An Open Book (6 page)

“What time was that?” I asked.

“After lunch, on Thursday, I guess. We’d spent the morning looking at old photos and
just talking, and then I told her about Mr. Fairfield, and she said she’d let me know
later. And then I left.”

I looked at Vanessa. “Edith came into the library that afternoon and took out the
book that Philip returned. She seemed fine.” She certainly hadn’t looked as though
she’d just heard life-altering news.

Philip glanced at me quickly, then went on, “Yeah, well, she called around five and
said she would like to meet us the next day. Yesterday morning I went over and picked
her up and brought her back to the house here. Then like I said, Mr. Fairfield asked
me if maybe I could be somewhere else for a while. I was okay with that.”

“Mr. Fairfield, what did you tell Laura? After all, you were her guests, and she barely
knew you, and then you go and invite guests into her home?” Vanessa asked and glanced
at Laura; Laura merely shrugged.

“It might’ve been wrong of us, but she never knew Edith would be coming here,” said
Edward. “She told me that she and the family had planned the shopping excursion, and
I pleaded fatigue—I can get away with that at my age—and sent them on their way.”

“That’s true,” Laura said. “I invited Philip to join us, but when he begged off I
just figured he was staying behind to keep Uncle Edward company.”

Edward nodded. “So you see, we didn’t have to make any elaborate excuses.”

“What
did
happen?” Vanessa asked. “Mr. Fairfield, how did Edith die?”

Edward sat back in his high wingback chair, looking like an ancient statue carved
in stone. “We talked. We remembered. Then she said, ‘I want to go back to our place.’”

Vanessa cocked her head. “‘Our place’? Where was that?”

He looked over our heads, into the distant past. “We met in summer, and the grass
was high. We used to climb the hill there and admire the view. Which has changed very
little, I must say. And then we would hide ourselves in the tall grass and . . . I
think you can fill in the rest. Our daughter was conceived there.”

“How could you take a frail old woman on a hike in the snow? She’d had a hip replaced,
for God’s sake!” Vanessa said.

“She didn’t tell me. And she would have been angry if I had fussed. She was the one
who proposed going up there. As you may well know, she was a strong-willed woman.”

He was right about that. “So you went up the hill. And?” I prompted.

“We went up there—a bit more slowly than in the past, I must admit. We admired the
view, after we’d caught our breath. We talked a bit. And then she sort of crumpled,
and she was gone.”

“How could you know she was dead? Couldn’t you have gone for help? Or called someone?”
Vanessa demanded.

“My dear officer, I don’t possess one of those cell phone things. I knew it would
take me some time to make my way down the hill, and I knew there was no one home in
any case. I came back to the house and took a moment to catch my breath, and by then
I could see someone up on the hill, and shortly after that you appeared. I certainly
didn’t intend to just leave her there, but by the time I was in a position to call
for someone to do anything about it, I could tell it was already in your capable hands.
In any case, at my age I’ve seen death often enough. It would have made no difference.
She didn’t suffer.”

Of course that was the moment Vanessa’s cell phone rang. I think we all jumped, so
absorbed were we in Edward’s story. Van fished it out of her pocket impatiently and
looked at it, then stood up quickly. “I have to take this.” She stalked off into the
hallway, lifting the phone to her ear. No one spoke in her absence; what was there
to say?

Van was back in under two minutes, and dropped into her chair. “That was the coroner’s
office. Turns out the guy on duty had Edith as his teacher, so he put her at the head
of the line.” She turned to face Edward. “She died of a blood clot in her heart. Even
with blood thinners, it happens with people who’ve had a joint replaced. Could have
happened anytime, even while she was sitting in her own living room. So it wasn’t
the climb that caused it.” Vanessa paused to let Edward digest this fact before going
on. “Just for the record, what did you do next?”

Edward’s gaze looked past us all. “I sat with Edith for a time, remembering her as
she was. It had been so long . . . and the time we had together was so short. Then
I tried to decide what I should do. I went back down the hill, but by then I was exhausted—it
was snowing just a bit, if you recall—and by the time I felt strong enough to call,
I saw your vehicle’s flashing lights on the road in front of the house, and I knew
that someone had found Edith.” Then he turned to me. “I’m very sorry, Sarabeth, that
you had to find her like that. It never occurred to me that anyone else would pass
by so soon, and I didn’t see you coming.”

