The Celtic Riddle Page 21

  So when I awoke the next morning, I was pretty sure I knew what we were looking for, despite the missing clues, even if I hadn’t figured out exactly where. The clues were in ogham, after all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  HE WHO CLEARS THE MOUNTAIN PATHS

  EITHNE Byrne was born forty-five, forty-five and Irish. I have a theory, one not supported by so much as a particle of scientific evidence, that some people come into the world with a particular age stamped all over them. These are the people who seem so much older than the rest of us when we’re young, but seen again after many years, a high school reunion for instance, look exactly the way they did in school. Eithne Byrne was one of these. Not that there’s anything wrong with forty-five—I’m perilously close to it myself—but I realized when I got a chance to talk to her one on one, she was actually much younger, almost ten years in fact, than I’d initially thought that first time I’d seen her at Second Chance, and later when she was playing acolyte to her mother over tea.

  She was also born Irish, with green eyes, slightly reddish hair, frizzed by the constant moisture, glowing skin, and a certain charming loquaciousness brought out by a few sips of sherry. She even dressed Irish, if there is such a thing, in a blouse with a lace collar, a short boxy wool jacket in dark green, and a long, pleated green skirt to match.

  Her sister Fionuala, on the other hand, was the party girl, talkative, charming, and a flirt. She wore bright colors, in this case, a red suit, the jacket done up, but with no blouse under it, revealing a fair amount of lightly freckled skin and cleavage, the short tight skirt constantly riding up to show off more than a little leg.

  I met both of them over a drink in the bar at the Inn. It was at their invitation, a fact that took me somewhat by surprise. It was the first time I’d seen them alone, that is, outside their family home, without their mother hovering nearby. Despite my inclination to think ill of them, I had to admit I saw nothing to fault. On this occasion, they both seemed to me very nice people, intelligent if a little naive, in Eithne’s case, rather more good-hearted than I expected in Fionuala’s. I could see that the two of them and Breeta, in addition to being closer in age than I’d thought, were more alike in personality as well.

  “We’ve decided to open a shop,” Fionuala said, the bolder of the two. “And we heard that you own one, an antiques shop, I believe, in Canada. We thought, we were hoping, you might give us some advice.”

  “I’d be delighted to. What kind of shop were you thinking of?”

  “Antiques, like you,” Eithne said. “There are lots of tourists in the Dingle every summer. And there are all of Da’s things, the ones that didn’t go to Trinity College, that is, maps and prints and books. Is it difficult to open a shop?”

  “A little,” I said. “Well, no, it’s not difficult to open one. It’s staying open that requires some luck, energy, and ...” I hesitated, thinking about the rumors in town about their fiscal state. “Cash, frankly.”

  “Does it cost a lot?” Eithne asked.

  “A fair amount. You’re fortunate to have some items to begin with, that you don’t have to purchase, I mean. But it takes a lot of merchandise to open a shop, more than you’d think. I expect you’d have to build up some inventory even with your father’s things.”

  “How much does it cost?” Fionuala said. Talking about money didn’t seem to bother her at all.

  “That depends,” I said, “on what you’ve got to start with and what you want to do.”

  “Well, there’s the furniture in the house,” Fionuala said. “It’s quite good, I believe. And we won’t need all of it. We’re moving.”

  “We don’t need all that room,” Eithne added, with more than a touch of steel in her voice. I wondered just how bad the situation at Second Chance was.

  “And how exactly do you go about setting up shop?” she went on as the waiter, at a sign from me, set second rounds in front of us.

  It was becoming clear to me that working for a living had never been on either Eithne or Fionuala Byrne’s life plan, but I told them what I had done anyway, about how I’d started out as a wholesaler to other stores, importing objects I’d picked up in my travels and warehousing them in the north end of Toronto, and how finally, with some money in the bank, I’d launched my business. I didn’t tell them how I’d married my first employee and had been forced to sell the store when we divorced. They might have found that part of the story way too discouraging, particularly with husbands like Sean and Conail.

