Malarkey (22 page)

"Maybe nothing's missing." Jay laid his computer on the
kitchen table and gave it a pat. "I think that was the target."

Joe raised his eyebrows.

"They usually aim for electronics, don't they?" Jay said
mildly.

"Ordinary B & E, yes. If this was ordinary."

Jay said, "The time of the inquest was well-known, and a
watcher could have spotted the Toyota leaving."

My anxiety level went down a couple of notches. "Like
funerals?"

Jay nodded. Canny burglars have been known to read the
obits and time their break-ins by scheduled funerals. The thought
reassured me, oddly enough. They?—he—whoever had waited until
we left together. That made him sound less like a maddened killer on
the loose and more like a dispassionate professional. However, the
dispassionate professional had not expected the burglar alarm to be
set. Otherwise, when he didn't spot the computer or find a television
or a boombox, he would have gone downstairs, removed our cash,
traveler's checks, and passports from the dresser, and made a swift
exit through the downstairs door.

Authentic American passports bring a juicy sum on the
blackmarket.

Dad listened to our chatter then slipped out to the living
room. I heard him draw a sharp breath and went in to him. My
complacence evaporated. The conversation corner near the fireplace
was strewn with loose papers, but the desk area looked as if it had
been touched by a tornado of pure spite.

Dad knelt and started gathering the torn photocopies.

I had the paraphernalia from the stationer's under my arm. I
knelt beside him and pulled out the packet of folders. "Shall we do
this methodically?"

He shot me a grateful look and handed me a sheaf of papers.
They had been ripped in half. "That's the one I was working on."

"Your man was wearing gloves," Kennedy observed from the
door arch.

"Good thing, too," Jay added. "Otherwise everything would
be dusted with fingerprint powder." He slid past the sergeant and
joined us on the floor. "Any shoe prints in here?"

Kennedy said, "He was wearing trainers."

"Sneakers," I translated.

"Sneakers and gloves," Jay mused, sorting a ripped
article.

"And carrying a key to the cottage," Joe said dryly.

Dad stared up at him. "A key?"

"There's no sign of forced entry."

"And we definitely locked up," Jay said. He sounded as if he
were repeating an assertion. Well, we
had
locked the
doors.

I squirmed to a more comfortable position on the
floorboards. The idea of that loose key wandering around raised my
level of discomfort again. I wondered whether we ought to call in a
locksmith.

Kennedy said abruptly, "I shall have a word with Tommy
Tierney when he flits home tonight, like a wee pigeon to the coop.
His da had a key. Toss swears the lad never touched it, but Toss lies
to us as a matter of habit. Tommy could have made a wax impression
and had Toss's key duplicated."

"The same might be said of the key at Stanyon," I
murmured.

"True for you."

Silence weighted the air.

Joe heaved a sigh. "May I ask you to leave the papers for a
minute or two, Mrs. Dodge? Look about you and see if anything's
been taken from this room."

I creaked to my feet. Joints seizing up. I was definitely going
to have to return to my daily run.

My survey of the room revealed nothing obvious missing. To
tell the truth, I hadn't paid much attention to the decor of the living
room. We had been living in the bedrooms and kitchen. The burglar
could well have made off with a doodad or two without my knowing
it.

When I had reassured Joe that I'd found nothing missing, he
left. Dad and Jay and I worked in companionable silence for the next
hour, and we made progress. I sat my father down at the kitchen
table with a cup of hot tea and one of the tape dispensers, and set
him to putting the photocopies back together. Jay and I gathered
loose papers.

I was puzzling over a set of notes in Dad's crabbed hand
when the phone rang. It was Barbara Stein. She sounded distraught,
and she didn't dally for small talk. She wanted to speak to my
father.

I carried the phone in to Dad, kicking the long cord aside.
"For you. It's Barbara."

He nodded and murmured hello into the receiver. I went
back to helping Jay. We were trying to flatten papers that had been
wadded and sort them by subject.

Dad brought the phone back and laid it carefully on the
desk. "Barbara wants us to come for cocktails."

I stared at him. "They're having a happy hour?"

