EXECUTION IN E Page 10

  Gethsemane’s maternal grandmother had shared African American folk tales and legends, in addition to family stories, with her—at least until her no-nonsense, psychiatrist mother had put a stop to it. But how could Rosalie know that? Or was she just guessing?

  Rosalie smiled. “I read in a magazine somewhere that your mother’s people came from rural Virginia. An interview you gave.” She held Gethsemane’s gaze for a moment, then tossed her hair, as if the motion changed a channel or turned a page. “Are you, by any chance, performing while we’re here in Dunmullach?”

  “What?” Something Rosalie said nagged at her and the sudden topic change caught Gethsemane off guard. “Um, no, I don’t have any scheduled performances.” How much did she hate Ty that she was trying to score concert tickets the day he died? “Maybe open mic night at the pub, but nothing formal.”

  “That’s too bad. I’d love to hear you play your violin. A Vuillaume from the eighteen hundreds, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, a copy of a Stradivarius ‘Messiah.’ You know violins? You’re a musician?”

  “No. I read that somewhere, too. I have an excellent memory for things I read.” She laughed. “Of course, I had to look Vuillaume violins up on the internet. An impressive pedigree.”

  Gethsemane agreed with her about the violin.

  “Hopefully, someday I’ll get the chance to hear you play it. One of the instrumental passages from ‘The Damnation of Faust.’ If you take requests.” She winked.

  “You’re a Berlioz fan?”

  “I find the story of Faust fascinating. What’s worth selling your soul to the devil? Money, power, love, fame? What’s worth the cost of eternal damnation? What would you give up in order to gain everything you thought you wanted? Do you ever wonder, Gethsemane,” she fixed her with an intense stare and lowered her voice, “how far you’d be willing to go?”

  “Not recently, no.” Had she underestimated Rosalie Baraquin? Though she be but little…What was she capable of? The idea of a connection between Ty’s death and Rosalie didn’t seem so fantastical all of a sudden.

  “I’m sorry.” Rosalie’s face relaxed into a smile and her voice returned to normal. “I’m weirding you out. I can tell. I have that effect on people sometimes. I don’t mean to, I just…” She circled her hand in the air then shrugged. “Sunny complains all the time. Calls me Rosal-eerie. Speaking of whom,” she checked her watch, “I’d better go. Sunny’s been in uber-high-maintenance mode since Ty’s death. You know she thinks he was murdered?”

  Boy, did she know. “I heard something along those lines.”

  “Murder may be a sin, but on occasion, it’s understandable. And sins can be forgiven, right?” She jiggled the bag with the tarot cards. “If you ever change your mind.”

  You’ll be the last one I call. Gethsemane watched her go. Something nagged her. It hit her as Rosalie disappeared around a corner. She’d given dozens, if not hundreds, of interviews in her career. She hadn’t mentioned her grandparents in any of them.

  Thirteen

  Gethsemane, on the chance Father Tim had tracked down a spell to keep spirits on the other side of the veil, aimed her bike toward Our Lady. She halted in front of the Mad Rabbit when she spied Theophilus Derringer and Brian Nishi walking in. Were they distraught over Ty’s death? Or were they, like Rosalie, shedding no tears? One way to find out. She parked her bike and followed them into the pub.

  “May I join you?” she asked as she neared their table.

  Theophilus rose from his seat and pulled over an extra chair. “Please, sit.”

  Brian nodded, then turned his attention back to his drink.

  “I’m sorry about Ty,” she said. “This must be a tough time for you both.”

  “No picnic for you, either.” Theophilus’s mellifluous accent reminded her of a BBC adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. “Considering the circumstances of how, you know…”

  Brian looked up from his drink. “Did you see anyone? Or hear anything? The road to the lighthouse runs right past your cottage.”

  “No,” Gethsemane said, “nothing.” No reason to tell him about Verna’s late-night trek up to Carrick Point, nor her run-in with Vivian. “How long did you know Ty?”

  “Since university,” Theophilus answered. “The three of us, Bri, Ty, and me, were suite mates.”

  “We knew him a damn sight longer than that header he got mixed up with,” Brian said.

