One Fool At Least (The Madeline Mann Mysteries) Read online

  “That’s potential for conflict right there. Slider is family. That entitles him to a piece of the bar. He could go to court.”

  “And yet Finn could have specified Slider in his will.”

  Jack took a sip of wine. “I’m guessing Finn wasn’t planning to die at the age of—what—forty?”

  “How sad.”

  “So I’m guessing the sister, Colleen, doesn’t know either.”

  “And yet—what if they did? What if they wanted to keep Finn from changing a will that included Slider? I wonder how much money the bar makes.”

  Jack looked around. It was a nice place, with a certain rustic elegance, and there were few empty tables. “I’m guessing it makes a lot. Not to mention we don’t know what Finn already had in his bank account. If he was up to something that even interested Wilde, he may have made some significant money already.”

  “How could we find that out?” I asked.

  Jack smiled into his glass. “We’ll find a way.”

  “Hey, you’re really taking to this whole investigative thing, aren’t you?” I smiled at him. A few moments later Aidan Flanagan appeared with our lunches. We thanked him and he moved off to another table.

  The moment I bit into my grilled cheese I heard a sound like glass breaking; I stiffened, chewing slowly, looking around the room to see if other people had heard it. Jack certainly had, and the hand holding his beer paused midway to his mouth.

  The next thing we knew, Ardmore came barreling out of the back room; he spoke briefly to Aidan’s sister, who went running to the house phone. She said something in her brother’s ear and he trotted out of sight. Ardmore spied us and charged to our table.

  “Madeline, Jack! Did you see anyone go by out there?” He was glaring out at the view from our window seat; the mysterious back room would have basically the same vista. We looked out into the street: a woman walked past with a baby carriage and two youths went by on scooters. A police car was slowing down in front of the bar.

  Jack stared at Ardmore, his fork still frozen in midair, and said, “No. What the hell happened?”

  “I was looking around back there and someone took a shot at me. Through the window. I didn’t see a soul. What did you see?” he asked again, his eyes on me.

  I had choked down my food, and now I wiped at my mouth with a napkin. “What were you looking for, Ardmore?”

  “Just some paperwork. My dad thought he left it here. Now that they’re back open, I thought I’d ask if I could—”

  A giant drop of blood fell on our table, and we all looked at it, surprised. I wasn’t quick in determining its source, and neither was Ardmore.

  Finally Jack, with a roll of his eyes, said, “You’ve been shot.”

  At first I thought he was talking to me, and I thought, not again. Then I noticed Ardmore. The sleeve of his T-shirt was torn, and blood dripped all the way down to his knuckles from a large wound in the flesh of his right upper arm. Ardmore turned his head and studied the wound. “Yeah, I felt something at the time. I guess I got so pumped up about who did it I forgot—shit!”

  He stood there, glaring and thinking and bleeding.

  With a muttered oath Jack stood up and examined the injury. “It’s deep,” he said. “But I think the bullet passed through. See, Madeline?”

  He was trying to show me something through the gore. “I trust you,” I said.

  He grabbed his napkin and wound it around Ardmore’s arm.

  I was reminded of something I’d seen on the Nature Channel, when scientists were relocating grizzly bears from somewhere to somewhere else; I hadn’t been paying much attention; it was Jack’s show. One of the bears had to be shot with three tranquilizers, and it stamped along on its hind feet like an angry, hairy man until it finally fell with a thud into the dirt.

  Now giant Ardmore was watching Jack bind his wound and mumbling “This changes things; this changes things.”

  Colleen Flanagan came over, looking pale. “God, first my brother, and now this!” she said.

  “Call an ambulance, if you haven’t already,” Jack said quietly.

  She ran back to her phone, flapping her hands in the air as if to wave off bad juju. The customers all stared openly, murmuring amongst themselves.

  Ardmore suddenly focused on me. “Listen, I thought I might know what was going on, but I don’t. And I’m thinking now that you might really be in danger.” He turned to Jack. “Maybe your whole family.”

  Jack was still trying to tie the napkin into a bandage, and he pulled a bit too tightly. I saw Ardmore flinch. “What the hell do you know about any danger to my family?” asked Jack. “And what do you know about Madeline’s kidnapping?”