He gave me a wan smile. "Not exactly. More like an
emergency meeting. Barbara thinks Mahon will arrest Alex
tomorrow, and she wants my advice." Perhaps he sensed that I was
about to protest because he said wearily, "I told her I'd come."

"We'll come with you." Jay didn't pause to consult me.
"Mahon may know something that Kennedy doesn't, and they'll want
to interrogate Alex again, in any case, but I don't think an arrest is
likely at this point."

Dad ran a hand over his face. "Then reassure them, by all
means. I believe I'd better take a nap before we go."

He took the words right out of my mouth.

A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a
garden full of weeds

Children's song

Stanyon Hall was a compound of memory and current
horror. My mental picture of Kayla descending the long stairway was
so vivid I half expected her to appear above us as we entered the
foyer.

Barbara had met us on the porch. When Dad gave her a hug,
she began crying. He soothed and patted, which he does very well,
and she recovered her composure almost at once. Even so, her dread
shook the air.

She led us again to the sitting room. Tracy Aspin and Liam
McDiarmuid stood off in one corner, talking low-voiced, and Mike
Novak hovered next to Alex at the drinks trolley. Their greetings
were subdued, and, having poured for us, Alex took my father aside
for a mournful conference. Barbara deserted us without apology to
join Dad and her husband.

Jay and Mike sipped beer and watched each other. I checked
an impulse to walk over and throw the window open. Without
Kayla's cigarettes, there was no reason to open it, nor was the room
warm, but the atmosphere was thick with anxiety.

"You did a star turn at the inquest." Mike took a morose gulp
of beer.

My wine tasted sour. "Glad you enjoyed it."

"Rumor, dear lady. I didn't attend. After three hours of
interrogation at the crack of dawn, I was too squeamish to face the
details of an autopsy, even Slade Wheeler's." He knocked back the
rest of his beer and poured himself another from a tall brown bottle.
"Besides, somebody had to hold down the fort with cops crawling all
over the second floor. The data processors were set to mutiny, and
that baroque disk has to go to the distributor next week."

Tracy drifted over, Liam at her elbow. "Are you still griping
about missing the inquest, Mike? I volunteered to stay here and
supervise, remember?"

"I didn't," Liam said with relish. "I wanted to see Toss
Tierney with the egg fresh on his beaming face."

Jay chuckled. "Toss was a pillar of rectitude."

Liam's mouth twisted. "'Yes, your worship, thank you, your
worship.' Jaysus, the shuffler."

"My money's still on Toss," Mike said.

"And wee Tommy, the darling twister." Liam was drinking
Perrier. He raised the green bottle in mock salute.

"According to my landlord, Toss has connections." Tracy
sounded tipsy.

Silence thickened. No one was going to comment on Toss's
republican associations. That was the second spring of the IRA's
eighteen-month truce, when there was still hope for peace in the
north. Everyone seemed to be tiptoeing around republican
sensibilities. Except clumsy Americans like Tracy.

Like me. I decided to bumble, too. "Maeve Butler said the
Irregulars used Stanyon Woods as an ammo dump during the Civil
War. I'm not sure who the Irregulars—"

"A Free State term for de Valera's boys," Liam interrupted.
"That's nonsense, though. Stanyon was an Orange stronghold."

"I took a walk in the woods," I ventured.

Liam stiffened. So did Jay.

"I found blotches of red paint here and there, but I didn't see
anything that looked like a storage facility." I decided not to mention
the incised stone.

"You went into the woods?" Mike gave an elaborate shiver.
"You are one ballsy woman. I'd sooner jump into the Avoca at high
tide with bricks in my britches. Slade's playmates bragged about
setting traps for each other in the woods."

"Lark is a little impulsive," said my loyal spouse. The
mildness of his voice warned me he was going to rake me over the
coals at the first opportunity. I hadn't got around to mentioning my
adventure in the woods to him.

I shut up, though I was still curious. Jay asked Mike a
question about the baroque disk, and general conversation
flowed.

I turned Liam's remark over in my mind. So the Irregulars
were die-hard republicans, ancestors of the present IRA. But I had
thought the Orange faction was out of the picture by the time of the
Civil War, at least in the south. What better place for a cache of arms
than an abandoned enemy stronghold? Liam's grandfather was a
staunch republican, though, so he ought to know.

