The Unknown Beloved(96)

“And I did. See? That’s it right there,” he said, triumphant.

“That’s not yours. That’s Francis’s. You didn’t give me yours. Check your breast pocket.”

Pling, pling, pling, pling.

“If we don’t leave now, we’ll have to wait in the queue. Where is my infernal ticket? And where is the attendant?”

Malone pulled her into another row as a portly man in coattails, nicotine trailing him like a fog and a bit of toilet tissue clinging to the bottom of his shoe, came bounding through a door somewhere in the back and hurried toward the clanging bell.

Pling, pling, pling.

“He gave his speech, now he’s ready to go. Can’t say I blame him,” Malone muttered.

“Who?” she whispered, but Malone was still listening to the exchange at the counter.

“I’m so sorry, Congressman,” the attendant said. “But . . . I really do need your claim ticket. I won’t be able to find your coat without it.”

“It’s the one right next to my wife’s. She has her ticket.” Tap, tap, tap. “That’s it, right there. Just grab the gray overcoat and the black bowler hat beside it. Those’ll be mine.”

“But, sir . . . it doesn’t always work that way.”

“Fine. Go with him, Marie,” the congressman snapped. “So he doesn’t grab the wrong ones.”

The attendant made a gurgle of protest and then must have thought better of it.

“Very well. If you would accompany me, madam,” he said. The whoosh of a door being opened and the swish of a woman’s skirts followed. Malone hesitated, his hand on her arm, waiting to see which way they would go.

“Well damn,” he muttered as they rounded the corner.

The attendant stopped so abruptly that Marie Sweeney let out a little oomph of surprise as she bumped into his back.

“You should not be back here,” the attendant stammered, his gaze pinging from Dani to Malone. He tugged at the bottom of his coat, indignant, like he was gearing up to blow a whistle or sound an alarm. Marie Sweeney peered around him, and her mouth dropped open.

“I needed my hat. You weren’t where you should be. I was tired of waiting,” Malone said, his voice so sinister the attendant took a step back and trod on Mrs. Sweeney’s pea-green dress.

“Oh. Oh dear,” she said, giving the poor man a little shove and staring dejectedly at her torn hem.

Malone took a step and plucked his hat from a cubbyhole just above the attendant’s head. The man flinched.

“Lucky for you, I got it.” Malone dropped the fedora on his head and drew his claim ticket from his pocket. He held it out to the attendant like he was serving a warrant, though there was nothing but the ticket in his hand and the flattest gaze Dani had ever seen on his face. The man’s hand shook as he accepted it.

“Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll let you apologize to Mrs. Sweeney,” he sneered, taking Dani’s hand, and moving around the attendant.

“Ma’am,” he said sweetly, touching the brim of his hat as he passed the congressman’s wife.

“What in the blazes is going on back there?” Congressman Sweeney bellowed, punching the bell with the flat of his hand as they approached the counter.

Malone didn’t vault it this time. He simply opened the door to the left of the counter and escorted her out, the way Marie Sweeney had been let in.

“I enjoyed your speech, sir,” he said to the congressman, slowing slightly. “Very powerful. My people are from Mayo too.” He added something in Gaelic and winked, like they had a secret.

Sweeney cleared his throat. “Yes, yes. Well. Thank you.”

“Your people aren’t from County Mayo, Michael,” Dani whispered as they walked away. “You said your father was from Belfast and your mother was from Dublin. That’s not Mayo.”

“I was tweaking him, Dani. Mayo is a bit of a rallying cry here among Cleveland’s Irish. He uses his heritage when he needs the votes.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Imigh leat, amadán.”

“Yes. That.”

“I called him an idiot and told him to, uh . . .” He cleared his throat. “Sod off.”

“But he said thank you,” she said.

“Proof that he is, indeed, an idiot. He’s made Eliot’s life hell.”

“Ih-mig lath oh-mah-don,” she murmured, trying it out. “I like that.”

He groaned like he’d taught a child how to curse, like she’d just given him another example of his “bad influence,” and she frowned at him.

“That reminds me. I thought if we got caught, we were going to fake a tryst,” she scolded him. “I feel swindled.”

Malone laughed out loud.





23


It was laundry day, Margaret had reminded him at breakfast, and he’d dutifully put his hamper in the hall. The house was muggy and too warm, and he’d thrown open his bedroom windows to combat it.

The same thing had been done in the rest of the house, for the sounds reached him differently, both from within and without—chatter from the shop, whirring from the sewing room, and the clank and sizzle of Margaret’s iron. The hum of a busy house mixed with birdsong from the trees and noise from the street was a strange symphony, and the sounds of life soothed him as he reexamined the dead.