  “But why don’t you try working in someone else’s antiques shop for a while?” I concluded. “You could learn about keeping the books, ordering supplies, advertising, and promotion and so on. Or why,” I said, suddenly having a brainwave, “why don’t you go and work in one of your father’s businesses, the import/ export one, for example? You could arrange that, couldn’t you?”

  Eithne bit her lip, and looked over at Fionuala. “Good advice, I’m sure. I’m not certain, though, how much longer there’ll be a Byrne Enterprises. Mr. McCafferty has been helping my mother with all the family affairs, since my father died, and I believe we may have to close down the company. It’s not doing very well. That’s why I’m thinking that I’ll have to do something, and I don’t really know what else to do. I learned quite a bit about antiquities from Da, so I thought ...” Her voice trailed off.

  “But I thought your father was very successful,” I said. “How could this be?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I haven’t had anything to do with the business. Perhaps I should have, but Sean, my husband, works there, and he doesn’t like the idea of a working wife. Thinks it’s beneath him. He blames Conail, my brother-in-law. He says Conail hasn’t been managing the peat business at all well, and it was always the part of the business that helped fund the newer and riskier ventures, the cash cow, I think Sean calls it.”

  “And Conail says it’s Sean who’s making a mess of it,” Fionuala interjected. “Not that I care what he thinks anymore.”

  “It’s a terrible thing to say, I know, sounding glad your sister’s marriage is on the rocks,” Eithne said, looking over at Fionuala. “But perhaps...” She couldn’t finish these painful sentences, it seemed. She was like her mother in that.

  “What she’s trying to say is that now that Conail is gone, maybe we can be friends again,” Fionuala said. “We were inseparable once, the three of us, Breeta, Eithne, and I. Just like the triple goddess we were named after, our nicknames that is, Banba, Fotla, and Eriu. Breeta never did like being named after a pig goddess, though,” she laughed.

  “Banba wasn’t just a pig goddess,” Eithne protested. “She was the goddess who controlled the line between the underworld and the sky. Maybe we could go and see Breeta together,” she said sadly, looking over at Fionuala. “Maybe if she could see the two of us, it would help get us all back together again. She’s not speaking to us,” she added. Me neither, I thought.

  “Of course we’ll go,” Fionuala said. “She’ll come around. We’re family.”

  “I think I’d like to have an antiques shop,” Eithne said suddenly, as if now she’d started talking, she wasn’t able to stop. “I’m not just looking into this because of the money, and the business problems. It’s something I often thought of doing, but there hasn’t seemed to be an opportunity. Sean would never approve. Now perhaps I can.”

  I could hardly fault her for wanting to go into the antiques business, so for the next half hour or so, I told them exactly what they would need to do to get started. Eithne, the organized one, got a notepad out of her purse, and wrote everything down, asking some rather intelligent questions as we went along.

  “Thank you,” she said at last. “You’ve been just grand. Especially since our family hasn’t been very nice to you and to your friend, Mr. Stewart. We hope he enjoys Rose Cottage, we really do. My father told us about Mr. Stewart many times, how he pulled him from the water when Da fell in and might have drowned.” Fell in, was it? I thought. That’s not
the way I heard it, but a quite understandable editorial change, a father’s tale for his daughters, when I thought about it. And it sounded as if the lawsuit was off.

  “You didn’t see any of us at our best, you know,” Fionuala said. “Our Da, he wasn’t really the way you saw him, on the video, I mean. The cancer, it had spread from his lung to his brain. He was actually a lot of fun. And Mother and my sister and I, well, Mr. McCafferty had just told us about the financial problems of the estate. We couldn’t believe it. Everything seemed to be fine when my father was alive. We were in shock, I think, with Da’s death and this news. I suppose we resented the idea of anybody else getting anything from the estate.

