Winters & Somers (4 page)

            When
he'd finally been driven to ask her about her day, she'd blushed and said she'd
been out and about with Ruth. Never a word about seeing Winters. And then she'd
sat watching her favorite soap opera and humming an old tune: “My Love Is Like
A Red, Red Rose'.

            “I
tell you, Miss Somers, I was about ready to go and rip all those innocent rose
bushes out of our garden! And I'd called in at the library the next afternoon
and who should be there but Winters, huddled up over some book in the reference
section with my Peggy! And they were laughing!”

            “Mr.
O'Keefe, don’t you think maybe you're taking this all a little too seriously?”
Cíara asked. “Why not just wait it out – your wife is sure to get over this
soon enough.”

            “Oh,
but that's not the worst of it. I woke up last night to hear Peggy calling his
name 'Jonathon…Jonathon…' and she was smiling. Just like a woman
who's…who's…well, you know!”

           
Like
a woman who's just had very satisfactory sex
. The unspoken words hung in
the office and Cíara nearly laughed out loud. Having wet dreams about a man you
fancied wasn't exactly a crime, either. But Frank's next words wiped the smile
off her face.

            “So
I got out of bed – she didn’t even wake up – and went down the hall to the gun
cabinet and got out my hunting rifle!

            “Oh,
I know, I know. These days you don’t just go shooting someone because he's
having an affair with your wife. Civilized people didn’t do things like that.
Besides, the gun's old and it hasn't been used in years. I think there's a good
chance it would jam and explode in my face – leaving Peggy a widow who could do
as she pleased. So I came here, instead, to ask you to sort this out.”

“Well, Mr. O'Keefe – first things first. Give me
the key to your gun cabinet!”

* * *

By the time Frank had written out a retainer
check and handed over the gun cabinet key, Cíara was thinking they were both
over reacting. Frank for thinking his wife was having an affair, and she for
thinking this mild-mannered man would actually shoot the notorious writer.

But better safe than sorry,
she muttered, grabbing her overnight bag and
rushing out into the early afternoon rain.

Harry had promised her a loaner car while the MG
was in surgery, so her first stop was at the garage.

“Are you sure about this, Harry?” she asked as
they stood in the dusty gloom inside Harry’s garage and eyed the elderly
compact three-door hatchback. Bright orange where the primer managed to
overcome the dull rust tones that prevailed everywhere else, the car showed
every minute of its 15 years of life.

“Ah, no, darling, you know I can trust you to
take care of her,” Harry had replied. Which wasn’t exactly what she'd meant.
What she’d been trying to ask, looking at the geriatric car was:
‘Do you
think it’ll even make it out of Dublin?’
But given Harry’s doting look at
the Beast, as she instantly christened the ugly old car, she clamped her lips
shut and, instead, issued a prayer to St. Christopher, patron saint of
travelers.
And she threw in an extra little prayer to St. Jude, patron saint
of hopeless cases, for good measure.

But to give the devil his
due, Harry knew cars. The ugly Beast purred all the way down from Dublin,
through the sweep of road alongside the River Slaney at Enniscorthy, warbled
through the tight, tight bends on the New Ross Road, and sang all the way down
to Waterford City on the long, straight stretches where she opened up the throttle
and let the car have its head.

She was lucky with the day.
Nature had decided to display the rich colors of an Irish Spring in a dappled
sunshine design, and Cíara had enjoyed the trip. There’d been one tense moment
when she’d been involved in a hostile staring contest with a current year
Mercedes Benz driver over who got the right of way at the intersection just
entering New Ross: A contest she'd easily won, because when you drove a vehicle
that looked like the Beast, other drivers with spanking new paintwork backed
down first, she soon learned.

Walters' client, heiress
Serena McLaughlin, had suggested the ‘test’ of her fiancé’s fidelity quotient
should be done while he was at a jewelry convention in Waterford. The rusted
Beast drew disdainful glances from the doorman of the posh hotel where the
convention was to take place. And, in a show of solidarity with the hotel’s
high standards, Nature’s good mood vanished just as Cíara parked, and the
heavens opened in a heavy rain shower that in moments had the gutters running
with water and debris.

