The Celtic Riddle Read online

“Wonderful idea!” I replied.

  “Sailing!” Rob exclaimed, feigning horror at the thought. “You forget I’m a Ukrainian from Saskatchewan. My idea of relaxation is to sit on a porch and watch fields of wheat stretching as far as the eye can see. Now there’s a vacation for you. Why risk seasickness, when you could have the taste of dust in your mouth, and not so much as the tiniest breeze to mess up your hair?”

  “What hair?” Jennifer grinned as she reached over and patted a small bald spot on the top of her father’s head. I noticed she switched to regular speech when she wanted to tease her dad, so he wouldn’t miss the jibe.

  “Given the absence of dust here, and wheat for that matter,” I said, “what are you going to do this afternoon while the rest of us are sailing?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ll think of something.”

  There was something in his tone. “Rob!” I said.

  “I was thinking maybe I’d just pop down to the local police station—what do they call themselves? Gardai is it?—introduce myself.”

  “Would you know a vacation if you tripped over it?” I asked. “You wouldn’t be planning to prove your theory that John Herlihy met with foul play, would you?” I can’t believe this man, I thought. He’s absolutely obsessed by his job. How can people be like that, thinking about crime and criminals every waking moment, and maybe even dreaming about it, too? It’s a sickness.

  “Will you look who’s talking like she’s an expert on vacations all of a sudden?” he said mildly. “When she hasn’t had one in all the years I’ve know her. No, I’m just trying to improve international relations, inspire a little goodwill between police forces, that sort of thing. Now get going, will you, so I can get on with this noble activity? And try and stay out of trouble, both of you.” He gave his daughter an affectionate hug.

  Jennifer and I turned left as we exited The Three Sisters Inn, as the guest house where we were all staying was called, and with Jennifer chattering away about all the things she’d have to tell her chums about when she got home, we ambled along a cobblestoned street that wound its way down to the sea past charming little houses, shops, and pubs painted sunny colors, yellow, red, blue, and green.

  To save money on the trip, I was sharing a room with Jennifer, and Rob and Alex were doing the same. It was not my idea of the perfect holiday, bunking in with an eighteen-year-old, but I found I was enjoying her company, and, as we made our way down to the harbor, I got caught up in the enthusiasm she brought to everything about her. Although she’d been reluctant to come with us at first, she was clearly having a good time now that we were in Ireland. She was on the cusp of adulthood, a little young for her age in some things, in my opinion, but very worldly in others, a whole new life ahead of her at university when she got home.

  Jennifer’s mother had died when she was very young, and Rob had raised her on his own. He’d not remarried. The way he told it, he and Jennifer had never found a woman they agreed on. So Jennifer had the combination of self-reliance and yet the essential loneliness of the only child. The big problem with her life right now, I’d quickly ascertained, was that she hadn’t yet had a serious boyfriend. As painful as this was for Jennifer—she claimed she was the only girl in the western hemisphere who hadn’t had a date for the prom—this state of affairs suited her father just fine, considering as he did all his daughter’s potential suitors to be lascivious louts, to use his own words. After a couple of days sharing a room with Jennifer, I began to realize it was time I had a serious talk with her father, something along the lines of his reserving his interrogation and intimidation skills for the people he came across in his chosen line of work, rather than the young men who came calling on his daughter. It was not a conversation I was looking forward to, but what are friends for? And certainly Rob has never held back from telling me things about myself he feels I need to know.

  The town lined the mouth of a river at the head of a large bay that provided snug harbor for the dozens of boats, large and small, moored there. We found Alex waiting for us at the end of the pier, aboard the Maire Malloy, a rather old and lumpy little wooden craft painted a dreadful pea green. The sea was perfect for sailing: a good stiff breeze, but not too much of one. The sky was clear in all directions, so it looked as if the weather would hold. Gulls squawked and wheeled after us as Alex started the engine and we putt-putted out of the harbor, past fishing boats, large and small. When we cleared the edge of the harbor, Alex cut the engine and gave orders to hoist the sail. The wind caught us immediately, and appearances to the contrary, the boat surged forward very nicely.

