The Widow's Mate (2 page)

Gregory had not returned. Then she had spotted him on the playground, at the center of a flock of cackling hens. Honestly. He noticed her and waved, but that was all. Marie felt jilted.

Then Edna told her of the swath Gregory was cutting through the women at the parish center. Lothario indeed.

“I'm surprised you let someone that young hang around here, Edna.”

“He must be the same age as the Widow Flanagan. They seem to have known one another.”

Again Marie resisted the urge to tell Edna the story of Melissa Flanagan. Of course Melissa would have known Gregory. Now that she thought of it, the two of them must have been in the same class in the parish school. When she did leave Edna, Marie went through the old gym that had been turned into a common room. At various tables, bridge games went on, some serious, some merely the occasion for companionship. Gregory was at a table with Melissa, just the two of them, and no cards in evidence. Melissa was smiling into Gregory's face as he spoke to her. It hurt a bit to see what a nice couple they made. Perhaps something would come of their reunion. With a resigned sigh, Marie pushed through the door and outside. The air was warm; there was a lovely scent of lilacs; birds twittered about. No wonder there was all that billing and cooing among the elderly. Edna might be impatient with it, but Marie walked back to the rectory in a wistful mood.

*   *   *

Her reverie was disturbed when Father Dowling appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Do you think you could scare up a little lunch for Amos and me? He's staying for the noon Mass.”

Amos, too, came into the kitchen. “I offered to take him out to lunch, Marie. I hate to impose on you.”

She shooed them off to the church and got to work. Scare up lunch indeed. She would show Father Dowling. Amos Cadbury, thank God, did not have the appetite of a bird, so feeding him was a challenge.

2

Amos Cadbury was surprised to see Melissa Flanagan in church for the noon Mass. What distracting memories she brought back. A long-ago meeting in his office with Luke Flanagan and his son, Wallace, was vividly before his mind. The result of that meeting had left Wallace and his wife, Melissa, financially comfortable, to put it mildly. Amos had been opposed to what father and son had come to do, but the two of them had made up their minds, and his demurrals went unheeded. No matter how much wealth old Flanagan transferred to his son, he might have been disowning him. Or perhaps vice versa.

‘This is your idea,” Wallace had said. “I just don't want to become a cement contractor.”

Flanagan senior had made a fortune with his fleet of trucks that carried freshly mixed cement to building sites during the construction boom that had transformed downtown Fox River, and his prosperity had continued.

“What can you expect?” Luke Flanagan asked Amos. “He's a college graduate.” He sounded as if he regretted the opportunities he had provided his son. He himself had not finished high school, going off with the Seabees before graduation and getting the experience that had enabled him to develop Flanagan Concrete into a lucrative business. Education or not, Amos considered Luke more intelligent than his son.

“What will happen to the business?” Amos asked in turn.

Luke looked gloomy. “I suppose I could sell it eventually. Or turn it over to my nephew Frank.”

Frank Looney was everything Luke might have hoped for from his son. A diligent worker, he had begun driving one of the trucks, then moved into the office and soon was Luke's right-hand man.

“Going to Loyola didn't spoil him,” Luke said.

In a few years, Frank was effectively running Flanagan Concrete, even though Luke still came to the office several times a week. There was something gratifying about watching his fleet of trucks set off, the great mixers mounted on them turning slowly, everything timed so that when they arrived at a building site, the cement would be ready to pour. But Luke had become a spectator of what he had created, and in time his nephew Frank succeeded him. The way things had turned out, Frank would have inherited Flanagan Concrete in any case.

Years in the law had prepared Amos for the unexpected in human behavior, but the disappearance of Wallace Flanagan had seemed incredible at the time, and even more incredible as it receded into the past.

Melissa had come to Amos with the news that she had not seen her husband for a week and had no idea where he might be.

“Has this ever happened before?”

“No!”

“Was there a quarrel?”

“We never quarreled.”

That was possible, of course, but Amos considered it a pardonable exaggeration in the circumstances. With some reluctance he suggested that Wallace Flanagan's absence be reported to the police.

“I'ved hired someone to find him.”

“You have!”

