Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery (21 page)

Liam Donellan’s journal

That first meeting of rock wall and fist—I didn’t feel a thing. I kept on like a bare-knuckle boxer crazed with the need to win. Why didn’t I take a breath, count to ten, anything? If only I’d acted with compassion and financed Adrienne a fresh start as a widow. Instead, I saw a world of hurt if I let her have an inch’s sway. I saw Julia smiling but in the end drifting away as Adrienne slow-stewed my freedom into mush. I saw red.

I hope you see my dilemma. I was in love with Julia. Simply that. I’d finally understood the yearning that I saw in the eyes of the people I matched, and there stood Adrienne thinking she could take it all away. There’s no logic in a fist whether it be against a rock wall or Lonnie’s smirking rapist face. This, my boy, is precisely why I never asked you to explain yourself. I remember the red haze too well, and Adrienne, she knew her own brand of jabbing. Straight at my Achilles heel, you might say.

“You as much as admitted that you’d bastardize my child in exchange for your little Julia. Wouldn’t the gossips love to spread the news that our matchmaker goes straight for the money. So much for your integrity and reputation.”

She dared to try to control me through my best self, my role as matchmaker. That’s when I shoved her against Kilmoon’s wall hard enough to unleash a tumble of rocks. Kilmoon herself had entered the fray to protect one of her own. Adrienne soon enough lay on the ground with clouds in her eyes, sightlessly peering beyond her own small life. I didn’t notice my blood smeared on Kilmoon’s wall until the pain lit me like dried tinder, the blood a red reflection of my despair.

• 42 •

Merrit blinked fiercely, recalling her mom’s last entry in the spiral notebook, her numbed resignation, her inability to relive the whole truth even while writing to her private self. Until Merrit had read the article about the skeletal remains, she had thought her mom had overheard Liam and Adrienne having the kind of passionate sex that bordered on violence. But still, just sex.

“You killed her,” Merrit said.

“I did.”

“But it was an accident.” Merrit couldn’t help the urgency that leaked into her tone. “Right?”

“Technically, yes, but I should have stopped with the pounding. I should have noticed that a few rocks had already landed around us.”

Merrit understood. She’d battled her own red place with Andrew and lost.

“Picture the scene,” Liam said. “Adrienne in a lime green dress, me still in my matchmaking regalia. We stood out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by limestone and pastures and gravestones. Adrienne leaned against Kilmoon’s wall with an elbow hooked on a recessed window ledge. Kilmoon, that sacred lady, she warned us with a groan or two of shifting rock, but we were beyond noticing. I stood in front of Adrienne, not so much leaning as bracing myself against the wall. The more enraged I became, the more time slowed down. I remember the way Adrienne’s fake eyelashes trembled as she blinked in time to my pounding. The way the rock wall began to squeal. Kilmoon practically announced her intent, but I didn’t heed her until one of the chunks of falling limestone cracked against Adrienne’s head. The sound of it—it was disgusting. Wet. Soft. Final. All I could see through my red were Adrienne’s eyelashes, their final trembles before she fell.

“Only then did my body, mind, and soul turn into the broken hand, a massive pulsing pain that voided out the world until I came to, I don’t know when, to find myself on the ground next to Adrienne and too late to save her. I made it back to the lane thinking I’d knock down the door of the closest house a quarter mile away and call the Garda, but there leaning against my car, whom did I see?”

Merrit pressed a hand against her chest. “Andrew.”

“Oh yes, and as pleased as a rutting pig. He boasted about his and Adrienne’s agreement to help each other achieve their true hearts’ desires. If he ensnared Julia, then I’d be free for Adrienne. He and Adrienne had planned for her to goad me into admitting that Kate was my child and that I wanted nothing to do with her. Show me up for the despicable cad that I was while Julia listened.”

Liam stared into the fire and kneaded his bad hand.

“In the end,” he said, “Andrew won the jackpot, but even he couldn’t risk being associated with Adrienne’s death. He’d been seen around the village with her, so he offered to help me bury her. I was in so much pain, I went along with him. And, sad to say, no one remarked her absence. Just another tourist who left the matchmaking festivities early. Andrew took care to mention to a few people that Adrienne had had second thoughts about being there with her child.” Liam glanced at Merrit with hostility sparking green glints in his eyes. “He could afford to be magnanimous because he had what he wanted: Julia.”

Liam flexed scarred fingers as if the residual ache lessened the pain of his memories. A sympathetic throb pulsed in Merrit’s hand as he went on to describe a delirium of pain and rage and grief. Somehow, he managed to drive home for shovels while Andrew watched baby Kate, who’d been asleep in Adrienne’s car the whole time. Halfway through the digging Kate seemed to sense that her mother no longer lived. She didn’t cry so much as keen and whimper.

