s gone back to Dublin for good, or if he’s planning to come in today?”

“He didn’t tell me, no surprise, but the feelin’ I had was that he wanted to stay around to see how this thing with Aidan plays out—I think he feels guilty for drawin’ him in.”

“Do you know where he’s staying?” Maura asked.

“No. Maybe in Glandore? I didn’t ask, and he didn’t share it with me.”

Maura turned back to Sean. “Sorry, we don’t know. But I’d agree with Mick—he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to move on or to get back home. Do you need to talk to him again?”

“We’ve had his information, and there’s no cause to look for him. But if he should come back, I’d like a word.”

“Sure.” Maura pushed the teapot, along with a mug, sugar, and milk, across the bar to Sean. “There you go.”

“Ta, Maura.” Sean hesitated a moment before going on, “I’d rather hear it from him, of course, but could yeh give me the heart of what it was Tim told yeh last night?”

Maura wondered if Tim would be offended or angry if she shared his secret. But then, she owed no loyalty to Tim, and she trusted Sean’s discretion. Plus her business was in the middle of the mess. She came out from behind the bar. “Let’s sit over there, where it’s more private.” She gestured toward a table in the far corner, away from the sports fans. Sean picked up his mug of tea and followed her.

When they were settled Maura said quietly, “Tim says he’s the result of a one-night stand his mother had with a musician, but she never named names, and now she can’t. Tim did some math and some research and decided Aidan was a possibility, so they met out back after the pub closed Saturday night, to talk. Tim said that Aidan denied knowing his mother—well, more like he couldn’t remember those days at all, which isn’t exactly denying it, but he simply didn’t know. I think Tim was hurt—he’d probably gotten his hopes up. But he swears that he left Aidan alive and well, outside the building.”

“Did yeh believe him?” Sean asked in the same low tone.

“I think so. He seems like kind of a lost kid—his mother’s gone now, and he wants to figure out who he is. I don’t think he wanted anything like money or a public announcement from Aidan, he just wanted to know.”

“Which he didn’t get. Did Tim seem angry last night, when you talked to him?”

“No, more like sad.”

Sean digested that before saying, “It wouldn’t have taken much to bring on Aidan’s heart attack. Even a threat from a strong young man could have been enough. And maybe Tim panicked after and ran off, so didn’t see where Aidan went. He could have made his way inside, before . . .”

“I get it,” Maura said quickly. “But I have trouble seeing Tim attacking anyone. Was Aidan’s neck badly bruised?”

“Are you asking how strong a man it would have taken? Or how long the man kept his hold? Truth is, it wouldn’t have taken much force. We need to find Tim,” Sean said. “Would Rose know anything about his whereabouts?”

“You can ask her, assuming it’s okay with Jimmy—I don’t know what your rules for interrogating underage kids are around here.”

Sean looked startled by Maura’s implication, and then he smiled. “It’s just a few questions, Maura. Is she here?”

“She was in this morning, but may have run home to put something on for Jimmy’s dinner. She’ll be back. I told her we might need her, if people keep coming in.”

“I’ll look out for her, then.”

Maura leaned her elbows on the table. “Sean, what happens next? I mean, you guys have talked to everyone who you know was here on Saturday, and any outsiders they could name. You’ve done some digging into Aidan’s past. Have you found out more about him, things you can’t tell me? You said not everything was good in his background. What did you mean by that? And how did you find out? I don’t know how this works here.”

Sean smiled. “It’s not like those
CSI
shows they’ve got on the telly, but we can ring one of our pals in Cork and ask for the odd favor now and then—like a file on Aidan Crowley, if there is one. Still, it doesn’t appear in seconds. We’ll have more information today. But the Cork gardaí did admit a file existed fer the man.”

“What about tracking down other people—the rest of the roving musicians? Can you check credit card use or track mobile phones to see who was here?”

Sean laughed outright. “Not without a lot of paperwork to justify it all, and by then whoever it was might be in Africa for all we knew. We start with the smallest circle, sort of—who was here, who saw what. If that doesn’t give us the results we want, we make the circle a bit larger. I’ll give you that this is an odd situation, since people seem to have come from all over to hear the music, but we’ve completed what I’d call the first circle. Now we’ll move beyond that. It takes time. I know yer worried about people staying away from Sullivan’s, but we’re doin’ our best.”

