Once more Maura walked into the Crann Mor main building and immediately felt out of place. No one would mistake her for a guest. Get over yourself, Maura! she told herself sternly. No wonder Sergeant Ryan had had trouble believing that she and Helen were related: Helen was comfortable in her own skin in a setting like this, but Maura felt like a poor relation—or worse. She stood up straighter and approached the reception desk. There was a thirtyish woman standing behind it, starting intently at a computer screen discreetly embedded in the top of the desk. She looked up when Maura was a few feet away.

“Good morning. Welcome to Crann Mor. How can I help you?”

At least she didn’t direct me to the servants’ entrance, Maura thought. “I’d like to speak to Siobhan O’Mahoney. I understand she works here?”

The woman behind the desk beamed. “She does indeed. Would this be a business or a personal matter that you wish to speak about?”

“I’m not looking for a job, or trying to sell anything. It’s personal. There’s something I need to talk to her about.”

The other woman’s smile declined by about ten percent as she reached for a sleek phone. “Let me see if she’s free to see you now.” She turned away to talk, and Maura wondered if Siobhan would ask her understaff person to send her on her way. If that happened, she’d have to enlist Helen’s help to get her in to see Siobhan.

Maura breathed a sigh of relief when the woman turned back to her. “She’ll be right out. Would you care to take a seat? Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

“No, thanks. I’m fine.” Maura gave the staff points for polite treatment of anyone who walked in—that was good for business, wasn’t it?

Three minutes later, a slender middle-aged woman emerged from somewhere in the back of the building. Since Maura was the only person waiting in the lobby, Siobhan approached her directly. “Good morning. I’m Siobhan O’Mahoney. I understand you wanted to speak with me?”

“Yes. I’m Maura Donovan. I own Sullivan’s Pub in Leap, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about. It’s about John Byrne.” There—she’d cast her bait, and she waited to see how Siobhan would react.

The woman’s expression didn’t change. “Ah. You’re not from the gardaí, are you?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s, uh, complicated.”

Siobhan studied Maura’s face and appeared to arrive at a decision. “Then perhaps you’ll explain it to me. We can go to my office, or we can sit in the garden in back—it’s such a lovely day.”

“The garden, please.” A place where no one would overhear their conversation.

Siobhan led her out through the back door to the elegant enclosed garden Maura had seen before with Helen. There was a sundial in the center of the intricate plant beds with a couple of benches grouped around it. They sat down on one of the benches, their backs to the sun.

“So, tell me, Maura Donovan, what’s this all about?”

Maura realized that she hadn’t planned any sort of script. She’d been focused on simply getting to the hotel and finding Siobhan. “First of all, thank you for seeing me. You don’t know me, and you have no reason to talk to me.”

“John Byrne asked about your pub, and after he’d seen it, he commented that it was rather charming. So I’ll take that as an endorsement from him. What did you want to say to me?”

“I only met John Byrne that one time, but”—Here goes nothing!—“my mother worked with him. She’s Helen Jenkins.”

Siobhan tilted her head. “I do see a resemblance. She never mentioned she had a daughter in the area. I’ve a daughter of my own about your age.”

“She didn’t mention me because she hadn’t seen me in over twenty years until she arrived last week.”

“Oh, my,” Siobhan said, not unsympathetically. “I’m sure there’s a story behind that. But what does that have to do with me?”

“Did you know that the gardaí have still not said that John’s death was an accident?”

Siobhan sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. There was an older man—a garda new to the town—who seemed sure he’d been murdered. I’ll admit that we here at the hotel have wondered about it, but we’ve tried to downplay the unfortunate event to our guests. And I’m sure you know, the gardaí don’t seem to have identified any suspects, much less arrested anyone. What is your interest?”

“I’ll get to that. I apologize if any of my questions seem, well, too personal, but for my mother’s sake, I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened to John, and that garda you mentioned seems to think that anyone without an ironclad alibi is a suspect.” Maura swallowed. “I understand you were originally from around Dunmanway before you started working here?” Maura asked carefully.

Siobhan seemed to stiffen just a bit, but she kept on her formal face. “Yes, from a townland on the south side of the town. You’re familiar with the term?”

“Townland? Yes. I own a house in Knockskagh, north of here.”

“I see. Do you know Dunmanway?”

“No. I seem to spend most of my waking time at the pub, and I haven’t had much time to explore the area.”

“What does it matter, where I came from?” Siobhan asked cautiously.

Here comes the curve ball. “It seems that John Byrne may also have come from Dunmanway.”

“Ah,” Siobhan said, then fell silent. Maura didn’t add anything, watching Siobhan’s face, waiting to see what she would say.

