The Widow's Mate (22 page)

Did Boleslaw know what she was going through? When he wasn't watching sports on television or drinking beer, or both, he just sat slumped in his wheelchair, lost in thought. Jimmy might have imagined that he was meditating on his life, thinking long thoughts about time and eternity, preparing to meet his God. Maud didn't think it was uncharitable not to attribute that to Boleslaw. When he did speak, it was about some ache or pain or something else that annoyed him.

“Where've you been?” he groused when Sandra showed up after her ordeal in Fox River.

Sandra seemed happy that he didn't know. “Maud, why don't we go up the street and buy Dad a beer.”

“I was just going to suggest the same thing.”

It was the kind of lie Jimmy might have approved of.

21

As soon as the alternative entrance and exit to the Flanagan garage apartment became known, Amos Cadbury, on behalf of his client, demanded an inspection of all the tools arrayed above and around the workbench in the garage, a move that Tuttle grudgingly appreciated.

“To free Mr. Flanagan of suspicion of wrongdoing is, of course, easily done, but my client insists that the outrageous crime committed in the garage apartment of his home be speedily solved,” Amos asserted.

Cadbury didn't exactly accuse Jacuzzi and Robertson of idiocy; nor did he criticize the thus far inconclusive efforts of Captain Keegan's detective division. He spoke from such lofty high ground that those judgments were remote inferences from what he said. Tuttle might have tried the same tack but knew that he would sound ridiculous. His client, bless her soul, had been turned into a painted woman, a ruthless housebreaker, by the traitor Mervel.

“The public has a right to know, Tuttle,” Mervel said unctuously.

“Then they should know you were drunk when you wrote it.”

“Sticks and stones, Tuttle. Sticks and stones.”

Well, the pressroom in the courthouse did have the culture of an elementary school playground. Ninian slept on the Naugahyde couch; Bea Hyverson, of the
PennySaver,
a shopping guide left gratis in every local mailbox, knitted away in a corner while surveying the room over the rims of her glasses. Mervel himself had brought up an old file from his hard drive, the one labeled
NOVEL
, and was folding recent events into the narrative.

Tuttle sipped the coffee he had let trickle into a Styrofoam cup and spit it back. “Who made this coffee?”

“Coffee?” Bea cried. “Don't drink that stuff.”

Tuttle got out of there and went upstairs to Keegan's office. “Any results from those other tools, Captain?”

“They're in the lab.”

“Good.”

“I'm glad you approve.”

Tuttle left the office and went to the railing that gave him a bird's-eye view of the black-and-white tile floor four flights below. A circular staircase wound down toward it, and an open elevator of ancient vintage dropped like a plumb line, its cable greasy and twisted. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. Tuttle took the stairs. As he descended, he had the feeling that he was winding up the string of recent events into a ball. Maybe when he got to the ground floor they would make some sense.

The trouble with that ladder that led from the main garage to the pantry in the apartment above was that you had to know it was there in order to use it. Luke Flanagan said he had completely forgotten it and, when he remembered, couldn't believe the thing still worked. It had been his son's idea, a boy's whim catered to in the forgotten past. Melissa had known nothing of it. Sandra Bochenski had shown it to Tuttle, which meant two things: She had known it was there, and she didn't see knowledge of it as any threat to her. No one else seemed to know of the trapdoor and collapsible ladder.

Hazel put away the crossword when he got to the office, glaring at him as if she had found him goofing off, rather than the reverse. Then again, what else did she have to do?

“Has your client skipped town yet?”

“She won't leave until I give the word. I want her name cleared.”

Hazel ducked her head and looked at him.

“No calls,” he said and went into the inner office. He seemed to be shutting out her derisive laughter when he closed the door.

Sandra Bochenski was torn between the desire to escape to California and concern for her father, Boleslaw. How could Tuttle not respond to that touching concern for her parent? He himself had an almost Oriental devotion to his parents, especially to his father, whose encouragement and support had survived Tuttle's checkered and prolonged progress through law school.

