Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Tommy, when he hits, hits home.
Cal and Trey have a wood guy, a rangy, crazy-eyed dude improbably called Sylvester, who lives high on the other side of the mountain with his three rangy, silent sons, his three rangy, muscled dogs, and a pile of logs as tall as his house.
Sylvester spends half his time traveling the country collecting tree trunks and the other half turning them into lumber with his sawmill, a ferocious piece of equipment that he treats like an extra dog, a savage but well-trained one that he’s particularly proud of.
This week he’s been all the way to Cork for a two-hundred-year-old walnut that came down in a gale off the Atlantic.
Like all artists, Sylvester has his favorite patrons, and when he finds something extra tasty, he phones Cal.
Trey wants to come along and see Sylvester’s new tree, so Cal waits till Saturday morning.
He figures the kid might be looking for an opportunity to talk about Tommy Moynihan, so he leaves plenty of silences on the way, but Trey’s main focus today appears to be the upcoming rematch with Lisnacarragh and how dirty they’re likely to play after last time’s blow to their self-esteem.
Cal listens and concentrates on navigating the roads, which under the never-ending rain are losing their veneer of civilization and devolving back towards bog.
He knows Tommy is in Trey’s mind somewhere, but if he’s drifted off to the sidelines, Cal isn’t about to bring him front and center again.
It turns out Trey has other reasons for coming along.
While Cal negotiates for a slab of wood and admires the new additions to Sylvester’s axe collection, Trey examines the walnut trunk from every angle and picks out a good-looking burl about the size of her head.
Sylvester likes Trey, too; he cuts the burl off so she can get a look at the grain, and gives her a good price, which she counts from a squashed wad of cash out of her back pocket.
The dogs, big softies around anyone who has Sylvester’s approval, nudge at Trey for attention and finally herd her off to climb the log pile with them.
“You got a plan for that burl?” Cal asks, on the drive home. The rain high on the mountain, like Sylvester’s dogs, has a different character from the lowland version: less domesticated, more territorial, coming at the car like it’s an invader to be driven off. “Or you just like the look of it?”
Trey shrugs. “ ’S almost Christmas. Might make someone a present, I dunno.”
Her voice has a self-conscious note, which takes Cal by surprise; he’s not used to a self-conscious Trey. It takes a second to occur to him that this might have something to do with Kate. This leaves him with no idea what to say next.
“Well,” he says in the end, “then we better get it dried out quick. It’ll fit in the oven.”
Trey nods, peering out the window at something or other.
Cal wants to ask whether this means she and Kate have managed to ask each other out, whether Kate is going to give her a Christmas present, whether it’ll carry the same level of time and thought and craftsmanship as whatever the walnut burl turns into, whether Kate comes anywhere near deserving the kid’s scrawny-ass self.
“It’d make a good bowl,” he says. “Or some kind of box, maybe.”
“I’ve enough money left for the football boots,” Trey says. “C’n we go into town later?”
“Sure,” Cal says. “We can dump this wood at home and head in there for lunch, get fish and chips at that place you like,” but that doesn’t work out because when they get home, there’s a marked car in the yard and Garda Dennis is standing on the step, peering forlornly in the window while Rip and Banjo threaten to eat through the door and disembowel him.
“What’s he want?” Trey demands, eyeing Garda Dennis with disfavor. Trey and her siblings mostly don’t play truant these days, but they and Garda Dennis have history, and Trey isn’t the forgiving type.
“I dunno,” Cal says. He pulls into the gate and lifts a hand to Garda Dennis, who has straightened up and is looking uncomfortable.
The last time Cal saw Garda Dennis down this way, both of them were helping to chase P.J.
’s sheep back in through a broken fence, but this isn’t giving sheep-rescue vibes.
“You take the dogs for a walk, lemme find out.”
“He might want me,” Trey says. “You said Tommy might go after my mam.”
“You been doing anything this guy might be interested in?”
“Nah.”
“Hassling the Moynihans?”
“Nah. Walked the dogs past their place, like I told you, is all. That’s not illegal. They didn’t even piss on the fountain yoke.”
“So you gotta train ’em better for next time,” Cal says. He lines up the Pajero neatly next to the marked car. “OK. You just keep quiet and let me do the talking.”
“How come? I done nothing. I can talk for myself.”
“I got a lot more experience dealing with cops than you have,” Cal says, getting out of the car. Trey rolls her eyes, but she quits arguing and follows him across the yard.
