John Lescroart - Dead Irish

Don’t forget to put the keys back in the ignition. He had to do that in any event to turn the car off, which is what he would do.

A final survey of the scene. He put his hand on Rose’s still-warm forehead. She had died peacefully-he was glad of that. He made the sign of the cross over her, giving her his blessing, last rites of sorts. Then he started jogging back to the house. He was surprised to find he was crying. But he didn’t try to stop himself. That was all right. Why shouldn’t he cry? And it would ring very true to the folks at 911.

STEVEN BELIEVED his mom was really trying.

After Dad and Jodie had left the house she came in and talked, or tried to talk, for a while. After she’d gone back out to her housework or whatever, he wondered what kind of teenager she’d been, if she had ever done anything like run away. It was the first time he’d thought of anything like that, and so it was a little hard to imagine-Mom screaming for Elvis Presley (as she said she’d done), or dating anybody but Pop.

Well, whatever she’d done, he was pretty sure it didn’t prepare her for him. She didn’t seem to be able to find a handle to grab on to, although Frannie’s pregnancy was as close as she’d gotten in a long while.

She sat on the bed, much the way Pop had done last night. He felt a little stronger and had managed a decent breakfast. She ran her hand through his spiky hair and asked him how he knew about Frannie.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I didn’t want to call her yet. She’ll tell us when she wants to.”

“Why wouldn’t she want to?”

His mom’s face clouded, as though trying to decide whether to tell him one of the adult secrets. As usual, she came down saying no. “I don’t know,” she did say. “There are reasons. It might just be too soon. But how did you find out?”

He’d thought about it this morning after he woke up. It had been Hardy, yesterday. He was telling him about Father Jim and about his pride, how he had kind of blamed himself for Eddie’s death because of talking Eddie into confronting his boss. Which was dumb. Eddie was going to do that anyway. He’d told Steven all about it the day before.

Anyway, once he got into it, Hardy was good at sounding like different people, and he did Father Jim pretty well. Of course, he had an easy voice-kind of regular, but the words he used in a certain way that Hardy caught the rhythm exactly. He spent a lot of time talking about Father Jim, even though he didn’t really have any part of it. But Father Jim was like that-he caught your attention.

Anyway, Hardy was “doing” Father and he said, “I sent Eddie off to slay the dragon. Do I think about his pregnant wife, whether he’s the man for the job? No, not the smart Jim Cavanaugh.” (That part sounded perfect, and Steven had laughed.) “I only see what a wonderful notion it is.” Then he goes: “My pride killed him.”

But in there-that’s where he’d heard about Frannie. It had been like Hardy was telling him part of another story, not really telling him. He tried to explain that to his mom, who wondered why Hardy hadn’t told her.

She put her hand up to her brow and said, “God.” He could see that she’d started thinking about Frannie now, or Eddie again. Her eyes were gone, out to the backyard, staring at nothing.

“Mom?”

He was going to say something like “It’s all right,” or, “I’m going to help,” though he knew it wasn’t and wasn’t sure how he could. She looked back to him, smiling with her mouth. So instead he asked if it was too early to have another pill.

He’d just have to go ahead and do it, whatever it turned out to be. Make his mom see he wasn’t going to be any more trouble. He’d have to do something that would help them all get over this, maybe forgive him for running away and making them deal with him when Eddie-naturally-was the hardest, most immediate thing.

He’d do something on his own. Something worthwhile, adult. Maybe then his mom would appreciate him. Love him…

Next time she came in was only a couple of minutes later, but he was sailing into oblivion pretty fast and almost couldn’t answer when she talked to him. Though she did come in and tell him about the call.

That’s what he was starting to see. She was trying. “Steven.”

Not faking at all, he had to use most of his strength to open an eye.

“That was Mr. Hardy on the phone.”

He hadn’t even heard it ring and it was right there, next to his bed. “He says yes, Frannie’s pregnant.”

“Maybe he’ll look like Eddie.”

He meant it as a good thought, but he saw when he said it that it kind of hurt her. She leaned against the doorsill, then walked the few steps over and plumped herself down on his bed again. “I hope so,” she said. It was like she was forcing herself to talk. “He also”-she stopped and rubbed at her eyes-“he also said that neither one of the suspects killed Eddie.”

He didn’t think anything could pull him out of the haze the pills created, but that almost did. Suddenly he was nearly awake. “How could that be?”

She hunched down over her shoulders. “They were all someplace else, I guess.” Then he heard her say… “I guess Eddie didn’t love us that much. As much as we thought.”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“I mean, if he killed himself-”

“He didn’t kill himself. I know he didn’t.”

She had that blank look again, that empty stare. She tousled his hair and kissed him on the forehead. “You try to get some sleep.” She got up and turned to the door.

“Mom.”

She stopped and faced him.

“He didn’t.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding her head. “Okay.”

It came to him. That’s what he’d do. He’d find out who had killed Eddie. Never mind Hardy or the cops. They were obviously dildoes who didn’t know Eddie the way he had known him. He’d find out the truth, all on his own, and then his mom at least would know Eddie hadn’t deserted him. That might get her started back to being alive.

Hardy hung up and shook his head.

He hadn’t called Erin to talk about Frannie’s pregnancy, and he was mad at himself for having let that out to Steven. How had he been so careless and at the same time so obtuse? No wonder he’d blocked it out for so long.

Cavanaugh had referred to Frannie as pregnant, and even after mimicking his damned voice to Steven, Hardy hadn’t put it together. The point was, how could Cavanaugh have known about the pregnancy if he hadn’t seen Eddie after Frannie had told him, which was the night he’d been killed? Which meant he’d lied about seeing him Sunday. It had been Monday.

He closed his eyes, really pumping now. He’d only slept five hours, but it didn’t matter. Things were falling into place.

The gun had bothered him a lot, and he’d stood in front of his desk from dawn until about an hour ago, drinking two full pots of espresso and throwing darts until it had come to him. The gun drive. Sixties liberal mania. Cavanaugh had collected some hundreds of unregistered guns. And what he’d done, of course, was to hold out on one or two of them. And the cops who were monitoring the thing-even the good ones like Abe-would never think that a priest would use a clean-the-streets gun drive to build his own arsenal. I mean, why would it occur to anyone to check that? But, Hardy was now certain, it was what Cavanaugh had done.

What he’d called Erin for was to ask her the exact date she and Ed had gotten married. That was a little bit of a wild hair, he knew, but it might tie in with something else that had occurred to him, something he needed to go back and check out before he went to see Glitsky.