Death in Irish Accents

Book 4: Dublin Driver Mysteries

by Catie Murphy

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Amateur Sleuth

Synopsis

After a long streak of avoiding murder investigations, Dublin limo driver Megan Malone thought her life had finally settled . . . but even her Irish luck can't keep her out of trouble forever.



It's been over a year since Megan found herself entangled in a murder—much to everyone's relief, including her girlfriend Jelena and Detective Paul Bourke. So when a body of a young woman quite literally lands in her lap at her favorite Dublin café, Megan tries to do the right thing and leave the crime-solving to the police so she can enjoy the St. Patrick's Day weekend. After all, she has no connection to the victim. Or does she?



Megan's latest client, world-renowned romance novelist Claire Woodward, is fascinated by Megan's own history of catching killers. Claire also just happens to be the murder victim's literary mentor. So maybe Megan can just sort of stay on the periphery of the case while trying to help out? Just a wee bit without causing too much fuss? Even Detective Bourke would approve since he has personal reasons not to trust Claire. The investigation leads Megan to the victim's writing group, who think that Claire has plagiarized the poor young lady's work. And when another member of the group is found dead, Megan will have to step up her sleuthing before the killer decides to write her off for good.

Release date: February 21, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

A body fell out of the closet when the barista opened it.

The barista screamed, throwing herself backward, and landed in a sprawl across Megan Malone’s lap. Coffee went everywhere. Megan, too startled to even yell, grabbed the barista to make sure she didn’t bounce to the floor the way the—

The way the body had done. Megan said, “Oh god,” under her breath. Immediately beside her, her girlfriend made a hideous, high-pitched squeak that was almost worse than the barista’s screams. Like Megan, Jelena had grabbed the barista—Anie—but Megan had taken most of the girl’s weight. Jelena scrambled backward, right over the arm of their couch, as the body dropped into the couch directly beneath the closet, then bounced off and hit the coffee table with a truly horrible crunch. Then it . . . slithered . . . to the floor, limbs flopping around with a stomach-turning looseness.

Either it was very fresh, Megan thought with a sort of clinically investigative detachment, or it was . . . not fresh at all.

Anie, the barista, was still shrieking. Jelena had landed hard on the floor and crouched there, hands clenched against her mouth to stop her own screams. Everyone else in the café was coming to see what had happened, people climbing on the wide arms of the café’s couches and pounding up the stairs from the lower floor. Alarmed faces started appearing at the top of the stairs, stacked one above another like a comedy sketch as they peered around at the nook-like space at the back of the café where Megan, Jelena, Anie and the dead girl were. The dead girl had fallen—well, landed—between two of the deep couches and the square coffee table at right angles to them.

Jelena, through the fists knotted at her mouth, whispered, “This is not possible,” and part of Megan had to agree. This was her fourth body in the past three years. That sort of thing had been within the bounds of reason when she was in the military, working as a combat medic and driving ambulances, but it was not what anybody expected as a limo driver in Dublin.

The other part of her thought they’d better clear the room before anybody started taking pictures, although it was almost certainly too late for that. She got Anie off her lap and stood, raising her voice. “Max? Can you get everybody out of here, please?” Her Texan accent sounded particularly noticeable to her right then, but it usually did when she felt she had to be pushy about something. An American accent worked wonders for being pushy in Ireland.

Another of the baristas, a good-looking young white man, stuttered, “I—yes, okay, yes—” and began to herd patrons out of the café. A third barista went downstairs and Megan could hear him calling, “Sorry, lads, Accents has to close for a while. If you’re waiting on your drinks, we’ll refund your money at the till.”

Somebody downstairs said, “What happened,” and the barista, Liam, said, “There’s been an accident,” in a grim tone. After a few seconds, the lingering patrons from downstairs began to exit, craning their necks to see what was going on in the little alcove. One of them said, “Oh, shit,” and scurried out with their phone already at their ear.

Jelena wrapped her hand around Megan’s upper arm. “Megan, we have to go.”

“I can’t.” Megan gave Jelena an apologetic glance, seeing the anger and worry in the other woman’s brilliant blue eyes. “Honestly, I can’t, Yella. Paul’s going to have a fit over me even being here, but if I leave the scene before I call him . . .”

“Megan.” Jelena’s voice filled with strain, and Megan shrugged helplessly.

“I’m sorry. I really am. It’s not like I mean for this to keep happening. Let me call Paul.” She took her phone out, but Anie, whose crimson-dyed hair made her currently starkly-pale face look desperately unhealthy, clutched Megan’s other arm.