  “Oohay!” Jennifer yelled. Sailing was a new experience for her, and her excitement was contagious. I found myself starting to enjoy myself, pushing the picture of John Herlihy’s black boot back to the furthermost comers of my mind.

  “Oohay!” I agreed. From the sea, the land was even more spectacularly beautiful: blue mountains in the distance, cut by the enormous gashes of valleys, rolling hills that swooped down to sheer cliffs at the sea, farther out, the wild columns of spray where the sea met the shore. And everywhere, tiny isolated houses stark against the most extraordinary shades of green.

  “Where to?” Alex called to us, the wind whipping his words away.

  Jennifer shrugged. “Dnaleci,” she shouted.

  “I have a more practical idea,” I called back.

  It was relatively easy sailing, hugging the coast, past little bays and coves, some with houses visible, others deserted, others with the same derelict and abandoned houses we’d seen near Rose Cottage.

  Few of the homes were as beautiful as Second Chance. From the water it was spectacular, the pale yellow of its walls in sharp contrast to the dark, dark green of the hills way behind it, and the well-manicured lawn and gardens sloping down to the sea. It looked like a little paradise, and even Jennifer, burdened very slightly by a late adolescent angst that had a tendency to show itself as chronic cynicism, looked impressed.

  As we followed the coast past Second Chance, the wind whipped up, as it had when we’d hiked to Rose Cottage, and we had to tack several times to make headway. It was exhilarating, though, as the little boat crested the waves, then fell into the trough, the rugged shoreline, high cliffs at whose base the waves pounded and above which seabirds flew, receding off into the mist miles away. And high on the cliff, Alex’s newly acquired cottage sat snugly facing out to sea. “Is that it, Uncle Alex?” Jennifer called out pointing toward the shore. “Oooo,” she exclaimed, as Alex nodded proudly. “It’s brilliant. Can I come and visit summers?”

  “Of course you may,” he replied.

  The little wooden boat was still bobbing in the cove when we got there. Alex skillfully maneuvered our craft past some rocks and pulled alongside.

  “I don’t see anything,” Jennifer said, peering into the Ocean Crest.

  “We’ll need to board her,” I said.

  “Be quick about it, Lara,” Alex said as he pulled alongside. “It’s time we were getting back,” he added, pointing to the sun now dipping toward the horizon.

  “Just give me a few minutes,” I said, easing my way into the other boat. Once I was aboard, Alex shoved off and anchored several yards away.

  I started at the stem and moved forward. I checked for wire or ropes over the side, thinking there might be a watertight package hidden in the water. I pulled the boat up to the buoy where it was moored, but found nothing there. I ran my fingers under the gunwales in case a tiny piece of paper had been stuck there. I checked the oar sockets and I felt under each seat, before moving toward the bow. I checked under that seat, too. Still nothing. Then I reached up into the prow of the boat, and came up empty again.

  I was about to give up when I noticed that one of the boards in the bow looked freshly painted, in contrast to the rather worn quality of the rest of the boat. I gave the board a little tug and it came away to reveal a piece of white plastic sheet, part of a plastic bag, I’d have said, rolled up tightly and wedged into a
groove between the boards, then taped to hold it in place.

  “Got it,” I yelled to Alex and Jennifer, slowly peeling away the tape, being careful not to tear the plastic or its contents.

  “Ynapmoc!” Jennifer called out, waving her arms toward the shore. I looked up in the direction Jennifer was pointing. At the top of the cliff, round about where John Herlihy must have gone over, Conail O’Connor, son-in-law number two, stood, arms crossed, one leg propped up on a rock at the edge, looking down at us, like a bird of prey readying to strike. At that moment, I knew two things: One was that if looks could kill, I’d have keeled over right then and there. The other was that some people were taking this treasure hunt way too seriously.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I called to Alex, who weighed anchor and navigated over to me. I stuffed the plastic roll in the back pocket of my jeans and scrambled on board the Maire Malloy. Alex started the little engine, and we slowly made our way out of the cove and into the wind.

  The trip back to the harbor should have been a fast one. The wind was with us, and as soon as the sail was up our little boat leapt forward. The setting sun was to our right and behind us as we sped along.

