Murder in G Major (A Gethsemane Brown Mystery Book 1) Read online

  A cultured voice answered the secretary’s knock. “Enter.”

  Inside, a distinguished-looking, impeccably dressed man rose from an ornately carved wooden desk to greet them. “Good evening, Dr. Brown. Father Tim, always a pleasure.”

  “Likewise, Richard,” Father Tim said. “Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I’m presiding over the Garden Committee’s monthly meeting.” He winked. “You know how the ladies get without a chaperone. Best of luck to you, Dr. Brown.”

  Gethsemane and the headmaster settled into chairs around his desk. Riordan opened a folder and turned pages. “Bachelor of Arts in music from Vassar College, Doctor of Arts from Yale University, a certificate in orchestral conducting from Yale as well. Multiple awards, including the Strasburg Medal and the Fleisher Prize. What an honor to have a musician of your caliber join our faculty, Dr. Brown.”

  “I can’t tell you how much this opportunity means to me, sir.” Not without admitting she’d rather play her violin for change on the nearest street corner than slink home defeated.

  Riordan outlined Gethsemane’s duties. “Four periods of general music education thrice weekly, individual music instruction twice weekly. You play the violin and—?”

  Gethsemane counted on her fingers. “Piano, viola, cello, guitar, percussion.”

  “Excellent. Your primary concern will be the honors orchestra, upper school boys selected by audition and recommendation. Unfortunately, the orchestra’s been,” Riordan crossed the room to a display case, “at sub-peak performance.”

  Gethsemane twisted in her chair. “Just how far ‘sub-peak’?”

  Riordan didn’t answer.

  Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique”—her early warning system—sounded in Gethsemane’s head. “How much time do I have to get them to peak performance?”

  The headmaster rapped his knuckle against the display case. “This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Annual All-County School Orchestra Competition, returning, after twenty-five years, to Dunmullach’s Athaneum Theater.”

  Tchaikovsky played louder. “When’s the last time St. Brennan’s won the competition?”

  “St. Brennan’s won”—Tchaikovsky screamed—“the inaugural competition, also at the Athaneum.”

  Gethsemane peered into the case. On the center shelf a golden piano-shaped trophy claimed pride of place. “When’s this year’s competition?”

  Riordan’s expression reminded Gethsemane of a boy hiding a failing report card from his parents.

  “End of Michaelmas term,” Riordan said. “Six weeks.”

  “Six weeks?” Gethsemane’s eyes widened. “Six weeks? That’s…”

  “Not a lot of time, to be sure.” Riordan’s expression brightened. “But you have the talent, expertise, and dare I say, genius required for the task. With your leadership, hard work, and a firm hand, I’m confident St. Brennan’s will triumph.”

  “Firm hand?”

  The headmaster hesitated. “The boys are a bit—spirited. You know boys.”

  “I have two younger brothers.”

  “Then I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle. You’re doubtless up to the challenge.”

  That word. Gethsemane hadn’t backed down from a challenge since she was ten.

  Riordan clasped his hands. Eyes downcast, he said, “It’s only fair to tell you some of the faculty expressed—concern—over my decision to hire you.”

  “Concern?”

  “They were unfamiliar with your work, your reputation.” Riordan met Gethsemane’s gaze. “You’ll show them.”

  First a challenge, now a dare. Getting an orchestra in shape to win a competition in only six weeks was impossible, but refuse a dare? Admit she couldn’t do it? She could hear her sister snickering. If Holst could do it for St. Paul’s…“Don’t worry, sir. St. Brennan’s will rise like a phoenix.” She fought the urge to cross her fingers behind her back.

  “Excellent.” Riordan returned to his desk and shuffled papers, dismissing her. “I expect you want to get back to Carraigfaire, settle in.”

  No time to settle in. It’s not like she planned to make Dunmullach a permanent change of address. Six weeks was no time and, if she judged the headmaster’s euphemistic assessment of the orchestra correctly, she’d be starting in the abyss.

