Cat's Eyewitness (7 page)

9

N
orton “Nordy” Elliott reveled in his good fortune. Pete Osborne called him “Nerdy” to his face, but on this night, Nerdy/Nordy was a star. Even Pete had to give him that.

The scandals in the Catholic Church, while creating profound misery for the victims, the church hierarchy, and those priests still trying to do God’s work, were a boon to the media. A church steeple needed repair. Made the news. One nun in the entire nation left a convent to become a lap dancer. Big news. A priest and a nun found love, rescinded their vows to marry. News. The image of blood on the Virgin Mary’s cheeks was picked up as a feed by NBC affiliates throughout the U.S.

Although Pete regarded Nordy as little more than a talking Ken doll, he was not averse to the attention this brought Channel 29.

The switchboard lit up after the first airing, the one the ladies had watched in the early afternoon. By the six o’clock news the switchboard twinkled like Christmas lights. For the eleven o’clock news the station took on a carnival atmosphere. E-mails jammed the system.

Nordy pushed the story. His next planned foray would be interviewing the brothers. As Prior, Brother Handle had sternly declined to give an interview or to have anyone else talk to the reporter. Pete allowed Nordy use of whatever equipment he needed. Nordy was in heaven.

The response proved the opposite at the monastery.

Brother Handle, in his late fifties and feeling it this evening, angrily clicked off the TV, one of two on the grounds, the other one in Brother Frank’s office. First he called Brother Frank and Brother Prescott into his office. After a fulsome discussion in which each man pledged complete agreement with the Prior, he called in Brother Mark. Brother Handle’s patience, already wafer-thin, wore through to threadbare. He finally ordered the young man to shut up and get out. Seeing Brother Mark slink away made him feel even angrier. Brother Handle never could bear emotional types. He then attended a choral practice.

When the eleven o’clock news aired, the brothers were still singing in the chapel. At eleven-thirty, Brother Handle ended the musical contemplation, as he liked to call it. The chapel, usually chilly, seemed even colder.

“At midnight we shall begin penance and silence. Two hours of private prayer will be followed by a return to your quarters. At five, we will again convene for Mass, followed by breakfast. You shall each go about your tasks in silence. The gates will be locked. No one is allowed onto the grounds and no one shall leave. If anyone speaks before I lift this rigorous rite of prayer and cleansing, a severe penance will be enforced.” He turned on his heel, sandal squeaking against the stone, and strode down the center aisle, the gray folds of his raw wool robe swirling outward, the white cape slightly lifting up behind his shoulders. He said under his breath, “Silence, prayer, work, abstinence, austerity, seclusion.”

Twenty minutes remained wherein brothers could speak, but as the men filed out, no one did.

Once out of the chapel, Brother Frank motioned to Brother Prescott.

Whispering, Brother Prescott intoned, “Runs a tight ship, our Brother Handle.”

“Our tight ship has sprung a leak,” Brother Frank whispered back, as both men smiled at the double entendre.

10

I
knew I shouldn’t have listened to you.” Susan mournfully looked out the window of Harry’s 1978 Ford F-150.

Although in four-wheel drive with snow tires, the truck, even in second gear, struggled for traction on the steep climb up Afton Mountain, the fog increasing in density with each ten feet of altitude.

“You always say that.” Harry peered ahead, scanning for red taillights.

Mrs. Murphy and Pewter watched the road intently. Tucker sat on Susan’s lap.

“Pea soup.”

“The mountain wears its mantle of fog all too often.” Harry remembered the time a pileup of over thirty cars closed down Interstate 64.

She kept to Route 250. She could swing onto it easily from Crozet. Since it was a two-lane highway, the opportunities to speed remained limited to whatever vehicle chugged along in front of you. At least, that’s what she told herself as she kept her foot steadily on the accelerator, her hands moving the steering wheel in the direction of the skid, then back straight again.

“I wish we’d never seen those tears.”

“Will you stop being morose? We’re almost there. Relax.” She coasted under the overpass, turned south onto the Skyline Drive. The fog was almost impenetrable. The Skyline Drive had been plowed out. Often, when weather became treacherous, the Skyline Drive shut down, since far too many people thought they could drive in ice and snow but events proved otherwise. The drop from sections of this extraordinary roadway sheared away at hundreds of feet. The height at the turn onto the Skyline Drive from Afton Mountain was about 1,800 feet.

