The Death of an Irish Sinner (7 page)

THE DAY WAS
a spring ideal with wind and sun locked in a pitched battle for weather dominance, McGarr realized, as he stepped down the drive toward the stables and his car.

On his back the sun felt so warm he would have removed his jacket but for the gusts of wind—still cool off the nearby mountains—that buffeted him.

He had to hold on to the brim of his fedora to keep it from blowing off. Overhead, brilliant puffs of the purest cloud were tracking across a cerulean sky.

“So who done it, Chief?” Noreen asked, climbing into the car. Two patches of color had appeared on her cheeks, and her eyes were bright; she was enjoying herself.

“I would have thought you’d still be upset by the
news of Mary-Jo’s death,” McGarr observed, wheeling her Rover down the drive.

“Oh, I am, sure. Mary-Jo was a saint. So good to all and sundry. Did you not read the bio Dery Parmalee did of her in
Ath Cliath
a year or so ago?”

McGarr hadn’t, but he made note that he should.

“Mary-Jo was not merely a world-class biographer, she was also extremely generous. Didn’t she build the school in the village and contribute to charities here and abroad, always anonymously?

“And she did all of that while living herself like a hermit, there in Barbastro, with that order of hers clinging to her money like a pack of avaricious leeches. They scarcely let her out of their sight.”

“According to Dery?”

“According to everybody, if the village can be believed.”

Who wished only the worst—which was the best—class of gossip, McGarr knew only too well.

“How difficult could it have been to dispatch an elderly woman kneeling in her garden? And how craven, since it’s plain she knew her attacker and had no fear. As your report reads, it was as though she didn’t resist at all.”

McGarr raised an eyebrow; how did she know that? Noreen had obviously gone through McKeon’s files closely.

“The murderer only had to draw a bit of blood with that horrific instrument plumbed from the depths of Dark Age zealotry, and she succumbed. Was it murder? You can bet your last farthing it was—worked by some heinous hypocrite in her immediate circle who es
poused her heartfelt beliefs but whose true motivation was get-and-gain, you’ll see when her will is read.”

“A bit purple this morning, are we?” McGarr asked, as they drove through the village.

“You mean the jacket?” It was a plum-colored merino jacket over a puce jumper and black slacks. He glanced down at her ankles, which—like the rest of her—were finely formed, and his hand moved off the shift to her thigh.

“Please—I’m thinking,” she complained, but she did not remove his hand.

McGarr rather enjoyed his wife’s enthusiasms. She was, he decided, much like the day—blustery, visceral, yet warm and bright too. Apart from her beauty, what had attracted him was Noreen’s capacity for life in all its forms.

And McGarr—without question jaded from his decades of police work—enjoyed the perspective that she often brought him. Mainly, it was her conception of humanity: that there might be, in fact, people who would never, ever resort to murder. Or anything else brutal and disgusting.

Yet, at the same time, she was attracted to his endeavors.

Turning his head, McGarr let his eyes play over her copper-colored curls, which had just begun to take on some gray now in her fortieth year. Her high cheekbones, the thin bridge of her nose, the angle of her head, which had dipped to one side as she pondered the few facts uncovered thus far. In that pose she looked like a pretty bird who had turned an ear to the ground.

“I know, I know,” she continued, “I shouldn’t rush on. But one thing is definite. Mary-Jo knew and did not fear whoever slew her.”

Or at least, whoever had placed the
cilicio
around her neck and left her for dead.

Which could not be debated. At the murderer’s approach, she had turned her head to him or her, then looked back down at her work in the garden. No worry, no perceived threat.

It seemed almost as though Father Fred Duggan were waiting for them just beyond the heavy metal gates of Barbastro, and he hadn’t been there for long, McGarr could see. Steam was rising from the cup in Duggan’s hand, and he was lightly dressed for the chilly morning.

Could he have known they were on the way? All it would take was a helpful villager seeing Noreen’s car, which was well known, wheeling by.

“I thought I’d take the air this morning,” Duggan explained when McGarr rolled down the window. A fit dark man, whose freshly shaven cheeks looked almost blue in the hard spring light, he squatted down lithely, so he could see into the car. “How ya, Noreen. Been a long time.”

