“History is all around you,” Sara said as they walked toward the house.
“That it is,” Fitzmaurice said with a laugh. “We also are home to the first McDonald’s drive-through in Europe, for which, of course, we are eternally grateful.”
“Is that true?” Sara asked.
Fitzmaurice nodded and grinned. “We’re planning to raise a statue to Ronald McDonald on the town green to commemorate the historical event.”
Edna Fitzmaurice met them at the door. Green eyed, with laugh lines at the corners of a broad mouth, she was a tall full-figured woman dressed casually in jeans and a short-sleeve pullover top.
“So you are the woman who’s kept my husband from hearth and home,” she said, after greeting Sara warmly. “Come inside and tell me how he’s been misbehaving.”
In the living room Edna sat with Sara on a couch facing a fireplace, while Fitzmaurice opened a bottle of wine at the sideboard in the adjacent dining room. The small living room, comfortable and inviting, had scaled-down furnishings that created a feeling of spaciousness, and built-in shelves filled with books. From the kitchen came the aroma of roasting lamb with a hint of garlic. Footsteps on the stairway from the second floor announced the arrival of Sean Fitzmaurice, who rushed into the room and smiled at Sara with a toothy grin.
“Finally we get to meet,” he said, shaking her hand. “At the award ceremony I was warned to stay away. Garda business and all that. Are you really an American army officer?”
Sara smiled back at the boy. “I am.” No more than nineteen or twenty, Sean had his father’s wide shoulders, large hands, and blunt fingers, and his mother’s eyes and mouth.
“Leave her alone, Sean,” Fitzmaurice called out as he carried in the wineglasses. “The colonel is a married woman. Wife and mother, to be exact.”
After a glass of wine Sara helped Edna put the finishing touches on dinner, while Sean and Hugh set the table. Father, mother, and son were convivial company. Edna had bought the lamb-done to perfection-from a butcher who raised and slaughtered his own sheep on a farm in County Roscommon. A bowl of fruit topped off the meal, and it was then that Sean asked her if she’d read the works for which Brendan Coughlan had been honored at the National University.
“I have not,” Sara replied. “But he’s now on my personal short list of writers to read.”
Sean nodded with great seriousness. “He has a lyrical flair and a wonderful way of describing characters and settings. Did you ever hear of Finley Peter Dunne, a late-nineteenth-century Irish-American journalist?”
Sara’s eyes widened in surprise. For an American Studies class at West Point she’d written a research paper on Dunne, a Chicago columnist who had created a comic Irish saloonkeeper named Mr. Dooley, a character with strong anti-imperialist tendencies who tenaciously criticized the Spanish-American War.
“Did you know he was great friends with Teddy Roosevelt, in spite of his opposition to the Spanish-American War?” Sara asked.
Sean beamed with pleasure. “I did. What was Mr. Dooley’s given name?”
Sara laughed. “I don’t remember.”
“Martin,” Sean replied. “And the customer who most often had to endure Dooley’s social commentary was named Hennessy.”
“That’s right,” Sara said. “Did you know that before he moved to New York City, Dunne wrote articles on women’s issues for the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine?”
Sean nodded. “He was one of the most popular muckraking reformers of his day.”
“How did you come to discover him?” Sara asked.
“I’m reading Irish-American Literature at Trinity,” Sean replied. “Do you know Thomas Flanagan’s works?”
“I’m afraid not,” Sara said with a shake of her head.
“You’re missing one of America’s great writers. He wrote a trilogy set here that reads like the work of a native son. Would you like me to write the titles down for you?”
“Yes, please.”
“Enough about books,” Fitzmaurice said as he pushed his empty fruit bowl away, “otherwise we’ll be sitting at this table long into the wee hours of the night.”
After the table had been cleared, Sean retreated to his room to study, and Sara helped Edna scrape and stack the dishes in the galley kitchen. As they stood at the sink, Edna turned to her and said, “I do hope you don’t think I invited you over to see if my husband was planning to take you away on a dirty little weekend.”
“I think he’ll be glad to see the last of me,” Sara replied with a smile.
“You’re welcome in this house anytime you decide to return.”
Impulsively, Sara hugged Edna as though she were an old and dear friend.
Fitzmaurice arrived to find the two women chatting like magpies, which continued over coffee in the living room. When he was finally able to suggest that it was time to take Sara back to her hotel, she reluctantly agreed.
She left Edna on the front stoop with thanks for a scrumptious meal and a promise to visit again, then climbed into Fitzmaurice’s car and waved good-bye.
Fitzmaurice started the engine, beeped the horn, and drove away. “The text messages Spalding sent to Paquette’s computer don’t help us one bit,” he said. “They were all about small changes he wanted the builder to make to the architect’s blueprints.”
“That’s it?”
“Afraid so.” He glanced at Sara. “I think we need to agree upon a plan of action in the morning. I can’t keep the number of people assigned to the case working any longer than that. Orders from the higher-ups.”
“Okay,” Sara said. “We’ll figure something out in the morning.”
At the hotel she thanked him for the wonderful evening, complimented him on his delightful family, and took the lift to her room, wishing Kerney and Patrick had been with her to meet Clan Fitzmaurice.
It was eleven p.m. in Dublin, and four in the afternoon in Santa Fe, but Sara was too drained to call Kerney or even check her e-mail for messages. She got ready for bed, her thoughts firmly fixed on Spalding and what to do about catching him come morning.
Chapter Nine
As Brigadier General Stuart Thatcher saw it, he’d risen through the ranks because he was objective, ambitious, and maintained a healthy skepticism about other people’s motives. Accordingly, he was constantly on guard for any sign of disloyalty from his subordinates or any outside threats to his authority.
On Friday, as he was about to leave the office at the end of the day, a memo from the vice chief of staff had been hand-delivered by his aide, advising Thatcher that Lieutenant Colonel Sara Brannon had been tasked to carry out a special courier assignment effective immediately. The memo contained no specifics as to the whys or wherefores, nor had Thatcher been consulted on the matter. His authority had been undermined, and he was desperate to know why.
Officially there wasn’t anything Thatcher could do about it other than defer to the vice chief. Still, he fumed that Clarke had not even given him the courtesy of a call about needing Brannon for a special detail. Because Henry Powhatan Clarke was clearly Brannon’s mentor and protector, Thatcher couldn’t help but wonder if hidden motives were in play.
Since her arrival at the military police directorate, Brannon had caused Thatcher nothing but trouble. It had started with her assignment to revise sexual-assault criminal investigation protocols and procedures, which she’d turned into an indictment against the army for failure to prosecute offenders and adequately protect victims.
Her findings had reached the halls of Congress, and it had taken a concerted effort to keep the situation from becoming an embarrassment to the service while preserving the careers of several ranking, highly connected officers. Fortunately, Thatcher’s second cousin, U.S. Senator Howard Ballard Rutledge, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had buried Brannon’s report under the provisions of the National Security Act. But from that moment on Thatcher had kept a watchful eye on Brannon and her work, reviewing it in exhaustive detail.