Blood Ties (12 page)

“Case closed?”

“As much as most of them are. We still have a man dead after a strange incident.”

“But the Lorenzos no longer figure in it?”

“If they do, I'd like to know how.”

Father Dowling felt vicarious relief for Amos Cadbury. Cy Horvath's account of his investigation would, when he heard it, take a great weight off the lawyer's mind. However, as Cy had indicated, that left a mysterious death mysterious still. When he was once again alone in his study, Father Dowling pondered the strange death of Nathaniel Fleck. There was, he persisted in thinking, something right about the man's desire to learn of the child he had fathered so long ago. That his curiosity had meant a great threat to the mother was also right. After all, the woman had resisted what must have been a great temptation simply to rid herself of the result of her folly. She had the child; it had been given up for adoption and, most fortunately, had been raised by the Lynches. Their reaction to their adopted daughter's curiosity about her real mother was also understandable, but who could not sympathize with the young woman's desire to know her true origins? Like most human affairs, this one was complex, the collision of intentions each of which had merit but which collectively had the great inconvenience of being irreconcilable. His own immediate reaction was relief that Amos's fears had no foundation. Thank God for Cy Horvath.

16

The realization that Mark had known her secret all along and had honored it made Madeline love her husband all the more. But how could she not feel rage at learning that it was her supposed dear friend Catherine Adams who had told him? What an odd sense that gave her in retrospect of the years of her marriage. All her memories of Catherine had been of her dearest friend, the one who had stood by her at the worst moment of her life. She remembered when she had returned stunned from the meeting when Nathaniel had made it clear that she was on her own.

“Thank God for
Roe v. Wade,
” Catherine said.

“What do you mean?”

“There is a remedy, after all.”

“No. No, I could never do that.”

“Just think about it, Madeline. You'll see it's the only way.”

The more she thought of it, though, the surer she was that she could never get rid of her baby like that. Catherine had supported the decision she did not understand, helping Madeline deceive her parents, even sitting in on courses for her so that Madeline earned credits she didn't deserve. An A- in Latin! The following semester, she had signed up for a course in Caesar and Cicero, scrambling to learn the grammar she supposedly already knew—and got an A.

“Of course,” Catherine had said. “You're Catholic.”

“Do you imagine we go to confession in Latin?”

“Confession! Do you do that?”

“Only in English.”

Several months before she gave birth, she confessed her sins, prepared to be scolded and treated like a scarlet woman, but when the priest asked if she would have her child and she said yes, he ended by congratulating her. She emerged from the confessional with the feeling that she had used her sin in a bid for praise. In truth she was delighted with herself that she had found the courage to carry her child to term. Of course, the Women's Care Center had been wonderful, and when she met the woman who would have her baby, any doubt she had had about the wisdom of her decision was gone.

She had learned their name—not from the center; they would never have told her, and Madeline understood the policy. She was agreeing to let her baby go and had to put aside forever any thought of a reunion. It was quite by accident that she found it out. She volunteered each week at the hospital where she had delivered, with some vague thought that she was paying a debt, and one night she caught a glimpse of one of the doctors who had been there before she was put under and wheeled into the delivery room. She told herself that she would work up the courage to ask him, but she could never figure out what she would say that would lead him to tell her what she wanted to know.

“Oh, it's a medical family,” someone said. “Lynch the pathologist is his son-in-law.”

She kept an eye out for Dr. Lynch and was surprised to learn that he, too, had been there when she had her baby. They were in the phone book, and she drove past their suburban house, again and again, and at last she saw in the driveway the woman with whom she had wept. Then she knew. And that had been enough.

After she married Mark and had his children, one after the other, thoughts of her first baby dimmed. It would have seemed disloyal to remain curious about the child the Lynches had adopted. Then one day a few years ago, she had seen the photograph of Martha Lynch in the paper, salutatorian of her class at Barat College. The picture might have been her own graduation photograph. Rather than stirring up her desire to see her daughter, that photograph put an end to it. Everything had turned out all right, and it would be criminal to disturb the life her daughter had. Then the Monster had appeared.

Appeared and then almost immediately was struck down on a Fox River street. His death enabled her to think of him almost as she first had. His reappearance, now that it was no longer threatening, had a redeeming quality. Perhaps he had imagined that she had remained unchanged, that he could return and they could reclaim their child, and what had not been would be. But if her thoughts toward Nathaniel softened, those toward Catherine hardened into something very much like hatred, the hatred of the betrayed. Nathaniel had been weak, but what excuse did Catherine have for telling her secret to Mark? Talking with Janet and learning the extent of Catherine's perfidy filled her with loathing for the woman she had considered her best friend. Beware of best friends indeed.

Listening to Catherine at the memorial for Nathaniel, astounded to hear her speak of her lifelong relationship with him, Madeline had been numbed, but her confusion became clarity when she went home and Mark told her he had always known her secret—had known, and it didn't matter. Clearly, Catherine must have imagined that telling him would abort their marriage.

She had not wanted to talk to Catherine at the memorial, but in the following days she became determined to confront her. There had been mention of the Hyatt Regency Chicago in one of the newspaper accounts, and Madeline phoned the hotel to find that Catherine Adams was still registered there. She took the train to the Loop.

She was told at the desk that Catherine's room did not answer. She felt frustrated. She descended to the street floor and sat in a chair and looked out at the urban scene, at the comings and goings of people, the revolving doors seemingly never still. Outside, taxis discharged their fares and valets took charge of vehicles.

Then she saw Catherine. She had just stepped out of a car and turned it over to a valet. Madeline watched her come through the doors and take the escalator, looking out over the open restaurant below as she was carried upward. After ten minutes, Madeline went to a house phone and asked for Catherine's room.

