St. Patrick's Day Murder
Read St. Patrick's Day Murder Online
Authors: Leslie Meier
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Women Sleuths, #Women Detectives, #Stone; Lucy (Fictitious Character), #Irish Americans, #Saint Patrick's Day, #Maine
ST. PATRICK’S DAY MURDER
Lucy returned to her soup, chopping up carrots and celery and adding them to the pot. Moira hadn’t said when she would pick Deirdre up, and Lucy wondered if she would still be with them at dinnertime. The Malones were an odd sort of family, she thought as she stirred the pot. Not exactly irresponsible parents, but awfully eager to assign child care duties to someone else. And then there was the day they had discovered Old Dan’s body, the very same day Dylan had come to the newspaper seeking news of his brother. She remembered it clearly, how he’d come through the door, claiming he was right off the airplane, straight from Ireland that very day.
Maybe it was just a phrase, a bit of blarney, as Miss Tilley put it, or maybe Dylan Malone had indeed arrived in the country days ahead of his family. But why would he bother to lie about it? Perhaps he had a reason for keeping that information to himself…
Books by Leslie Meier
Mistletoe Murder
Tippy Toe Murder
Trick or Treat Murder
Back to School Murder
Valentine Murder
Christmas Cookie Murder
Turkey Day Murder
Wedding Day Murder
Birthday Party Murder
Father’s Day Murder
Star Spangled Murder
New Year’s Eve Murder
Bake Sale Murder
Candy Cane Murder
St. Patrick’s Day Murder
Mother’s Day Murder
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
St. Patrick’s Day MURDER
LESLIE MEIER
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
For Kevin and Beryl Daley
Acknowledgments
Much thanks to Joyce Flynn and Phil O’Leary.
Contents
Prologue
T
he last customer hadn’t left the bar until nearly two a.m.—well past the eleven p.m. closing time mandated by the town bylaws in Tinker’s Cove, Maine—but that didn’t bother Old Dan very much. He’d never been one to fuss about rules and regulations. No, he was one who took the inch and made it a mile. If they wanted him to close at eleven, well, they could jolly well send over a cop or two or ten and make him. Though he’d be willing to wager that wouldn’t go down well with the clientele. He chuckled and scratched his chin, with its week’s worth of grizzled whiskers. That crowd, mostly rough and ready fishermen, didn’t have a high regard for the law, or for the cops who enforced it, either. No, close the Bilge before the customers were ready to call it a night, and there’d be a fine brouhaha.
And, anyway, he didn’t sleep well these days, so there was no sense tossing out some poor soul before he was ready to go, because, truth be told, he didn’t mind a bit of company in the wee hours. He knew that if he went home and to bed, he’d only be twisting and turning in the sheets, unable to calm his thoughts enough to sleep.
That’s why he’d started tidying the bar at night instead of leaving it for the morning. The rhythmic tasks soothed him. Rinsing and drying the glasses, rubbing down the bar. Wiping the tables, giving the floor a bit of a sweep. That’s what he was doing, shuffling along behind a push broom to clear away all the dropped cigarette butts and matches and dirt carried in on cleated winter boots. He braced himself for the blast of cold and opened the door to sweep it all out, back where it belonged. But it wasn’t the cold that took his breath away. It was a bird, a big crow, and it walked right in.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, feeling a large hollowness growing inside him.
“You know quite well, don’t you?” replied the crow, hopping up onto the bar with a neat flap of his wings. The bird cocked his head and looked him in the eye. “Don’t tell me an Irishman like you, born and bred in the old country, has forgotten the tale of Cú Chulainn?”
He’d not forgotten. He’d heard the story often as a boy, long ago in Ireland, where his mother dished up the old stories with his morning bowl of oats. “Eat up,” she’d say, “so you’ll be as strong as Cú Chulainn.”
He found his mind wandering and followed it down the dark paths of memory. Had it really been that long? Sixty odd years? More than half a century? It seemed like yesterday that he was tagging along behind his ma when she made the monthly trek to the post office to pay the bills. “’Tisn’t the sort of thing you can forget,” he told the crow. “Especially that statue in the Dublin General Post Office. A handsome piece of work that is, illustrating how Cú Chulainn knew death was near and tied himself to a post so he could die standing upright, like the hero he was.”
