An Early Wake (16 page)

“I’d think whoever was after Aidan’s money is still looking for it.”

“Exactly.” They stared at each other for a moment. Finally Maura said, “The good news is, he doesn’t know that the gardaí have it. The bad news is, he’s clearly getting more and more desperate, if he’s broken in. I need to tell Sean.”

“And what will he be able to do?” Mick demanded. “You know they’ve no men to spare. Do we stand guard at night?”

“Shoot, I don’t know, Mick! I thought this part of the country was supposed to be so peaceful. Sean and the gardaí need to know, if only so they can file some kind of report.”

“It
is
quiet—that’s why my mate noticed the door. People here look out for one another. This man must be from away.”

“Well, duh. No one here recognized him when he was skulking around after Aidan or stalking and threatening Tim.” She rummaged in her bag for her mobile. “I’m calling Sean.”

When Maura reached him and outlined the situation, Sean promised to be there in ten minutes, and he lived up to his promise. He stalked into the pub, looking grim. After he’d greeted Mick he turned to Maura. “What time did yeh leave last night?”

“About ten minutes after you did. And, yes, I checked all the doors. They were locked, so whoever it was had to break in. That’s a crime, right? I took the money from the cash drawer home with me last night and put it in the bank this morning.”

“It is a crime, Maura,” Sean said. “Mick, when did yeh get the call this morning?”

“About nine. Though the break-in could have happened at any time between, while it was dark, couldn’t it?”

“Right. So it seems our man is still in search of Aidan’s money.”

“That’s about what we decided. What do we do now, Sean?” Maura asked.

“What would the man do next?” Sean said, almost to himself. “The money wasn’t on Aidan. Our man has looked here, twice, with no luck. Or mebbe not—the man might have panicked when Aidan died and left without looking for what he had come for the first time. So he had to come back, right? Aidan had no car to search, since yeh say he took the bus.”

“We should warn Niall,” Maura said suddenly. “The man may go looking for him next, thinking that Aidan could have stashed the money with him, if he saw them together at all. Which we can’t say he didn’t.”

“Do yeh know where he’s stayin’?”

“No. He never said.”

“Try the hotel at Glandore,” Mick volunteered. “There’s lots of big-name folk who pass through there. Hadn’t yeh checked before?”

“We’ve only a small force, and it’s only me that’s doing the interviews,” Sean told him, sounding a bit defensive. “I’ll be needin’ to talk to Niall.”

“You haven’t already?” Maura asked, surprised.

Sean looked embarrassed. “There was never the time, what with all the other interviews, and he didn’t seem to be goin’ anywhere.”

Maura wondered if that was the whole story. Had Sean been scared to talk to a former rock star? “Can we open as usual?” she asked. She was getting tired of having to ask that question.

“If yer askin’, will we be sending a team of investigators armed with colored powders and brushes and sprays to gather evidence from yer door, the answer to that is no, as yeh well know. Go ahead and open. And before yeh ask again, don’t worry about trying to keep this one quiet. Better not to hide it—yeh can tell folk whoever broke in was lookin’ fer money, with no luck. The more people on the lookout, the safer yeh’ll be. Not that it’s likely the man’ll be back, if he’s already checked this place again and found nothin’.”

“Got it. I’ll tell Jimmy and Rose too. Do you think Tim is safe?”

“The man let him go once, and there’s nothing more to be had from him. But tell Tim to take no chances. If I can find Niall, I’ll ask him if he can get in touch with the other players and alert them as well. I wish there were more to be done, Maura.”

“It’s not your fault, Sean.” Was it hers, for listening to young Tim and getting her hopes up for a bit more income for the place? If she hadn’t let this music session go forward, none of this would have happened. But how could she have known?

T
im came in just after noon, cursing. “They’ve trashed me car!” he protested, looking like an angry little boy.

“What? Who?” Maura asked, startled.

“I don’t know who! Probably the man that grabbed me. She’s an old banger I borrowed off a friend so I could come down here, but it runs. Me friend is going to have me head. Why’d he have to slash all the seats?”

“Probably looking for . . . something,” Maura said cautiously, eyeing the others in the room, who, she knew, were all listening eagerly, even if they didn’t look toward Tim.

