Buried in a Bog by Sheila Connolly Page A

Mick, whichever was handling the books for the pub. They hadn’t been opened, though the dates on them were fairly recent. But there was one personal letter, handwritten, whose envelope had been slit open. Maura pulled it from the stack and was startled to see an Australian return address. She looked up at Rose. “Australia! Did Old Mick know anyone there?”
    Rose craned her neck to look. “Nice stamp. No, I can’t say as he did. Wonder why the letter came here instead of to his home? I’m surprised Old Mick left it here—he was real private. But maybe he was feeling poorly and forgot to take it home with him.”
    “How did he die?” Maura asked, hoping she wasn’t about to learn that he’d dropped dead in the pub.
    “He went easy. He didn’t come in one morning, and when Mick went looking for him, he found him in his bed, gone. Old Mick was well into his nineties, anyways.”
    “How long ago was this?” Maura asked. She wondered briefly what local regulations might be for burying someone; she was more familiar than she wanted to be with the American customs.
    “Ten days, is it now?” Rose calculated in her head. “There was talk of waiting to put him in the ground until a next of kin was found, but nobody was sure where to look, sincemost of his family’s long gone. The Sullivans have a plot behind the church, so they put him there. The funeral filled the church—everyone knew Old Mick.”
    No wonder things were so unsettled about the pub. “Maybe we should look at the letter. If it’s personal, someone might be hoping for an answer, and at the very least they should be told that Old Mick is gone.”
    “Go on, then—read it. It’s already open,” Rose said.
    Feeling vaguely guilty, Maura pulled two sheets of paper from the envelope and scanned them quickly. They were covered with dense script, and it took her a moment to decipher what the writer, Denis Flaherty, was saying. Denis wrote that he was in his eighties and working on his own family history and thought that Old Mick might know something about the local McCarthys, from his mother’s side. It appeared to be an out-of-the-blue letter, and the first that Denis had written to Mick, because he took the time to introduce himself as the son of Bridget McCarthy, and he wondered if she was the sister of Ellen McCarthy, Old Mick’s mother, but he couldn’t be sure because he’d only learned bits and pieces from his family in Australia. Genealogy, then. Something Maura had had no particular interest in, and that Gran hadn’t encouraged—indeed, she’d often said that she’d made her choice to find a new life in America and looking backward was useless. And what was it with all these Denises and Bridgets and whatever? Mrs. Nolan had mentioned something about traditional naming patterns, but this was ridiculous. How did anybody keep straight who was who, and who was related to whom? Of course, they’d probably known all their lives, unlike her.
    “What’s it about?” Rose asked.
    “It’s a letter from some guy in Australia who’s looking for some of his relatives or ancestors around here. He thought Old Mick might be able to help, because he might be related.”
    “Who’s he looking for, then?”
    “His name’s Denis Flaherty, but he’s looking for his mother’s people. Her name was Bridget McCarthy. Do you know of any McCarthys around here?”
    Rose giggled. “At least a dozen. I was at school with a few.”
    “Should I ask people at the pub if they can help this Denis? I hate to just send the letter back, and I don’t know who’s who around here or where to find them.”
    “You can ask, but it may not help you much.”
    Maura looked down at the letter in her hand. Poor Denis probably didn’t have many years left to him, and she hated to leave him in the dark, if there was anything she could do. “Still, I think I should do something. If you see a McCarthy walk in the door today, point him out to me, will you? I’ll hang on