St. Patrick's Day Murder Read online

  “Since I heard singing was required,” said Lucy, laughing.

  “Break a leg, girls!” called Miss Tilley as they hurried out the door.

  Lucy and Rachel had a hard time finding a parking space near the church and weren’t surprised when they found the church hall packed with people. It seemed that everybody wanted a chance to stand in the spotlight and be in the show, and it took quite a few minutes before they spotted Pam in the crowd.

  “I blame American Idol,” said Lucy, greeting Pam with a hug. “Everybody wants to be a star.”

  “We shouldn’t have to wait long,” said Pam. “I put all our names in together. I think we’ll be called any minute now.”

  “So what’s the drill?” asked Lucy, surveying the chaotic scene. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the audition. Everybody just seemed to be waiting, except for Frank Cahill, who was seated at the piano, and Dylan and Moira, who were standing on the stage, deep in discussion. Little Deirdre, Lucy noticed, was sitting all by herself in a corner, absorbed in a book.

  “You just put your name on the sign-up sheet and wait to be called,” said Pam. “Shh, I think I hear my name. Come on.”

  She dashed ahead, wiggling her way through the crowd, followed by Lucy and Rachel, and was already singing “Look to the Rainbow” for Frank when they caught up with her at the piano.

  “Fine, fine,” he said after a few bars. “I’m sure we can use you in the chorus.”

  Pam clapped her hands together. “Great.”

  Then it was Rachel’s turn to try out, and Frank handed her a piece of sheet music. She hardly looked at it, and didn’t wait for Frank to cue her, but simply started singing the song, which she knew by heart, in her clear, lovely voice. The crowded room fell silent as she worked her way through the lyrics, not even pausing for breath before the high notes.

  When she finished, there was a smattering of applause, and she blushed, embarrassed.

  Frank looked thoughtful as he asked, “Could you do a bit of ‘How Are Things in Glocca Morra?’”

  “Sure,” said Rachel, promptly reeling off that song, too. As Lucy listened to the lyrics, an idyllic Irish landscape developed in her mind, complete with green fields, chirping birds, and charming thatched cottages.

  This time everybody clapped when Rachel finished, and there were a few whistles and cheers.

  “You obviously know this show,” said Frank.

  “I played Sharon in a college production,” admitted Rachel.

  “Do you think you could handle a leading part now?” he asked.

  Rachel’s face lit up. “I’m sure I could.”

  But before Frank could continue, Dylan was at his side. “Could I have a word, Frank?” he asked.

  Frank followed him a few steps away, and they watched as a spirited discussion ensued. There was much waving of hands and shaking of heads, but in the end Dylan seemed to carry the argument, and Frank returned to the piano, with a glum expression.

  “Well, Rachel, it seems we already have a Sharon,” he said. “You could be in the chorus and understudy for La Malone.” He rolled his eyes as he said the name. “Moira there will be Sharon, or you could have the part of Susan. That is, if you can dance.”

  Rachel shook her head. “Not well enough to play Susan,” she said. “I’m thrilled to be in the chorus. That’s fine with me.”

  “Right,” said Frank, obviously unhappy. He shot a dark look at the stage, where Dylan and Moira had their heads together over the script, and growled, “Who’s next? Lucy Stone!”

  Here goes nothing, thought Lucy, stepping forward.

  “I didn’t know our star reporter could sing,” he said, recognizing her.

  “I’m going to try,” said Lucy.

  He played the introduction. She took a deep breath and managed to croak out a few lines of “Look to the Rainbow.” When she got to the high notes, she gave up, with an embarrassed shrug.

  “You’re obviously not a singer,” he said. “But I do need altos. Let’s try a lower register.”

  Lucy managed a bit better with the alto part, but Frank was clearly unimpressed. “I’m going to put you down as a maybe,” he said.

  Lucy nodded in agreement, relieved to be off the hook, but Rachel and Pam protested. Their raised voices attracted Moira’s attention, and she hurried over, script in hand.

  “Lucy! It’s great to see you here!” said Moira as she wrapped her arm around Lucy’s shoulders and tossed her flaming curls back over her shoulder. “Lucy’s my great friend, Frank,” she said pointedly. “I’m sure she’ll be a wonderful addition to the show.”

