CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“There were deposits that came out of nowhere. Huge ones. Liz’s notes said he claimed to have a real estate investment on the side where the money came from, and she believed him for the longest time, even when discovering the weirdest stuff, she said. Like finding prescription drugs—not a bottle, but a case—stuffed under the bed,” Megan said to Niamh a few hours later, over a drink that, in retrospect, she wished was alcoholic.
Five o’clock was early enough by hours that the Library Bar hadn’t yet overfilled. Its interior reminded Megan of a pool table: dark wainscoting below felt-green walls, broken by a deep, reddish-brown picture rail that matched the wainscoting as well as the glass-fronted, brass-embellished bookcases. Tall windows were framed with heavy, red-and-gold curtains that matched deeply winged chairs and Queen Anne–style couches that were crowded around low, polished wood tables that forbade more than a handful of people in any one group. Astonishingly, no music played, which made talking much easier, or would for another few hours, until dozens or hundreds of people crowded in, shouting at one another and moving around the chairs until the whole place’s librarylike ambience was lost. Apparently, long before Megan had moved to Dublin, the Library Bar had been regarded as a well-kept secret for someplace atmospheric and pleasant to meet for a pint and an actual chat, but then someone had written an article about well-kept-secret bars and ruined it for everyone. Megan liked it anyway, as long as she got there before the rush.
“How did he excuse the pills?” Niamh asked, one part genuinely fascinated and one part well-trained audience. She wore loose-legged, cream-coloured trousers that Megan suspected were actually seersucker, a puckered cotton she’d heard about but never seen anyone wear before, and a ballet-shouldered T-shirt in rose pink that made her look delicate and vulnerable. She also had on a straw hat—a cloche, Megan thought they were called, the kind that pulled down over the ears and cast a shadow with its brim—which helped hide her distinctive features. The hat exactly matched the shade of her trousers and its band went perfectly with both Niamh’s shirt and, once Megan thought to check, her two-inch, heeled sandals. Megan herself was suitably and comfortably dressed in bright yellow linen capris with roomy pockets and a white tank top—vest, and the fact that she had to remind herself suggested she’d never use that particular Irishism naturally—but Niamh looked like she’d pulled the flawless outfit together casually, which seemed vaguely unfair. On the other hand, image was, if not everything to an actor, at least a great deal, whereas Megan didn’t even have to think about what outfit to wear any day she went to work.
Megan spread her hands. “I mean, you hear about doctors getting loads of free samples from drug companies, you know?” Niamh quirked an eyebrow and Megan sighed. “Well, they do in the States, where the pharmaceutical companies are charging eye-bleeding prices for what you can get for a tenner here. So Simon just told her he’d gotten samples, or that he’d signed an exclusive for three months with some company and they’d given him a bag of product to offer his patients. Or he’d been out of the country and been able to pick up prescription drugs cheaper, so he could sell some under the table to poorer patients. It happens,” she said to Niamh’s dismayed expression. The actress accepted this with a nod, although Megan had the sense she was being humoured.
“Anyway, there was a long dry spell, where all the extra money seemed to vanish. Liz’s notes were really relieved, like she could finally just let it go and move past it, right? Only then, when they came here, it started up again. A lot of money, Nee.”
“And you took it to the guards, did you not?”
“I called Detective Bourke. I haven’t heard back from him, but it’s not like he’s got nothing to do, right? So I thought instead of waiting at home like a princess in a tower, I’d come talk to you and see what you’d learned about Martin, just in case you’d turned anything up about him being crooked or something, I don’t know.”
Niamh managed a solemn smile. “Sure and you’re only thinking of the case, not about whether you can impress the handsome detective, like?”
“Is he handsome? Charismatic. I’m not sure he’s exactly good-looking. But that smile . . . anyway, no, I’m not trying to—I mean, maybe I am trying to impress him, but not to get into his pants.” Megan scrunched her face and swirled the ice in her fizzy lemonade, wishing it had a shot of whiskey in it. But given that she’d had a headache from concentration earlier, she didn’t really think she needed to add booze on top of that. Niamh had a glass of red wine that she held lightly in both hands, fingertips on the glass so she wouldn’t warm the liquid. “Besides,” she added, “he’s already asked you out.”
“I believe you asked me out for him.”
“Oh. Right. But you didn’t object. Or do you? Now that you’ve thought about it?”