  “Sunny, he means.” Theophilus called to a barmaid, “Same again,” then asked Gethsemane, “Did you want anything?”

  “Nothing for me, thanks.” She came to snoop, not to drink. “You didn’t approve of Ty’s relationship with Sunny?”

  “I approved of it the way I’d approve of going before a firing squad,” Brian said.

  Theophilus toyed with his glass. “I’m afraid Sunny was the only one looking forward to the upcoming nuptials. And she was mostly looking forward to the photo ops. I guess Mal may have been looking forward to them. Sunny was paying him a bloody fortune.”

  “He’d have earned it,” Brian said. “Probably would’ve developed a repetitive motion injury of his trigger finger. No amount of money’s worth being saddled with that horrideous cow, not even for as long as it’d take for the ink on annulment documents to dry. Ty should’ve stuck with Verna. Probably be alive now if he had.”

  Gethsemane leaned closer. “Verna? You know Verna?” Because Verna had claimed she didn’t know either of them.

  “Sure, we know her,” Brian said. “Sweet girl. Theo’s sister introduced her to Ty.”

  “My sister apologized to Verna for that.” Theophilus drank a good portion of his drink before continuing. “Ty was my mate and all, and I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Ty didn’t treat Verna as well as she deserved. She was good for Ty, but Ty wasn’t so good for her.”

  Brian slammed a fist on the table. Glasses rattled. A few heads turned. “None of this matters now, Theo, does it? Ty’s dead and what’s past is past.”

  Theophilus didn’t answer right away. “No, none of that matters now.” He emptied his glass. “Where’s that barmaid got to?”

  “Don’t you think you ought to slow down, mate?” Brian arranged Theophilus’s empty glasses, one, two, three, in a row on the table.

  “Are you my nanny now, Bri?” Theophilus ordered a fourth.

  Gethsemane waited until both men finished their drinks and the silence grew uncomfortable. “Do you think Ty killed himself? Sunny doesn’t.”

  Brian swore. “Let me guess. She can’t imagine that anyone would rather be dead than with her. What’s her explanation? Autoerotic asphyxiation gone horribly wrong?”

  Theophilus shot Brian a look. “I don’t see how it could be anything but suicide, given where he was found.”

  “Was Ty suicidal?” Gethsemane thought back to the red flags her mother, a psychiatrist, had spoken about. “Did he put his affairs in order? Make a will? Seem emotionally distant? Distracted?”

  “No more so than any other bloke about to take the plunge.” Brian cringed. “Sorry. Get married.”

  “He lived in what I guess you’d call a bachelor pad,” Theophilus said. “He had to sell his apartment and furniture—”

  Brian interrupted. “Sunny made it clear none of his furniture would be welcome in the family home.”

  “Give notice at work—he and Sunny planned to live in the States, you see,” Theophilus continued. “Don’t know if he made a will.”

  “Signed a prenup,” Brian said. “Sunny’s idea.”

  “What about visiting old friends?” Or ex-fiancées? Had he tracked down Verna to say a final goodbye? “Making amends with family? Ruminating on past events, losses?”

  A glance that Gethsemane couldn’t decipher passed between Theophilus and Brian before Theophilus answered. “Ty wasn’t one for dwelling on the past. No profit in it, he said.”


  “Ty focused on future plans, not past accomplishments,” Brian said. “Always had an eye out for his next big opportunity. As far as he was concerned, anything that happened more than six months ago was ancient history and best forgotten.”

  “Doesn’t sound as if he was at high risk for suicide.”

  “But who would’ve killed him?” Theophilus asked. “Who could have? Verna’s not got killer instinct. Plus she’s half Ty’s size. No way she could’ve gotten him over a railing.”

  “Sunny wouldn’t have done it,” Brian said. “I don’t doubt she’s capable of murder. If Ty had turned up dead after the wedding, she’d be number one on the suspect list. She’d probably even post the kill shots on her social media feed. But she’d never have ruined her wedding plans and lost out on all those influencer endorsement deals.”

  “Not even if she discovered Ty loved her money more than he loved her?” Gethsemane asked.