“That’s right, you’ve dealt with this kind of thing before. What do we do?” She got to her feet unsteadily, her gaze averted from the body at their feet. Most of the café had cleared out by then, with only the staff and a couple customers getting their money back remaining. “Is this going to ruin the business? Oh, God, I’d better call the owners. What am I going to say to them?”

“I don’t know, Anie. I’m sorry.” Megan glanced briefly at the body, which didn’t seem to be leaking any blood, despite having hit the table hard on its way down. It—she—was young, with thickly curled, naturally red hair, and a host of freckles still visible after death. Megan didn’t know if that was normal or not. She looked back across the café, where at least half the patrons were still gathered outside the plate glass front windows, and said, “Does anybody know who she is?” to the handful of people remaining in the café.

“She’s a writer,” Anie whispered. “Part of a group that’s in here all the time. Bláthnaid. She liked a flat white and the peanut butter cake.”

“Bláthnaid.” Megan mentally spelled the name in her head, because it was one of those that didn’t look anything like it sounded, at least to American ears. She heard Blaw-nid, but the spelling had a T-H where the W sound was, for heaven’s sake. Then, idiotically, she added, “The peanut butter cake is amazing,” as if she couldn’t quite get her mind to work clearly beyond asinine agreements. “When was—”

“Megan.” Jelena’s voice sharpened. “Megan, just call Detective Bourke so we can go. You shouldn’t get mixed up in this. Not again.”

“Right. Yeah, okay, sorry.” Megan actually dialed the detective this time, grimacing in anticipation of him picking up. He had once, lightheartedly, said that Megan only rang when she’d discovered a body. The rest of the time, she texted. He was unfortunately pretty much right about that, so she wasn’t looking forward to him answering this call.

He did so on the third ring, with a wary, “Megan . . . ?”

“I’m at Accents Café on Stephen Street Lower and a dead body just fell in my lap.”

The silence went on so long she checked to see if her phone had disconnected. Then, obviously through his teeth, Paul Bourke said, “Do not touch anything and do not speak to anyone until I get there,” and hung up.

Megan put her phone in her pocket again and said, “He’s mad at me,” to the remaining people in the café, as a general statement. Then she looked at the set of Jelena’s jaw, and thought it wasn’t Detective Garda Paul Bourke who was mad at her. Although neither of them were exactly mad at her, probably. It wasn’t like she planned this. But she did say, “I’m sorry,” to Jelena, very softly.

Color rose in the pretty Polish woman’s heart-shaped face, staining it pink. “When he comes here, Megan, we have to leave. When he’s done talking to you. You can’t . . .”

“Solve another mystery?” Megan supplied with a weak smile. “I don’t know, my track record is pretty good so far.”

Jelena’s skin flushed to red. “This isn’t your job. It’s not the kind of thing you should be getting involved in. It makes me worry for you.”

“I know. I know.” Megan offered Jelena her hand, and pulled her into a hug when Jelena reluctantly accepted it. “I don’t see how this could possibly have anything to do with me, though. It’ll be fine, babe. I promise.”

“Okay.” The word, muffled against Megan’s shoulder, sounded resigned. “Next time we’re going to a different café after the gym, though.”

Megan grinned. “Oh, come on, what are the odds that somebody else is going to get killed here? We’re probably safer staying—”

“Killed here?” Anie had come back from calling the owners and stopped, frozen, just before the step leading up to the section Megan and Jelena stood on. “You think she was killed? Like, murdered?”

Megan, somewhat insensitively, said, “Well, she didn’t put herself into that closet, Anie,” and the young woman paled so sharply she had to sit down. A stab of guilt shot through Megan. She generally forgot that she was technically old enough to be most of the staff’s mother. Being fortysomething was supposed to feel grown-up, but Megan had come to the reluctant conclusion that most people never actually felt grown-up. They just got older, and spent a lot of their time being vaguely surprised that they no longer shared the same life experiences as a twenty-five-year-old.

And honestly, her own life’s experience up to the ages that the staff were was probably significantly different from theirs too, which made unthinkingly callous or cynical statements come a little easier, maybe. She, after all, had been in the Army for five years when she was Anie’s age. Megan mumbled, “Sorry,” and Anie nodded, although Jelena gave her a somewhat appalled look.

Megan said, “Sorry” again, and meant it.

Anie whispered, “It’s okay. Of course you’re right, I just didn’t think—who would kill Bláthnaid? She was nice.”