“No, it’s almost always better to date somebody a friend introduces me to, even if they’ve just met him, instead of some rando off the street. Can you imagine trying to use a dating site?”
“I can imagine me using one. In theory.” Megan pulled up her feet into the big, soft chair tucked beside one of the windows and watched a few young men come in through the bar’s double doors.
Niamh had taken the corner seat, her chair angled so its back blocked most of her from view, and Megan wasn’t sure the cloche did much to disguise her cheekbones or jaw if someone happened to look her way. Mostly people didn’t bother her, but a group of lads like the ones now at the bar might well, especially after a drink or two. “You, not so much.”
“You don’t need a dating site,” Niamh proclaimed. “You just walk along meeting charismatic officers of the law like his own self. I, on the other hand, meet wildly attractive costars whose romantic intentions last the length of a run or a filming, and leave with me poor heartbroken.”
Megan put down her lemonade and placed her hand on top of Niamh’s to say, solemnly, “It’s hard to be you.”
Amusement sparkled in Niamh’s brown eyes. “You’re mocking me.”
“Yes. And no. You have a weird kind of hard life.” Megan picked her drink back up and breathed into the glass, watching her breath steam on its far side. “I have this horrible feeling Liz’s autopsy report is going to come back with a prescription drug overdose. Except if her husband was selling prescription drugs while traveling around the world with her, he wouldn’t kill his excuse to be anywhere there might be profit to be made, would he? I shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” she said fiercely to her drink. “I don’t know that Liz Darr was murdered.”
“We do know it wasn’t food poisoning,” Niamh said. “Or we’re nearly certain, at least. And she hadn’t been ill. So we suspect, don’t we?”
“We suspect strongly,” Megan admitted. “Detective Bourke didn’t quite say they were both murders, but he thought Martin and Liz’s deaths had to be connected, and a bad-luck food poisoning death wouldn’t have any reason to be connected to a murder, would it? Not that we think Liz was food poisoned,” she concluded hastily.
“So maybe Simon poisoned her because she’d decided to stop traveling. You said they were thinking about settling here. So if he couldn’t get his drugs as cheaply here, to sell on . . .” Niamh took a sip of wine like it was rehearsed commentary on the situation.
Megan shook her head. “But honestly, if you were a doctor, would you use prescription drugs to kill someone? I’d do something horrific, like what happened to Martin, so it would seem less likely to be me.”
“Except after dinner, in the middle of Dublin city centre, without anybody seeing you do it?”
“Well, obviously not. All right, I suppose if you’re going for subtlety . . .”
“Maybe it’s a red herring,” Niamh suggested. “The obvious murder can’t be the simple answer, so do the obvious thing and they’ll look somewhere else. No one’s arrested Simon so far.”
“The gardaí don’t even have the USB yet,” Megan pointed out. “I wish Liz had been a little more forthcoming in her journal. ‘Dear Diary, next week I’m filing for divorce from my drug-running lout of a husband,’ or something like that. I never got into keeping a diary, but I thought the idea was to blurt out everything in the one private place you had access to.”
“Celebrities don’t have much privacy. If she—if I—kept a really intimate diary, when I died somebody would want to monetize it. The only way to absolutely prevent that from happening is not write it down, to just . . . remember. Even if that means the intensity of the moment fades.” Niamh shrugged gracefully.
Megan studied her for a moment. “I don’t think I’d want to be famous.”
“I did.” A rueful smile touched Niamh’s lips. “God, I wanted it so much. I never thought I would be—most actors aren’t, you know—but I was after wanting it from the time I can remember. I wanted to be—” She spread her hands like she was drawing a screen in the air. “I wanted to be up there, making people laugh and cry. Or in the theatre, where you know if you’ve made them laugh or cry, but to be really famous as an actor, you have to be in the movies. So that was what I wanted, wee Niamh O’Sullivan from County Clare. But that’s all nonsense. Did you find out who Simon Darr was selling to?”
“It wasn’t in Liz’s paperwork. Why would it be? She wasn’t a drug runner herself, not if she had all this secret paperwork.” Megan gnawed her lower lip and drank some lemonade, dismayed at her train of thought. “Of course, if he found out she’d been tracking him—and maybe he did; maybe that’s why he stopped before?—but if he’d gotten back into it and was afraid she might turn him in . . . there’s more motive for murder. Niamh,” she half-wailed, although not loudly, “how did I end up sitting in the Library Bar trying to figure out murder motives?”