“The sound haunts my dreams,” Liam said. “There was a prominent Catholic orphanage down in Limerick. Mind you remember, Ireland, Catholic, conservative. Children out of wedlock? Still a scandal. In those days, you could drop infants off on orphanage steps and the nuns gladly took them in. So that’s what we did. Andrew drove my car. I settled Kate in her bassinet on the stoop, knocked on the door, and fled. Then Andrew dumped me and my car at the hospital and somehow found his way back to Kilmoon before dawn. He said he’d drive Adrienne’s car over the border, abandon it, and hitch back. What I remember most of all is my self-loathing as I left my fate in his hands.” Liam tucked his weak hand into the folds of the strong. “That was the first and I vowed last time I’d land myself in such a passive position. I’d broken half the bones in my hand, and all I could think about in the hospital was how to salvage my tie to Julia. But there was no way. For the first time in my life, I’d lost at something that, also for the first time in my life, truly mattered.”

Merrit hugged herself to lessen the chill that had invaded her bones. Such a waste, the whole wretched mess.

“You trust me not to go to the Garda with the story?” she said.

“Bah, at my age the Garda are the last thing on my mind. Besides, trust isn’t the issue. You deserve to know how I ruined Julia. The last time I saw your mother was the next day on Andrew’s arm. I had insisted that the doctors do a quick job of repairing my hand so I could get back to my duties. Julia looked as beautiful as ever while watching me at my matchmaker’s business, but her spark was gone. She’d already left Ireland behind. It was as if she woke from a long dream and realized that her efforts to be other than a well-bred, upper-class girl would always end in heartache. Andrew must have convinced her to leave it all alone—don’t go to the Garda, don’t worry herself over baby Kate, she’d be fine.” Liam shoved the 1975 box off his lap as if its memories sickened him. “I’m sure he was persuasive.”

“You could have fought for her,” Merrit said. “She would have stayed with you, I know it.”

“It was too late.” He leaned over as if to pat her hand, but stopped himself. “No sweet family of three. It wasn’t meant to be. I’m sorry.”

Merrit closed her eyes against an image of Andrew’s fevered gaze aimed at her from within sunken eye sockets. He’d always known how to get what he wanted.

“I don’t know how I made it through that day or the next or the days that followed until the end of the festival,” Liam continued. “All I thought about was Julia and what she heard from behind the wall. What it must have sounded like.” He pointed to the jewelry box that Merrit still held. “Those earrings were the only thing I had left of her. I’d planned to surprise her the next day.”

Merrit eased the lid shut. Her fingers left sweaty prints on the box’s shiny surface. If only she knew what her mom had been thinking the day she died, when Julia had walked away from her spiteful, spoiled daughter. She now knew part of the story, the missing bit not included in the notebook, but she sensed yet more lurking beyond her grasp.

The flames had all but burned the peat back to its gritty origins. Merrit hurried to pile more chunks on the fire. Liam took the opportunity to retreat down a hall that Merrit presumed led to bedrooms. Merrit leaned her head against the fireplace bricks, reminding herself that Adrienne Meehan’s death was an accident. An accident.

Liam returned, holding a worn envelope. “So you can see the extent to which the past has influenced you. I received this letter back in June.”

One look at the letter’s salutation and Merrit’s hands began to shake.

• 43 •

Three boxes under the window carried their labels like weak
proclamations. Danny hadn’t bothered to use a permanent marker, just a blue
ballpoint pen that skipped over the corrugated lumps. His penmanship appeared
weak-willed.
Donation
, read the first box, then
Refuse
, then
Storage
. His
daughter’s life partitioned into three categories no more personal than bins at a
rummage bazaar. It was enough to send him out of the room, except that he’d
committed himself to this final agony.

Danny reached into a dresser drawer without looking. His fingers knew
this cool, smooth memento. The purple piggy bank with chipped snout. Beth had placed
her first pennies into the slot on its back. Sad little piggy, time for donation. He
pulled a sheet of day-old newspaper off the pile next to him, noting the headline,
The Haunted Church
.

Kilmoon Church had had her share of stories over the years. He wondered
if the kids still dared one another to spend the night under her stern eye. He’d
spent a frightful night or two out there himself.

Danny wrapped the piggy in newspaper and set it in the donation box. A
creak and a footstep sounded from the hallway. He turned to see Ellen standing in
the doorway with a footstool hugged to her chest. Without word, she positioned
herself on the stool in the corner farthest from Danny. At least she wasn’t yelling
at him. Now, instead of calling him an untrustworthy bastard or an inconsiderate
ass, she hovered with mouth closed and knees knocking together over pigeon-toed
feet.

Several minutes passed in silence. Their deadened hush echoed into the
rest of the house and returned shadow sounds of emptiness. An ache of wood, a
tic-tac of magpie steps on the roof, the hum of the icebox. With the children
visiting playmates, the house became a morgue. It occurred to Danny that even the
most corrosive comfort was hard to relinquish. Like perpetual sadness, for
example.

“I saw Kate Meehan in the village,” Ellen said.

Danny tensed. So this was why she’d decided to linger in the same room
with him. She had something to say, and by Christ, she would.

“I couldn’t help staring at her, wondering who she resembled.” Her snort
said all there was to say about Kate Meehan. “Of course that would be Liam. Now that
the gossip’s gone around about his illegitimate offspring, it’s too obvious Kate
takes after him. She walked around with the same air of imperiousness about her, as
if her existence justified her actions.”