  Brian shook his head. “She knew Ty was marrying her money. She didn’t care, as long as he played his part in front of whatever smartphone camera happened to be pointed in their direction. She turns that little girl voice on and off like a tap and makes cow eyes at any male over the age of twelve she thinks may be of use to her, but the helpless female routine is just that, a routine. She’s as cold-blooded and pragmatic as they come and suffers no illusions about what she’s—she was—getting into with Ty.”

  “Besides,” Theophilus said, “Sunny’s also too small to have hoisted Ty over a railing.”

  “You’re both convinced Ty took his own life?”

  Theophilus shrugged. “What other explanation is there?”

  “Doubt we’ll ever know why,” Brian said. “In the end, does it matter? Dissecting Ty’s past searching for an answer won’t bring Ty back, will it? I say leave it alone.”

  She couldn’t leave it alone. Not after Sunny barged into her house, insistent a murder had occurred. And not after she caught her friend’s girlfriend in a lie about not knowing the dead guy’s best friends.

  She flagged down a barmaid. “On second thought, I’ll have that drink.”

  Not even her favorite whiskey, Bushmills, kept her from ruminating on Sunny’s and Verna’s behavior. Was Sunny vicious enough to kill the man she planned to marry if she found out he’d made a play for a woman he’d dumped? Had Verna really told him to go away? With two big lies to her credit, she ranked low on the credibility scale right now. And what about Vivian? Had she gone back up to the lighthouse later that evening? She seemed protective of her older sister. Could she and Verna have teamed up to toss Ty off the catwalk? But how would they get the rope around his neck?

  She continued to brood as she pedaled home. Was Brian’s joke about autoerotic asphyxiation really a joke? Or did Ty have a kink that a killer might have exploited to trick him into participating in his own murder? If he’d put the rope around his own neck and climbed up onto the railing, a push would have sent him over. Even a small woman could shove an unsuspecting narcissist off a railing he’d perched on. Sunny, Verna, Vivian. Of the three, Verna was the one who’d lied. Why? Sure, she wouldn’t want anyone to know she’d been one of the last people to see Ty alive, but why lie about knowing the groomsmen? Even if you forgot you knew Brian, you certainly wouldn’t forget you knew a guy named Theophilus.

  Suddenly, a chill shot down Gethsemane’s spine. The hair on her neck and arms stood up as she stopped her bike in the middle of the road. She rubbed at the gooseflesh on her arms and looked around. Nothing but trees. She listened. No Tchaikovsky.

  “Eamon?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

  Silence. She squinted to peer into the woods that surrounded her. The “insufferable gloom” Edgar Allan Poe described in “The Fall of the House of Usher” crept over her. She shook her head to clear it. She’d ridden this way hundreds of times without incident. What creeped her out now?

  “Eamon,” she said, her voice a little louder, “if that’s you, knock it off. You’re scaring me.”

  Sunset loomed on the horizon. The gathering gold and orange and pink filled her with angst instead of awe.

  “Eamon?” she whispered again. “Please let that be you.”

  An ear-splitting wail rent the twilight. Gethsemane froze, a breath caught between lung and throat.

  “It’s a banshee.”

  She yelped and spun, clenched fists raised. The Pashley crashed to the road.

  Eamon appeared before her. His frightened mauve aura failed to reassure her.

  “Jaysus, Mary, and…” Gethsemane exhaled her relief and dropped her hands. “What the—”

  “Did you hear what I said?” Eamon asked. “It’s a banshee.”

  “A banshee.” She ran through her mental bestiary. “A folkloric female believed to be a harbinger of—”

  “Of nothing good.” Eamon pointed at the Pashley. The bike righted itself and rolled to Gethsemane. “Get on and let’s go. I’ll walk you home.”

  She climbed onto the bike. “A banshee is a harbinger of death. Hearing a banshee’s cry means—”

  “There’ll be another violent death in Dunmullach soon.”

