How to Trace a Cold Case, page 16
“So how was Suitcase Salesman and the break-in connected to the man’s death if Farmhand Kerry disappeared months before?”
I shrugged. “Maybe the salesman found out about the murder and confronted Oscar. Oscar paid him to leave town immediately, which didn’t leave him time to pick up his suitcase. We’ll never know what actually happened. Just need to be happy we identified Oscar as the killer, and we identified the victim, or at least know his background and that he was from Kerry.”
I didn’t like unanswered questions. However, we’d cleared Kiernan’s grandmother of having committed a horrific crime and his mentor from being involved with the murder. Preserving Kiernan’s fond memories of loved ones and getting his life back on track was what mattered.
And hopefully this would help get my life back in order.
While waiting for the garda to take Winnie’s statement, we stopped in to visit Julia. Neither Elvis nor Julia greeted us at the woman’s coconut-scented room. She was sitting in silence, staring out the window.
I rapped on the open door, and Julia turned to us, concern wrinkling her forehead. “I just heard the garda is in Winnie Sheehan’s room. Hope she’s okay.”
I nodded, entering. “She’s just discussing a matter with him.” Wait a sec. “I’m sorry—did you just call her Winnie Sheehan? Thought her last name was Dwyer?”
Julia let out a faint laugh. “Fifty years later I still sometimes call her by her maiden name. Knew her as Winnie Sheehan when we attended school together. Can’t believe Sheehan just popped into my head.”
Luckily, it had since the name rang a bell.
“Was she by chance related to James Sheehan?”
The rasher and pork supplier who’d filed charges against Oscar and then gotten in a brawl with him because Oscar had cut off his livelihood.
“He was her father. Surprised a young lass such as yourself would have known the man. He died many years back.”
“Read about him in an old paper.” I glanced over at Biddy. “We should see how Winnie’s doing.”
Before leaving, Julia insisted we slather coconut-scented lotion on our hands. The bottle was already a quarter empty. Would have to pick her up another one.
Once out in the hallway, I grabbed Biddy’s arm and propelled her toward the entrance rather than Winnie’s room. We flew out the front door and into the parking lot. I reminded Biddy of James Sheehan’s connection to Oscar Dunphy.
“Janey,” she muttered. “Winnie made it sound like Oscar was just grand, giving kids free sweets and all. Why wouldn’t she have mentioned her father’s troubles with the dodgy man?”
I told Biddy about Oscar’s loan shark ledger.
“Right, then.” Biddy looked baffled. “Was she afraid if she brought up her father’s troubles with Oscar, she’d be raising suspicions that he’d killed Oscar, instead of Oscar having killed Farmhand Kerry?”
“Yet if her dad killed Oscar, how does Winnie know that Oscar had a missing toe?”
“This can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
Garda Higgins exited the building. He couldn’t discuss the details of his conversation with Winnie except to acknowledge that she’d confirmed our story. We headed inside to discuss a different variation of the woman’s story.
Winnie sat on her bed, clutching the St. Brigid’s cross around her neck, her hand trembling. She was awfully upset about the death of a farmhand seventy years ago, whose name she hadn’t even known.
Biddy and I pulled up chairs across from her.
“I’m glad it’s finally over,” Winnie said. “After all these years it’s been proven that our man was the victim of foul play.”
Biddy and I exchanged skeptical glances.
Biddy gestured to the woman’s necklace. “That’s a lovely cross. It’s done a fab job protecting you all these years, seeing as you’ve lived a long life. Legend has it that besides protective powers, the cross brings one peace.”
Winnie nodded, a tear slipping down her cheek.
Biddy wore a sympathetic expression. “It hasn’t brought you peace, has it?”
The woman shook her head. “Nothing will except the truth.” She choked back a sob.
Biddy sat on one side of Winnie, I sat on the other. I placed a comforting hand on her arm.
“The farmhand was a lie,” she said. “It was Oscar Dunphy’s remains buried there. I knew the man was missing a toe because his shoe and sock slipped off when I was dragging his body down the stairs.”
