Death of an Irish Diva (7 page)

“Annie, do you think you can talk to them?” Bryant asked her.

“Yeah, sure, but I wonder why they won't talk to you,” Annie said, placing the last file back into a box labeled MCGLASHEN.

Annie and Bryant were sitting in his office. It was Monday afternoon, and they had just been through boxes of Emily's papers and had found nothing that linked her to the NMO, yet. But they did find adoption papers. Turned out Emily was adopted. Her adoptive family name was Greenberg. One reason it was so hard for the authorities to track her parents down.

“I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm so cute?” he said and grinned at her.

“Or it's because you've offended them somehow. More likely, wouldn't you think?” she clipped.

He grabbed his chest. “I'm hurt!”

She laughed, loving the sound of his laughter coming up from deep in his chest.

“Okay,” she said. “I'll talk to them. At least I can ask about her adoption. It seems odd that Emily would take another name.” She paused, looking across the desk at him. “Have we ruled out the NMO?”

“Nothing has been ruled out yet. We've talked to a couple of their members, and they say they don't know Emily. That they were not really representative of the group, but . . . ,” he said and grimaced.

“What?” she said, sitting up on the edge of her chair.

“The runes. Not something you see every day, you know. We have to pay attention to this. The NMO uses the same symbols as what is on Emily's ass. And add to that your crazy friend Vera, who has yet to come up with a reason her purse was found at the crime scene.”

“Vera is not crazy,” she said. “Have you talked to the members of the historical society?”

He nodded. “Not much help, as you can imagine.”

“How about the Irish dance community?” Annie asked.

“Yes, we've spoken to several dancers. None of them were even in this area around the time Emily was killed. There was this man, Ian something or other, who obviously didn't like Emily. But he's in Chicago.”

“Can you give me his contact info?”

“Sure, but why? We've already talked to him.”

“As I told you before, Adam, people react differently to you because you're a cop. And a smart-ass cop, at that.”

He rolled his eyes, leaned back in his desk chair, and placed his hands behind his head. Annie tried not to let her eyes drift to his biceps, because that would lead to her wanting him to wrap those arms around her. She didn't look.
Think about Mike.

“You may be right. There may not be a link with the NMO,” he said, letting out a groan as he released his hands from behind his head.

“I mean, I've been looking at the NMO's documents very closely,” she said. “They say nothing about killing people. Though they do think that all the strange symbols are sacred. And they think that anybody who doesn't believe that Jesus is the Messiah is going to hell.”

Bryant harrumphed.

“The dangerous part of it is that they thought Zeb was a prophet and was getting messages directly from Jesus. So, many of them did what he asked them to do. But now that he's gone . . . at least for now, I'm not sure who would be giving orders to kill Emily. And for what reason.”

“Me neither.”

“So if we rule out the NMO, who and what is there?” Annie persisted. “No real leads on the Irish dancing . . .”

“I've got to admit, Annie, this Irish dancing thing has me thrown. What is it? I don't think I've ever seen it,” he said.

“Have you ever seen
Riverdance?
” she asked.

“What?” he said, with a look of bewilderment.

“Oh, never mind,” she said. “It's a form of dance that has its roots in Ireland. Sometimes the dancers wear those soft shoes, gillies, and other times they wear hard shoes that are sort of a cross between a clog and a tap shoe. Either way, it's pretty amazing to watch. Especially the group dances, all of them together, making fancy, complicated formations while performing difficult dance moves.”

“I think I'll check into renting
Riverdance,
” he said after a moment.

“You should, but in the meantime, I recorded a bit of Emily dancing the other day on my phone. Check this out,” she said and pulled out her phone. “Sam was very interested in hard shoes. The shoes are thick and have taps on the bottom. I'm sure he just likes the noise. I prefer the soft-shoe dances, the ones where they wear—”

“The gillies with all the crisscrossed laces,” he said, finishing her sentence.

Annie pressed a button on her iPhone screen. They heard the
clack-clackety-tap-tap
of Emily's shoes as she danced in sync with fiddle and drum rhythms, jumping and spinning without missing a beat. A huge smile spread across her face, her ponytail bobbing up and town. Her skirt and legs were moving so quickly that they blurred on the iPhone screen.

