Prodigal Father (23 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective

BOOK: Prodigal Father
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The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.
—Psalm 16
 
Amos Cadbury was having lunch at the Cliffdwellers Club near the Chicago Art Institute. His primary loyalty was to Fox River, but he was perforce a Chicagoan and held memberships in both the University Club and the Cliffdwellers, which were often more convenient places to meet with certain clients and colleagues than
his office in Fox River. He and Lars Anderson had finished dining, they were sipping Mirto, a Sardinian liqueur Anderson insisted he try. Amos found the liqueur everything Anderson had said it was.
“How did you come upon it?”
“On vacation in Alghero, a lovely town on the west coast of Sardinia. Have you ever been there?”
“To Sardinia? No.”
Amos had grown up in a time when a trip to Europe meant taking a train to the East Coast and then sailing from Manhattan or Newark, a six-day voyage to Southampton, then a Channel boat to France, long train journeys to Italy and Rome. This he had done with his wife on their honeymoon trip, and like the honeymoon itself it had not seemed a repeatable performance. Now people were driven to O'Hare and seven or eight hours later dropped any place on the globe, and many did it. It surprised Amos that Anderson, a man his own age, should talk so casually of visiting Sardinia!
“Do you ever go to Rome?” Amos asked.
“I didn't like it.”
Amos said nothing. He and Mrs. Cadbury had put up at the Hassler in Rome and seen everything, ancient, medieval, Renaissance. As part of a sizable group they had an audience with Pope Pius XII. Those memories, vivid after the passage of years, had served for a lifetime. But Rome had been the high point of their European experience. Amos sipped his Mirto, finding it very good indeed.
“Charlotte Priebe has been to see you,” Anderson said.
“A remarkable young woman.”
“I wish I had a son like her. Or a daughter. Sometimes I feel
I am just building castles in the sand.” Anderson's hair had grayed, but it still looked blond and his weathered complexion told of hours on building sites. Or was that the Sardinian sun? “I seem to have gotten to old age instead without someone I can pass things on to.”
“The way Maurice Corbett did?”
Anderson frowned. “I used to think a man like that was nuts. Handing over huge sums of money as well as his estate to strangers.”
“I don't suppose he thought of the Athanasians as strangers exactly.”
“It's not because they're priests. I make charitable contributions, who doesn't, but it seems part of making out my taxes. I have been asked to endow a museum. They say they would name it after me. It would be filled with pictures I couldn't understand, if there is anything in such paintings to be understood. What I want is to leave something that is mine, things I've built. I suppose that's what Corbett had in mind, give it to those priests and it would be kept up, the house he built, the grounds.”
“They have certainly done that, and more.”
“I bid on some of their buildings but didn't get the contract.” But the slight frown was fleeting. “Some time I'll show you the model of what I would like to do with that property if I can get hold of it. It would be my monument.”
Perhaps Mirto made one philosophical. Lars Anderson had come to the time of life when he wondered about the significance of what he had done. An Anderson home was a byword west of Chicago. But gaudy and expensive as many of them were, Anderson dreamt of something lasting. Perhaps Father Dowling would think of this desire as a surrogate of eternity.
“Maybe you will get your chance.”
“I hope so.” Anderson hunched over the table.
“Miss Priebe put your case very well. The Athanasians are a dwindling Order. I think that even they must wonder if they are destined to survive. There are vast acres of their property that they would not have done much with even in their years of flourishing.”
“They would never regret selling to me.”
“But what of the grandson?”
Anderson smiled slyly. “I wouldn't worry about him.”
“Oh?”
“He put himself in the hands of fools.”
“Tuttle.”
“Tuttle. The boy, too, might have gotten something if he hadn't wanted everything.”
“Have you spoken with him?”
“Charlotte has.”
“And?”
“He won't know what hit him.”
Amos had no love for Leo Corbett, but Anderson's rough business sense seemed hard on the grandson of Maurice Corbett. Perhaps the Athanasians might be more amenable to seeing that the young man got something. But Anderson wanted to get down to cases on the Corbett property and Amos reined him in.
