EXECUTION IN E Page 18

  “Everything’s such a bloody mess.” He sat on a bench and ran his hands through his hair. “It was lovely for a while, it really was. But the lies. I just can’t get past the lies.”

  “I’m really sorry, Frankie, I am. I wish I had some magic spell that could turn the clock back two weeks and keep all this from ever happening. But I doubt even Father Tim’s grimoires contain any incantations powerful enough to do that.”

  “Mostly because magic’s not real.”

  Gethsemane bit her tongue.

  Frankie scuffed his shoe in the dirt. “Maybe I should just give up women. My track record…”

  “Don’t say that Frankie.” She sat next to him. “Not every woman on the planet is like Yseult and Verna. Give the rest of female humanity a chance.”

  A grin softened Frankie’s expression. “Listen to you, undercover romantic. I haven’t exactly noticed you out there giving male humanity a chance.”

  She blushed and shrugged. “That’s not where I am at this point in my life. But just because I’m feeling monk-ish doesn’t mean you should be.”

  “Do as you say, not as you do? Or don’t do.” He nudged her shoulder.

  “Something like that.” She rose and held out a hand. “So where can I take you? Not home, not the pub, Sutton’s people are crawling all over the village.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled himself up. “How about Our Lady? A cup of Father Tim’s Bewley’s will set things right.”

  “Frankie, it’s tea.”

  “A cup of tea always sets things right.”

  Twenty-Four

  Father Tim welcomed Gethsemane and Frankie into the rectory’s kitchen. He concurred with Frankie’s assessment of Bewley’s restorative powers as he poured around the table. “My oul’ wan used to say, ‘when the world is going to hell in a handbasket, stop and wet the leaves.’ Tea helps you gain perspective.”

  Gethsemane spooned sugar into her teacup as steam wafted up from the reddish liquid and surrounded her with robust, malty comfort. “Tim, in the midst of the apocalypse, if the world was literally going to hell, I believe you’d offer the four horsemen a cuppa.”

  Frankie sipped his tea without joining the banter.

  Gethsemane laid a hand on his arm. “We’ll find her Frankie.” As she withdrew her hand, she brushed against papers stacked near the edge of the table. “Sorry, Tim.” She bent to scoop them up.

  “Don’t worry about those. Just research I’m doing for my lecture on economic, racial, and ethnic disparities in application of the death penalty I’m preparing for the Dumullach Ethical Society next month.” He set the papers aside. “Why don’t you try calling Verna again, Frankie?”

  “What’s the point, Father? She’ll see it’s my number and ignore the call. She doesn’t want to speak to me. Can’t say I blame her, the way I reacted.”

  “The news came at you out of left field,” Gethsemane said. “You handled it better than most.”

  “I’ve an idea.” Tim handed his phone to Frankie. “Why don’t you call her using my number? She wouldn’t recognize that.” He excused himself. “I need to go check on—”

  Loud clanging and thumping emanated from somewhere below the kitchen.

  “Jaysus,” Frankie said. “What was that?”

  “Sounds like the old boiler kicking over,” Tim said.

  “It’s July.” Gethsemane frowned. “Why would the boiler be on in July?”

  “Don’t know,” Tim answered. “July or December, that one shouldn’t be on at all. Haven’t used it to heat the place since renovations five years ago when we had a furnace installed.”

  “You don’t have ghosts in the basement, do you, Father?” Frankie forced a laugh.

  “No, I don’t,” Tim answered, not laughing at all.

  Gethsemane and Frankie followed him to the basement steps. They halted at the landing as more clanging and thumping reverberated off the walls of the narrow stairwell.

  “There are three of us,” Gethsemane encouraged.

  They crept downstairs, single file. Gethsemane recited baseball stats in her head. Father Tim mouthed a prayer. Silent Frankie wore a grim expression. The stairs opened into a dank, mildewed, unfinished room. Jumbles of buckets, brooms, old candlesticks, and sagging boxes lined the walls.

  Frankie hefted one of the candlesticks. “Brass.” He handed another to Gethsemane.

