CHAPTER THREE
Orla Keegan reminded Megan of a rattlesnake: small, leathery, and full of poison. Megan believed that buried somewhere in her depths—very, very deeply in her depths—lay a woman of compassion and kindness, but working for her had led Megan to conclude that her compassion might only extend as far as vehicles. It had no apparent time for actual human beings.
Not even at half twelve on a Thursday night—Friday morning, now—with a dead client in the morgue and a local restaurant at risk. She’d swept out to the garage upon Megan’s arrival, investigated the car’s soundness with what Megan knew from experience was not a cursory glance, even if it looked like it, and turned a deadly glare of expectation on the American woman.
Megan raised her hands in peremptory defeat and retreated to the office attached to the garage before even trying to explain. She turned on the overhead lights, avoiding the reception counter and the low desk that sat in front of a couple of expensive, soft, leather chairs under a curtained picture window that overlooked the street.
Orla came in behind her, switching off the main lights and opening the blinds so the streetlamps and passing cars could throw some degree of illumination into the room. Megan made a what-the-hell face—she often felt like her expressions regressed to teenager-dealing-with-impossible-mother around Orla—and dropped into one of the leather chairs. “There’s no point spending up the electric bill when there’s plenty of light from the street,” Orla said to Megan’s look.
Megan gestured expansively at the reception desk. “There are lamps!”
“What, and have people thinking we’re open at this hour, like no decent business would be?”
Military life had taught Megan there were hills worth dying on, both literally and figuratively. Office lights in the middle of the night weren’t one of those hills, so she only rolled her eyes and explained the events of the evening to her boss.
Nobody received any sympathy, not for herself—who least needed it—not for Elizabeth, and certainly not for Fionnuala. What garnered Orla’s concern was that the guards now had a reason to be aware of Leprechaun Limos, though Megan spluttered, “It wasn’t like I had a choice about saying who I worked for, Orla, the car was right there—!”
“The woman was after dying already,” Orla complained. “Why didn’t you bugger out while you could?”
“The Darrs were our clients,” Megan said incredulously. “They were paying me to be there.”
“And they’d best be paying for the three hours you were there after your shift ended!”
“Oh, come on. You can’t bill them for that.”
“Can I not?” Orla possessed a ferocious stare, coldly blue and calculating beneath a mess of hair that waged a continuous battle with its natural grey-brown and the bleached blonde regularly applied to it. None of the colours were done any favors by the orange streetlights, or even the occasional bright white flashes from passing cars. Megan guessed Orla to be in her mid-sixties, though truthfully, she could as easily have been a hard fifty. She’d never once said anything that dated her past about thirty years ago, but if she was ten years Megan’s junior, Megan would eat her chauffeur’s hat.
Regardless, whether she’d seen thirty years or seventy, Orla Keegan had clearly never met an hour of the day she couldn’t wring an extra few quid from. Megan didn’t doubt she would charge the Darrs—Simon Darr—for the hours Megan had waited for him at the hospital.
She sighed. “Of course you can, but it’s unethical. Take it out of my paycheck instead of slapping a surcharge on a man who’s just lost his wife.”
The gleam in Orla’s eyes said she’d do both and pocket the profits. Megan sighed again. “You’re a terrible person, Orla.”
“It’s a free country. Go find another job if you dislike this one so much. Rich Americans, swanning in and talking about money like it grows on trees. Not all of us grew up as privileged as you did, lass, and I’ll thank you not to forget it.”
“If I find another job, you’ll make me find somewhere else to live,” Megan replied dryly. It had seemed like the perfect situation when she’d arrived in Ireland: a job driving and an apartment just up the street from the garage, all in a package deal. Orla had been outrageously charming then, laying on the kind of lilting accent Americans thought of as most Irish. Megan had since learned there was practically an accent for every street, and that the one Orla came by naturally was a thick inner-city cadence that Megan hadn’t understood clearly for months. By then, though, she’d agreed to a job and a three-year-lease on the apartment and had found out Orla only charmed when she wanted something, like a driver who—by dint of being American—could probably be trusted to show up on time.
“Sure I should anyway so,” Orla snapped. “You’ve got that apartment at half of market value.”
“I’ve got it at barely below market value, and the only reason you haven’t doubled my rent is because I signed a three-year-lease. And because if I sign another one, they’ve enacted that law saying you can only raise it by ten percent. Which you’ll do.”
Orla’s shrug challenged Megan to do something about it, though they both knew she wouldn’t, mostly because she liked the job as much as she found her boss exasperating. Satisfied with Megan’s silence, Orla said, “Fine so. I expect you to get it sorted out before the company gets a bad name around town. I can’t have the competition saying ‘oh, Leprechaun Limos, they’re the ones who lost a client last year,’ now can I?”
Megan allowed herself a long blink as her eyebrows crawled up her forehead and thought about just leaving her eyes closed and going to sleep in the cozy leather chair. Only the thought of being rousted by Orla made her reject the plan, and when she opened her eyes again, it was to find her boss staring at her expectantly. “Get what sorted out?”