  Frank hung his head, hit a few chords on the piano, and slowly raised his head, meeting Moira’s gaze, with a shrug. “Okay. Whatever. You’re in, Lucy.”

  Pam and Rachel squealed in delight and wrapped themselves around Lucy and Moira, and soon they were all shrieking and jumping up and down like teenyboppers at a pop concert. But even as she made an outward show of delight at being included in the show, Lucy had her doubts. She suspected Moira saw her role more as baby-sitter than performer.

  Those suspicions were confirmed when Moira was distributing scripts to the cast members and paused to have a word with Lucy. “And what’s your darling little Zoe doing today?” she asked. “Poor Deirdre’s been stuck here for hours, and I know she’s missing her friends from home.”

  “I saw her there in the corner,” said Lucy. “I’m sure Zoe would love to have a playmate this afternoon. Shall I take her home with me now?”

  “That would be wonderful, Lucy,” said Moira, all smiles. “I’ll get her coat.”

  “Now I call that a smooth operator,” said Pam.

  “I always feel foolish when I meet a manipulative woman like that,” confessed Rachel. “Why do I feel that I have to do everything myself?”

  “It’s no big deal,” said Lucy, defensively. “Zoe and Deirdre get along really well. Sometimes it’s easier to have another kid in the house. Zoe will be too busy to bother me, and I’ll be able to cook dinner in peace.”

  “Right,” said Pam as Moira approached, holding Zoe’s pink parka and Hello Kitty backpack, which she handed to Lucy before disappearing in a swirl of black skirt.

  “And denial is a river in Egypt,” said Rachel, watching as Lucy bent down to zip the little girl’s parka.

  The girls had a point, admitted Lucy as she drove home with Deirdre safely buckled into the backseat, but the child wasn’t a bit of trouble. She sat quietly, looking out the window and crooning a little song to herself.

  “What are you singing?” asked Lucy.

  “A fairy song,” said Deirdre.

  “You made it up yourself then?” asked Lucy.

  “No, I didn’t make it up,” said Deirdre. “A fairy taught it to me.”

  “Ah,” said Lucy, smiling to herself. What an imagination this kid had. She turned on the radio, hoping to catch the weather report, but instead heard the announcer saying that the medical examiner’s report on the Tinker’s Cove beheading had been released and quickly switched it off. There was no sense fueling an overactive little mind like Deirdre’s.

  As she expected, Zoe was thrilled when Lucy arrived with Deirdre in tow, and the two immediately ran off to play together in Zoe’s room. When Lucy brought them a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and apple juice, she found them busily transforming some of Zoe’s Barbie dolls into fairies.

  “Mom, what can we use for wings?” asked Zoe, shoving the straw into her drink box.

  Deirdre didn’t seem to know what to do with the drink box, so Lucy helped her, showing her how to pull off the straw and insert it into the little hole. Maybe they didn’t have them in Ireland, mused Lucy, taking a mental inventory of her sewing box. Coming up empty there, she turned to her collection of wrapping paper and ribbon.

  “Tissue paper?” suggested Lucy. “I have some wide Christmas ribbon. It’s gold.”

  “Silver would be better,” said Deirdre.

  “Let’s take a lo
ok,” said Lucy.

  They followed her into her bedroom, where she opened the trunk at the foot of the bed and found the shoe box she used for odd bits of ribbon. When she left them, they were kneeling on the floor, happily examining the various scraps salvaged from birthdays and Christmases past.

  Back in the kitchen, Lucy was rinsing beans for a pot of soup when she remembered the autopsy results, and she called Ted at the newspaper office. She knew he’d probably be there, even though it was Saturday.

  “I hear you’re going to be in the show,” said Ted. “I didn’t know you could sing and dance.”

  “I can’t,” admitted Lucy. “But I can baby-sit the star’s daughter.”

  “Ah,” said Ted. “It’s like that, is it?”

  “I really don’t mind. Deirdre’s a sweetheart. And it’s not like I have to sing by myself. I can blend in with everybody else. I hope.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” he said, chuckling. “Pam says it’s going to be terrific.”

