Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery (12 page)

Liam Donellan’s journal

Danny looked a sight too grim when he picked me up from the pub tonight while you languished at the station. Danny-boy, I said, you look worse than a week-old corpse. We stared at each other until he exploded with laughter. Would that be pickled and ready for viewing, he said, or too decayed for help? Seems he’ll not be working the case anymore—except unofficially, of course. His tightrope broke, poor devil.

He mentioned Kate before dropping me off, hoping for insight about her possible guilt. I have my thoughts, but I’ll keep them my own for now. I told Danny that she walks in the image of her mother—though in a harder version, my genetic contribution to the equation. At her core she carries Adrienne Meehan’s knack for coveting the life she can’t have, for stalking that life with a marauder’s instinct.

Adrienne, she came along at the end of that September season and came to symbolize all that lay broken with my life, including the hand. You came along at the beginning of the next, the mending season. So it’s said about blood, that it runs thicker, but I never preferred its viscous and sticky weight to the easy fluidity of water.

• 23 •

On Wednesday morning, Ivan gripped Lonnie’s purloined mobile and paced around his rat-hole home. He was about to fall into the first floor, he’d worn the floorboards so thin. On the third ring, Connie answered with a wary, “Ivan, that you? I can’t take this secrecy when I need you more than ever.”

“I will make it OK, you will see, but right now it is urgent I get help. A loan.”

From downstairs, creaking floorboards stopped Ivan in his tracks. “
Chert voz’mi
,” he hissed. “Someone’s here.”

Ivan slid the mobile under his mattress and locked himself in the bathroom with his ear pressed against the door, hearing nothing until his door banged against the wall. “Ivan Ivanov!”

Danny, no mistaking his baritone. Ivan imagined him brandishing a baton the likes of which Ivan hadn’t seen since the Soviet Union imploded. An extra-strength, blood-spattered, steel-tipped weapon supposedly used for defense but more often used for breaking down doors. His mother would say he was more boiled than a turnip, which made good sense in his native language.

Danny’s voice easily penetrated the bathroom door. “Had a feeling you’d still be here at what I like to call the crime scene. Which shall it be, obstruction or good old-fashioned trespassing?”

Ivan opened the door to find Danny blocking the exit to the stairs. He stood in the center of Ivan’s tiny domain, his head almost hitting the low rafters as he gazed around the dusty confines with scowl lines furrowing the skin between his eyes.

“I have no money,” Ivan said. “This is only place for me.”

“Ivan Ivanov, I’m in a foul mood, so you don’t want to fuck me about. I want to know why Lonnie cornered you for a tongue-lashing.”

“Lonnie cornering me? I remember no such thing.”

“Trespassing?” Danny’s voice was almost pleasant now. Ivan hated the pleasant voice. The pleasant voice was not good in times like these. “Hindering a murder investigation? Or simply export you back to Minsk? Your choice.”

“Fine, you put it like that. Lonnie chastised me because I earlier left Internet Café’s back door unlocked.” He cleared his throat against his slippery English. “I did not know he would return to the shop to fetch the business credit card rather than use his personal one to buy drinks.”

“Why did you leave the back door unlocked?”

Ivan felt his face flush redder than borscht. “A woman friend was to meet me later. That is all.”

“And who is this
amor
of yours that I might be confirming your story?”

“It never happened so there is nothing to say on that, only that Lonnie did not like the door unlocked.”

“Who was she?”

Ivan swallowed. “Connie, but do not tell. Her family does not know. I would appreciate the consideration.”

“As in our very own Constanza O’Brien?” Danny grinned, looking too wolflike for Ivan’s comfort. “You astound me. But at least you chose the nice one.”

“It is not astounding. We love each other. It was disappointing that we could not meet. More than disappointing. Lonnie ruined everything, and you don’t even know.”

“Speaking of Lonnie,” Danny said. “Sometime later in the evening he returned to the café again and died. Did he have his own
rendezvous
scheduled?”

“All I know is that the person who killed him was leaving the door unlocked when this person left because it cannot be locked without a key, which only Lonnie and I carry.”

“You’re doing me proud, Ivanov. Now that I’ve got you warmed up, time to get on with my real business.”

“There is yet more? You cannot do this. This is harassment.”

Danny waved him toward the head of the stairs, at the bottom of which loitered the officer called O’Neil. As Ivan descended with Danny right behind him, he eyed the padlock on the connecting door that separated the building’s rear from the shop front. The yellow tape splashed across the connecting door was intact, as well it should be since Ivan had taken care not to so much as breathe on it.

Danny lowered himself onto a step and gestured toward O’Neil, who handed him a folder. “Sit.”

