The Lost Years (12 page)

“Do you know any biblical experts, Father Aiden?” Rita asked.

“The three I know best are Jonathan’s friends, Professors West, Michaelson, and Callahan. They are all biblical scholars.”

“What about Greg Pearson? Mariah Lyons said her father was his good friend and always included Pearson in that dinner group,” Rita continued.

“Maybe as a friend Jonathan would have shown it to Greg, or told him about it, but I don’t think he would have any reason to consult Greg as an expert.”

“Why do you think he didn’t tell his own daughter about his supposed discovery?”

“I don’t know, except that sadly the closeness between Mariah and her father was strained by his relationship with Lillian Stewart.”

“Would you consider Professor Lillian Stewart an expert on an ancient parchment?”

“I can’t answer that, either. Lillian Stewart is a professor of English, but whether that extends to judging ancient parchments, I don’t know.”

The discussion with the detectives lasted about an hour, and when they got up to go, Father Aiden O’Brien was certain that they would be back. And when they do come back, he thought matter-of-factly,
they’ll be focusing on Jonathan’s relationship with Lillian and whether he might have entrusted the priceless parchment to her.

After they left, feeling drained and weary, he sat down again at his desk. Before he had become aware of Jonathan’s involvement with Lillian Stewart, he had occasionally been at Jonathan’s dinners for his colleagues. He liked Lily and had gotten the impression that she and Charles Michaelson were a couple. She had a flirtatious manner when she spoke to Charles and would refer to a play they had gone to or a movie they’d seen. It was all a cover-up for the fact that she and Jonathan were involved.

And Jonathan went along with it, Father Aiden thought sadly. No wonder Mariah feels so betrayed.

Would Jonathan have kept the Vatican letter in Lily’s apartment for safekeeping? he wondered. And if so, would she admit to having it now? Especially since Jonathan told me he was planning to give her up?

Father Aiden leaned on both arms of the chair as he rose painfully to his feet.

The terrible irony is, he thought sadly, if Kathleen killed Jonathan, it was just after he had decided to dedicate the rest of his life to taking care of her and to mending his relationship with Mariah.

God works in mysterious ways, he thought with a sigh.

R
ichard Callahan taught biblical history at the Rose Hill campus of Fordham University in the Bronx. After college, he had entered the Jesuit community but stayed only a year before realizing that he was not ready to make the commitment to the priestly life. At age thirty-four, he still had not come to a final decision.

He lived in an apartment near the campus. Raised on Park Avenue by his parents, two prominent cardiologists, it was convenient to be able to walk to work, but there was also something else. The beautiful campus with its Gothic buildings and tree-lined paths could have been set in the English countryside. When he walked outside the gates, he enjoyed stepping into the diversity of the crowded neighborhood and the abundance of splendid Italian restaurants on nearby Arthur Avenue.

He had intended to meet friends for dinner at one of those restaurants, but on his way home from the funeral, he canceled the date. The sadness of the loss of his good friend and mentor Jonathan Lyons would be a constant for a long time. But the question of who had taken his life was paramount in Richard’s mind. If it was proved that Kathleen in her dementia had committed the crime, he knew it would mean she would be confined to a psychiatric hospital, probably for the rest of her life.

But if she was found to be innocent, who else would the detectives start looking at as someone who had a reason to kill Jonathan?

The first thing Richard did when he stepped into his cheerful three-room apartment was take off his jacket, tie, and long-sleeved shirt and put on a sport shirt. Next he went into the kitchen and got out a beer. I’ll be glad when the cool weather comes, he thought as he stretched his long legs out and leaned back in the aging fake-leather reclining chair that he refused to allow his mother to replace. “Richard, you haven’t taken the vow of poverty yet,” she said, “and you may never take it. You certainly don’t have to live it now.” Richard smiled affectionately, remembering the exchange, then turned his mind back to Jonathan Lyons.

He knew that Jonathan had been translating ancient parchments that had been discovered in the safe of a long-closed church.

Had Jonathan found the Joseph of Arimathea parchment among them? If only I hadn’t been away, Richard thought. If only he had told me exactly what he found. It was possible that by accident he had stumbled across it. Richard remembered that a Beethoven symphony had been discovered on the shelf in a library in Pennsylvania not that many years ago.

There was a nagging thought in the back of his mind that refused to surface as he later fixed pasta and a salad for himself. It was still there when he selected a movie on demand on his television set and watched it.

