Authors: Joy Fielding
Assuming Devon was involved.
Was she?
Marcy took a few seconds before running out the door to run a comb through her hair and apply a hint of lipstick. It would help if she didn’t look too crazy, she thought. What she was about to tell the O’Connors was crazy enough.
She decided to take a taxi, a mistake, she decided once she was firmly ensconced in the cab’s backseat. The traffic was especially awful and the cab driver particularly garrulous. “Is there any way we can get there faster?” she asked him, sitting forward in her seat and giving him the O’Connors’ address. “I’m in a huge hurry.”
“A
huge
hurry, are you?”
“It’s just that I’m running late.”
“Americans are always in a hurry.”
“Actually, I’m not American.” Marcy corrected him, an automatic reflex, then wished she hadn’t.
“What
are
you then?”
“Canadian.”
He scoffed. “What’s the difference?”
Marcy had no desire to go into the various cultural differences that distinguished the two countries. “What’s the difference between north and south Ireland?” she asked in return, then bit down on her lip. She really
was
crazy, she thought. What was the point in being so provocative?
“Are you kiddin’ me?” the cabbie sputtered. “The difference between the north and the south of Ireland?”
“Forget it,” Marcy said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Have you no knowledge of history?” he demanded.
“It was a silly thing to say.”
“I’ll give you a wee refresher course.”
“That’s really not necessary.”
“In 8000 BC, the earliest known human settlers arrived in Ireland,” he said, clearing his throat with a flourish.
Dear God, thought Marcy.
“In 2000 BC, the first metalworkers arrived. In 700 BC, the Celtic settlement of Ireland began. The Gaels arrived in 100 AD. About three hundred years later, St. Patrick returned to Ireland as a Christian missionary.” The taxi drove over a large pothole, sending Marcy bouncing a good foot into the air.
“Do you think you can concentrate on the road?” she asked the driver.
“The years between 500 and 800 AD are often referred to as the golden age,” he said, ignoring her plea. “Ireland became one of the largest centers of Christianity in Europe.”
“Look. I’m really sorry if you took offense—”
“Then the Vikings invaded, then the Danes, then the English. In 1204, Dublin Castle was founded as the center of English power. By the 1500s, Henry VIII declared himself king of all Ireland and began the suppression of the Catholic Church. Queen Elizabeth I subsequently proclaimed Ireland an Anglican country.”
Marcy sank back in her seat, deciding it was pointless to argue further. What the hell? The history lesson would help to pass the time, keep her mind occupied and her blood pressure down. And she might even learn something.
The cabbie continued. “In 1641, an Irish Catholic revolt in Ulster ended in defeat. Eight years later, Oliver Cromwell invaded. In 1690, the armies of King James the second, a Catholic, were defeated, consolidating the Protestant order in England. In 1782, the Irish parliament was granted independence.
In 1801, it dissolved, becoming part of the United Kingdom. Then, 1845,” he pronounced ominously. “Surely you know what happened then.”
Marcy returned to an upright position, her mind searching for an answer, like an errant student caught not paying attention in class. “I-I’m not sure,” she stammered.
“The start of the Great Famine,” he said with a disapproving shake of his suitably red hair. “Lasted over three years. Almost two million people either died or emigrated, mostly to America.”
“Yes, that was terrible.…”
“In 1886 and again in 1894, bills for home rule were defeated in parliament,” he said, dismissing her pity with a wave of his hand. “In 1905 came the founding of Sinn Fein. You know what that means?”
“Trouble?” Marcy asked, catching the driver’s glare in the rearview mirror.
“Sinn Fein means ‘We Ourselves,’ and in 1918 they won a landslide victory against the Irish Parliamentary Party. From 1919 through 1921 was the Irish War of Independence led by Michael Collins, which led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty whereby Ireland was partitioned into twenty-six counties forming the Free State and six that remained part of the UK.”
Marcy leaned forward again. Despite herself, she found herself growing increasingly interested in this impromptu history lesson. “Did you used to be a teacher?”
He shook his head. “Every Irishman could tell you as much. Couldn’t you? About Canada?”
“I was never very good in history,” Marcy replied. What
had
she been good at?
