Chapter 51
No luck at Hertz. Headed back to Tarrymore to look for passport there. Will try for flight home tomorrow. Safe travels.
Therese felt a momentary pang of guilt. Then she popped one of Uncle Kevin’s gummies in her mouth and chewed, watching as the plane rumbled down the tarmac, lifted, and then climbed through the clouds while the landscape below turned miniature.
Once they were in the air and the “Fasten Seatbelt” signs were off, she flagged down the flight attendant.
“I’d like a screwdriver, please. Heavy on the ice. And the vodka.” She offered the attendant a ten-dollar bill.
“Sorry. We can’t accept cash. Credit or debit cards only.”
“Allow me.”
She’d barely noticed the man seated on the aisle, on the other side of Maeve’s empty seat. He turned toward her. It was the lawyer from Atlanta whom she’d chatted with the previous night in the hotel bar.
“I know you,” Therese said. “Jason, right?”
“Close enough. It’s Jackson.” He handed his Platinum Amex to the flight attendant. “And I’ll have a bloody mary, please.”
“Thanks, Jackson,” Therese said. “Welcome aboard!”
Maeve hadn’t driven a stick shift since high school, but the clerk at the Hertz counter was indifferent to her plight.
“I’m afraid it’s the only car in the lot, mum. Tourist season, you know, but you could check back tomorrow to see if anything gets turned in early.”
“Never mind.” Maeve handed over her credit card, silently praying she hadn’t already maxed it out.
The Kia stalled twice as she was attempting to exit the rental center, and she found herself reciting the rosary out loud more than once as she searched for the highway markers directing her back to the west.
Pulling onto the airport exit rotary without having Therese in the passenger seat navigating was a new level of terror.
“Holy Mary, mother of God … oh shit.” She’d accidentally drifted into the wrong lane, nearly getting hit head-on by a passing eighteen-wheeler. Veering suddenly back into her own lane earned her a blast from the car following too close behind. “Oh shit. Fuck, damn, hell, piss.”
Everything about her plight was terrifying. She’d tried for an hour to reach someone at the inn at Tarrymore, but only got a recorded greeting suggesting she book her reservation online or leave a message.
Her passport absolutely had to be in their room at the inn. There was no other possibility. Or was there?
No. There was no way. She couldn’t have been so careless as to somehow leave her passport in Liam’s car, or at his brother’s farmhouse. Maeve Dunagin was many things, but careless wasn’t one of them.
She put the thought out of mind. Driving solo took every ounce of concentration she possessed.
On this journey back to Wicklow there would be no admiring the rolling green hills, or the pastures with split-rail fences and flocks of sheep.
No time to stop and take photos of the roses clambering over the front of cottages, or the breathtaking vistas at every turn of the road.
Maeve was ashen-faced and dripping with perspiration by the time she pulled the Kia into the parking lot at the Tarrymore Inn.
A large blue tour bus was idling near the inn’s entrance, and a sprightly mix of silver-haired ladies and women who looked a couple of decades younger were streaming off the bus.
The inn’s lobby and lounge area were crowded with women. A banner stretched across the fireplace. WELCOME CHINA PAINTERS.
Maeve had to elbow her way to the reception desk, where the harried clerk was explaining to a guest that check-in wasn’t until 4 PM.
“Sir!” She raised her voice to be heard above the din of chatter.
“Hi. My sister and I checked out of our room yesterday, but I seem to have misplaced my passport. I’ve been calling all morning to see if the housekeepers found it and turned it in.”
The clerk waved his hand in the general direction of the lobby. “Ma’am, we’re overfull as you can see, and haven’t been able to check the answering machine this morning.”
“I see, but could you check to see if my passport was turned in? Please?”
A pained expression crossed his face. “One moment.” Five minutes passed. When he returned, he was shaking his head. “Sorry. No passport has been turned in.”
Maeve bit her lip. “Would it be okay if I looked in the room? I’m thinking maybe it slipped out of my bag while I was packing.”
“Impossible. There are guests in that room now. I assure you, our housekeepers are very thorough and very honest. If there was something left behind, they would have turned it in to me by now.”
