It was still early enough in the day that it took only ten minutes to drive to Skibbereen and park in the small lot next to the garda station. No sign of Sean outside, so she headed down the street, turned the corner, and ducked into the small restaurant, where she spotted Sean sitting at a table in the back. She made her way through the tables to where he sat and dropped into the chair opposite him.

He cocked his head at her quizzically. “Good mornin’, Maura. Yeh look like yeh’re ready to spit nails.”

“Still? Well, your new sergeant seems to have that effect on me. I swear, he asked me if I was sure Tom Donovan was really my father. And then he tried to pin John Byrne’s death on my mother just because they were both outsiders.”

Sean looked dismayed. “Yeh’re not the first to report somethin’ like that since he’s arrived.”

Maura leaned on her elbows. “I won’t whine about him, but can you tell me if he’s getting any results or just making people angry?”

“Mostly the second, so far. But it’s early days. Yeh said yeh’ve got somethin’ fer me? Oh, but I need to tell yeh: we’ve got the coroner’s report now.”

Maura looked at his expression, and she got a sinking feeling. “Isn’t that good news?”

“Not when he couldn’t reach a verdict. So it’s not officially murder, just an unexplained death, and we’re no farther along.”

“I’m sorry, Sean. Does that happen often?”

“It’s not rare. There’s simply not enough evidence to make the call. So what do yeh have that’s new?”

“I would have given it to the sergeant, but I don’t think he would’ve appreciated it.” She came straight to the point. “When I got to Sullivan’s this morning, Billy Sheahan wanted to talk to me. You know he knows everything that’s been going on with John Byrne’s death. When he went over the list I gave him, it got him thinking, and he remembered that there were Byrne families up near Dunmanway. Is that in your district?”

“No, but I know it a bit, though I’ve never been involved with any business there. Why?”

“Billy said that the Byrnes had dairy herds up there, but there were too many in the family to make a go of it, so one brother took off for New York. Patrick—Paddy. Leaving a wife and young son behind. Billy thought that could be John. When the mother died, the rest of the family sent John, who was in his teens by then, off to New York to live with his father.”

Sean was listening carefully. “It could fit, and there are facts we could check. But what would that have to do with the man’s death thirty years later?”

“Billy didn’t have any ideas about that, but he did believe that Paddy Byrne was some kind of old-style gangster in New York. Kind of the last of his breed. I know the story’s kind of weak, but the timeline fits. John leaves the farm in Dunmanway in the nineties to go live with his father. Somehow after a couple of years, he gets himself into Harvard and proves he’s a bright and hardworking boy and does well. And by the way, manages to lose his Irish accent. Then he goes to business school, works for big-name banks, starts his own company. And then he comes back here to show off what he’s accomplished. Only he never tells anyone he’s a local boy, as far as we know. Maybe he wanted it to be a surprise. Or maybe he told the wrong person.”

Sean didn’t look convinced. “I have to agree wit’ yeh, it’s pretty thin. What’s yer point, Maura?”

“That if we have the right John Byrne, he does have a history with West Cork, and that opens up all sorts of possibilities, doesn’t it? You can track down the Dunmanway Byrnes, if there are any left, and ask about their John and if they know where he is now. You can ask for records from New York, or Harvard, or whatever. All I’m saying is that you’ve got a reason to dig a little deeper into his earlier life like you were thinking, and you might just find somebody there who knew him—and wanted him dead. Have you got anything better to work with?”

Sean shook his head. “Fair enough. We’ve had no luck anywhere else. Thank Billy fer me, will yeh?” He lowered his voice. “And I’d say yeh’re right not to hand it to the sergeant—he wouldn’t give it much weight.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. You sure you don’t want to make Billy an official consultant? He’s got stuff in his head that there’s probably no other record of, and he can put the pieces together.”

Sean smiled. “If he was fifty years younger, we’d recruit him.”

“So, will you bring it up to your boss?”

“I will, though maybe him alone fer now. I’ll do a bit more digging on the American end unless yer ma comes up with something.”

“Well, good luck. I’d better get back to the pub. Thanks for listening, Sean.”

“I always listen to yeh, Maura. I’ll walk you out.”

Outside she breathed deeply—spring and auto exhaust. The town was waking up.

When Maura walked into Sullivan’s, all eyes turned toward her. Except Mick’s: he appeared very focused on lining up the bottles on the shelves. The rest of the crowd consisted of Jimmy, Rose, and Billy, in his usual chair.

“Hi, Jimmy. Nice to see you.” Maura tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Why is everybody here so early? Is something happening?”

Rose dimpled. “It’s spring, no more than that. We couldn’t just sit in our homes stewing. Billy here’s been tellin’ us his ideas about John Byrne. Yeh’ve been to see the gardaí?”

