Malarkey (33 page)

"He's in custody, charged with the break-in at the
cottage."

Jay expelled a breath. "Quick work."

Mahon gave a gracious nod. "Go on."

"Tommy told me his name after he'd gagged me. He slapped
me around, taunted me. Then he went off and took the flashlight
with him." Jay fell silent. I handed him the jug, and he sipped from it.
His hand shook.

When he set the water down, Mahon said, "How did
McDiarmuid come to be in the folly with you?"

Jay took my hand. "I can tell you what he explained to me,
but you ought to ask him. All I saw—and this was some time later,
maybe an hour later—was that Tierney had brought in another
victim. The light hurt my eyes at first, but when they adjusted I could
see it was Liam McDiarmuid and that he was bleeding."

"You know McDiarmuid," Mahon interrupted—for the
record.

"Yes. I met him at Stanyon Hall."

The constable jotted something in a notebook.

"So young Tierney brought him into the folly."

Jay nodded. "He tied Liam to the other chair. There were
these two chairs like short-legged thrones, with arm rests and moth-
eaten cloth back-rests and cushions. They smelled moldy."

If they were nearly two hundred years old they were
entitled to smell moldy, I reflected, but the smell must have added to
the horror.

Jay was saying, "He'd tied me to one chair, and he tied Liam
to the other."

"That's clear. Go on."

Jay swallowed more water. His voice sounded rough, as if he
had a cold coming on. "Liam had fainted. Tierney was ranting,
laughing. I couldn't make much sense of what he said, but I gathered
he'd fought with Liam. My head ached. Maybe I passed out, too. I was
fading in and out. When I regained consciousness, Tierney had gone
and taken the light with him. I could hear Liam breathing."

Mahon opened his mouth to ask the next question, but Jay
said, in a less certain voice, "You're sure Liam's alive?"

"Yes." Mahon had had plenty of time to call the Wexford
hospital.

Jay closed his eyes. "Okay. As I said, you should ask Liam
what happened. He was out for quite a while. When he came to, he
sounded weak. He wanted to know if I was all right, and I said
mmhmm. Then he apologized."

"Apologized!"

"He said he'd tried to rescue me and failed."

Mahon made a skeptical noise.

Jay went on, dogged, "When he heard I'd disappeared, he
was afraid Tommy had abducted me."

"Wasn't that a leap of logic?"

"Tommy'd seen the news stories."

"And they put the wind up him? I see." Mahon sounded
depressed.

"Tommy called Liam at Stanyon and said he needed a
getaway car. Liam agreed to help him escape to Shannon Airport and
arranged to meet him in the lane west of the woods. Liam took a
knife, drove there, and waited. He intended to force Tommy to take
him to me. They fought and Tommy won." Jay's voice kept fading like
a bad audio. "Tommy took Liam's cash and car keys and brought
Liam into the tomb."

"The folly," Mahon corrected, absent. "That had to be before
we got the telephone message saying you were being held
hostage."

"There was a ransom demand?"

"We have it on tape. The laboratory types think the voice
was Tommy's." Mahon explained the phony political message, then
burst out, "In God's name, why? Why would a respectable man like
McDiarmuid agree to such a thing?"

A considerable silence ensued. "Because Liam killed Slade
Wheeler on Easter Sunday, and Tommy witnessed the killing." Jay
drew a ragged breath. "And I wouldn't be telling you that if Liam
hadn't also admitted he killed Wheeler's sister. I don't think the first
death was murder. The second was."

Mahon raised a heavy hand and the constable shut off the
recorder. "You're saying Liam McDiarmuid admitted he was
responsible for both deaths?"

Jay nodded. He was tiring rapidly, and I didn't like his color.
"Liam thought he was dying. He wanted me to know what had
happened, because he believed I was going to die, too. Tommy meant
to leave the country."

I said, "Tommy abandoned the two of you to die of
thirst?"

Jay was silent.

I felt a wave of nausea. It could have happened. If we hadn't
known of the folly's existence...no, surely not. Too many people knew
of the hideaway. Someone would have come forward, but would they
have come forward quickly enough? It doesn't take many days for a
human being to die without water.

I gripped Jay's hand almost as fiercely as he had held
mine.

