“He wanted you to have it,” Diane said quietly, slipping her arm through Electra’s. “He provided for us both. That’s an amazing thing for a divorced man to do. If he hadn’t been addicted to gambling—”
“There you go,” Electra said. “A phrase that could go on many a Vegas headstone.”
Temple put an arm through Electra’s free one and pulled both women back to the bar. “Let’s finish our drinks with a toast to Jay Edgar and then go get our feet on the ground. Your new ground, Electra.”
What she didn’t say, and wasn’t about to over the older women’s strawberry-lime frozen margaritas, was that she hoped J. Edgar Dyson hadn’t signed any irrevocable documents with the interested parties who’d seemed determined to fleece him, and maybe even had killed him after he’d signed on the dotted line. The bizarre manner of death and location sure wouldn’t help authorities look farther than Electra or her friends.
Nor did Temple point out that Molina and company would consider Electra being Dyson’s most significant heir made her an even more likely suspect for engineering his macabre murder.
31
Sleepless After Sunset
Mea culpa, mea culpa. My fault, my fault, I am not worthy.
Even with Sean and Deirdre looking on, Max thought a man who had come all this way with a woman to a remote Irish cottage ought do more than feel regret and move on.
“If I ran away after that intimate moment, Kathleen,” he confessed, “I wasn’t ready for the responsibility of such a pure and needful love. It was the worst mistake of my life. I’ve paid for it every day, and you’ve seen that I’ve paid for it every hour.”
He laughed a little. “I wish there was something that would redeem the moment for you.”
She shook her head. “You’ve won. You’ve forgotten, and I can’t.”
Before Max could answer, Deirdre spoke behind him. “See the glorious sunset you’ve brought with you, Michael Kinsella.”
He and Kathleen automatically looked away from each other to the picture window again, where the sky was bleeding all the colors of a watercolor box into undiluted strands of peach and aqua and magenta and orange and purple and scarlet and iridescent mother-of-pearl blue.
“Mother of God,” Deirdre’s soft croon sounded like a lullaby, “’tis the loveliest spot on earth.”
Max waited for Kathleen’s raw outburst, but she remained silent.
Deirdre said briskly, “Sean has things under control at the stove. We’ll sit outside. Will ye take out the settings?”
“Of course,” Max said, collecting Kathleen’s glass with his—broken glass was a weapon—and heading for the kitchen to deposit them on the table. Sean wasn’t there.
Deidre indicated a cupboard with tableware in ceramic pots and the dinner plates on a high shelf. Deidre must stand five-eight, Max thought, almost Molina tall.
He smiled to think of no-nonsense, emotions-stowed Molina peeking in on the dramatis personae in this domestic scene with utter shock.
Max reached for the plates and turned, almost bumping into Kathleen collecting knives and spoons and forks. He could feel her entire body tense to have someone standing this close, especially him.
He looked down on her shining black hair, wearing no black velvet band, and stroked his palm over it.
She remained frozen, staring down at the silverware in her hands, minutely trembling, fighting the instinct to lash out.
He stepped away without incident, and saw Deirdre watching.
“Michael, be a love, and take the butter dish out as well? Ah! Max, I mean.”
Hands full, luckily, Max and Kathleen elbowed themselves out the pantry door to be ambushed by a Cinemascope version of the sunset that suffused the entire sky.
While their eyes feasted, their nostrils inhaled the smoky aroma of grilled steak. Sean stood at a portable stainless steel barbecue setup against the cottage’s textured stone wall.
“A high-end barbecue?” Max asked. “Not a common item of Irish charm.”
“It charms the tourists,” Sean said. “The brews are on ice in the washtub, if that’s charmin’ enough for an Ugly American like you. And the ladies might need shawls against the goin’ of the light. Deirdre’ll give you a couple inside.” Sean stepped forward to pull the heavy wrought-iron chair out for Kathleen, who stared at the thing as if it’d bite her.
Max darted inside to take two big serving dishes from Deirdre and ask for the shawls.
Forty-five minutes later, the food was gone and the lingering sunset was nearly gone. Two lanterns moved from the side table now flickered on all their faces, almost like flames.
Sean had fetched a wine bottle for the women. Max had tired of the strong Irish ale and itched for three fingers of Jameson’s, but drank what his host did, eager not to challenge the habits of the house in this peaceful place.
“Have you thought of adding a fire pit, Sean?” Max asked. “It’d take away the chill.”
“Too American, Max. The tourists like their comforts, but also like a bit of the primitive. Except for the stainless steel barbie, a must for the Aussies.”
“You’re right. You don’t want to make this into a suburban backyard in Racine.” Max looked around. “St. Patrick banished the snakes from Ireland, it’s said, but I believe he exiled the mosquitoes too.”
“Aye, I don’t miss the mosquitoes in Wisconsin, as big as butterflies,” Sean told Deirdre.
“And now carrying exotic and lethal diseases,” Max said.
“But you don’t have mosquito problems in Las Vegas.”
“No, drought though.”
“I can’t stand it!” Kathleen’s voice shattered the peace. “Look at you. Two self-satisfied retiree ex-patriots reminiscing over your pints.”
“We are ex-pats of a sort,” Max told Sean, ignoring her outburst.
“I don’t mean from America, you dunces!” Kathleen had stood, her cheeks ruddy with wine and fury, her shawl clutched around her. “From the Cause. Even Michael here once gave a tinker’s damn about undermining the resistance’s bombing plots, and you, Sean, you were taken in by the IRA and ended up at a negotiation table. All that I did for years to raise money for guns and gold is fading like the setting sun into futility.”
“Because we’ve won the peace,” Deirdre said quietly.
“It will never last. The Orangemen still march in Belfast.”
“And,” Max said, “there’s still a price on my head, or else I wouldn’t be going to Belfast to find where Garry Randolph’s body has been buried.”
“Once again,” Kathleen said, “you set yourself on a quest for a dead man. I suppose the living aren’t good enough for you. I can arrange more such quests.”
“Sit down, Kathleen,” Deirdre said.
“Why should I sit at table with you lot of traitors?”
“This is my table and you will sit down, Kathleen.”
To Max’s amazement, she obeyed. Deirdre’s intense command must have echoed a nun’s from the Magdalene asylum. A stern parental “No!” can sometimes make an attacker pause. Max had used that trick, but Deirdre had not shouted.
“Body?” Sean asked Max. “Buried? Who is Garry Randolph?”
“The counterterrorism mentor I told you about,” Max said, “who performed as the magician Gandolph the Great. My bungee-based magic act was sabotaged in Vegas and I fell, broke both my legs and a good bit of my brain, the part that remembers. Garry took me to Europe to escape, heal and revisit my past. We were on the run and got tangled up with some IRA remnants in Belfast. Trying to outdrive a shooting spree, I…Garry got hit. I…do you have any whiskey?”
Sean nodded at Deirdre.
“I’ll have some too,” Kathleen said. Sullenly.