Now You See Her (23 page)

“Haven’t a clue. But I
do
know that what’s done is done. The past is over and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. So what’s the point of beatin’ yourself up about something you can’t change? Unless, of course, that
is
the point.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, maybe you like wallowin’ in all that guilt because it allows you to stay stuck in the past, prevents you from movin’ forward. Maybe that’s what you want.”

Marcy felt a twinge of outrage poking at her side. “You think I want to be miserable?”

“Don’t know,” he said again, his voice deliberately provocative. “Do you?”

“I just want things to be normal,” Marcy said, burying her face in her hands. That was all she’d ever wanted. “Maybe if I’d—”

“No,” Liam said, suddenly pulling to the side of the road
and shutting off the car’s engine. “No more maybes.” He kissed her before she could say another word.

The kiss was passionate and grew even more urgent as it progressed. Marcy felt strong hands at her waist, on her cheeks, in her hair. So different from the way Vic had kissed her just last night, she found herself thinking.

What’s happening? she wondered, feeling dizzy and out of breath as she pulled away from Liam’s embrace.

Liam apologized immediately.

“Why did you do that?”

“I’ve been wanting to kiss you since the first minute I laid eyes on you.”

“You have? Why?”

Liam looked as confused as she felt. “God, Marcy. Do you really have to ask?”

Marcy’s head was spinning. She stared at the empty field by the side of the road in order to steady it. “Where are we?” she asked, realizing she had absolutely no idea where they were.

“Just outside the city limits. I’m really sorry,” he said again.

“No, it’s my fault.”

Liam smiled. “Not everything is your fault, Marcy.” Then, tenderly, “Things will work out in the end, you’ll see.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then it’s not the end.”

Marcy laughed through her tears. “How’d you get to be so smart?” She reached out to touch his hand, then thought better of it. As comforting as his arms were, as thrilling as his embrace was, Marcy realized they weren’t the arms she wanted around her. She pictured Vic standing outside the door of the Doyle Cork Inn, his wounded eyes following Liam’s car down the busy street. Would he be waiting for her when she got back?

As if he sensed what she was thinking, Liam took a deep
breath, straightened his shoulders, and restarted the car’s engine, waiting for a break in the traffic before pulling back onto the main road. Within minutes, they were mired in traffic, the sound of jackhammers pounding against the sides of their heads.

“Damn construction,” Liam muttered.

“There’s certainly enough of it going on.”

“My father used to work in construction,” he said, obviously straining for conversation as they crawled toward Western Road. “He was killed twelve years ago when a building he was working on collapsed. Never knew what hit him, as they say.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“The company claimed it was his own damn fault. He should have been wearin’ a helmet, that sort of thing. They paid the funeral expenses, but other than that, we got nothin’.” He shook his head. “Oh, well. What’s done is done, right? Think I remember a very wise man once saying that there’s no point beatin’ yourself up over things you can’t change.”

“He
is
a very wise man,” Marcy said.

“Just not the man you want.” Liam pulled to a stop in front of the Doyle Cork Inn.

“Liam …”

“It’s all right. It’ll all work out in the end,” he said, green eyes twinkling. “And if it doesn’t …”

Marcy got out of the car. It’s not the end, she finished silently.

S
ADIE DOYLE WAS WAITING
for her in the inn’s small reception area, hands on her wide hips. “That’ll be an extra fifty euros for your guest,” she announced before Marcy was through the door.

“Is he still here?” Marcy asked hopefully, her eyes running up the stairs toward her room.

Sadie shook her head, the tightly set curls of her gray-flecked, reddish-blond hair barely moving. “Nah. He left hours ago. Got tired of waitin’ around, I guess.”

Marcy tried to mask her disappointment with a smile. What did I expect? she wondered. “Did he leave a message?” she asked hopefully.

Another vigorous shake of Sadie’s head, the motion dislodging the stale scent of too much hair spray. “I’ll just tack that extra charge onto your bill, shall I?”

“Yes.” Marcy walked toward the stairs.

“Where’d you run off to in such a hurry anyway?” Sadie asked, disguising the question she’d obviously been dying to ask as an afterthought. “You find your daughter?”