  Six weeks. Gethsemane banged open the cottage door, weary after the twenty-minute uphill trudge through the ever-present rain. She hung the borrowed mac on its hook on her way to the study where she flopped onto the sofa. Who was she kidding? Veronika Dudarova, herself, couldn’t turn slacker school boys into a championship orchestra in six weeks. She should call Riordan, tell him she changed her mind. Suck it up and go back. It wouldn’t be so bad. The “disappointed look” from Mother, relentless heckling from her eldest sister, smothering pity from the other…

  Blech. Even if crawling home didn’t sound less fun than a gaping head wound, how would she get there? She’d canceled the stolen credit cards. Which were maxed out anyway. She had her passport and a hundred euros. She might get as far as Dublin or Shannon, but then what?

  She studied the bottles on the bar cart and lifted a stout one with a bold black and red label. Waddell and Dobb Double-oaked Twelve-year-old Reserve single barrel bourbon, from Kentucky. McCarthy had good taste. She poured liquid amber into a heavy leaded crystal whiskey glass. Maybe she could borrow money. Not from Mother or her sisters—unless she wanted to hear about it until doomsday. Her brothers? They didn’t have any more money than she did.

  Her old professor. The maestro had helped her before. He’d gotten her into the Strasburg Competition, arranged her audition for the Cleveland Symphony, her first professional gig. He’d be at his villa this time of year, hiding from the modern world. No phone or internet. She’d write him a letter.

  The roll-top yielded stationery and a fountain pen in a brass violin-shaped pen stand. One shake sent ink drops jetting from the nib where they spread in Rorschach patterns across the dark cherry wood. Gethsemane cursed and ran to the kitchen for a rag. Returning, she froze a moment in the study’s doorway then moved to the desk. The ink spill was gone, the pen back in its stand, the stationery back in its box, the whiskey glass back on the bar. She hadn’t imagined pen and paper and bourbon, so how—?

  “Is it American custom to take without askin’?”

  Gethsemane grabbed a letter opener. A tall, broad-shouldered, unsmiling man leaned against a bookcase near the window, arms crossed.

  Gethsemane ran—out of the cottage, down the driveway, and into the path of a slow-moving car. Brakes squealed, gravel sprayed, the car stopped inches from Gethsemane’s knees. “Are you all right?” The driver, a stocky brown-eyed blond, about a decade older than her, jumped out.

  Gethsemane gasped the story of the intruder.

  The driver gestured up the hill. “C’mon, we’ll take a look.”

  There was a fine line between brave and stupid and she wasn’t crossing it. She watched horror movies in college. She knew better. “If Jack Torrance’s up there—” She aimed a thumb at the cottage. “I’m staying down here.”

  “I shouldn’t worry. No deranged caretakers ’round here in at least a hundred years.”

  Gethsemane didn’t return the man’s smile.

  “Would you feel better if I went up myself and looked around?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” Gethsemane asked.

  “Teague Connolly.”

  Teague Connolly. Billy’s friend and Eamon’s brother-in-law. Gethsemane took a closer look at the blond hair and brown eyes, so like the woman in the photograph. “You’re the man Billy McCarthy told me to call if I needed something. I’m Gethsemane Brown.”

  “I know. Whole village knows. News travels fast ’round Dunmullach. Wait here.” Teague got back into his car and continued up the road.

>   Gethsemane listened to the wind howling down over the cliffs, conscious of the gathering darkness. Psycho killers grabbed people on isolated roads too. She hiked back up to the cottage in time to meet Teague at the front door.

  “No one’s there,” he said.

  “He was in the room with the desk, over by the window.”

  “I looked in all the rooms. Not a livin’ soul inside. You know, the light up here plays tricks this time of evening, casts weird shadows.”

  “He spoke to me. Does the light form complete sentences?”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “I dunno. Big. White.”

  Teague scratched his head. “You might have seen Kieran Ross.”

  “Who?”

  “Kieran Ross. Roams the cliffs, does errands. Harmless, an Irish Boo Radley.”