Finally Siobhan asked, “Who told you that?”

“A friend. Someone who’s lived around here for a very long time and remembered the family. He’s got a good memory.”

“And who’ve you told this?”

“Based on what my friend told me about the Byrne families, I pointed the gardaí toward Dunmanway, but I never mentioned you or any possible link to you because I hadn’t put it all together. And even if I had made the connection, it wouldn’t be fair to you to tell them, especially if I’m wrong. You can tell me to take a hike if you want. Nobody’s got proof of anything right now. But if they start looking harder at John’s early life, what will they find?”

Siobhan studied Maura before answering. “There’s nothing that puts the two of us together. No evidence, if you will. No history between us. No friends who knew about us because there was no us. No names joined on any pieces of paper. If I tell you what really happened, can you keep it to yourself?”

“As long as it has nothing to do with John’s death, sure.” Unless there was a whopping big motive involved, and in that case, Maura wasn’t sure where her obligation lay.

Siobhan nodded as if reaching a decision. “Let me start by saying that I do not know how the man died. I didn’t have a hand in it. You can believe me or not. Yes, John and I both come from near Dunmanway. We were neighbors of a sort in adjoining townlands. Farm kids and churchgoers, so we knew each other, as did our families. I was a bit older than he was. He was a decent boy—never in any trouble. But then his father took off to seek his fortune in America, and a couple of years later his mother died, and there was no one to take him in. So he was sent off to live with his father.”

“That’s how my friend remembered it. Do you know much about his father?”

“When he left here, Paddy Byrne was a dairy farmer. I gather he found . . . other employment in New York. It didn’t pay to ask too many questions, and Johnny never came back. He kept in touch with his family here only when he felt like it, which was not often.”

That much Maura had already guessed. It was time to dig a little deeper. “Tell me if I’m on the right track. John, a farmer’s son, goes to New York and joins his father there. About two years later, he ends up as a student at Harvard, which wasn’t then and isn’t now an easy place to get into. So either he was some kind of genius or he had some help from his father and his New York pals—money, influence, whatever it took. Word is, they weren’t exactly law-biding types. But as far as anybody knows, John Byrne grabbed that opportunity and ran with it, and he did himself proud. I’ve wondered if maybe he bought this hotel and came back to show everyone around here how well he’d done. Does that fit?”

Siobhan was looking past Maura, lost in her memories. “It does. Yes, he was smart, but only about some things. It’d be my guess that Paddy fixed it so he’d go to that fancy college—don’t ask me how. John took what was offered and made good use of it. And the gangs or wise guys or whatever they were called back then were already on their way out, so none of them ever bothered John again. There were no favors to call in, no deals made.”

“Well, there goes one theory,” Maura said. “So we can be pretty sure that John Byrne was not killed in a mob hit by an eighty-year-old gangster,” Maura said. Siobhan smiled faintly, and Maura went on: “Do you know if anyone else around here knew about his past?”

“I think there’s still some family up in Dunmanway that recall him.”

“Did he meet with you when he arrived?”

“I’m thinking you know full well he did and why.”

“Look, Siobhan, I’ve got a pretty good guess, but I haven’t shared it with anyone. All I want is to find out how and why he died. For my mother’s sake, I suppose. In a crazy way, it was John who put us together after twenty years.”

Siobhan looked away. “I suppose it’s too late to end the story now, and I’ve trusted you this far. When Johnny was preparing to leave all those years ago, the families threw him a big party—that’s an old tradition around here, if you don’t know. Used to be that most people knew they’d never see the person again, so it was a send-off and a wake wrapped up together.

“There was plenty of drink flowing, and somehow in the night things got a bit out of hand. Johnny and I, we ended up in a grassy field doing what drunken kids do. Johnny left the next day, and I came up pregnant. I never told him. Hell, he was sixteen and thousands of miles away. What could he have done?”

Maura hesitated before asking her next question. “Did he know about the baby? None of the relatives ever told him?”

Siobhan shook her head. “I went off to Skibbereen before it was obvious. My own family wouldn’t have said anything—they were ashamed. That’s the way it was back then. And Johnny’s family was glad to be rid of him—one less mouth to feed. I doubt they ever wrote him a letter, much less mentioned a baby if they knew.”

“What did you do?”

“I stayed with a friend ’til the baby came. She saw me through it.”

“And you kept the baby. Ellen, right?”

“You have been doing your homework, Maura. Yes, I did. It wasn’t easy. I’d no money and few skills. I found someone to look after Ellen, got a job at this place as a cleaner, and worked my way up. You know I was married to Tim Nolan?”

