CHAPTER EIGHT
Bourke’s affable, regular-guy charm fell away in a heartbeat and he took Megan’s phone without asking. “Miss O’Sullivan? This is Detective Bourke—”
Niamh O’Sullivan, award-winning stage and film actress, darling of the Irish media, known for her quips and clever one-liners, yelped, “Shite!” and howled, “Why weren’t you after telling me he was with you, Megan, you utter langer! Jaysus, you can’t trust anybody these days, what the absolute fuck, Meg, you manky wagon—”
Megan’s shoulders hunched with laughter as Bourke stared at the phone in horror. “Stop, stop, Nee, you’re giving Detective Bourke a heart attack.”
“Well, he didn’t want Gilda!” Niamh shrieked. “Jesus, Megan—”
“She’s not really mad, just surprised,” Megan informed Bourke beneath Niamh’s outraged rant. “Enjoy the performance.”
“How can you tell?”
“You remember a couple years ago when that reporter asked a couple of nasty questions on the red carpet?” Bourke nodded, and Megan, remembering, felt her cheeks turn red in angry solidarity with her friend. It hadn’t been the first time, and probably wouldn’t be the last, that Niamh, whose Afro-Caribbean heritage made her stand out in the pantheon of successful Irish film and stage stars, had been questioned about the authenticity of her Irish roots, but the tone had been particularly condescending. Niamh had eviscerated him with a smile, and while the embarrassed broadcast networks had cut away during her speech, more than one company—and several individuals—had caught it in full. She’d gone viral, upstaging the awards show, and her ascending star had suddenly risen in meteoric fire. Megan had been driving her that night; it was how they’d met.
“That’s what Nee is like when she’s really angry,” Meg said. “Absolutely calm and brutal and able to undercut every stupid thing anybody within a three-mile radius says. This—” she gestured at the phone “—is showboating.”
“—setting me up like that, I can’t believe you, Meg,” Niamh was saying in still full-fledged outrage that disappeared with the next word. “Anyway, Adam says herself is only in her early twenties, young enough to be impressed by fame—”
“Almost everybody is that young,” Megan pointed out.
Niamh made a generally agreeable sound without otherwise stopping. “—and that she’s quite pretty, with gobs of browny-blonde curls and pale blue eyes. He didn’t have a clue what her name was, but he says he’d swear to it in court, that he’s seen them skulking around together.”
“I’ll want to talk to him.” Bourke turned the phone off speaker and put it to his ear, meeting Megan’s eyes as he did so. “That’s very helpful, Miss O’Sullivan. Thank you for your efforts. As for next Monday . . . it might be better to wait until this case is wrapped up before we meet. Fewer complications that way, even if you’re only tangentially involved.”
She said something, and Bourke shook his head. “It’s only being treated as suspicious right now, but yes, that’s the rule of thumb. The first forty-eight hours are critical. That doesn’t mean we all throw in the towel at the end of two days, though.” He smiled briefly, nodded, and said, “Don’t think I won’t,” before handing the phone back to Megan.
Niamh, grimly, said, “Did he actually hear the Gilda comment? No, don’t answer that right now, I don’t want him to know I asked. He won’t ring.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. Look, I’ll ring you later, okay? Thanks for calling.” They hung up, and Meg met Bourke’s eyes. “Liz’s lover sounds like she looks an awful lot like Cíara O’Donnell.”
“She does at that.” Bourke gave her a direct look. “And I’ll be the one looking into it, Ms. Malone, not your own self.”
Megan raised her hands defensively. “I’d never dream of it.”
Bourke hmphed, a sound of doubt and acceptance and, with a nod, left Meg on the dockside. She waited until he was a silhouette in the distance, slim black shape outlined by glittering blue water, then called Fionnuala. “How are you holding up?”
“I’ve had more inspectors than I can shake a stick at come through,” Fionn said. “I had to explain about the damn dog—how are the puppies?—because I wasn’t allowed to clean up, because they had to inspect the place, but—you know the Reddit cow poem?”