Vanessa insisted on following through. “What did you tell your great-grandson here?
Didn’t he ask where she was?” Philip looked startled by Van’s attention, and glanced
at his great-grandfather again.

“When Philip returned, I said only that Edith had gone home. I gather your crew had
left by then, so he didn’t see them.”

“Mr. Fairfield, you should have told me!” Philip looked like he was trying not to
cry.

“You’re right, Philip. But I wasn’t sure how you’d take the news, and I hadn’t made
up my mind how I would handle the whole situation.”

“Were you planning to talk to the police, or were you just going to walk away?” Vanessa
demanded.

“To be honest, I don’t know. I must have been more shaken than I realized. As you
might imagine, it’s been a rather stressful few weeks—I had not had time to properly
absorb all that had happened. Philip finding me, learning of our daughter, and that
Edith was still living in Strathmere. I had hoped to make amends, but I was not granted
time to do so. I’m sorry if that caused you trouble, Chief Hutchins. Laura, I apologize
that I inadvertently brought you and your family into this unfortunate situation.”

We sat in silence for a few moments. Edith had lived among us for decades, and as
far as I knew, no one in town had known about her baby. Then nearly seventy years
later, a teacher in another state assigned a school project which ended in Edith’s
death on a snowy hill. Had she finally achieved closure for that long-ago episode,
and, knowing that her child had prospered and the family had gone on, had Edith felt
she could finally let go? I felt bad for Edward and Philip: the elder having just
learned the story, only to see Edith die; the younger to be thrown late into an unexpected
drama with tragic consequences. I wondered how much he would include when he turned
in his project report.

“What happened to Edith’s purse?” the ever-practical Vanessa asked.

“It’s here—she left it behind when we climbed the hill. I was going to turn it over
to you,” Edward said.

“And the library book?” I asked gently.

“I found it in the car,” Philip answered. “It must have fallen out of her bag. I tried
to take it back to Mrs. Hathaway’s house, but she didn’t answer, and I didn’t want
to leave it in front of the door in case it got wet. I figured it’d be safer at the
library, and I knew where that was.”

I smiled at him. “Edith did always want to have something to read on hand. Thank you
for returning it. And thank you both for your explanation.”

“Do we face any charges?” Edward looked at Vanessa.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “The coroner said it was natural causes, and he’s
not going to make a fuss.” She hesitated before adding the standard phrase, “I’m sorry
for your loss.”

“You’re very kind,” Edward replied.

Vanessa stood up. “We should go so I can write all this up. You two driving back to
Ohio?”

“I wondered if perhaps there would be a service of some kind for Edith?” Edward said.
“If so, I would like to attend.”

“I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be,” I answered. “If nobody else steps up, I’ll see
that there’s something planned. I’m sure it would be well attended. I’ll give you
a call and let you know.”

He smiled at me. “Thank you.”

Laura, recognizing that the conversation had finally run its course, came to her feet.
“I’ll see you out.” She followed us to the front door, then asked in a low voice,
“Is Uncle Edward in any trouble?”

“I don’t think so,” Van said. “I’m not going to make things difficult for him.”

“That’s good. I’m sorry we didn’t know anything about it—you could have wrapped this
up faster if we’d only come home a little earlier.”

We’d made it out the door when Philip came out and ran to catch up. He thrust a piece
of paper toward me, and I saw a phone number on it. I let Vanessa go ahead of me before
I spoke to him. “Was there anything else, Philip?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, kind of. You knew Mrs. Hathaway pretty well, didn’t you?”

“As well as anyone else in town these days, I suppose.” She’d kept all of us in the
dark about some rather important things, but I would have called her a friend. “Why?”

“Well, you know, I only just found out she existed, and now she’s gone. You think
maybe I could get in touch with you sometime and you could tell me more about her?”

“I’d be happy to, Philip. She was quite a lady. You let me know and I’ll be happy
to talk with you, or email, or whatever you prefer.”

“Thanks,” he said shyly, then retreated back into the house.

Poor Laura—unknown relatives showing up on her doorstep, followed by a body up on
the hill and police coming to call? And people thought that life in a small town was
so peaceful. Little did they know!

Vanessa and I drove back toward town. I thought for a while about how to go about
planning a memorial service for Edith, and then another thought struck me. “I wonder
if Edith left a will.”

“Probably. I was going to track down that lawyer on Monday. Why?”

“I wonder if she’d made any provision for the heirs of her daughter.”

