An Early Wake (20 page)

“I have no idea what Billy thought he was doing, but he managed to keep Donal Maguire here until you showed up.”

“He’s a smart man, even if he plays the fool a bit fer the tourists.”

“And I’m sure Billy will collect his share of pints with this story! Listen, Sean—thanks for looking out for us. I’ve been worried all day that something like this was going to happen, and you got here fast.”

“I’m glad it all worked out for the best.” For a moment he looked like he wanted to say something else, but then he decided against it. “I’d better go start processin’ our man from Cork, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Maura. Take care.”

“Thanks, Sean,” Maura called out to his retreating back. She wasn’t quite sure what she was thanking him for, since Billy and Mick had taken care of the hard stuff. All she’d managed to do was not panic. She had some reason to be proud of that, didn’t she? She’d stood her ground, at least. Defended her place.

Her
place. And the battle, such as it was, had been won with the help of her friends. Something to think about.

W
hen Sean had left, Maura took Billy’s arm. “Do you want that pint now?” she asked with a smile.

He patted her hand. “Thanks fer the offer, but I’ll wait ’til tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind it if you’d walk me to my door, though.”

“Of course. Are you all right?” Maura hadn’t even had time to wonder if he’d been injured in the brawl, such as it was. Surely tangling with a thug like Donal Maguire would have taken a toll on a man far younger than eighty.

“I’m fine, just not as young as I was.”

Maura called out to Mick, who was busy righting the tables and chairs that had been knocked down in the scuffle. “I’m taking Billy home. I’ll be back.” Mick nodded and went on picking up the furniture that had been overturned.

Maura kept her pace slow to match Billy’s. The night was completely still, and there were no cars in sight. It was hard to believe they’d just caught a criminal drug dealer and possible killer, yet nothing had changed outside the pub. “Billy, you didn’t just happen to show up tonight, did you? And you weren’t drunk.”

He slowed his pace even further, to look at her. “You’ve served me every drop I’ve had today, so you’d know I wasn’t. The truth of it is, I was keeping an eye on the front. I figgered the Cork man would have reached the end of his patience, so tonight would be his night to make a move. He woulda done better to go home last night. I thought the cane might come in handy. And nobody pays much attention to an old man like me, so I had surprise on my side.”

Maura had an image of Old Billy, cane at hand, sitting by his front window, waiting up and watching well past his usual bedtime, and she was touched. When they reached his door, Maura said, “Billy, you were wonderful. You caught him completely off guard, and you were even smart enough to call the gardaí first. I can’t thank you enough.”

He brushed away her compliment. “Ah, a pint or two’ll see me right—I’ll come by tomorrow and claim my reward. And you woulda been fine with Mick on the lookout too. Plus young Sean sittin’ by the phone waiting fer the man to do somethin’ daft.” He paused before opening the door and looked at her again, and this time his expression was more serious. “Maura Donovan, here we look out for our own. Yer one of our own now. Good night to yeh, then.” With that he turned and went into his home, leaving Maura on the doorstep fighting tears.

In all the time she’d waited on tables or served drinks in Boston, she’d never personally had to break up a fight, and she’d never had to stare down a killer (at least no one she’d known to be a killer, although she’d had a few suspicions). Most of the bars where she’d worked had kept a bouncer on hand for things like that—and there could have been any number of killers who had come and gone without making any trouble. But here in Leap, at Sullivan’s, she had thought she was on her own. Instead, she had just learned that she had Mick and Sean and even Billy backing her up. She was surprised—and moved. It was hard for her to let other people help; she was so used to managing on her own. But this place was different, as she was constantly being reminded. Was she really one of them now? Not the odd outsider from America, who had dropped in from the sky and taken over the pub from under the noses of Jimmy and Mick?

She walked slowly back to Sullivan’s, where she found that Mick had finished erasing all signs of the scuffle. The old clock over the bar read half past midnight, but she suddenly felt too exhausted to move. She dropped onto a bar stool and shut her eyes.