“Morning,” Cal says, as they come up to the house. “Sorry you were kept waiting. Me and Trey here were out buying that.” He nods to the slab of wood sticking out of the back of the Pajero. Regardless of what Garda Dennis is here for, he’s not going to fuss over an open trunk.
“Ah, no problem,” Garda Dennis says. He’s gone pink, like they caught him doing something he shouldn’t be. “Sure, I only got here.”
“Well, come on in,” Cal says. Garda Dennis’s face hasn’t lit up at the sight of him this time. “Have some tea.”
“Ah, no,” Garda Dennis says hastily, waving both hands. “I’ll come in for a wee chat, just. A few minutes, only.”
Cal knows the drill by now. “I’m gonna make some tea anyway,” he says, opening the door and giving the dogs’ heads a rub to settle them. “I need it after that drive. Lemme get you a cup.”
“No, no, no,” Garda Dennis says more earnestly, wiping his boots carefully on the mat. “I’m just after having one, sure. I’m grand, honest to God.”
This can’t be good. “Well, you let me know if you change your mind,” Cal says. He holds the door open. “Come on in. The dogs won’t bother you, but they’re going kind of stir-crazy; I was gonna get the kid to take them for a run.”
“Ah, yeah,” Garda Dennis says, relieved.
He’s giving a dubious side-eye to Trey and her burl, which looks like a cross between an enormous dried cow pat and a troll’s head.
“Great idea. They seem like they could use a run, all right.” This eases Cal’s mind, at least a little bit.
Whatever is going on, it doesn’t require Trey’s presence.
“Walnut,” Trey explains, hefting the burl in Garda Dennis’s direction as she passes. He doesn’t look like this makes things any clearer. She dumps the burl on the floor beside the cooker and turns on the oven, low. “Stick it in once it’s ready, if I’m not back,” she says to Cal.
“Yeah,” Cal says. “Moisture meter’s in the back room.” Garda Dennis is starting to look severely out of his depth.
Trey fetches the moisture meter, waves it at Cal and leaves it on the counter, snaps her fingers for the dogs, and heads out, shooting a dirty look at Garda Dennis’s back on her way.
Cal puts Garda Dennis at the kitchen table, where he sits like a teenager at Sunday lunch with his new girlfriend’s parents: on the edge of his chair, back straight, hands flat on his round thighs.
Whatever is going on, he’s not one little bit happy about it.
“You’ve a lovely place here,” he says, the way his mammy taught him to. “Your missus isn’t here, no?” He glances around like Lena might be behind the sofa.
“Nope,” Cal says, hanging up his jacket. “She mostly works Saturday mornings.”
“Would you mind…” Garda Dennis has gone pink again. “Is it OK if I take notes? No offense, like, just I’ve a head like a sieve on me—”
“Sure,” Cal says, giving him an approving nod, detective to beat cop. “Good idea.” He takes a chair opposite Garda Dennis, folds his hands on the table, and looks helpful.
Garda Dennis fishes in his pockets for a very new notebook and a ballpoint pen, and finds himself a clean page. “Would you be able to tell me where you were last night?” he asks. He’s trying to sound official, but what he mainly sounds is miserable.
Cal has always told both Alyssa and Trey, with an intensity rooted in experience, that if there’s the slimmest chance you might be a suspect, you don’t talk to the cops without a lawyer.
But they’re in an unusual position here: poor Garda Dennis is looking at Cal as a colleague and as some kind of suspect both, and getting a headache from the double vision.
If Cal clams up, he’ll tilt them across that line and be a suspect all the way.
“I was right here, mostly,” he says. “It was raining too hard to do much else. Trey, who you saw there, she came over around four-thirty, after school let out—she spends weekends here, doing some woodworking with me. The two of us were making a nursing chair for Con McHugh.” It’s occurred to him to wonder whether Con will still want them making him anything, but until he hears different, they might as well keep on going.
“Around six o’clock, Lena, that’s my fiancée, she came over and we ate dinner.
I helped Trey out with her math homework, we took the dogs for a walk, watched some Netflix.
Lena went home around ten, maybe a little later.
Trey went to bed at eleven-thirty, she’s got the sofa bed there. ”
He nods at the sofa and watches Garda Dennis’s gaze move over it. Cal has been aware all along that Trey’s living arrangement is a gift to anyone who might be out for his blood. He’s relied on the fact that there’s no reason why anyone would be.
“I read in my room for a while,” he says. “Turned off the light around midnight.”
Garda Dennis says, still holding on to his official voice, “Which of ye brought the dogs for that walk?”