Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) by Greg Herren Page A

whatever. I won’t go, and I won’t watch it on television. It was so—animalistic and brutal.” She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why would anyone want to do that? Get paid to be violent? I don’t understand it—it was like something out of ancient Rome. The crowd was screaming for blood, it was horrible.” She said the last in a whisper.
    “What does that have to do with Heather? He was fighting before he met her, wasn’t he?”
    “Yes, well, you know he only married her because she was pregnant.” She made a face. “Yeah, Mom told me she was just some groupie who had a thing for fighters, she used to go with another one of them, and she hooked up with Jonny when the other guy wouldn’t marry her. She’s just trash, and she got pregnant and he married her and Mom bought that house with his college fund. I tried to talk him out of it, tried to talk Mom out of buying that house—that horrible little house, have you seen it? But Jonny won’t listen to anyone. Try to tell him he’s wrong—he’s so damned stubborn and used to getting his own way.” She sighed. “Jonny, I guess, has a lot of potential. The promoters think he can be a world champion or something, I don’t know, but he supposedly can go far, make a lot of money doing it. I didn’t want to know anything about it, like I said, it was just too barbaric for me, you know? Mom talked about it a lot, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t listen. When she would tell me about it, all I could think about was my baby brother getting all of his teeth knocked out or his brain scrambled. Mom was supportive of it all.”
    “What about your brother? You said you two weren’t close anymore. Was he supportive of Jonny’s fighting?”
    “They always say you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead.” She got up and refilled my coffee cup. “Well, I’ve always thought that was stupid, you know? Like dying changes the fact that Robby was an asshole while he was alive? And that wife of his.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Robby and Celia both thought—I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t say.” She started drumming her fingernails on the table. “Look, it’s not like I didn’t do my research into all of this, you know. When Jonny started fighting, I looked into it all. I’m not stupid.” She ran a hand through her hair. “It’s not like boxing, you know, where someone can make millions. These guys—the top guys might make six figures, but the majority of them don’t make shit. They risk their bodies, risk brain injury, and for what? I don’t get it. But Robby—Robby thought Jonny could be a star, a champion, one of the big-money fighters. That asshole Morgan Barras sold Mom and Robby and Jonny all a line of bull.”
    “Morgan Barras? The billionaire?”
    She made a face. “Yeah. I don’t know, I didn’t want anything to do with it, you know? Maybe they didn’t care if Jonny’s brains got scrambled, but I did.”
    I pulled out my copy of the cashier’s check from Morgan Barras. “So, could this check have been a down payment of sorts?”
    She raised her eyebrows. “Maybe.”
    “Why do you think your mother has disappeared?”
    “You know, I thought Jonny was overreacting when he called me on Friday morning. I just figured it had something to do with the church. She just couldn’t let St. Anselm’s go. I don’t understand it, never could—I’m lapsed Catholic myself—I send the boys to Country Day.” She made another face. “Mom wasn’t too happy about that, but what good did Sacred Heart do for me? I mean, really. Country Day is a better school, and they don’t try to brainwash the kids there like the Catholic schools do.”
    “Did your mother seem worried, or concerned, the last time you talked to her?”
    “I talked to her last Thursday morning. She was supposed to come over that morning when she was finished with her stupid vigil, but she called and canceled. She was really pissed about the