  “I don’t know about terrific. Maybe interesting is more like it. Listen, Ted, the reason I called is I wonder if you’ve heard about the autopsy?”

  “Talk about interesting,” he said. “The beheading was expertly done by someone with a sharp blade and a good bit of strength. And Old Dan was dead before he was beheaded.”

  “Do they know how he died?”

  “Whatever it was, it happened to his head. There was nothing the matter with his body except a little liver damage. Not enough to kill him. No bullet holes, no trauma, nothing. So whatever it was—a bullet, a blow, a tumor—it was in his head.”

  “And they haven’t found the head?”

  “No, and they may never find it if it’s in the bottom of the bay. But the police are assuming his death was not natural….”

  “Good thinking,” said Lucy.

  “And they’re continuing to investigate,” finished Ted.

  Just then the girls came into the kitchen, eager to show Lucy how they’d transformed the Barbies into fairies.

  “I’ve gotta go, Ted,” she said, ending the call and examining the girls’ handiwork.

  They’d dressed the dolls in Barbie’s sheerest nighties, the ruffled baby dolls, and had carefully stitched loops of ribbon to the backs to create colorful wings.

  “Those are great,” enthused Lucy. “They look like they could really fly.”

  “All fairies can fly,” said Deirdre.

  “Of course, they can,” said Lucy. She was beginning to be a little disturbed by Deirdre’s unwavering belief in otherworldly creatures and couldn’t help adding a cautionary warning. “Maybe fairies can fly, but you’re not a fairy. You’re a human girl,” said Lucy, “and humans can’t fly. Right?”

  “I flew in an airplane,” said Deirdre.

  “Right. Humans can fly in airplanes and helicopters, but even if they put on wings, they can’t fly like fairies can.”

  “Mommy and I pretended we were fairies when we were in the airplane. We flew through the clouds,” replied Deirdre.

  “That must have been fun,” said Lucy, joining in the make-believe. “And what about Daddy? Did he fly through the clouds, too, like the king of the fairies?”

  “I don’t know,” said Deirdre. “He wasn’t with us.”

  “He sat in another part of the plane?” asked Lucy, suddenly interested.

  “No. He was on another plane. He left before us.”

  “The same day?” asked Lucy.

  “No. Mommy and I went to Gram’s after he left, for a visit. Then we put on our fairy wings and flew to America, where he was waiting for us.”

  My, my, wasn’t this interesting, thought Lucy, who had assumed the family arrived together. But if Dylan had indeed arrived earlier, she realized, he didn’t have an alibi, and he couldn’t be excluded as a suspect. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, especially since he had a wife and child, and she hoped he wasn’t the murderer. She smiled at Deirdre, who was making her Barbie swoop through the air.

  “Just remember,” said Lucy, recalling stories she’d heard of children jumping off roofs, under the impression they were superheroes, “fairy wings only work inside airplanes.”

  “C’mon, Deirdre,” said Zoe, taking her friend’s hand. “Let’s go back upstairs and make a house for the fairies.”

  The two little girls had started up the stairs together when there was a tap at the kitchen door.

  “It’s Molly!” shrieked Zoe, dropping Deirdre’s hand and skipping across the kitchen. “Molly’s here!”

  “Hi, Zoe,” said Molly, closing the door behind her. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Deirdre. She’s from Ireland,” said Zoe.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Deirdre,” said Molly, extending her hand in greeting to Deirdre, who took it and gave a polite shake.

  “Molly is my brother Toby’s girlfriend,” said Zoe. “They’re going to have a baby.”

  Lucy dumped the beans into a pot and set it on the stove. “You girls go on and play now,” she said. “Molly and I want to visit.” She pulled a chair out from under the table and turned to Molly, eying her bulging tummy. “Take a load off your feet.”

  “Oh, I can’t stay. I just came to borrow some molasses. If you have any, that is.”

  “I bought some at Christmas, for cookies,” said Lucy, dragging the step stool over to a corner cupboard. She climbed up and began shifting jars and cans around on the shelves.

