Her name was Meara.
“Emptied the place, it did, and cut the evenin’ short and me pay, when the police arrived.” She threw a look of open invitation over her shoulder as she picked up another tray of ale.
“Got to make up for it tonight.” She wound her way through the tables, picking up empty tankards along the way anddelivering full ones, at the same time escaping just out of reach of a wandering hand.
She made her way back to the end of the bar.
“I heard a man got himself knifed?” Brodie added to the conversation as she sidled up beside him, fanning herself with a bar towel as Mac loaded her tray once more.
“That’s what I heard and sent off to hospital,” Meara replied. “It was that newspaper fella wot comes in regular, right Mac?”
Mac grunted. “Looking for information, stirrin’ up the customers with stories about himself. It was a bloody mess out the sidewalk. The police carried ’im off in their van.”
“Disgusting little man,” Meara added as she picked up the filled tray.
“How is that?” Brodie asked.
She dispensed fresh tankards and returned.
“It’s the way he has of puttin’ his hands on a woman,” she said, with a look at Mac as he wiped the bar and then went to greet a customer at the other end.
“Like he owns ’em just for the price of ale. Get my meanin’?”
He did. He’d seen it hundreds of times.
“I say who gets to put his hands on me, and not that slimy bugger,” she added as she leaned in closer, the roundness of a breast pressed against his arm where he sat at the bar.
She was pretty and smelled of soap along with ale. In another place, another life, he might have taken her up on the obvious offer...in thatotherlife.
“It’s a pity that a man canna enjoy a drink. Did anyone see who attacked him?” he casually asked.
“It was when the man left. They were outside. Someone said that the newspaper fella said he was meeting someone here. Seems like it went bad.
And Mikaela had been the person he was to meet.
“If it’s not one of the regulars, then it’s the ones just returned from outta the docks,” Meara commented. “Smellin’ like it too.”
There was that invitation again in her smile as she reached out and stroked his beard. “I like ’em clean, not smelling of swill or the bottom of a fishin’ boat.”
“We got other customers, Meara!” Mac reminded her from the other end of the bar.
She smiled again and picked up the tray of mugs filled with ale.
As she left to take the next round to those who waited, one of the players at dice table stood.
“I’ve enough to pay for one more, then I’m for home, gentlemen.”
He made a grand gesture of pulling coins from his pocket, almost went over, then straightened himself.
“Meara, darlin’, I’ve a need for one more, if you please.”
Brodie left the bar taking the mug of ale with him as he approached the table. He took an empty chair.
Over the next hour, the dice changed hands several times as conversation and bets rounded the table.
The man called Fitch groaned as he lost.
“That was new shoes for me boy.”