“I have not yet put the matter in this new light before Father Boniface, the superior. Recent events have made that unseemly for the moment. But I will make the strongest case I can for some such compromise as Miss Priebe brought.”
Anderson thrust forward a great hand, and Amos took it, wondering how many witnesses in the dining room noticed it.
“So far as my own inclination goes, we are of one mind,” Amos said.
“I'm sure the priests always take your advice.”
Amos smiled. “I try to give such advice that its refusal is not attractive. In this case, I think what you are proposing is the happiest of compromises.”
“Good.” Anderson sat back. “Let me tell you a little secret. Charlotte Priebe talked to you before she told me anything about it.”
“What a singular young woman.”
“One of the shrewdest associates I have ever had.”
“She would have made a great lawyer.”
“It would have been a waste. No offense. I expect that some day she will offer to buy me out.”
“She seems a mere girl.”
Anderson shook his head. “She's tough as nails.”
“And would you sell?”
“After what I want to do with the Corbett property? Perhaps. It would be interesting to negotiate with her.”
“You could settle in Sardinia and drink this.”
And the two men touched glasses and finished off their Mirto.
The Lord tests the righteous.
—Psalm 11
 
Rita Martinez was devastated when Michael George was questioned about the murder of Father Nathaniel. Lieutenant Horvath had talked with him at the lodge first and then asked him to come downtown and go through it all again with Captain Keegan. Afterward, they had let him go home, but it seemed only a matter of time before something worse happened. And then he had come to her.
The boy she had loved because he had such a stable family, such a wonderful prospect in life, carrying on after his father, was a fading memory now. Despite the obstacles there had been before, neither she nor Michael had believed anything could stand in the way of their marriage and their life together. Rita was confident that theirs would be a Catholic wedding, whether or not Michael came into the Church. It was not simply that all that had changed now. While Rita listened to Michael, she found herself doubting what he said.
“Rita, I saw the body first.” He paused. “I got up early and before breakfast I went over to the shed. That place is so wonderful at the beginning of the day, large, quiet, dark, the smell of
oil and gas, all the machinery and tools in perfect order. When the large doors are opened from inside, you look out as if from a cave to the grounds, the trees, the plants, the lawn, as the sun strikes them for the first time that day.”
This was the Michael she loved, but all this was prelude to his great revelation.
“That's why I liked to go over to the shed even before breakfast. Passing the grotto, I saw one of the priests kneeling there, but I didn't really look at him. I kept on to the maintenance shed. What a shock when I went inside. It was a mess. It looked like some drunk had been in there, crashing around. My first thought was vandals.” He looked at her. She knew what he meant. There were boys who resented her going with this gringo. “I started to straighten things up. I didn't want my father to see the shed like that. And then I saw blood.”
He couldn't say it. He stared at her, wanting her to know his thought but not express it either. It was too horrible.
“I cleaned up as best as I could and then I heard something. I opened the door …”
His father had come running toward him. “The telephone. Something awful has happened.”
“Rita, I listened to him when he talked with Father Boniface. I went back to the grotto and saw that Nathaniel was dead. An ax in his back.”
Rita shuddered but would not let him take her in his arms.
“That's it. My father was running around. He didn't even seem to notice the mess the shed was in. When he left, I finished the cleaning up I had started.”
“Cleaning up?”
“Yes. But the blood left stains. I decided to paint over it.”
“But why?” He had to put it into words for her. Michael looked past her, then met her eyes.
“I didn't want my father to see it.”
“Oh, Michael.”
What would the police make of a story like that. Michael had developed a deep dislike for Father Nathaniel. “I'd like to drug him or get him drunk and ship him back to California,” he had said once. “Buy him a ticket, pour him onto the plane. Maybe he wouldn't dare come back a second time. He's ruining everything.”
She wanted to tell him that their happiness did not depend on his living as his father had lived. He could find another job. She did say that, but her heart sank when she did. Her dreams of the future involved herself and Michael settled in the lodge, living with his parents until …
“What did the police say?”
“They don't believe me.”
“But your father?”
“What about him?” he said sharply.