Ivan sat beside Danny. A photo dropped onto his lap. The image showed a computer on a desk. Lonnie’s computer. More images showed it packaged, then unpackaged in a forensics lab somewhere, and then with its innards on display. Pages of reports followed. In Belarus, such computer analyses took months, in fact more than half a year, which Ivan had counted on for planning purposes. He trembled with the sudden need to piss.

“Never mind trespassing,” Danny said. “That’s nothing compared to evidence tampering. Our head lab rat salutes you, Ivan. Made a fancy job of it, but he says this computer is too clean. I’m sure you know what that means better than I.”

Ivan crossed his legs against pressure from his bladder.

“In other words, a mysterious someone
populated
a new computer with files. I read here, for example, that the computer doesn’t contain any temporary files, which I gather accumulate automatically as computers are used.” He tilted his head in Ivan’s direction. “As do things called
cookies
—of which there are also none on this machine.”

“Lonnie must have switched his computer for a new one. Or the murderer did.”

“What did I tell you about fucking me about, Ivanov? I’m this close to frying up your balls and calling them round sausages. I suspect that you in your pretty latex gloves copied innocuous documents over from Lonnie’s original computer to a new computer. Even I know that deleting files doesn’t really delete them, so I applaud you for trying something new. Now, where’s Lonnie’s computer?”

Ivan squeezed his legs together. “There are many people having computer knowledge. All these tourists—”

Danny’s jaw tightened and Ivan stopped. With a sigh, he nodded toward the storefront.

“Bloody Ivan. You’ll have to show me, but don’t touch anything.”

While Ivan shifted from foot to foot, O’Neil and Danny went through the official maneuvers: donning gloves, calling for a scenes of crime team yet again, and unlocking the padlock. O’Neil ducked Ivan under the crime-scene tape after Danny. Ivan pointed toward his inner sanctum, where electronic bits and pieces spread across a work table like digital entrails.

“Congratulations, Ivan, a mighty effort. You copied over enough financial records, memos, invoices, and porn sites to confuse the lab techs for five seconds.”

“I was desperate. I was not thinking straight. This, I can explain.”

“I’m sure you can.” Danny shot him a look that said but-I-don’t-want-to-hear-it. “I have this straight from Lonnie’s bank. In August, Lonnie made cash deposits that don’t correspond to his negative business income. Was Lonnie dealing drugs with your help?”

“No,
blin
, no drugs, I promise.” Ivan shook all the more as he grasped anew the magnitude of Lonnie’s arrogance, not to mention idiocy. To deposit the blackmail money into his business account, it was too absurd. The donkey’s ass deserved to die for that alone. Ivan wriggled against his aching bladder. “Can you excuse me?”

“The DPP—that’s the Director of Public Prosecution in case you don’t know—could press charges for evidence tampering, or maybe not, depending on what you tell me. So talk.”

Ivan pictured Connie and Kate. They squeezed him from both sides to keep his mouth shut—lose Connie’s love, lose Kate’s potential patronage. And then there was Merrit. She factored in at zero squeeze potential now that Danny knew about the computer tampering. Time to grovel. This was survival of the fittest, and he’d apologize to Merrit later.

Ivan ran upstairs with Danny and O’Neil right behind him. He detoured into the bathroom. Surely the men could hear him piss well enough. They didn’t have to be pounding on the door.

Ivan stepped out of the bathroom and, ignoring Danny’s scowl, climbed onto the bed to grab a sheet of paper from its hiding spot in the rafters. He’d managed to find an obscure but fascinating newspaper piece about Merrit. Ivan shoved the printout at Danny. “Merrit is more suspect than you think.”

Danny eyeballed the headline. “How did you find this?”

“That is tricky part. I”—he cleared his throat—“was looking for it? On the Internet?” Danny’s scowl deepened. “I was unwilling participant!” Ivan yelped and then caught himself. “Lonnie said he would shuck me back to Minsk like slimy oyster I am. He hired me on false pretenses. He was promising me partnership in the business, but I was only another immigrant slave who gathered information for him.”

“Are you done?”

Out of breath, Ivan nodded.

“You’re saying Lonnie blackmailed Merrit because of this article?”

“Not so exactly. I was keeping it to myself until Lonnie paid me my due.”

“You’re a model of discretion, Ivanov. What did Lonnie have over Merrit then?”

“Merrit is Liam’s long-lost daughter, but she was not wanting anyone to know until after she approached Liam herself. She is private person. Very private.”

“That’s it? That doesn’t seem too dire.”