This time it was Marcy’s turn to shake her head. She proceeded up the stairs in silence, deciding to call Vic as soon as she got to her room. Liam had said he was staying at the posh Hayfield Manor Hotel, which was relatively close by. She’d ring his room, apologize profusely for running out on him again, and tell him about what had happened in Youghal. He’d understand and forgive her without a second’s hesitation. They’d arrange to meet for dinner. He’d stay the night, or maybe this time she’d stay with him, spend the night in the warmth of his arms, surrounded by luxury. And this time she wouldn’t skip out in the wee hours of the morning or abandon him without so much as a word of good-bye. She’d been wrong to treat him in such a cavalier fashion, wrong to exclude him when all he wanted was to help. She’d make it up to him tonight, she was thinking as she strode purposefully down the hall toward her room, key in hand, her hand reaching for the door.

It took several twists of the key until she succeeded in unlocking the door, and then it suddenly swung open, as if pushed. Marcy froze, thinking for an instant that she must have the wrong room. This couldn’t be hers. “Oh, my God,” she gasped, slowly stepping over the threshold, her eyes flying from one corner of the room to the next, trying to absorb what
they were seeing. “Oh, my God,” she said again, louder this time. Then, “No. No.”

The room looked as if a terrible storm had swept through it. Everything was in violent disarray. The sheets had been ripped from the bed, the mattress dislodged and left dangling precariously across the bed frame. It had been slashed down its center, and its stuffing sprouted across its surface like weeds. Every drawer in the place had been opened and upended. The closet had been emptied, her clothes ripped from their hangers and left in a crumpled heap on the carpet. Even her toiletries hadn’t been spared, she noted, glancing into the bathroom, the bottles smashed, the tubes emptied, her toothbrush snapped in half. “What the—” Her words froze in her throat as she approached the bed, her shaking hand reaching for a pair of panties whose crotch had been slashed repeatedly with either scissors or a knife. “Oh, God,” she exclaimed in mounting horror, realizing that every item of her clothing had been violated in some way: her underwear, her nightgown, her blouses, her sweaters, her black slacks, even her trench coat. Nothing had escaped mutilation. Everything had been slashed, shredded, gutted. “No!” she shouted at the flowered walls. “No, no, no, no!”

She heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, followed by a shrill scream. Then more footsteps, faster, nimbler than the ones before. A whoosh of air behind her. A sharp intake of breath.

“My God. What have you done?”

Marcy spun around to see both Sadie and Colin Doyle standing in the doorway, their eyes reflecting the horror of what was before them, their faces red with indignation and disgust. “What have
I
done?” Marcy sputtered. “You think I did this? I just got back, for God’s sake. You saw me walk through the door no more than a minute ago. You think I had time to do this?”

Sadie Doyle said nothing, her face absorbing the damage to the room.

“Would I do this to my own things?” Marcy waved her slashed underwear in Sadie’s face.

Sadie held firm, stubbornly folding her arms across her chest. “You’re responsible nonetheless.”

“I’m responsible? How do you figure that?”

“Looks like your friend didn’t appreciate your runnin’ off the way you did this mornin’,” Sadie said.

Tears filled Marcy’s eyes. “He didn’t do this,” she said, her voice shaking. He couldn’t have, she thought.

“Who then?”

“You tell me.”

“You accusin’
me
of somethin’?”

Marcy looked from Sadie to her son.

“You think Colin did this?”

“Who else had access to this room?” Marcy asked.

“Aside from your gentleman friend, you mean? The one you ran out on this mornin’, the one who sat here half the day waitin’ for you to come back, the one who snuck out when he thought no one was lookin’?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talkin’ about the fact your boyfriend was still sittin’ here waitin’ when I came to make up your bed this mornin’, asked if I’d mind him hangin’ around awhile, ’til you got back. I said it was no skin off my nose, but I was gonna have to charge you extra. He said, no problem, he’d take care of it later. Then I saw him sneakin’ out of here about an hour or so later without so much as a fare-thee-well. I guess now we know why.”

“That can’t be,” Marcy muttered impotently. “He would never—”

Sadie scoffed, the harsh sound sweeping through the air like a broom.