“This mess! You weren’t thinking, getting us involved in it at all, but now you’d better start, and get it sorted.”
Megan’s face crinkled on its own, like if she wrinkled her nose and bared her teeth it would reflect Orla’s ridiculousness back at her. “The guards are looking into it, Orla. That’s their job.”
“And what do they care about us? It’s your own self who’ll be out of a job if the company folds under this nonsense!”
“Okay! All right.” Megan raised her hands in a gesture of defeat again, trying not to think about how many times a day she did that with her boss. “All right. I’ll do my darnedest to prevent the besmirching of Leprechaun Limos’ good name, ma’am. I’ll go get this sorted.” She meant it about as far as she could throw Orla, but at pushing one a.m., that didn’t seem to matter much. As a caveat, she added, “In the morning. I can’t do anything about it at this hour,” and, upon Orla’s grudging nod, fled home.
* * *
Habit rolled Megan out of bed at five thirty, got her into workout gear, and out the door before her brain could put together a coherent objection. It couldn’t get her across the street without a cheerfully bipping crosswalk telling her it was okay, though, even if traffic was scant at half five in the morning. That was true in most places, but Dublin seemed to take it to an art form: the Irish were not, generally speaking, early risers.
Megan leaned on the crosswalk post, idly pushing its big silver button, and stared blearily at the little red man on the other side of the road. Eventually the once-a-second bip exploded into an enthusiastic, rapid-fire twitter of beeps and the man switched to a little green one.
Megan lurched into motion, smiling as the beeps slowed down. She sort of loved the noisy signal, which was just as well, because the thin panes of her apartment’s windows didn’t block it very well. That was the trouble with—or the charm of—living in what had been student housing a hundred years earlier. To be fair, though, if it hadn’t been student housing in Rathmines, it would have been Victorian factory housing somewhere else, and double-paned glass was as hit-and-miss there as it was in her flat.
Heating bills could be ridiculous, although she’d become Irish enough to turn off the heat entirely when she left the apartment and had lined the windows with thin weathering film meant to keep the warmth in.
She was too early for the gym, which didn’t open until six, but she’d learned the hard way that if she so much as stopped for coffee, she somehow never quite made it to her workout. The staff were used to her hanging around in the doorway, stretching and doing jumping jacks—stars, they called them—to warm up. Just before six, another woman arrived, and they exchanged a friendly nod and a couple of inanities about the fine weather before somebody opened the door and let them in.
The gym, like her apartment, gave her a view of the gorgeous church down the street, with its massive copper-green dome. Megan ran on the treadmill, her phone strapped to her biceps and playing upbeat music in her headphones, watching the dome brighten with summer dawn. It stood high enough to be the landmark for the entire area, though Meg thought it was a little like the Cheshire cat, disappearing from view when she most needed to orient herself by it. On the other end of the road, well past the church, was the Stella Theatre, which brought a little glamour back to going to the movies. Everything in between—including Meg’s little apartment—was the heart of Rathmines, a village that still existed inside the greater city of Dublin. Meg loved it. Her hometown of Austin, belovedly weird as it might be, didn’t have anything with quite the same feeling to it. Of course, her hometown hadn’t had people dropping dead in front of her either, so that balanced something out. Meg made a face and stepped off the treadmill, mopping sweat and popping her earphones out to dangle around her neck.
“Got a minute to spot me?”
A smile blossomed on Meg’s face before she even turned around. “Sure.” The sky had brightened too much to show Jelena Kowalski’s reflection in the window, but Meg knew the woman’s tight, curly hair and heart-shaped face as clearly as if she saw it. She turned, still smiling, to see the other woman—a few inches taller than Meg, pale olive skin, sparkling dark eyes, and wonderfully broad shoulders—setting up the weights on a barbell. “You’re here early.”
“I have to get here early if I want the best spotter at the gym.”
Jelena smiled over her shoulder at Meg. “You Americans,” Jelena went on. “Always up early.”
“What time do people get up in Warsaw?”
“Not as early as you do.” Jelena swung onto the bench, flexed her wrists, then took a firm hold on the barbell as Megan came around to spot her. Jelena had biceps to die for. Meg’s were pretty good, but watching Jelena lift always reduced her to an admiring mental daaaang. She wanted to be in same fit form. “We switch out?” she asked as she finished her first set.
“You lift more than I do,” Megan said but switched places, exhaling a couple of times before pushing the barbell into the air under Jelena’s supervision.
“That’s why I watch,” the other woman said approvingly. “Good job, nice form. Breathe.” By the start of the third set, Megan’s arms were wobbling, but Jelena had finished her own set so smoothly she was determined to match her. Later, when she couldn’t pick up a cup of coffee, Fionnuala would tease her about trying to impress Jelena again and Megan wouldn’t be able to argue.