  Boo Radley wasn’t harmless.

  “What’s he doing in the cottage?”

  “Kieran keeps an eye on the place.” Teague frowned. “Never known him to talk, though, ’cept maybe to the Nolan girl. I’ll tell him to keep clear.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Connolly.”

  “Teague.” He opened the trunk of his car. “I brought these for you.” He lifted out two shopping bags filled with clothes.

  Gethsemane stepped back. “You keep women’s clothing in your trunk?”

  Teague laughed. “Not as a matter of course, no. These belonged to Orla. Billy told me you were about her size.”

  “You won’t mind me wearing your sister’s things?” She looked through a bag.

  “You’re doing me a favor. My wife’s been after me about getting rid of them. Sentimental, she calls me. I’d rather see ’em put to good use than end up in the rubbish.”

  Rubbish? Gethsemane pulled out a dress. Halston. Another. DVF. What philistine would toss designer dresses in the rubbish, even if they were twenty-five years old? She held up a suit. Chanel. Eamon wasn’t the only McCarthy with good taste.

  Back inside after Teague’s departure, Gethsemane locked the door. She was sure—almost—she’d bolted it when she’d gotten home. How had Kieran Ross gotten in? She shrugged it off and went back to the study. The letter to the maestro needed to go out in the morning mail.

  The scent hit her near the desk. Leather, cedar, pepper mingled with soap. Gaeltacht and Mrs. Leary’s.

  Then the voice. “Wouldn’t Connolly give ya a ride back to town?”

  No letter opener. Gethsemane swore. She must have dropped it outside. She grabbed a paperweight and faced the large man, drawing back her arm. “I’m warning you. I was starting pitcher in the Girls’ State Fastpitch Softball Championships.”

  The man laughed, rich and throaty.

  “Go ahead. Throw it.”

  Gethsemane hurled the weight. It sailed through the man’s chest, disappearing into him like a sugar cube into hot coffee, and thudded behind him. She gasped. She’d thrown a low fastball dead center. A direct hit. He should be on the floor.

  Had it really gone right through him? Gethsemane grabbed the pen stand and let loose an overhand pitch with heat like Jonathan Broxton. The stand stopped mid-air, hovered motionless, then fell to the ground.

  Not. Humanly. Possible.

  “Stop before ya break something.” The weight and pen stand floated back to the desk.

  Gethsemane ducked behind the wing chair. When had the laws of motion been repealed?

  “Don’t grip the chair so tight. You’ll mark the leather.”

  “You’re not Kieran Ross.” He looked like—no, he couldn’t be. She wished the chair was larger.

  “Brilliant. My first conversation in a quarter century and I land a dullard.”

  Gethsemane scowled. Her brain must be playing tricks. How could Eam—? “Who are you?” she asked, afraid she knew the answer.

  “Eamon McCarthy, owner of this cottage.”

  She forced her lips to speak the words. “Eamon McCarthy’s dead.”

  “Be that as it may, I’m he.”

  “Him. And that’s not possible,” she said. Not possible. Notpossiblenotpossible…As if repeating it would make it true.

  “Yet here I am.” He cocked his head. “What’s the matter? Don’t believe in ghosts?”

  She felt dizzy. “There’s no such thing.” What did generations of Mother’s people—uneducated country-folk—know?

  The man stepped closer. “Damned silly remark, since you’re looking right at me. And stop cowering. It’s unbecoming. What have you got to be afraid of if I’m not real?”

  Gethsemane squeezed her eyes shut. Reality check. She recited her name, birthdate, current location. She opened her eyes. The man looked solid, real. He existed. But a ghost? Her physician mother left country superstition behind when she went away to college, married a mathematician and raised children—a chemist and a nuclear physicist, for God’s sake—in a world filled with science. Not ghosts. But this wasn’t her world.

  “Decided yet?”

  Eamon McCarthy. Gethsemane leaned around the chair.

