Thirteen

Gethsemane, on the chance Father Tim had tracked down a spell to keep spirits on the other side of the veil, aimed her bike toward Our Lady. She halted in front of the Mad Rabbit when she spied Theophilus Derringer and Brian Nishi walking in. Were they distraught over Ty’s death? Or were they, like Rosalie, shedding no tears? One way to find out. She parked her bike and followed them into the pub.

“May I join you?” she asked as she neared their table.

Theophilus rose from his seat and pulled over an extra chair. “Please, sit.”

Brian nodded, then turned his attention back to his drink.

“I’m sorry about Ty,” she said. “This must be a tough time for you both.”

“No picnic for you, either.” Theophilus’s mellifluous accent reminded her of a BBC adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. “Considering the circumstances of how, you know…”

Brian looked up from his drink. “Did you see anyone? Or hear anything? The road to the lighthouse runs right past your cottage.”

“No,” Gethsemane said, “nothing.” No reason to tell him about Verna’s late-night trek up to Carrick Point, nor her run-in with Vivian. “How long did you know Ty?”

“Since university,” Theophilus answered. “The three of us, Bri, Ty, and me, were suite mates.”

“We knew him a damn sight longer than that header he got mixed up with,” Brian said.

“Sunny, he means.” Theophilus called to a barmaid, “Same again,” then asked Gethsemane, “Did you want anything?”

“Nothing for me, thanks.” She came to snoop, not to drink. “You didn’t approve of Ty’s relationship with Sunny?”

“I approved of it the way I’d approve of going before a firing squad,” Brian said.

Theophilus toyed with his glass. “I’m afraid Sunny was the only one looking forward to the upcoming nuptials. And she was mostly looking forward to the photo ops. I guess Mal may have been looking forward to them. Sunny was paying him a bloody fortune.”

“He’d have earned it,” Brian said. “Probably would’ve developed a repetitive motion injury of his trigger finger. No amount of money’s worth being saddled with that horrideous cow, not even for as long as it’d take for the ink on annulment documents to dry. Ty should’ve stuck with Verna. Probably be alive now if he had.”

Gethsemane leaned closer. “Verna? You know Verna?” Because Verna had claimed she didn’t know either of them.

“Sure, we know her,” Brian said. “Sweet girl. Theo’s sister introduced her to Ty.”

“My sister apologized to Verna for that.” Theophilus drank a good portion of his drink before continuing. “Ty was my mate and all, and I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Ty didn’t treat Verna as well as she deserved. She was good for Ty, but Ty wasn’t so good for her.”

Brian slammed a fist on the table. Glasses rattled. A few heads turned. “None of this matters now, Theo, does it? Ty’s dead and what’s past is past.”

Theophilus didn’t answer right away. “No, none of that matters now.” He emptied his glass. “Where’s that barmaid got to?”

“Don’t you think you ought to slow down, mate?” Brian arranged Theophilus’s empty glasses, one, two, three, in a row on the table.

“Are you my nanny now, Bri?” Theophilus ordered a fourth.

Gethsemane waited until both men finished their drinks and the silence grew uncomfortable. “Do you think Ty killed himself? Sunny doesn’t.”

Brian swore. “Let me guess. She can’t imagine that anyone would rather be dead than with her. What’s her explanation? Autoerotic asphyxiation gone horribly wrong?”

Theophilus shot Brian a look. “I don’t see how it could be anything but suicide, given where he was found.”

“Was Ty suicidal?” Gethsemane thought back to the red flags her mother, a psychiatrist, had spoken about. “Did he put his affairs in order? Make a will? Seem emotionally distant? Distracted?”

“No more so than any other bloke about to take the plunge.” Brian cringed. “Sorry. Get married.”

“He lived in what I guess you’d call a bachelor pad,” Theophilus said. “He had to sell his apartment and furniture—”

Brian interrupted. “Sunny made it clear none of his furniture would be welcome in the family home.”

“Give notice at work—he and Sunny planned to live in the States, you see,” Theophilus continued. “Don’t know if he made a will.”

“Signed a prenup,” Brian said. “Sunny’s idea.”

“What about visiting old friends?” Or ex-fiancées? Had he tracked down Verna to say a final goodbye? “Making amends with family? Ruminating on past events, losses?”

A glance that Gethsemane couldn’t decipher passed between Theophilus and Brian before Theophilus answered. “Ty wasn’t one for dwelling on the past. No profit in it, he said.”

“Ty focused on future plans, not past accomplishments,” Brian said. “Always had an eye out for his next big opportunity. As far as he was concerned, anything that happened more than six months ago was ancient history and best forgotten.”

