One Fool At Least (14 page)

He regarded us somberly. I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and I had already started laughing in disbelief, making bubbles into my diet coke. “Finn was dad’s son. Finn was my brother,” he said.

Jack’s laugh was
louder than mine; he laughed right in Ardmore’s face. Ardmore seemed less insulted than surprised. “He’s everyone’s brother. We just need to find the people he
wasn’t
related to, I think.”

Ardmore turned to me for translation. I nodded toward Aidan Flanagan. “Well, he’s got a brother over there, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How exactly is he your brother?”

“Well, it came out around Christmas that Finn had found out who his real Mom was. She was Sarah Cardini, Slider’s Mom.”

“Which makes him Slider’s brother,” I said.

“Okay. So my dad heard this from Finn, when they were talking once at the bar, and Dad got all upset. It seems he and Sarah Cardini had a thing way back in high school, back when she was Sarah Sloane. He knew she’d had a baby, and he knew she gave it up. But he hadn’t known it was Finn. He didn’t even know that Sarah knew. I think a part of my dad still cared about her. He was upset when she died.”

“So Damian Wilde and Sarah Cardini are the real parents of Finn Flanagan,” I said, feeling suddenly like I was learning a foreign language.

“Right,” Ardmore said.

“So you and Finn shared a father, while Slider and Finn shared a mother.”

“Bingo.”

“While Aidan there is his brother merely by adoption. Which means you and Slider are his only blood brothers.”

“Blood brothers,” Ardmore repeated, looking at the stain on his hand.

“So what does that mean?” asked Jack thoughtfully, swirling the wine in his glass.

“Someone tried to kill you, and someone did kill Finn. Are they trying to wipe out a family line?”

“Maybe they weren’t trying to kill Ardmore,” I suggested. “Maybe they thought he was someone else.”

Jack shook his head. “How tall are you, Ardmore?” he asked.

“Six six,” Ardmore said.

“Would you make that mistake, Maddy?” Jack asked me. “And I’m assuming someone called the cops, by the way?”

Ardmore tipped his chin in Colleen Flanagan’s direction.

“They’re out front,” I said. “Probably looking for your perpetrator.”

“If someone’s after all of Finn’s brothers, that puts Slider in danger, not my family. So why did you say my family is in danger?” Jack asked.

“My dad has this theory that the Sheas are involved because of something Finn said to him once. They were talking about secrets, and Finn said every family in this town has secrets, even the Sheas.”

Jack shook his head. “He was just talking.”

“No. He’d had a meeting just before with Libby Shea, and my dad interrupted it. He thinks it may have something to do with—”

“Molly said Libby never met with Finn,” I said, and then I wondered about it.

“Did Libby tell you so?” Ardmore asked.

Jack and I exchanged a glance. “I am confident that you can leave my family out of your calculations,” Jack told Ardmore. “You have enough to worry about.”

Ardmore looked at the door; the police were entering. Two men in uniform looked purposefully about. One of them spotted Ardmore and walked over to us, his boots clicking like those of a soldier on parade.

“Ardmore,” he said by way of greeting.

“Chief,” Ardmore said. “This is Chief Roy Hendricks,” he told us.

We nodded. The chief looked about forty-five, with dark hair and a dark cop mustache which he smoothed before saying, “Where’d the bullet come from?”

“I’ll show you,” Ardmore said, standing up.

“Chief, Ardmore’s been shot,” I said.

Ardmore displayed his arm impatiently, and the chief looked at it, then at Ardmore, then at us. “Then what the hell’s he doing sittin’ in a booth?” he said.

“Just chatting,” I said.

The other cop emerged from the back room, where he’d apparently been surveying the damage. “Call a fuckin’ ambulance,” the chief said under his breath to his comrade.

Ardmore bristled. “Colleen already called one, not that I need a goddam ambulance. I was gonna get it looked at by Doctor Breen as soon as I was done here.”

They moved off, arguing, and I looked at the remains of my sandwich. It was cold and congealed. I couldn’t imagine eating it now that I’d seen Ardmore’s gory arm.

“Still enjoying the honeymoon?” Jack asked dryly, touching my hand.

I grinned. “Actually, I am.”