Harry couldn’t see a thing as she passed the Inn at Afton Mountain, its lights diffused to yellow circles in the gray fog. She missed the mobile unit from Channel 29, but they couldn’t see her, either. Had they been outside the unit, they would have heard the deep rumble of the big eight-cylinder engine.

She checked her speedometer. The monastery was just a half mile from the inn.

“The icicles are blue.” Susan noted the ice covering the rock outcroppings. “True ice blue.” She folded her hands on Tucker’s back. “I really am crazy to listen to you.”

“Hey, takes your mind off your troubles.” Harry’s concentration was intense, although it did flit through her mind that she had not told her best friend of Fair’s latest proposal and deadline.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the great iron gates loomed. Harry wisely did not hit the brakes but slowly applied pressure. The truck skidded slightly to the left, toward the drop side of the road. Susan gasped, reaching for the Jesus strap hanging over the window of the passenger door. Harry calmly corrected, slowly stopping.

She got out as Susan, grumbling, also stepped into the snow, a foot deep now.

“Dammit!” Susan stomped her feet, her Montrail boots leaving a distinct tread print.

“Calm down, Susan. God, you’re edgy these days.” Harry regretted this the second it escaped her lips. “Sorry. Really. I would be, too.” She reasoned that in Susan’s current state she really ought not to discuss Fair.

Tucker and the two cats jumped into the snow. Each time Mrs. Murphy and Pewter sank in over their heads, they’d fight their way back up, pyramids of snow between their ears. They resembled kitty coolies. Tucker, who was larger, had an easier time of it.

The cats squeezed through the iron gate. The humans remained on the other side. Tucker looked for a way in, since she was too big to squeeze through the bars.

“Girls, don’t go far,” Harry admonished them.

“We won’t,”
they lied, plowing through the snow.

“If we had a brain in our head we’d have figured out that the brothers would circle the wagons. I don’t blame them. It’s all rather bizarre.”

“Someone else has been here. Three someone elses.” Harry pointed to tracks already filling with snow as another squall descended upon them.

“Hmm.” Susan knelt down to inspect the frozen imprint of a boot tread in the compressed snow. “Men or women with big feet.”

“We know it wasn’t the brothers. They wear sandals despite the weather.”

“It doesn’t mean squat, Harry. There’s nothing wrong with people coming up here. We did. The gates are usually open.”

“Yeah, but the news about the statue—” Harry stopped talking mid-sentence as she witnessed her two feline friends disappearing in snow, reemerging, throwing snow everywhere. When the cats would hit a smooth, windblown patch where they didn’t sink in, they’d chase each other.

“Can you imagine feeling such joy?” Susan looked at the cats with envy.

“Yes.”

Tucker wormed her way under the fence, digging out snow. She finally made it and tore after the cats.
“I’ll get you.”

Both cats puffed up, standing sideways.
“Die, dog!”
They spit.

Tucker roared past them, a spray of snow splashing both cats in the face. Their whiskers drooped a bit with the debris.

They shook themselves to run after Tucker, though it was harder for them because of the varying snow depths. They persevered.

“Tucker! Mrs. Murphy! Pewter!” Harry called in vain.

“Don’t even think about it.” Susan put her hand on Harry’s forearm, the fabric of her parka crinkling.

“I won’t.” Harry was considering climbing the fence.

The animals gleefully frolicked. They enjoyed many opportunities to play at home, but Harry’s discomfort added to the moment. They paused, hearing buzzards lift up to circle overhead. As it was deer season, a few irresponsible hunters had left carcasses. Most dressed the deer where they dropped. Deer season was feast time for vultures.

Before they knew it, the animals came upon the statue, snow swirling about her, frozen blood on her cheeks. They stopped in their tracks.

There, kneeling in the snow, hands clasped in prayer and resting on the boulder base, no gloves, hood over his head, was one of the brothers.

“Shh,”
Tucker respectfully ordered the cats.

Mrs. Murphy lifted her nose, followed by Tucker, then Pewter. In the deep cold, the mercury hung at eighteen degrees Fahrenheit; at this altitude, they couldn’t smell a thing. That was the problem. A live human at normal body temperature would emanate scent.