An image of Detective Bourke’s angular, expressive face flashed through Megan’s mind. She wouldn’t mind impressing him, too. The thought made her laugh and she almost dropped the barbell as her breathing changed. Jelena caught a little of its weight and gave Meg a scolding look that made her laugh again. “Okay, okay, sorry.” She steadied her breathing and finished the set with more strength than she’d thought she had left and earned a pat on the shoulder for her efforts. They continued to work their way through the rest of the weights, spotting each other and occasionally pausing for a breather. Jelena muttered about the unusually warm summer, earning a grin from Megan. “This is cold in Texas.”
“And Irish winters are warm if you’re from Poland,” Jelena said, not really sourly, “but we’re not in Texas or Poland, and it’s hot.”
“I’ll bring you homemade lemonade on Monday.”
“Lemonade. At seven in the morning?”
“American lemonade,” Megan stressed. “It’s not fizzy. We have it at barbecues and stuff.”
Megan’s phone buzzed, then began ringing, on her arm. Jelena waved and trotted off to the changing rooms, letting Megan untangle her phone, see who was calling, and fumble it to her still-sweaty ear. “Niamh. Kill me now. Also, what are you doing up at this hour?”
“Fionn texted and told me everything, but I couldn’t call her back, I knew she’d be asleep, so I called you because you never sleep. Why am I killing you?”
“Oh, because I’m a moron who can’t talk to people after a gym workout.” Megan grabbed a towel and wiped down both the weight benches and herself before trotting out the door and jogging toward home.
“Hmph,” said Niamh. “Anyway, what’s the story, tell me what you know about Fionn and it all. Over coffee.”
Megan squished her phone between her ear and her shoulder, a location that no one had ever intended a mobile phone to sit, and unlocked the street-level door that led up to her apartment. “Someday I’m going to get a headset that works as a mic for my phone, too.”
“You still don’t have one? You do know we’re well into the twenty-first century, like? Where are you?”
“At home, now.” Megan climbed the stairs two at a time, opened her own front door, and threw her gym bag under the kitchen table as she came in. It was a nice little flat, with an unusual-for-Ireland open-plan kitchen/dining room/living room. A table for one sat beneath the kitchen window, a tiny kitchen with a half-size fridge nestled beside an under-counter washing machine, comfy chairs and stacks of books dominated the living room, and an en suite bedroom overlooked an alley. “You don’t want to have coffee with me until I’ve showered.” She’d stripped off most of her gym gear by the time she reached the bathroom—the advantage of living alone was nobody cared if she left sweaty clothes on the floor—and put the phone on the bathroom sink, set to speaker.
“Are you showering in my ear?”
“I am so.” Megan lifted her voice over the sound of water and used the Irish phrase on purpose.
Niamh laughed. “You’re mental. Look, I’m in city centre, will you meet me at Accents at nine?”
“Are you trying to make me eat peanut butter cake for breakfast? Yeah, I’ll see you there.” Meg let Niamh end the connection and scrubbed her fingers through her hair, feeling the sweat of her workout loosening and washing out. She didn’t even have to hurry; Dublin’s city centre was a twenty-minute walk from her apartment, and Niamh’s favourite cafe was on the near side of it to her. And how the mighty had fallen, that she even considered distances in terms of what could be walked: Meg had never walked as much in her life as she did in Dublin, with a job as a limo driver. But Dublin’s core was only a few miles across, and most days it was easier, faster, and cheaper to either walk or take public transportation than it was to drive and find parking.
Forty minutes later, clad in sandals, flowing linen trousers, and a crop top to try to eradicate the tan lines on her shoulders, Megan swooped into the little cafe near Grafton Street that Niamh liked so much. It had two kinds of seating: enormous, squishy, faux-leather couches and bean bags, although the latter were downstairs and usually only in use by people under the age of thirty.
Usually: Niamh, already downstairs, had dragged a beanbag from the corner where they were stored and collapsed across it, her feet propped on the comfy chair she was saving for Megan. When Megan appeared, Niamh unwound—it was a production with her, although she wasn’t tall, just long-limbed and ballet-dancer-fit—and swayed across the wooden floors to embrace Megan. “You look gorgeous, darling.”
“I look passable. You look gorgeous.” Megan air-kissed Niamh’s round cheeks and fell into the chair beside her beanbag, smiling. Niamh was all dramatic features: large brown eyes and a slightly crooked nose, full lips and a strong jaw that belied the delicacy of her bones. She wore bright colours almost all the time, setting off the warmth of her light brown skin, and looked as at home in highly tailored outfits as flowing sundresses, one of which she wore now, in red.
“I am gorgeous,” Niamh conceded immodestly, “but you’re more than passable, my sweet. Now, tell me everything about last night.”
“I thought Fionn already told you.” Megan looked up to thank the waiter who brought her a latte with a bear face as the foam art, then summarized the previous evening’s events a bit more juicily than she’d related them to Orla. Niamh, clasping a cup of herbal tea, listened with the air of a child hearing a particularly good bedtime story, then settled back into her beanbag with a contented air.
“That’s desperate, every word of it. But you don’t even know the best part, Megan. Elizabeth Darr was having an affair.”