  “The boiler room’s that way.” Tim led them past the stacks of junk.

  The hum of machinery grew louder as they approached the boiler room. A heavy steel door fitted with an ancient lock guarded the room’s entrance. A small porthole cut into the door’s upper third provided the only visualization of the interior.

  Gethsemane stood on tiptoe. She glimpsed white fumes. Off balance, she lowered herself to her flat feet. “Should there be smoke?” she asked. She touched the scar on her forehead, chilled by the memory of fire at St. Dymphna’s.

  Tim peered through the porthole. “Those are exhaust fumes. And no, they shouldn’t be in there.” He grabbed Frankie’s hand as the latter reached for the door’s handle. “No, don’t. I can’t vouch for the ventilation in this area. You could gas us all.”

  Gethsemane jumped to get another glimpse inside. “Hey, I think there’s someone in there.” She pounded on the door.

  Tim cupped his hands around the porthole and pressed his face against the glass. “You’re right. Someone’s in there.”

  Tim tried the door handle. It didn’t move. Frankie tried it. Nothing. They pushed, pulled, jiggled, and tugged at it together.

  “It’s jammed,” Tim said.

  The men pounded and kicked at the door. Frankie smashed at the lock with the candlestick. The stick bent. The lock held fast. Frankie slammed the end of the candlestick against the porthole, only to drop it as the impact of the brass against glass as thick as the door caused a kick back forceful enough to leave him doubled over in pain, hands tucked into armpits.

  Gethsemane spied Tim’s phone protruding from Frankie’s pocket. She grabbed it. “What’s Verna’s phone number?

  Frankie recited it from memory. Gethsemane punched digits, then held her breath, hoping she was wrong. One second, two seconds, three seconds. The call connected. A musical ringtone, a tinny rendition of “Put on a Happy Face,” played. She heard the notes, clear and distinct, in the ear she held pressed against the phone. Her other ear picked up a faint echo from someplace near. Very near. She lowered the phone. Music was still audible. She pivoted toward the boiler room. She felt sick.

  The tinny notes of “Put on a Happy Face,” almost imperceptible through steel and over pounding, played from inside the boiler room.

  Twenty-Five

  Gethsemane sat on a bench in the church cloister, her arm around Frankie. She watched as Scene of Crime gardaí wheeled a stretcher burdened with a covered body toward an ambulance. Frankie did not watch. Father Tim laid a hand on Frankie’s shoulder and said a prayer. In the distance, Sutton and Niall conferred with a woman wearing a fire brigade jacket.

  Niall broke away. “They’ve given the all-clear to go back into the rectory, Father.” He laid a hand on Frankie’s other shoulder. “I’m really sorry.”

  Frankie shook priest, guard, and Gethsemane off and walked into the churchyard. He sank down next to a statue and buried his face against his knees.

  Niall cleared his throat. “Sutton, uh, thinks it’s—”

  Gethsemane cut him off. “Don’t say suicide. You know it wasn’t.”

  “I said, ‘Sutton thinks.’” Niall looked over his shoulder at his colleague. “Only he doesn’t really. He’s not thick. The violent deaths of three people involved in the cover up of a fourth death. That’s too much to explain away, even for him.”

  “So why even suggest suicide?”

  “Because,” Niall said, “‘Verna Cunningham contribute
d to the death of Ty Lismore and murdered Brian Nishi, then killed herself out of remorse or to avoid prosecution’ sounds better to the Superintendent than ‘we have a serial revenge killer on the loose in Dunmullach and we can’t locate either of the two most likely suspects.”

  “Agnes and Theo,” Gethsemane said.

  Niall nodded.

  “Where’s Vivian? Someone needs to tell her about her sister.”

  “Still at the station. Sutton will notify her.”

  “In a gentle and sensitive manner, no doubt.”

  “Give the man some credit. Informing family members of the deaths of loved ones is, unfortunately, part of his job.”

  “Any idea how someone got into the basement?” Tim asked. “No one came through the upstairs. I’d have seen them.”