“That’s where I just was. I told Sean Murphy what Billy told me, and I think he’s going to check out the things he can. Which still doesn’t leave us any nearer to figuring out who might have killed John. If in fact he really was killed, which nobody’s sure about.”

“Odds are good that it’s somebody from his past,” Jimmy commented.

That was an unusually smart observation coming from him. “Seems likely,” Maura agreed. “Although we can’t be sure he didn’t talk to other people here, he didn’t have a lot of spare time, and nobody’s come forward.”

It was hard to read Mick’s mood from the back of his neck. Maura went behind the bar and made herself a cup of coffee. While it dripped, she asked quietly, “Everything okay?”

He looked at her then and smiled. “So it is.”

“Good,” she replied, smiling back at him, and gathered up her coffee before turning to the others. “So, what’ve we got on for the rest of the week? We’ve got music on Friday, right? Are we ready for the band?”

“I told yeh,” Rose began, “I put out the word on the Internet, and tickets are sellin’ well.”

“I’m impressed. We’re actually selling tickets online now?”

“Sure and we are,” Rose said firmly. “I asked some friends to help me, and we signed Sullivan’s up for an online ticketing page. I was worried that the crowds would be so big that we might end up breaking local regulations.”

“So we can look at how many people have bought tickets, and then we can plan our supply orders based on real numbers?”

“Of course. I’ve been lettin’ Mick know the last couple of music nights.”

“Well done, Rose!” I really am behind the times, aren’t I? “Anyway, back to business. We probably need to give the back room a quick cleanup, right? Mick, I guess that thanks to Rose I don’t need to ask how we’re fixed for snacks?”

“Order’s comin’ tomorrow. Extra kegs in the cellar. We’re good,” Mick reported.

That took care of most of the business items that Maura could think of. Still no customers. Maybe it was time to look at that list of hotel employees that Billy had marked up. Sean had bought into her suggestion that whoever had killed John might have come from his past. Looking at an out-of-date but still fairly recent staff list was a long shot, but it couldn’t hurt.

She sat at a corner table, pulled the folder Billy had returned to her out of her bag, and spread the pages on the table.

Maura glanced at the first page and smiled. No fancy yellow highlighter for Billy: his notes were chicken scrawls written in blunt pencil, and they were not always easy to read. But she could manage. Living in West Cork now, she was continually amazed that there were so few surnames—or first names, for that matter. Back in Boston, she’d thought it was something like a joke that all the Irish men were named Michael or Patrick and called Mick or Paddy, but here she knew plenty of both.

Focus, Maura! That same group of surnames dominated the hotel lists. No doubt some of them were related to each other. Probably most of the people on the list had stayed in the same job for the time period covered.

Maybe she should come at this from a different direction. Bridget had told her that her son’s wife had worked at the hotel. No Nolans on any of the lists, but the woman might have taken her husband’s name when she remarried. The only female manager on the earliest lists was Siobhan Buckley—and Siobhan was the name Bridget had mentioned. Two years ago, the name of the manager in the same position had changed to Siobhan O’Mahoney. Same person, new husband?

Farther down the list, Maura found the name Ellen Buckley. Bridget had said her former daughter-in-law had had a daughter named Ellen who worked at the hotel, and Ellen was the only other Buckley on the list. Farther again down the list, she found the name Bernard O’Mahoney, who was a groundskeeper throughout the entire period—he was the man she’d met in the garden. An older man. The one who’d found John dead? Was he Siobhan’s new husband? The ages could be about right.

Maybe she’d better check with Billy before she went off in the wrong direction. She left the papers where they were and went over to sit by him.

“Young Murphy’s on the scent now, is he?” Billy asked as she sat.

“I hope so.” Briefly she wondered how Sean was doing with Harvard and asking about a student who had graduated twenty-odd years ago. On the other hand, John might have contributed money to the college and would be listed in donor records, which would more easily available. She should remember to mention that to Sean, who probably knew little about making big contributions.

“I see yeh’re looking at that list I gave yeh?”

“Yes, and I have some questions. Let me run by you what I’m guessing, and you can tell me if I’m close to right. Siobhan Buckley—she’s Siobhan O’Mahoney now?”

“That’s right. Yer list goes back no more than five years, but she’s been there far longer.”

“And she’s married to the groundskeeper now? Bernard O’Mahoney?”

Billy beamed at her. “Ah, Maura, yeh’ve a real gift fer this. And you not knowing them at all.”

“Bridget kind of pointed me in the right direction, and you’ve helped a lot. One more question: Ellen Buckley is Siobhan’s daughter?”

“Three fer three. Before yeh ask, back when Siobhan was married to Tim Nolan, may God rest his soul, she went by the name Buckley and kept it when she married, and that’s how her daughter was recorded.”