  Fourteen

  She didn’t sleep that night. Images of Ty hanging from the lighthouse plagued her when she closed her eyes and thoughts of Verna’s lies, Sunny’s machinations, and Vivian’s possible involvement plagued her when she opened them. Every creak and groan of settling walls and floorboards reminded her of the banshee. Paranormal experiences, both pleasant and deadly, over the past several months meant she couldn’t dismiss the wail as harmless superstition. She sighed and threw the covers back. Some nights, she missed being a skeptic.

  She went down to the kitchen. Nothing in the fridge looked sleep-inducing. Coffee was out of the question. She picked up the phone.

  Niall did not sound happy to hear from her. “Do you have any fecking idea what time it is?” He yawned.

  “It’s late.” Too late to play coy. “Could Ty have been murdered? How sure is the coroner about suicide?”

  Niall’s voice faded, as if he held the phone away from his mouth. Not so far away that she couldn’t hear the torrent of swear words he unleashed. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I’m not doing anything to you. Except disrupting your sleep. I’m concerned a murder may be misclassified as a suicide and a murderer may escape justice.”

  Niall sighed. She imagined him massaging the bridge of his nose, his tell when she got on his nerves. “Not every case is the Eamon McCarthy case.”

  “And Eamon McCarthy’s death isn’t the only one to have been mislabeled.”

  “What dosser’s doin’ a number on ya to get you all worked up about this?” She thought she heard him mumble, “So I can throttle them.”

  “Ty’s fiancée is convinced he was murdered.”

  “I heard she paid you a visit.” He chuckled. “Boy, did I hear about it. She put on a holy show at the station. Sutton threatened to arrest her for interfering with garda business. That wedding photographer showed up and managed to corral her and coax her out of the building. Poor Sutton went home early with a headache. You didn’t take her rants seriously?”

  “Not at first. And not only because of what she said. I talked to Theophilus Derringer and Brian Nishi.”

  “The groomsmen?”

  “Yes. And neither of them remembered Ty as suicidal. They’ve known him for ages, and they described a man looking forward to the next phase of his life.” A phase filled with crazy amounts of money. “They couldn’t understand why he’d take his own life.”

  “But they agree he did?”

  “Only because they couldn’t think of anyone who might have wanted him dead who, physically, could have killed him. The main suspects are half Ty’s size.”

  “Suspects? Plural?”

  Damn, he caught that. Note to self, watch your
grammar when speaking to a cop. “Sunny…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  “And?”

  Gethsemane took a deep breath and silently apologized to Frankie. “And the Cunningham sisters.”

  Another sigh. “What do you know?”

  She told him about her collision with Vivian and Verna’s late-night meeting with Ty at the lighthouse and her failure to acknowledge her acquaintance with his groomsmen.

  “Maybe Verna didn’t know Nishi and Derringer well,” Niall said. “Maybe she forgot them.”

  “Forgot a big, blond guy with a scar on his face and a name like Theophilus?”

  “Point taken. And even if she had legit forgotten Nishi and Derringer, she wouldn’t have forgotten meeting her ex a few hours before he died. So she lied.” A pause. “Have you spoken to Frankie?”

  “No. I don’t particularly want to. He already knows about her meeting Ty. She told him she begged Ty to leave her alone. He seemed to believe her.”

  “You doubt her?”

  “No. Not exactly. Well, maybe.” She searched for words. “I mean, her story sounds reasonable. A jerk from her past threatens her current relationship so she tells him to get lost. And I understand why she wouldn’t tell Frankie about the meeting. But…”

  “But catching her in a second lie, a lie that doesn’t serve much purpose, makes you wonder.”

  “And there’s Vivian. She’s quick to rush to her sister’s defense. Is her loyalty limited to verbal attacks or would she amp it up a level?”

  “Hanging a man is amping it up more than a level. And Vivian’s no bigger that Sunny and Verna, so how—” He swore. “Now you’ve got me doing it.”

  “You’ll take another peek at the coroner’s report?”

  “Yes, I’ll look, if you promise to hang up and not call me again before sunrise.”

  “I promise. I—”

  The call ended.

  Eamon materialized. “Thank you. And you don’t have to figure out who killed Ty to keep him from haunting Carrick Point. Just keep him from being wrongly buried in unhallowed ground as a suicide.”