“It’s the luck of the Irish in you,” Niamh said, straight-faced. Megan threatened to flick lemonade at her and she chuckled quietly. “Wrong place, wrong time. Mental things like that happen to everyone, once in a while.”
“Do they, though?” Megan sighed and brushed it off. “I wonder if I could just go ask Simon all this stuff. I mean, he’s busted now, right? What’s the point in hiding anymore? Obviously if I can find this information, the guards will be asking about it.”
“As you just said, the guards don’t have that USB drive yet,” Niamh reminded her. “But assuming you share with our attractive detective—”
“I’m going to share, Niamh! I’d get busted for obstruction of justice or something if I didn’t. Wouldn’t I?”
“Only if you got found out.”
Megan squinted at the actress. “I think you’d be a better criminal than I would be.”
“Of course I would be. Surely part of being a good criminal is being able to act. Therefore, I’m better equipped for crime than a—what were you? Field medic?”
“And driver.”
“Not,” Niamh said, “a combination routinely expected to lie and hide facts, as both actors and criminals are encouraged to do. And you’d better not go ask Simon if he’s been selling drugs, because if he has been, I bet he’ll be on the next flight out of Ireland and then Detective Bourke will have a word or two for you indeed.”
“Yeah. Maybe I should—” Megan looked for a clock, though she knew it couldn’t be much past half five. She caught one of the lads who’d come in earlier, now at a table on the other side of the room, looking intently their way, trying to figure out if Niamh was who he thought she was. Caught, he blushed and looked away. Megan murmured, “You’ve been recognized,” and Niamh nodded without looking toward the group. “Anyway, maybe I should call Bourke again, though. I’d think he would see this as kind of urgent. But I guess he’d have called me back, if it was. All right, okay so, never mind Simon anymore. What’s the story on Rafferty?”
“Nobody liked the man,” Niamh said promptly. “Fionnuala did, maybe, but no one else. It wasn’t that he cheated anyone, though his fist is as tight as me grandmother’s ar—” She cleared her throat suddenly and finished with “. . . armpit . . . ,” making Megan laugh out loud. The lads looked over and one of them smiled, but Megan turned her attention back to Niamh as she continued. “And he never paid anybody a penny beyond what they were agreed upon. It’s that he treated people badly, though. High and mighty, like, as if they were below him, and him only a boy from Bray. He must have been good at charming people, though, because he got the capital to start half a dozen businesses, including Canan’s.”
“Orla’s like that,” Megan said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t say anybody likes her after they’ve met her more than twice, but the first couple of times she’s wonderful. She makes you laugh, and makes you feel important, and like she’s trustworthy.”
“Is she not trustworthy?”
“I guess she is. She’s a skinflint, though. Not one red cent goes missing under her watch and she could squeeze blood from a stone.”
“Like himself.” Niamh nodded. “It doesn’t help narrow down enemies, though, when no one liked your man.”
“Well, it probably narrows it down to Canan’s employees, doesn’t it? It was somebody who could get into the premises. I didn’t have the impression the place had been broken in to.”
Niamh grinned. “And you know so much about breaking in to places?”
“Well—”
Niamh’s grin turned to a laugh. “We’re only a few steps away. Shall we go have a look?”
“Sure, because that won’t be suspicious at all.” Megan finished her lemonade in a few teeth-achingly cold swallows. “Let’s go.”
They rose together, Megan making some effort to keep herself between Niamh and the lads across the room so they wouldn’t get a good look at her, but the actress stood three inches taller and wore heels besides, which left her pretty well towering over Megan. A burst of noise came from the lads, indicating they’d seen her clearly, and though Niamh didn’t look their way, from the activity behind them as they left, it was clear they would be followed down to the hotel lobby beneath the Library Bar. Megan ducked her head toward Niamh, breathing, “Do we make a break for it?”
“Not without interference, or it just makes it worse. I can—” She stopped at the front desk, pulling off her hat, and the young woman behind the desk went electric with excitement. Niamh gave her a disarming smile and leaned across the desk. “There’s a load of lads about to come down and make a fuss. Could you ring security and ask them to be a bit in the way of the door for two minutes, just so I’ve a way out?”