“I don’t know. The guards will be here soon. Detective Bourke is only fifteen minutes away, even on foot.” Just as she said that, a tallish, slender man in a camel-colored trench coat strode up to the door, flashing a badge and scattering at least half of the remaining crowd outside. He entered, brushing dampness from sandy red hair with one hand, and glancing around the café in a quick, professional assessment before his gaze landed on Megan and went flat.

Megan’s shoulders slumped and she shot Jelena another apologetic look before taking a few steps toward the plainclothes detective. “Paul. Sorry, I mean, Detective Bourke. I’m, uh . . . really sorry.”

Bourke shook his head in weary acceptance. “I feel like I should just be grateful it’s been over a year since I found you neck-deep in a crime scene. What happened?”

Megan gestured toward Anie. “She asked if we could scoot over so she could get some supplies out of the closet—”

Bourke’s gaze went to the closet, which still hung open. Normally hidden behind eight-inch-deep bookshelves, it filled the upper half of the wall above the couches, and was probably a couple feet deep and a good six feet high. Megan said, “I usually sit downstairs. I didn’t even know there was a closet there. I thought it was just bookshelves. So we scooted over and she opened it and . . . Bláthnaid fell out.”

“Bláthnaid? You know her?” Bourke’s notepad was out now, its orange cover flashing as he flipped it open to start writing. He’d had a different-colored pad for every case Megan had ever seen him work on, and she assumed there was some kind of organizational or file-keeping method to the color schemes.

“No, no, Anie told me her name.” Megan gestured toward the barista again. “And then I called you. Honestly, I did,” she added defensively, at Bourke’s skeptical glance. “You got here fast.” It couldn’t have been more than four or five minutes since the body had fallen out of the closet.

“I was at the top of Grafton Street,” Bourke replied shortly. Megan had a momentary impulse to discuss which end was really the “top” of the street, but given that Bourke had arrived so quickly, he clearly meant he’d been closer to St. Stephen’s Green. “What are you doing here?”

“Accents is my favorite café. They make better mochas than anywhere else I’ve ever been. Jelena and I came here after working out this morning.”

“And you just happened to be here for the discovery of a body.” Bourke sighed and gave Jelena a brief nod of greeting, which she returned before casting an unhappy but accepting glance at Megan.

“I’ll be outside.”

“Jelena, I’m sorry, I—”

Jelena lifted a hand, cutting off the apology, and went outside. Bourke followed her with his gaze, then raised his eyebrows at Megan. “Trouble in paradise?”

“There wasn’t until five minutes ago! She wasn’t happy the last couple times this happened, but we hadn’t been seeing each other very long then, and nothing like this has happened in over a year now—”

“Exactly fourteen months,” Bourke said. “To the day. Cherise Williams’s funeral was fourteen months ago today.”

Megan looked askance at him. “You just know that off the top of your head?”

“I counted it out on my way over here.” He pointed toward Jelena with his chin. “I’m actually going to need to talk to her, you know.”

“I don’t think that’s occurred to her, but I don’t think she’s planning to leave without me unless I’m here a long time, so . . .”

“You have no reason to be here a long time,” Bourke said. “You’re not an investigating officer. You’re a witness, at most. So tell me what you know and then, for God’s sake, go away and don’t get involved in this, okay, Megan?”

“This time I don’t see how I possibly could. And I’ve told you what I know,” Megan added with a sigh. “Anie opened the cupboard and the body fell out. Everybody screamed—”

“You didn’t,” Anie put in, and Megan blinked at her, then smiled ruefully.

“Maybe not on the outside. I was trying to keep you from hitting the floor. Anyway,” she said to Bourke, “then I called you. That was pretty much it.”

Bourke looked down at her for a long moment, nearly-blond eyebrows drawn down over pale blue eyes as he waited for the other shoe to drop.

For once, though, Megan didn’t have another shoe. The dead girl wasn’t her client, or a friend of her client’s, or connected to her in any way. She couldn’t blame him for expecting a link, though. He’d been the investigating officer on her first murder—that sounded all wrong—and they’d gotten to be friends, so she’d called him when she’d found herself neck-deep in a second, and then a third, murder mess.

But she wasn’t involved in this one, so she spread her hands in as good an approximation of innocence as she could manage. “Honestly, that’s all I know.”

“And you’re just going to leave instead of hanging around on the edges of my investigation, trying to overhear something and look into it yourself?”

Megan’s face heated, although her brief smile was full of admission. “Obviously, I’m not gonna lie and say I’d never do such a thing. I totally would. But Jelena would kill me, and I’d rather have a girlfriend who still speaks to me than another notch on my murder belt.” She winced as Paul’s eyes popped. “That came out wrong.”

