John Lescroart - Dead Irish

Hardy nodded. “Just fainted.”

The priest came and knelt between them. He felt for a pulse in her neck, seemed satisfied, stood up. “She’ll be all right,” he announced to the mourners.

The color in Frannie’s face was returning. Her eyes opened, then closed, then opened and stayed open. Moses said something to her, got her up on his arm and followed Hardy through the crowd back to where the cars were parked.

Hardy heard a muffled sob into Moses’s shoulder, suddenly couldn’t deal with it anymore, put his hands in his pockets and moved out of vision, out of earshot, down the drive back toward the entrance gate. Finally, he stopped and cleared a space under a eucalyptus tree, then sat down, trying to face away from any tombstones, which in Colma is not an easy thing to do.

THE COCHRANS’ house was in a familiar neighborhood, near Hardy’s own, on 28th Avenue between Taraval and Ulloa. They shared the same fog most days, but Hardy lived north of the park -south of it was about as close to suburban as San Francisco got.

Big Ed greeted him at the door and introduced himself. He was dressed in a shiny black suit that looked as though it hadn’t seen much wear in the past ten years. The lapels were too thin, the black tie was too thin. The white shirt was brand new.

Hardy had the feeling that he’d caught him out of uniform, like running into a cop dressed as a clown at a parish festival. Ed Cochran looked slightly uncomfortable, but not in the least diminished either by grief or attire.

The eyes, though puffed, were clear and piercing. The solid man’s face was startlingly controlled. His strong chin and flat fighter’s nose conveyed an impression of suppressed power, reinforced by the handshake, which made no effort to crush or intim-idate. The meaty vice gripped, shook, let go, but the strength was there.

His hand gently touched Hardy’s back as he ushered him into the foyer. His wife Erin had used her hand the same way-to guide-at the cemetery. A family mannerism, perhaps. Ed’s touch was as light as Erin ’s.

And here was the priest again, by the bar near the sliding doors that led out to the redwood deck. Good-looking man, another powerhouse, but in a more subtle way than Ed Cochran. Drink in hand, he turned just as Hardy and Ed arrived.

“Good, so you’ve come. I was hoping to meet you.”

“Dismas, this is Jim Cavanaugh,” Ed said. Cavanaugh’s grip was firm and dry.

“Dismas? The good thief?”

Hardy smiled. “So I’m told.”

“And you’re Catholic, then?”

“Was.”

The priest shrugged as though accustomed to the answer. “Was, is. It’s all a matter of tense, and there’s no time in heaven. Like the good thief, will you rejoin the fold at your final hour?”

Hardy scratched his chin. “Well, I’m not much like the original Dismas. I’ve never stolen so much as a candy bar. But you never can tell. Was he much good at darts?”

“Darts?”

“Darts. I’m a pretty fair hand at the chalk line.”

Cavanaugh grinned broadly, displaying perfect teeth. “I’m afraid the New Testament is a little vague on that point. Get you a drink? Let me guess, Irish whiskey?”

Hardy had been thinking of a beer, but the Irish was okay. Cavanaugh had a knack, he guessed, for making his ideas feel like the best ones. He took the drink, they clicked their glasses, then moved out onto the deck, into the sunshine.

“That was a good move at the grave, Dismas Hardy,” the priest said. “You saved Frannie from a nasty fall.”

Hardy shrugged. “Marine training, mixed in with a little Boy Scouts. You’re the famous Father Cavanaugh?”

Cavanaugh’s eyes clouded briefly. “I don’t know about famous.”

“Anybody who knew Eddie’s heard about you. You were like one of the family.”

The quick flush of pleasure, as quickly controlled. “I am family, Dismas. All but.” He sipped his drink. “I’ve known Erin and Big Ed since high school. Introduced them, in fact, baptized all the children, then married Ed and Frannie, and now with this…”

He stopped, sighed, looked out into nothing over Hardy’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“The Lord giveth and taketh away, I suppose. That’s my counsel to the grieving, isn’t it?” He smiled crookedly. “But He levies some burdens I don’t understand, never will.”

“I don’t know if the Lord did this one,” Hardy said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if Ed killed himself…”

Cavanaugh fixed him with a hard gaze. “Eddie didn’t kill himself.”

Hardy waited.

“I just buried him in consecrated ground, Dismas. If I had any belief at all that he killed himself, I couldn’t have done that. Do you understand?”

“Do you understand what that means, Father? What you’re saying?”

The priest squinted in the sun.

“It means somebody killed him.”

Cavanaugh’s hand went up to his eyes. He didn’t seem to want to believe that either. “Well…” He knocked back the last of his drink. “I just… he couldn’t have killed himself. He didn’t do it. I am as certain of that as I am of you standing here.”

“Why? Do you have any-?”

“Call it a moral conviction, but there’s no doubt.”

“Your glass is empty.” It was Erin Cochran. Hardy noticed that she had put her arm through Cavanaugh’s. “And I am dry myself.”

Cavanaugh went to get her a refill.

“He seems like the perfect priest,” Hardy said.

Erin paused, as though savoring some secret, looking after him. “Jim?” she said. “Oh, he is. He is the perfect priest.”

Frannie sat up, covered with a comforter, and looked around the wall of the den. Moses had just gone to get Dismas-for some reason she had asked to see him, to thank him for catching her, she supposed. She couldn’t exactly remember. Her mind kept flitting from thing to thing. It was weird.

It was probably good that Moses and Mom-she called Erin “Mom”-had decided to lay her down in here. She still felt weak, light-headed. Maybe that was why she kept forgetting things, changing her mind. She felt her forehead, which was still clammy.

Leaning her head back against the pillow, she let her eyes rest on the wall opposite her. There were the family pictures, the whole history of the Cochrans from Dad and Mom’s wedding through her own to Eddie’s. She remembered the pride she’d felt, the sense of belonging to a real family for the first time in her life, when the picture of their engagement-the one that had been in the Chronicle -had found its place on that wall.

It had been the perfect Cochran way. No fanfare. Just one time she came by and was watching TV with Eddie, sneaking in a little petting when they were left alone, and the picture was suddenly there. She looked at herself, next to Ed, smiling so hard her cheeks must have hurt, though she didn’t remember that now. And then, next to it, the wedding picture. How could that be in the same life as this?

Then she thought of the baby picture that she’d envisioned as the next one. The baby. She crossed her hands over her stomach. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

There was a knock on the door. Before she could answer, it opened and Eddie’s sister Jodie looked in.

“Hi,” she said. “You okay?”

Hardy saw the women hugging, crying together, and thought he would wait a little longer before going in to see Frannie. A door farther down the hallway stood open, and he walked into that other room to wait.

It was a strange place, out of context with the rest of the house. Rock posters on the lower end of the taste spectrum covered most available wall space. Shades were pulled down over the two windows, and Hardy had the sense that they were left down most of the time. In one corner a television set was on, the volume turned all the way down, the picture snowy and untuned as though it hadn’t been touched for months.