Chapter 26
Tara stood on the sidewalk, wishing she felt as cheerful on the inside as the streets of Galway were on the outside. She wished she was just a tourist and that her biggest problem was whether to go into this pub or that pub. Right now, she’d take any of them. Danny answered on the third ring. “Are you alright?” he said. “Did you get my message?”
“Yes,” Tara said. “And I want to hear all about your second visit with George.”
“We also have that meeting with the solicitor. Do you want to meet at the mill?”
“I’m on my way to the Garda station,” Tara said.
“Oh, no,” Danny said. “What happened?”
“Apparently they have a lot of questions for me.”
“For you?”
Tara sighed. Gable was glaring at her. “I’ll tell you later. But before I go—Dawson Security called me. The security cameras at the mill are disabled.”
“What?”
“Did you have anything to do with that?”
“’Course not. When?”
“Yesterday.” At least she thought it was yesterday. Was it the day before? So much was happening, Tara was losing her grip on time. “The day before yesterday. A few days ago. I don’t know.”
Danny’s low laugh eased her mood a bit. “I’ll take care of it. Why didn’t you call straightaway?”
“I was waiting to see you in person.”
“Let’s go,” Gable said.
“Are you going to need a solicitor?” Danny asked.
“No.” Am I? “I know about the retail shop too,” she said. She was sick of secrets. “I’m not mad. I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me.”
“What retail shop?”
“Now.” Gable wasn’t joking around.
“I’ve got to go.” Tara hung up. Now Danny was upset with her. What retail shop . . . Was he playing her? Or had he spoken with the real estate agent so long ago that he forgot? Maybe Heather had weaseled her into signing the lease by pretending someone from Irish Revivals had been interested in renting it. Now that she thought about it, Heather had consistently referred to “her employee.” Everyone in town knew about Tara and Johnny Meehan by now. Had she been played?
Even if that were the case—she loved the retail shop. As soon as she was finished at the station she might head over there, just to start planning, to distract herself—make herself feel better. She didn’t need this. She didn’t want it.
She supposed she was lucky that when Gable opened the back door to the guard car she wasn’t in handcuffs. But people were watching anyway. The Irish grapevine. She was starting to hate grapes.
* * *
Breanna was behind the counter and offered a weak smile when Tara entered, flanked by Detective Sergeant Gable and the other guards. Tara tried to smile back, but she couldn’t make her lips move in the direction she wanted, and feared it came out as more of a snarl. She felt nervous, and could see how bad this looked from their perspective. She had been the one to discover both murder victims. They might easily think she was lying about room 301 and the blood on the key. They might think she was lying about her phone being stolen and that’s why she didn’t tell them about discovering Johnny right away. And she was going around and talking to all the suspects. What if they sent her home? Could they? She didn’t know her rights. She did know that Ireland offered citizenship to anyone whose grandparents were born here, and given her parents—according to her mother, her father was Irish too—had been born here, then Tara could become a citizen. She’d never considered it before. But the more people wanted her gone, the more she wanted to stay. If that kind of obstinance wasn’t an Irish trait, she didn’t know what was.
They led her to a room empty of everything but a long table and several chairs. Then they left her there. They were treating her like a suspect. She still had her phone, but she had a feeling they wouldn’t be happy to see her using it. She didn’t know who she would call anyway.
Detective Gable returned, and to her surprise set a cup of coffee in front of her.
“Thank you.”
“What else haven’t you told us?”
Tara chewed on her lip. Was this a good sign, or was he circling in for a kill? “Alanna lied about her alibi.”
Gable stared at her, his face turning red. He crossed his arms. “Go on.”
“I visited the Galway Cookery School. She only took their twelve-week program, and that was last spring. When I asked where she was the morning Emmet was killed, she insisted she was in class. She’s been pretending to go every day. Ask Grace.” Or her father.
“Alanna Kelly is playing you for a fool,” Gable said. He took a seat but his arms remained crossed. “She may be a liar. But that doesn’t make her a killer.”
“I’m just telling you what I know.”
“What else?”
“I think Carrig Murray was taking money from his theatrical production.”
“And you know this . . . ?”
Tara sighed. She filled him in on their meeting with George.
Gable glared. “Is that it?”
“Why would he sell George a light then turn around and insist on getting it back?”
Gable tapped his pen. “I suppose you have a theory.”
Tara shook her head. “It’s still an open question.”
“Let’s focus on the matters that pertain to Emmet’s murder, and by all means if we have time we’ll move on to open questions.”
The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Tara, but she was happy to move on. “Johnny was going to propose to Rose, and for some reason he didn’t. I found the stem of a rose left outside his cottage. He had a tattoo done recently of a rose with an engagement ring. So why didn’t he propose?”
“You didn’t think to ask him when you discovered his hiding place?”
“I was so stunned I forgot all about it. I didn’t even remember to ask Rose when I saw her.”