"Well, well, my money was on young Stein." Mahon heaved a
huge sigh. "I'd best make a telephone call. We'll have to put a guard
on McDiarmuid's room and bar visitors. Tommy Tierney's in
custody, but we were set to release him on bail Monday."

A nurse bustled in at that moment and ordered Mahon out.
Perhaps she'd been eavesdropping. It was time, she announced, for
Jay to eat. I was astonished I hadn't thought of feeding him. I'd been
feeding people compulsively since I arrived in Ireland, and here was
my husband starving. I expressed myself.

It seemed they had fed him toast and broth earlier, before
they called me to his room, and were about to administer cream of
asparagus soup. Jay doesn't like cream of asparagus soup. I noticed
that he ate it to the last drop. And drank a glass of juice. And ordered
a steak, medium rare, when the nurse returned. She laughed as she
whisked the cart from the room and promised a midnight
snack.

I was rather hungry myself by that time and thought
longingly of pizza. However, Mahon would return at any moment
and I was not going to leave Jay with the story untold. In fact, I was
not going to leave him at all. I was explaining that to him in a low
voice because I didn't want Gardai witnesses, when a crash sounded
in the corridor.

Jay's muscles contracted. I turned.

Toss Tierney ripped the privacy curtain aside and stood
swaying at the foot of the bed. He was drunk but by no means
incapable of mayhem. I could see that in his eyes. I stood up slowly,
but Jay kept a hard grip on my hand.

"Liar!"

Jay said nothing.

"May God damn ye to hell telling lies about my son."

"What lies, Mr. Tierney?" Jay's voice was cool, almost
detached.

Toss blinked. "And that hoor, Maeve Butler, wheedling and
telling the missus she ought to betray Tommy. She's a traitor herself,
the wee sassenach bitch. We know fine how to deal with traitors." He
smacked the footrail and the bed shuddered.

I said, "Teresa didn't betray anyone, Toss, and neither did
Maeve."

He called me unsanctified names in a spray of spittle. Jay
squeezed my hand harder, holding me at his side.

I softened my voice. "I know you love your son. That's
probably why you showed him how to enter the folly. He showed
others." I started to say he showed Artie and bit back the name. Why
get Artie into trouble?

"Others? What others?"

"Does it matter? You were the one who betrayed the
secret."

His lower lip stuck out, I swear, like a pouting baby's. His
eyes shifted, and he let out a baffled roar, shaking the bed. "Liar! I say
he's innocent. Tommy's innocent."

"He didn't kill Slade Wheeler," Jay murmured.

Toss caught himself in mid-roar. "Whazzat?"

"I said he did not kill Slade Wheeler."

Toss shook his head like a fly-tormented horse. "Ah, shite,
wasn't he after telling me he did?"

I held my breath.

Jay shook his head slowly. No. He held Toss's eyes.

"Jaysus!" Toss sank onto the constable's chair. Great
wrenching sobs shook his body. I don't think he noticed when Mahon
and the constable, nightstick in hand, reentered the room. They
handcuffed Toss and led him away, still sobbing.

Jay flopped back against the pillow.

I sat with a thwack. "You can let go of my hand."

He released it finger by finger. "My dear and darling wife, do
not ever try to reason with a drunk. He was ready to tear the limbs
from your body."

I shook my aching hand. "I wasn't trying to reason with
him."

"Then what did you have in mind?"

I rose to my feet. "System overload."

He squinted up at me. "Say again?"

"I was trying to paralyze his central nervous system."

Jay let out a long breath and wriggled his shoulders. "You
came fairly close to paralyzing mine."

"Anyone for pizza?" My father stood in the door holding a
flat grease-blotched carton. The smile that wreathed his features
faded. "What's the matter?"

I said, "Just Toss Tierney. He's gone now."

Jay said, "Hello, George. Did somebody mention pizza?"

Dad's smile came back full force. His laid the carton on the
bed and took Jay's hand. "My dear boy, we were so worried."

Jay's cheeks reddened. "So was I."

Maeve poked her head in from the corridor. "Is it safe?
Grand. We brought clothes and a razor, Jay." He needed a razor.

He smiled at her. "And pizza."

So Jay and I shared the pizza while Dad told Jay about
Maeve's campaign to enter the folly and Artie's last-minute
rescue.