“Huh, I hadn’t even thought of that. It’s a long shot, but you never know. Funny about
how the things you do early in your life come back to bite you in the butt,” Vanessa
said.

“Does that mean you’re hiding any deep, dark secrets in your past?”

“No, not me. You?”

“Nary a one. My life is an open book.”

Vanessa dropped me off at my house, since she had picked me up in the morning. Henry
was waiting for me, with a fire going in the fireplace and more good smells coming
from the kitchen. “Where’ve you been? I was beginning to worry.”

I came into his arms. “I thought it was my turn to cook!”

“I figured you might have other things on your mind,” Henry said, holding me close.

“You heard about Edith?”

He nodded. Word travels fast in a small town.

“There’s a lot more to the story.”

“I’ve got plenty of time.”

And now a special excerpt of Sheila Connolly’s first County Cork Mystery . . .

BURIED IN A BOG

Available in paperback February 2013 from Berkley Prime Crime!

Maura Donovan checked her watch again. If she had it right, she had been traveling
for over fourteen hours; she wasn’t going to reset it for the right time zone until
she got where she was going, which she hoped would be any minute now. First the red-eye
flight from Boston to Dublin, the cheapest she could find; then a bus from Dublin
to Cork, then another, slower bus from Cork to Leap, a flyspeck on the map on the
south coast of Ireland. But she was finding that in Ireland nobody ever hurried, especially
on the local bus. The creaking vehicle would pull over at a location with no obvious
markings, and people miraculously appeared. They greeted the driver by name; they
greeted each other as well. Her they nodded at, wary of a stranger in their midst.

She tried to smile politely in return, but she was exhausted. She didn’t know where
she was or what she was doing. She was on this rattletrap bus only because Gran had
asked her to make the trip―just before she died, worn down from half a century of
scrabbling to make a living and keep a roof over her granddaughter’s head in South
Boston. Now that she thought about it, Gran had probably been planning this trip for
her for quite a while. She had insisted that Maura get a passport, and not just any
passport, but an Irish one, which was possible only because Gran had filed for an
Irish Certificate of Foreign Birth for her when she was a child. What else had Gran
not told her?

And what else had she been too young and too selfish to ask about? Gran had never
talked much about her life in Ireland, before she had been widowed and brought her
young son to Boston, and Maura had been too busy trying to be American to care. She
didn’t remember her father, no more than a large laughing figure. Or her mother, who
after her father’s death had decided that raising a child alone, with an Irish-born
mother-in-law, was not for her and split. It had always been just her and Gran, in
a small apartment in a shabby triple-decker in a not-so-good neighborhood in South
Boston.

Which was where Irish immigrants had been settling for generations, so Maura was no
stranger to the Boston Irish community. Maybe her grandmother Nora Donovan had never
shoved the Olde Country down her throat, but there had been many a time that Maura
had come home from school or from work and found Gran deep in conversation with some
new immigrant, an empty plate in front of him. She’d taken it on herself to look out
for the new ones, who’d left Ireland much as Gran had, hoping for a better life, or
more money. The flow had slowed for a while when the Celtic Tiger—the unexpected prosperity
that had swept the country and disappeared again within less than a decade—was raging,
but then it had picked up again in the past few years.

Maura suspected that Gran had been slipping the lads some extra cash, which would
go a long way toward explaining why they’d never had the money to move out of the
one-bedroom apartment they’d lived in as long as Maura could remember. Why Gran had
worked more than one job, and why Maura had started working as early as the law would
let her. Why Gran had died, riddled with cancer after waiting too long to see a doctor,
and had left a bank account with barely enough to cover the last bills. Then the landlord
had announced he was converting the building to condominiums, now that Southie was
becoming gentrified, and Maura was left with no home and no one.

It was only when she was packing up Gran’s pitifully few things that she’d found the
envelope with the money. In one of their last conversations in the hospital, Gran
had made her promise to go to Ireland, to tell her friend Bridget Nolan that she’d
passed, and to say a Mass in the old church in Leap, where she’d been married. “Say
my farewells for me, darlin’,” she’d said, and Maura had agreed to her face, although
she had thought it was no more than the ramblings of a sick old woman. How was she
supposed to fly to Ireland, when she wasn’t sure she could make the next rent payment?

The envelope, tucked in the back of Gran’s battered dresser alongside Maura’s passport,
held the answer. It had contained just enough cash to buy a plane ticket from Boston
to Dublin, and to pay for a short stay, if Maura was frugal. Since Gran had taught
her well, she didn’t think she’d have any trouble doing that. How Gran had managed
to set aside that much, Maura would never know.