  “Jimmied the lock on the basement door. Which doesn’t prove Verna didn’t do it. Wood’s nearly rotten. A baby could’ve yanked it off. And the lock on the boiler room door could have been jammed from the inside or out. The machine was connected to a timer that turned it on.”

  “Do you really think Verna was a small electronics expert?” Gethsemane said. “That she rigged a timer to turn on a boiler.”

  Niall’s back straightened with indignation. “I didn’t say I thought—”

  Gethsemane held up a hand.

  A commotion at the edge of the yard drew everyone’s attention. Two women, anemic and reedy, and a rotund man, as ruddy as his companions were pale, argued with the uniformed gardaí positioned as barricades between the crime scene and the rest of the village. They gesticulated and cast increasingly unpleasant glances toward Father Tim.

  “Oh, heaven have mercy, not now.” The priest sighed. “The divil himself is less of a pain in my—” He crossed himself.

  “Who are they?” Gethsemane asked.

  “Folks looking to get arrested.” Niall headed over to offer the uniforms reinforcement. His arrival prompted angry glances in Tim’s direction from the women and a wave from the man.

  “Who are they?” Gethsemane repeated.

  “They’re the president, vice president, and secretary of the Dunmullach Ethical Society, come to discuss my lecture. Meaning criticize it before they’ve even heard it. I forgot we had a meeting.”

  Gethsemane snapped her fingers as the Ethical Society members, with final displeased looks at Tim, yielded to the gardaí and departed. “Your lecture! Tim, that’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  “The death penalty. Don’t you see?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Call it a side effect of being from the U.S. Death penalty cases are always in the news. The three deaths we’ve had here—Ty, Brian, and—” She cast a glance at Frankie as the ambulance pulled away with its tragic cargo. “Verna. Hanging, lethal injection, and the gas chamber. They’re all methods of execution.”

  Gethsemane and Tim stared at each other for a moment as the impact of what she’d said sank in.

  They yelled simultaneously, “Inspector Sutton!”

  He frowned, then excused himself from the fire brigade woman and strode toward the cloister. Niall hurried to catch up with him. Frankie looked up from his grief but stayed put by the statue.

  “Why is it, Brown,” Sutton began, “that whenever you get that gleam in your eye, I regret quitting smoking?”

  “At least she’s not Sunny Markham putting on a holy show.” Niall elbowed his colleague in the ribs.

  “What do you want?” Sutton asked.

  “To find Agnes Haywood and Theophilus Derringer before it’s too late.”

  “Before they make it to an airport and onto a plane out of the country? Yes, I—”

  “No. Before the executioner carries out their sentences. They’re not murderers, Inspector Sutton, they’re the next victims.”

  Sutton worked a muscle in his jaw that allowed a grudging, “Go on.”

  “Ty was hanged, Brian was executed by lethal injection, Verna died in a gas chamber. Someone’s decided that crew escaped punishment for their roles in Jared Ely’s death for long enough and now they’re pronouncing sentence. Agnes and Theo were both in the car the night Jared drowned. They both put the blame on Jared and they both covered it up.”

  “They’ve been weighed in the balance and found wanting,” Tim said.

  Sutton patted his pockets as if looking for cigarettes. “Damn.”

  “You don’t believe me,” Gethsemane said.

  “I do believe you. That’s why I want a cigarette.”

  “Who in the village, besides Agnes and Theophilus knew what happened in New Orleans?” Niall asked.

  Good question. Sunny? Would Ty have told her? Would she have cared if he had? Rosalie? “Rosalie’s from New Orleans, or somewhere around that area. She might have heard about Jared’s death in the local media.” Or read about it in her tarot cards.

  “Hearing about a death is a far cry from murdering those you hold responsible for it,” Tim said.

  “We need to know more about Jared Ely,” Gethsemane said.

  “If you’re right,” Sutton said, “and I grant that you probably are, Derringer and Miss Haywood don’t have time for us to do a deep dive on Ely. No one’s seen them since we found Nishi’s body. They haven’t answered their phones nor tried to contact anyone.” He smoothed a hand over his thinning hair. “We may be too late as it is.”

