“Thou wert there to protect the innocent fool, Bird-eye.”
“But the bones are gone. Sold by now, no doubt.”
Magda chuckled. “If only Magda might have seen the thief s face at dawn, when he took out the bones and saw his treasure. Or woke to its smell.” She was overtaken by a bout of mirth.
Owen had a sinking feeling. How many people had fooled him? “What were they?”
“The bones of an old goat that strayed onto the mud flats and died.”
“And the bones for the bone man?”
“He came before Magda left.” She patted Owen’s knee. “Magda is not disappointed in thee. Thou hast done as Magda had hoped. John will heal, and he has seen the folly of his search for a miracle. The thief is gone, no more spying on Magda.”
“No doubt I’ve learned something, too, though I cannot see it. Why did you have me here?”
“If he had felt no danger, the thief would have examined the bones, Bird-eye, and spoiled Magda’s fun.”
“But what of poor John?”
“Fortescue respects thee. He will not wish to appear a fool to thee again, so he will behave now. So.” She snipped the thread, squinted up at Owen. “How dost thou like working for Magda? A nice change from politics?”
Owen rubbed his scar. “In truth, I’d rather a month on the road for the archbishop than another night in your hut.”
Magda turned the mended shoe inside out, tugged it on, stood up, hopped, nodded. “Suit thyself, Bird-eye,” she said with a shrug and went inside.
Owen did not leave at once, but sat there, staring down at the rising tide, trying to remember what it had been like to be able to see upstream as well as down. At last he gave up. A useless exercise. That had been another life. He headed for home.
In This House of Stone
by Jeremiah Healy
© 1997 by Jeremiah Healy
Congratulations to Jeremiah Healy on his 12th Shamus Award nomination. The Shamus, given by the Private Eye Writers of America, recognizes achievement in the field of “hardboiled” crime fiction. Mr. Healy’s novels and stories are not as hard-edged as those of some other P.I. writers hut his record of Shamus nominations and wins is phenominal. This year’s honor is for Invasion of Privacy (Pocket Books).
1.
Our Lady of Perpetual Light fit its setting like a lambskin glove. The church rose three stories in gray, pink, and blue fieldstone, the white steeple spiring above it visible for half a mile as I’d driven through the small business district of Meade, about fifteen miles southwest of Boston. From the driveway, I could see the office annex, two floors of the same stone and connected to the church, nestled against the autumn-fired oaks and maples. The trees stood at the edges of a macadam parking area that surrounded the buildings like a moat.
Over the telephone, Monsignor Joseph McNulty had told me on which side of the annex to park. Very specific directions they were, too, as though he felt it important for my car to be in just the right place. Leaving the Prelude in a diagonal, white-lined space, I could hear the dirge of organ music coming from the church to my left as I walked up to the heavy wooden entrance of the annex. Pushing a button mounted on the jamb produced a tinkling noise inside, like the sound of canticle bells I’d shaken as an altar boy.
When the door opened, a stubby man with bushy gray eyebrows looked out at me. He wore a priest’s reversed white collar, black shirt, and black pants. The shirt was short-sleeved despite the October air, the man’s arms pale and veined. His face was veined too, but many of the capillaries had burst, as though my host counted among his faithful the likes of Jim Beam and Jack Daniels.
“Monsignor McNulty?”
“Ah yes. And you’d be John Cuddy, then. Our private investigator.”
He didn’t phrase any of it as a question, his voice that combination of brogue and wheeze you hear in men his age, which I’d have put as near sixty.
I said, “Not yet, Monsignor.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“I’m not your private investigator until you tell me what you want done, and I agree to try and do it.”
McNulty didn’t seem fazed. “Well, come in, come in.”
I followed him down a corridor that seemed to run the width of the annex, a door similar to the one I’d entered at the other end. A smaller hallway branched left toward the church itself.
McNulty turned into an office on the right, the air smelling of old pipes and old sweat. It reminded me again of my days as an altar boy, the priests not always that careful about laundering their robes and other vestments. The monsignor had a large wooden desk and one wall of exposed stone. His windows were arched rectangles, half the panes around the lead made of stained glass. One window gave a nice view of the parking area and my car in it. The room was hot, and I could understand why my host wore short sleeves.
McNulty noticed me looking at the baseboard heaters. “One of the parishioners installed them, gratis. Do a wonderful job of taking the chill off the stone, sometimes too wonderful. Sit, please.”
I took a visitor’s chair while McNulty turned himself sideways and went behind his desk. He used both hands on the arms of the desk chair to lower himself into it. “So. This being the first time my church has needed the services of a private investigator, I suppose I don’t know where to start. Money?”
“Why don’t we wait on my fee until after you tell me why you called me.”
McNulty nodded judiciously. “You honestly don’t know what happened here at the church last week.”
“I’ve been out of town for a while.”
A sigh. “Last Tuesday, it was. In the afternoon sometime. It’s still not...” The words seemed to come hard for him, and he turned to look out his window. “My other priest, Francis Riordan, was struck down and killed in his office across that corridor.”
During my trip, I’d heard a throwaway line on a radio news program about a priest being killed near Boston, but no details. “Monsignor, I’m sorry.”
Another nod. “Frank — he always preferred nicknames, Francis did, especially his own.”
My middle name being Francis, I could understand that. “Go on.”
“It happened sometime between lunch and dinner, because when he didn’t come to table that evening, I went to his office. He was lying there, his head in a pool of his own... blood.”
“The police have any suspects?”
“The police?” A grunted laugh. “I’m afraid not. They’ve already stereotyped this. ‘Crackhead who panicked.’ ”
“In Meade?”
McNulty shifted against his chair, making the leather squeak. “Frank Riordan was a fine man, Mr. Cuddy. And I mean a man, not one of those Nancy-boys the seminaries seem to be hatching these days.”
I’d never heard the expression, but McNulty flicked his wrist as he said it. I was beginning not to like him very much.
“No, Frank played football in college. Came to his vocation later than some, but for that, all the more sure of it.”
“Monsignor, what does this have to do with a drug addict attacking him here in Meade?”
McNulty fixed me with a baleful look. “Frank volunteered at St. Damian’s House. Do you know it?”
A place for disadvantaged kids in a tough part of Boston. “I know of it.”
“Yes, well. Frank thought the lads could do with a look at how the other half lives. So he persuaded Joyce Steinberg — the owner of the health club he belonged to out here — to sponsor a basketball tournament for them. Took a bunch of the boys on a tour of our church buildings as well. The police believe one or more of them came back to rob him.”