  Ardmore pushed me over in my side of the booth and sat down, looking ready to confide. I met Jack’s eyes in disbelief. “Listen, maybe my dad was involved, I don’t know. But if he was, you’ll never pin it on him, and I’d have to say you’re wasting your time. But I’ll tell you this. My dad didn’t kill Finn Flanagan. He’d never kill Finn because—”

  He paused, then shook his head. “Look, I can’t go into everything, okay? My dad is a good guy. Getting rich changed him a little, but he’s good at heart. He feels bad about what happened to you, and he feels terrible about what happened to Finn. He’d been spending a lot of time with Finn, getting to know him.”

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  Ardmore sighed. “He’d heard Finn didn’t have the best reputation. That he wasn’t always above-board with his finances, and that he was too irresponsible with the ladies.”

  “So?” asked Jack, frankly disbelieving.

  “Well, so he cared about Finn. He was trying to set him straight.”

  “Why?” asked Jack, folding his arms across his chest.

  Ardmore said nothing. He glanced at the growing bloodstain on the napkin around his arm.

  I tapped him on his hand. “You know, I think your father suspects you of killing Finn.”

  “He might,” Ardmore said, nodding.

  “Why?” asked Jack, sounding like a broken record.

  Ardmore shrugged. “My dad thought there was a whole Cain and Abel thing going on,” he said. “At least, he did that night.”

  Jack sighed. He was tired of asking why.

  “Ardmore,” I said. “Someone shot you! Who do you think it was? Why would someone want to hurt you? What are you hiding? And why does your dad think you would kill Finn?”

  Ardmore nodded again, stretching out his legs under the table and cracking his knuckles. The blood on his hand was starting to dry. “There’s something that’s going to come out soon, when this whole thing breaks open. So I guess it’s okay to tell you.”

  Jack looked at his watch. I smothered a laugh. It was surreal, sitting here with Ardmore and his bullet wound. “The fact is, I thought my dad was up to something with Finn. He’d been meeting with him a lot, and normally I butt out of his business, but…. Anyway, I confronted them both. This was the night Finn died. It turns out my dad wasn’t plotting anything. He was just trying to get to know Finn, forty years too late.”

  He regarded us somberly. I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and I had already started laughing in disbelief, making bubbles into my diet coke. “Finn was dad’s son. Finn was my brother,” he said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jack’s laugh was louder than mine; he laughed right in Ardmore’s face. Ardmore seemed less insulted than surprised. “He’s everyone’s brother. We just need to find the people he wasn’t related to, I think.”

  Ardmore turned to me for translation. I nodded toward Aidan Flanagan. “Well, he’s got a brother over there, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How exactly is he your brother?”

  “Well, it came out around Christmas that Finn had found out who his real Mom was. She was Sarah Cardini, Slider’s Mom.”

  “Which makes him Slider’s brother,” I said.

  “Okay. So my dad heard this from Finn, when they were tal
king once at the bar, and Dad got all upset. It seems he and Sarah Cardini had a thing way back in high school, back when she was Sarah Sloane. He knew she’d had a baby, and he knew she gave it up. But he hadn’t known it was Finn. He didn’t even know that Sarah knew. I think a part of my dad still cared about her. He was upset when she died.”

  “So Damian Wilde and Sarah Cardini are the real parents of Finn Flanagan,” I said, feeling suddenly like I was learning a foreign language.

  “Right,” Ardmore said.

  “So you and Finn shared a father, while Slider and Finn shared a mother.”

  “Bingo.”

  “While Aidan there is his brother merely by adoption. Which means you and Slider are his only blood brothers.”

  “Blood brothers,” Ardmore repeated, looking at the stain on his hand.

  “So what does that mean?” asked Jack thoughtfully, swirling the wine in his glass.

  “Someone tried to kill you, and someone did kill Finn. Are they trying to wipe out a family line?”

  “Maybe they weren’t trying to kill Ardmore,” I suggested. “Maybe they thought he was someone else.”