“Once more Ms. Meehan . . . what does this have to do with the murders?”
“I don’t know. You asked me to tell you everything. I’m telling you everything.”
Gable jotted a few notes down, stared at his pad. “Don’t stop now.”
Tara held out her hands. “You get the significance of how Carrig was killed, don’t you?”
Gable’s head popped up. “In what sense? Stabbed in the back or Shakespeare?”
Danny was right. Most Irishman did know their Shakespeare. Yay them. “Both,” Tara admitted.
“Leave those threads to me.” Gable shut his notebook.
“I thought you wanted it all,” Tara said.
Gable arched an eyebrow, opened his notebook again with a sigh, and waved for Tara to continue.
“The security cameras around the mill were disabled by someone the other day. And the paint used to write ‘Go Home Yankee’ was taken from in front of Rose’s caravan. I confronted Alanna and she admitted to leaving the message.” She swallowed. This next one was a betrayal, but she had to come clean. “Remember the cast-iron pig that Emmet Walsh hired Johnny to find?”
“How could I forget? That was the tipping point to their feud.”
Tara didn’t want to tell him. It didn’t bode well for Johnny. But she was in way over her head and she wasn’t going to keep any more secrets. “I found out that the cast-iron pig—the one that was used to kill Emmet—was a copy of the original.”
Gable stopped writing. “What?”
It was too late to turn back now. This wasn’t her fault. She should never have been in this position in the first place. “I think Johnny was fed up with Emmet hounding him about it so he . . . he cheated. I got a phone call from a man who did the work—asking if the client believed it—bragging about how good his workmanship was.”
Gable crossed his arms. “Why am I just hearing about this now?”
Tara pretended it was a rhetorical question and kept going. “And it might not be the first time. I had planned on checking the authenticity of a granite slab, a cast-iron harp, and an old theatre light. These items involved Carrig as well.”
“Involved Carrig how?”
“He asked Johnny to find him a granite slab so that he could trade it for his old theatre light that he sold to George O’Malley in the Aran Islands.” Gable’s right eye appeared to be twitching. Not such a ridiculous question now, is it? Tara felt sorry for him. “Do you need a cup of tea?”
“No. I do not need a cup of tea. Keep talking.”
“Johnny told Rose that he was fed up with Ben Kelly trying to get his shop—and he thought they were all plotting against him. Everyone thinks my uncle was paranoid—but I think he was being targeted.”
“He’s fabricating items and you’re calling him the victim?”
“No. That’s the problem with our case—”
“My case.”
“Of course. Semantics. That’s the problem with your case. Most of the suspects are guilty of something. But there’s quite a span between lying, or fabricating items—or even spray-painting a threat—and murder. Fabricating items was wrong. Johnny will have to answer for it. But that doesn’t make him a murderer.”
Gable took a moment to think this over. “And who is framing him for murder?”
“Either Johnny is the killer, or he’s not. If he’s not, the killer counted on him being fingered for it. And you’ve played right into his or her hands.”
“It’s my fault now, is it?”
“Of course not. I’m just saying, this killer we’re dealing with—you’re dealing with—is very, very smart.”
“And what do you think of us?”
“Us?”
“The guards. Are we very, very stupid?”
“No. I’m not saying that at all.”
“I’ve heard enough.” Gable stood.
Tara shot up from her chair. She needed him to believe her. She needed him to take charge so she could go back to being a tourist. She could be on a tour bus to the Cliffs of Moher. Or headed to Dublin for a change of scenery. Or anywhere else for the craic. She hadn’t asked for this. “I don’t know why the theatre light was so important to Carrig—what if it was fake too? What if he was squeezing Johnny?”
“Even more reason to believe that I had our killer pegged from day one.” He pointed at her. “Johnny Meehan is our killer.”
“He didn’t run me off the road. Or disable the cameras. Or steal company money—”
“Please get out of my station. I’m going to be needing headache tablets.”
“I didn’t lie about the room at the inn. Maybe Alanna spun this story just to make me look crazy.”
“I think you’re doing a good job of making yourself look crazy. I want you to buy a plane ticket home within the next twenty-four hours. I want proof of your reservation.”
Could he do that? “You can’t make me go home.”
“It’s either that or I will arrest you.”
“You don’t have the grounds to arrest me.”
“You’re interfering with not one but two murder probes.”
“You’re the one who told me not to leave town.”
“This is for your own safety.”
“That’s for me to decide.”
There was a knock on the door. Gable called for them to come in. Breanna poked her head in. “Danny O’Donnell is here with a solicitor. He’s insisting you let them in.”
Gable turned back to Tara and studied her. “Interesting.”
“He’s an employee,” Tara said. “He’s looking out for me.”
“Not much of an investigator if that’s the conclusion you’re drawing,” he said. He pointed. “I want you on a plane, or a train, or a bus twenty-four hours from now. I don’t care where you go. As long it’s a long way from Galway.”