Nothing But Trouble Read online

  Fitzmaurice fished out Spalding’s photograph and slid it across the desk to Kehoe. “Just to confirm, this is Mr. McGuire?”

  Kehoe picked up the photograph and adjusted her glasses. “Indeed it is. Charming man. I hope his family troubles won’t be devastating to him.”

  “His father died,” Sara replied, “and his presence is needed to help settle complex issues regarding the estate.”

  “How sad.”

  Sara nodded solemnly in agreement.

  “May we have a copy of your records?” Fitzmaurice asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Kehoe replied.

  “Also, if you could furnish us with a list of the organizations who offer the yachtmaster training schemes, that would be lovely.”

  After Kehoe left to make copies and gather the information, Fitzmaurice turned to Sara. “Apparently, our George is well on his way to establishing himself as a charming and agreeable member of the Dún Laoghaire yachting set.”

  “If he has put out to sea on a cruise around Ireland,” Sara said, “what are our chances of finding him?”

  “Hit or miss would be my guess. I’ll ring up the Coast Guard and ask them to start looking.” Fitzmaurice glanced at his wristwatch. “If we’re going to keep vigil while Paquette meets with the builder at the villa, we need to leave straightaway.”

  On the drive to the villa Fitzmaurice kept one hand on the wheel as he called the Irish Coast Guard to get a search under way for Spalding’s yacht, and then made another call to the passport office in Dublin. He was still on the phone when he parked the car down the street from the villa.

  When he finished the conversation, he turned to Sara and said, “Passport records show that Spalding, either under the name of Bruneau or McGuire, has spent seven of the last twelve months in Ireland.”

  “Did you get the exact dates?” Sara asked.

  Fitzmaurice rattled them off from memory as Sara wrote them down.

  “Interesting,” Sara said, scanning the paperwork Kehoe had provided. “From what Kehoe gave us, soon after Spalding bought Sapphire, he started coming back to Ireland to take the coastal and offshore land-and sea-based training classes. To qualify he spent almost four months in class or at sea. To get his ocean certificate he needs to log another six-hundred-mile, nonstop trip. I bet that’s what his voyage around Ireland is all about.”

  “There’s no need to be checking marinas and yacht clubs for him if he’s at sea,” Fitzmaurice said.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Fitzmaurice said.

  “How far are we from Bray?”

  “A few kilometers.”

  “Telephone this number.” Sara read it off. “It’s for a company called Celtic Sailing. They offer the yachtmaster ocean certificate course.”

  Fitzmaurice punched in the numbers, put the phone to his ear, listened, and shook his head. “Closed for the day. No matter, I’ll have an officer find the owner and arrange for us to interview him.”

  He made the call, put the phone on the dashboard, and said, “It may interest you to know that Spalding paid for his passport application with a cheque from a Galway bank. Quite possibly he’s moved his assets there. I’ll query the bank in the morning. With any luck we may be able to trace his current movements through his cheque and credit-card transactions.”

  Fitzmaurice stopped talking when a builder’s van rolled to a stop in front of the villa, and a stocky man with gray hair, holding a roll of blueprints, got out and waited by the side of his vehicle. He wore work boots, blue jeans, a plaid shirt, and had a bit of a potbelly. Joséphine Paquette arrived shortly afterward in her hired car, accompanied by her driver. While the driver waited, Paquette talked briefly to the man at the front of the van, who quickly unrolled the blueprints on the bonnet of his vehicle and pointed to something that made Paquette nod in approval. The builder smiled, rolled up the blueprints, and followed Paquette into the house.

  A half hour passed before they came out, Paquette talking and gesturing with her hands while the builder scribbled notes on a clipboard. Finally she waved a good-bye, got into the waiting car, and left.

  The man walked to his van, sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, and continued to make notes.

  “Here we go, then,” Fitzmaurice said as he got out of the vehicle.

  Together they approached the man, who looked up from the clipboard to find Fitzmaurice’s Garda credentials under his nose.

  “A few moments of your time, if you please,” Fitzmaurice said with a smile.