“Ah, Fred—I’m sorry for you. It must be difficult.”

“’Tis, ’tis—and to think something like this could have happened to Mary-Jo of all people. And here at Barbastro. Still and all, she was a devout, good woman, and I’m sure she’s passed on to the reward that we all seek.”

McGarr noticed that Father Fred appeared to have slept well. His eyes were bright, no bags or sags. And
there he was, fully McGarr’s own middle age or older by a year or two.

“Can we give you a lift to the house?” McGarr slid the Rover back in gear.

Duggan glanced at his mug of tea, then down the long drive. “Well…you can, sure. It’s chillier than I thought this morning. There’s a wintry edge to this wind.”

Turning to throw the latch of the back door for the priest, McGarr noticed that tires had patterned the frosted dew on the drive. A car had driven down to the gate, turned around, and returned to the house. Only one person had got out on the passenger side; only one person had walked there since the rime had formed during the night. Fred.

“Did you get any sleep?” McGarr asked, after the man had climbed in.

“Not much with your two colleagues prowling about. But at least I got some. How about yourself?”

“Same. A chap name of Dery Parmalee was waiting for me here at the gate, rather like yourself this morning. Know him?”

In the rearview mirror, McGarr watched Father Fred’s brow glower.

“Indeed. And you say he was here last night?”

“He knew what had happened. Case and point.”

“How?”

“Said his car is equipped with eavesdropping devices that can monitor phone calls, both yours from the house and my cell phone. Said he was around here yesterday because he’s doing an investigative journalism piece about Opus Dei.”

McGarr watched Father Fred’s clear blue eyes dart here and there. “And that Opus Dei is responsible for Mary-Jo’s death, I should imagine,” the priest said.

“Parmalee was with me…oh, I’d say the better part of two hours.”

“Spewing out venom and hate, undoubtedly.” Duggan tapped McGarr’s shoulder. “Now
he’s
an avenue of investigation—I believe you call it—that you should pursue. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of anybody as purely evil. But Dery Parmalee comes close. Even the Jesuits couldn’t tolerate him.”

“He says you killed John Paul the First.”

“And I suppose Salvador Allende, Roberto Calvi, the financier, and a host of other martyrs to Liberation Theology, pan-socialism, and abortion.”

“He’s not alone in those charges.” The report McGarr had been handed earlier said that many respectable newspapers and periodicals had also either raised questions or made charges about the means that Opus Dei employed to achieve its ends.

They included
Corriere della Sera
—Italy’s largest newspaper—
Newsweek
magazine, and both the
Sunday Times
and the
Financial Times
in England.

The report also said that, throughout his clerical life, José Maria Escrivá had reiterated to his faithful the maxim “Our life is a warfare of love, and in love and war all is fair.”

Namely,
pillería
, as Parmalee had told McGarr and the report suggested was true. Nothing was beyond Opusians, it seemed, not even encouraging fiduciary sleight of hand by its members to enrich Opus Dei, and
assassinations of convenience to further its agenda, which was one of extreme reactionaryism.

“I know, I know—just like Jesus in his time, we’re not without our accusers, which is why we have to be doubly vigilant and strong. For the record—John Paul, God bless him—died of a heart attack.”

“Myocardial infarction.”

“Exactly.”

Some critics, the report continued, charged Opus Dei with getting rid of its enemies by inducing heart attacks using colorless, odorless, and tasteless digitalis. The report referenced the death of the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Leningrad—while waiting for an audience with John Paul—from acute myocardial infarction.

“Well—here we are,” McGarr said, pulling up to the front door of the house. “Perhaps we’ll see you later.”

“I don’t understand. Shan’t I accompany you? I know the players, their backgrounds, their experiences with Mary-Jo, their histories here at Barbastro.”

It was the argument that Noreen had made not even an hour earlier. “Problem is, Fred—they know you.”

In the rearview mirror, Duggan’s eyes flashed up at McGarr. “What’s that supposed to mean? Of course they know me. I hope you’re not taking Parmalee’s scurrilous and libelous carry-on seriously. The man is delusional, I’ll have you know. When he was here working with Mary-Jo, he admitted to her he was taking tablets to treat paranoid schizophrenia, which gives you some idea where his papal-assassination and worldwide-conspiracy theories are coming from.”