Remembering Cadbury's lofty statement, Tuttle realized that the only thing that would clear his client's name was to identify the killer of Gregory Packer. Of course, the police did not seriously think that Sandra had killed the man.

“Sure I could have. There were times when killing him would have been a form of self-defense,” she said to Tuttle.

“Our conversations are confidential. Don't talk like that to anyone else.”

“I already have.”

“Who?”

“Sylvia.”

Sylvia was the bimbo stashed in the same building by Marco Pianone.

“How long has she been hooked up with Pianone?”

“You want me to ask her?”

“No!”

“She was really surprised when she read that Greg had been my husband.”

“Did she know him?”

“She said Wally Flanagan talked about him. They had a lot of time to talk up there in the North Woods. He loved it, but she was cabin-crazy most of the time.”

“How long?”

“Years.”

“What did he do?”

“Fish, read, go for long walks.”

There are those for whom such a schedule would seem heaven on earth, but Tuttle was not among them. He could sympathize with Sylvia Beach.

“She ever say why he went off with her rather than go to California to be with you?”

“Blackmail.”

“Blackmail?”

“She found out about our plan. Her suspicions were aroused when he told her he wanted to arrange her portfolio so her worries would be over. What worries? The future. It sounded like the payoff for their affair. So she followed him, saw us together, and then confronted him, threatening to blow the whistle. Her alternative was that they do what Wally and I planned to do. That's how she got him. He had no choice.”

“You don't sound bitter.” It was an odd thought, the two of them talking about the guy they had both been seeing, a married man.

“He deserted her.”

“Come on.”

“One day, she came back from town—there was a bar there she liked and Wally didn't—and he was gone. No note, nothing. Just gone. He might have done that to me.”

“She have any idea how he ended up dead in Fox River?”

“I'll ask her.”

“Don't.”

Reviewing this conversation in his inner office, feet on the desk, tweed hat pulled over his eyes, Tuttle didn't like the way the Pianones kept coming to mind. Wally's body in the cement mixer had the Pianone touch, and maybe so did the murder of Gregory Packer. It turned out that he had put the touch on Sylvia, too, wanting backing for a driving range in Barrington—but Melissa Flanagan had already agreed to finance that project. If Marco thought some guy was trying to put the squeeze on Sylvia …

These were not thoughts to pursue, not even in the privacy of his own mind. They would occur to Cy Horvath sooner or later, he supposed. From what Peanuts told him, Tuttle knew that Horvath knew at least as much as he did. But how willing was Horvath to pursue the Pianone connection, if there was one?

22

When Greta came into his office, carefully shutting the door behind her, she was holding a folded piece of paper in such a way that Amos Cadbury's eyes were drawn to it.

“He asked me to give you this. Unread.” She seemed to be pleading for understanding. “He was so polite. I thought he wanted a handout, but when I opened my purse, he just shook his head.”

“A handout?”

Amos had taken the note. Greta stood waiting as he read it. He read it twice and then turned his chair toward the window. What a dreadful joke. He was astonished that Greta had allowed herself to be used in this way. He turned back to her.

“Describe him.”

Her description of the man made it even more incredible that she had been taken in. Still, she had offered him money, so her first reaction had been sensible.

“Will you see him, Mr. Cadbury?”

Greta seemed to have become the vagrant's advocate, but it was curiosity and controlled anger that prompted Amos to ask her to show the man in.

She hurried across the room, opened the door to the outer office, and stood in it, urging someone forward. She stepped aside, and a bearded middle-aged man entered and approached the desk.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Cadbury.”

Was it the suggestion of the note, its preposterous claim, or this office in which years ago he had presided over the arrangements Luke had made with his son that gave him pause? Amos rose behind the desk and studied his visitor. He still held the note in his hand. He flourished it.