  A brief conversation with the builder, a man named Brendan McCarrick, confirmed Sara’s theory that Spalding could not possibly have left the renovation of his villa solely in Paquette’s hands. Twice over the course of the previous week Spalding and Paquette, posing as an unmarried couple, had met McCarrick and an architect to discuss in detail the interior changes and improvements they wanted, which had to be made in accordance with the Protected Structures Act.

  Once it had become clear to Spalding that McCarrick wouldn’t be able to start work on the refurbishments until the local planning council had approved the architect’s plans, Spalding had left Paquette in charge of seeing to the final details.

  That afternoon McCarrick and Paquette had done a last walk-through to finalize all the construction specifications, before he sought permission from the planning council to proceed.

  Without being specific Fitzmaurice advised McCarrick not to count on the project going forward. As they drove away from the disheartened builder, Sara asked Fitzmaurice about the Protected Structures Act.

  “It’s a fairly new law,” Fitzmaurice replied as he pulled into the visitors’ car park at the Dún Laoghaire Marina, “that requires planning permission to make any substantial change to either the exterior or interior of buildings deemed to be worthy of architectural conservation. My semidetached suburban home, which I hope you may soon see, hardly qualifies. It is both a mercy and a pity. We can do what we like with it, but protected status does rather boost the value,” he ended with a chuckle.

  They followed a pathway that skirted the marina, looking for Johnny Scanlan, the night-crew worker, and came upon him at the fuel dock, where he was topping off the tank of a sleek-looking powerboat. When he’d finished and the skipper had pulled away, Fitzmaurice approached and flashed his police credentials.

  “Doherty said you’d be coming to see me,” Scanlan said, with a thick brogue that reminded Sara of the villagers she’d met on her honeymoon in Connemara.

  “Have you seen this woman?” Fitzmaurice asked, holding up a photograph of Paquette.

  “I have,” Scanlan replied as he put the fuel hose in the cradle. “She came looking for the Sapphire, Mr. McGuire’s boat, one evening no more than a week ago. Spent two or three hours on board before leaving. I saw her walking toward the rail station.”

  “Did Mr. McGuire sleep on board his yacht during his stay?” Sara asked.

  Scanlan locked the fuel hose to the pump. “Yes. I’d see him most evenings, or notice his lights on late into the night.”

  “Did anyone visit him besides Paquette?”

  “None that I saw.”

  “Did he have any crew members?” Fitzmaurice asked.

  Scanlan shook his head. “With a boat like that you don’t need a crew.” “Did he say where he was sailing?”

  “No, but the way he provisioned his boat before he left, I’d say he was planning a long cruise.” Scanlan eyed the fuel-pump gauge and recorded the amount of petrol he’d delivered to the speedboat. “Is that it, then? I’ve got work to do.”

  “Thank you,” Sara said.

  On the way to the car Fitzmaurice’s phone rang, and after a brief exchange with the caller he told Sara the owner of Celtic Sailing would meet them at his pierside business establishment in fifteen minutes. The phone rang immediately again and Fitzmaurice broke into a smile when he took the call.

  “Just a minute, luv,” he said, winking at Sara,
“let me ask her. My wife wants to know if you’re still beguiling me.”

  Sara smiled. “Tell her I am doing no such thing.”

  “The good colonel refuses to take any responsibility for her flirtatious ways,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. He paused to listen and then turned to Sara. “Would you be up to having a late meal with us?”

  “That would be lovely,” Sara replied.

  Fitzmaurice glanced at his wristwatch. “Give us two hours, luv,” he said to his wife before disconnecting.

  At the Bray pier Desmond Phelan, the owner of Celtic Sailing, waited for them under the shop’s Boats for Hire sign. In his thirties, Phelan was a small-boned man with light-brown hair, a wide forehead, and an aquiline nose. Inside the shop two young boys, no more than four and six years old, sat on stools at a customer-service counter, drawing pictures on scraps of paper.

  Phelan told the boys to stay put and led Fitzmaurice and Sara to a small back room that served as both office and a storage room. He nodded at the photograph Fitzmaurice placed before him on his cluttered desktop.