Megan pulled the phone away to stare at it, thinking that Niamh might be on to something with using video calls all the time. It certainly would be more satisfying to gape at Fionn rather than her own faint reflection in the glassy black background. “The cow poem?”
A brief silence in which she could all but hear Fionn trying to decide if it was worth it came over the phone and ended with, “It’s a health inspector story involving cows. Never mind. The point is, I explained about the dog, and that obviously that kind of thing never happens, and the restaurant’s passed the health inspection. Now I’ve got to wait for the report on the food, but so far so good. How are the puppies?”
“Boring. Apparently puppies sleep twenty hours a day for the first week or so of their lives. I thought they were supposed to be wiggly and adorable. Can you go over to my apartment and take Mama Dog out for a walk?”
“I can’t,” Fionnuala said unhappily. “They’re sending more people to talk to me, even though they say the place is clean. This is going to haunt me forever. Martin came over this morning with the books. Honestly, Meg, I thought we were safer than the numbers say we are. Two more days of this and we might never open our doors again.”
“We are not going to let that happen, Fionn. We’ll figure it out. I don’t know how, but we will, okay? How’s Martin doing?”
“Worse than me. Sweating bullets. I think he’s sunk more into Canan’s than he’ll tell me, Meg. It’s not just Canan’s, of course. It’s Club Heaven upstairs, and the bar with it that makes so much money—”
“But they’re not closed, are they? Oh, no, wait, you said they were, but not why?”
“They are, though, because there are stairs up and down that are only blocked off with the gates, like. Waitstaff go up and down them with key cards, and people might be able to get over them, or throw things through them, so to keep the whole scene clean—” Fionnuala’s voice broke and she took a breath so deep and shaky that Megan could hear its rattle over the phone. “The club will probably be able to reopen, maybe sooner than the restaurant. But right now, Martin’s just watching his investment money drain into the River Liffey.”
Megan, mostly to herself, breathed, “I thought the Poddle ran under Temple Bar,” and Fionnuala’s baffled silence filled the phone line momentarily before she gave a sharp, hard laugh.
“It doesn’t come this far east, I don’t think. I’m not being literal, you eejit—”
“No, I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t make stupid jokes when you’re so stressed. I just like the idea of underground rivers.”
“Ah, you’re grand.” A little of the strain went out of Fionn’s voice. “You know that big, ugly grate you can see on the south side of the river when the tide is low, just past the Millennium Bridge? The one that looks like a hellmouth? That’s where the Poddle meets the Liffey.”
“Oh. Yeah, that’s farther west than Canan’s. There, I learned something today.” Trying to keep her tone nonchalant and feeling like a total failure, Meg asked, “What about Cíara? How’s she?”
Fionn didn’t seem to notice the awkward note in Meg’s voice and only sighed explosively, her tone much less stressed than it had been. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since she finished the ice cream yesterday. I’d go check on her, but I can’t be in two places at once. Or five. I need a clone, Meg.”
“Look,” Megan said, as false-brightly as before, “I can go check on Cíara for you, if you know where she lives?”
“Um, it’s on her employment file, but I probably shouldn’t just tell you, you know? It’s probably illegal.”
Meg wrinkled her nose at the soft sea horizon. “I guess it probably is. Maybe I could just go be in the neighbourhood, coincidental-like.” Like a stalker, she thought, and bit her tongue on the idea.
“Right. Hang on.” A few minutes of silence ensued before Fionn came back and said, “If you were coincidentally in the area of—oh, you actually could be, she lives near you. I’m just saying, if you wanted to take in a movie at the Stella later today and happened to walk by the apartments behind it . . .”
“Oh, brilliant. I’ll go see what’s playing after I get done with this job.”
Fionn said, “Thank you,” sincerely enough to make Megan feel guilty. “I’m worried about the poor creature. She’s taking it all very hard.” A tired laugh followed. “Unlike me, of course.”
“You both have reason to,” Megan said. “I’ll let you know if I catch her and how she’s doing.”