“Yeah, well, they didn’t find the ‘something’ ’cuz I don’t have it.” He dropped heavily onto a bar stool. “Bejaysus, I never should have come here. I coulda done plenty of research on the Web and talked to a few of the local fellas in Dublin. If it hadn’t been for . . . yeh know, I woulda done just that.”

This talking in circles is getting annoying,
Maura thought. “Did you talk to anyone about the, uh, something, while you were here yesterday?”

“No. Yer garda friend told me not to, and I didn’t.”

“Have you talked with the gardaí about your car?”

“What’s the point? What could they do? It’ll be on me to get it fixed. But I wish this would end.”

So did Maura. “Do you happen to know where Niall is?” she asked, changing the subject.

Tim shook his head. “He’s still around somewhere, I think, but I haven’t seen him since Sunday. Have you tried the hotels?”

“Sean has. Now we’re thinking that the person who was looking for that something might decide to look for Niall and his car, in case Niall gave Aidan a lift at any point. He might guess that Aidan thought the something would be safe in Niall’s car.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that, I was that upset. Can we warn him?”

“Only if we can find him. Sean’s looking for him. Can I get you something?”

“Is Rose here?” he asked plaintively, no doubt hoping for a more sympathetic ear.

“She’ll be in later. Coffee?”

“Sure, fine,” Tim said, then lapsed into glum silence.

Poor Tim—nothing was working out the way he’d wanted. She hoped Rose could cheer him up, because she didn’t have the time to try. She’d never seen so many people in Sullivan’s on a Tuesday.

Sean called her mobile later in the afternoon. “Can yeh talk?” he asked.

Maura took her phone and retreated to the back room, which looked grimy and bleak to her at the moment. “Now I can. Have you got something?”

“I found Niall, at that new hotel in Glandore. Anything new at Sullivan’s?”

“It’s pretty busy, for a Tuesday, but I haven’t heard anything interesting except that Tim says his car was trashed, probably by our mystery man searching for the money.”

“Ah. I’ll be sure to check that Niall’s car is safely parked in the garage at his hotel and no one’s been near it.”

“So what happens now? Did you talk to Niall?”

“I did, but he couldn’t shed any light. Though he did mention that he might stop in at Sullivan’s later.”

Maura wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Having a star, even a faded one, hanging around the bar was certainly good for business, but he seemed to bring trouble. But to be fair, it wasn’t his fault, any more than it was hers. “Do you think he knows anything about the break-in?”

“I can’t say, but it felt wrong to ask when we know so little.”

Or it may be Sean is indeed just a bit starstruck and couldn’t bring himself to interrogate Niall Cronin,
as she had already guessed.

“Look, I’ve got to go,” Sean said. “I might stop in later meself.”

“See you then.” Maura hung up and went back to the bar.

Several hours later, a sudden lull in pub conversation made Maura look up to see Niall at the door. He looked tired, and older than he had when she first saw him. Or maybe the bright daylight was unkind to him; put him onstage making music and he looked far younger than she knew him to be.

He nodded to several of the men in the pub, but crossed directly to the bar. “A pint, please.”

“Coming up.” Maura started a glass. “I’m surprised you’re still around. The past few days must’ve been hard.”

He smiled ruefully. “What, yeh think I lead a glamorous life in the big city? Not lately. Now and then someone sets up one of those reunion shows—I hate ’em, but they pay the bills. Or some eager journalist with a Sunday column to fill or, God save us, a blog post to write, rings me up and tells me he’s doin’ another damn ‘where are they now’ bit and what’m I up to these days?”

Maura decided she might as well be blunt. “What
are
you up to these days?”

“Mostly keepin’ my accountant honest so I get all me royalties. Sounds grand, doesn’t it? My last wife left me two years ago. I live in a simple house in a simple village an hour from Dublin, and me car’s eight years old.”

“No kids?”

“Grown and out on their own.”

“No music?”

He cocked his head at Maura, curious. “Do yeh care about the music?”

Maura smiled as she topped off his pint. “To tell the truth, I’m clueless about music. But it seems to me that it was a big part of your life once, and I can’t imagine you’d just kind of stop cold turkey.” She slid the filled pint across the bar.

