Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery Read Online Free Page A

announce you to Liam myself.”
    “You wouldn’t dare.”
    He grinned. “Wouldn’t I?”
    “I’ll introduce myself to Liam on my terms, not yours. And definitely not in front of the whole village.”
    “You and I both know you’re itching to go.”
    She stared at him, loathing him for being correct. She was more than itching to go—compelled would be more like it. At the very least, she longed to observe Liam the Matchmaker from afar, to get a sense of whether he’d welcome or reject her.
    “How much is it worth to you to ensure I keep my mouth shut during the party?” Lonnie said.
    Merrit had considered scuttling back to California rather than deal with Lonnie, but that would have been yet one more sign of her weakness. Some might have called Andrew’s end a death with dignity. But she knew different. Powerless against a tidal wave of fury and despair and exhaustion, she’d snapped. Now she had to live with the horrid truth of it: she was capable of taking a human life. Lonnie might or might not know something about the darkness that lurked within her. He might or might not decide to reveal her darkness to her real father just because he could.
    “You are such a—” Merrit yanked her wallet out of her purse, then the cash out of her wallet. She threw the wad at him. “I’ll go to the party with you, but you’d better keep your mouth shut about me.”
    Lonnie’s smile turned gleeful just before he bellowed. “Ivan, fetch us coffee, will you?”
    “Oh, that’s right,” she said, “we’re such good friends. Screw you.”
    “Why so uptight?” he called after her. “You could probably do with a good shagging after all that.”
    ***
    Ten minutes later, Merrit reclined on her bed clutching a battered spiral-bound notebook with a psychedelic rainbow and “September 1975” on the cover. She’d found it in Andrew’s nightstand just like he’d said. After reading it, her shock had been so profound that she’d barely survived the next weeks of funeral arrangements and legal turmoil. She was better now. She hoped. At the very least, she wasn’t using her inhaler every ten seconds anymore.
    She fingered the notebook’s tattered cover. Above the rainbow, her mom’s precise block lettering spelled out “Ireland Article.” Within the notebook, the pages revealed scribbles, cross-outs, and journaling that bore witness to her mom’s increasing distraction back in 1975. Julia Chase had started out earnestly enough with initial research for her first big travel-writing assignment. Quite a coup for a woman, given the times, but the travel piece went unfinished due to the source of Julia’s distraction. None other than Liam the Matchmaker. A man her mom had called Liam the Lion .
    One sentence always filled Merrit with sadness. I’m a coward, that’s what I am, and all I can do is pack my bags because I hate myself for loving the man . . .
    Merrit’s life, her mom’s life—how different they would have been if Liam had fought for her mom. But he hadn’t, and Merrit had to know why. Since childhood, she’d yearned to fill the void where the unsaid and the murky festered beneath her mom’s smiles. Merrit couldn’t recall when she’d realized that her mom was a woman who hid her unhappiness well most of the time. Nor could Merrit recapture the moment she first noticed that Andrew treated her like a houseguest who’d overstayed her welcome, only that it hadn’t mattered until after her mom’s death. All she knew was that the answers lingered along Lisfenora’s cobbled lanes, along which Liam had walked arm-in-arm with her mom.

Julia Chase’s notebook
    During the matchmaking festival, Lisfenora village is Liam Donellan’s court. He reigns in a fur-trimmed, flowing purple cape that flaps around his knees. Flamboyant and fashionable with his long hair and (My God, this is crap. Too bad the matchmaker is the best human-interest angle around.)
    Eccentric he may be, but he’s the matchmaker, and