CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
God—or more to the point, Orla—forbid Megan should borrow a car from the car service. She hired it, paperwork and all, and got on the road to Bray at about a quarter past five, which was a terrible time, even on a weekday, to look for an investor. Ireland’s white-collar businesses tended to close at five on the dot, or six at the latest.
There were two roads down to Bray: the scenic route along the water, which Megan much preferred, and the M50, which was as close as Ireland got to a freeway system. The latter took less than half the time, and—not being Irish-born, and unable to embrace the mañana-but-without-such-a-terrible-sense-of-urgency aspect of Irish life, Megan took that, getting into the south-Dublin town just before six.
Bray’s waterfront still had the seaside resort air it had developed almost two centuries earlier, with pretty Victorian buildings dominating the entire shore from the northerly end all the way down to the hill called Bray Head at its southerly end. She parked at the DART station and, after a longer walk than expected, found the O’Donnells’ restaurant just on the south side of Bray Head, both the mountain and the derelict hotel of the same name. The restaurant was a comparatively new building, probably from the 1970s, before it was decided that the waterfront’s Victorian charm had more tourist-trapping value than new builds. Consequently, it looked badly out of place, especially with its blue-shuttered windows boarded up and a heavy, steel security door in front of the original front door. An estate agent’s information hung on a board outside the building, and Megan took a picture of it in case she needed the number later.
Then, with her phone’s mapping software turned on, she walked up into the town proper. Literally up—Bray itself was set above the waterfront—and she slowly found her way to Cora Kelly’s office. She spent the entire walk trying to remember what “estate agents” were called in the States, struggling with it even though she knew she’d known it as recently as yesterday. The word realtors finally dropped into her head, awakening a bloom of triumph and amusement. She’d had friends in school and the military whose first language wasn’t English and who would occasionally find themselves unable to remember a word in their native tongues. Doing the same thing with words in her native language fell somewhere between embarrassing and laughable.
Aware there was no way someone would be in the office at 6:15 on a Sunday evening, Megan knocked anyway, waited a few seconds, and backed up to look regretfully at the building. Once upon a time it had been a standard “two up two down” Victorian home but had clearly undergone extensive changes since.
All investigative curiosity aside, Megan always liked seeing the insides of old buildings, even when they’d been completely refurbished with modern interiors. She liked it better still when they hadn’t been modernized, or when they’d been “renovated sympathetically,” as the housing shows said, with the high ceilings and cornicing and old window sashes left in place.
A little regretful, she paused on the sidewalk, trying to decide which way to go, and to her surprise, a woman’s voice behind her said, “Sorry, did you knock?”
Cora Kelly looked very like her website picture, if a few years older: nicely highlighted auburn hair that probably didn’t grow out of her head that colour, an intelligent brown gaze, and a carefully calculated smile that spoke of both curiosity and caution.
Megan, genuinely surprised, said, “Oh!” and came back up the walk to stand a comfortable distance away. “I did, yes, hi. I’m sorry, I figured no one would be at work. It’s a Sunday and such a long shot, but—” She stopped herself, cleared her throat, and said, “Sorry. My name is Megan Malone. I’m looking for some information on an acquaintance of mine.” She offered her hand, and Cora, after a moment’s hesitation, shook it.
“Cora Kelly. I actually live above the offices, so you caught me somewhere between home and work.” Cora sounded like Megan’s friend Brian Showers but more so: her accent was a complete mess of Irish and American, as if it had no idea where to settle. “What can I help you with?”
“A friend of mine—an acquaintance—has gone—” Megan wrinkled her face. “I don’t know if she’s gone missing or if I just can’t get hold of her, if that makes sense. I’ve only just met her, so I don’t have her number, but there were a couple of deaths recently and I’m just . . .” Cora’s eyes had widened progressively as Megan spoke, and she ended up finishing, “I’m just making a mess of this, aren’t I?”
Cora lifted one hand to hold her thumb and middle finger an inch apart, mouthing, “Maybe just a little,” with obvious humor. “Want to try again?”
“I’m looking for a girl named Cíara O’Donnell,” Megan tried, and Cora’s expression cleared.
“Oh. Joe and Edna’s daughter?”