“
Working
here? Parmalee led me to believe that he was having an affair with Mary-Jo.”

“What?”

“That’s what he told me.”

Plainly perturbed, Duggan flung open the door, spilling the tea on himself. “Damn.” He swung his legs out of the car and batted at the milky stain. “I hope that gives you proof of Dery Parmalee’s insanity. I knew Mary-Jo throughout the year or two that she collaborated with Parmalee on that project, and I can attest to the fact that there were no relations of that nature between Mary-Jo and that…ingrate.”

“Attest? How can you attest?”

“I was her confessor. And I know she would wish me to break the bonds of confidentiality to tell you this. As well, Mary-Jo was old enough to have been his mother.”

“Or yours,” McGarr observed in a quiet voice.

Duggan closed the door and stepped up to the driver’s window, which McGarr rolled back down. Again the priest squatted to peer in.

“Peter—I’m going to assume, even through this trying time, that you’ll continue to be our friend and our neighbor. Am I correct in that assumption?”

McGarr only considered the man.

“You’ve spoken to Parmalee, at length, you said. May I ask you this? What are his intentions? Is he planning to make a mockery and a…circus of Mary-Jo’s death? Is that what he intends?”

McGarr continued to hold the man’s gaze.

Finally, the priest looked away, before raising him
self up. “Pity he owns that rag he writes for. Otherwise…”

Otherwise, what? McGarr wondered. Otherwise, Duggan and Opus Dei would squelch him?

“The irony is—Parmalee began
Ath Cliath
with funds that Mary-Jo herself advanced him. ‘Seed’ money, she called it. Some seed, that will now vilify her life, which was holy and above reproach in every regard, I’m here to tell you.”

Again the priest glanced down at his splotched trousers. “Be sure you take Mary-Jo’s life—and not just the manner of her death—into consideration, Peter. You wouldn’t want the opprobrium of a smear campaign to fall on your head.”

There it was—guilt, which ruled all in Ireland. McGarr raised a hand and allowed the car to drift down the drive toward the gardens.

“What does he mean that you’re
our
friend and our neighbor? Who’s us? Opus Dei?”

McGarr hunched his shoulders.

“Do you still have that report on them Bernie gave you?”

From inside his jacket, McGarr removed the folded report and handed it to her.

“And amn’t I right in thinking he just threatened you?”

McGarr looked over at Noreen and smiled. “Could it be you’re catching on?”

Stopping the car at the murder scene, McGarr got out and described to Noreen how Mary-Jo had been found
there in her garden—prone, in a position of utter subjection as though bowing down to whoever had wrapped the
cilicio
around her neck and tightened it until it drew blood.
Before
she died of a myocardial infarction, McGarr reminded himself.

“She still had the gardening trowel in one hand,” he mused.

“After having recognized whoever approached her and even having said a few words,” Noreen added.

“Before the security camera was covered up.”

“Where’s that?”

Walking back toward the corner of the garden haggard that a tall, cedar-pole fence enclosed, McGarr wondered if Father Fred was watching them. By his own say-so, he was now the only person who possessed a passkey to the monitoring room.

McGarr pointed to the camera lens, which had been concealed so cleverly it looked like the shaft of an intersecting cedar pole.

“Whoever obscured it was well enough acquainted with the property to know it was there and to know there was a blind spot where he or she could approach Mary-Jo and yet not be recorded.”

That there were probably blind spots in other parts of the property now occurred to McGarr, and he was glad Noreen had insisted on tagging along.

Yet as they stepped back to the car, he had a feeling he was missing something right there at the crime scene. But what?

Like the other outbuildings at Barbastro, the gardener’s cottage was concealed in a sizable copse, not far from the haggard if you walked through the wood,
McGarr reflected. But the road itself wound around tall beeches on the periphery of the small forest until it entered an avenue of—could they be?—giant sequoias that cast deep shadows.

Surely the towering trees from the Pacific Coast of North America had been planted as a curiosity in other gardens and demesnes in Ireland, and the species had thrived in the damp, mild climate. But only within this vale, where the service structures of the estate were located, was their great height apparent.