She’d buried Gran, with only a few of her Irish immigrant friends in attendance, and
a week later she’d found herself on a plane. And here she was. Maura was surprised
to feel the sting of tears. She was cold, damp, jet-lagged, and—if she was honest
with herself—depressed. It had been a long few weeks, but at least staying busy had
allowed her to keep her sadness at bay. She’d held on to her couple of part-time jobs
until the last minute, but she had made no plans to return to them; that kind of work
was easy enough to find, and she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to stay in Boston.
Gran had been her only relative, her only tie to any place, and with Gran gone Maura
was no longer sure where she belonged. She was free, if broke. She could go anywhere
she wanted, and with her work experience tending bar and waitressing, she could pick
up a short-term job almost anywhere. The problem was, she didn’t know where she wanted
to go. There was nothing to hold her in Boston, but there was no point in leaving
either.

Maura looked out through the rain streaming down the windows. She’d always heard that
Ireland was green, but at the moment all she could see was gray. What had Gran wanted
her to find in Ireland?

Since Gran had never really mentioned any people “back home” to Maura, she’d been
surprised to find a bundle of letters and photographs stashed next to the envelope
with the money, where Gran must have been sure that Maura would find them. Sorting
through them after Gran’s death, she had found that the few photographs were ones
she had seen no more than once or twice in her life, but luckily Gran had written
names on the back; most of the letters had come from a Bridget Nolan, with only the
skimpiest of return addresses—not even a street listing. Taking a chance―and wanting
to believe that someone in Ireland would still care―Maura had written to the woman
about her old friend Nora’s death and her wish that Maura make the trip to Ireland
to pay her respects there. Mrs. Nolan had written back immediately and urged her to
come over. Her spidery handwriting hinted at her advanced age and suggested that Maura
shouldn’t delay, and it was barely two weeks later that Maura had found herself on
the plane. And then on a bus, which passed through small towns, cheerfully painted
in bright colors, as if to fight the gloom of the rain. Most often it took no more
than a couple of minutes to go from one end of the town to the other, and between
there was a lot of open land, dotted with cattle and sheep and the occasional ruined
castle to remind Maura that she was definitely somewhere that wasn’t Boston. The towns
listed on the road signs meant nothing to her. She was afraid of dozing off and missing
her stop. Mrs. Nolan had given Maura sketchy instructions to get off the bus in front
of Sullivan’s Pub in a village called Leap, and they would “see to her,” whatever
that meant. The bus lurched and belched fumes as it rumbled along the main highway
on the south coast, though “highway” was a rather grand description: it was two lanes
wide. More than once the bus had found itself behind a truck lumbering along at a
brisk twenty miles per hour, but nobody had seemed anxious about it; no one was hurrying.

Finally, through the gloom of the late afternoon in March, Maura could make out a
large painted sign by the road: Sullivan’s of Leap, with a dashing highwayman riding
a horse straight out of the sign. It was no more than a minute later that the bus
driver called out “Leap” (which he pronounced “Lep,” as in “leper”), and Maura gathered
her belongings, which consisted of a battered duffel bag with her clothes plus an
old school backpack with everything else, and waited while a few other women climbed
down. The women appeared to be regular riders; they exchanged farewells and vanished
quickly in different directions, leaving Maura standing in the rain looking at the
dilapidated facade of Sullivan’s.

Despite the rain she took a moment to study the town and get her bearings. Actually
“town” was probably not the right term, since she could see most of it from where
she stood on the main road. There was a string of brightly painted houses along each
side of the road, with a glimpse of the occasional cow grazing on the hill behind.
Two churches―one Catholic, one Church of Ireland―faced off across the road from each
other. One school, next to the Catholic church. A small hotel, and a couple of shops.
And she counted three pubs, including Sullivan’s, huddling together where the road
widened.

From what little she’d read online at the local library in Southie, Leap’s population
had been hovering around two hundred people for more than a century. Once the ladies
from the bus had vanished, there was no one in sight, though she spied a few lights
on here and there, including one inside Sullivan’s. Gran had always said that making
a good first impression was important, but Maura didn’t have a lot of options: she
hadn’t brought much with her, and she’d left even less behind. Now she was wet and
rumpled. She ran her fingers through her hair, then hoisted the straps of the two
bags up on her shoulder, approached the door, and pulled it open.