“Oh my God, you know her?” Megan’s voice shot up and she tried to claw it back down into its normal register. “Yes, that’s her. Her father ran the Sea & Sky restaurant?”
“Well.” Another pinch of humor darted across Cora’s face. “I’d say it was Edna who ran it, but yes, I know them.” Concern replaced the humor. “Wait, what’s happened to Cíara? Why don’t you come in for a moment?” She stepped out of the doorway, inviting Megan into a clean, fresh, modern office off a hall that emphasized Megan’s impression of the original two-up-two-down layout of the house: stairs to one side, a hall along them, two rooms front and back, though the back had long since been extended, and extended again. Megan counted two more doorways leading into what had probably been a large garden, 150 years ago and were now more office space and probably a toilet.
The initial office, fronted by an old, curved bay window, was lit by filtered sunlight through a lace privacy curtain over the bay window, and retained a number of its period features, including the fireplace that would have once warmed the room. A sofa, probably custom-built to fit the curve of the bay window, sat in front of a radiator that did half of the heating job now; another radiator sat in the space beside the fireplace, nearer to the back wall. Cora’s desk, with a computer and phone on it, had a couple of nice-quality chairs facing it, and two framed pictures, one of which was presumably her family, and another that Megan couldn’t see at a glance.
The walls and the fireplace mantel displayed a dozen or more photographs of businesses on their opening days: ribbon-cutting ceremonies, cornerstones being laid, someone smashing a bottle of champagne on a building’s front steps. Cora was in a few of them, alongside beaming business owners, and—judging from a mid-range-quality Nikon DSLR camera half-hidden by the computer screen on her desk—Megan bet she’d taken a number of the others. There were art prints as well, photographs taken around Bray, and Megan paused to ask, “Are these yours? They’re beautiful.”
“Oh, thank you. Yes, it’s a hobby. But what’s wrong with Cíara?” Cora gestured to the sofa and sat at one end of it herself, a frown wrinkling her forehead.
Megan, sighing, sat as well. “Maybe nothing. It’s just—did you read about the food critic’s death? Elizabeth Darr?”
Cora’s face went solemn. “I did.”
“Well, Cíara knew her, and it turned out that Liz’s review had been the—”
“The final nail in the Sea and Sky restaurant’s coffin,” Cora said with a sigh. “Yes. That was an investment that paid off. I was sorry to see it close.”
“Right,” Megan said, relieved she didn’t have to explain it all. “But I haven’t seen Cíara since right after Liz’s death, and then yesterday the owner of Canan’s, the restaurant Liz died at, was murdered.”
“Jesus!”
“I know. So it’s probably nothing, but I’m worried about Cíara. And—I’m sorry, it seems a little stalker-ish now, but—I looked up people who might have been involved in the restaurants and found your name and hoped you might be willing to tell me where Cíara lived, or where her parents lived, so I could check on her.”
“Sea and Sky is the only restaurant I’ve invested in. You said restaurants,” Cora said to Megan’s confused blink.
“Oh. Yeah, I’d looked up people in Bray who invested in Martin’s restaurant, too. In Bray, because this is where he was from, and I thought—you know, the hometown thing? I thought maybe people here would know more than some random investor in Canada or something. And I could drive to Bray,” Megan admitted with a quick smile. “If I hadn’t been able to find you, I guess I would have tried the other guy—Michael Hayes, I think his name was.”
“Mee-hall,” Cora said, correcting Megan’s pronunciation to Micheál, the Irish version of Michael, almost absently. Megan’s stomach tightened, but she only nodded, brushing it off as Cora went on. “It would be a little unorthodox of me to give you the O’Donnells’ address or contact details, but . . . I hate to think of anything happening to Cíara, too.”
“It’s almost certainly nothing.” Megan scrubbed her hands over her face. “It’s just bothering me, you know? With two people dead, I just . . . I can’t even imagine how she might be caught up in it all, but I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
Cora smiled suddenly. “Americans, huh? Always trying to fix other people’s business.”
“Oh, God. Not necessarily one of our better traits, honestly.”