“Why have you come to me?”

“You're the family lawyer.”

It was information anyone could have gathered from recent newspaper stories. The visitor looked around. “It was here that my father made me a rich man before my time.”

Amos sat. “Go on.”

The description of that event, of the discussions that had led up to it, of Amos's reluctance to preside over the premature inheritance, was uncannily accurate. Amos studied the man as he spoke, and against all reason, he began to see in this bearded fellow some resemblance to young Wally Flanagan.

“Wally Flanagan is dead, sir.”

“I will not quote Mark Twain.”

“Mrs. Flanagan identified the body.”

“How?”

“By his wedding ring.”

“May I sit?”

“What is the point of this farce?”

He held up a ringless left hand. “I can't imagine how my ring could have been found on a corpse.”

Amos, certain the man was dropping the charade, gave him a clinical description of the body, the body parts, that had been found in one of the Flanagan cement mixers.

“One of my father's?”

“In a Flanagan cement mixer,” Amos repeated.

“You said body parts.”

“The ring convinced her.”

“I had stopped wearing it. For obvious reasons. I must have left it behind when I left Garrison. Yes, of course I did. In the sense that I had forgotten it. What happened to the ring?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I could describe it.”

“Wedding rings are pretty much alike.”

“There were inscriptions.”

“Were there?”

“Our names and the date of the wedding.”

Amos restrained himself from congratulating the man on his good guess.

“There was another inscription, too. Inside. It was Melissa's idea. ‘Until death do us part.'”

“And that is what happened when Wallace Flanagan's body was found.”

The man breathed deeply. “Of course you're skeptical. I expected that. I would think less of you if you weren't. But I have to convince you first. Otherwise, I will simply fade away.”

There were intonations as the man spoke that were reminiscent of Luke. The facial hair was like a mask over the lower face, although the fellow had the same wide mouth as Luke. It was the eyes Amos found most unnerving.

“How can I convince you?”

“That you are a dead man? What is the point of all this?”

“I wanted to be of help to my father. I heard that he was suspected of killing a man. Gregory Packer.”

“I suppose you knew Packer.”

“We were kids together. We were classmates at St. Hilary's. Neither of us turned out very well.”

“And now you're both dead.”

It occurred to Amos that by allowing this preposterous conversation to go on, he was seemingly giving credence to the man's claim.

“He was best man at our wedding. Much to my father's displeasure.”

“You have done a lot of research.”

“In the smithy of my soul.”

“Where have you come from?”

“Gethsemani. A Trappist monastery in Kentucky.”

“You're a monk?”

“A penitent. They let me stay on, no questions asked. I had decided to remain dead, dead to all those I had betrayed, and spend my days trying to get right with God.”

This was disarming, as it was no doubt intended to be. “What is it you really want?”

He looked beyond Amos. He spoke softly. “Forgiveness.”

“You should see a priest.”

“I have been living with monks. Confession is surprisingly easy, but it is hard to believe that one can be forgiven.”

Amos wanted to tell the man that forgiveness for what he was attempting would be difficult to achieve.

“I have often prayed for my godmother.”

Amos sat upright. “Did you?”

“Mrs. Cadbury. Aunt Helen.”

Amos had wavered when the man described the inscriptions on the wedding band, and he had been unsettled by all the man seemed to know, but this mention of his departed wife undid him. He put his hands on the desk and leaned toward his visitor and, against his will, saw that he was Wally Flanagan.

From that point on, the conversation was very different from what it had been. Amos felt the layers of his skepticism melt away, but with the realization that, incredible as it was, he was talking to Wallace Flanagan, a host of other emotions came. The man had deserted his wife; he had been a womanizer, even betraying his mistresses; he had lived in seclusion and allowed his loved ones to imagine what they would of his whereabouts. Had he arranged for a body to be identified as his own?

“I have been weak and deceptive, but that would have been ghoulish. Sacrilegious.”