The Widow's Mate (11 page)

“Oh, stop it, or I'll scrub out your mouth.”

They went on, he and Maud, like a comic routine, to Melissa's delight. Damn it.

“Beautiful girl,” Maud said when Melissa had kissed him, patted Maud's arm, and gone through the revolving doors.

“Girl! She's middle-aged.”

“And you said your daughters were fat.”

Luke let it go. Now that Melissa was gone, his anger that Gregory Packer was occupyng the apartment over the garage in the Flanagan house in Fox River returned. If Maud hadn't shown up, he would have driven to Fox River and kicked that SOB out of the apartment.

“I'll buy you a beer.”

“Only if I can buy you one.”

“That sounds fair.”

She took his arm and steered him toward the revolving doors.

It was good to have her back from visiting her son the monk in Kentucky. She told him about the guesthouse where the monks put up visitors, just across the road from the monastery, and gave them retreats.

“Some stay in the guesthouse longer. Thinking about joining, I guess. One of them was your namesake.”

“Luke?”

“Flanagan.”

“No relative of mine would think of becoming a monk.”

“What else are you?”

Her eyebrows danced, and she pressed her knee against his beneath the table.

“A retreat didn't do you much good.”

“I'm better at advances.”

“You can say that again.”

“Another beer?”

“They make me amorous.”

“Good.” She signaled to the waitress.

19

Tuttle sauntered into Cy Horvath's office, took a chair across the desk from him, and tipped back his hat. “Why don't we pool resources?”

Cy just looked at him.

“The Wally Flanagan case. I've been hired to find out what he was doing from the time he left here until he turned up dead.”

“Is that what Sandra Bochenski wants to know?”

Tuttle sat back. “How do you know that?”

“You've been under surveillance.”

“And you've been checking out Sandra Bochenski.” Two can play at that game.

“What else did Peanuts tell you?”

“So you see, we have a common interest.”

“I thought you were interested in Wally Flanagan.”

“Let me tell you what I've learned.”

Tuttle took off his tweed hat and fitted it to the knee of his crossed leg. While he spoke, he had the impression that none of what he had to say came as news to Cy, but with that face you never knew. He told Cy about the affair between Sandra and Wally and about their plan to run away together and start a new life in California. “She went ahead. He never showed up.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Are you saying he did?”

“You're doing the talking.”

“You realize that I am under no obligation to tell you these things. It's all confidential. But why should we duplicate efforts?”

“You could just have Peanuts get you my report.”

“I'd rather hear it from you.”

“How long is Sandra Bochenski in town?”

“Until I find out what she wants to know.”

“What's her interest?”

Tuttle had thought about this. Why should his client be paying him good money to find out things that could not do her any good. Curiosity? That seemed the only motivation. Of course, she was still a woman scorned, but any revenge she had in mind involved Greg Packer, not Wally Flanagan. Her suspicions about Packer seemed Tuttle's hole card.

“What's your interest?” Tuttle asked boldly.

“I'm a cop.”

“Things must be pretty slow around here if you can devote your time to ancient history.”

“You think Wally Flanagan is ancient history? How long has it been since his body was found?”

“Long enough to be forgotten.”

Even as Cy said it, Tuttle considered what that meant. The body of Wally Flanagan had been mainly hamburger. The identification had been made by his wife from the wedding ring on the undamaged left hand. A ring can be put on any dead hand.

“Get the hell out of here, Tuttle. I've got work to do.”

Tuttle rose. “I just had an idea.”

“I thought I heard a buzzing sound.”

“More like ringing.”

*   *   *

He found Peanuts napping in the pressroom and shook him awake. “Can you get a car?”

“What's wrong with yours?”

“I'm low on gas.”

Peanuts rose slowly. “Meet me downstairs.”

Tuttle took the circular staircase that gave those going up and down a view of the dome above and the great checkerboard floor of black and white tile below. What if the death of Wally Flanagan had been staged? He had to ask Melissa what had happened to the wedding ring that convinced her the body in the cement mixer was her husband's.

He waited outside, and five minutes later Peanuts drove up with a patrol car.

“Couldn't you get an unmarked car?”

“Look at the dents in the fenders.”

You never knew with Peanuts. Tuttle got into the passenger seat, and Peanuts took off, turning on the siren briefly, then grinning at Tuttle.

“Leave it on.”

“I don't want to get arrested.”

20

After she left her father-in-law, Melissa drove to St. Hilary's. She smiled as she thought of the perky little woman with whom Luke had been so friendly. Was it possible that he would marry again at his age? It seemed a comic possibility, but that wasn't fair. His life had been as devastated as her own by Wally's disappearance. In his case, it went back further, to Wally's turning down the offer to succeed his father in the family business. That had opened the way for his cousin Frank.

“Frank Looney?”

Wally had nodded. The famous, or infamous, Looney family. “But that's all over. My cousin Jim is a Jesuit, and Frank is straight as an arrow.”

When she parked, she looked toward the school, wondering if Greg was there. How the years fell away when she was with him; they might have been kids at school again, in that very building. He was full of memories of those days. The past, if you got far enough back in it, was like a soothing shower.

“Of course, we were all nuts about you.”

“Oh, sure. Why didn't you marry?”

“I did.”

“Tell me.”

He looked at her, then shook his head. “It's not a happy story.”

“It can't be as sad as mine.”

“In a different way.”

“Are you retired or what?”

“Oh, I have a business plan. All I need is money.”

He told her about the driving range he'd had in California, and his tone told her how much he had enjoyed it.

“So why did you leave?”

“The state decided to run a freeway through it.”

“Then you must have made money.”

“Oh, I did. Then I remembered how Wally made his money, with money, and tried my hand at that. I might just as well have run it all through a shredder.”