The length or brevity of time is contingent on our moods. Madeline seemed to wait forever while the phone rang in Catherine's room, yet during that time she hardly breathed.

“Yes?”

“Catherine?”

“Who is it?”

“Madeline.”

The slightest of pauses and then a squeal. “Madeline, where are you?”

“In the lobby.”

“Here in the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“I'll be right down. My God. This is marvelous. Will I know you?”

“I'll know you.”

Five minutes later, she appeared, descending on the escalator, looking expectantly at the scene below. Madeline awaited her at the foot of the escalator. Catherine took one look and came running into her arms.

“Oh, what a wonderful surprise. Madeline, you look wonderful.”

“You've cut your hair.”

“Only on the ends. Come, let's have a drink.”

In the bar they ordered glasses of wine; Catherine charged them to her room. The place was full of people, mostly men in suits, the women elegantly dressed. Madeline felt frumpy in her faculty wife clothes. Catherine lifted her glass, looking at Madeline with a huge smile. Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed Madeline on the cheek.

“Don't even say how many years it's been. Tell me all about you.”

“You were there at my wedding, remember.”

“Of course I remember. And how is Professor Lorenzo?”

“I came to the memorial for Nathaniel. You were in our neighborhood.”

“And it didn't even occur to me!”

“So you and Nathaniel became permanent.”

“In a California way. Madeline, you're not jealous.”

“Of a dead man?”

“Ouch.” Her expression became the funereal one of the memorial. “I am determined that it won't destroy me. This is the most difficult thing I have ever lived through. A little secret. The last time I was with him, we quarreled. Not unusual, that. Ours was a lengthy quarrel punctuated by, well, you know. Still, it hurts to know that the last things I said to him were in anger.”

“He came to see me.”

Catherine put down her glass. “I know. That's what we quarreled about. I tried to stop him. It was crazy.”

“Yes, it was.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Tell him? I refused even to talk to him.”

“Good for you. Imagine, after all these years, feeling the call of duty.” She sipped her wine. “Of course, all writers are insane.”

The longer they talked, the more disarmed Madeline felt. She had come determined to tell Catherine what a hateful person she was, what an awful thing it was to tell her secret to Mark in what had to be an effort to break them up. What could possibly drive this woman? But as they talked, as Catherine talked, glib, flowing, hardly needing to take a breath, Madeline felt her hatred ebb. The woman across from her was hollow, artificial, all surface. Any soul she had seemed to have seeped away, and she was reduced to chatter.

“Do you have children?”

“Four sons.”

“My God. Well, he had hairy arms and a thick beard, it figures.”

“Is that what does it?”

“Nathaniel hadn't a hair on his chest. And he was balding, in a nice way.”

“So no children.”

“Oh, that was never in the cards.”

“Why did you tell Mark?”

Catherine seemed genuinely confused by the question. “Tell Mark what?”

Was it possible that what loomed so large for Madeline was insignificant to Catherine? She changed the subject. “Janet was at the memorial, too. You remember Janet. We talked afterward.”

“And didn't come talk to me?”

“We didn't want to barge in.”

“Oh, you. My best friend.” Catherine put her head to one side and smiled. “If I kissed you again I would probably get arrested.” She made a little face and shrugged. “So consider yourself kissed again. Madeline, why don't the three of us get together, you and I and Janet.”

“How long are you in town?”

Catherine's face fell. “Oh my God, that's right. I'm flying back tonight. On the red-eye.”

“Well, that's that.”

“At least I've seen you.”

It was forty-five minutes later that Madeline left. Catherine did kiss her again, in the lobby, and Madeline kissed her back. Somehow the rage with which she had come downtown seemed uncalled for. Catherine in person did not inspire deep emotions.

17

Peanuts brought Tuttle the report Cy Horvath had written on his investigation of the downtown hit-and-run or whatever it was. At any other time, Tuttle would have read it immediately, but now, with several fish to fry, he just put it in his pocket. “Good work.”

“You owe me a lunch.”

Why not? Tuttle had spent the morning in old family court records, wasting hours until it occurred to him that Amos Cadbury was the key to his research. That required a competence with the computer Tuttle did not have. He called Hazel and had her put the paralegal on it.

“Just have her pull up everything twenty-two years ago that involved Amos Cadbury.”

“What did Bernard Casey want?”

“I'd rather not say over the phone.”

“So get back here and tell me.”

“I should be there by midafternoon.”

He waited for the sound of the phone being slammed down, but there was only an annoyed humming, and then that stopped. “Tell me about Martin Sisk.”

“This afternoon.”

She did slam down the phone then. Well, later he could divert her with stories of Martin and avoid telling her about the meeting with Bernard Casey. Meanwhile, he headed for the Great Wall with Peanuts.

“The law is endlessly interesting, Peanuts,” he said through a mouthful of fried rice.

Peanuts grunted.

“Routine is the key,” Tuttle continued. “And records. Records last, that is the point. Everything is filed away somewhere, and it is just a matter of finding it.”

Peanuts hailed the waiter and ordered another beer. “You want that egg roll?”

“Take it.”

Peanuts took it and made it disappear as if by a magician's trick. There were those who left Chinese restaurants with styrofoam boxes filled with what they had been unable to eat while there. Peanuts would never need a styrofoam box. His stomach was a styrofoam box. Tuttle looked at his mute friend with fondness. The report he had put in his pocket crinkled when he moved his arm. He got it out and began to read it. Peanuts, of course, went on eating. As he read, Tuttle became suffused with an unfamiliar emotion. The parlay of Martin and Bernard Casey was already a sharp change in his fortunes—the daily double, as it were—but what he read in Horvath's report held the promise of a triple play. A hat trick. He took his tweed hat from the hook beside him and put it on.

Peanuts noticed. “You going?”

“Just my thinking cap.” He hung it up again.