“A man named Tuttle.”

Dear God. Amos wondered if Tuttle could find Flanagan even if the man weren't missing.

“I wish you had come to me first.”

Her mention of Tuttle made Amos less reluctant to suggest that they check with the bank and Wallace's broker. If Wallace had decided to disappear, he had doubtless provided for his future. He might have cleared out with everything and left Melissa penniless. But the savings and investment accounts were unchanged.

“I thought Mr. Tuttle would tell you,” Hibbs, the broker, said.

“You gave this information to Tuttle?”

Hibbs was surprised by Amos's indignation. He looked at Melissa. “Isn't he working for you?”

She nodded. Hibbs looked at Amos as if he expected an apology.

Melissa's two Flanagan sisters-in-law took turns staying with her during the weeks that followed. Tuttle sought an appointment with Amos but was refused. Amos might be the Flanagan lawyer, but he would have nothing to do with Tuttle. Then, years later, the suspense ended.

The body had been discovered when one of Flanagan's trucks had difficulty unloading its burden at a building site. The flow of cement had unaccountably stopped. The driver tried to get it going again, but unsuccessfully. He had to return to Flanagan's, several acres of land near the airport, pocked with excavations and with huge piles of sand and gravel and other ingredients of the company product. There was no choice but to wash out the contents of the mixer, and that was when the mangled body was found. It was removed in pieces. The left arm was intact, and there was a wedding ring that was the basis of identifying the body of Wallace Flanagan.

Melissa called Amos when the news was brought to her, and Amos went with her to McDivitt's Funeral Home, where McDivitt took Amos aside and advised against exposing Melissa to the horror of the remains. In the funeral director's office the ring was produced. Mellisa cupped it in the palm of her hand, staring at it, her calmness eerie. Then she held the ring up so she could read the inscription inside. She handed it to Amos.
MELISSA AND WALLACE. 14.II.76
. Amos could remember the wedding, performed by a trio of Franciscans at St. Hilary's Church. He stood and put his arm around Melissa, and finally she cried. He felt the shudder of her body beneath his arm; he and McDivitt avoided one another's eyes. Amos urged Melissa to her feet and led her outside. He held the door of the car open, but before she got in he handed her the ring. She looked at it almost in horror and shook her head. Amos had no choice but to put it into his pocket, get her settled, and drive off. On the way, he telephoned Luke Flanagan.

“Bring her to the house.” Luke seemed relieved that Melissa had turned first to Amos rather than her father-in-law in her distress.

Melissa had continued to rely on Amos during the following dreadful days. He made the arrangements with McDivitt and with the friars of St. Hilary's, making sure that the Flanagans were kept informed. Father Dowling was on retreat and Mrs. Flanagan, a Third Order Franciscan, wanted the friars. On the day of the funeral, Melissa insisted that Amos sit with her in the front pew. Luke was on the other side of the new widow, then his daughters, then Frank Looney. The ceremony had been penitential for Amos. The friars were in the grip of the new view that the departed could be assumed to be in heaven, even now enjoying the beatific vision. A funeral thus became an occasion for rejoicing rather than mourning, beaming faces, bouncy music, and, of course, eulogies afterward. The homily had already canonized Wallace Flanagan, but now a number of friends gave testimonials about the man whose remains—
membra disjecta
—were in the huge casket in the main aisle. Anecdotes, jokes—it might have been a roast, and then, thank God, one of the speakers broke down and wept. He could not finish what he had wanted to say and finally stumbled back to his pew. Amos learned afterward that his name was Gregory Packer. Outside the church, Amos went up to him and shook his hand wordlessly, but it was meant to thank him for the grief he had displayed. Packer seemed surprised. Then he grinned. “I don't know what got into me.”

“Call it a human impulse. And a Christian duty.”

Packer stared at him. Then once more that unsettling grin.

At the cemetery Amos mentioned it to Luke.

“He was a bad influence on Wally.”

“At least he had the sense to weep at a funeral.”

Luke shrugged his shoulders. “He was always putting ideas into Wally's head. Things might have been different if those two hadn't known one another.”

