CHAPTER 15
For a single heartbeat, everyone in the room was temporarily united in surprise at Jenny Flynn’s reappearance. Adam Nolan accidentally caught Megan’s eye, and she jerked her gaze away to keep from laughing at the abject exasperation in his expression. Worse than exasperation, really: borderline horror. Jenny was clearly the last person he wanted mixed up in the conversation, and Megan, catching a glimpse of Aisling’s face, saw just as much unhappiness in her pinched mouth. Even Doyle looked pained, although his irritation was probably just that yet another party had been added to the mix. Megan knew her own distaste wasn’t much better hidden.
Jenny somehow seemed not to notice any of it, descending on Aisling with a happy trill. “I’m sorry, my darling, I realized I never should have left you in these dreadful times. I drove back to Cork last night, but only long enough to arrange for someone to stand in for me at my gallery opening, and then came back up this morning immediately. I can’t believe how insensitive I was being, leaving you alone with all of this to deal with.” She draped her arm around Aisling’s shoulders in a protective manner, but also leaned on the girl hard enough that Megan had the sudden thought of vampires draining the strength of those around them.
Aisling made a visible effort to keep from curling her lip and swallowed before turning a thin smile toward her mother. “You really shouldn’t have, Mam. I’m all right. I’ve got the solicitors in hand and all.”
“I’m sure you do, my pet,” Jenny cooed. “But Mama is here to help now anyway. What would your dear father never?”
Another extremely brief silence swept the room as the others took in, and adjusted to, the idea that she’d roundly defended Seamus Nolan’s reputation without having a clue what had been said. In that time, she noticed Doyle for the first time, and her eyebrows drew inward.
“Detective Sergeant Doyle,” he said before she could come up with any questions. “Here at Mr. Nolan’s request, ma’am. There are unwanted parties on the property.”
Adam flushed heavily around the collar, and Megan took a glorious moment to revel in the suspicious squint tightening Jenny’s eyes, as if she had to briefly consider the possibility that she was one of the unwanted parties. But her expression cleared, because the police officer had obviously been there before she arrived, which let her off the hook. Megan bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning, although the impulse faded fast as Jenny trilled another laugh. “Oh my goodness, Detective Sergeant, not ma’am. I’m never old enough to be a ma’am!”
She shot Megan a warning look as she spoke, as if afraid Megan would bring up the whole over-forty thing again, like she’d done the day before. Megan tried for a politely reassuring smile and got one corner of her mouth to lift briefly, which was evidently enough. Doyle, however, said, “I’ll remember that, ma’am,” evenly, and after a pause said, “or should it be ‘Mrs. Nolan’?”
To Megan’s astonishment, Jenny simpered and gave a little wiggle of her shoulders that almost devolved into a childish curtsy. “I suppose, if you must.”
Adam Nolan shot Megan another look, this time clearly intending to get her attention, and Megan popped her eyes at him in return. Given the rejection she’d gotten for using “Mrs. Nolan” the day before, Jenny’s change of heart was enough to make even Aisling stare at her mother. Then, almost as one, Aisling and Adam’s expressions cleared, and Megan felt her own doing the same. Jenny, she thought, was trying to stake her claim to the Nolan fortune by suddenly being willing to be “Mrs. Nolan.” And she was doing so in front of the law, specifically, which would arguably be considered more strongly in a court case. Megan refrained from giving a low whistle, but only just.
“Mrs. Nolan,” Doyle said obligingly. “Mr. Nolan, you called for me?”
“I did—” Nolan strangled the words. “Get O’Malley off my property!”
“My property!” Both women spoke, and Aisling, cheeks bright with furious color, shook her mother off.
Adam ignored both of them. “And get someone in here to investigate an environmental disaster cleanup.”
Doyle’s eyebrows rose. “That’d be beyond An Garda Síochána’s remit, sir. You’d have to ring the government.”
“Then ring them! Jesus, I’ll have to talk to the press, it’s already too late to get ahead of it if O’Malley’s out there showing it to them, but I’ve got to do something—” Nolan strode out of the room while Aisling, still pink with anger and hands shaking with emotion, turned her focus to her phone. Jenny slipped over to Seamus’s computer and sat, trying a password and then opening the drawer that had contained his password book and effortlessly checking its secret compartment.
A flicker of irritation darted across her eyebrows, although her voice was syrupy sweet. “Aisling, my love, where’s your father’s password book?”
Aisling shrugged and put her phone to her ear. Doyle looked around the room, attention landing on Megan, and for a moment she felt a surge of sympathy for the detective. Even without her presence, this was a family drama writ large, and she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to be in the midst of it. She tilted her head toward the door cautiously, an invitation, and after a tight-jawed moment, he followed her into the hallway. Neither of them made any effort to close the door behind them, and both paused to watch Jenny opening and closing desk drawers and growing increasingly agitated as she didn’t find the password book. “I wonder what she thinks is on the computer,” Megan said quietly.