Money had never been a problem with Wally, and he had left her amply provided for. When he went missing, people kept coming back to that since it suggested his disappearance was part of a plan. Only in the most private compartment of her soul could she admit that thought. Her great fear during the investigation was that information about Wally's fooling around with other women would be turned up. When she had hired Tuttle, she had been aware of his reputation. Amos Cadbury's reaction told her exactly what he thought of his fellow lawyer. The truth was that she had never expected Wally to be found. They had gone together forever by the time they married, and they were too used to one another. She had watched him grow bored with her, but then she was a little bored with him, too, not that she would ever have been unfaithful. Men are so different. The thought that he had deserted her made weeping easy when she was questioned about him.

As the years passed, their life together seemed almost as unreal as his disappearance. She found that she didn't mind living alone. Her only regret was that they had never had children. God knows they had tried. Maybe that was the reason he had begun to stray. Left well provided for, she had sought diversion in cruises, in travel. She would arrive in a city like Rome ready for systematic touring, having read up on it for months before leaving. But how much diversion can one stand? There was the consolation of religion, of course, and she had become in her way devout. How ironic to remember that Wally had told her that when they were in St. Hilary's school and he an altar boy, he had dreamt of becoming a priest.

When his body was found and she was shown the ring she had put on his finger on their wedding day, it seemed proof that for years he had been living his life, ignoring her, not caring at all about the pain his disappearance caused her. She had looked at it with tear-filled eyes but could only shake her head when the ring was offered her. It seemed to mock her life and the grief she had sincerely felt when she could convince herself that something awful had happened to him or that he had amnesia and just didn't know who he was. If Amos Cadbury had been shocked by her refusal to take the ring, he managed not to show it.

She sat now in her car, staring at the school she and Wally and Greg had attended, and Cyril Horvath, too. Whenever Cyril had talked with her, she had the sense that he knew far more about her and Wally than he let on. Some old people were moving slowly around on what used to be the playground. Luke thought she was crazy, spending so much time there. Well, it was crazy. You would think she couldn't wait to be old.

Of course, it was being with Greg that explained it. It wasn't being old, it was being a school kid again.

“All I need is money,” he had said about his plans to open a driving range. “I found a perfect spot, out in Barrington.”

“How much money?”

He told her, just a guess. It didn't sound like much to her. People who saw them together would think what she had thought when she saw Luke with Maud. Was that what she wanted? She realized it wasn't. How stupid to let him use the garage apartment. Luke's anger seemed to indicate that he thought there was something going on between her and Greg. Well, there wasn't, and there couldn't be. Getting that money for him would be the easiest way to put an end to it without having to confront him.

Melissa got out of her car and went rapidly along the walk to the rectory. Mrs. Murkin came to the door in response to her knock. The housekeeper looked surprised, then delighted, but finally settled for a bland, wide-eyed waiting look.

“Is Father in?”

He was. Mrs. Murkin showed Melissa to a front parlor and marched off down the hallway. There was a delightful aroma of pipe smoke in the house, competing with the smell of baking. Then Father Dowling was with her, tall, thin, regarding her with the most kindly eyes.

21

Father Dowling had heard the story first from Edna, just an aside as she was bringing him up to date on the center, then from Marie, who spoke with a stiff and staring look that made it clear she thought he had to do something about this. Phil Keegan had also passed on what he had heard from Cy. Gregory Packer was living at the Flanagan home. Only Marie had put it quite that baldly, adding, “With Melissa Flanagan.” She had adopted a kind of chant tone for this recital, and “Flanagan” came out in a flutter of neums. Phil just sounded disgusted when he told the story.

“It must be a very large house,” Father Dowling said. A pastor has wide responsibilities, but he did not know that his writ ran to this sort of thing.

“Oh, he's not in the house. There's an apartment over the garage.”

“Marie will be relieved to hear that.”

He said this on the assumption that Marie Murkin was keeping her ears open as she pushed a dust mop around in the hallway outside Father Dowling's study.

“What does Cy think of these arrangements?”

Phil half rose and pushed the door shut. “We've learned quite a bit about Packer in recent weeks.”

Father Dowling had already been told that Greg had spent time in Joliet and was now on parole, but that was recent history. It seemed that Greg had remained in California after getting out of the navy.

“And he married.”

Father Dowling waited. Half the people in the world were married to the other half.

“The woman that Wally Flanagan had been having an affair with.”

“He married her!”

Phil seemed pleased with all the information on Packer Cy had managed to gather.

“Had he known her before?”

“He was in the navy. She was in Chicago.”

That Packer should meet and marry the woman who had gone to San Diego in the expectation that Wallace Flanagan would join her there invited speculation.

“Of course, we thought Flanagan might have used Packer's name. They went to school here, you know.”

“Did Wally Flanagan go to California?”

“If he did, he left no trail. With the woman, Sandra Bochenski, there was the wedding record. Packer was even easier. After the marriage broke up…”

“Is there a record of that, too?”

“Packer divorced her, charging desertion. That was when he married the woman whose driving range he was managing.”

“A busy fellow.”

“A bad apple.” Phil said this with the quiet conviction of one who had been dealing with Gregory Packers all his life. The idea that people might change was only an abstract possibility for him, given his years of experience. Father Dowling's own experience taught much the same lesson, which is why what most of us need is mercy rather than justice. Now Packer was a frequent presence in the parish center and had moved into the garage apartment at the Flanagans'.

Marie's attitude toward the former altar boy had changed radically. Her account of his dropping into her kitchen out of the blue had been almost breathless, and for a time she had just tossed her head at the mention of his name, but as of late she seemed quite enamored of the man all over again. “He's Edna's responsibility, not mine.”