  “George McGuire,” Phelan said. “A genial fellow, quite the eager student. I couldn’t imagine why a Garda would come to my house at suppertime to ask me to talk to you. I surely didn’t think it had anything to do with Mr. McGuire.”

  “We need to locate Mr. McGuire,” Sara said, “to inform him of a family emergency. Do you know where he might be?”

  “On the water this fine evening in a smooth sea. You should be able to reach him by marine radio.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “He sailed this morning.”

  “Going where?” Sara asked.

  “He didn’t say. He came down from Dún Laoghaire five days ago and retained me to tutor him on celestial navigation techniques so he could prepare for his yachtmaster ocean certification, which requires making a passage without the use of electronic aids. He did the shore-based class-work in the mornings and then we went out later in the day for his practice exercises.”

  “Was he planning to do his qualifying trip for his certification right away?” Sara asked.

  Phelan perched on the corner of the desk. “He said nothing to me about it.”

  “How did he pay for your services?” Sara asked.

  “By credit card.”

  “Could we see the charge slip?”

  “Of course.”

  Sara stood on the Bray pier looking out at the horseshoe bay while Fitzmaurice made phone calls on his mobile to learn if the writ had been approved to access Paquette’s Internet account, and to arrange for a detective to speak to the solicitor who’d prepared the conveyancing documents for the sale of the villa. A paved promenade ran along the shoreline just behind a rock barrier where waves lapped at a slender ribbon of beach. A hilly spit of land rose up at one end of the bay, and the quiet sea, as pale gray as the evening sky, seemed to absorb the fading light.

  At Sara’s back pitched-roof buildings crowded Bray’s waterfront high street. The shoreline curved toward the spit of land where a new residential development stood and the houses, all with matching red tile roofs in an Italianate style, climbed up the hillside to take in views of the bay.

  Phelan had said it was a fine evening with a smooth sea, and indeed it was so. Sara wondered where Spalding might be out on the water. Was he anchored in some nearby cove or at an offshore island? Or cruising slowly southward in St. George Channel? She was less than a day behind Spalding now, but catching him remained no easy matter. They could probably reach him by ship to shore radio, but doing so could easily raise his suspicions.

  Fitzmaurice motioned to her, and she walked back along the pier to the car where he waited. He told her the solicitor would be interviewed first thing in the morning and the order to inspect Paquette’s Internet account and e-mail records had been served.

  “Do we have her picked up?” he asked.

  “I’d rather wait until we know Spalding’s exact location,” Sara replied.

  “I’ve put in a query to his credit-card company,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ll have him the next time he uses it.”

  On their return to Dublin, Fitzmaurice avoided the motorway and drove through the coastal towns of Shankill, Killiney, and Dalkey until they reached Dún Laoghaire. Sara fell silent, gazing out the car window at the glimpses of the sea and the plots of pastureland that dotted the inland side of the coastal hills. Along a winding, narrow road bordered by hedgerows they passed by granite cliffs covered in yellow shrubs, huge estates on promontories overlooking the water, and a seaside park along an inlet with rock outcroppings and tall trees that were dark green against the backdrop of gray sky and water.

  In the towns they passed by weathered cut-stone churches with towering spires, an old castle with high turrets and parapets, and rows of Victorian and Georgian houses behind stone walls on finely tended lawns.

  Although Fitzmaurice had said nothing about taking her on an impromptu Cook’s tour, Sara appreciated his thoughtfulness and said so as they drove through Rathfarnham, a suburb of the city nestled against the foot of the Dublin Mountains several miles south of St. Stephen’s Green.

  So this is his semidetached, she thought, as Fitzmaurice pulled to a stop in front of a two-story modern town house in an established subdivision. It had brick facing on the ground floor, a plastered exterior wall above with several windows that looked out on the street, and a pitched, shingled roof with shallow eaves. A common lawn in front of the building had separate walkways leading to the two ground-floor entrances.

