Read Online Family Vault by Charlotte MacLeod - Free Book Online

“What do you think of this Ruby Redd thing?”
    Jeremy Kelling told her what he thought in sulphurous detail. Sarah sipped Egbert’s coffee, which was pure nectar compared to Edith’s, and waited until he’d run out of swear words. Then she said, “Really? I took it for granted you’d put her there yourself, although of course I didn’t say so to the police.”
    Her uncle took the sally as a compliment, as she’d known he would, and regaled her with several too-familiar anecdotes. Finally, she managed to get in the question she’d come to ask.
    “By the way, here’s a little nugget the reporters didn’t get hold of. There was an old man in the cemetery with me while I was waiting for Dolph. We got to talking—I get my bad habit of picking up odd characters from you, you know—and by the maddest coincidence he turned out to have been the bartender in a place Ruby Redd used to frequent, called Danny Rate’s Pub. Would you happen to know him?”
    “Ah, sweet memory! Many’s the libation I’ve lifted to the buxom beauties of the burleycue over that sudsy oaken timber. Gad, the nights I spent in Danny Rate’s Pub! I could tell you stories—”
    Sarah knew better than to let him get started again. “All I want is for you to tell me that bartender’s name,” she interrupted firmly. “He was actually the first one to identify the body, though Dolph hogged the credit, and he was such a dear to me, lending me money for the telephone which I forgot to give back. He simply faded out of the picture before I had a chance even to thank him. I thought I’d like to return his dime and write a little note of appreciation. He was so—oh, old and seedy-looking and probably living in some poky room—”
    “At the taxpayers’ expense,” snorted Uncle Jem, who had never done a tap of honest work in his life. “What did he look like?”
    “Short and thinnish, and I’d say he may have been fair-haired when he was younger. He had pale blue eyes, I know, unusually pale, with something odd about them.”
    “One eyelid drooped, and the other didn’t?”
    “Yes, that was it!”
    “Funny sort of crack in his voice?”
    “Yes, I thought it was just old age.”
    “No, he always talked that way. Well, well! Imagine his turning up like that. I remember one night—”
    “Never mind,” Sarah broke in relentlessly. She couldn’t spend the whole morning here. “What’s his name? You must remember that, you never forget anything.”
    “Wait, don’t rush me. Let me think. It was a funny sort of name. Not peculiar, amusing. We had a standing joke around the bar. ‘Oh, gee, Tim,’ we’d say. That was it, Tim O’Ghee, with an h. Some corruption of Magee, I daresay, unless his mother made it up, which is not without the realm of possibility. Speaking of names—”
    “Edith will be calling me names,” said his niece, “if I don’t get back and do Edith’s work for her. The hordes are descending on us after the funeral. Sorry you won’t be among them, but I shouldn’t be, either, if I didn’t have to. It’ll only be sherry and cheese, anyway. Thanks for the lovely coffee and the help. I’ll drop over in a day or so and tell you all the nasty things Cousin Mabel says about you.”
    She kissed him good-bye. She’d never minded kissing Uncle Jem because he was plump instead of craggy like the rest of the uncles, didn’t have whiskers, and smelled pleasantly of Bay Rum. Besides, he’d given her what she came for.
    Now that she knew Timothy O’Ghee’s name, she must surely be able to track him down. Sarah hastened over to the pay phones on the Common, found a phone book that hadn’t yet been vandalized, and hunted among the Os. No O’Ghee was listed, which didn’t surprise her. That would be too easy.
    The voting lists would be a likelier place to find him. Sarah knew all about voting lists, she’d plowed through enough of them addressing postcards in the interests of one or another of Aunt Caroline’s