Biddy and I gasped in shocked disbelief.
“Janey,” Biddy muttered. “You killed the fella and buried him by yourself?”
“His mother helped me.”
Oscar’s mother helped drag her son’s body down the same steps Kiernan freaked out about if someone got mud on them?
“It was actually her idea. I never should have agreed to it, but I hadn’t much choice, seeing as I’d killed him.” She clutched her necklace.
“Was it because of your father and his business dealings with Oscar?” I asked.
Anger sharpened the woman’s soft features, and she pressed her glossed lips into a thin line. “The man ruined my family. My father lost the farm when I was in school. It destroyed my parents’ marriage. He died at not even forty years old, leaving my mum to raise me and my younger brothers. My father never even met my children, his grandchildren.”
Biddy slipped an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “You’re going to be grand.”
“’Twas an accident. I went there to beg him to not press charges against my husband, who was set on revenge for what Oscar had done to my family. Henri demanded money to keep quiet over the man’s unfair and shady dealings. The Dunphys were a powerful family. I was afraid of what he might do to my husband.” She nibbled on a purple fingernail. “The horrible man made advances toward me. I pushed him away, and he fell against the brick fireplace. His mum heard the commotion and came running into the room. She stared in shock at her son lying dead on the floor. Rather than breaking down crying or threatening to ring the garda, she said her son had gotten what he deserved.”
“That seems brutal,” Biddy said.
“Before her husband’s death, she’d discovered her son was swindling many of the locals. Raging, she’d told her husband about it. Turned out he’d already known yet hadn’t done a thing to stop it. To make matters worse, he went against her wishes, leaving the house to Oscar once she was gone. She felt Ernest was the lad most deserving of the estate as well as the business.”
“Where did you bury him?” I asked.
The garden shed wasn’t public knowledge, so I wanted to confirm she was aware of the detail. It seemed crazy that people confessed to crimes they didn’t commit. However, Ian had falsely confessed to his brother’s murder, certain he was protecting his lover, Rhona. I wanted to make sure Winnie wasn’t protecting someone.
“Under the gardening shed. With the help of a man.”
“A salesman for the grocery store?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. He had some sort of dealings with the Dunphys. He stopped by in the middle of it all. Not only did he offer to keep quiet but also to assist us with burying the body if Mrs. Dunphy made it worth his while. She paid him a load of quid to leave town without seeing a soul and to never return.”
Precisely why he hadn’t taken time to get his suitcase.
Biddy wore a puzzled expression. “What did the store’s break-in have to do with this if Oscar’s death happened at his house?”
“Mrs. Dunphy and I staged the break-in. She thought that claiming her son was attacked during a robbery would lead to fewer questions and people wouldn’t be so suspicious.”
“And nobody ever questioned Oscar’s disappearance?” I asked.
“Not like the nasty bloke had a wife or friends. He and his brother, Ernest, didn’t get on, so he believed his mother that Oscar wanted nothing further to do with the family and was starting a new life in Dublin.”
It was amazing what people got away with before the internet. Two fabricated life stories in one family. Maybe I wasn’t the only secret in my family’s closet.
“Did you be telling anyone what happened?” Biddy asked.
“Merely Henri. Had to tell him. My dream had always been to marry and raise a family here. After all that, I couldn’t stay here and live with what I’d done. We only returned to the area twenty years back.”
Life was strange. Julia had dreamed of moving to Dublin with her friend Annie, but she ended up staying in Kilcarrigy. Whereas unfortunate circumstances had forced poor Winnie to give up her dream of raising a family in her small hometown and instead live in Dublin.
“It was self-defense and over seventy years ago,” I said. “The guards surely won’t pursue charges.”
I hated to have to tell them. But how could I tell Kiernan the truth without telling the police?
And despite the horrible situation and the fact that Oscar had been a nasty human being, I felt an obligation to Skelly. I’d grown quite fond of Skelly...though not Oscar.