“I know. I wasn’t criticizing. But when I find a body, I take it kind of personally.”

“So yeh should. And pray that it won’t happen again.”

Rose walked in and looked startled to see Sean and Maura together in the corner. She made a point of avoiding them after that, trying to seem busy behind the bar.

Troubled by Rose’s odd behavior, Maura stood up. “Excuse me, Sean—I need to talk to Rose for a minute.” When she reached the bar she leaned across and asked, “What’s going on?”

The whites of Rose’s eyes flashed as she said innocently, “What do yeh mean?”

“You know what I mean. I’ll get right to it: do you know where Tim is?”

Now Rose looked down at the glass in her hand, one she was polishing for the fifth time. “I might. Is he in trouble?”

“I don’t know. Sean needs to talk to him.”

“You mean, about his ma and Aidan?”

“Wait—when did he tell you about that?”

Rose looked away. “Just now, before I came in. He rang me on my mobile and asked if we could talk face to face.”

So he was somewhere nearby, Maura realized. “Did he tell you he didn’t hurt Aidan?”

Now Rose looked her in the eye. “Yes, and I believe him. He’s not like that.”

It was clear that Rose really did want to believe that, and it more or less matched what Maura thought too, but she wasn’t about to give that away. “So where is he?”

“He was thinkin’ he might go back to Dublin, but I told him he needed to see this thing here through. Maybe Aidan wasn’t . . . who Tim thought he was, but Tim was here late that night and might have seen or heard somethin’ without knowin’ it. So he didn’t go.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Where is he?” Maura repeated.

“Will he get in trouble?” Rose shot back.

“I don’t think so. Look, please tell Sean where to find him, will you? Sean’s a friend. He just wants to ask Tim some questions. Tell Sean where Tim is, or call Tim and tell him to meet Sean here or somewhere else. It’ll be fine, I promise.” Maura hoped she was telling Rose the truth, but she did trust Sean to be fair.

Rose stared her down for a long moment, then nodded. “All right, then, but I’ll hold yeh to it.” She came out from behind the bar and went over and plunked herself in the chair across from Sean Murphy, who looked startled by her abrupt arrival. Maura debated joining them but decided that this was Rose’s responsibility; let her act like an adult and be treated as one, without Maura hovering. Besides, she had customers to deal with, and the rest of her staff seemed to have vanished for the moment.

Maura watched from a distance as Sean listened patiently to Rose. He nodded several times and asked a question or two, then both of them stood up and went out the front door, leaving Maura feeling just a bit annoyed at being left out. She sighed. It was not her problem, and she’d hear the results soon enough. In the meantime, the crowd was growing again, with the talk split between the music and the death of Aidan Crowley, and she eavesdropped when she could.

It was a half hour later when Sean and Rose returned, without Tim. Sean looked a bit grim, and Rose appeared to be fighting tears. She didn’t look at Sean before walking stiffly around the bar and serving the next person who asked.

Sean followed more slowly and came up to the bar.

“What happened?” Maura asked quietly.

“The man wasn’t there, where he told Rose he’d be. Where she’d met with him only an hour or two before.”

“You think he ran?”

Sean shook his head. “There were signs of a struggle, and we found his mobile under a shrub.”

Maura did not like what she was hearing. “Did you check at Ellen’s?”

“Of course. No one’s seen him. And his vehicle is still parked there.”

“Where was he supposed to be?”

“You know the old slate factory, down by the harbor?” Sean asked.

“I’ve seen it. It’s locked up, isn’t it?”

“It has been, for years, but that doesn’t mean someone can’t get in. Tim told Rose he went there to think things through. He wasn’t exactly hiding; he only wanted to be alone fer a bit. And he’d left all his gear behind at Ellen’s, so it doesn’t look like he meant to flee.”

“So the big question is, who found him there?”

Sean nodded. “Someone who didn’t exactly wish him well.”

Maura swallowed a couple of words that weren’t appropriate for the setting, no matter how strongly she felt. “What now?”

“I’ve got to report this to the station as a suspicious disappearance, since he knew that the gardaí want to question him and he’s nowhere to be found. But the circumstances tell me that he didn’t leave of his own choice. So we’ll start a search. Rose, there, she’s upset, no doubt. It seems she really took to the young man.”