“Cú Chulainn was a hero indeed,” admitted the crow. “And his enemies couldn’t kill him until the Morrighan lit on his shoulder, stealing his strength, weakening him….”
“Right you are. The Morrighan,” he said. The very thought of that fearsome warrior goddess, with her crimson cloak and chariot, set his heart to pounding in his bony old chest.
“And what form did the Morrighan take, might I ask?” inquired the bird.
“A crow,” he said, feeling a great trembling overtake him. “So is that it? Are you the Morrighan come for me?”
“What do you think, Daniel Malone?” replied the crow, stretching out its wings with a snap and a flap and growing larger, until its great immensity blocked out the light—first the amber glow of the neon Guinness sign, then the yellow light from the spotted ceiling fixture, the greenish light from the streetlamp outside, and finally, even the silvery light from the moon—and all was darkness.
Chapter One
M
aybe it was global warming, maybe it was simply a warmer winter than usual, but it seemed awfully early for the snow to be melting. It was only the last day of January, and in the little coastal town of Tinker’s Cove, Maine, that usually meant at least two more months of ice and snow. Instead, the sidewalks and roads were clear, and the snow cover was definitely retreating, revealing the occasional clump of snowdrops and, in sheltered nooks with southern exposures, a few bright green spikes of daffodil leaves that were prematurely poking through the earth.
You could almost believe that spring was in the air, thought Lucy Stone, part-time reporter for the town’s weekly newspaper, the
Pennysaver.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Part of her believed it was too good to be true, probably an indicator of future disasters, but right now the sun was shining and birds were chirping and it was a great day to be alive. So lovely, in fact, that she decided to walk the three or four blocks to the harbor, where she had an appointment to interview the new harbormaster, Harry Crawford.
As she walked down Main Street, she heard the steady drip of snow melting off the roofs. She felt a gentle breeze against her face, lifting the hair that escaped from her beret, and she unfastened the top button of her winter coat. Quite a few people were out and about, taking advantage of the unseasonably fine weather to run some errands, and everyone seemed eager to exchange greetings. “Nice day, innit?” and “Wonderful weather, just wonderful,” they said, casting suspicious eyes at the sky. Only the letter carrier Wilf Lundgren, who she met at the corner of Sea Street, voiced what everyone was thinking. “Too good to be true,” he said, with a knowing nod. “Can’t last.”
Well, it probably wouldn’t, thought Lucy. Nothing did. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it in the meantime. Her steps speeded up as she negotiated the hill leading down to the harbor, where the ice pack was beginning to break up. All the boats had been pulled from the water months ago and now rested on racks in the parking lot, shrouded with tarps or shiny white plastic shrink-wrap. The gulls were gone—they didn’t hang around where there was no food—but a couple of crows were flying in circles above her head, cawing at each other.
“The quintessential New England sound,” someone had called it, she remembered, but she couldn’t remember who. It was true, though. There was something about their raspy cries that seemed to capture all the harsh, unyielding nature of the landscape. And the people who lived here, she thought, with a wry smile.
Harry Crawford, the new harbormaster, was an exception. He wasn’t old and crusty like so many of the locals; he was young and brimming with enthusiasm for his job. He greeted Lucy warmly, holding open the door to his waterfront office, which was about the same size as a highway tollbooth. It was toasty inside, thanks to the sun streaming through the windows, which gave him a 360-degree view of the harbor and parking lot. Today he hadn’t even switched on the small electric heater.
“Hi, Lucy. Make yourself comfortable,” he said, pulling out the only chair for her to sit on. He leaned against the half wall, arms folded across his chest, staring out at the water. It was something people here did, she thought. They followed the water like a sunflower follows the sun, keeping a watchful eye out for signs that the placid, sleeping giant that lay on the doorstep might be waking and brewing up a storm.
“Thanks, Harry,” she said, sitting down and pulling off her gloves. She dug around in her bag and fished out a notebook and pen. “So tell me about the Waterways Committee’s plans for the harbor.”
“Here, here,” he said, leaning over her shoulder to unroll the plan and spread it out on the desk. “They’re going to add thirty more slips, and at over three thousand dollars a season, it adds up to nearly a hundred thousand dollars for the town.”