  Jack shook his head. “How tall are you, Ardmore?” he asked.

  “Six six,” Ardmore said.

  “Would you make that mistake, Maddy?” Jack asked me. “And I’m assuming someone called the cops, by the way?”

  Ardmore tipped his chin in Colleen Flanagan’s direction.

  “They’re out front,” I said. “Probably looking for your perpetrator.”

  “If someone’s after all of Finn’s brothers, that puts Slider in danger, not my family. So why did you say my family is in danger?” Jack asked.

  “My dad has this theory that the Sheas are involved because of something Finn said to him once. They were talking about secrets, and Finn said every family in this town has secrets, even the Sheas.”

  Jack shook his head. “He was just talking.”

  “No. He’d had a meeting just before with Libby Shea, and my dad interrupted it. He thinks it may have something to do with—”

  “Molly said Libby never met with Finn,” I said, and then I wondered about it.

  “Did Libby tell you so?” Ardmore asked.

  Jack and I exchanged a glance. “I am confident that you can leave my family out of your calculations,” Jack told Ardmore. “You have enough to worry about.”

  Ardmore looked at the door; the police were entering. Two men in uniform looked purposefully about. One of them spotted Ardmore and walked over to us, his boots clicking like those of a soldier on parade.

  “Ardmore,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Chief,” Ardmore said. “This is Chief Roy Hendricks,” he told us.

  We nodded. The chief looked about forty-five, with dark hair and a dark cop mustache which he smoothed before saying, “Where’d the bullet come from?”

  “I’ll show you,” Ardmore said, standing up.

  “Chief, Ardmore’s been shot,” I said.

  Ardmore displayed his arm impatiently, and the chief looked at it, then at Ardmore, then at us. “Then what the hell’s he doing sittin’ in a booth?” he said.

  “Just chatting,” I said.

  The other cop emerged from the back room, where he’d apparently been surveying the damage. “Call a fuckin’ ambulance,” the chief said under his breath to his comrade.

  Ardmore bristled. “Colleen already called one, not that I need a goddam ambulance. I was gonna get it looked at by Doctor Breen as soon as I was done here.”

  They moved off, arguing, and I looked at the remains of my sandwich. It was cold and congealed. I couldn’t imagine eating it now that I’d seen Ardmore’s gory arm.

  “Still enjoying the honeymoon?” Jack asked dryly, touching my hand.

  I grinned. “Actually, I am.”

  * *

  When we left we stopped to thank Colleen, who was at her little podium, on the phone. “I’m calling my husband,” she whispered to us. She turned her attention to the receiver in her hand. “Hey, hon, it’s me. Give me a call when you get back. You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on here.”

  She hung up and thanked us graciously for coming to Flanagan’s. She made such an obvious effort to detach herself from the chaos and be professional that I felt great admiration for her. I shook her hand. It was small and elegant, with pink-varnished nails of medium length—all except the thumb of her right hand, which had been bitten down to nothing.

  “Good luck,” I said. “I’m sure the police will sort things out soon.”

  “Let’s hope,” she said, waving us off.

  Jack went to get Pat’s jeep and I waited, trying to get my crutches just right. Ardmore came past me again, accompanied by two white-coated people who were trying to examine his arm. “Just a second,” he told them.

  He came right up to me and lowered his voice. “Listen, Madeline. You should know something. I didn’t even tell this to the cops, because it didn’t dawn on me at the time. But the night Finn died, I went there and told him off for involving my dad in his little schemes. That’s when they told me Finn was my brother. Anyway. I left, Madeline. But I saw Libby in the bar, and I think she was waiting to talk to Finn.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “She was on her way to see Finn, I’m sure of it the more I think of it. It was pretty late at night, and she was alone. There were still a bunch of regulars hanging out, but she wouldn’t have been there that late without a reason, would she? So if she’s not involved in what happened, she may well know something.”

  “Then you should have told the police,” I said.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. Nothing Ardmore said made sense to me. He had his own logic. “And another thing,” he said, nodding impatiently at the attendants who were trying to get a look at his arm. “If you do know where Slider is, you should tell him: he was in Finn’s will. He and I both were. Finn was a rich man, thanks to his business, and his late real mom, and my dad.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Gave him some money. I guess he felt prompted to make a will, what with all the sudden windfalls coming his way.”