Eighteen
Garda Higgins came straight over to the nursing home and took Winnie’s confession. Ultimately, it was the detective inspector’s decision on how to proceed. Garda Higgins believed the case would be closed—ruled as self-defense and not intentional homicide. He promised to do everything he could to keep Winnie’s name from being disclosed to the public. Why ruin the last few years of the poor woman’s life?
He agreed to allow Biddy and me to tell Kiernan the story in person before he visited the estate and shared Skelly’s identity. Kiernan would be relieved that Ernest’s name had been cleared as both the killer and victim. Even though I’d pursued the investigation after having promised not to, all had turned out well in the end.
“It’s better Oscar having been the victim rather than the killer,” Biddy said.
I nodded. “If Ernest ever discovered the truth, I’m sure it was years later, and he never shared it with Kiernan’s grandma Isobel.”
“That’s the story we’re sticking with.”
That Ernest had raced after the inn’s owner to retrieve the salesman’s suitcase could have been at his mother’s request, not because he’d wanted to destroy evidence.
Thankfully, it hadn’t rained much since Storm Skelly, so the estate’s drive had dried up. No more pushing cars out of mud ruts. The crime scene tape was gone. The sun was shining. But I feared a dark cloud still loomed inside the house, and inside Kiernan Moffat.
Surprisingly, the appraiser answered the door with a smile, well-groomed hair, clean-shaven face, and crisply pressed tan slacks and a white button-up oxford. He ushered us inside, where a green shag rug replaced the Turkish one.
“Please excuse the hideous rug. Brought it down from a bedroom. Merely a temporary replacement while the other is being professionally cleaned.”
He led us up the spotless wooden steps. I envisioned Winnie and Oscar’s mom having dragged the man’s body down the stairs and his shoe and sock slipping off to reveal his missing toe. A shiver crawled over me. When sharing Winnie’s story with Kiernan, it probably wasn’t a good idea to mention specifics as to how the two women had hauled the body to the shed.
The library’s open red drapes welcomed us with sunshine and the aroma of freshly brewed tea mingled with a vanilla-scented candle covering up the stench of cigar smoke.
“Fancy a spot of tea?” Kiernan asked.
Biddy and I nodded, sitting on the brown leather sofa while he prepared our beverages. He placed a silver tray with tea service for two on the cocktail table in front of the sofa. He relaxed in a brown wingback chair across from us with a teacup.
“I, er, have something to tell you?” I said, finally finding my voice.
He nodded. “Yes, I know.”
Argh. Garda Higgins had promised to let us tell him.
“Ah, yes, the show’s producer, Camille, rang and told me about your visit to the set.”
Based on his calm demeanor, his call with the producer had gone well. Or he was merely happy to have closure and to move on to his next venture.
“That appraiser fella you mentioned is a total eejit,” Biddy said.
He smiled at Biddy. “Yes, I heard you succeeded at putting the gobshite in his proper place. As you did Camille.”
“Sorry if our visit caused you any problems,” I said.
“On the contrary. Camille was quite humbled by it and has changed her tune. Reality set in, and she no longer fancies the idea of losing the show’s top appraiser and having the ratings tank.”
“Ah, brilliant,” Biddy said. “That’s fab news.”
He eased out a calm breath. “Right, then. I need to thank you both for having my back when others didn’t. Even when it was no benefit to yourself to do so.” He glanced at the window, a faint mist in his blue eyes, his cheeks flushing. “Don’t believe anyone has ever done such a thing for me before.”
If the man started crying, I hadn’t a clue how I’d react.
He stood from his chair. Instead of wrapping us in a group hug, he went over and grabbed four books off the desk. He handed Biddy a blue cloth-covered book with a gilded peacock on the front.
“The first illustrated copy of Pride and Prejudice with a preface by George Saintsbury, illustrations by Hugh Thomson. Only two hundred and fifty copies were printed in 1894.”
Biddy stared in awe at the book. “Janey,” she muttered. “Will have to be getting one of those floor safes to keep the yoke in. It’s bloody lovely. Much better than that Doctor Zhivago, written by Boris Pasternak.”
