An Early Wake (A County Cork Mystery) - Softcover

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Maura Donovan looked at the piles of paper spread out on her well-worn kitchen table and despaired. For six months now she’d been running Sullivan’s, a small pub in a small town in County Cork, Ireland, and she had no idea if she’d made any money at all. She knew how to handle the day-to-day stuff like tending bar—she’d been doing that since she was legally old enough (and maybe a bit before), back in Boston where she’d grown up—but running a business was a different matter. At least it had been a good summer with nice weather, and the place had been well filled some nights. Not so well filled on others. She’d heard it was the poor economy everywhere that was keeping the tourists from other countries home watching their own pennies, but it was hard to get by with only the locals as customers. And even here in Leap there was plenty of competition, particularly from the inn across the street, plus the new bistro that just opened down the road—and even more competition in nearby Skibbereen, a thriving market town seven miles down the road and with ten times the population of Leap.

All of which was why Maura had been putting off doing the numbers for Sullivan’s. She didn’t have a computer or spreadsheets—just invoices and bank statements and lots of scraps of paper with scrawls that she couldn’t even read. She had taken a couple of accounting classes back in Boston, but she’d never liked them and hadn’t paid a lot of attention then. She’d paid the salaries of her employees—Mick, Jimmy, and Jimmy’s daughter, Rose—but they were all part-time and worked erratic schedules, adjusting their hours from day to day or week to week. How her employees managed to live on what she paid them, she did not know, but closing down wasn’t an option: she was pretty sure Mick could find himself another job, but she had her doubts about Jimmy. Jimmy was good at bantering with customers but when it came time to swap out the kegs of Guinness or wash up on a busy night, he always seemed to disappear. Then there was his daughter, Rose, who’d only recently turned seventeen, a sweet, bright girl who had little future in the small village but no plans to leave her father to fend for himself. Good for Jimmy, bad for Rose. Worse, there were hardly any young people Rose’s age around: they’d all gone off looking for work in other places, not that Maura could blame them. The young men in particular seemed to have gone the farthest, not only to England or Spain but even to Australia.

Maura wanted the girl to have a life of her own, but she couldn’t offer much guidance, certainly not based on her own patchy history. Besides, she was still learning the ins and outs of Irish culture, and maybe she was reading the situation all wrong. But she was pretty sure there had to be something better for Rose than pulling pints part-time in a shabby small-town pub and going home to fix supper for dear old dad. Rose was quite a good cook, based on what she’d brought in to share now and then. Maybe she could find work in a restaurant locally. There was some money in the region, Maura knew—a conference center had opened over in Rosscarbery and a newer one in Glandore just up the harbor a bit. People were coming to the area, and they had to eat, didn’t they? There were a few nice restaurants in Skibbereen. Rose should look to her future, rather than doing what Maura had done, which was drift along with no plan and no goals until her grandmother’s death had blasted her out of her rut and somehow landed her in Ireland.

Well, now she was here, trying to scratch out a living, and responsible for employees. Maura herself took as little money out as she could, but even she had expenses, if only minimal ones.

Her house, for example, she’d inherited outright six months earlier, along with the pub from Old Mick Sullivan, but no matter how much she scrimped, she still had to pay for electricity, and gas for cooking and heating. She hadn’t needed much heat yet, but that could change—she hadn’t even been in the country through a winter yet. She’d been told that it never got really cold in this part of Ireland—something about the ocean currents. She’d even seen palm trees here and there, which always startled her. Still, these old stone and stucco cottages were hard to keep warm. Was she supposed to be laying in peat—or turf, as they called it here—or wood? She could just see herself in the middle of a damp winter, huddling over a small pile of smoky burning moss, trying to keep warm. Not the life you imagined back in Boston, Maura.

And then there was the car. She was driving an ancient Peugeot on an extended loan, somewhere short of a gift, from Bridget Nolan down the lane. But Maura couldn’t expect Bridget to pay upkeep on the car that had belonged to her late husband, and she didn’t like to take charity from anyone. She was happy to pay her own way and willing to work hard. But there was so much she didn’t know.

Old Mick had kindly left her some money to tide her over when she took over the pub, but that wasn’t going to last much longer. Which left the whole mess in her lap. For a moment Maura looked back on her days as a bar waitress with something like nostalgia: it sure was easier when all she’d had to do was show up and serve people, then collect a paycheck and some tips if she was lucky.

