John Lescroart - Dead Irish

“About seven-thirty. We finished dinner and talked for a while.”

“And he just decided to go out for a drive?”

She hesitated, perhaps remembering, perhaps hiding. “No, not exactly.” She looked at her lap, biting her lip. “Not exactly.”

“Frannie, look at me.”

The green eyes were wet.

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing, just household stuff, you know.”

“Did you fight?”

She didn’t answer.

“Frannie?”

“No, not really.” All strength seemed to leave her. Her hands went slack and the can of beer fell to the floor. Hardy jumped up and grabbed it, righting it and letting the foam overflow.

“I’ll get a sponge,” Frannie said.

Hardy put a hand on the tiny, bony shoulder to keep her from rising. “Forget the beer, Frannie. Did you have a fight or not?”

She slumped back, staring at Hardy as though she wanted to ask him a question. She looked about fifteen years old. Then she started crying, just tear after tear rolling silently down her made-up cheeks. Hardy, his hand still on her shoulder, felt the suppressed sobs.

“What about?” he finally asked.

The voice, now husky and nearly inaudible, came. “I’m pregnant. I told him I was pregnant.”

Her eyes held on the floor between her feet. She whispered. “Ed always just said to go ahead when I was ready. That was the way he was. He said we’d deal with it when it came up, and if we waited ’til he was ready in advance, he might never be.”

“And you’d just found out?”

“That day. I thought he’d be happy.”

She looked up at Hardy, the tears still flowing. “But it really wasn’t a fight or anything. I just wanted him to stay. I was all emotional, you know.”

“But he went out?”

She shook her head, slowly, back and forth. “He went out.”

“Do you know where?”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “That’s the thing I hate.”

“What?”

“Just seeing him go off, not even talking, and then…”- she swallowed -“now he’s gone.”

The thing Hardy hated, he told himself, was being in this position, the inquisitor. After a minute he told her as much.

“That’s okay,” she said. “At least you believe me.”

“Who didn’t believe you?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I got the impression the police had a hard time with it I mean, me not knowing why Eddie had gone out, or where.”

“Maybe he just wanted…” Hardy began, then rephrased it. “Maybe he needed to think about being a father.”

“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced.

“Except what?”

“Except he’d been going out a few times lately. I think it had to do with his business.”

Uh-oh, Hardy thought. But he said, “Didn’t you talk, you and Ed?”

“We talked all the time, about everything. You know that!”

“But not this?”

She shook her head, then punched her little fist into her other palm. “It made me so mad, I could’ve killed him.” The hand went up to her mouth. “Oh, I mean, I didn’t mean that. But we always shared everything, and this was like he was protecting me or something, like I couldn’t handle what he was doing.”

Okay, that was possible, Hardy thought. “So this night, Monday, after you told him about being pregnant, did you have a fight?”

“Not a real fight. More a disagreement. I wanted to snuggle, have him tell me it was all right, that he wanted to have it.” She sighed. “But he said he had to go out.” Again, Frannie shook her head back and forth. Her knuckles were white, clamped on her lap.

Hardy watched the beer she’d spilled spread slowly over the hardwood.

“See?” she continued. “His job was almost over anyway. I thought it was stupid.”

“His job?”

She bit her lip, thinking. “I mean his concern with trying to save the business. I think he got tired of arguing with me about it, and just went ahead on his own, not wanting to bother me or fight anymore about it.”

Hardy drank some beer. “I’m afraid you’re losing me.”

“I’d better get a towel.”

She brought another beer back for both of them. “God, it’s hot,” she said. “Eddie always loved hot days, all two a year.”

She sat this time in the deep chair in front of the window. More composed now, getting used to it, she started talking on her own.

“You know we were going down… He’d gotten into the MBA program at Stanford and we were going down there in September. His job was so… arbitrary. It wasn’t a career. He just wanted to actually work a couple years so grad school wouldn’t all be book learning, you know? So he got this job after college with Mr. Polk over at Army, because he wanted to get into distribution eventually.” She looked out the window. “This seems so stupid now. Why am I talking about this?”

“Talk about anything,” Hardy said.

“Then last Thanksgiving or sometime there, Mr. Polk got married and at the same time they heard they might lose the La Hora account.”

“ La Hora ? That’s Cruz Publishing.”

Frannie nodded again. “I know, that’s where he…” She tightened her lips and continued. “Anyway, the police said they’d check that. If there was a connection.”

“If? There’s gotta be.”

“It sounded crazy to me, but one of the policemen said it could have been like a protest, Eddie maybe killing himself in the parking lot as a protest against Polk, like a Buddhist burning himself or something. I don’t know if he was serious.”

Hardy swore at that, shook his head.

“I know,” she said, “but at least it does put him there-”

“So would a meeting with someone who wanted to kill him.”

She didn’t answer. Hardy felt a wisp of a breeze, and Frannie sat back in the deep chair. She turned her head to the window, away from him. He saw her wipe her face with the back of her hand, as a small child would.

“Oh, damn,” she said.

“Frannie,” he began, and she twisted to face him.

“I didn’t want him to go,” she said. “I didn’t even know he owned a gun.”

Now she sobbed, and Hardy got up, walking to the window, his back to her. The street fell away sharply outside. In the distance, the air shimmered over the rooftops.

“Did you tell the police about being pregnant?” he asked finally, turning around.

“No.” She sniffed, rubbed a hand over her eyes. “I didn’t see what difference it would make. I don’t want anybody to know until I know what I’m going to do. You won’t tell Moses, will you?”

“Not if you don’t want.”

“Because he wouldn’t understand. I mean, I might not have it now. I might…”

“Frannie…”

“But Eddie would not have killed himself over that.” She pounded a small fist against her leg. “He wouldn’t have. He would have been happy as soon as he got used to the idea. He was happy. He was!”

In the next fifteen minutes, Hardy found out that the scar on Ed’s leg was from trying to hop a train when he was a kid. His guitar playing, Hardy should have remembered, explained the finger calluses, and also made him right-handed, which Frannie verified. Sometimes at work he got little bruises from moving and lifting things, but Frannie noticed no new ones the last few days. He’d never had a fight she knew of, and he drank, she said, “way, way less than Moses, just a beer or two when he got home.”

Finally Hardy lost his heart for going into details. He looked at her for a long minute. “You really, deep down, can’t think of any reason for it? I know it’s a hard question, Frannie, but could there have been anything?”

Frannie walked over to the open window. She stood there for what seemed a very long time, occasionally brushing the hair away from her face. When she turned around, she shrugged. “He just didn’t. What can I tell you? He didn’t do it. The rest I don’t understand, I don’t…”