The girl nodded, fumbling the phone in her nervous delight. Niamh winked broadly at her, put her cloche back on, caught Megan’s hand, and scurried out the door as a couple of large, black-suited men and one large, black-suited woman appeared in the lobby. The desk attendant communicated to them in what sounded like dolphin squeals, and all three of the security people rubber-necked to get a glimpse of Niamh O’Sullivan as she waved and hurried around the nearest corner. Megan would have collapsed breathlessly against the wall, but Niamh pulled her along. “We can’t stop where they might see us if they come out. Come on, we’ll go the long way around to Canan’s.”
She dragged Megan down past a pub called the Stag’s Head, with a placard, now a few years old, proudly proclaiming it the best pub in Ireland, and around the corner onto Dame Lane, not to be confused with Dame Street, the Dame Tavern, or the general Dame District.
“There.” Niamh let go of Megan’s hand and shook herself, like a cat tidying itself after an unexpected fall. “We ought to be quick, but we can get to Canan’s without crossing into their line of sight now. Acht, look at those ones. Ah, to be young, single, and prepared to get utterly car parked.” She nodded down the street at a crowd of young women, one of whom, Megan thought, was the heavily eyebrowed girl from Thursday evening. She probably lived in the area, and although she appeared to have misplaced her eager young men, none of the gaggle were lacking for other admirers.
“You are young and single,” Megan pointed out, “and the only thing keeping you from being utterly car parked is your self-restraint. And the fact that you have a show in ninety minutes.”
“I am the very model of a modern major . . . teetotaler, except I’m never that.” They rounded the far corner, having gone around the block, and went past a gourmet doughnut shop that made Megan miss boring, old, American-style grocery store doughnuts every time she saw one. Niamh saw her longing look and laughed. “Do I need to buy you a banoffee doughnut, Megan?”
Megan shuddered. “All I want is a regular, normal apple fritter that costs a buck forty-nine, not one of these giant messes that costs four dollars.”
“I thought all you ex-pats would be happy there were finally doughnut shops here.”
“Those aren’t doughnuts,” Megan said sadly. “They’re frostings and candy piled on bread. The dough isn’t even right.”
“It’s hard to be you,” Niamh said in the same tone Megan had used earlier, and Megan, equally somberly, said, “It is,” before saying, “There’s police tape all around Canan’s, Niamh, how are we supposed to go peek and see if it looks broken-in-to? Oh, God, it’s worse than that, they’ve got gardaí watching the place!”
Niamh took off her hat and fluffed her hair. “I’ll distract them. You go around to the back and see if it looks jimmied.”
Megan whispered, “I am a terrible criminal” at her but broke away and crossed the street before the guards had time to notice they were together. Niamh pulled out her phone, tapping idly at it as she approached Suffolk Street, and as Megan scooted out of sight, she heard somebody say, “Isn’t that—?!” in a carrying stage whisper. By the time she reached the back gate of St Andrew’s Church, she could hear that a small crowd had grown in front, near Molly Malone, and how Niamh’s warm, welcoming laugh bounced around the square as she flirted and chatted.
Good thing, too. Megan glanced around half-heartedly to see if there were any obvious security cameras, then, gracelessly, climbed up the black, cast-iron gate and wedged her foot between its narrow spikes to give herself enough lift to clear them. She landed in a crouch, feeling somewhere between superheroic and super-idiotic, and snuck over to examine the church’s back door.
It had three visible locks. One looked as old as the church itself, rusty but still formidable, and the other two were increasingly newer—one had probably been there decades and the third had likely been added sometime after the now-closed tourist office had moved into the church premises. At 6:30 p.m. on a bright June evening, there was plenty of light to see the locks by. Megan concluded immediately that she’d never know if the oldest lock had been tampered with or not; it had scratches that obviously went back nearly two centuries, just as the church did itself. None of them looked particularly new, but she didn’t even know if that lock was still in use, so the age of them struck her as irrelevant.
Scrapes along the door next to the second-oldest lock, though, did look new, like they hadn’t really had time to weather. The third, newest, lock, was unblemished. Megan reached for the door handle, just to try it, had a momentary skip of her heart, and, feeling like a seasoned criminal, wrapped her shirt around her hand before testing the handle, so she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t shift. Megan guiltily slipped back out under the police tape, went around to the front of the church, and extracted Niamh from her crowd of admirers. The actress said, “Well?” breathlessly as they made their way up Suffolk Street toward Grafton.
A little smile curved across Megan’s lips. “Know what? I’d better ask Fionn how many of those locks are in use, because I think somebody did break in to Canan’s recently.”