Luke seemed to be suggesting that Packer had put the idea of giving up the family business into Wallace's head.

“Come to the house, Amos.”

There were mountains of catered food, as well as Jameson's for the Irish, who knew what a funeral was for.

Melissa did not stay long and was soon convoyed away by classmates from Barat. Luke just shook his head when Amos produced the wedding ring. Amos put it back in his pocket and later into his office safe. Eventually, he was sure, Melissa would want to have it.

But the transfer had never been made. From time to time, Amos noticed the sealed envelope in his safe marked
FLANAGAN WEDDING RING
. Once he had taken it back to his desk, opened the envelope, and held the ring up to the light. That was when he noticed the legend on the outer surface of the ring.
TILL DEATH DO US PART
.

*   *   *

Amos shifted on his knees and managed to drive away these memories and attend to Father Dowling's noon Mass. Afterward, he returned with Roger Dowling to the rectory, where Marie first served an avocado salad that elicited Amos's praise.

“Avocado as in lawyer?” Father Dowling said. “This must be one of Marie's theme luncheons.”

“I hope not,” Amos said when the salad was followed by an omelet that melted on the tongue. “You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Is that another reference to my law practice?”

Marie ignored this, but she tuned in when Amos mentioned having seen Melissa Flanagan at the noon Mass.

“She's a frequent presence at the center,” Marie said.

“At her age?”

“You'd be surprised.” Marie did not say how.

Father Dowling said, “She tells me she has been traveling a lot and now wants to settle down.”

“The Flanagans never really left the parish,” Marie said.

“She's a widow, isn't she?” Father Dowling asked.

“Yes.” Amos let it go at that. “Marie, you deserve a
cordon bleu.
”

“To go with her black belt?”

After lunch, Amos called his driver. Father Dowling came outside with him, and they waited for his car. On the playground, groups of the elderly were visible. It was difficult to think of Melissa Flanagan in such a setting.

3

Father Dowling sometimes thought that his friend Captain Phil Keegan regarded the baseball season as the secular equivalent of the liturgical year's Ordinary Time. Several times a week now, Phil came to the rectory to follow the fortunes of the Cubs. Even the smallness of Father Dowling's television screen no longer drew his complaints, but then baseball is a game that does not wholly absorb the attention of viewers. These were the occasions when the pastor of St. Hilary's was made privy to the current activities of the homicide division of the Fox River police, of which Phil was the head. It seemed the Pianone family was trying to buy into Flanagan Concrete.

“How does that concern your department?”

“It doesn't, but old Luke Flanagan complained to Robertson about it,” Phil growled. Robertson, the chief of police, was a creature of the Pianones, whose influence in Fox River was pervasive.

“Hasn't Luke retired?”

“His nephew Frank Looney took over some years ago. Luke might have been waiting for definitive news of what happened to his son. I suspect the Pianones made Frank Looney an offer he can't refuse.”

Whatever the tainted sources of their money, the Pianones were interested in concealing it with legitimate investments.

“They already have half the unions. I suppose that's their wedge, the drivers.”

“Is that a crime?”

Another growl. “Nothing will stay legitimate long if the Pianones are involved. They will soon be in control of all major construction in Fox River.”

It was Phil's cross to be running the one division of the police force that wasn't under the Pianone thumb. Of course, he'd had to accept Peanuts Pianone into his division, but Peanuts was regarded as too dim to be used by the family. Phil had agreed to Peanuts as his insurance against any further Pianone incursion into homicide. Into the investigating side of it, that is.

The young pitcher who had been part of the trade for Greg Maddux was on the mound for the Cubs and hadn't allowed a hit in four innings. Moreover, he had stroked a homer over the left field wall in the second, putting the Cubs ahead 1–0.

“And they said that without Maddux the Cubs were dead,” Phil gloated.

Phil's remark about the Pianone control of the drivers at Flanagan Concrete disturbed Father Dowling. Earl Hospers, Edna's husband, had finally been released from Joliet, and he had found employment driving one of the Flanagan mixers. If the Pianones got involved in Flanagan's, it might be construed as a violation of Earl's parole. He asked Phil if that was possible.