“Yeh look like yeh could use a cuppa.” Mick’s voice broke through the fog.

She opened her eyes again and managed a small smile. “The Irish solution to everything: a cup of tea.”

Mick busied himself with making the tea. “It’s hot, it’s sweet, and it’s got caffeine in it. What more could you want? Better for yeh than a shot of whiskey, fer sure.”

“I wasn’t going to ask for that—I’m not much of a drinker.”

“I’ve noticed.” He slid the mug of tea across the bar toward her, and Maura wrapped her hands around it. “And you runnin’ a pub.”

“If I’d known that was what I’d be doing, I might have developed a taste for it. Luckily most people only want their pint.” She sipped. Mick was right: hot and sweet seemed to be working. “What just happened here?”

Mick poured himself a glass of whiskey from a bottle on the top shelf and came around the bar to sit on a stool next to her, resting his elbows on the bar, cradling his glass. “I’m thinkin’ the proper phrase would be, ‘You apprehended a criminal.’”

“Hey, I didn’t do much of anything. I just stared at the guy while everybody else did the work.”

“You faced him down, did you not? Knowing who he was and what he might have done?”

“I guess. What else could I do? Hide in the loo?”

Mick’s mouth twitched, and he took a swallow from his glass. “And leave me to take him on alone?”

Maura waved a dismissive hand at him. “Ah, you could’ve taken him, easy.”

Mick nodded. “I might have done. Point is, you didn’t run or hide.”

Maura swiveled on her stool to face him. “This is my place. I’m responsible for it, and for the people who work here. Including you. And don’t tell me you can take care of yourself, because I know you can, and this isn’t about that. I
own
this place; I run it. So I have to be ready to deal with thieves and killers and God knows what else. Do you get that?”

“I do, Maura,” he said quietly.

Maura fell silent, drinking her tea, staring at the ranks of bottles on the shelves behind the bar. Most of them were dusty. The people who came to Sullivan’s were not fancy drinkers. Most of them could stretch out a single pint for an hour or two, but she felt no need to hurry them along or to force more drinks on them. She wanted Sullivan’s to be a place people were happy to come to, and she didn’t want them to feel rushed or pressured once they were here. Was that the best thing for her bottom line? Probably not, but she wasn’t going to fiddle with the system.

The sugar and caffeine finally kicked in, and getting herself out to her car and driving home didn’t seem to be quite the mountain it had a few minutes earlier. She straightened up on the stool, but before she could gather herself to stand up, Mick laid a hand on her arm.

“Maura,” he began, then stopped. But didn’t remove his hand.

She turned to look at him. “What?”

“Are yeh seein’ Sean Murphy?”

That she hadn’t expected, not here, not now. “Seeing, as in dating? Going out with? Whatever it’s called around here? Is that what you’re asking?” Where had this come from?

“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, but only watched her, his eyes dark.

Oh. Well. That was complicated, mostly because she didn’t know
why
he was asking and she wasn’t sure she wanted to explore what that might mean. Or what she wanted to tell him, for that matter. And why had he picked this of all times to get into it?

Maura took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “Sean and I have been out on exactly one date, when he took me to dinner in Skibbereen, though we barely got to eat before he got a call from the station. Which everybody in the village knows. He’s asked me to go with him to one other thing, if we ever get all this . . . stuff here sorted out. Why do you want to know?”

Mick shook his head, more to himself than to her, as he turned to stare into what was left of his drink. “I didn’t want to put myself in the middle of anything.”

Maura was beginning to be glad that she hadn’t had anything alcoholic to drink, because even sober she was unprepared for this conversation. Was Mick trying to ask her out? “There is no ‘anything,’ at least, not yet. But I haven’t noticed you putting yourself into anything either. What are you asking?”

