Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery Read Online Free Page B

each year September incomes grow along with Lisfenora’s fame. Wives stockpile jars of preserves homemade from blackberries that grow along stone walls. Husbands invest in sheep to provide wool for hand-knit sweaters because the foreigners inevitably arrive underdressed. Children take up residence in living rooms thereby opening bedrooms up for lodging.
    No one minds the inconvenience because the man is a bona fide tourist attraction. In this region where most villages molder under the debilitating effects of unemployment, little Lisfenora thrives. All, it’s said, because of the matchmaking festival. (Need statistics here.)
    Liam the Lion, as he’s often called, plants himself in the plaza with a gigantic ledger on his lap. Gold leaf gleams under mild sunlight, and the calfskin cover creaks when Liam opens the book. Upon thick parchment he scribbles crucial data about each supplicant . . . (I need to get to the heart of this Liam character. What about his own love life?)

• 3 •
    Lonnie sipped coffee and grimaced at his computer screen. Christ, his mom together with Merrit, of all the sodding luck. But then, he couldn’t argue with bringing Merrit along to Liam’s party—good craic indeed.
    He barked a laugh and settled back into moodiness. He tried not to picture Ivan out front wanking away on his laptop while twenty gleaming computers faced one another around the room’s perimeter. They were on, but you’d never know it to look at them. They’d long since fizzled into energy-saver mode so nothing but darkened monitors graced his shop. By rights, his cyber café should be doing well. So why wasn’t it?
    In answer, Lonnie heard his father’s supercilious voice. “What you have now, my boy, is the classic problem of demand not meeting supply. The good news is that you can create demand. Marketing plans, they’re not just a dick-whipping exercise.”
    Marketing plans. Not to mention publicity and promotion and giveaways and tie-ins with the sightseeing companies and an actual coffee bar. The word café in the storefront name Internet Café was symbolic only, for feck’s sake. Why would he serve coffee and risk damage to the computers?
    So here Lonnie sat while down the road and across the plaza, his father, owner of the Grand Arms Hotel and a dozen other luxury accommodations along the west coast, perused numbers that glowed black as night at the end of each month. While he, Lonnie the Lovely—yes, he’d heard the words said behind his back—contended with digits that fizzled into the red even with Ivan’s expertise to back him up.
    The shop cat—Ivan’s idea—nosed around Lonnie’s feet. Idly, Lonnie scratched the root of its tail. And what about Ivan anyhow? Lonnie didn’t dare fire him. Even this basic owner’s privilege lay beyond his free will. The man was a genius with computers and had a global network of cyber-hack contacts besides. He could retrieve anything. Any thing. Which meant that Lonnie must tolerate Ivan and his dodgy personal hygiene for the time being. Lonnie’s sideline into information nondisclosure services—INS, ha, ha—was temporary. Just until his business got going. Or maybe not, who knew?
    “Ivan,” Lonnie called through the closed office door.
    Ivan poked his head in with fingers scratching deep into masses of red hair that fluffed out of his head like cotton. Lonnie shuddered. Could be anything under those fingernails.
    “This place is a bloody morgue. Get the music, will you?”
    “We could get disco ball,” Ivan said, accent heavier than usual, a sign that he longed to sulk but dared not. “Hire women for sitting at the computers. They could be wearing almost nothing.”
    Lonnie stood. The slob might be onto something. He could rig up private cubicles and charge half-hour fees. He could spread the word through the pubs. Hardworking men straight in from their labors and not ready for home—of course not, what with multiple brats and nagging sow wives there to