Scandal in Skibbereen (A County Cork Mystery) Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Buried in a Bog

  “Connolly’s latest is a captivating tale—sweet, nostalgic, and full of Irish charm, but also tightly plotted and full of twists, turns, and shocking reveals . . . Connolly’s County Cork Mysteries have a ton of promise.”

  —The Maine Suspect

  “’Tis a grand thing . . . Connolly invests this leisurely series opener with a wealth of Irish color and background.”

  —Richmond Times-Dispatch

  “An exceptional read! Sheila Connolly has done it again with this outstanding book . . . [A] must read for those who have ever wanted to visit Ireland.”

  —Shelley’s Book Case

  “Full of charm and mystery . . . The locals are warm and welcoming and the central hub of the village, Sullivan’s Pub, is a slice of comfort. Throw in a dead body and a mugging in a nearby village and you have all the makings of a great whodunit.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Anyone with a trace of Irish in them, and all of us who wish we could claim an Irish connection, will welcome the first book in the County Cork series . . . And, with a country with Ireland’s history, there’s certain to be fascinating murders and mysteries to come.”

  —Lesa’s Book Critiques

  PRAISE FOR THE ORCHARD MYSTERIES

  “Sheila Connolly’s Orchard Mysteries are some of the most satisfying cozy mysteries I’ve read . . . Warm and entertaining from the first paragraph to the last. Fans will look forward to the next Orchard Mystery.”

  —Lesa’s Book Critiques

  “An enjoyable and well-written book with some excellent apple recipes at the end.”

  —Cozy Library

  “The mystery is intelligent and has an interesting twist . . . [A] fun, quick read with an enjoyable heroine.”

  —The Mystery Reader (four stars)

  “Delightful . . . [A] fascinating whodunit filled with surprises.”

  —The Mystery Gazette

  “[A] delightful new series.”

  —Gumshoe Review

  “The premise and plot are solid, and Meg seems a perfect fit for her role.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A fresh and appealing sleuth with a bushel full of entertaining problems. One Bad Apple is one crisp, delicious read.”

  —Claudia Bishop, author of the Hemlock Falls Mysteries

  “A delightful look at small-town New England, with an intriguing puzzle thrown in.”

  —JoAnna Carl, author of the Chocoholic Mysteries

  “A promising new mystery series. Thoroughly enjoyable . . . I can’t wait for the next book and a chance to spend more time with Meg and the good people of Granford.”

  —Sammi Carter, author of the Candy Shop Mysteries

  PRAISE FOR THE MUSEUM MYSTERIES

  “Sheila Connolly’s wonderful new series is a witty, engaging blend of history and mystery with a smart sleuth who already feels like a good friend.”

  —Julie Hyzy, New York Times bestselling author of

  the White House Chef Mysteries

  “[The] archival milieu and the foibles of the characters are intriguing, and it’s refreshing to encounter an FBI man who is human, competent, and essential to the plot.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “She’s smart, she’s savvy, and she’s sharp enough to spot what really goes on behind the scenes in museum politics. The practical and confident Nell Pratt is exactly the kind of sleuth you want in your corner when the going gets tough. Sheila Connolly serves up a snappy and sophisticated mystery.”

  —Mary Jane Maffini, author of

  the Charlotte Adams Mysteries

  “National Treasure meets The Philadelphia Story in this clever, charming, and sophisticated caper. When murder and mayhem become the main attractions at a prestigious museum, its feisty fundraiser goes undercover to prove it’s not just the museum’s pricey collection that’s concealing a hidden history. Secrets, lies, and a delightful revenge conspiracy make this a real page-turner!”

  —Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha Award–winning author of

  The Other Woman

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Sheila Connolly

  Orchard Mysteries

  ONE BAD APPLE

  ROTTEN TO THE CORE

  RED DELICIOUS DEATH

  A KILLER CROP

  BITTER HARVEST

  SOUR APPLES

  GOLDEN MALICIOUS

  Museum Mysteries

  FUNDRAISING THE DEAD

  LET’S PLAY DEAD

  FIRE ENGINE DEAD

  MONUMENT TO THE DEAD

  County Cork Mysteries

  BURIED IN A BOG

  SCANDAL IN SKIBBEREEN

  Specials

  DEAD LETTERS

  AN OPEN BOOK

  Scandal in

  Skibbereen

  SHEILA CONNOLLY

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  SCANDAL IN SKIBBEREEN

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2014 by Sheila Connolly.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-13733-2

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / February 2014

  Cover illustration by Daniel Craig.