“You think? All right.” The detective exhaled. “Send Jelena in for a minute to talk to me, but I don’t think there’s much more she’s going to be able to tell me. I’ll interview the staff and learn more ab . . .” He trailed off, frowning. “I don’t have to tell you what I’m doing for my job.”

Megan produced a wide, cheesy grin. “No. But if you wanted to keep me up to date on the details. . .”

“My boss would demote me.” Bourke turned away, and Megan, actually feeling a little guilty, scurried out of the café. An Garda Síochána—the Irish police force—was not, as an institution, fond of her, and Paul’s boss specifically would be happier if Megan returned to the States and never complicated another Irish murder investigation in her life. Megan thought the ins and outs of the messes she kept getting into were fascinating, but she genuinely didn’t want to cause Paul any trouble, and Jelena . . .

Jelena was leaning in the alleyway just beside the café, her arms folded and a worried scowl settling on her delicate features. Megan murmured, “Sorry,” again as she found her. “Paul wants to talk to you real quick.”

“We go on double dates with him and Niamh, Megan, we don’t—” Jelena’s protest ended in a splutter and a waving of her hands, but she went inside, leaving Megan to cringe guiltily again. Even she had to admit it was kind of weird to be interviewed about suspicious deaths by somebody she hung out with for Friday night pizza, but at least she’d gone through it before. Jelena hadn’t.

Of course, if it was weird for them, it had to be a lot harder for Paul, who also probably had to justify to his boss why he spent his spare time hanging out with somebody who kept being connected to murders. Megan said “Ugh,” out loud, and thumped her head against the alley wall. Then, also aloud, she said, “But you’re not connected to this one,” and nodded firmly, like all she needed was a good talking-to.

Her phone rang, startling her, and she took it out to see her boss’s name coming up with the Leprechaun Limos emblem as the image. Megan answered with as wary an “Orla?” as Paul’s “Megan?” had been earlier, and was broadsided by Orla’s most an-American-is-listening-to-me Irish accent.

“Megan? Have you plans for the afternoon? I’ve a new client who’s asking for you specifically.”

“A new client?” Megan echoed, surprised. “Usually only Carmen asks for me by name.”

“Oh,” Orla said, her voice dropping to a grim mutter, “she’s not asking by name, no. She’s asking for ‘the murder driver.’ ”

“Oh my god,” Megan said faintly. “Tell her I don’t exist? You’ve never heard of a murder driver?”

“I knew you’d cause me no end of trouble,” Orla hissed.

Megan, contrary to the last, said, “Now that’s not fair. You’re getting clients because of me!” and rather thought she deserved Orla’s outraged sound of dismissal. “Why does she want the murder driver? I mean, me?”

“I don’t know,” Orla said, her inner-city Dublin accent growing stronger. “Says she’s a writer, and a famous one at that. She’s got fierce notions, if you ask me.”

Megan said, “I take it she’s left the office,” and Orla snorted.

“She only rang. It was other clients who were in. Will yis take the job or not?”

“Is it only for today? I have St. Patrick’s Day plans.”

“Sure and it’s only Tuesday,” Orla said. “Maybe a bit tomorrow. Nothing on the Thursday.”

“Okay, because there can’t be. Jelena’s in the parade and she’ll kill me if I can’t come help. I’ve had this weekend scheduled off since last August.”

“I know,” Orla said irritably. “All prepared, that’s you. Cillian was devastated he couldn’t bring his niece to the parade due to work, and that’s on you.”

“Heh. First, you could close business for the weekend, so, no, it’s not on me.”

Orla squawked with outrage. “D’yis know how much money’s to be made on the holida—”

Megan, who did know, spoke over her. “Second, Cillian’s niece is not yet two years of age. She won’t remember anyway. What time today?”

“He had grandstand seats!” Orla protested, as if she cared a whit about Cillian’s holiday plans. Having gotten her way, she went on briskly. “Half eleven, if you can make it, at the Avoca House in Drumcondra. I’ve told her there’s a premium on hiring you, so be on time.”

“Orla, half the reason you hired me is I’m an annoyingly punctual American.” She glanced at the time, which was just past ten. “I know where that B and B is. I should be able to make that, yeah.” She hung up, shaking her head in disbelief. Her boss was as mean as a rattlesnake and had never met an opportunity that she couldn’t squeeze an extra bit of cash from, but putting a premium on “the murder driver” seemed rich.

Then again, maybe a so-called famous writer also seemed rich. Heavens knew Orla had a real knack for recognizing which clients she could bilk while simultaneously convincing them that the. . .