  “And Sean. He looks like a terrible snob, I know, but he’s quite good-hearted, under it all. It’s just that the more worried he gets, the more standoffish he gets too. I know he seems cold and heartless to an outsider, but that’s only because he’s been terribly worried about Byrne Enterprises and what will happen to all of us, wouldn’t you agree, Eithne?” Eithne apparently did.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question or two? Well, three, actually,” I asked them. “Make that four.” I was on a roll now, and they didn’t seem to mind.

  “Ask away.” Eithne hiccoughed. She was on drink number three. “Lovely sherry.” She giggled.

  “Is the family looking for the treasure or not?”

  “No,” Eithne said. “Mother wouldn’t stand for it. She wants to remember my father as he was, not the man on that videotape. I still do what my mother tells me,” she added ruefully. “Sean isn’t either, I think I can say with some assurance. He doesn’t believe there really is a treasure. He thinks my father was too far gone, mentally that is, when he made the videotape, that the clues were just a mean joke from someone who didn’t know what they were doing anymore.”

  “Neither am I,” Fionuala added. “Breeta, I can’t speak for, although I don’t think she is. She couldn’t anyway, come to think about it. Mother took Bree’s clue out of the safe in Da’s office and tore it up, along with her own. Mother is a very determined woman,” Fionuala added.

  “Are you telling me there was no robbery?” I asked.

  “Of course there wasn’t,” Fionuala replied. “Mother went off on the most awful tear. She tore the pages out of Da’s diary and burned them, along with two of his maps. She was afraid there’d be something in the diary she wouldn’t want to know, and the maps might have something on them that would encourage the rest of us to go after the treasure. We didn’t call the police, or anything, so it wasn’t so terrible a thing to do, was it?”

  “No,” I replied. As long as you didn’t burn one of those rare old maps, I thought. Although, come to think of it, the diary burning could be seen in another light. Perhaps Margaret really was trying to protect herself from painful things her dying husband might have written, or there were things she wouldn’t want others, Garda Minogue and Rob, for example, to read.

  “Anyway,” Fionuala went on, “The only one I can think of who might be still looking is Conail. He’s really angry at Sean, and now with this split with me, he might be doing it to spite the family. He told me, yelled at me actually, when I told him to get out, that he’d find the treasure first.”

  “Someone trashed our room at the Inn,” I said. It was a statement, not a question, but I was still hoping for an explanation. “And tried to swamp us in a boat.”

  The sisters exchanged meaningful glances. “That might be Conail,” Fionuala sighed. “Just his style, I’m afraid. Never one to tread lightly in any respect. It was what I liked about him once. Sorry to hear that, though. And he doesn’t have a boat, you know.”

  “But he does know how to handle a boat,” Eithne added. “Do you have another question?”

  “How about Padraig Gilhooly?”

  “Paddy, looking for the treasure? I don’t know,” Eithne said, misunderstanding my question. “Oh, you mean, how does he fit in the family? Or do we think he’d trash your room and swamp you in a boat?”

  I nodded. “All of the above. And where he came from, too.”

  “I can’t imagine he’d do anything like trash your room and swamp you out on the water. He’s actually quite nice, despite his rather sullen looks. I’m not sure where he came from, though, do you, Nuala?” Fionuala shook her head.

  “Da just kind of adopted Paddy. He did that sort of thing. He liked giving people a chance. He helped him buy his boat and set him up in the charter business. Paddy almost lived at Second Chance for a while. But then he imposed on our hospitality,” Eithne giggled. “That’s the way Mother put it. He started going out with Breeta, more than going out, if you see what I mean, right in the house, too.” She blushed.

  Fionuala laughed. “Scandalous!” she said.

  “Mother was furious, said Paddy wasn’t good enough for Breeta, and threw him out of the house. That made Breeta really angry. She didn’t blame Mother for some reason. We’re all a little afraid of her. She blamed Da and his money, which was silly, but Breeta saw it to be the root of the problem with Paddy, Mother thinking we were too good for him. They had a fight. I’ve never seen Da so angry. I think it was in a way because Breeta was his favorite, and she really adored Da. I think it works that way sometimes, the more you love each other, the worse the fight. Anyway, Breeta left. I heard she’s not going with Paddy anymore, so it was hardly worth it,” she said.