"How can the two of you be so damn passive?" Barbara's
voice rang sharp. She stomped to the drinks trolley and refilled her
wine glass. My father and Alex, glum-faced, trailed after her.

Tracy wound down a technical comment on the disk. Mike
and Liam moved aside to make room for Alex. I gave him a tentative
smile which he apparently didn't see. His eyes were dark with
worry.

Dad held out his glass, and Barbara poured. "About half,
thanks. You did ask my advice, Barbara, and you know I'm the last
man on earth to advise anyone to fight."

Barbara was not about to be jollied. "I seem to remember a
lecture on the perils of passivity. It had to do with the
Holocaust."

Dad said gently, "It had to do with the uprising in the
Warsaw Ghetto—with the dignity of resistance."

Tears glinted in Barbara's eyes. "And when those Nazis
come for Alex, I suppose you want him to go with them like a meek
sheep."

"The Gardai are not Nazis," Alex said. "You're
hysterical."

She turned on him. "Thanks a lot. I'm not hysterical, Alex,
but you damn betcha I'm emotional. We can't afford to have you
hauled off on a false charge. The company needs you. I need you."
Her mouth quivered. "Mahon has stopped looking. He's found his
scapegoat. You have to do something. Hire a detective."

As with one mind everyone, including Dad, looked at Jay. His
ears turned red. After a moment, he said, "What makes you think
Mahon has it in for your husband, Barbara?"

"We have a trade show in Brussels Saturday. He told Alex
not to leave the country. And he made Alex strip naked, and they
photographed his bruises. Is that good enough?"

Jay said mildly, "It's a little extreme, though I imagine Mahon
had a warrant."

"So?"

"Does it occur to you that the photos may eliminate Alex as a
suspect? He fell downstairs. It may be that Mahon's looking for a
different pattern of bruising."

"A bruise is a bruise," Barbara muttered but she calmed
down a little.

Jay said, "What did Mahon say about the burglary?"

"What burglary?"

Jay looked at Dad. "You didn't mention it?"

Dad shook his head. "I didn't talk to Barbara very long this
afternoon."

"And couldn't get a word in edgewise when you did," Alex
interposed, acid. "Was there a break-in at the cottage?"

I said, "During the inquest. Or just as it was ending."

The Stonehall people stared. Mike said, "No shit."

I went on, "We hung around at the church hall for a while
after the inquest, trying to evade the press and talking to Teresa
Tierney. By the time Maeve drove us to the cottage, the alarm was
ringing and a constable had driven over from Killaveen."

Jay gazed deep into his glass of dark ale. "It would be
interesting to know exactly when the call came in. If it was before the
inquest adjourned, then anyone who attended would be eliminated
from the list of possible burglars."

Mike groaned, and Tracy punched his arm, grinning.

"You said it was a professional," I protested.

"Maybe it was. Probably it was, but it can't hurt to check the
timing."

I began calculating. "It's ten minutes, tops, from Killaveen to
the cottage, and Byrne was driving a patrol car."

Jay looked at the Steins. "How long did the reporters keep
you after the inquest?"

Alex stared.

Barbara's eyes gleamed with sudden hope. "Hours. Most of
the crowd was gone by the time we escaped. Alex, go call that
bastard—"

Jay said, "I imagine Mahon will ask all of you where you
were. Novak, you were here. Did you notice when the two uniformed
men left?"

Mike shook his head. "I was working right up to the time
Alex and Barbara came back. In my office." He sounded irritable.

"The crime-scene technicians from Stanyon also got the call.
They came along maybe half an hour later and brought their gear.
There must have been a lot of commotion when they left the
house."

"I didn't notice." Mike's jaw set. The wispy beard
quivered.

Jay sighed.

Tracy wriggled. "I wish I'd come here directly. I didn't,
though. I could see those reporters had Alex and Barbara trapped. It
was obvious our staff meeting would be delayed, so I drove to my flat
for a sandwich. It was almost lunchtime."

Liam said, "I cut out whilst Mahon was on the stand. Went
for a walk."

"Guilty!" Tracy grinned at him.

He cocked his hand like a pistol and cracked his thumb
joint.