  Grandfather, the paternal one, had taken her to see McCarthy perform Debussy at the Peabody in Washington, D.C. when she was seven. Her first “grown-up” concert. She formed a crush on the Irish pianist with the wild dark curls, clipped his picture from a magazine and had kept it in a pink heart-shaped frame next to her bed until she went off to Vassar. This was the man in the heart-shaped frame, the same man in the silver frame on the vanity upstairs—Eamon McCarthy, dead twenty-five years.

  “Well, which is it?” Eamon frowned down at her. “Ghost? Trick of the light? Or maybe a psychotic break? Or drunk on my bourbon?”

  Her father’s professorial words came to mind: if evidence forces you to reject your null hypothesis—ghosts don’t exist—you must accept your alternative hypothesis. Mother would choose option C: psychotic break. She preferred Father’s reasoning. “Ghost.” She dropped into the wing chair. “Excuse me if I take a moment to become accustomed to you.”

  “Gene Tierney, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. One of my wife’s favorite movies.”

  Gethsemane reached for Eamon’s leg. Her fingers buzzed as they passed through to the desktop. “You look so—here.”

  “I am here. And sticking your hand through people’s rude.”

  “Sorry.” She yanked back. “I meant solid. Flesh and blood.”

  “How’m I supposed to look?”

  “I don’t know. You’re my first ghost.”

  Eamon dematerialized until only a vestige remained. “You prefer this?”

  Gethsemane counted stars through his chest out the window beyond. “Not at all, Mr. McCarthy.”

  Eamon re-solidified. “You knew me before I told you my name.” An accusation, not a question.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I knew who you were. Are. Were, whatever. Gifted pianist, brilliant composer, notorious hothead. I saw you at the Peabody. You played Debussy.”

  “One of my better performances.” He looked Gethsemane over. “You’re not old enough.”

  “I was seven.”

  “School field trip?”

  “Birthday present from my paternal grandfather. A cellist.”

  “You’re musical?”

  “Yes.”

  Eamon looked her over again. “Smart, talented, easy to look at. Has some bone in her back.” He stroked his chin. “She’ll do.”

  “Hey, Irish.” Definitely a ghost. Hallucinations would’ve had better manners. “I’m right here. What’ll I do?”

  “Help me.”

  “Help you? Go to the light?”

  Eamon waggled his fingers and made cartoon ghost noises. “Where’d ya get that?”

  “I heard it on an episode of Ghost Hunting Adventures.”

  Eamon snorted.
“A skeptic watching such rubbish?”

  “I wasn’t actually watching the show.” Gethsemane felt her cheeks redden. “The TV happened to be on and it happened to be playing.”

  “And you happened to catch a glimpse over your shoulder as you passed by on your way to return Jane Austen to the library.”

  The press hadn’t exaggerated when they described Eamon as brusque and arrogant. They’d understated. “I know why you don’t want to go to the light. Because, in your case, it’s the glow from the fires of hell.”

  “Do you want to try scared speechless again? I liked that better than snarky.”

  “Me snarky?” Gethsemane got up. “Go haunt someone else.”

  “This is my house. Go live somewhere else.”

  “Fine.” She started for the door.

  Eamon blocked her path. “Wait.”

  “I’ll walk through you.”

  The study door slammed shut.

  Or not. “Well, if that’s the way you’re going to be about it.” Gethsemane returned to the wing chair. “What do you want?”

  “Your help. Pay attention.”

  “Are you going to get to the point or are we going to play twenty questions?”

  Eamon crossed his arms and glared down at her. “Are all Americans as contrary as you?”

  Gethsemane crossed her arms and glared up at Eamon. “Are all ghosts as contrary as you?”

  “Stop.” Eamon threw up his hands. “You’d think after ten years of marriage I’d have learned better than to argue with a female.” He looked her over a third time.

  “Quit ogling. I’m not a bug on a pin.”

  “Not much bigger than one. But you give as good as you get. Though she be but little she is fierce.”

  “Though she be but little she is leaving.” Gethsemane stood. “I’ll find lodging at the school.”

  “Hear me out.” The lock on the study door turned. “Please.”