“It’s my passport,” Maeve said in a pleading tone. “My flight left this morning. I can’t leave the country without it.”
He wavered. “I’ll call up to the room to ask the guests’ permission. Maybe the housekeepers can look when they go in to freshen the room.”
“When will that be?”
He picked up a walkie-talkie and turned his back.
“You could check after lunch.”
Her shoulders slumped as she walked dejectedly to the only vacant seat in the lobby, behind a potted palm tree.
“Angela? Hi. It’s Maeve Dunagin.”
“Maeve! Lovely to hear from you. But I thought you were flying home today. Or did you have a change of heart?”
“I was supposed to be on an eight AM flight, but when I got to the airport, I discovered my passport has gone missing.”
“Oh dear. How can I help?”
“I’ve racked my brain. I’m back here in the village, at the inn, actually, because I thought maybe I’d left it in our room, but they haven’t found it. I was wondering if maybe it fell out of my pocketbook while I was at the farm on Sunday?”
“Haven’t seen it, but I’ll go have a look outside on the patio. In the meantime, have you asked Liam?”
“Not yet…”
“Like that, is it?”
“Afraid so.”
“Listen, Maeve, love…” Angela hesitated. “No. Absolutely not. I am not going to say what’s on my mind. Shut up, Angela Grogan. Nobody cares what you think. Right?”
Maeve couldn’t help but chuckle. “I do care. But it’s complicated.”
“Love always is,” Angela said. “I’ll call you back in a jiffy, all right? In the meantime, where did you say you were?”
“I’m at the inn right now, but I’m going to walk over to the Willow Tree. I didn’t have breakfast, and I’m starving.”
Thankfully, the Willow Tree was not inundated with china painting ladies. Maeve asked to be seated as far from the pool table as possible.
Maeve ordered the shepherd’s pie and a Coke. She was staring down at her phone, looking up the address of the US embassy in Dublin, when a shadow fell over the table.
“You’re like a bad penny,” Liam said. “You just keep turning up again, don’t you?”
“Angela called you and told you how to find me?”
“She did.” He gestured to the empty chair opposite her own. “May I?”
Maeve nodded. “I don’t suppose you’re here because you found my passport?”
“Afraid not. I tore the Jeep apart. When I get home from work tonight, I’ll search the cottage.”
“Thank you.”
The bartender arrived with her food. He exchanged pleasantries with Liam and left.
“Join me?” Maeve offered. “There’s more than enough for two.”
“Can’t. We’re short-handed at the distillery. Got a busload of elderly ladies coming for the tour and Donal’s chosen today of all days to turn up with a broken toe. Not supposed to put weight on it. Damn fool, trying to play rugby with lads half his age.”
“I saw the ladies. They’re staying at the inn,” Maeve said. “It’s a group of china painters.”
He looked perplexed. “Why would you paint china? Doesn’t it usually come prepainted?”
“It’s sort of a craft. My aunt took a class in china painting. Lots of flowers and butterflies.”
“Bless ’em,” Liam said. “I’d better get back then.” He nodded goodbye and headed for the door, but suddenly looped back around the room and came back to her table.
He clasped his hands on the tabletop. His expression was troubled. “I wish you’d called me yourself, Maeve.”
Her face grew hot, and she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“I’m not your enemy, you know.”
“I know.”
“What about your sister? Did she come back with you?”
“No. I told her to get on the flight without me. I really thought my passport would turn up—in the rental car, or in our room at the inn.”
“Angela said to tell you she looked all over. It’s not at the farm.”
“I don’t understand. This is just so unlike me. I’m not a careless person. I don’t misplace things. That’s Therese’s department. This is all so upsetting.”
His eyes locked with hers. “Can I ask you something?”
“Okay.”
“Why are you so obsessed … with always being in control? Why are you so terrified of change?”
“I’m not,” she protested.
“What’ll you do if it doesn’t turn up here?”
“I suppose I’ll have to go to the US embassy office in Dublin to see if they can replace it.”
“What a nuisance. I’ll let you have your lunch in peace. Will you at least call me and let me know what happens?”
“I will.”
He walked away, and this time he didn’t stop. Maeve wanted to call him to come back, but she knew it was already too late.