  Cover photo: Celtic Knots © Shutterstock.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for Sheila Connolly

  Also by Sheila Connolly

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapt
er 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  One of the challenges of writing about a real village in Ireland is deciding whether to invent characters or to borrow from the ones who actually exist. In this book there are some of each.

  Thanks once again to Sergeant Tony McCarthy of the Skibbereen gardaí, who answered my questions about how the investigation of a crime that strongly resembles the one included here would proceed. Police matters in Ireland don’t always resemble those in the United States, or what readers have come to expect in this age of CSI and digital evidence. You have to keep in mind the size of the places, which is reflected in the staffing of the garda stations. Skibbereen is a small town by American standards (with a population of about 2,700 people), and the garda station is small as well. When we met, I apologized to the sergeant for saddling the police force with a fictional crime wave, and I’ve given their fictional counterparts a lot of discretion in how they handle the events. If I’ve gotten it wrong, it is my error, and not due to the advice I was given.

  Sheahan’s Hotel in Leap has been operated by the same family for more than a century. The current proprietors were generous in sharing information about hiring regulations, food service restrictions, parking requirements, and so on—the nuts and bolts of running an Irish pub in a small village. I hope I have used those details well.

  The Townsend family lived in the manor house overlooking the harbor in Leap from the seventeenth century until the later twentieth century, and the building is as I’ve described it. However, it is now a retreat house rather than a family home. I’ve tweaked a bit of the family’s history for my purposes, although the founder of that family line, Richard Townsend, was a contemporary of the artist Anthony Van Dyck. I apologize to any Townsends who may read this book for muddling up their past.

  If you’re planning a trip to West Cork—and you should!—you’ll find all the places mentioned, including Maura’s cottage (now in ruins) and Bridget’s just over the lane (still occupied), and the terrible road down the back of the hill. I have been thrilled by the warm responses from readers, who write to tell me that I’ve captured the spirit of Ireland and they’re ready to get on a plane.

  And of course, I have to thank my agent, Jessica Faust of BookEnds, and my editor, Shannon Jamieson Vazquez (with whom I had many interesting discussions about Irish slang!), as well as the wonderful support network among mystery writers, including Sisters in Crime and the Guppies.

  Is maith an scéalaí an aimsir.

  Time is a good storyteller.

  Chapter 1

  Now that the high season had arrived, Sullivan’s Pub was busier than Maura Donovan had ever seen it. Of course, she’d only arrived from Boston about three months before, so she didn’t have a lot to compare it to. Still, it was promising—it was the middle of the day, and she already had a nice crowd. It wasn’t until later that the regulars would drift in and settle in their favorite spots, either at the bar or near the small peat fire, which Maura had found useful even in June. Plus, it seemed to please those tourists who wandered in: their eyes lit up at the sight of it. Ah, a bit of Old Ireland, she guessed they were thinking, and on a damp day like today they’d be glad of the warmth. There’d been quite a number of damp days lately.

  But business was building. Her business. Maura still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of owning a pub, though she’d worked in enough of them in her twenty-five years. She’d never owned anything of importance in her life. She and her gran had lived in a small apartment in South Boston as long as she could remember, and with Gran gone now, Maura had found that all their worldly possessions amounted to very little that she wanted to keep, except a few family photos and letters to and from her grandmother. Yet those had led her here to Leap, a tiny village on the south coast of Ireland, close to where her gran had been born, and landed her in the middle of a new and unexpected life.

  Maura had to admit she was still worried that someone would find a reason to challenge Old Mick Sullivan’s will, which had left her not only this ramshackle old pub and the building that housed it, but also his home a couple of miles away and the acreage that lay behind it. She’d gone from all but penniless to homeowner and publican practically overnight. It took getting used to. Not exactly what she’d planned for her life, but then, she hadn’t really had a plan. Right now Maura was taking it slowly. She had no major changes mind, at least not yet. She’d cleaned the place up some—but not too much, as she was pretty sure the regulars came in because of the shabby, comfortable, and familiar setting. They didn’t mind cobwebs in corners, the occasional puff of peat smoke when the wind blew down the chimney, or the dozens, if not hundreds, of postcards and newspaper clippings and posters and whatnot that decorated the walls.

  “Gathering wool, are yeh, Maura?” Rose, her young employee, not yet seventeen, surprised Maura from her reverie.

  “Maybe,” Maura admitted. “I was just thinking—things are getting better, aren’t they?”