I munched bland, cheesy pizza and watched my father. His
voice was clear as a bell, no slurring, and his motions vigorous.
Considering Dad had done every possible thing he shouldn't have
done since I arrived, including breakfasting on scrambled eggs, I
thought Ma was going to be pleased when she saw him. I was more
than pleased. The session with Maeve's students had been tonic,
clearly. He liked students. They kept him young. Maybe he needed to
teach a class now and then. I'd suggest that sometime—some other
time.

"Sure, it's a council of war," Joe Kennedy said from the
doorway.

"Join us." Jay licked a bit of mozzarella from one finger. "It's
good to see you. I hear you pulled the tape off my mouth. Thanks,
buddy." They shook hands.

Joe was blushing. "Ah, I couldn't help myself. Yon evidence
johnny would have photographed you from a dozen angles and taken
blood samples before he touched the tape—or the ropes."

"No sense of priorities."

Joe rubbed the back of his neck and grinned. "That's it."

He was wearing jeans and a heathery blue pullover, so I
gathered he was off-duty.

"Pizza?" Jay lifted the carton, which was balanced on his
stomach. Dad and Maeve had brought the largest pizza in the
province of Leinster.

Maeve handed Joe one of the paper plates Jay and I had
ignored, American style, in favor of eating with our hands. "Don't tell
me you're hungry."

Joe helped himself. "I can never tell you anything that you
don't already know, Miss Butler."

Maeve's eyes glinted, and her jaw thrust out.

"Hey," I said, swallowing pizza. "Truce. You two have been at
daggers drawn for days now. It's exhausting to watch. Besides, you
make a splendid team even when you're quarreling. Think what
triumphs of archaeology and criminology you'd achieve if you
cooperated."

Both of them looked sheepish, so I pointed out Mrs.
O'Brien's daffodils on the pseudo-altar by way of distraction, and
told Joe I appreciated the gesture.

We chatted about one thing and another. Maeve was taking
her team to the motorway site the next morning. Joe was going
fishing. Dad said he'd called Mother and the Dean. Ma was flying in to
Dublin the following Saturday. Jay lay, eyes half-closed, yawning
from time to time, but obviously comfortable and interested.

However, when he heard I intended to stay the night he told
me point-blank to forget it. My feelings were hurt. I'm afraid I had
been romanticizing my role as noble wife ministering to sick
husband—and sleeping at his feet, more or less. It's easy to create
foolish self-images.

Jay said, "Mahon's coming back. After that they'll knock me
out again. I guarantee it. Come in the morning, Lark."

"But—"

He jabbed a thumb in the direction of my father who was
asking Joe something about trout fishing.

"Oh." I am sometimes slow on the uptake. Jay didn't want
me to leave Dad alone in the cottage. Tears stung my eyes. I bent
down and gave my good man as thorough a kiss as I should have,
given his sore lip. "Well, if you insist. Dad and I will come for you
right after breakfast."

So we went away. Dad let me drive home. Maeve and Joe
were standing in the car park talking when we left.

Oh, when my back began to smart
'Twas
like a penknife in my heart,
And when my heart began to
bleed,
Then that was death, and death indeed.

Children's song

Liam McDiarmuid died early that morning. Alex called at
half past seven. He told me the news, his voice trembling, and asked
if he and Barbara could come to the cottage to talk to my father. Dad
was in the shower, but I said yes. A week earlier I would have tried
to shield him.

I brewed a fresh pot of coffee. When he came upstairs, I told
him what had happened. Though he was sad, he was not as
devastated as he might have been. We had talked for a long time the
night before, unwinding, putting things in perspective, and I had told
him of Jay's revelations. Now he agreed to let Alex and Barbara
know, if Mahon had not told them, that their friend and colleague
had probably committed murder. I thought it would come better
from Dad than from me.

So I fixed him a quick breakfast and went downstairs for my
own shower. I dawdled afterwards, making the beds and running a
batch of laundry. The swoosh-swoosh of the washer was oddly
comforting. The spin cycle whined away, and I had set up a drying
rack in the hallway, when I heard the Steins' knock. I took my time
festooning the passage with a week's worth of damp underwear.
When I had tossed a colored load into the washer and set it going
again, I crept upstairs.

Barbara was sniffing into a handkerchief, and Alex gave me
a dispirited flap of the hand by way of greeting as I entered the
kitchen. I poured myself a cup and warmed the coffee in the three
other mugs.