“But she’s not in any trouble, is she? I mean, she didn’t know where he was, earlier.”

“Until he called her on his mobile and told her.”

Not good. “But she tried to get him to come here and talk to you.”

“So she says, but we have only her word for that. Maybe the two of them are conspiring to get Tim away from here. I’m sorry, Maura, I’ve got to go. Keep an eye on Rose.” Sean stood up, but as he reached the door, a nondescript car pulled up outside Sullivan’s. The passenger door opened, and Tim Reilly fell—or was pushed—out. He’d barely hit the pavement when the car sped away toward the east and Tim scrambled to his feet and watched the car disappear.

When he turned toward the pub, he found himself face-to-face with Sean Murphy, who said, “I’d like a word with yeh, Mr. Reilly.”

A
s soon as Sean led Tim into the pub, Rose intercepted them. “Tim, are yeh all right? I was that worried! Whatever happened with yeh?”

Before Tim could open his mouth, Maura stepped up. The rest of the customers in the room watched the exchange with interest, but Maura wasn’t offering free entertainment, nor did she want Sean dragging Tim off to the garda station without a chance to collect himself. “Sean, why don’t you and Tim go back to your table. Tim, you look like you could use a coffee. Rose, will you get that for him?”

Sean, Tim, and Rose all did as she had ordered.
Maybe I’m getting the hang of being in charge,
Maura thought. While Sean and Tim sat, Maura stationed herself between their table and the small crowd, who finally took the hint and turned back to their pints and their conversations, although Maura was sure they were listening. Oh, well, with luck they’d stick around a bit longer and order another pint, just to see what all the excitement was about.

Rose delivered the coffee to Tim and a fresh cup of tea to Sean. Maura was surprised when Sean gestured to Maura to join them. She scanned the room: Jimmy was still enjoying his dinner at home, it seemed, but Mick was in, and he and Rose could handle things for a bit. Maura sat at the table, prepared to listen to Tim’s story.

Sean pulled out a small notepad. “All right, then. Start from the beginning, if yeh will.”

“Are yeh arrestin’ me?” Tim demanded.

“Nothing like that, Tim,” Sean reassured him.

Maura interrupted. “Before you start—Tim, I’m sorry, but when Rose and Sean couldn’t find you, I told Sean what you’d told me last night. I thought it might help. So Sean knows the basic details.”

Tim looked relieved. “No worries. I’m not the only boy who grew up without a father, where I come from.” He turned to Sean. “Look, everything I’ve said about my uni research into this place’s music history—that’s all true. But I guess I also thought my nosing around it might flush a few of the old players out of the woods, so to speak. And it did.”

“And I thank you for that, Tim—it was a great turnout,” Maura said. Sean glared at her for interrupting again.

Tim didn’t seem to notice and went on, “Like I told Maura, Ma said me father was a musician, and Aidan was on me short list. But it was so much more crowded than I’d expected—there was no way to have a proper conversation with anyone. That’s why I asked Aidan to meet me after the pub closed, and he told me to meet him out back.”

Aidan knew the place that well?
Maura wondered. Well, he
had
had a key to the place on him, so it seemed likely. But she didn’t interrupt.

“And what time was that?” Sean asked, in his professional voice.

Tim’s eyes darted at Maura. “Just past closing, which was pretty far after hours. Maybe one o’clock? Or later? I wasn’t looking at the time—I just went out and waited for him. Anyways, we sat outside, and I told Aidan me story, and he said that there were a lot of girls back in the day and he couldn’t remember the half of them. I was disappointed, sure, but I guess I wasn’t really surprised. Then he said he was shattered, so that was the end of it. I went back to me room and I guess he came in here.”

“Did yeh see anyone else about?” Sean asked.

Tim gave a short laugh. “Have you not seen this place in the middle of the night? I might’ve seen a dog, up toward the church. The rest of the village was locked up tight.”

“I didn’t see anyone either when I left after closing,” Maura added.

“Go on, then,” Sean said to Tim.

“So like I said, I went to me room and was feelin’ a bit low and sorry for meself, so I drank myself to sleep. Yesterday I was still hangin’, as you saw me here. This mornin’ I woke up with the sun and felt like the walls were closing in on me, and I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone, so I started walkin’ down along the shore.”