Kiernan gave her a sharp nod. “Fair play to ya. I knew you could read.”
She smiled. “Thanks a mil.”
Not just for the gift, but also his confidence in her ability to read.
He handed me a three-volume set of pristine orange cloth-covered books with gold writing and a crown on the front. The spine read Letters, Queen Victoria, 1837-1861. My heart raced.
“The correspondence covers a fascinating period from the time Victoria ascended the throne until she lost her dear Prince Albert. Should make for an interesting read. First edition, of course.”
The oldest book I owned was The Poky Little Puppy with a frayed spine, worn edges, and my name written in pen all over the inside cover.
“These are...incredible.” I blinked back the tears blurring my vision. “Thank you.” I hugged the books to my chest, breathing in the scent of vintage paper and cloth covers.
Kiernan cleared his throat. “You’re welcome. Yet let’s not get emotional, shall we?”
I was going to become even more emotional if he took the books back after what I was about to confess.
“Um, there’s actually something else I have to tell you.”
Biddy sprang to her feet. “That can wait. We must craic on. I’m late for...a date.”
I gave her pant leg a solid tug.
She reluctantly dropped down onto the couch.
Kiernan sat across from us. I explained that I’d broken my promise not to pursue the investigation. However, I really hadn’t since it was purely by chance, as usual, that we’d solved the case and correctly identified Skelly. His expression remained unreadable until I finished.
A relieved look washed over him. “Ernest wasn’t involved in any manner?”
I shook my head. “He hadn’t a clue. He and Oscar were estranged, and Ernest never had a desire to reconcile.”
That was my guess anyway.
Moisture filled the appraiser’s blue eyes. He peered back over at the chair by the window where he’d read Ernest’s entire vintage book collection as a boy. “I shouldn’t have cared so much about what other people thought. What matters is what I think and how I felt about the man. Thank you for ensuring his reputation and my fond memories remain intact.”
I choked down a lump of emotion.
Biddy sniffled next to me.
“I agree that there’s no need for mentioning this Winnie woman’s name to the public,” Kiernan said. “The news and social media will crucify the poor thing and make her remaining days sheer hell. I’ll discuss the matter with the garda.”
“Speaking of social media...” I filled the appraiser in on the viral photo of Biddy and me circulating on the internet, possibly the news by now. “We’d like to defend ourselves against this idiot’s lies.”
“And clear our reputation as skeleton scavengers and body snatchers,” Biddy said.
“Standing up for yourselves is the bloody right thing to do. It’s what I should have done from the start before things became such a mess. Who knew how wretched people would become?”
Biddy and I just needed to figure out how to turn the scandal in our favor without making matters even worse.
“Despite everything, suppose I should give Oscar a proper burial,” Kiernan said. “Can’t be putting him in the family plot, the way Ernest felt about his brother and after his mother’s involvement with covering up her son’s death.”
“Have him cremated,” I said. “Spread his ashes somewhere else on the estate instead of under that large oak tree.”
Kiernan nodded.
The doorbell rang, echoing up the stairs and startling us.
Kiernan stood, adjusted his collar, smoothed a hand over his hair, and popped a piece of spearmint gum into his mouth. “Sorry. I have a meeting.”
It was apparently an important one.
As he escorted us down the stairs, Biddy leaned in toward me. “We didn’t have time to ask him about the castle’s episode.”
I shrugged. It’d have to wait.
He opened the door and greeted the show’s producer with a smile. Her blond hair was pulled back in a twist. An emerald-green sheath dress and matching coat brightened the green in her eyes, as did her green eyeshadow and liner.
Hmm... Fancy meeting.
Rather than giving Biddy and me the evil eye, the woman smiled sweetly. “Nice to see you both. Guess I’ll be seeing you again in April. That castle looks like a lovely location.” She flashed Kiernan a flirty smile. “We’ll have to take a quick trip over to check it out.”