Disappointed that Danny wasn’t suitably shocked and impressed, Ivan pointed to the printout. He struggled for the right words, words that would make sense of Lonnie’s crooked behavior but not give anything else away. “Lonnie knew she must be hiding something more. He was like his mother that way, always sniffing for secrets.” He tapped the article. “And see, Lonnie’s instinct was true. She did have something bigger to hide.”

“Indeed,” Danny said. “
Local Woman Arrested in Father’s Death
. But this doesn’t explain how Lonnie first found out that Liam is her father.”

“You are under the impression that Lonnie confided in me, yes?” Ivan hoped his voice conveyed beleaguered honesty. “That is wrong. All I am knowing is that one day while I was out, Merrit came in for help with her laptop, and then later Lonnie is getting money from her.”

“So she lied when she said she checks her email here.” Ivan nodded. “Why did she come to the shop early on the morning after Lonnie’s death?”

“Because Lonnie pointed her out to Liam at the party. Lonnie thought it was all very funny.”

“So Merrit was angry.”

“I’d say so, yes. She wanted to, what you say, ‘have it out’ with Lonnie.”

“Let’s backtrack. When did Merrit first come in with her laptop?”

“The 23rd? Yes, the 23rd.”

Something lit behind Danny’s eyes that Ivan didn’t much like. “If you were such an unwilling participant why did you destroy Lonnie’s computer?”

“Back in Minsk, we have saying that police are shining flashlight up your ass rather than finding truth.” Ivan dug fingers into his hair. “I mean—”

Danny held up a hand. “Fine, for now I’ll pretend you were a victim too. What did you not want me to find on Lonnie’s hard drive?”

“Other articles I forwarded him about Merrit, financial records, and email messages between them.”

“And that’s all?”

“Of course, of course.”

Danny stretched toward the ceiling. “By the way, you know a Kate Meehan?”

“No.”

“Funny, when you copied invoices from Lonnie’s old machine, you forgot to delete Kate’s record. She needed an AC inverter, or did you forget?” His voice became expansive. “I suppose that’s understandable, given all your many inner conflicts. Interesting the timing is all. Kate visited you last week to have her laptop repaired, and the next day Lonnie made a deposit. Fancy that.”

Ivan fought himself to remain still while Danny pulled a sheet of paper out of the folder and jotted a line about Merrit’s visit to Internet Café on the 23rd of August. “Why, look at this, a pattern. Lonnie also made a deposit the day after Merrit’s visit. However, neither Merrit nor Kate explains Lonnie’s bank deposits in the beginning of August—before they arrived.”

12 Aug: Bank deposit, 500

17 Aug: Bank deposit, 500

23 Aug: Activity in café, Merrit asks for help with Internet

24 Aug: Bank deposit, 500

27 Aug: Bank deposit, 1,000 (500+500?)

29 Aug: Activity in café, Kate orders new AC inverter

30 Aug: Bank deposit, 500

31 Aug: Activity in café, Lonnie found dead with deposit slip

Ivan sagged. The back of his knees itched where they wanted to buckle.

Danny waved the paper with enthusiasm. “It looks to me like Lonnie favored receiving many smaller payments rather than a few large ones. And it looks to me like he gathered money from
three
people. Kate, Merrit, plus someone starting on August 12th. I know Kate also claims to be Liam’s daughter, which I’m sure interested Lonnie mightily. Think that might be why Lonnie blackmailed both her and Merrit?”

Ivan dug fingers into his hair again, hoping to pull something coherent out of his head, but all that came was an image of chopped turnips on the kitchen counter back in Minsk. He pointed toward the chart in hopes of a diversion. “What does that mean,
deposit slip
?”

“Lonnie had written up a deposit slip for Monday, September 1st for €3,000. We found it in his inner jacket pocket, impaled by the knife. Brilliant luck, that.”

Ivan could swear he tasted the turnip’s nasty tuberous funk, smelled its dirty stink that used to meet him at the door for every Wednesday’s dinner, courtesy of his mother.

“If we surmise from my chart that Lonnie had three, shall we say
clients
, then we might imagine that he expected €1,000 out of each of them, and used the night of the party to gather it from them. As a matter of fact, this is my favorite theory because of the money left on the floor, which totaled €2,000. Apparently, Lonnie didn’t get the chance to collect from his last client. I would imagine that he was meeting one of the three at the time he told you he was picking up his business credit card.”

“I do not understand this at all.”

“What intrigues me most is what Lonnie discovered that allowed him to up the ante from €500 to €1,000. He discovered something new sometime after he met Kate on the 29th. There’s a fact out there in the world that three people want hushed.”

Ivan didn’t need to fake his confusion. Lonnie had managed to discover an important fact without Ivan’s help? Something other than Merrit’s arrest record? This was mind-boggling. It could only be something that came from Kate’s computer.