She had no choice but to
make a run for the hotel foyer under the openly disapproving gaze of the
doorman, her overnight bag held aloft but giving scant protection to her
uncovered head. The end result was a lithe redhead in a wet tee shirt who
dripped her way across the foyer to an accompaniment of lecherous glances or
contemptuous looks, depending on the gender and the inclination of the
onlookers. She ignored them all to fix a laser stare on the desk clerk.

            “We’ve
no rooms left, I’m so sorry.” The heavily made up blonde behind the desk didn't
sound the least bit sorry. “There’s a jewelers’ convention here this weekend.”

            Cíara
groaned inwardly. Had she really been so dumb as to expect to sashay into the
hotel and get a room knowing her prey was at a convention in the same hotel?

            “Do
you know of any place that might have vacancies?” she asked imperiously, hoping
to stare the desk clerk into submission. The woman smirked, then brightened as
she said: “I could call the Osprey’s Nook for you.” Cíara’s face must have
registered her reaction to the name –
how could any place called the
Osprey’s Nook even have inside bathrooms?
The clerk added maliciously:
“It’s probably the only place not booked up. This is a very busy weekend for
conventions and festivals.”

            Cíara
nodded, making a snap executive decision that she didn’t want to spend the
night slumbering in the Beast.  Moments later she was heading out into the
downpour with an address and a confirmed booking at the Osprey’s Nook. She
tried to forget the nasty little smirk on the desk clerk's face as she had
handed over her directions.
Just how bad can it be for a couple of nights?
she muttered to herself as she battled the late afternoon traffic.

            Passing
the historic ruin of Reginald’s Tower for the third time, she stopped to ask a
harassed-looking young woman struggling with a briefcase and bulging plastic
grocery bags for directions to the Osprey's Nook. She hoped the pitying look
the woman gave her was just down to a trick of the light.  Ten minutes later,
she was turning the Beast onto a leafy laneway under a small wooden sign
announcing The Osprey’s Nook, Bed and Breakfast. Through the trees, she could
see a tall, forlorn looking Victorian house wrapped in the air of the motel
house in
Psycho
.

With an envious glance at the nearby pub, where a
‘No Vacancies’ sign in red neon mocked her, she gingerly guided the Beast up
the rutted driveway. Standing on the front steps listening to the clanging of
an old-fashioned doorbell echoing deep in the cavernous regions of the house,
she looked back towards the car and thought it suited the house – sort of
rusted and past its prime. Both maybe ready for the wreckers.

            “Lookin’
fer someone?” She hadn't heard the big front door open behind her and jumped at
the raspy cigarettes-and-whisky voice. Part of her mind rejoiced that some
maintenance work obviously took place because the hinges of the door hadn’t
squealed, while the other part was trying not to gasp as she took in the woman
who peered shortsightedly out of the opening.

Small and as wide as she was tall, Grace Muldoon
sported crimson hair, orange Spandex bike shorts, and a man’s bright yellow
shirt that stretched alarmingly over her bosom. To complete the ensemble she wore
white ankle socks and tiny black court shoes with two-inch heels. A cigarette
with an inch-long ash clung precariously to her red-painted bottom lip. Cíara
swallowed over the constriction in her throat, and asked: “Mrs. Muldoon? The
desk clerk at the Tara Bay Hotel called and booked a room for me – Cíara
Somers?”

            “Ah,
you’re the one that snotty bitch down there called me about, are you? And me in
the middle of me dinner, too. Well, don’t just stand there like leftovers, come
on in, girl.” The woman turned back inside the house, leaving Cíara
contemplating escape.
Maybe sleeping in the Beast wouldn’t be so bad, after
all.

            But
fifteen minutes later, she was seated at a broad polished dining table littered
with quilted fabric panels in various stages of completion, and was breathing
in the scent of savory stew so incredible she thought she might faint from
pleasure. Her overnight bag was safely stowed away in a sparklingly clean room
with crisp white real linen sheets and a pale green candlewick bedspread. The
kitchen which adjoined the dining room was so scrubbed that surgery could have
been safely performed on the gleaming counter tops.