  I squinted at him, trying to make sense of all the information, and he patted me on the arm and strode toward his waiting attendants.

  I crutched out the door in time to see a Cadillac pull up in front of Flanagan’s; Damian Wilde jumped out. He left the car in the middle of the road and lurched up to me. “Roy called me; he said my son’s been shot,” he rasped. He looked even older than he had at our last interview, and something more: he looked afraid.

  “He’s right there,” I said, pointing at Ardmore, who was emerging from the restaurant just behind us. “I think he’ll be—”

  He moved without another glance at me. He called his son, and Ardmore looked up. “Dad,” he said, surprised.

  Wilde walked forward, his limbs looking somehow disjointed, like a man puppet.

  He gave Ardmore an awkward embrace, avoiding the sore arm. Wilde was a tall man, easily over six feet, but next to his son he looked short.

  Jack pulled up in our rental car; I was glad to turn away from the scene with Ardmore and his father. Ardmore was the only son Wilde had left; perhaps Finn’s death had put fatherhood in perspective for him.

  “What now?” Jack asked.

  “Slider gave me the passcode to his safe deposit box. Let’s go to the bank,” I said.

  We drove to Main Street, a trip back to 1910, like a movie set for a John Wayne film. If it weren’t for the McDonald’s at the end of the block, and certain modern touches like the signs saying “Fax” and “1 Hr Foto” glowing in neon amidst the carefully preserved architecture, I would have found it almost disconcertingly old-fashioned. There was a big old bank for robbin’ on one corner, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear a stagecoach coming. Sure, the street was paved and there were kids with ten-speeds and skateboards hanging out in front of the courthouse across from the bank, but the effect was
the same.

  “Quaint, isn’t it?” asked Jack fondly. This wasn’t the town he’d grown up in, but he knew Grand Blue and most of the towns in the area.

  “Sure is. Is this the bank we want?” I asked.

  “It’s the only bank,” Jack said.

  It was called Grand Blue Bank, and all thoughts of the old-fashioned faded as I saw an ATM in the lobby and read the large glossy posters advertising free checking and a free iPod Shuffle.

  We made our way down carpeted stairs to the basement vault, where signed in and showed our identification to an elderly woman and were sent into a tomblike room containing silver lockers. We found Slider’s—number 803—opened the locker with his passcode, and removed the box, which we took to a viewing table.

  “You’re getting quick on those crutches,” Jack said.

  “Adapt or die.”

  Jack opened the box and removed the contents, which included an insurance policy and the adoption papers Slider had mentioned, as well as a very sweet picture of the baby of Sarah Sloane, who later became Finn Flanagan. Perhaps because Max was the most recent baby I had met, the picture reminded me of Max.

  “Are you crying?” Jack asked.

  “No, of course not. It’s just—this baby picture. Finn went through a lot, when you think of it. His parents gave him up, then he was a bit estranged from his adoptive parents, and he never knew his real mother. Never knew she’d been coming into the bar to see him, never knew she was thinking of him when she died. And then he died. Everything about this story is sad.”

  “I think your medication is making you weepy,” Jack said, not looking sad at all.

  I nodded, still looking at the baby. It was a newborn photo; his eyes were still stretched-looking, and his little fists were clutched on either side of his round face. How unfortunate that innocent babies grew up to be adults who inevitably made bad choices.

  I sighed. “What’s the note say?” I asked.

  Jack was reading the note Slider’s mother had written to him. “I’m not even going to show you, because in this mood you’ll start sobbing. She just says she loves him, and she hopes he’ll understand about his brother, and hopes that he’ll love his brother. She says, ‘I was very young when I had Finn, and I knew that someone else could take care of him much better than I. You’re my most beloved child on earth, Joseph, but I do have some room to love Finn, and I hope you’ll have room in your heart for him, too.’ Then she talks a little about the money. She says that she hopes Slider will understand, but she wanted to make Finn a beneficiary too, as a sort of reparation.”