“That woulda been when I first went looking for yeh,” Sean said.

“Could be. Anyways, out by the water it was quiet, except for a lot of birds. I found this old building, where I’d be out of sight, and settled meself inside.”

The old slate factory,
Maura thought.

Tim went on, “I sat there for a while, tryin’ to sort things out, I guess. Maybe I’d pinned all me hopes on Aidan. Or maybe seein’ him and the others had showed me how hopeless it was. I had nothing to go on, and I can’t spend all my time runnin’ around the country lookin’ for middle-aged musicians and saying, ‘Are you me da?’ like an eejit. Maybe if Ma didn’t want me to know, she had her reasons. Maybe it wasn’t a musician at all, or she’d been attacked, or it was a boy from her village and she wanted to build the story up. Or maybe she was drunk or high and really didn’t know. Too late to tell now.”

“Then you called Rose,” Maura said bluntly, earning another glare from Sean. “Why?”

“I was thinkin’ that if I was goin’ back to Dublin, I’d want to say good-bye to her. After Rose left I was sittin’ there lookin’ at the water and thinkin’ it was time I just gave this up and go on with me life back in Dublin. And then this fella shows up.”

Maura knew the place he was talking about. While there was a path of sorts, no one would just happen to be strolling along it, since it didn’t lead anywhere. It was also not visible from much of anywhere, other than the water. So whoever the man was, he had to have followed Tim there, because he couldn’t have found it on his own.

“Did yeh recognize this man?” Sean asked.

Tim shook his head. “I don’t think so. But you saw how packed the place was on Saturday night, and how dark. He could have been there but I might never have seen his face. And I wasn’t in any shape to notice faces on Sunday.”

“And yeh didn’t see him hanging around, after yeh met with Aidan?”

“No. Like I said, I didn’t see a soul then.”

Sean made another note. “All right, then. What did the man look like?”

Tim squinted, trying to picture him. “Maybe late thirties? Short hair, hard to tell the color. Heavier than me, but not too tall. Kind of weaselly, if you know what I mean. Ordinary clothes.”

“What happened when he came upon yeh?”

“That’s when things got strange. I didn’t like his looks, so I stood up. Then he says, ‘Where is it?’ And I go, ‘Where is what?’ And he says, ‘Crowley’s stuff.’ And I say, ‘I don’t know what yer talkin’ about.’ Except he didn’t believe me, I guess. He says, ‘Word’s out that Crowley’s dead, and it’s not at his place, so it’s got to be somewhere here. How’d he get here?’ I told him, ‘The bus, mebbe?’ The big guy says, ‘No car?’ And I say, ‘How would I know?’ And then he gets angry and grabs me by the front of me jacket. I tried to fight him off—I mean, it was broad daylight and we were standin’ on the shore where anybody could see, and he wants to get into it right there? But he was stronger than me, and he kind of dragged me back to where he’d parked his car. And I’m yellin’ at him, ‘What do you want? I don’t know anything!’ I don’t think he believed me.”

“Did he physically assault yeh?” Sean said formally.

“He hit me a time or two, mostly to scare me, I think, but then he kind of gave up. Most likely he figured it out that I really didn’t know anythin’, and it wasn’t worth beatin’ me to a bloody pulp as I still wouldn’t know any more. So he shoved me in his car and drove back here and dumped me out, like yeh saw.”

Maura felt chilled. The stranger sounded like a thug, and she hadn’t seen many of those around Leap or in Skibbereen. Was he local? Had he been at Sullivan’s? Tim didn’t look like he’d been hurt by his attacker, but things could have been much worse. Why had the man let him go?

“Why didn’t he just leave you where you were?” Maura jumped in. “I mean, then he could have gotten away without anybody even noticing.”

“Maura,” Sean cautioned her. Then he turned to Tim. “What she said. Why’d he bring yeh back here?”

“Bugger if I know,” Tim admitted. “Maybe he felt sorry for me. I mean, whoever he was, he didn’t stand to gain anything by roughing up an eejit like me. And he didn’t really hurt me. More like put the fear in me. But I really had no clue what he was talking about, and I still don’t.”

“He never said what he was lookin’ fer?” Sean asked.