  Fitzmaurice pointed to his side of the semidetached before killing the engine. “Here we are, then,” he said. “Clan Fitzmaurice’s castle, wherein the lady of the house awaits along with my infant son, should he be home from university.”

  Sara climbed out of the car. “It’s sweet,” she said.

  Fitzmaurice shut the door and locked the car. “And within a very short distance of a real castle, where my grandfather worked as a groundskeeper when the Jesuits owned it. Sometime back they found secret tunnels at the castle, one of which runs to the golf course where I spend many pleasant afternoons slicing balls into the rough. We have megalithic tombs on the mountaintops and are home to the abbey where Mother Teresa of Calcutta first entered the religious life.”

  “History is all around you,” Sara said as they walked toward the house.

  “That it is,” Fitzmaurice said with a laugh. “We also are home to the first McDonald’s drive-through in Europe, for which, of course, we are eternally grateful.”

  “Is that true?” Sara asked.

  Fitzmaurice nodded and grinned. “We’re planning to raise a statue to Ronald McDonald on the town green to commemorate the historical event.”

  Edna Fitzmaurice met them at the door. Green eyed, with laugh lines at the corners of a broad mouth, she was a tall full-figured woman dressed casually in jeans and a short-sleeve pullover top.

  “So you are the woman who’s kept my husband from hearth and home,” she said, after greeting Sara warmly. “Come inside and tell me how he’s been misbehaving.”

  In the living room Edna sat with Sara on a couch facing a fireplace, while Fitzmaurice opened a bottle of wine at the sideboard in the adjacent dining room. The small living room, comfortable and inviting, had scaled-down furnishings that created a feeling of spaciousness, and built-in shelves filled with books. From the kitchen came the aroma of roasting lamb with a hint of garlic. Footsteps on the stairway from the second floor announced the arrival of Sean Fitzmaurice, who rushed into the room and smiled at Sara with a toothy grin.

  “Finally we get to meet,” he said, shaking her hand. “At the award ceremony I was warned to stay away. Garda business and all that. Are you really an American army officer?”

  Sara smiled back at the boy. “I am.” No more than nineteen or twenty, Sean had his father’s wide shoulders, large hands, and blunt fingers, and his mother’s eyes and mouth.

  “Leave her alone, Sean,” Fitzm
aurice called out as he carried in the wineglasses. “The colonel is a married woman. Wife and mother, to be exact.”

  After a glass of wine Sara helped Edna put the finishing touches on dinner, while Sean and Hugh set the table. Father, mother, and son were convivial company. Edna had bought the lamb—done to perfection—from a butcher who raised and slaughtered his own sheep on a farm in County Roscommon. A bowl of fruit topped off the meal, and it was then that Sean asked her if she’d read the works for which Brendan Coughlan had been honored at the National University.

  “I have not,” Sara replied. “But he’s now on my personal short list of writers to read.”

  Sean nodded with great seriousness. “He has a lyrical flair and a wonderful way of describing characters and settings. Did you ever hear of Finley Peter Dunne, a late-nineteenth-century Irish-American journalist?”

  Sara’s eyes widened in surprise. For an American Studies class at West Point she’d written a research paper on Dunne, a Chicago columnist who had created a comic Irish saloonkeeper named Mr. Dooley, a character with strong anti-imperialist tendencies who tenaciously criticized the Spanish-American War.

  “Did you know he was great friends with Teddy Roosevelt, in spite of his opposition to the Spanish-American War?” Sara asked.

  Sean beamed with pleasure. “I did. What was Mr. Dooley’s given name?”

  Sara laughed. “I don’t remember.”

  “Martin,” Sean replied. “And the customer who most often had to endure Dooley’s social commentary was named Hennessy.”

  “That’s right,” Sara said. “Did you know that before he moved to New York City, Dunne wrote articles on women’s issues for the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine?”

  Sean nodded. “He was one of the most popular muckraking reformers of his day.”

  “How did you come to discover him?” Sara asked.

  “I’m reading Irish-American Literature at Trinity,” Sean replied. “Do you know Thomas Flanagan’s works?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Sara said with a shake of her head.