“Where do you keep your keys?” Marcy asked suddenly.

“What?”

“The keys to the rooms. You obviously have a master set.…”

“They’re in a safe place.”

“Where? Behind the reception desk?”

The look that passed through Sadie’s eyes told Marcy her guess was correct.

“And you’re not always at that desk, are you, Mrs. Doyle?”

“It’s either me or Colin.”

“But sometimes you’re both busy with other things. It’s possible someone could have come in, taken those keys, and—”

“And what? Decided to ransack your room? Why would anybody want to do that?”

“I don’t know.” Marcy felt her knees grow weak and fought to stay upright. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah? Well, this is what
I
know. I know my room’s been trashed. That’s what I know. And I know somebody’s got to pay for the damage. Now, I don’t know how well you know that guy who spent the night, but frankly, he looked a little shifty to me. Maybe he was lookin’ for somethin’, maybe he thought you had some money lyin’ around. Any jewelry missin’?”

Marcy looked through her tears toward the empty drawer where she’d put her earrings. “My gold earrings are gone,” she said dully, glancing back at Colin.

“What are you lookin’ at me for? I didn’t take ’em.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”

“What happened is that my property got smashed up, and you’re on the hook for the damages,” Sadie Doyle said again.

“Let me get this straight,” Marcy said angrily, her patience
exhausted, her head on the verge of exploding.
“My
room got broken into,
my
belongings were destroyed,
my
earrings are missing, it’s
your
hotel, and yet
you
expect
me
to reimburse you? You guys are nuts!” she added for good measure.

“Call the gardai,” Sadie instructed her son.

“
WELL, HELLO THERE
, Mrs. Taggart,” Christopher Murphy said in greeting, running his hand through the stubble of his short blond hair. He closed the door behind him, walked toward her chair. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

“Do you think we could dispense with the sarcasm?” Marcy asked, concentrating her attention on the messy stack of papers on the garda’s desk. It seemed to have grown substantially since she was there yesterday.

“How’s the eye?”

“Better, thank you.”

“Let’s have a look.” He tilted her chin gently toward his face. “Suppose you tell me what happened this time,” Murphy said as the door opened again and Colleen Donnelly entered the room, immediately followed by John Sweeny and his overhanging gut. Marcy felt her heart quicken at the sight of their neat, dark blue uniforms and immediately brought her eyes to her lap. “Is there a problem, Mrs. Taggart?” Christopher Murphy asked.

“The problem is that I’ve done nothing wrong and yet, here I am.”

“Again,” Murphy added.

“Yes. Again.”

“Would you mind looking at me, Mrs. Taggart?”

Reluctantly, Marcy brought her head up.

“If you’ve done nothing wrong, why do you have such trouble looking me in the eye?”

“I have no trouble looking you in the eye.”

“And yet you’ve been staring at the floor, at my desk, at the wall, at anything
but
me since I walked in.”

“It’s not you,” Marcy said after a pause. Then, when that clearly didn’t satisfy him, “It’s just that uniforms have always made me a little nervous.” I shouldn’t have told him that, she thought immediately, catching the startled expressions on the faces of all three gardai. “There’s no rational reason for it. I’ve just always been that way. My sister says I’m worse than her poodle,” she added, trying to laugh, to show them she understood just how silly it all was.

“Your sister?” Sweeny asked. “Is she here in Cork?”

“No. She’s in Toronto.”

“Would you like us to call her?” Colleen Donnelly asked.

“Why would I want you to do that?”

“I thought you might appreciate some support.”

“It’s not every tourist who gets hauled into the garda station two days in a row,” Murphy added.

“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea.”

“You’re the victim,” Sweeny said, although his tone said otherwise.

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Tell us what happened, Mrs. Taggart,” Murphy said.

Marcy sighed. From her experience the day before, she knew they weren’t going to let her leave until she provided them with a plausible version of the events. Might as well get this over with, she decided. “I came back to the inn—”

“You’d been out all day?” Murphy said, interrupting.

“Yes.”

“Mind my asking where?”

“I went to Youghal.”