Read Online The Irish Cairn Murder by Dicey Deere - Free Book Online

Unfortunately some of the blood was Mr. Brannigan’s. What else have I missed? Besides you, of course.” His hand affectionately caressed her nape the way she loved.
    â€œThere is something else.”
    â€œDo tell.” Jasper resettled the pillow behind his back.
    â€œWell …” She told him then about the threatening telephone call when Dakin was working at the cottage and how after he’d left, she’d gone into the woods. “Look at this.” She took the old tin lozenge box from the drawer in the bedside table, opened it, and held up the cigarette butt she’d found under the oak. “I can’t tell the brand. There’s an S, then I think an I . The rest’s burned away. It’s imposs—”
    â€œSinbad,” Jasper said. “Relatively new. Canadian company. Getting popular up there.”
    â€œCanadian!” For a moment she was bewildered. Then she felt a protest rising in her. No, no! Head bent, she put the cigarette butt back in the box. Slowly she closed the lid. She didn’t want to look at Jasper.
    â€œSay it,” Jasper said.
    â€œWell … coincidence.”
    â€œCoincidence?” Jasper said. “That the man on the telephone threatening Dakin Cameron’s mother was likely Canadian … at least that Sinbad cigarette butt suggests it. And Brannigan, whom some one then bashed at the Sylvester Hall gates—I’m only saying some one—tried to kill—was a Canadian? A Canadian who might have made a threatening call to
Dakin Cameron and was a threatening presence to Natalie Cameron? A Canadian who was presumably terrorizing—”
    â€œI don’t think—”
    â€œThe boy. Dakin. Close to his mother? Maybe, if he were sufficiently spooked—What’s he like?”
    â€œ Like ?” She stared at Jasper, but she was seeing the leering faces of the two Dublin lads on the access road as she bicycled toward them, she was seeing the dirty hand that grasped the handlebars, stopping her. She was seeing, then, the blur of a mustard jersey on her left, she was hearing a voice saying to the dirty hand’s owner, “You don’t really mean that, do you?” and in response to have the other Dublin boy lash at his face and land a blow. And in return get clobbered.
    â€œLike?” she said to Jasper; and she told him about the encounter on the road. “I’d say he’s more a knight errant. Not likely to attack anyone except to defend himself.”
    Â 
    At seven o’clock they left the cottage and walked up the road to the village. Jasper didn’t want to miss Finney’s Monday night supper special of stew made with lamb shanks, carrots, curry, and stout, a four-star dish, in his estimation. Next week he’d be at the Kinsale Food Festival savoring and tasting, and reporting on Kinsale’s famous restaurants in “Jasper,” his food column.
    They came into Finneys, to the warmth and the usual suppertime hubbub. At the bar a handful of local farmhands and shop owners were deep into politics and swapping local gossip. One tiddly old fellow, holding on to the bar, was humming “Reilly’s Daughter.”
    Torrey and Jasper settled at the only available table, one of a small cluster of tables beside the bar, and Torrey said hello to Sergeant Bryson and Ms. Plant, who were finishing supper at the next table. Ms. Plant was having wine with her lamb shanks, Jimmy Bryson a dark beer. Torrey smiled at
Jimmy Bryson. Thoughtful of him to take Ms. Plant to supper. Never mind that it was at the Ballynach village expense. Ms. Plant, sipping the last of her wine, had managed to pull her rather fleshy self together. She was in a soft brown wool dress, and with her hair now neatly combed she looked composed and even attractive despite an overabundance of blue eye shadow.
    Jasper had just ordered when the tiddly old fellow at the bar said to his younger companion,