“Thanks, Meg. You’re a star.” Fionnuala hung up, leaving Megan alone to stew in her own guilt about knowing things and not sharing them with friends. Not that mentioning the possible affair angle to Fionn would have helped anything at all. It would almost certainly have made things worse, because Fionn wouldn’t just let it lie, any more than Megan wanted to. And she hadn’t lied to Fionn. Checking up on Cíara, a distraught young woman of her recent acquaintance, was a perfectly legitimate thing to do. And she had distracted Fionn for a moment with the idiocy about the rivers, and that had to make up for something.
She snorted and headed back for the car. She could jump through all the mental hoops she wanted to; it wouldn’t fool anybody, least of all herself. Clearly, she wasn’t cut out to be a criminal, since presumably actual bad guys didn’t go through mental turmoil trying to justify their behavior to their friends. Or maybe genuine bad guys didn’t have any friends, which would solve the whole problem but seemed unlikely.
Out loud, the better to silence her hamster wheel of thoughts, she said, “Oh my God, Meg,” and climbed into the car to await her clients.
* * *
Somewhat to Meg’s surprise, her clients finished the hike in good time and were content to return to their B&B rather than spend the day exploring Howth’s other touristy activities. She’d been rather looking forward to trailing along on a tour of the still-lived-in Howth Castle, which had stood overlooking the Irish Sea for eight centuries, or to climbing the lighthouse, which she’d actually never done, or any of the other half-dozen things her clients could have stuffed into the day. Instead, they arrived back at the car only minutes after she did, and by 10 a.m. she had the car back in the garage and had gone home to rub the puppies’ tummies. Mama Dog managed to convey that she deigned, rather than desired, to go for a walk, and Megan said, “I’ve got to bring you to a vet” as they headed out the door. “Maybe you’ve been chipped and somebody is looking for you.” She doubted it, though: Mama seemed like she’d been on the street a while, and Meg was afraid someone had abandoned her when she got pregnant.
They were on the way home, actually at the lower apartment door, Megan fumbling with her keys, when from up the street came Orla’s deeply offended voice: “And what is that I see?”
Megan flinched like she’d been caught breaking in, then looked down at Mama with a sigh. “I’m just keeping her for a few days for a friend, Orla.”
“Is the lease not very clear?” Orla demanded. “Does it not say no pets and outline the costs of a deposit for so much as bringing one into the house?”
“It’s a week, Orla,” Megan said wearily. “I’m not keeping th—her—forever.”
“I’ll have three hundred euro from you straight-away or it’s out you go,” Orla snapped. Mama Dog’s ears flattened, though she had the good grace not to bare her teeth at Megan’s boss and landlord.
“Strangely enough, Orla, I’m not carrying three hundred euro around with me right now, and if you throw me out, you’ll have a driver who smells of whatever gutter she slept in the night before. That’ll be grand, won’t it?”
“Or I won’t have a driver at all,” Orla said with a threatening gleam in her eye.
Megan’s eyebrows slowly rose. “You can take that tack if you want to, but I’m not the one always complaining of how hard it is to turn away clients because you haven’t enough drivers to begin with. And we both know I’m your best driver for early morning clients because I don’t stay up as late as the lads. It’s a week, Orla. Give it a rest, okay?”
“I’ll want to inspect the place the moment that little bitch is gone,” Orla warned. That time, Mama did growl. Megan couldn’t blame her, though she did bend to pet the dog soothingly.
“Fine. You can inspect it next week. Come on, pup.” Just inside the door, with a fuming Orla left outside, Megan muttered, “Her bark’s worse than her bite, Mama, but I admit she’s got an awful bark.” Upstairs in her apartment, she lay down on her stomach next to the puppies and gave them her fingers to nibble on. “You’re going to cost me three hundred euro plus all this stuff I bought to feed you guys for just a week. I am definitely not keeping you.”
The boy wiggled toward her on his belly, more like a baby seal than a dog, and plopped his tiny head on her hand. A little pink tongue emerged to give her one small lick, and then, exhausted by his efforts, the puppy went straight to sleep.
Megan, smiling, extracted her hand so she could find an early lunch—it was only half ten, but she’d been up a long time already—and had almost finished eating when the phone rang and Simon Darr’s broken voice said, “Megan? Megan, it happened again. Liz uploaded another video.”