False Mermaid (39 page)

“We think she may have discovered that her father is still the main suspect,” Cormac added.

Nora said: “He’s never been charged. Unfortunately, whenever we get a promising lead, it seems to evaporate. The point is that Elizabeth came to me for help, for protection. I can’t just let her go back—”

Cormac said: “There’s another possible wrinkle as well. Her father might claim that Nora abducted her. You see our predicament—”

Devaney rubbed his chin. “You haven’t spoken to anyone in the police over here?”

“I wasn’t sure what to do,” Nora said. “The detective working the case at home said he would contact Garda headquarters and Interpol, let them know he had a murder suspect on the loose over here. My brother-in-law’s name is Hallett, by the way—Peter Hallett.”

“And so far as you know, nobody’s got him under obso?”

“No—not as far as we know. As I said, he arrived in Dublin on Friday, so he could be anywhere in the country by now.”

“And you don’t know if he’s filed a missing persons report?”

Nora shook her head. “I’m afraid we’re completely in the dark. We obviously couldn’t just phone up and ask. Frank Cordova, the detective back in the States, has been working on some new leads. A few things have just turned up in the past few days, but—”

“Still not enough to file charges?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Devaney pondered for a minute. “Well now, it seems to me your only choice is to dig in for a bit, at least until your detective can scare up more on those leads. He should get in touch with me directly, and I can shuttle
him to the right person in the Serious Crimes Unit. In the meantime, I’ll work a few contacts, see what I can find out.”

“I’d be so grateful for any help. I should warn you—Peter Hallett is dangerous. He has a way of twisting things, turning everything around so that he looks like the victim, and anyone who dares to question him seems seriously disturbed. He made my sister seem completely mad—and he’s been trying to back me into that same corner for five years.”

The two girls had climbed to the top of the opposite promontory overlooking the harbor. Nora shaded her eyes to peer over at them.

Devaney’s voice was thoughtful. “Could Elizabeth know enough about her mother’s death to be in danger?”

“I don’t know. She was only six, and she was out of town with my parents at the time of Tríona’s murder.”

“Still, children see and hear things nobody else does. Especially true in domestic cases. But kids don’t want to be grassing on the other parent. Has she ever been interviewed by a social worker or counselor?”

“Her father wouldn’t allow it. He moved away after my sister’s death, so I’ve had no contact with Elizabeth for the past four years. Even now, I can’t get her to talk to me. I tried to ask this afternoon why she ran away, and do you know what she asked me? If everyone believed her dad was a murderer. She flatly denies that he had anything to do with my sister’s death.”

“Not uncommon, unfortunately. Sometimes it takes them a long time to figure things out. But she did come to you—that’s a good sign.”

Nora was remembering how Elizabeth fidgeted when pressed. “I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with children.”

Devaney offered a sympathetic wince. “My wife tells me to stop worrying and start listening—I think it’s very good advice.” He turned to Cormac. “Ready for that tune now?”

Back at the house after the excursion, Nora watched the musicians getting ready to play, Róisín taking a half-sized fiddle from her case while her father slid an amber cake of rosin up and down his bow, the rounded belly of his fiddle still dusty from the last application. When all was ready, the two fiddlers sat cradling their instruments, plucking absently at their strings, bows at the ready on the table. “Why don’t you and Róisín play something together to start us off?” Cormac suggested to Devaney. “Maybe the tune you were playing down at the pub this afternoon—‘The Pigeon on the Gate.’ That was a nice setting.”

Father and daughter exchanged a quick glance and launched into the tune, not too fast, not too slow, triplets slipping up and over the head of the melody like tiny snares, the low notes a throaty growl. Elizabeth seemed secretly impressed that someone her own age could just sit down and start playing an instrument. She couldn’t take her eyes off Róisín’s dancing fingers. When the two fiddles slipped easily into a second set of reels and Cormac picked up his flute to join in, Elizabeth’s eyes grew wider.

Nora thought about something a teetotaling friend had said to her once, as they were crushed in the crowded back room of a pub.
I don’t drink myself,
this friend had shouted in her ear over the din.
But I like being where it is.
That was what being near this music felt like, she thought. The tunes belonged to another realm, a separate world of which she was not really a part. She did not speak the language, and yet hearing these tunes was somehow essential, almost like nourishment. Elizabeth’s eyes were still on Róisín’s fiddle. Some people were susceptible to this music, and some were not. Elizabeth looked to be smitten.