He smiled into it. “Yer right. I write a few songs now and then, for other people. But I’ve no desire to go back to the life. Surely you’ve seen those sad shows where the old bands are practically using walkers to stand on the stage as they trot out the old audience pleasers? I played with a lot of ’em, and I don’t want to be one of them. If yer worried about me, I get by.”

“And Aidan? Where did he fit?”

“Are yeh planning to write an article about me? Or Aidan, God rest his soul?”

Maura laughed. “I’m not a writer. And aren’t pub owners supposed to be good at keeping their mouth shut and listening? But I’ve got a personal interest, since I’m the one who found Aidan’s body, remember?”

“Sure, and it must’ve been a sad thing for yeh,” Niall said.

“It was,” she replied. Maura briefly considered her options. After all, there was some slim possibility that Niall could have been involved in Aidan’s death. She didn’t really believe that; still, she opted to be discreet. “The postmortem showed that his heart gave out.” Which was true. It didn’t account for the bruises, but she wasn’t going to mention those.

“Which wouldn’t surprise anyone who knew Aidan. You know something different?” Niall said. The words hung in the air between them.

“I’ve still got questions,” Maura finally replied.

Niall took a long draw of his pint before answering. “You asked how we met up this last time. Word went out that there was something on at Sullivan’s. Talk about a ‘blast from the past.’” Niall made air quotes at the corny phrase. “I had no other plans, so I decided to check it out. I stopped in Cork on the way down, and I went to a pub there where the players used to hang out. I hadn’t been there for years—I don’t spend much time in Cork. I’d forgotten, or maybe I never knew, that Aidan lived somewhere about. But I walked into the pub and there he was, large as life, sittin’ on a stool at the bar. So I sat myself down next to him and we got to talkin’, catching up, like, and I asked if he’d heard about what was goin’ on at Sullivan’s, and he said he had. I told him I was goin’ that way and offered him a lift. He turned me down—said he had some business to take care of but he’d see me here later. That’s all.”

“Did you know where he was staying around here?”

“No. I knew there’d be little problem finding a place this time of year, but I’d heard about the new hotel so I rang ahead. I would’ve shared with Aidan, because from the look of him he hadn’t much money, but I never had the chance. He might have planned all along to bed down here for the night—Mick Sullivan was easy about that, back in the heyday. Hell, Mick encouraged it—he always said if he let some of us go out in the state we were in, we’d be dead on the road by mornin’. Of course, the floor wasn’t so hard in those days.” Niall smiled at the memory.

“Did you have a key from Mick?” Maura asked.

“I did, and so did Aidan—it was a sign that you were one of the insiders, that Mick approved of you. That meant something then.”

“You think I should get some air mattresses, if we keep doing this?” Maura asked, only half joking.

“Will you keep on with it?” Niall asked, looking her in the eye.

Was it important to him?
she wondered. “I might. A week ago I had no idea that this place was famous for its music. Heck, a year ago I barely knew this village existed, and I never knew Mick Sullivan. But then Tim walked in, talking about the music, and Billy Sheahan confirmed it, and suddenly all these people like you start showing up. Which was great, of course, but it’s not like I organized anything. Could I keep it going, or was this a onetime thing that could never happen again?”

“I’m not the one to ask—I’ve a lousy head for business—but there was always something special about this place. I fer one have missed it, and I know there’d be others.” He leaned forward. “Listen,” he began in a lower voice.

“Hold that thought,” Maura said as she saw Rose come in, followed by her father, Jimmy. She came out from behind the bar and intercepted her, while Jimmy went around behind the bar. “Hey, Rose, Tim’s here and he seems kind of depressed. Do you mind trying to cheer him up a bit?”

“Why, Maura, whatever do yeh mean?” Rose dimpled. “Sure and I’d do that without yer askin’. But it looks busy again. I see
he’s
here again.” She tipped her head toward Niall at the bar. Maura noticed that Niall was no longer alone there—a couple of the other men had approached him and they were now all lost in conversation, and Jimmy was leaning on the bar, listening eagerly.

How had she ended up in the middle of all this? Maura wondered as Rose went off to stow her things and say hello to Tim. Old rock stars, young lovers, dead bodies—nothing in her past had prepared her for any of this. What was next?