  We were about halfway back when a trawler, engines at a deep throaty roar, blasted out of the late afternoon shadow of the bay, heading directly for us. It was not a sleek boat, but it was a powerful one, its course bringing it inexorably closer and closer. “Come about,” Alex yelled, as Jennifer and I ducked to avoid the boom, and scrambled to the opposite side. The other boat changed direction and continued to bear down on us. We were yelling and waving, trying to catch the attention of the driver, whom we couldn’t see, before it was too late. At the last moment, Alex, an excellent sailor and remarkably calm in a crisis, did a quick maneuver, and the trawler, which was about to hit us broadside, instead just grazed the stern. It was enough, however, and, swamped, the Maire Malloy rolled over, hurling all of us overboard.

  As we went over the side, I grabbed hold of Jennifer, but I hit the water so hard, I was dazed for a moment, and she was wrenched from my grasp. There was a roaring in my ears, either the shock of the water or the underwater sound of the powerboat, and my nose and mouth were filled with water as I was swept up in the wake. I struggled my way to the surface and looked about for the others. I saw Alex immediately, but Jennifer was nowhere to be found. A panic so intense it was almost a physical pain gripped me, and I started screaming her name and flailing around in the dark, cold water, desperate to find her, a glimpse of her purple jacket, or her blonde hair.

  And suddenly there she was, first her head, then her shoulders, she rose coughing and sputtering, a few yards away. “Gip!” she gasped, shaking her fist at the departing trawler, already far away, a small black shadow retreating in the shimmering path of the sun on the water. “Mucs!” she yelled again, this time much stronger. I figured she was okay.

  Together, we tried to right the boat, but it was difficult, exhausted as we were by our narrow escape, and in the end we just clung to the side of it, waiting until help arrived. It came mercifully soon in the person of Michael Davis who pulled alongside not long after in a small motorboat.

  “I saw you from the cliff,” he said after he’d hauled us all on board and attached a line to the sailboat to tow it to shore. “Bloody ijit driving that boat!” he exclaimed. “You could all have been killed!”

  “Did you happen to see who the bloody ijit was?” I asked him, after I’d caught my breath.

  “No,” he replied, but he looked away as he said it. I had a feeling that even if he couldn’t actually see, at that distance, who was driving the boat, he had a very good idea who was responsible. And recalling vividly the malignant look on Conail O’Connor’s face, so, for that matter, did I.

  Chapter Four

  A STAG OF SEVEN SLAUGHTERS

  “APPARENTLY you were right,” Rob said, nodding in my general direction as he passed his daughter the marmalade. Breakfast was served each morning in a little glassed-in porch overlooking the little garden at the Inn, and we started our days together there.

  “I’m always right,” I said, as Jennifer giggled. Alex raised his eyebrows skeptically.

  Rob chuckled. “That may be, but I don’t often admit it, now do I?”

  “That’s an understatement,” Jennifer teased. Rob made a motion as if to box her ears, and she ducked, laughing.

  “What particular instance of my being right are you referring to this time?” I asked. I was happy to see Rob and Jennifer getting along so well, and that she was beginning to speak English in its normal order once again.

  “John Herlihy,” he said. “Blood/alcohol readings over the top. Guy had been drinking for several days solid. It’s a wonder he could stand up at all, but people who drink pretty consistently can be like that.”

  Now I’m always glad when Rob agrees with me about something. I like to think that on the important things in life we pretty much agree right down the line. On the smaller details, however, we hardly ever see eye to eye. It’s the source of bouts of bickering from time to time. Sometimes, I think we carry on like an old married couple, even though we’ve never been anything more than friends. Having him admit I’d been right in this instance was, indeed, a victory. Trouble was, in the meantime, I’d changed my mind.

  “What about the other things you talked about: marks on the body, that sort of thing?”

