If her brother had an opinion of this lifestyle, he said nothing publicly about it, not, that is, until she took up with a young man by the name of Anastasios Karagiannis, a Greek playboy, there is no other word for it. Brandy and Taso, as he was generally referred to— perhaps in those circles it's de rigueur to have a nickname; I wouldn't know—were pictured together dancing at Regine's, or enjoying some revelry in Paris, and so on.
The trouble with Taso, in addition to the fact that he had no visible means of support, was that he was seriously into the drug scene, and he drank way too much. It was at that point that Crawford came on the scene, and there was one archival photo in which someone, with head averted, was pulling Brandy out the door of a hotel somewhere. The caption said the person doing the dragging was Crawford Lake, although it could have been anyone.
Undeterred, Brandy and Taso announced their engagement and set the date for the wedding. Two days before the event, which was to take place somewhere tacky, one of those clubs with bare-breasted dancers, Taso died, killed in an absolutely horrendous car crash. The car, a snazzy little sports job that Brandy had given him as a wedding present, had spun out of control on a hilly road, and Taso had plunged to his death in a fiery tumble down the side of the hill. The car was checked over, what was left of it, and nothing mechanical was found that would explain the crash. Taso's blood-alcohol reading, however, was over the top. The medical report also said he'd burned to death, which must be a truly horrible way to go.
Brandy placed dozens and dozens of white roses on Taso's casket, and then, like her brother, disappeared from public view. Unlike her brother, however, her whereabouts were known to anyone who was prepared to do some digging: her mother's family home on Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands off Ireland's west coast. I tried calling, but there was no listed number for Brandy Lake, nor for the O'Reilly family, at least not the one I wanted. I booked a flight for Shannon.
Before I went, though, I called Salvatore Vitali, Lola's lawyer friend. "How's she doing?" I said.
"Not well," he replied. "She's refusing to eat. She's such a tiny woman. . . ."
"I'm working on this," I said. "Try to get her to eat."
ACCORDING TO THE TIMETABLE I PICKED UP AT the airport, I'd missed the last ferry from Dolin. In yet another rental car, I headed up the coast for Galway, stopping only once, at a florist shop, and then on to Rossaveal. I caught the last ferry with only minutes to spare. The sea was rough and the air chilly as the boat plowed doggedly toward the island, about six or seven miles offshore.
At Kilronan, where the ferry berthed, I got a horse-drawn carriage and asked the driver to take me to a nice bed-and-breakfast inn. There was a light drizzle falling, and storm clouds hung low to the horizon. The island was rather bleak, small patches of grass surrounded by low stone walls the most prominent feature. Some might find it romantic, a windswept and rocky island, but in my present state of mind, I found it merely depressing.
The climate may have been unpleasant, but the welcome wasn't. The driver dropped me at a pleasant inn, and I was ushered to a cheerful spot by a warm fire, where I enjoyed a very nice glass of wine or two, a surprisingly fine dinner, and a very comfortable bed.
The next morning, the sun was shining brightly, and I felt I was in a different place and that I was a new person. I asked directions to the O'Reilly house and was delighted to find it was close enough to get there on foot. "Funny one, that," the innkeeper said. "Brandy Lake. Never goes out. She has help, of course. A maid she brought with her. Name's Maire. But herself hasn't been out in years. Too bad. I remember when she was young. She came here summers with her family, the grandparents, the O'Reillys. Lovely little thing. Always laughing and running about. Can't bear to think what happened to her to make her such a recluse now."
"Do people visit her?"
"People came a lot when she was first here, but not anymore. In the early days, those reporter types showed up, but we always said we didn't know anybody by that name. You're not a reporter, are you?" she said, suddenly suspicious.
"Absolutely not," I said. "I have a message from her brother."
"Crawford? He's not been seen around here since she first came. A serious young lad, he was. Doing rather well for himself, I'm told. It will be nice for her to hear from him, even if he won't come in person."
The road rose and fell gently, and there was a wonderful view across the water to the mountains of Connemara on the mainland, purple against the bright sky, and up ahead on a high promontory, the ruins of the fort of Dun Aengus. I found myself feeling much more optimistic, that I'd found a real link to Lake, that I was about to learn something that would make my path clear. Surely, if I could persuade her to get in touch with her brother, he'd have to listen.
The Lake—or rather I should say the O'Reilly— house was one of the largest on the island, but not in any way palatial. It was stone, two stories, with a large front yard. For some distance before I got there, a border collie ran alongside me in the fields, taking the stone fences easily, and barking in a not unfriendly fashion. He followed me right into the yard and up the stone walk to the door, his barking getting more intense the closer we got. I rang the doorbell.
I heard footsteps inside, and a voice called through the door. "Just leave it on the step."
"Hello?" I said.
The door opened a crack, and the dog, all excited now, started jumping up and down and putting dirty paws on my coat. "Who are you?" the voice inside said.
"My name is Lara McClintoch. I'd like to talk to Ms. Lake," I said over the din created by the dog.
"Hush, Sandy," the voice said. "Down. Don't bother the lady." Sandy ignored her. Finally, the door opened wider. "You'd better come in or you'll be a mess from that dog," the woman said.
"Many thanks," I said, brushing doggie prints off my coat and pant legs.
"She doesn't have many visitors here," the woman said. "Not many come to visit. I was expecting a delivery of some milk."
"Are you Maire?" The woman, a rather solid woman in her forties, I'd say, who'd worked hard all her life, nodded. "Would you ask Ms. Lake if she would talk to me?"
"She won't," the woman said. "Why are you here?"
I'd thought a lot about this question, given that it was an inevitable one. I'd thought I could say I was a friend of her brother's, or that I knew someone she did, although who that would be I couldn't imagine. In the end, standing there, I opted for the truth.
"I have a friend who is in an Italian jail for something she didn't do. The only person who can help her is Crawford Lake, but he won't see me, so I'm trying to find a connection to him, some way of getting in touch with him, so that I can help my friend."
"I'm sorry," Maire said. "But she still won't talk to you."
"But won't you ask her?"
"It won't do any good."
"Please. I'm throwing myself on your mercy, here. I'm getting pretty desperate. I mean, an Italian jail!"
"It won't do any good, I tell you. No."
I decided retreat, at least for the moment, was the only option. "Will you at least give her these?" I said, handing over a package that I'd babied all the way from Galway. The woman peered in the top.