“In 1922 and ’23—the Irish civil war,” the cabbie declared, “between the government of the Free State and those who
opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Michael Collins was assassinated by the IRA, who considered the treaty a sellout. In 1937 the Free State adopted a new constitution and abandoned its membership in the British Commonwealth. The country changed its name to Eire. In 1948, the Republic of Ireland severed its last constitutional links to Britain.”
“You left out the Second World War,” Marcy said, admonishing him.
“Ireland was neutral.”
“You prefer to fight among yourselves,” Marcy remarked, and was grateful when he laughed.
“I guess we do.” He stopped the car. “Well, here we are, 117 Adelaide Road.”
Marcy looked out the side window at the large yellow-brick house with its flower-lined front walk and three-car garage. Hopefully Mr. O’Connor’s car was still inside it.
“That didn’t take too long, now, did it?” the cabbie asked.
“You did great,” Marcy told him, including a generous tip along with the fare. “Thank you. And for the history lesson, too. I learned a lot.”
“Next time I see you, there’ll be a quiz,” he said before pulling away from the curb.
Marcy watched the cab disappear around the bend in the road, then she turned on her heel and ran up the O’Connors’ front walk, ringing the bell and pounding on the black double doors. “Please be home,” she prayed. “Please don’t let me be too late.”
But after several seconds, it became obvious that no one was there.
“Damn it,” Marcy exclaimed, walking around to the side of the house, knowing there was little point in knocking on the side door but doing it anyway. She approached the garage
and jumped up, trying to see inside the sliver of glass that ran along the top of all three garage doors. But the glass was too high and the inside of the garage too dark, and what difference did it make if their car was inside anyway? If the O’Connors had a three-car garage, there was a good chance they had more than one car. Besides, they could have taken the train or even a taxi to Kinsale, she thought, wishing she’d had the foresight to ask her driver to wait until she’d known whether anyone was home. Now what was she supposed to do?
“I could leave them a note,” she said out loud, returning to the front of the house and seeing curtains move in the window of the house across the road. She dug inside her purse for a piece of paper but found nothing but a few crumpled pieces of Kleenex. “Naturally.” What had she been planning to say anyway?
Hi, you don’t know me, but I think someone is planning to kidnap your baby!
“Yeah, right,” she said as her cell phone started ringing. She retrieved it from her purse, flipped it open.
“Where are you?” Liam asked before she had time to say hello.
Marcy told him.
“What?” he barked. “What are you doing over there?”
Marcy told him about her trip to Mulcahy’s, about seeing Jax with Shannon, about overhearing his phone conversation and her subsequent suspicions.
“Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “You’re saying you think there’s a plot to kidnap the O’Connors’ baby?”
“You think I’m crazy,” Marcy said. Of course he’d think she was crazy. What other option had she left him?
He surprised her by saying, “I think you should call the gardai.”
“What?”
“Call the police, Marcy,” he translated. “Now.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“They’ll
think I’m crazy,” she said.
“They
already
think you’re crazy,” he said, reminding her.
She smiled.
“Look, Marcy. You’re in way over your head. You’ve done everything you can. Now let the police handle it.”
“I’m afraid Devon might be involved. I don’t want to get her in trouble.”
“If your suspicions are correct, it’s too late for that.”
“But what if I’m wrong?”
“What if you’re right?” he asked in return. “What if you’re right and something happens to the O’Connor baby, and you could have stopped it? You’ll never forgive yourself.”
“I know,” Marcy said. “I just don’t know if I can.”
The sound of sirens in the distance, getting louder, drawing nearer.
“Call the gardai, Marcy,” Liam urged.
Marcy watched a police car tear up the street and pull to a stop in front of the O’Connors’ driveway, watched as the nosy neighbor emerged from her house across the street and conferred with one of the gardai, while another garda walked purposefully up the path of the O’Connors’ front lawn toward her.
“Call the police,” Liam said again.
“That won’t be necessary,” Marcy said.
R
EALLY, MRS. TAGGART,” CHRISTOPHER
Murphy was saying, leaning back in the chair behind his desk and cupping his hands behind his head. “We have to stop meeting this way.”