  “According to the garda I spoke to, pleasant chap by the name of Minogue, Herlihy’s injuries are pretty consistent with having fallen forty feet onto a pile of rocks,” Rob said. “All rather neat and tidy, actually. After all, they can pinpoint the time of death with great accuracy. You walked by the spot minutes after the proceedings at Second Chance ended, that is about three-thirty, and about forty-five minutes or so later, by all accounts, you walked back, and there he was. His clothes were wet, from the rain presumably, under the body too, although that doesn’t mean much on the sea-shore. He might have been lying down there when you first went by, I suppose—you wouldn’t necessarily have seen him—but it’s more likely he fell during the rain. Either way, it doesn’t change the time much, and during that time, everyone is more or less accounted for, not every second perhaps, but no one was alone for very long.”

  It wouldn’t take very long, I thought to myself, just a short jog to the edge of the property and around the comer where no one could see. And from our end, Michael had been gone rather longer than I had thought necessary to get a little fuel for the fire. “What about the other stuff? Footprints? Signs of a struggle?”

  “Downpour pretty well took care of that. Also, all of you tramping around and looking over the side of the cliff when you found him.” He looked mildly annoyed as if we should have known better. “Not much sign of anything, I’m told.” He paused for a moment. “Do you take the opposite side of every discussion with me for sport, or have you changed your mind?”

  I shrugged. How could I tell him that for a moment or two the world had stood still, soundless, and that I’d had a premonition of something awful about to happen? How could I say that just as it was beginning to rain I’d heard an unnatural animal sound that at the time I’d thought was a bird, or an animal fleeing the wet, but now thought, despite every effort to persuade myself otherwise, might have been the scream of a dying man going over a cliff? “Just wondering,” I said.

  “Well, wonder no more,” he said reaching for the Irish Times. “Do you think my arteries will survive two weeks in this country?” he asked, eyeing the empty plate in front of him that just a few minutes ago had contained the innocuously named heart attack on a plate, the Irish cooked breakfast: two eggs, a few rashers of bacon, two breakfast sausages, two kinds of blood sausage, and toast with Irish butter. I gathered he was changing the subject.

  I couldn’t let it go like that. The sound I’d heard, the edginess I’d felt, wouldn’t go away. If indeed that awful sound had been Herlihy, then he hadn’t slipped on the mud. It had barely begun to rain when I’d hear
d it. And why, exactly, had it gone so quiet? The wind had dropped, yes, just before the rain, the lull before the storm. But what about the birds that only seconds before had been wheeling and shrieking above us. Why did they suddenly stop too? Was it the approaching storm, or had something else, a struggle on the cliff, perhaps, made them go silent?

  Before the boating incident of the day before, I might have been prepared, indeed have welcomed the chance, to accept the official explanation. But I couldn’t believe that what had happened to us had been an accident, not after seeing Conail O’Connor’s face. That in itself made me look at other so-called accidents with suspicion. But I couldn’t tell Rob that, either. Jennifer had related the story with great dramatic flair when we got back, and Rob had looked perturbed, but she was at the age where she exaggerated everything, and Alex and I had downplayed it. I would have liked to talk to him about it, about my panic when I lost hold of her, those horrible seconds before she surfaced, but I knew I’d be doing it to make myself feel better, not him. Parenthood is frightening enough, I decided, without having to be terrified by what might have been.

  When breakfast was finished, Rob and Jennifer announced that they were off sightseeing to Killarney, if anyone wanted to come. Alex said he’d met someone who’d offered to take him fishing. I said I was just going exploring around town.

  “Promise me you’re not going anywhere near Second Chance,” Rob said severely.

  “I promise,” I said. It was an easy promise to make because I had something else in mind. Not something he’d be any happier about, mind you. There was a specific bit of exploring I proposed to do, and when the others had left, I headed down, once again, to the pier. It took me about an hour, wending my way up and down the docks, but eventually I found what I wanted. It was down by a sandwich sign advertising something called St. Brandon Charters offering fishing expeditions, scenic tours of Dingle Bay, trips to the Blasketts, the islands off the Dingle coast, and both fly-fishing and sailing lessons. The proprietor of St. Brandon Charters, whoever he or she might be, was obviously a versatile sort. Multi-skilling, I think they call it in the corporate world, another of those vile made-up terms like downsizing and rightsizing that are euphemisms for unpleasant results, in this case, presumably, fewer employed people doing a lot more work.