Irish Coffee Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jameson’s,” she said. “No, make it a lot.”
    â€œIce?”
    â€œWater. Just a little.”
    And then she told her story. Mary had been hysterical when she heard the news, already something of a surprise, and then she had told her mother she was engaged to marry Fred.
    â€œShe claims they had been engaged for months.”
    â€œClaims?”
    â€œI know nothing about it.”
    â€œDo daughters always tell such secrets to their mothers?”
    â€œThey do when they live as close as we do. We have no secrets.”
    â€œThe night she was here and Fred came in she acted as if she didn’t know him.”
    â€œI said the same thing. Apparently, she was peeved because he came in with Griselda Novak!”
    The ways of women were a mystery to the Knight brothers. “I wonder if Fred knew.”
    But Roger remembered Griselda’s remark about Fred being in love. Had she meant Mary Shuster? He went into his study and made a call.
    â€œIsn’t it awful?” Griselda said. “I saw you at the wake but didn’t get a chance to talk to you.”
    â€œYou remember Mary Shuster, the woman who was here the night…”
    â€œShe’s his girl. Or she was. I often caught them smooching in his office. She visited him there a lot.”
    This would be confirmed by others in the Joyce Center. Marjorie and the Knights seemed the only ones who hadn’t known of Fred and Mary. When his desk was opened some days later, her photograph was found.
    Marjorie said, “Why would she keep it a secret? The reason she gave made no sense.”
    â€œWhat was that?”
    Marjorie hesitated. “She said I nagged her so much about being single she didn’t want me whooping it up if she told me.”
    â€œOf course she would have told you eventually.”
    â€œLook at what eventually turned out to mean. The girl is making a spectacle of herself.”
    â€œYou can’t blame her for mourning Fred.”
    â€œAll in black? She never brought him home, not once, to introduce him to her mother. If I knew nothing about it, who did? And there she was, acting like a widow. How can you be a widow if you never married?”
    â€œOur Mutual Friend,” Roger murmured.
    The reference sailed past Marjorie. “Oh, I know, I know. It isn’t that I didn’t like the man, what I knew of him, God rest his soul. She did this out of spite.”
    â€œNow, Marjorie.”
    â€œWell, what am I to think? Keeping something like this from her own mother. If it’s even true. Do you have any more of this, Phil?”
    â€œA little.”
    â€œThat’s all I want.”
    Marjorie seemed intent on having an Irish wake for Fred Neville, the son-in-law that might have been.
    â€œI suppose it’s a blessing, God forgive me. What did he die of?”
    Phil said, “He died in his sleep.”
    Phil drove Marjorie home and Roger asked to be taken along. “Drop me at Hickey’s, Phil.”
    â€œYou’re going back there? Talk to Mary, please.”
    Thus it was that Roger was at the funeral home when Naomi McTear appeared.
    She was a slender girl with thick red hair worn to her shoulders, familiar as the breathless reporter from the sidelines at televised football games, the one that buttonholed a coach as he was heading for the locker room at halftime. Her dress was modish, festive rather than mourning. She stood in the open door of the viewing room and looked around at the depleted group. Then she saw the Nevilles and walked rapidly to them as if she were going to conduct an interview. She gathered Mrs. Neville into her arms, her left hand splayed on the back of the smaller woman. She was wearing the biggest diamond Roger had ever seen.
    â€œPhyllis,” she sobbed.
    â€œNaomi.”
    Then she turned to Mr. Neville. “Oh, Arthur, Arthur.” It was he who embraced her and she looked up at him, all tears. Then she glanced at the casket