“Doesn’t sound as if he was at high risk for suicide.”

“But who would’ve killed him?” Theophilus asked. “Who could have? Verna’s not got killer instinct. Plus she’s half Ty’s size. No way she could’ve gotten him over a railing.”

“Sunny wouldn’t have done it,” Brian said. “I don’t doubt she’s capable of murder. If Ty had turned up dead after the wedding, she’d be number one on the suspect list. She’d probably even post the kill shots on her social media feed. But she’d never have ruined her wedding plans and lost out on all those influencer endorsement deals.”

“Not even if she discovered Ty loved her money more than he loved her?” Gethsemane asked.

Brian shook his head. “She knew Ty was marrying her money. She didn’t care, as long as he played his part in front of whatever smartphone camera happened to be pointed in their direction. She turns that little girl voice on and off like a tap and makes cow eyes at any male over the age of twelve she thinks may be of use to her, but the helpless female routine is just that, a routine. She’s as cold-blooded and pragmatic as they come and suffers no illusions about what she’s—she was—getting into with Ty.”

“Besides,” Theophilus said, “Sunny’s also too small to have hoisted Ty over a railing.”

“You’re both convinced Ty took his own life?”

Theophilus shrugged. “What other explanation is there?”

“Doubt we’ll ever know why,” Brian said. “In the end, does it matter? Dissecting Ty’s past searching for an answer won’t bring Ty back, will it? I say leave it alone.”

She couldn’t leave it alone. Not after Sunny barged into her house, insistent a murder had occurred. And not after she caught her friend’s girlfriend in a lie about not knowing the dead guy’s best friends.

She flagged down a barmaid. “On second thought, I’ll have that drink.”

  

Not even her favorite whiskey, Bushmills, kept her from ruminating on Sunny’s and Verna’s behavior. Was Sunny vicious enough to kill the man she planned to marry if she found out he’d made a play for a woman he’d dumped? Had Verna really told him to go away? With two big lies to her credit, she ranked low on the credibility scale right now. And what about Vivian? Had she gone back up to the lighthouse later that evening? She seemed protective of her older sister. Could she and Verna have teamed up to toss Ty off the catwalk? But how would they get the rope around his neck?

She continued to brood as she pedaled home. Was Brian’s joke about autoerotic asphyxiation really a joke? Or did Ty have a kink that a killer might have exploited to trick him into participating in his own murder? If he’d put the rope around his own neck and climbed up onto the railing, a push would have sent him over. Even a small woman could shove an unsuspecting narcissist off a railing he’d perched on. Sunny, Verna, Vivian. Of the three, Verna was the one who’d lied. Why? Sure, she wouldn’t want anyone to know she’d been one of the last people to see Ty alive, but why lie about knowing the groomsmen? Even if you forgot you knew Brian, you certainly wouldn’t forget you knew a guy named Theophilus.

Suddenly, a chill shot down Gethsemane’s spine. The hair on her neck and arms stood up as she stopped her bike in the middle of the road. She rubbed at the gooseflesh on her arms and looked around. Nothing but trees. She listened. No Tchaikovsky.

“Eamon?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

Silence. She squinted to peer into the woods that surrounded her. The “insufferable gloom” Edgar Allan Poe described in “The Fall of the House of Usher” crept over her. She shook her head to clear it. She’d ridden this way hundreds of times without incident. What creeped her out now?

“Eamon,” she said, her voice a little louder, “if that’s you, knock it off. You’re scaring me.”

Sunset loomed on the horizon. The gathering gold and orange and pink filled her with angst instead of awe.

“Eamon?” she whispered again. “Please let that be you.”

An ear-splitting wail rent the twilight. Gethsemane froze, a breath caught between lung and throat.

“It’s a banshee.”

She yelped and spun, clenched fists raised. The Pashley crashed to the road.

Eamon appeared before her. His frightened mauve aura failed to reassure her.

“Jaysus, Mary, and…” Gethsemane exhaled her relief and dropped her hands. “What the—”

“Did you hear what I said?” Eamon asked. “It’s a banshee.”

“A banshee.” She ran through her mental bestiary. “A folkloric female believed to be a harbinger of—”

“Of nothing good.” Eamon pointed at the Pashley. The bike righted itself and rolled to Gethsemane. “Get on and let’s go. I’ll walk you home.”

She climbed onto the bike. “A banshee is a harbinger of death. Hearing a banshee’s cry means—”

“There’ll be another violent death in Dunmullach soon.”