“Whew,” he said after it was over.

“I know. Amazing, right?” Annie said. Then, a few moments later, she added, “Any other leads?”

“Just Vera, unfortunately. And for the record, I can't see her as a killer. But people surprise you.”

The look on his face startled Annie. Could he really think that Vera was capable of murder? Well, he still harbored suspicions about Cookie, even though they now knew she wasn't guilty of killing those two young women. They had simply known too much about an illegal operation and were killed because of it. Bryant looked serious.

“Between you and me, the killer probably had to have a lot more upper body strength than what I think Vera has. I mean, Emily was held down, along with being strangled. I'm not sure Vera could manage that physically,” he told her. “But if she murdered Emily when she was sleepwalking . . .”

“What? That's a stretch.”

“There have been cases like this. It's rare. I mean, where someone kills a person and doesn't remember it, because they were sleepwalking, for lack of a better term. No, wait. There is a term. Homicidal somnambulism. Look, I don't understand it. But there you have it,” he said. “Something is troubling Vera. I hope she gets to the bottom of it soon.”

“What will happen if you don't? Will you put her in jail, like you did Cookie?” Annie asked, with a note of bitterness in her voice.

Just then a uniformed officer walked in and handed Bryant a file and mumbled something to him.

“Excuse me,” Bryant said, getting up from his desk. “I'll be back in a minute.”

She glanced at her watch. “Well, I need to go, anyway. It's almost time for the boys' bus to come.”

“Call me,” he said, standing in the doorway.

Her eyes met his, and one of her brows lifted. She felt a flush of heat move across her, along with jolt of energy. Good God, what was happening to her?

“I mean,” he stammered, “I mean if you find something more about the NMO or Emily. And, um, once you've talked to her parents.”

He left the room, leaving Annie to gather up her things and rush out of the police station. As she was leaving, she saw Leo Shirley walking through the hallway in handcuffs. That man was always in trouble. Didn't he just get a DUI?

He'd also attacked Robert Dasher when the two of them were sitting at Pamela's Pie Palace a few years ago. The man was a menace. She wondered what he had managed to get into now.

But for now, Annie wanted to chat with Ian Jones, the Irish dancer. After several attempts, she finally reached him.

“Like I told that cop, Emily McGlashen was a bitch, nobody liked her, but she was a highly respected dancer. That's about all I can tell you,” he said.

“Did she have any friends?” Annie asked.

He harrumphed. “No. It's strange. The Irish dance community is competitive. But the guy that's my biggest competitor? Well, we are friends. But Emily? She was quiet, kept to herself in rehearsal and competitions. She was so focused that it was, um, kind of scary.”

“How so?”

“Well, it was just like, you know, she was oblivious to anybody else. She hated dancing in groups, as part of a team, because that meant she'd have to work with others. It got to the point where nobody wanted to work with her. She was just so difficult. Dancing is really such a team effort. Man, if you messed up, she'd let you have it. Wasn't helpful about it at all.”

Annie heard commotion in the background.

“Sorry,” he said. “That's my roommate. He's just getting up.”

“Now?” Annie looked at her watch. It was two in the afternoon.

“Yes,” he said. “We keep odd hours, you know, especially when a show is running. We sleep most of the day. Sort of like vampires,” he said and laughed. “Imagine that, if you will. Irish dance vampires.”

The crews from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources were gathered in Beatrice's backyard. They had already carefully unearthed the bones of a man—er, what was left of the bones, which were, scientifically speaking, petrified bones.

“Curious,” Beatrice said. “Why wasn't he buried in a box?”

“Well, times might have been hard,” the crew leader said. “Or he could have been murdered. Or it could be a Native American, although most of the time, their bones are found in cloth or hide bags. So I don't think that's what our guy is. But ya never know.”

He then explained that if the bones were found to be Native American, there would be complications for her.