Marcy smiled, appreciating the senior garda’s attempt at levity, however strained. She knew what he probably wanted to do was lock her in a holding cell until she was due to leave Ireland, or better yet, personally escort her to the airport and strap her into her seat on the Air Canada jet back to Toronto himself. Despite his outwardly calm demeanor, she recognized the look of contained fury in his eyes that said he was this close to leaping across the desk and wrapping his fingers around her throat. She’d seen that same look in Peter’s eyes many times in the months leading up to his eventual desertion.
“I’m truly sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused,” Marcy told him.
Murphy waited, as if he’d already heard the “but” that was about to follow.
“But I haven’t done anything wrong,” Marcy said obligingly.
“Not much you’ve done right either,” was Murphy’s instant retort.
“That’s true,” Marcy was forced to concede. “But, as far as I know, I haven’t broken any laws.”
“Don’t know about that. I think a good case might be made for being a public nuisance.”
“A public nuisance? That’s ridiculous.”
“This is your third visit to this station in as many days,” he said. “Not to mention the little stunt you pulled last night.”
“The stunt …?” Dear God, had that bastard Kieran filed a formal complaint?
“I understand you spent some quality time with one of our boys in the front seat of his patrol car,” Christopher Murphy said, nodding toward the open folder on his desk.
Marcy felt her shoulders slump. “You know about that,” she stated more than asked.
“Marcy Taggart, Canadian citizen, found wandering the Cork hills at around ten p.m.,” he recited from memory, “a little wobbly on her feet, smelling of alcohol, likely inebriated …”
“I was not drunk.”
“No? What were you then?”
“I just needed some air.”
“At ten o’clock at night? In the pouring rain? Far from your hotel?” Murphy nodded, then shook his head, as if arguing with himself over how best to proceed. “Is that what you were doing this morning as well then? Just getting some air?”
Another weary shake of his head when Marcy failed to respond. “Mrs. Leary said it wasn’t the first time she caught you snoopin’ around the O’Connors’ house.”
“I wasn’t
snoopin’,”
Marcy replied pointedly, then immediately wished she hadn’t. Christopher Murphy wasn’t the enemy. What was the point in antagonizing him? “If anybody’s a snoop, it’s that damn Mrs. Leary.”
“She saw you peeking in her neighbor’s windows, tiptoeing around the side of their house, looking in their garage,” Murphy rattled off, carefully enunciating the final G of each verb.
“I was just trying to see if the O’Connors were still home.”
Murphy nodded. “The fact that nobody answered when you knocked or rang their bell wasn’t enough of a clue?”
“I already told the other officers—”
“You were trying to warn them,” the garda stated as the door to his office opened and Officer Sweeny stepped inside. He walked around the side of Christopher Murphy’s desk and whispered something in his ear, his pronounced belly brushing up against the sleeve of Murphy’s uniform. Murphy nodded several times, and Sweeny left the room with a knowing smile in Colleen Donnelly’s direction. The female garda was standing in a far corner of the room, one thin ankle crossed over the other, her shoulder leaning against the off-white wall, so quiet that Marcy had all but forgotten she was there.
“Yes, that’s right,” Marcy said.
“That there’s a plot afoot to kidnap their baby.”
“Right again,” Marcy said, trying to ignore the tired note of skepticism she heard in the policeman’s voice.
“And you think this because …?”
“I’ve already explained.”
“Explain it again.”
Marcy sighed, understanding the drill. Might as well
cooperate, she thought, knowing there was no point in arguing. She wasn’t going to get out of here until she went over every last detail of her story again. And, very likely, again after that.
“I overheard a phone conversation,” she said, folding her arms across her chest and speaking to the floor.
“Back up a minute,” Murphy barked, his tone forcing her eyes up to his. “Where was this?”
“Outside Mulcahy’s.” Marcy glanced at the temporary black tattoo on the back of her hand. It had faded only slightly from the night before, despite repeated attempts to remove it.
“And what, pray tell, possessed you to go to a place like Mulcahy’s?”
“I was looking for my daughter—”
“That would be Audrey?”
“Devon,” Marcy said, correcting him.
“Yes, right. She’s just calling herself Audrey these days. Who told you about Mulcahy’s?”