Marigolds, Chapter 5

By the way, The picture at the end of this chapter is neither, I say again, is neither David Crosby nor Sean Connery. Though, both could play that guy in the movie.

5

I stopped at my car just long enough to ferret my phone out of the center console. Walking, I turned it on, checked its charge and slipped it back into its case. Unfastening my belt, I slid the case onto it and re-cinched myself, the phone now on my hip. All without missing a step. Fore Street was a five-minute walk.

In an aromatic, busy and boisterous coffee shop I sat in the wide window at a raised birch bar on a soft stool. Spread in front of me a copy of the Portland Press Herald was sharing my attention with the passers-by on Fore Street when the phone sounded. My mouth was full of lemon poppy-seed muffin. I hit the answer button while I was still chewing. I must have sounded slightly dangerous. After a moment of awkward silence at the other end,

“Hello, is this Mr. Fintan O’Keefe? Hello? Is this…?” The voice was accented and female. The accent I deduced was eastern European.

“Yes it is. Excuse me, I had food in my mouth.” Truth was I still did. I wiped my mouth and swallowed what I had just sucked from my teeth.

“Forgive me. May I ask who’s calling?”

“You were just at my home. You put your card at my door. I am calling you, now.”

“Thanks for calling. May I ask…”

"You are not police?”

“No, I am a private investigator…as it says on the card in your hand.”

“Cards can say anything, Mr. O’Keefe. I do not want talk to police.”

“I suppose you are correct. Who is this, please?”

“ Brian Boru? You know it?”

“Ah…The Irish king or the bar in the Old Port?”

Silence.

“Of course you mean the bar.”

“Yes. If you are there in Brian Boru in one hour wearing baseball hat…sitting alone away from bar in back…reading newspaper… I will speak with you.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

I pushed the end button and returned the phone to its case. A sudden elevation in both blood pressure and anxiety had sucked the life out of my appetite. I folded the muffin’s remains in the sheer sheet of wax paper on which it sat and threw it away. No more coffee either. There was enough acid in my stomach. I folded the newspaper, placed it under my left arm and made the small leap, sliding from the stool to the floor. My Chelsea Cucarachas’ ball cap was in the car.

Brian Boru, King of Irish Kings