“Shall we try a few Donegal tunes?” Cormac asked. “What about ‘The Gravel Walks’?” He began to play, leading them into a thicket of angular reels. There was definitely something different about the music in a place like this. Donegal had a reputation as a “gentle” place, where the veil between worlds was thin. Otherworldliness was simply fact here, like hearing music on the wind, or swimming with the souls of the drowned.

The evening passed quickly, but after a feast of excellent tunes, Róisín looked as if she might be tiring. Nora knew the evening was drawing to a close when she felt Cormac’s eyes upon her.

“Nora, would you ever give us a song?”

“I’m not in great form—”

He touched her hand. “Please, Nora.”

How was it possible to refuse? She closed her eyes and began:

Is cosúil gur mheath tú nó gur thréig tú an greann
Tá an sneachta go frasach fá bhéal na trá
Do chúl buí daite is do bhéílín sámh
Siúd chugaibh Mary hÉighnigh is í i ndiaidh an Éirne a shnámh.

There was a sudden commotion, and Nora opened her eyes to find that Elizabeth had risen from her chair and darted from the room.

“Excuse me,” Nora said to the others at the table. By the time she reached the upstairs bedroom, Elizabeth had managed to wedge herself in between the wardrobe and the wall, and was pressing her face into the cupboard as if wishing she might crawl behind it. Was it something in the song that set her off? She couldn’t possibly know the meaning of the words.

Nora crouched against the wardrobe. “Elizabeth, please tell me what’s troubling you.”

“Go—away—” Dry sobs came like short, involuntary howls. Cormac’s head appeared at the door, but Nora signaled him that she was all right, for the moment, and he retreated.

“Lizzabet, please don’t push me away.”

“You don’t understand anything.”

“Will you let me try?”

“You think—I ran away—because my dad—” Her voice slid up almost an octave. “He didn’t do anything. He’s my dad—I miss him.”

Nora felt yet again as if her heart would crack. “Why, then, Lizzabet? Why did you come to me?”

There was no answer for a moment but ragged sobs. When Elizabeth finally spoke, her voice sounded small and faraway. “Because of Miranda. She said she knew what I was up to. But I don’t know what she’s talking about—I’m not up to anything.”

“No, of course you’re not.”

“She said I was looking for attention. And maybe I was more like my mother than anybody knew. What was she talking about? Why does she have to be so mean?”

“Oh, Lizzabet. I don’t know.” Nora had inched close enough to reach into the gap between the wall and cupboard to stroke Elizabeth’s back. “I do know one true thing: your mama loved you more than anyone or anything else in the world. She has her arms around you right now, love. And she’s never letting go.”

It was after ten when Elizabeth finally drifted off. Nora returned to the kitchen to find Garrett Devaney and his daughter gone. The only illumination came from candles on the table and on the wide windowsills as Cormac finished the washing up. He set the last wineglass in the cupboard and brought out a package he’d evidently placed there earlier. He handed it to Nora, slightly embarrassed when she looked inside to find several extra heavy-duty door chains. “I thought it might be a good idea, but didn’t want to set off any alarm bells this afternoon.” He produced a screwdriver, and began marking the doorframe. “That song you started to sing tonight,
‘An Mhaighdean Mhara’
—where did you get it?”

“I heard someone sing it at a competition once,” Nora said. She could still see the face of the young woman, whose name she couldn’t recall, standing alone before a restless crowd in a drafty school gymnasium. Little by little the crowd hushed as each person was drawn in. When the song finished, the girl calmly returned to her chair while the silence in the room gave way to shouts and crushing waves of applause.

“You know it’s a famous Donegal song.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“What made you sing it tonight?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because Tríona and I used to sing it together. That was a long time ago—I don’t think Elizabeth ever heard us.”

“You think it was the song that upset her?”

Nora crossed her arms and sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t seem to know anything.”

Cormac set down the door chain and came closer. “Nora, what’s wrong? What did Elizabeth say?”