Of course, she could walk away from Sullivan’s, if she couldn’t make the numbers work. What would be the point of staying open just to lose money? The real estate market in Ireland was still down, but the pub license had to be worth something, didn’t it? And it was hers to sell. She hadn’t yet run through all the money Old Mick had left to her; she could take that and go . . . anywhere. Except she didn’t know where to go. She didn’t feel any strong need to go back to Boston—now that Gran was gone, there was nothing for her there. And she had Jimmy and Rose and Mick depending on her, and she didn’t want to turn them out when there weren’t enough jobs to go around. And maybe the new owners wouldn’t be so kind to Old Billy Sheahan, a longtime friend of Old Mick’s and a fixture in the well-worn armchair by the pub fireplace, or maybe they’d tear down the place altogether and put in a shiny modern place of some sort and change the town. Maura sighed. Not easy being an owner. Maybe it got better with practice.

She stretched, then checked her watch. Nearly ten a.m., and she should be opening the pub by ten thirty. Too late to start anything now, eh, Maura? she told herself. She stood up, pulled on a sweater hanging by the door, and went out the front door of her house.

She had no near neighbors. At one end of the lane, where it petered out, there was a house that hadn’t been lived in for years, although the owners still kept sheep and cows on the pasture. The house on the other side of hers had been abandoned even longer, and she guessed it had been in ruins since before she was born. There were other, newer houses up the hill in front of her, and a few farther down the hill, not that she often saw the people who lived there. And then there was Bridget’s cottage, on the lane that led from the top to the bottom of the hill. Maura decided to stop in and say good morning before she left for the village.

She picked her way along the muddy, unpaved lane toward Bridget’s house, pulling her sweater close. It was September now, with the tourist season just ending. The days were getting shorter, and the wind sharper. She knocked on the front door of Bridget’s cottage, which was smaller even than hers. She knew Mick, Bridget’s grandson, made sure it was kept up and paid for his gran’s phone so she could reach him in an emergency. Bridget was well into her eighties, but refused to consider moving in with Mick’s sister a few towns over. This townland—called Knockskagh, or “hawthorn hill”—was her home, and she wouldn’t be moved from it; she’d settled into the cottage when she married and had lived here all her adult life. Maura might have wondered if Bridget got lonely if she hadn’t seen the steady trickle of friends and relatives who stopped by to make sure the old woman was all right and to swap gossip and news. It was nice, knowing that people were looking out for you. Her gran had done a lot of looking out for the struggling Irish immigrants who’d arrived in Boston.

“Ah! Dia duit a Mhaire!” Bridget opened the door with a broad smile.

“Dia’s Muire duit, a Bride,” Maura replied, with the little Irish she knew. Bridget had taught her a few phrases, like how to exchange a basic greeting.

“Come in, come in,” Bridget said. “There’s a bit of a chill in the air, isn’t there?”

“Definitely. I can’t stay long, but I was going crazy trying to sort out the finances for the pub and I thought some fresh air might help. Although I always like to see you.”

“There’s tea on the stove and fresh scones in the tin, if yer hungry.”

“Thanks.” Maura, long familiar with Bridget’s kitchen by now, helped herself. “Can I pour you a cup?”

“That’d be grand, if it’s no trouble.”

“No problem.” Maura filled two cups and carried them back to where Bridget now sat in front of a small fire. “Are you feeling the cold already?”

Bridget sighed. “Don’t you be getting old, Maura—if it’s not one thing, it’s another. I can feel winter coming in my bones.”

“Anything I can do?” Maura asked. She hated to think that Bridget might be failing. Since she’d lost her grandmother—the only relative she’d ever known—less than a year before, somehow she’d come to count on Bridget to take Gran’s place. It was because of Bridget that Maura had come to Leap in the first place, after she’d stumbled upon Bridget’s long correspondence with her gran.

Bridget waved a dismissive hand at her. “Ah, don’t be minding me. I’m just a fussy aul woman. And don’t you be telling Mick that I’m complaining, either, or he’ll be after me again to move in with my granddaughter over to Bandon. Which would not suit me at all, for she’s got two loud children and little enough room as it is.”