* *

When we left we stopped to thank Colleen, who was at her little podium, on the phone. “I’m calling my husband,” she whispered to us. She turned her attention to the receiver in her hand. “Hey, hon, it’s me. Give me a call when you get back. You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on here.”

She hung up and thanked us graciously for coming to Flanagan’s. She made such an obvious effort to detach herself from the chaos and be professional that I felt great admiration for her. I shook her hand. It was small and elegant, with pink-varnished nails of medium length—all except the thumb of her right hand, which had been bitten down to nothing.

“Good luck,” I said. “I’m sure the police will sort things out soon.”

“Let’s hope,” she said, waving us off.

Jack went to get Pat’s jeep and I waited, trying to get my crutches just right. Ardmore came past me again, accompanied by two white-coated people who were trying to examine his arm. “Just a second,” he told them.

He came right up to me and lowered his voice. “Listen, Madeline. You should know something. I didn’t even tell this to the cops, because it didn’t dawn on me at the time. But the night Finn died, I went there and told him off for involving my dad in his little schemes. That’s when they told me Finn was my brother. Anyway. I left, Madeline. But I saw Libby in the bar, and I think she was waiting to talk to Finn.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“She was on her way to see Finn, I’m sure of it the more I think of it. It was pretty late at night, and she was alone. There were still a bunch of regulars hanging out, but she wouldn’t have been there that late without a reason, would she? So if she’s not involved in what happened, she may well know something.”

“Then you should have told the police,” I said.

“Not necessarily,” he said. Nothing Ardmore said made sense to me. He had his own logic. “And another thing,” he said, nodding impatiently at the attendants who were trying to get a look at his arm. “If you do know where Slider is, you should tell him: he was in Finn’s will. He and I both were. Finn was a rich man, thanks to his business, and his late real mom, and my dad.”

“Your dad?”

“Gave him some money. I guess he felt prompted to make a will, what with all the sudden windfalls coming his way.”

I squinted at him, trying to make sense of all the information, and he patted me on the arm and strode toward his waiting attendants.

I crutched out the door in time to see a Cadillac pull up in front of Flanagan’s; Damian Wilde jumped out. He left the car in the middle of the road and lurched up to me. “Roy called me; he said my son’s been shot,” he rasped. He looked even older than he had at our last interview, and something more: he looked afraid.

“He’s right there,” I said, pointing at Ardmore, who was emerging from the restaurant just behind us. “I think he’ll be—”

He moved without another glance at me. He called his son, and Ardmore looked up. “Dad,” he said, surprised.

Wilde walked forward, his limbs looking somehow disjointed, like a man puppet.

He gave Ardmore an awkward embrace, avoiding the sore arm. Wilde was a tall man, easily over six feet, but next to his son he looked short.

Jack pulled up in our rental car; I was glad to turn away from the scene with Ardmore and his father. Ardmore was the only son Wilde had left; perhaps Finn’s death had put fatherhood in perspective for him.

“What now?” Jack asked.

“Slider gave me the passcode to his safe deposit box. Let’s go to the bank,” I said.

We drove to Main Street, a trip back to 1910, like a movie set for a John Wayne film. If it weren’t for the McDonald’s at the end of the block, and certain modern touches like the signs saying “Fax” and “1 Hr Foto” glowing in neon amidst the carefully preserved architecture, I would have found it almost disconcertingly old-fashioned. There was a big old bank for robbin’ on one corner, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear a stagecoach coming. Sure, the street was paved and there were kids with ten-speeds and skateboards hanging out in front of the courthouse across from the bank, but the effect was the same.

“Quaint, isn’t it?” asked Jack fondly. This wasn’t the town he’d grown up in, but he knew Grand Blue and most of the towns in the area.

“Sure is. Is this the bank we want?” I asked.

“It’s the only bank,” Jack said.

It was called Grand Blue Bank, and all thoughts of the old-fashioned faded as I saw an ATM in the lobby and read the large glossy posters advertising free checking and a free iPod Shuffle.

We made our way down carpeted stairs to the basement vault, where signed in and showed our identification to an elderly woman and were sent into a tomblike room containing silver lockers. We found Slider’s—number 803—opened the locker with his passcode, and removed the box, which we took to a viewing table.

“You’re getting quick on those crutches,” Jack said.

“Adapt or die.”