“Yes. His mother, Bridget, is a neighbor of mine, and we talk.”

“She’s a good woman, although we spent little time together, for with the child and my job, I had little time to spare. There were no more children with Tim, but Tim was happy being a father to Ellen. They got on well. We had a good marriage, and then he died. I’d a better job at the hotel by then, so we were pretty well fixed. Ellen started working here a few years back. And then John’s company bought the place.”

“That must have been a shock. You two had had no contact in all that time?”

“None. What was the use of stirring things up? I never expected to see him again.”

“When did you find out he was part of the group that bought the hotel?”

“I’m not at a level that anyone shared the sale details with me—I didn’t recognize the name of the company, much less who was part of it. I didn’t know until he arrived.”

“What happened when you did finally see him?”

“Did he recognize me, do you mean? He didn’t even remember that night. Not that I can blame him.”

“So, did you tell him about Ellen?”

“Yes. I thought it was only right. I told him flat out that I didn’t want or expect anything from him, financially or otherwise. I just thought he should know he had a daughter in Ireland.”

“How did he react?”

“I’d say he kind of closed down for a bit. He had a good life in Chicago, a family and all, and he was looking forward to sorting out the hotel, and then I threw this at him. He was a careful man from all I’ve heard—he wanted time to think things through. But he wasn’t angry, didn’t accuse me of lying or anything like that. He’d already seen Ellen by then, not that they’d spoken.”

“Does she know? About him, I mean—that he was her father?”

“I never told her. She always knew that Tim wasn’t her father—at least, once she could do basic maths. I only told her I’d had a one-night stand that I regretted and I didn’t even know the man’s name. She wasn’t exactly happy with me about that, but what could she do? Thank God she inherited John’s brains.” Siobhan turned to face Maura squarely. “So what’re you going to do now, Maura Donovan?”

Maura looked at her squarely. “Siobhan, I believe you. Thank you for telling me the details. I won’t go spreading it around, even to the gardaí. If you’ve told me the truth—and I think you did—you had no reason to kill John Byrne. I did wonder, though—on the staff list your last name used to be Buckley. You didn’t take Nolan when you married Tim?”

Siobhan nodded. “Tim didn’t care whether I changed it, and I wanted to have my daughter’s surname. I changed it when I married my current husband, though—it’s what he wanted. Bernard.” Her expression softened. “He waited a long time for me.”

Maura hesitated, unsure about whether to go on. But what the hell—Siobhan had confided in her, and she felt that she owed her something in return. “This has nothing to do with John’s death, but how did your daughter feel, growing up without her father?”

“You mean, did she realize that until Tim she had no father in the house? She was six when I married Tim, and he was the only father she ever knew. They got on well. You said you hadn’t seen your mother for what must be most of your life. Did she give you up?”

“For adoption? No. My father came from around here, but when his father died, his mother moved to Boston with him. Then he died in an awful accident when I was about two, and my mother was still pretty young. She didn’t want to get stuck with me, living with her mother-in-law, so one day she just disappeared. She left me with my grandmother. I don’t have any memory of either of my parents. So I just wondered how Ellen felt about all that.”

“She never asked, and I never volunteered—afraid of what more she might say, I suppose. It must have been hard on you, losing your mother and father before you could ever know them.” They both fell silent for a few moments. Finally Siobhan asked, “So what happens now? About John, I mean.”

“Maybe you can answer a question for me. What was John doing out there on that path behind the hotel late at night? The gardaí said he wasn’t exactly dressed for a walk, and he didn’t have a torch. There was no sign that he fought with anybody. So why was he there?”

Siobhan looked around at the colorful, elegant, and very orderly garden. “He’d seen the place by daylight. When I told him about Ellen, I brought him out here to the garden to do it. It was daylight then, and we strolled a bit down that path, so he knew the lay of the land. We went a bit farther because I wanted to be sure no one overheard us. It was no one’s business but our own.”

“So he knew the path was there.”

“Yes. And as I told you, he seemed to want time to think, to work things out in his head, although I can’t imagine why he’d choose that path to do that. Maybe here in the walled garden, but not out there in the dark.” Siobhan shook her head. “I’ve not found an explanation. I barely even knew the man after all this time, so I couldn’t guess what took him out there. I wish I could be of more help to you.”

“You’ve been more than fair just talking to me.” Maura stood up and held out her hand. “Thanks, Siobhan. I’ll keep your private life out of it if I talk to the gardaí again. And that may not even happen. But thanks for all that you’ve told me.”

Siobhan took Maura’s hand and shook. “Good luck, Maura. I’m hoping that we can lay all this to rest.”

“So am I. I’ll find my way out.”