  “Which of the two is most likely to, you know—” Gethsemane made a slicing motion across her throat, “—first?”

  “Most likely to get it, you mean?” Frankie joined the group. “Theophilus Derringer. He’d be next on the list.”

  Sutton frowned at him. “You know that how?”

  “Speaking as a man who has a shite track record with women. Whoever’s doing this is someone close to Ely, someone who loved him, would do anything—even kill—for him. A blood relative.”

  “Like Vivian and Verna,” Gethsemane said. “Blood’s thicker than everything. Those two would have sacrificed anyone to save each other.”

  Frankie swallowed hard before continuing. “This person, this executioner, he or she is sending a message. They’d save the best—or the worst, depending on how you look at it—for last.”

  “Agnes is the worst?”

  “Absolutely. She was Ely’s girlfriend. She should have chosen him over a bunch of maggots she’d just met at a bar. But instead, she chose them. Her choice cost Ely his life. Then, to add insult, she starts shagging the fella who killed him. Betrayal upon betrayal. Agnes Haywood will die last.”

  “Unless we find her first,” Sutton said. He turned to the other gardaí and motioned for them to gather around.

  Niall spoke to Gethsemane. “Do us a favor? See if you can find some connection between Rosalie Baraquin and Jared Ely. I don’t know the New Orleans area, but if it’s anything like Dunmullach, most folks are related somewhere back. Text me if you find anything.”

  “And let us know if you locate Agnes and Theophilus,” Father Tim said. “I’ll pray for their safe recovery.”

  “Thanks, Father.” Niall shook his hand. “We need all the help we can get.” He nodded goodbyes and joined his fellow gardaí.

  “When all else fails,” Gethsemane said, “turn to the internet. Ely and Baraquin are both Creole names. Let’s hope Creoles are proponents of online genealogy.”

  Twenty-Six

  “I know the fire brigade deemed it safe to go back to the rectory, but I feel more comfortable waiting a bit longer.” Father Tim snapped on the lights in the sacristy. “We can use the computer in the robing room.”

  “This is where you write your sermons, Father?” Frankie asked.

  “I mostly write them at the library.” Tim powered up a PC set atop a writing desk and logged in. “This comes in handy for looking busy when the head of the altar guild and head of the
flower guild want me to mediate one of their endless disputes.”

  Gethsemane’s phone rang out Beethoven’s “Fifth.” “Niall? You what?” A sickening knot tightened in the pit of her stomach and she sank to a chair. She felt as if all the vitality had been sucked from her. “Oh. I’ll tell them.”

  Frankie sat in a chair next to her. “Which one?”

  “Theophilus. Shot.”

  “God rest his soul.” Father Tim made the sign of the cross.

  “Firing squad,” Frankie said. “What’s left?”

  “Beheading, electrocution, burning at the stake. Poor Agnes.”

  “Beheading and burning weren’t much used in America, were they?” Frankie asked.

  “I don’t think they were used at all,” Gethsemane said. “Not officially, anyway. Hanging and shooting were the most common methods of execution until the advent of alternating current.”

  “Then I vote for electrocution.” Frankie grimaced. “You know what I mean.”

  “It’s not that easy to electrocute someone, is it?” Gethsemane asked. “It’s not like spare electric chairs are lying around. An electrocution would require a set up and technical know-how.”

  “Our executioner has had all day, at a minimum, to set things up,” Frankie said. “If he or she found someplace to hide the works, they could have set things up in advance in secret. And as we saw with the boiler room…” Frankie’s voice caught. Gethsemane squeezed his shoulder. He patted her hand and continued. “The boiler room, he or she has technical know-how.”

  “Hey, now we’re sucking diesel.” Father Tim clapped his hands. Gethsemane and Frankie gathered around him. He opened a website with a jubilant click of the mouse. “‘The Louisiana Creole Family Database, the most comprehensive online French and Black Creole genealogy collection available without a subscription.’ At least, that’s how they describe themselves.”