“And yet also one of your—our—most charming. I grew up there, though I’ve been back in Ireland almost fifteen years. I got a business degree in the States and the Celtic Tiger was booming, so I thought, why not come home and make my mark?”
Cora smiled, as if suddenly embarrassed at bragging, and Megan shook her head, admiration in her voice as she said, “That’s a big change, a big risk. That’s amazing. Good for you!”
Delight fought with shyness in Cora’s face at the praise. “Thank you. My mother was furious with me, actually. She never wanted anything to do with Ireland again, and she didn’t care much that I’d done well. Coming home to a country that had done badly by her was unforgivable.”
“Ireland’s been a hard country for women for a long time,” Megan said quietly. “It’s getting better.”
“Everywhere’s getting better. Not fast enough, but nothing ever does, does it?” Cora moved her hands like she might wipe away tears, though none had fallen or even shone heavily in her eyes. “Well. Enough of that. Tell you what, I’ll give the O’Donnells a call and see if Cíara’s home.”
“Oh, you’re brilliant. Thanks very much.” Megan politely looked away as Cora got up to use the phone, as if by turning her attention out the window, she had magically turned her hearing off, too. Cora’s brief conversation ended with a thanks, and she came back to the couch frowning.
“Her da says she’s not home, which I wouldn’t normally think anything of, but now you’ve got me worried too.”
“I’m sorry,” Megan said, meaning it sincerely. “What a thing for me to do, just turn up on your doorstep to make you worry about someone else.”
“Americans,” Cora said dryly.
“Yeah. Look, I’ll give you a call when I find her, okay? Just so you don’t have to be fussed about it. I’m sure she’ll turn up soon.”
“Ah, you’re very good. Thanks—it’s Megan, right? Thanks very much, Megan.”
“No worries. Thank you for your time. I know this was a weird thing to have fall into your lap.”
“Not at all.” Cora escorted her to the door and Megan waved as she trotted down the steps and struck off back toward the boardwalk.
The minute she was certain she was out of sight—and an overblown sense of paranoia meant she’d gone three blocks and around two corners to achieve that certainty—Megan stopped to lean against a wall and press her hands against her stomach.
Cora Kelly had known who Micheál Hayes was. Known well enough that she’d corrected Megan’s American pronunciation of the name—Mykul—to the Irish Mee-hall—without even thinking about it. Everything else she’d said—details Megan bet she wouldn’t have given an Irish-born person—lined up with what Uncle Rabbie had remembered of Cora Byrne and the mother who had left Ireland decades earlier. Whether Cora had a finger in the family pie or not, Megan would lay money on the Hayes family being the connection between Martin and Liz’s deaths.
When she trusted her voice, she took out her phone and called Paul Bourke. His voice mail picked up immediately and she stomped her foot like a three-year-old, then held her breath behind her teeth until his message stopped and hers could begin. “Hi, Detective Bourke, this is Megan Malone. I’m out in Bray looking for Cíara O’Donnell and I just—look, it’s probably nothing, except I just spoke with a woman named Cora Kelly, one of the investors in—ah, jeez, this takes a lot of explaining. Look, can you give me a call as soon as you get this? I’ll explain then.”
She hung up, but, phone still in hand, she put “joseph edna o’donnell bray” into the search engine and spent a minute swearing at the European Union privacy laws that meant that, unlike in the US, she didn’t get a hit on a home address—or, more likely, an option to buy a pass to a website that would give it to her—immediately. Normally, she approved heartily of making it more difficult to find people online, but without the resources of an actual police department, at the moment she found it a real bother. The internet generally agreed that, yes, indeed, Joseph and Edna O’Donnell lived in Bray, but wouldn’t go any farther than that. Finally, exasperated, Meg stomped back down to the boardwalk near the closed-down restaurant and started waylaying passers-by with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m looking for Joe and Edna, who used to own the Sea and Sky? I was supposed to visit, but I wrote their address down wrong . . .”
The second person she stopped laughed, patted her shoulder, and said, “You’re not far wrong. They’re just down the street there, d’you see the red door? Two doors past that.”
Megan, in her most American accent, said, “Oh my God, thank you so much,” and got another laugh that sent her on her way.
Three minutes later, holding her breath, she knocked on their door.