“It’s everything that’s happened—yesterday, and this morning while you were away. We went over to Port na Rón to check out the caves, like you suggested. We never made it that far. We got as far as the beach. I got distracted for a moment, and when I turned around, Elizabeth was
walking straight out into the water, like she was headed somewhere. I had to go in after her—”

“You don’t think she was trying to harm herself?”

“I don’t know, Cormac. I’m baffled. I just can’t seem to get through to her. I feel so unprepared for this, so inadequate.”

“You’re doing your best.”

“Elizabeth is having second thoughts about running away. Do you know what she told me upstairs? That it wasn’t her father she was running from—it was Miranda.” Cormac tried to step closer, but she put up a hand to keep him away. “What am I doing here? I shouldn’t be here.” She began to pace.

“Nora, what are you talking about?”

“All this time I’ve spent over here, these last three years, digging in bogs—it wasn’t what I should have been doing at all. I should have been at home. All the things we stumbled upon this week back in Saint Paul, they were there all along—”

“Nora, what’s got into you? This isn’t like you—”

“How do you know? Maybe this is the real me. And now—” She held up the door chain. “Now I’ve brought it all down on you, on Frank. His brother died, Cormac, but he’s still over there, working the case, because he doesn’t want to let me down. I’m the one who let everyone down. I keep thinking, ‘This time, we’ll get the evidence, we’re finally going to get down to the truth. This time, it’s going to work. It’s got to work.’ Well, what if it doesn’t? What if Peter gets Elizabeth back, and he manages to make everyone believe that I took her? It could happen—and if it does, it won’t just be a restraining order for me this time—I could actually go to jail for kidnapping.”

“Nora, let me help—”

“How? How can you help me? There are so many things I haven’t told you—”

“Tell me now.”

Nora had the feeling she was standing at the edge of a precipice. She was about to close her eyes and fall forward, and there was no parachute. She let Cormac settle her in a chair, and let out a long breath. “Nobody had any idea what was really going on. After Tríona was killed, all kinds of strange details started to surface, bit by bit. Most of it still doesn’t make any sense.” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts. “The first bizarre piece of evidence was a bottle of eyedrops found in Tríona’s purse.
When the police analyzed the stuff in the bottle, they found it wasn’t eyedrops at all. It was a drug called GHB—”

Cormac shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

“It has all sorts of names—Grievous Bodily Harm, liquid ecstasy. One of the club drugs. I don’t know what they call it here. It was developed years ago as a presurgery anesthetic, until someone discovered how it could affect a person’s sexual appetite. Lots of people started to use it recreationally. When the police searched Tríona’s house, they found a dozen similar bottles stashed all over the place—all with her fingerprints on them.”

“You think she was using the stuff?”

“That’s what everyone assumed, but Tríona didn’t do drugs, Cormac. She wouldn’t. The thing is, GHB also induces amnesia—one capful, and you don’t remember a thing. It’s easy to slip into drinks, and gets metabolized very quickly—the cops will tell you, that’s what makes it the trickiest of the date rape drugs. I think Peter was giving it to her. I found a tape when I was home, a message Tríona left for me, about what to do if something happened to her. She says on the tape that there were hours, whole days, that she couldn’t remember. She didn’t know what was happening to her.”

“If she was being drugged, there must be some way to prove it.”

“The effects of GHB wear off as soon as it’s out of your system. There’s no way to prove she wasn’t taking it on her own. And the more I find out about what he did, the worse it gets.” Nora struggled to maintain control. “At first, Peter seemed horrified about the drugs. He told the police he was mystified, that their marriage was rock solid. He couldn’t imagine who had a motive to kill Tríona. But when they kept questioning him—”

“Let me try to help you, Nora. Please.”

“After several interviews, Peter broke down, and started telling stories about coming home from work and finding Tríona asleep, Elizabeth still in her pajamas. He told them that since the prior summer, Tríona had been going out at all hours, coming home with leaves in her hair, strange bruises, and no memory of where she’d been or what happened. He said for months he’d been at his wit’s end, wondering every night whether she’d come home at all. It was lies, Cormac, it had to be. That wasn’t Tríona—it just wasn’t. But he was so convincing—and there was no way to prove it hadn’t happened just as he described. When the
police searched the house, they found not just the GHB, but the clothes as well—” She shut her eyes, trying to keep it together. “Tríona’s clothes, all torn and stained with dirt and—”