Her question hung there in the air between them. As the silence went on, Maura again realized how little she knew about Mick Nolan. He had to be in his midthirties—but no attachments, other than his grannie Bridget, that she knew about. He was always here at the pub when he said he’d be, and he didn’t seem to mind covering for Jimmy, who was far less dependable. But she’d never heard him talk about family or friends or much of anything else—which, she realized, was a lot like her. But she was the outsider, the intruder, and she had no ties with the living around here. Why was Mick so closemouthed about
his
life?

He still hadn’t answered her question, so she plunged ahead. “Mick, why are you still here? Not tonight, but in general? I know you must have hoped that Old Mick would leave you Sullivan’s, and you should be mad at me for snatching it away from you the way I did, even if I didn’t mean to. But there must be something else you could be doing that has more of a future for you than this place.” She’d stopped herself just in time from saying “this dump.”

“So now yer givin’ me career counseling?” he asked with a slight smile. “If you want to know, I did wonder how Old Mick had left things, not that we’d ever talked about it. And then you showed up, looking like a half-drowned kitten, and it took a bit to sort out what was what with the ownership.”

“And once you knew, you still could have cut and run,” Maura said.

He nodded. “I could have done. But it was clear that yeh were in over yer head, and I wanted to see how you took to runnin’ the place.”

“Do I pass?”

“There’ve been a few bumps in the road, but yer gettin’ the hang of it.”

“And you’re still here,” Maura said bluntly.

“I am.”

This is a very lopsided conversation,
Maura thought. He’d opened the can of worms but he wasn’t going fishing with them. God, what a pathetic metaphor—she must be more tired than she knew. Well, from everything she’d ever heard, Irish men were kind of slow, at least when it came to women. There was probably a long history to that, but that didn’t help her at the moment, when she was sitting in a pub past midnight confronted by a thirtysomething man who seemed to be trying to tell her he might be interested in her as something beyond his boss. Did she really want to get into it, here and now? If she shot him down now, would there be another chance? They could always blame whatever came out of it on the stress of the moment—all that life-and-death stuff they’d been dealing with for days. But should she? Did she want to? She didn’t know.

She was surprised when Mick suddenly began speaking again. “Sean Murphy is a good man—smart, hardworking, ambitious. He knows the people around here. He likes his work. He’s got a strong family behind him.”

“True. But?” Maura demanded.

“But . . . he seems a bit young,” Mick answered.

And Maura knew exactly what he meant. She’d had the same thought many times. Sean did seem kind of . . . innocent, for all that he was a policeman. Though being a policeman here meant something very different from what it did in Boston. “And you’re saying I’m not?”

“Not in the same way. You’ve seen more of the world, or mebbe I mean the darker side of it. You haven’t had an easy life, especially lately, but yer tough.”

What few romantic fantasies Maura had entertained in her life, none had included being called “tough.” “Well, I’ve had to be,” she said cautiously. Where was he going with this?

Mick seemed to be choosing his next words carefully. “It seems there’s no one you’ve left behind in Boston—no relatives, I know, but no friends either?”

Or lovers?
Maura added mentally. “Not really. Looks like I’m a misfit, right? No attachments.” Except for Gran, and she was gone. “Mick, I’m tired. It’s been a long day, and I have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow. Was there something else you wanted to say?”

He gave her an odd look, and Maura knew she wasn’t playing by any rules that he would recognize. Heck, she’d never figured out the him-and-her rules back home either, and the best she could do was to be direct, and try to be honest.

And now she seemed to have scared Mick off, because he said only, “You’re right—it’s late. I should let you get home. Will you be all right, driving the lanes?”

Right now she wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed, but she knew this was not the time to decide anything. “I’ve been managing fine—I know the way.”

Maura slid off her stool and stumbled, and Mick was quick to grab her arm to steady her. They stood for some indeterminate period, inches apart, frozen. Maura felt something like panic: did she lean in and let happen what maybe they both wanted, or did she do the sensible thing and run for the hills? In the end it was Mick who stepped back, gently. “I’ll lock up, and I’ll be in early tomorrow.
Slán abhaile
.”

Safe home indeed. Maura tried to make her exit look like anything but flight.