  “I have the worst yen for molasses cookies,” said Molly, easing into the chair and rubbing her stomach.

  Deirdre remained in the kitchen despite Zoe’s tugs, staring at Molly. “Does it hurt to have a baby inside you?” she asked.

  Molly laughed. “No. It doesn’t hurt to have it inside. It’s getting it out that hurts. At least, that’s what I hear. I never had a baby before.”

  Lucy gave Molly a sharp look. “Birth is a natural process. It’s something our bodies are designed to do,” she said, with a nod to the girls.

  “Sadie says sometimes they cut the baby out,” said Zoe, undermining Lucy’s attempt to present childbirth in a positive light.

  “That’s true,” said Molly. “It’s called a caesarean.”

  “That must really hurt,” said Deirdre.

  “Not at all,” said Lucy, climbing down with the jar of molasses. “They use anesthesia, like they do for any operation.”

  “And then they sew you up!” exclaimed Zoe, gleefully. “Sadie had stitches once, and she said it hurt real bad.”

  “Mummy says it’s all worth it to have a beautiful baby like me,” said Deirdre, dreamily. “She says I was such a beautiful baby, she was afraid the fairies would steal me.”

  Lucy set the molasses on the table with a thud. “Now, Deirdre, you know that’s just make-believe. Fairies don’t steal babies. Now, off you go.”

  “Thanks, Lucy,” said Molly, picking up the jar and lumbering to her feet.

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “Nope, I’ve got it all. I’ll bring some over when I’ve finished baking them.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Lucy, smiling.

  “You’re right,” admitted Molly, buttoning her coat. “I’ll probably eat them all, just like I ate a whole half gallon of coffee ice cream the other night.” She grinned ruefully. “I can’t seem to help myself. And the weird thing is, I never liked coffee ice cream before.”

  “It goes with the territory,” said Lucy. “You’re eating for two.”

  “Feels more like twenty sometimes,” said Molly, closing the door behind her.

  Lucy returned to her soup, chopping up carrots and celery and adding them to the pot. Moira hadn’t said when she would pick Deirdre up, and Lucy wondered if she would still be with them at dinnertime. The Malones were an odd sort of family, she thought as she stirred the pot. Not exactly irresponsible parents, but awfully eager to assign child-care duties to someone else. And then there was the day they had discovered Old Dan’s body, the very same day Dyla
n had come to the newspaper, seeking news of his brother. She remembered it clearly, how he’d come through the door, claiming he was right off the airplane, straight from Ireland that very day.

  Maybe it was just a phrase, a bit of blarney, as Miss Tilley put it, or maybe Dylan Malone had indeed arrived in the country days ahead of his family. But why would he bother to lie about it? Perhaps he had a reason for keeping that information to himself.

  Chapter Eight

  After a bean soup supper on Sunday evening, Lucy took the script of Finian’s Rainbow into the family room and settled down on the couch, joining Bill, who was in his usual spot, in the recliner, watching a This Old House rerun on PBS. She figured he must know every single show by heart, but he never tired of watching Tom Silva poking away at what seemed to be perfectly good siding and discovering rotted timbers underneath. The image of that crumbling wood—“Nothing holding this old house together except paint”—always gave her pause, since she knew that the last thing her highly regarded restoration carpenter husband wanted to do when he came home from a long day reconstructing somebody else’s antique house was to work on his own antique house. She suspected the 150-year-old farmhouse was rotting away around them and occasionally had nightmares about the porch falling off, or about opening a door and stepping into a ruined room, with wallpaper hanging in shreds and gaps in the walls that you could see through. She didn’t want to risk watching the show and discovering yet another potential problem, so she decided to ignore it and focus all her attention on the script.

  Resolutely blocking words like termite damage and rainwater seepage from her consciousness, she was soon caught up in the story of Finian and his daughter, Sharon. She even found herself humming along to the songs.

  “Lucy, that can’t possibly be the tune,” said Bill. “Are you sure they really want you in this show? Do they know you can’t sing?”

  “Frank Cahill, he’s the musical director, was clearly underwhelmed by my talent,” admitted Lucy. “But Moira insisted, and I’m in the chorus.”