  “Bit by bit, they are. And it’s not even full summer yet,” Rose said. “With fairer weather, it’ll pick up.”

  “I hope so.” Maura silently counted the crowd. There was Old Billy Sheahan in his well-worn armchair next to the fire; two or three couples tucked into corners, looking happily settled there; and a few lone men who’d tipped a cap in greeting but seemed to prefer a quiet moment with their pint to conversation. She looked past the small clutch of patrons out the large windows facing the road and saw that it was raining again. Would it ever be sunny here? That usually didn’t stop the regulars from dropping by, but it kept the tourists home, or maybe in Dublin where there was something else to do on a wet day, like visit museums, or so she’d heard. She hadn’t seen anything of Dublin past the bus station. Maybe someday. Not so many museums in West Cork, although there was the Heritage Center in Skibbereen, not far away. But there was nothing she could do about the rain, except hope that it ended before she went broke.

  Rose’s father, Jimmy Sweeney, bustled in from the back of the building. Maura had more or less inherited him and his daughter as employees along with the pub. She’d quickly found that Rose was a lot more useful than Jimmy. “I’ll be off to Skib for those supplies you wanted, eh, Maura?”

  “Fine, Jimmy,” Maura said. She’d worked with him long enough now to know that a journey to the nearest town, Skibbereen, often took him a couple of hours, even though it was less than ten minutes away, and half the time he returned without the supplies he’d promised but with a handful of excuses. Sometimes she wondered if Jimmy was doing it deliberately to punish her for inheriting the pub—she had a feeling that he’d had his hopes set on running it himself, although they’d never talked about it. But when she was feeling more kindly toward him, she just figured he was easily distracted. In this economy she didn’t have the heart to let him go, and she was pretty sure he wouldn’t push her far enough to fire him outright. At least Rose hadn’t inherited her father’s slipshod attitude: she was always eager to please and happy to take on more work.

  So business had picked up a bit, on this wet afternoon, but it could still be better. Since she had some time on her hands, Maura was considering going over the pub’s account books, something she had little liking or aptitude for, when the front door burst open and slammed against the wall. A blast of damp air preceded a woman who looked like a wet cat. Maura sized her up quickly: definitely not Irish. English maybe? American? Definitely urban. The thirty-something woman wore all black, including a fancy raincoat that seemed to be doing little to keep her dry. Her delicate shoes were soaked, and there was mud caked on one. “Goddamn lousy weather,” the woman said, oblivious to anyone who might be listening—which was everyone in the place.

  Oh, yeah, Maura thought. Definitely American. It wasn’t uncommon to get American tourists in Leap, but they usually arrived wearing jeans and hiking boots, rather than what Maura suspected was a designer suit.

  The woman spotted Maura be
hind the bar and stalked over to her. “Where am I?”

  “Leap. In County Cork. Where did you want to be?” Maura said amiably.

  “Thank God—you’re American! Maybe I can get a straight answer from you. Everybody else around here has been giving me the most ridiculous directions. Like, ‘Take the roundabout through the village and look for the old church,’ like they can’t tell I’m completely lost and barely know what a roundabout is, and I’m having enough trouble remembering to drive on the wrong side!” It was hard for Maura to tell whether the woman was spitting or just dripping.

  “Why don’t you sit down and dry off a bit, and maybe I can help you,” Maura suggested.

  “I need a drink,” the woman said. “No, I don’t. It’s bad enough having to deal with that effing rental car, and the last thing I need is to get stopped by a cop now.” Her eyes brightened when she spotted the espresso machine Maura had installed. “Please tell me that thing works.”

  “Sure does. What would you like?”

  “Can you handle a grande cappuccino?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll do it,” Rose volunteered. She seemed fascinated by the stylishly dressed newcomer.

  The woman shrugged off her wet coat and tossed it over a bar stool, then perched on the one next to it. “I must be insane . . .” she muttered, and Maura wasn’t sure whether she was talking to Maura or to herself. “Why did I have to end up in the back of beyond rather than Nice or Venice?”

  Rose slid the coffee across the bar and retreated a few steps. The woman grabbed it and swallowed, and a fleeting look of bliss crossed her face. “You may have just saved my life. Thank you. And I apologize for being so rude, but it’s been a lousy few days. I think I’m in the right place, finally, though, so that’s progress. So, tell me about this place. How big is it?”

  “Leap?” Maura said. “What you see is about all there is. Population just over two hundred. A couple of paved roads, and a lot more that are sort of paved. You came in on the main highway. Were you on your way somewhere?”