Faire Thee Well — Bill Stackhouse

Caitlin (Kate) O'Rourke is not your typical Irish-American lass. At six-one and one-hundred-seventy-eight pounds, with dark skin, raven-black hair, and a nose like an eagle, the former MVP setter/middle blocker on the Italian Pro Volleyball circuit is a has-been in her late 20s, prematurely retired due to a blown-out knee.Although retirement does not sit well with Kate, she soon finds herself so entangled in other people's difficulties that she doesn't have time to dwell on her own problems.Kehough's Irish Pub in Nashville, Tennessee, with its upstairs apartment, is home to Kate, and the pub itself not only provides employment for her brother, Seamus, and his wife, Mary Grace, but serves as an office for her fledgling confidential inquiries business.In Faire Thee Well, the fifth Caitlin O'Rourke Mystery, a gal walks into a bar on a Thursday morning—That seems like sort of a cliché, except the bar in question is Kehough's Irish Pub, and the gal is Robin Ruth (Knowles) Bergeron, a former classmate of Kate's at both Our Lady, Queen of the Universe Elementary School and Immaculata High School.With her cute little wriggle instead of a walk, a big, fake, toothy smile, and her breathy little-girl voice, she approaches Kate and says, Oh, Caitlin, it is so, so good to see you. It's been just ages.Now, Robin Ruth and Kate were never friends. Back in the day, Robin Ruth always thought she was better than everyone else and earned the nickname 'Little Miss Knowles it all.'But there she is, intent on hiring Kate to find another of their former classmates—Robin Ruth's BFF, Mary Elizabeth (Bolenbach) Rocco.The problem is, though, both Mary Elizabeth and her husband, Francesco, were in Witness Security, waiting to testify against the mob, when their pontoon boat mysteriously exploded on Nickajack Lake, leaving nothing but debris and allegedly killing both Roccos, even though no bodies were ever recovered.But Robin Ruth insists that Mary Elizabeth survived. She even has a photo, taken a the Renaissance Faire on Monday, of one of her nieces on the carousel. Not noticing it the day of the Faire, on Tuesday, when she uploads the photos from her camera to her computer, in addition to the perfectly framed image of the kid, the photo also contains a badly out-of-focus image in the background of a brown-haired woman entering the psychic's tent, who Robin Ruth swears is Mary Elizabeth. Returning to the Faire on Wednesday, Robin Ruth finds out from the psychic that the out-of-focus woman inquired about an absent Rocco's Cucina Italiana su Ruote (Italian Kitchen on Wheels), which, according to the Faire brochure, was supposed to be parked outside her tent. As per the psychic, the food truck was having its oven repaired and would be back on site on Saturday.Being such 'good friends' with Robin Ruth, Kate takes the case, charging her former classmate almost double her normal Confidential Inquirer's fee, plus expenses for almost double her standard minimum days.So there on Saturday, from one of the parking lots at the Faire, binoculars in hand, Caitlin stakes out the food truck, waiting for the appearance of Mary Elizabeth or her brown-haired doppelganger.What she sees instead is a motorcyclist tossing an improvised explosive device through the counter window of the food truck, then speeding out of the Faire grounds as the food truck explodes.With no cops around, Caitlin takes up the chase, following the cyclist onto the Stones River Greenway, where, at a cul-de-sac, there are two gates—one for pedestrians and the other for vehicles. The cyclist shoots through the pedestrian gate. However, as Caitlin rounds the raised planting bed in the cul-de-sac, she finds the vehicle gate is blocked by another car, causing her to swerve so severely to miss it that her SUV careens down the semi-wooded embankment and into the Stones River below, rendering her unconscious.Now, the hunt for the brown-haired woman is not just a job for Kate. It's personal. But what her investigation uncovers is more than just a missing witness. Way more.