It was also there when he went to bed, and it slipped in and out of his dreams during the night.

It was midmorning on Saturday when it finally surfaced. Lily had been lying when she said she didn’t know anything about the parchment. Richard was sure of it. Of
course
Jonathan would have shared that discovery with her. Maybe he might even have left it with her.

And, if so, now that he was dead, would she quietly find a buyer for it and pocket what could be an enormous sum of money?

It was a scenario he wanted to discuss with Mariah. Maybe it would do her good if I asked her out for dinner tonight, he thought.

But when he phoned her, it was to learn that Greg had already called and she was having dinner with him. Richard realized how deeply disappointed he was to hear that.

Had the decision he had finally made come too late?

T
hat was a good night’s work,” the pawnbroker told Wally Gruber when Wally brought in his haul from the Scott home burglary. “You sure know how to pick them.”

Wally beamed in agreement. Forty years old, short of stature, balding, with a somewhat bulky frame and an engaging smile that warmed the unsuspecting recipient, he had a long list of unsolved burglaries to his credit. Only one time had he been caught, and he had served a year in prison. Now he was employed as an attendant in a parking garage on West 52nd Street in Manhattan.

My day job, he would think sardonically—Wally had found a new and much safer way to engage in criminal activity without attracting the attention of the police.

The scheme he had dreamed up was to place tracking devices under the cars of people whose homes he might consider burglarizing, then follow the movements of those cars on his laptop computer.

He never did it to a regular patron of the garage, only the occasional customers who would come in just for an evening. The way he chose his victims was often by the jewelry the wife was wearing. In late July he had put a tracer on the Mercedes-Benz of a guy who was dressed for a black-tie dinner. The wife was a knockout even though she was fiftyish, but the emeralds she was wearing caught
Wally’s eye. Dangling emerald-and-diamond earrings, a diamond-and-emerald necklace, a bracelet that jumped out at you, a ring that must have been seven carats. Willy had to force his eyes from feasting on the sight.

Surprise, surprise, he thought when Lloyd Scott handed him a five-dollar tip at the end of the evening. You don’t know what a gift you just gave me.

He had driven out to Mahwah, New Jersey, the next night and passed by the Scott home. It had been well lighted both inside and out and he had been able to read the name of the security system. A pretty good one, he thought admiringly. Hard to get around for most people, but not me.

The Mercedes had gone back and forth to the city for the next week. Wally bided his time. Then one week passed and the car had not moved. Wally drove out again to check the site. The house was lit up in one downstairs room and in an upstairs bedroom.

The usual, he thought. Lights on timers, make people believe you’re home. Then last Monday evening he’d made his move. Using stolen plates on his own car and with a “borrowed” E-ZPass from one of the cars in the garage, he had driven to Mahwah and parked down the block, where the neighbors were obviously having a gathering. Six or seven cars were lining the street. Wally easily bypassed the alarm, got into the house, and had just finished cleaning out the safe when he heard a shot and rushed to the window, getting there in time to see someone running from the house next door.

He watched as a hand reached up and pulled down a scarf or handkerchief just as the figure passed the overhead light on the cobblestone path to the sidewalk, then turned and disappeared down the block.

Wally saw the face clearly and in that instant it seared into his mind. Maybe someday he would find that memory useful.

He’d wondered if anyone else had heard the shot and if there
might be someone in the house who was calling the police now. Grabbing his booty, Wally rushed from the house, but even in his haste he did not forget to lock the safe and reset the alarm. He got to his car and drove away, his heart pounding. It was only when he was safely back in Manhattan that he realized he had forgotten one very important detail. He had left the tracking device on the Mercedes-Benz, which was parked in the garage of the house he had burglarized.

Would it be found?
When
would it be found? He had been careful, but could he have left a fingerprint on it? Because if he had, his fingerprints were on file with the cops. It was a disquieting thought. Wally did not want to go back to prison. He had read with avid interest about the murder of Dr. Jonathan Lyons and could tell that the cops thought his wife, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, was the one who had done it.

I know better, Willy thought. The one comfort he hugged to himself was that now if the cops
did
trace the tracking device back to him, he could trade his description of the killer for a light sentence on the jewelry heist, or maybe even immunity.

Or maybe I’ll really get lucky. They’ll go to some fancy party around here and park in my garage again.

As worried as he was, he realized it was too dangerous now to try to sneak back into that garage and try to get the tracker off the Mercedes.