Page 73 of Road Trip
CHAPTER 32
By the time Liam returned to the Jeep, Maeve was once again seated in the front passenger seat.
“Did you hear what she said to me just now?”
Liam was carefully backing the car out of the tight parking spot. “No. What did she say? Something like ‘Turn back, Dorothy’?”
“Pretty close to it.” She repeated Esme’s warning. “What do you think she meant? ‘Let the dead rest,’ that’s kind of alarming, right?”
Liam chuckled. “I think that’s Esme Rossington’s version of ‘mind your own business.’”
“She knows more than she’s letting on about that IRA robbery, and I think she definitely knows something about that supposedly stolen portrait of Lady Geraldine.”
“What’s your theory then?”
“Esme told Therese that painting was the only one not recovered. But I think maybe, somehow, the painting did turn up somewhere. And whoever had it, that’s the painting that was sold at auction.”
“And whom do you suspect might have found that painting, and decided later to sell it?”
“My best guess? One of the IRA members stashed it away, and came back for it years later, after they were released from prison.”
“Not possible,” Liam said. “They’re all dead. Even the girl, Starr McGahee, who was the youngest, but actually the leader of the gang. She died nearly ten years ago. Breast cancer.”
Maeve did a double take. “How do you happen to know that particular bit of trivia?”
“They made a film about it.Radical Blues. Emma Thompson played Starr McGahee, which was quite comical, because she looked nothing like the real Starr. I think you can probably still watch it on one of the streaming services.”
“Maybe we will. But I feel there’s something more you’re not telling me. You weren’t even born in the ’70s, but you seem to know a lot about this topic.”
“My family has lived in this village a long, long time. Longer than the Rossingtons, who didn’t buy Tarrymore until around 1850-something. That IRA raid was the stuff of local legend.”
“And?” She waited for the other shoe to drop.
They’d reached the end of the long driveway that led away from the gardener’s cottage. A lone car passed on the two-lane road.
“And also my cousin Maddie, who you met at the home farm? Starr McGahee was her husband’s mum.”
“Really? Your cousin’s mother-in-law pulled off that heist?”
Liam nodded. “Of course, Starr wasn’t her real name. Her given name was Margaret. From a fancy English family. Peggy, they called her. Everyone said she was a bright thing. Won a scholarship to study chemistry at the university in Dublin.”
“Tell me more,” Maeve prompted.
“I don’t know too many other details. It’s not something Jamie goes round talking about.” He reached for her hand and she curled her fingers around his.
“This painting thing. Why is it so all-consuming? Can’t you just be a tourist and do tourist things—the Ring of Kerry, Dingle Peninsula, maybe even, God forbid, the Blarney Stone?”
She flashed a rueful smile. “In the beginning, when I agreed to take this trip, I told myself I was only doing it to honor our mother’s dying wish—and to humor Therese. But now, the truth is, the morewe find out about Kathleen, and how she came to possess that portrait, the more I read her letters and learn about her life here, and in the States, the more questions I have.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”
“You saw how Esme reacted when I mentioned Kathleen’s name. And ever since that day you showed me around the home farm and introduced me to your cousin Maddie? When I mentioned Kathleen’s name, it seemed like the two of you exchanged a look. Like you knew the name. Or am I imagining things?”
He looked over at her. “You’re very observant, and no, you’re not imagining things. Hearing that name, from a stranger, it came as a shock. Especially coming from someone who is related to her.”
“Because?”
“Look. Aside from the Rossingtons, this village, this part of Ireland, has never been a place of great wealth. We’re an out-of-the-way sort of place. Folks like my family have lived here for generations.”