Jack opened the box and removed the contents, which included an insurance policy and the adoption papers Slider had mentioned, as well as a very sweet picture of the baby of Sarah Sloane, who later became Finn Flanagan. Perhaps because Max was the most recent baby I had met, the picture reminded me of Max.

“Are you crying?” Jack asked.

“No, of course not. It’s just—this baby picture. Finn went through a lot, when you think of it. His parents gave him up, then he was a bit estranged from his adoptive parents, and he never knew his real mother. Never knew she’d been coming into the bar to see him, never knew she was thinking of him when she died. And then he died. Everything about this story is sad.”

“I think your medication is making you weepy,” Jack said, not looking sad at all.

I nodded, still looking at the baby. It was a newborn photo; his eyes were still stretched-looking, and his little fists were clutched on either side of his round face. How unfortunate that innocent babies grew up to be adults who inevitably made bad choices.

I sighed. “What’s the note say?” I asked.

Jack was reading the note Slider’s mother had written to him. “I’m not even going to show you, because in this mood you’ll start sobbing. She just says she loves him, and she hopes he’ll understand about his brother, and hopes that he’ll love his brother. She says, ‘I was very young when I had Finn, and I knew that someone else could take care of him much better than I. You’re my most beloved child on earth, Joseph, but I do have some room to love Finn, and I hope you’ll have room in your heart for him, too.’ Then she talks a little about the money. She says that she hopes Slider will understand, but she wanted to make Finn a beneficiary too, as a sort of reparation.”

“So Finn got money, too, when she died?”

Jack riffled through the papers. “He got thirty-five percent of a five hundred thousand dollar policy.”

“Wow. That’s, like—“

Jack laughed at my poor math skills. “It’s 175,000. Before taxes. Still, it could be money worth killing for. And unlike Slider, Finn didn’t have to wait for his.”

“But Slider’s going to be even richer,” I said. “And Ardmore said this was only the start of Finn’s wealth.”

We thought about this for a moment. Ardmore, Finn and Slider. All of them were heirs, in one way or another. “Who would benefit from killing all three?” I asked.

Jack nodded. “I think we would need to know the contents of Finn Flanagan’s will. How could we determine that?”

I shook my head. I had no idea. “Ardmore said Slider is in it. If Slider died, his dad would get the money, unless he made a will stipulating otherwise.”

“And I assume the same is true of Ardmore and his parents,” Jack said, frowning at the papers. “Hey,” he said suddenly. “This doesn’t say Sarah Sloane. It says Sarah Wilde.” Jack held up the signature on the adoption documents.

“So Sarah and Damien were married! I wonder why Ardmore didn’t mention that.”

“Maybe he didn’t know.”

He and I exchanged a glance. His eyebrows lifted and a slow smile appeared on his lips. I reached out to touch his growing chin stubble, which was almost a beard in just two days. “Hairy beast,” I said.

“The better to scratch you with, my dear.”

I leaned over to kiss him. He tasted like wine. “This isn’t just about Damian Wilde anymore. You’re starting to like this mystery stuff.”

“I’d like doing anything with you,” he said.

* *

We put all of Slider’s things back into his safe deposit box, then left the bank and crossed the street to the office of David Kirk, Accountant. Slider had asked him, he’d told us, to handle his money when it began to roll in. Slider thought perhaps we might learn more about anyone’s motive to kill Finn, or him, Slider, if we talked to people who knew his situation. Of course this was a delicate situation, since to the town Slider was still officially missing, he was a runaway, and this was really none of our business except for the fact that Slider had made it so.

“Mr. Kirk?” asked Jack, as a young, dark haired man stood up behind a cluttered desk.

“Yes?” Kirk asked, smiling at us.

I crutched over and introduced Jack and me. “Oh, and are you related to Pat Shea?” Kirk asked.

Jack agreed that we were; Kirk brightened even more. “I do Pat’s taxes! He’s a great guy. It’s nice to meet you. Welcome to Grand Blue.”

“Thank you,” I said, sitting in one of the seats that faced his desk. “We’re also friends of Slider Cardini. We were wondering if you could tell us anything about Slider’s money affairs.”

Kirk’s smile disappeared. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t. That would be privileged information.”

“What I mean is, I understand Slider planned to hire you to sort through some of his financial options.”