Tim shook his head vigorously. “Believe me, if I’d known anything, I woulda told him.”

“Let’s think this through, then,” Sean said. “You left Aidan here, alive, yeh say, sometime past one o’clock. Maura comes in about nine hours later and finds him dead in the back room here. Sometime in between, it looks like someone laid hands on him. We know he had a bad heart, so if he was confronted by the same man who took yeh off, he might have died before his attacker got anythin’ from him. So what was he lookin’ fer?”

“Aidan’s fiddle!” Maura interrupted, which brought a stern look from Sean. “When he came in on Friday, looking for Niall, he had a case with him. But I don’t remember seeing it near him on Sunday.”

“We haven’t found it,” Sean said, almost to himself. He looked at Maura. “We should look more thoroughly in yer back room,” he said, standing up.

Maura stood up too. “Let’s go.” They went over to the bar, where Mick and Rose were dispensing pints.

“What’s up?” Mick asked.

“It’s possible that Aidan left something here,” Sean said. “Yeh didn’t happen to find the odd fiddle case or any other lost items when yeh cleared out the back after the music, did yeh?”

“No, but I haven’t done a full cleanup in there, since we weren’t planning on using the room right away, and your lot wanted us to stay clear of it,” Mick said.

“Can you and Rose handle things while we look around?” Maura asked.

“Sure. Jimmy’ll be in any minute. I take it yeh don’t have anything for me to say to our customers as have seen young Tim here dumped on the doorstep?”

Those customers were obviously all but drooling with curiosity. “Not just yet,” Sean said. “Thanks, Mick.”

Maura, Sean, and Tim went to the back, where Maura opened the door to the room and turned on the lights. Damn, it was dark in there. There were few windows, and the sun was low. The wattage of the lights were good for a party, bad for a search. But at least the surfaces were clear—and there was no fiddle case in plain sight. She pulled the door shut behind her, to keep out nosy customers. “Any instructions?”

“If yeh find anything interestin’, try not to touch it, will yeh?” Sean said.

“Got it,” she replied. “I’ll take this end. Tim, why don’t you check out the balcony? Aidan might have planned to sleep up there.”

“I’ll take the stage and behind,” Sean said.

They split up. Maura wished she’d thought to bring a flashlight—it was so dim that she couldn’t see into the corners. She hadn’t spent much time back here, and she hadn’t realized how unappealing it could be. But the event on Saturday had transformed it, making it come alive. She’d have to think about that.

She could hear Tim banging around over her head, though apart from tables and chairs, there were few places to conceal anything up there. All the electronic equipment had been shifted downstairs to the stage area, and that was where Sean was poking around now. At her end, the surface of the bar was bare and relatively clean, so she went around behind. There were a couple of unwashed glasses in the sink, but otherwise Mick had done a good job—she’d give him a B plus for his efforts. Nothing against the wall but a small refrigerator, which wasn’t even plugged in at the moment—she checked inside it, just in case. Empty. Shelves along the wall held only what they were supposed to—bottles and glasses—and wouldn’t conceal a fiddle case anyway. She turned to face the bar. Sink, a couple of kegs underneath. No luck there.

But there was a low shelf that ran just under the bar for its entire length. She felt along it, and in one corner she felt something bulky and rounded. She pulled her hand out. “Sean, I might have something,” she called out.

Sean hurried over. Maura pointed under the bar. “There.”

Sean knelt down for a better look. “You have a cloth or something?”

She was confused for a moment before she figured out what he meant. “You’re seriously thinking about fingerprints?” Maura stifled a laugh. “What, you don’t carry latex gloves at all times?”

Sean looked exasperated and held out a hand. “Cloth, please?”

Maura found a relatively clean bar rag under the sink. At least it was dry. She handed it to him.

Sean covered his hand and reached under the bar. He pulled out what was unmistakably a fiddle case—covered in battered brown leatherette, with a few odd stickers attached. Holding it by its worn handle, Sean set it on top of the bar.

“Is this the one yeh saw?” Sean asked Maura, as Tim came up to join them.

“The stickers look right. No ID on it?” Tim said.

“Not on the outside.”

“You going to open it?” Maura demanded.

Without answering, Sean released the latch on the case and laid the cover back. Inside was a fiddle, as battered as its case, a bow—and a roll of euros over an inch thick.