Was that unusual in Ireland? “Why’d Siobhan change her name this last time around?”

“Ah, and that would be because this time she wanted to do it right with a big fancy party. It’d be my guess that the hotel paid part of the cost of it fer the publicity, like. Things like photos in the papers. Good fer the hotel.”

That made some sense. “Do you know Bernard?”

Billy nodded. “He’s younger than me, but we’ve met from time to time. He knows the Crann Mor place up one side and down the other. First marriage fer him, brave man. Seems he’d been pinin’ fer Siobhan fer half his life, but it took him a bit after Tim died to screw up his courage to ask the woman.”

Another myth confirmed: Maura had always heard than Irish men were slow and late to marry. Poor Bernard must have been waiting for Siobhan for half his life.

So what had she learned or confirmed? A longtime employee at the hotel had once been married to Bridget’s late son and was now married to the groundskeeper. And she had a daughter who also worked at the hotel. Bridget had said Ellen was born before Siobhan married Tim Nolan. Had there ever been a marriage to a Buckley back then? Had Ellen been born out of wedlock? Maybe people didn’t comment on that much these days—Gillian didn’t seem too concerned that she and Harry weren’t married—but twenty years ago it might have been different. Siobhan might have had to choose between giving up the baby forever or toughing it out, bringing her child up in the face of nasty comments from the neighbors and maybe even family and friends.

Maybe she’d come to Skibbereen to get away from those nasty neighbors who knew the story. “Was Siobhan from around here?” Maura asked Billy.

“She came from up near Dunmanway, I recall. People didn’t know her well.”

Dunmanway. Where Johnny Byrne might have come from. Could Siobhan have known Johnny?

If she was going to string together wild guesses, she might as well jump in with both feet, Maura decided. Could Johnny be Ellen’s father? Was it too much of a leap of logic to guess that Johnny Byrne of Dunmanway had gotten his neighbor, Siobhan Buckley, pregnant before disappearing to America?

She looked up to find Billy watching her with an odd expression on his face. “I don’t know, Maura. Yeh’ll have to ask Siobhan.”

She stared at him. “Billy, are you reading my mind?”

“I can tell what yeh’re thinkin’. I won’t say I haven’t wondered meself, but no one would have shared that kind of gossip with me back then.”

Maura thought hard. “Even if it’s true, I can’t just hand this to the gardaí and have them asking embarrassing questions.” She shuddered internally at the thought of Sergeant Ryan charging into a delicate interview like an angry bull. “That’s not fair. But you think it’s possible, right?”

“I do. Talk to Siobhan O’Mahoney, will yeh? Off the record, like. If yeh’re wrong, she may be angry with yeh, but she doesn’t need the gardaí knowin’ all this unless there’s a good reason.”

“I don’t even know her. How do I walk in and ask the kind of questions we’re talking about?”

Billy sat back in his chair and looked at her. “It could be she’s had a hard life. So have you. She stuck by her daughter, mebbe with no father. Yer ma didn’t—so tell Siobhan she did right by her own daughter. If yeh’ve guessed right and she knows somethin’ about Byrne’s death and you do nothin’, what then? Somebody gets away with murder, and that’s not as it should be.”

Billy was right, and she knew it. This was her theory, and it was up to her to ask Siobhan if it was true. “All right, Billy. I’ll try to find her and talk to her before I tell anyone else what we think might have happened. It seems only fair.”

“And yeh’re fair woman, Maura Donovan.”

At least she had Billy’s approval. That was some comfort. “Any other interesting things you found in those lists?”

“Nah, I’ve given you the best of it. Might be it’s time fer me first pint of the day, though.”

“Coming up.”

Maura went behind the bar to start Billy’s pint, all too conscious of Mick’s presence there.

“Everything all right?” he asked in a low voice.

“Billy’s given me some ideas about John Byrne’s death.”

“And they would be?”

“I don’t feel right talking about it yet. I need to check something out first. I’ll tell you when I know more.”

“Take care.”

It hadn’t even occurred to her that she might be putting herself at risk, but the idea seemed ridiculous. Siobhan had to be a middle-aged woman now, working at a large hotel with lots of people around—talking to her seemed safe enough to Maura. If she chickened out and told the gardaí instead about this possible connection, they’d probably embarrass Siobhan. She had to do this herself.

She looked around the still empty room. “I might as well go now. Who knows, we might get busy later.”

In his corner, Jimmy snorted at that statement. No one else commented.

She gathered up the papers that she’d left on the table, stuffed them back in her bag, and went outside. It was shaping up to be a lovely day. Maybe that was where all the pub patrons were—out enjoying the spring, gamboling like lambs in the green fields. The image of Seamus and his gang doing that made her laugh out loud.