Maura knew Mick kept a close eye on his gran and would notice any decline in her condition on his own, so she wasn’t about to go tattling to him. She took a sip of her tea—strong, as always. “I’ve been trying to figure out if Sullivan’s is making any money. How did Old Mick manage?”

“He didn’t ask for much. Many of his friends spent their time there of an evening. Not that they drank much. They could nurse a pint for hours, or so Mick used to say. They were there for the craic, not for the drink. God help the poor tourist who stuck his nose in while that crowd was in good form.”

That wasn’t hard for Maura to imagine, especially since she’d made few physical changes since she’d taken over in the spring, afraid to drive away what patrons she had. Besides, she’d never been big on prettying up a place. She tried to imagine track lighting and new curtains in the pub and had to swallow a laugh, though she had at least managed to introduce a few new paintings, which had brightened some of the darker corners. The paintings were the works of Gillian Callanan, an artist who lived over the hill in an old creamery by the lake, at least during the summer. Maura hadn’t seen much of Gillian lately and wondered if she’d gone back to Dublin for the winter, as she had told Maura she usually did. Maura would miss her if she went, since Gillian was close to her own age and had quickly become a friend—one of the few Maura had made since she’d arrived—but she knew that Gillian couldn’t make a living selling her paintings during the winter around here. Besides, the creamery building wasn’t heated, certainly not well enough to withstand the wind rushing across Ballinlough. Maura could tell already that this could be a lonely place in winter.

She stood up. “I should probably be going. Can I pick up anything for you?”

“No, love, I’m grand. Mick came by yesterday. And don’t worry yerself about the numbers—I’m sure things will come right.”

“I hope so, Bridget. See you later.”

She shut the door on her way out, then trudged back to her place. She wasn’t sure why she’d asked Bridget if she needed anything, when Maura was the one with a bare pantry. There never seemed to be any time to shop, much less prepare meals, and she spent most of her waking hours at the pub. It was easier to walk down to the Costcutter at the gas station and pick up something quick.

She drove into the village, glad in a way that the few clueless tourists who had ventured along the lanes had gone home now. To be fair, she’d been in the same boat herself not that long ago. It was hard for some people to accept that there were no road signs, except on the biggest of the main roads, and that most people gave driving instructions along the lines of “Turn left at the abandoned church and go up the hill until you see the field with the bull, then turn right at the fallen tree.” It took a bit of getting used to, and by the time most people did, it was time for them to leave. Luckily most of the time there were no cars on the lanes, which were pretty much one lane wide anyway.

Maura parked her car well away from Sullivan’s—parking was at a premium along the main road and she didn’t want to discourage any potential customers—and went toward the front door of the pub, keys in hand. She was surprised to find the door already unlocked and Rose behind the bar. She stepped into the dark interior and took quick stock of the scene: no customers except for a casually dressed young man seated on a stool at the bar and talking to Rose with great animation.

Rose looked up and saw her, then beckoned her over eagerly. “Maura, this is Timothy Reilly. He’s a student from Trinity up in Dublin and he’s here to work on a project, he says. Tim, this is Maura Donovan—she’s the owner here, since March. Mebbe you’d best explain what it is yer after.” Rose was as animated as Maura had seen her in a while, but then, Tim was a fairly attractive young man. He looked to be around twenty, putting him about five years younger than Maura, and he had an open, eager face.

“Nice to meet you, Tim,” Maura said. “What brings you to the Wild West of Cork?”

“It’s a pleasure, Maura. It’s the music that brings me—the music here at Sullivan’s.”

Chapter 2

For a moment Maura stared blankly at Tim: this was the first she’d heard anything about music at Sullivan’s. She glanced at Rose, who shrugged, apparently as ignorant as Maura. She pulled out a stool and sat down next to the young man.

“Can I get you anything, Maura?” Rose asked.

“A coffee, please. Tim, are you set?” He had an empty cup in front of him, so he must have been here for a while, even though the pub wasn’t officially open yet.

“Another coffee would be grand, if you don’t mind, Rose.” He smiled at her.

Rose blushed. “Right away.”

Maura turned to face Tim. “So, what’s this about music?”

He cocked his head at her. “American, are you? How do you come to own this place?”

Maura noticed he hadn’t exactly answered her question, but by now she was used to the roundabout path most conversations here took. “I grew up in Boston, but my grandmother was the niece of the late owner, Michael Sull...