The three cautiously crept forward. Tucker sniffed the back of the thick gray robe, white with snow, as white as the wool mantle worn with the robes.

Mrs. Murphy circled around, as did Pewter. Both cats stiffened, jumping back.

The brother’s eye sockets were filled with snow. Snow had collected at his neckline, covering halfway up his face. His face, though, remained uplifted to that of the Blessed Virgin Mother, who looked down, her own face lined with snow.

“He’s frozen stiff!”
Pewter finally could breathe.
“A human frozen fish stick!”

Mrs. Murphy stepped forward boldly as Tucker came around.
“I can’t make out his features.”

“Even if you could, we might not know him. There are many of the brothers we don’t see,”
Tucker spoke quietly.
“The ones who work in the shops and talk to us are hand picked.”

“Why would anyone come out in bitter cold—and he’s been here awhile”—
Pewter’s dark whiskers swept forward and then back
—“to kneel and pray? This is beyond devotion. Why would the Virgin Mary want someone to suffer like that? No.”
The gray cat shook her head, snowflakes flying off like white confetti.

“Maybe he had big sins to expiate.”
Tucker couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Mmm, whatever they were, they had to do with humans. They never pray for forgiveness for what they do to us.”
A bitter note crept into Mrs. Murphy’s voice.
“Humans think only of themselves.”

“Not Mom. Not Fair.”
Tucker stoutly defended his beloved Harry and her ex-husband.

“That’s true,”
Mrs. Murphy agreed.

Pewter sat in the snow, her fur fluffing up.
“It’s hateful cold. Let’s go back. There’s nothing we can do for this one. Maybe he’s found Mother Mary.”

“We ought to check for tracks,”
Tucker sagely noted.
“In case there’s more than one pair.”

The three fanned out, soon returning to the frozen corpse.

“Tucker, there’s so much wind and snow this high. The statue’s on the highest point here. If there had been someone else, the tracks are covered, which makes me believe he’s been here since the middle of the night,”
Mrs. Murphy said.

“Why did we look for tracks, anyway?”
Pewter realized she’d cooperated without putting up a fuss or demanding a reason.

“Maybe he didn’t die in prayer,”
Tucker simply replied.

“Or maybe he died with a little help,”
Mrs. Murphy added, finding the sight of those snow-filled eyes creepy.

“Absurd. Who would want to kill a praying monk?”
Pewter again shook off the snow.

“Maybe I should bark and get someone up here.”

“The buildings are down that hill. The brothers can’t hear you, and if Mother can, you’ll only make her frantic.”
Mrs. Murphy started down the hill, dropping into deep snow here and there.

Tucker pushed in front of her.
“I’ll go first. You and Pewter can follow in my wake.”
She put her head down, pressing forward as the wind suddenly gusted out of the northwest.

Pewter grumbled from the rear,
“I still can’t imagine going out in the middle of a snowy night to pray in front of a statue, even if she does have blood on her face.”

“On her hands.”
Mrs. Murphy fired back, then corrected herself.
“No. Not Virgin Mary. She is love.”

“He froze to death in prayer or had a heart attack or something. We’ve all been around Harry too much. She can’t resist a mystery. She’s still trying to find out who had Charlie Ashcraft’s first illegitimate child almost twenty years ago. She’s rubbing off on us.”
Pewter laughed at her friends and herself.

“You’re right. The brothers will eventually find whoever that is, then there will be a burial and prayer service. That will be the end of it.”
Tucker dropped over snow-covered stones.

“Yeah. Who would want to kill a monk? They don’t have anything to steal.”
Pewter could hear Harry calling faintly in the distance. They’d traveled farther than she remembered.

“Like I said, the service will be in the paper and we’ll know who it was and that will be the end of it.”
Tucker, too, heard Harry.
“Murph, you’re not saying anything.”

“I don’t think that will be the end of it. This is the beginning.”
The tiger felt the snow turn to tiny ice bits between her toes. She wanted to hurry back to the truck. She wished the strange, uneasy sensation washing over her would ebb away, a sensation deepened by the sound of wings passing overhead, the snow so thick she couldn’t see the buzzards.
“Buzzards’ luck,”
she thought to herself.