            “Betcha
ya were like all them others. Ye took a look at the house and thought, it’s
rubbish?” Grace said without rancor as she plopped a pretty Arklow Pottery
plate piled with beef stew down in front of Cíara, and another side plate with
moist brown soda bread slathered in real butter to go with it. Gratefully,
Cíara noted the woman had removed the cigarette that had earlier dangled from
her bottom lip, but now she prepared to light up again.

            “Stop
me if it bothers you,” Grace challenged. Cíara wondered if any guest had ever
actually had the balls to object to the landlady’s nicotine habit. She doubted
it. Grace picked up one of the half-finished quilt panels and, squinting
through the cigarette smoke, began to pick at the fabric with the tiniest,
neatest stitches Cíara had ever seen.

            “Don’t
you ever get ash on the fabric?” Cíara dared to ask as the stew disappeared and
she began to feel more like herself again.

            “Gawd,
no, my love, I'm really careful not to do that. I learned quilting when me and
my hubby, God Rest His Soul.” The little woman, paused, crossed herself and
rolled her eyes heavenwards. “We lived in the States for a time, and these
beautiful quilts were all the rage. I went to buy one from an old lady who
lived down the road from us out in this little town in West Virginia. She
looked at me, big with our eldest, and gave me such a talking-to.
‘You
shouldna be buying a quilt, Missy,’
she told me.
‘You gotta make your
own if you expect to have a happy family.’

“Well, me Ma had taught me mending and such, but
I’d never thought of needlework as art. That old American lady taught me, and
now I sell them to tourists here and make enough to help me get by. I Love
doing it, too. Sure, it relaxes me, so it does.”

            Cíara
had watched her throughout the speech, amazed that the woman’s fingers never
faltered, that no stitch dared get out of line as she worked and talked. There
was no doubt that appearances could be deceiving, if walking contradictions
like Grace Muldoon were anything to go by.

            The
meal over, she was summarily dismissed to her room. Grace announced that she
was cleaning up and going for a nap, and ‘woe-betide them that disturbs me
rest’. At a loose end and hoping to summon some of the excitement she thought
should be the grace-note on which a case starts, she pulled out the file folder
she had received from Walters and an itinerary for the jewelers’ convention that
she had purloined from the Tara Bay Hotel under the disapproving gaze of the
desk clerk.

            If
the studio photograph was anything to go by, Anton Wallace, fiancé to Walters’
client, was a good-looking man. A little effete for Cíara’s taste – she’d always
held the conviction that any man with nicer hair than her own was definitely
out of the date stakes – but she could see why his fiancée had some anxieties.
The man was built on the slender side, with thick blond hair teasing his
shoulders and swept luxuriously back over his forehead like a young Adonis, as
the old movies used to say. He looked boldly at the camera, deep emerald eyes
taunting the viewer to make the first move.

            And
Cíara was certain lots of women would be happy to make the first move, although
personally she felt that laying your ego on the line like that was probably
foolish. Rejection was one thing, rejection by Adonis too painful to consider.

Unable to resist, she also flicked open the file
folder that contained the information that Frank O’Keefe had given her. She
remembered the bitter note in the older man's voice as he'd explained that the
man he suspected of cuckolding him was a famous writer. She'd done her
research; in fact, had bought one of the J. V. Winters' books from a vast display
at a local store. There was no photograph in the file, and the one on the
book's back cover showed a broad shouldered, sun-glassed figure with a cowboy
hat who could have been Quasimodo for all that was visible of his face. But an
impression of sensuality seemed to reach out from the picture and caress her –
Cíara sucked in a sudden breath and shook herself.

You've been too long without a man in your life,
she thought and then allowed herself a few
moments to fantasize, wondering if maybe he had some terrible deformity that
allowed him to write beautiful love stories but prevented him from ever showing
his face in public for fear he could never be loved. A sort of literary Phantom
of the Opera.