“Probably Nolan’s last will and testament,” Doyle said in the irritable tone of a man who wanted to discuss things with somebody, but definitely not her. “What’s the story with that one? The three of you looked like you’d bit lemons when she swanned into the room. She’s Nolan’s estranged wife, I know that, but what’s the rest of it?”
“She’s manipulative and cloying. I only met her yesterday, and she set my teeth on edge. Detective Sergeant. . .” Megan sighed. “Look, for what it’s worth, assuming Seamus Nolan was killed, at the moment, Aisling thinks Adam did it so he could inherit and sell off the land before the courts decided Aisling could inherit. Adam thinks Jack O’Malley did it because O’Malley believes Seamus’s tactics were destructive to the environment and he’s up for the same grants Seamus was. Jenny showed up to get her piece of the pie, and somebody dumped toxic waste in the middle of Seamus’s rewilding efforts. At the very least, there’s been a mess brewing here for a long, long time.”
To her surprise, Doyle gave her a thin smile. “Isn’t that always the way at the big house. What do you think?”
Megan was surprised enough to be asked that she hesitated, and Doyle’s mouth went thinner and flatter. “Don’t mistake me, Ms. Malone. I’m not looking for your help. But you’re in the thick of it, and somebody might have let something slip to you that they wouldn’t say to me.”
“I’ll answer, but does this mean you’re considering the possibility there was a murder after all?”
Doyle exhaled heavily. “I think the man slipped, cracked his head, and drowned, but where you are, there’s fire.”
Megan started a protest, then let it go with a short nod. “All right. Adam Nolan or Jack O’Malley look like the most likely suspects, but it’s not to either of their benefit to set a toxic waste dump on the land, so I don’t see how that’s connected to them. Jenny’s awful and as far as I can tell must have a head for the long game, or she’d have divorced Seamus years ago, but with the way the inheritance laws stand for landed gentry, I think she’d have been better off waiting until the court cases cleared and declared Aisling the legal heir. Even if it meant she didn’t get anything officially, she could probably leech off her daughter for the rest of her life, but if Adam inherits, I don’t think he’ll give Jenny a red cent. So if she was going to kill him, I wouldn’t do it now.” She paused, aware her pronouns had gotten mixed up there, but Doyle nodded, apparently understanding.
“Anyone else?”
“There’s a young man called Ian who works in the gardens. Aisling fancies him and thinks her father had plans to promote him into a position of overseeing the whole wilding project, but he fancies her, too, and killing somebody’s da isn’t a great way to cozy up to them. Father Colman didn’t like Nolan much, and says he didn’t see him at the holy well that morning, but he would be the closest we have to being the last person to see him alive. And there’s still the matter of the bicycle.”
“The bicycle,” Doyle echoed grimly. “Nolan’s bicycle, in the hedge where some gombeen threw it.”
“It was missing the next morning. Which, Detective Sergeant, points at you. You’re the only person I told about it, anyway.”
Doyle’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Are you seriously considering me a suspect?”
“You didn’t want to investigate, I told you about the bike and you dismissed it, and now it’s missing. So, yeah. You’re on my list.”
The detective stared at her for a few seconds. In the silence, Megan heard Jenny swearing, and glanced into the office to see her glaring, red-faced, at Seamus’s computer. Then, her tone wheedling, she said something quiet to Aisling, who turned to emphasize that she was still on the phone. Doyle, after a long pause, followed Megan’s gaze, and in a relatively neutral tone, said, “How about that one?”
“Aisling? She’s nineteen and been thrown in over her head with estate law while grieving. I could be wrong, but I don’t think she’ll have killed her own da.”
“And what about you?” Doyle asked sourly. “Miss Marple, always at the heart of the scene, why isn’t it you?”
“Because I was at the Dublin airport picking my friends up at half eight in the morning on the day Seamus Nolan died.”
“It’s an hour between the airport and the holy well,” Doyle challenged. “You could have done it and gotten back to collect them.”
Megan stared at him. “With weekday traffic on the M50? Seriously? But okay, let’s say I had. Why would I have brought them to the murder site, when I could have just not, and kept myself completely out of the picture?”
“Killers always return to the scene of the crime.” For the first time, Doyle looked like he might be enjoying himself.
Megan snorted. “First, no they don’t and you know it, and second, I’d have to have either taken public transport, which wouldn’t have gotten me back in time, or a vehicle that went on the toll roads, in which case you can check the CCTV to see if there’s any hint of me driving either north or south before about ten a.m. on Monday morning.”
“You’d be a good killer, wouldn’t you, Ms. Malone?”
“I’d like to imagine I wouldn’t make any really obvious mistakes if I found it necessary to secretly murder someone, but people like to imagine they could fight off a lion with their bare hands, too, so I’m not sure what I imagine is a great baseline.”
Doyle’s eyebrows rose again, and Megan ducked her head to chuckle. “Sorry, it’s something I read online. The percentage of American men who think they could fight off a lion with their bare hands. It’s something like six or eight percent.”