Inside it seemed barely brighter than the dusk outside. A black-and-white dog lay
sprawled on the floor near the entrance. It lifted its head as Maura approached, then
decided she wasn’t worth bothering about and went back to sleep. There was a small,
smoke-stained fireplace at one end, surrounded by shabby upholstered chairs, and what
Maura guessed was a peat fire glowed dimly. The smell of the peat smoke helped to
conceal the other, less pleasant odors: a mix of stale beer, staler cigarette smoke,
unwashed bodies, and just a hint of urine. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she
took in the bar that occupied half of the back wall and the complete absence of customers,
except for a bulky figure slumped in the chair nearest the fire. Maura wasn’t sure
he was breathing.

A young girl was swabbing the top of the bar with a damp gray rag, her eyes on whatever
sitcom with laugh track was playing on the television mounted over the end of the
bar. Her hair was carelessly tied up in a ponytail, with a few curls escaping, and
her delicate face was lightly sprinkled with freckles. She looked up eagerly when
Maura came in, and said, “How can I help you, ma’am?”

Maura would bet that she was no more than ten years older than the girl, who looked
about fifteen―when had she become a “ma’am”? And why wasn’t the girl home doing her
schoolwork on a weekday in March? Not that it was any of her business. But at least
the girl was polite and welcoming, and Maura was cold and tired and hungry. She couldn’t
even remember when she had eaten last. “I’m Maura Donovan,” she said. “Bridget Nolan
said I should stop by here?”

The girl looked perplexed for a moment, then recognition dawned. “Ah, you’d be the
American, come to visit. She left a note for you―I know it’s here somewhere.” The
girl turned and shuffled through odds and ends on a shelf behind the bar. “Here it
is.” She smoothed the slightly crumpled folded piece of paper before handing it to
Maura. “Would you care for a cup of tea? Or coffee? Americans do like their coffee,
don’t they?”

To Maura’s experienced eye, the coffee she spotted on a hot plate behind the bar would
probably be suitable only for sealing asphalt. “Tea would be fine, thank you.” How
far wrong could she go with a tea bag and hot water?

As the girl hunted up the cup, the bag, sugar, milk, a spoon, and a napkin, Maura
took a seat on a creaking bar stool and read the note Mrs. Nolan had left for her.
She recognized the handwriting from the letters Gran had kept, although now it was
much more shaky. In the note Mrs. Nolan apologized for not being able to come out
and meet her right away, and instructed her to cross the street and talk to Ellen
Keohane, who would fix her up just fine. Maura shook her head, trying to decipher
what Mrs. Nolan could mean by that.

The girl proudly set a steaming mug in front of Maura, with a tea bag tail dangling.
At least it was Barry’s Tea, which her gran had loved―Maura couldn’t fathom crossing
an ocean just to get a cup of Lipton. “Thank you. What do I owe you?” She’d gotten
some euros from what she’d finally identified as an ATM at the airport, after a bit
of wrangling with numbers—at least her debit card had worked, not that there was a
lot in her bank account. It was funny, putting in the card and getting out a handful
of bills with pretty pictures on them—it was like play money. Just to reassure herself,
she had broken a few bills, buying something to drink and a bun, to have coins on
hand, but after paying for the bus ticket she wasn’t sure how much she had―or how
long it would need to last. She’d seen neither a bank nor an ATM in Leap so far.

“Seeing as you’re a friend of Mrs. Nolan’s, it’s on the house,” the girl said, flashing
a dimple. “By the way, my name’s Rose Sweeney.”

“Nice to meet you,” Maura said. “I can’t say that I exactly know Mrs. Nolan, but my
grandmother did.”

“No matter, Mrs. Nolan said that we should be looking for you. At least Mick, her
grandson, did―he’d be the one who brought the note here for you. We didn’t know when
you’d be coming.”

“I wasn’t sure myself—I kind of had to grab the first cheap plane ticket I could get,
and there wasn’t time to let anyone know. Is it a problem?”

“Mrs. Nolan knew you’d be here soon, and she let Ellen know. Don’t worry yourself.

“So, who is this Ellen Keohane I’m supposed to find?” Maura asked.

“She takes in a few visitors now and then, in the house over by the harbor there.”
Rose gestured vaguely across the road. “It’s a small place, she only rents out the
two rooms, but it’s nice. Quiet, and the views are pretty.”