  “That’s what your father meant then about Paddy being considered a member of the family. He wouldn’t have minded if Breeta had married him?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Eithne said. “That’s all he meant. He never said anything about our boyfriends. I don’t think he liked either Sean or Conail very much, but he didn’t object to our marrying them.”

  “Your father went on about how the family was always squabbling. How he wanted the treasure hunt to bring you all together. Is this a squabbling family?”

  “Not always, in fact, not until recently, do you think, Nuala? We were actually quite close, particularly the three of us sisters. But I suppose near the end of his life it was. The cancer brought out the worst in Da, accentuated his least positive features, in a way. He was difficult to deal with. Sean and Conail started fighting over what was happening to the business, each blaming the other. Breeta, of course, walked out. Paddy blamed the family for what happened with him and Breeta. Nuala and I were always very close, but with our husbands fighting and everything, it was hard. Also, I’m a little like my mother, I’m afraid, and so when things get a little rough, I withdraw, get a little snappy, frankly. It hasn’t been too great, lately.

  “Was that all the questions?” she said hesitantly.

  “Not quite,” I replied. “Tell me about Deirdre.”

  “I don’t know what to say. It’s terrible, isn’t it? She was such a little mouse, and to have something like that happen to her—I can hardly think about it.”

  “Was she with you long?”

  “Five years, I’d say, Nuala?”

  “About that,” Fionuala agreed. “She came after Kitty had her stroke and had to retire. So, yes, about five years.”

  “She wasn’t the greatest help when she first came,” Eithne said. “It took a while for her to learn the ropes, so to speak. And she was always spilling stuff and breaking things, usually Mother’s little glass ornaments or the good china. It drove Mother crazy.” She giggled a little, and Fionuala joined in with a hearty laugh. “We shouldn’t laugh, I know, but it was rather funny. I’ll remember her that way, but with fondness. We got used to having her around, breaking china or not, and we were so grateful she came back to us. She felt like family. I told her, a couple of days before she died, that she wasn’t to worry, that I’d look after her. I’m the eldest, and I know that I’m going to have to take charge of things: Mother’s way too upset. And I will. I’ll get this antiques business going somehow, and find us a smaller place to stay, and see about getting Breeta back with us again. She’ll have the baby, of course. Do you think it’s Mich
ael’s? Or Paddy’s? It doesn’t matter. We’ll help her look after it. I would have looked after Deirdre too, and I wanted her to know that.”

  “Oh, Eithne, aren’t you the serious one?” Fionuala sighed. “She’s always been like this,” she added, turning to me, “even when we were little. I’m taking you to the music festival, Eithne, since that dry stick of a husband of yours probably won’t. Maybe Mother will come too. We’ll hear some music, have a few drinks, maybe even dance a little and find a new man or two for Mother and me. You too, if you want one.”

  Eithne laughed out loud. “Rich would be good,” she said.

  “Essential,” Fionuala agreed. “I know what I have to do,” she added, twirling a piece of hair around her finger and batting her eyelashes outrageously. The three of us laughed so hard, the tears were running down our cheeks.

  But then suddenly, Eithne’s tears became real ones. “What do you think happened to us, Nuala?” she sobbed. “We all got along well once, didn’t we? I know Da was sick and wasn’t himself, but what happened to the rest of us? Especially you and Banba and I: The three of us used to be inseparable.”

  “You think too much, Eithne,” Fionuala said, putting her arm around her sister’s shoulder. “Things happen in families, that’s all. We will get through this, and you’re not going to have to deal with this family business all alone. We’re going to stick together in this mess, so don’t you fret about it.”

  I had to admire their determination. The woman who had frowned when her mother frowned, nodded when her mother said anything, stood up when her mother did, had revealed herself to have some backbone in the face of three murders and what was beginning to sound like insolvency. And her sister had shown that no matter how shallow she might appear, she was essentially good-hearted and a no-nonsense kind of person, and she would do what she had to do as well.