“Have they ever seen a lion?” Doyle asked cautiously.
Megan laughed out loud that time. “Maybe not in real life. I don’t know. I think the list of animals went from, like, house cats to grizzly bears or something, but man, I’ve seen cats fight. I don’t think I could beat a nine-pound one, never mind a lion. To be fair, I’m pretty sure I’d stand a better chance against humans, generally. They don’t usually bite as a first line of defense.” She fell silent, suddenly aware she wasn’t necessarily making the best argument against being a killer.
Doyle shook his head. “I’d say I walked into that, but I’m not sure how I could have. I’ve known Adam Nolan thirty years,” he added with a sigh. “I wouldn’t have said he was a killer. That, and he’s an old man. A fight against Seamus could as likely go badly for him.”
“There’s a back road,” Megan said suddenly, aware it hardly tracked. As Doyle’s expression turned questioning, she went on. “The front driveway’s got security, right? So they can keep track of the visitors coming and going. But the back way might, too. If it does, we might be able to see whether Adam or anybody else went out the morning Seamus died.”
“We,” Doyle said icily, “will do nothing of the sort.”
A pang of irritated disappointment sliced through Megan, although she only shrugged in response. Partly because it was Doyle’s job to look at that kind of thing, and partly because if she didn’t make a fuss now, he might not think to tell the on-site security not to let her look at any potential footage later.
As if following her thoughts, Doyle added, “I’ll look into it,” in a grudging tone. Megan nodded, wondering if he would, or—now that she was thinking of security cameras—whether the heritage centre had any pointed at the road outside their parking lot. She tried not to let her head snap up at the thought; Doyle pretty clearly had no intention of looking into the matter of Seamus’s bicycle, and if she made it clear she wanted to, he’d forbid her.
Of course, Paul forbade her to do things like that all the time, and she did them anyway. Paul, though, was a friend and an ally, willing to use what she learned toward a common goal of solving a mystery. Doyle was neither friend nor ally, and would be just as likely to have her arrested on the grounds of interfering with an investigation as not.
Even now he eyed her suspiciously. “You’ve gone awfully quiet. What are you thinking?”
It wouldn’t go over well if she said she was thinking it was hypocritical of him to listen to her analysis of who might have done it, without being willing to let her help look into it all a little more. Instead, Megan said, “I was trying to think if anybody had said anything else that might be useful to you,” which wasn’t far off the truth. “Where’s your young man? The young guard, I mean,” she corrected as Doyle’s eyes widened. “The one who was with you Monday. Garda Farrell, I think. Shouldn’t he be here, if you’re here on official business?”
Doyle’s jaw snapped shut, and color flushed his jowls, which Megan bet meant he wasn’t there on official business at all. That was interesting. She grabbed for the next thought she had, trying to go on casually as if she hadn’t really meant anything by the question at all. “I thought Aisling might fancy him. Although what am I doing matchmaking when the poor girl has just lost her father . . . listen to me go on. Look at her mother,” she added with a little more sincerity, and Doyle, the tension in his jaw loosening a little, glanced into the office toward mother and daughter.
Jenny Flynn had borderline ransacked Seamus’s desk—all the previously tidy stacks of papers, books, and notes were scattered everywhere—but had evidently failed to find what she was looking for, because she’d left the desk and was cooing at Aisling’s side. The angle of her head said she was trying hard to hear both ends of the phone conversation her daughter was having, although every time Aisling spoke, she walked away from her mother. It led to an odd-looking little chase around the room, Jenny scooting along in Aisling’s wake like a particularly needy puppy. “I wonder if I can distract her again. Although it didn’t do enough good yesterday, if she’s back again today.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Doyle said with a grim note. “If she’s after Nolan’s fortune, then maybe she’ll let slip how she took herself down to the holy well and pushed him in.” He went into the office, and Megan, not prepared to find herself thrown out, followed so she was back in Aisling’s eyesight and memory. The girl gave a quick exhalation of relief at seeing her.
Doyle, deft as a sheepdog, separated Jenny from Aisling and escorted the older woman out of the room with a brief show of charm that Megan hadn’t previously seen displayed at all. Aisling finished her phone conversation and threw herself into one of the office sofas, face swelling with tears and emotion. “I thought she was gone. I wish she was. Isn’t that awful of me?”
“It’s not.” Megan came to sit beside her and offered a hug. “I’ve only known her for ninety minutes and I’m already exhausted by her, so, no, I don’t think it’s awful at all. Ais, I don’t mean to be pushy, but both your uncle and your mother really want access to your father’s computer. Do you know why?”
Aisling, sniffling, said, “No, but I think we should find out. There’s a key in the office door, go on and lock it so, and I’ve got his password book.” She darted a glance at Megan. “You won’t tell Uncle Adam and Mam, will you?”
“Definitely not.”
Aisling sniffled again. “Then let’s see what Da was hiding.”