“Kate took after Liam in some ways. At least from what I’ve heard,
but—”

“But you adore Liam so how similar could they be? It’s almost as if you
have to revise your opinion of him—just a bit, mind—to make sense of their
similarities.”

She was on a roll now, and the train of her words accelerated toward the
wall between them. Danny dropped his hands to his lap and waited.

“You’re trying to rearrange your thoughts around Liam,” she said, “given
the fact of this daughter. And maybe the other one, too. Merrit. You don’t want to
but your sense of fair play won’t let you not. And if Liam isn’t really the
village’s resident saint, could it mean that—” she hiccupped over breath stuck in
her throat. “Could it mean that—”

“This isn’t about our marriage, by Christ. That’s you. Your doubts are
your own.”

“You doubt too.”

“Not until lately.” He pulled a wooden caboose out of the drawer.
“Liam’s not to blame if we’ve changed over the years or if events caused us to
change. He’s just a man.”

“My point exactly,” Ellen said. “He’s just a man.”

“Stop it.”

“You forget that I still know you.” Ellen spoke with quiet conviction.
“You got tossed off the case—”

“How did you know?”

“Mrs. O’Brien, who else? Saw her at church yesterday. Couldn’t help
herself, going on about your loyalties to Kevin and Liam over doing your job.” She
spoke fast, not letting him respond. “So you got tossed off the case, but you can’t
stop yourself from investigating against Clarkson’s orders.”

Danny glanced down at a paper scrap anchored by a rubber ducky that no
longer floated. “I guess not.”

“You’re willing to bankrupt us to help Marcus and lose your job to help
Kevin. Turn us into paupers. All because you must do the right thing—”

“It’s not that simple.”

“—without regard to how I might feel. Even this, Beth’s room—without my
say.” Ellen popped into his line of sight long enough to grab the paper scrap out
from under the rubber ducky. “And what’s this, more secrets?”

“Go on, read it aloud and tell me what you see.”

Timeline at the party:

8.00: Kevin arrives at party with
Liam.

8.30: Kevin fetches Liam in from Marcus’s
bench, talked about the afghan.

9.00: Danny Ahern arrives, at bar with
Kevin.

10.15ish: At party, Lonnie chastises Ivan for
leaving back door unlocked. Lonnie just in from errand to Internet Café—received
€1,000 from Kate.

10.30: Merrit leaves party.

10.45: Kevin gone for 30 minutes.

After 11.30: Liam opens last present using the
knife that killed Lonnie. Last knife sighting.

1.00: Liam and Kevin leave. Liam
drove.

“Of course that’s not the last time Liam saw the knife—” Ellen shook her
head and leaned her head back against the wall. “Bloody hell.”

Hairs danced a jig on the back of Danny’s neck. “Mind telling me what’s
going on?”

“I was there that night if you must know. Thought I’d make some amends—I
don’t know for what exactly—and keep you company at your post. Only, you weren’t
exactly on door duty, were you?”

“That can rest a moment, don’t you think?” Danny spoke in the low
monotone he reserved for banishing the children to their room without dessert. Only
this was his wife, and this went beyond the daily dance around her moods. He felt
around under a pile of frilly socks until he found his pen. “Go on, take it.”

Ellen grabbed the pen. She hunched over his timeline. Danny couldn’t
watch her. While the pen scratched, he matched up the socks as if his hands had
brains of their own. A sick certitude washed over him. This was the end of
something, right here, right now.

Ellen handed him the timeline with her blocky printing squeezed between
his scrawled lines.

Timeline at the party:

8.00: Kevin arrives at party with
Liam.

8.30: Kevin fetches Liam in from Marcus’s
bench, talked about the afghan.

9.00: Danny Ahern arrives, at bar with
Kevin.

10.15ish: At party, Lonnie chastises Ivan for
leaving back door unlocked. Lonnie just in from errand to Internet Café—received
€1,000 from Kate.

10.30: Merrit leaves party.
Around this time, I bump into Emma outside pub, frantic to talk
to Kevin. I send someone in to fetch him out for her.

10.45: Kevin gone for 30 minutes.

11.00: Liam visits Marcus with plate of food
and escorts him to new bench.

After 11.30: Liam opens last present using the
knife that killed Lonnie.
Last knife
sighting.

12.00ish: Liam cuts himself piece of cake with
knife. You look drunk. I leave.

1.00: Liam and Kevin leave. Liam
driving.

Hands shaking, Danny read the list through twice and carefully folded it
in half. “You were spying on me. Worse yet, you knew we were talking to all
potential witnesses yet you withheld information—why?”

“I haven’t had a clear thought in what seems like ages.”

“You seem clear enough when you’re bollocking me, and you seem clear
enough now.” Danny grabbed up the rubbish box and upended its contents on the floor.
“You can’t keep using Beth’s death as an excuse. Not anymore.”

He carried the box into their conjugal bedroom with its big bed, one
side tidy, the other rumpled from Ellen’s tossed sleep. Ellen followed him.

“When Marcus recovers,” he said, “he’s moving back into this house.
You’ll need him.”