“Does he believe you?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Michael, what is going to happen?”
“I don't know.” He puffed out his chest, lifted an eyebrow, and said, “And frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn.” But the old tricks would not do now. Michael had a gift for mimicking movies. His “Bond. James Bond” was one of his best, the exact intonation of Sean Connery's voice. Now she tried to take him in her arms, but it was he who twisted away.
“Rita, I don't want you mixed up in this. Nothing is going to be the way we hoped. Maybe we should just cool it for a while.”
It would have been kinder if he had struck her. Then he left
hurriedly and before she could go to her room, her father came in from the kitchen. “What did he say?”
All she could do was cry, like a kid. She did go to her room then and lay on the bed sobbing. Her father looked in at her, but thank God he said nothing. What was there to say? He knew and she knew that Michael was in very deep trouble. She tried to imagine herself asking him if he had killed that priest, but she could scarcely form the question in her own mind. To say it would be to acknowledge that it was all over between Michael and herself.
After half an hour, she washed and got herself looking presentable, then went to St. Hilary's. As she approached the rectory, she thought of how she had dreamed of Michael and herself coming like this to make arrangements for their wedding. She stopped, fearful that she was going to start bawling again. And then a voice called her name and she turned to see Mrs. Murkin the housekeeper coming from the school. It was written all over her face that she knew about Michael. Mrs. Murkin came right to her and took her in her arms, and then Rita did start crying again and they went together to the rectory door.
“Is Father Dowling in?”
“What you need first of all is a cup of tea.”
Rita never drank tea, not even iced tea, but she sat at the kitchen table, almost glad of the delay before she talked to Father Dowling. It helped that she seemed not to have to explain to Mrs. Murkin why she was here or why she was crying. The housekeeper fussed about the kitchen, putting on water, getting out some cookies, putting a napkin at Rita's elbow. Then she sat across from her while they waited for the water to boil.
“Father Dowling isn't here just now, but I know you need someone to talk to.”
“Oh, it's so awful.”
“What does the boy say?” The boy was Michael.
She tried to tell her what Michael had said, but she couldn't look at her because Mrs. Murkin obviously thought this was only part of the story. If this was the reaction from a sympathetic person, what must the police think?
“Just think,” Mrs. Murkin said, “if his father had said nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“That he had seen his son in that shed when he ran there to call the police.”
“His father?”
Marie Murkin put a hand over her mouth and looked at Rita with rounded eyes. “Of course, the police would have found out anyway.”
Why should such a revelation have been welcome? Suddenly Rita thought she understood what Michael was doing. But she didn't want to talk about it anymore.
“What a nice kitchen you have here.”
“You should have seen it when I first came.”
“How long have you been here?”
Tea was poured, cookies were eaten, Marie Murkin told war stories about life as a rectory housekeeper. Rita listened with an expression of rapt attention, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She left as soon as she could do so without abusing Marie Murkin's hospitality. From the rectory she drove to the lodge.
Michael could not conceal how glad he was to see her.
“I thought you would never come here again.”
“Let's walk.”
They walked to the north, through the orchards, the blossoms
long gone and the fruit now beginning to form among the rich green leaves.
“Telling you was the hardest thing of all.”
“You're protecting your father, aren't you?”
“What?”
“Michael, you didn't kill that priest.”
He had never said he had, just painted himself in the blackest colors he could and let others draw their own conclusions. But why, if he hadn't done it? Even now, he couldn't bring himself to say that he had killed Father Nathaniel.
“You cleaned up because you didn't want anyone to know that it had happened in the shed.”
“I told you that.”
“But who were you cleaning up after?”
He didn't have to say. She knew. He had thought his father had done it, in the shed, but cleaning up, painting, turned suspicion on him. The police would never learn the truth from him. He would never point the finger at his father although, if Marie Murkin knew what she was talking about, Mr. George had turned attention to Michael. Things were as black for Michael as they had been before, but Rita no longer felt toward him as she had. She took him in her arms and they stood in silent embrace among the apple trees for a long time, and then they walked slowly back to their fate.

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