“There's some kind of law stating that the government has the right to come in and pretty much take over if it's a burial ground. But, as I say, it doesn't look like it. Won't know until we run those tests. In the meantime, we appreciate you letting us look around a bit.”

“No chance of finding out who the bones belong to?” Beatrice asked.

“Very unlikely. They will do DNA tests, of course, but unless we already have DNA belonging to this person in the system, there's nothing to compare it to.”

“And since people didn't go around collecting DNA back in the day . . .”

“Precisely,” the man said.

Beatrice stood over the ground where other things were being removed. She had no use for them and planned to donate them to the state. Every day they discovered another item. One day they pulled up a hairbrush. Another day a razor. When you grew up in a place like Virginia, history was just a part of everyday life. It was marked by signs, monuments, and museums. But to think that all these years, Beatrice's backyard held historical treasure. Well, it was astounding.

“Ho!” one of the men called out. “I found something here.” He pulled out a box, covered in earth. He brushed it off carefully. Everybody stilled. “Tin,” he said. “And there's a bigger box under it, or something. Maybe a trunk.”

Beatrice heard a sound like a loud train and felt a rumbling beneath her feet. The earth vibrated; she reached out for Jon, who steadied her. Some of the ground caved in just as the last man was pulled out of the ditch.

Cell phones began to sound.

“What the heck was that?” Beatrice said, looking around.

“A confirmed earthquake,” the head honcho said.

“Well, imagine that,” Beatrice said. “An earthquake in Virginia.”

“I think we need to call it a day. There will be aftershocks, and I'm uncertain about any of my group being down there.” He pointed to the hole.

“Understandable,” Beatrice said. “But what about the box? Can we open it?”

“Sure,” the guy said and laughed a little. “If you're sure you want to. Could be a pet buried. You never know.”

“I'll take my chances,” she said. “Come inside.”

He dismissed his crew and followed Beatrice and Jon into the kitchen, where she spread out newspaper on her chrome and turquoise 1950s table.

She watched as he sat the box down. It looked really old to Beatrice, yet oddly familiar. Jon's brown eyes were wide saucers of excitement.

He carefully opened the box. It was partially filled with dirt, but he pulled out some metal piece that had colored thread hanging from them.

“Hmmm,” he said.

“Hmmm, what?” Beatrice said impatiently.

“I think these are medals.” He held them up to the light. “Perhaps Civil War?”

“Glory be,” she said. “There wasn't any fighting in these parts. Maybe a skirmish or two.”

“This could belong to our bone guy,” he said. “Of course, this could have been where he lived. Or maybe it belonged to someone else.”

“How do we find out?” Jon said.

“Well, I don't know, but the guys in Richmond will be able to add something to it, no doubt. They have an extensive collection of Civil War medals and some kind of database.... I'm a field guy. Don't know too much about it. But I think this is a gem. A real gem.”

Beatrice grinned. In her eighty-three years of living, she'd never been so awestruck. The fact that a Civil War soldier might have been buried in her backyard or lived in the house, here on this property, spun around in her mind. She hadn't felt this excited about anything since she learned about quantum physics and then with Cookie and all her machinations about time travel—or not. She thought about that conversation nearly every day.

“We'll get back to you, Mrs. Matthews,” the man said and gently placed the medal back into the box. “Hopefully, we'll see you tomorrow. Sam said there was a bigger box down there. You may have a real treasure here.”

“Don't you mean the state of Virginia?” she said.

“Well,” he said, “yes, I guess I do, since you've been so gracious. And in the meantime, the medals are in safe hands, I'm sure.”

“It's amazing,” Jon said after the man left. “First an earthquake, then the medal business. Quite a day.”

“Yep, I'm hungry. How about you?” Right now, Beatrice's stomach gnawed at her. She knew she had some corn bread and leftover beans in the fridge, which was one of her favorite lunches. She smacked her lips. After lunch she'd check on Vera and then call Rose, her cousin who still lived on Jenkins Mountain. She was going to love the news. She read anything and everything she could get her hands on about the Civil War. She had actually been thinking of going on a vacation to tour the Civil War battlefields. But she'd have to leave the mountain. And she'd never been off of it.