VC03 - Mortal Grace (21 page)

“That’s right.” Cardozo was surprised she remembered. Pleasantly surprised.

A man in an expensively cut business suit had followed her into the hallway. She turned to include him. “May I introduce David Lowndes, our attorney?”

“We’ve met,” Cardozo said.

“Oh, yes.” It was obvious from Lowndes’s blandly handsome face that he didn’t remember. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Is there any way I can be of help?” Bonnie Ruskay asked. “Or make your work easier?”

“It would be a help if you showed us around.”

“I’ll be glad to.” Bonnie Ruskay watched Lou Stein and the six-person crime-scene crew carrying their paraphernalia into the rectory. There was dismay in her eyes.

“Do you contemplate a complaint against the church,” Lowndes asked, “or against any of its staff?”

Cardozo shook his head. “Not at this point.”

“All the same, Bonnie, play it safe.” Lowndes’s tone was joking. At the same time it wasn’t joking at all.

“David and I feel the intruder broke in this way.” Bonnie Ruskay led Cardozo and Ellie into Father Montgomery’s study.

Cardozo examined the window. A small pane near the lock had been shattered. Most of the glass was missing. Only three jagged fragments remained clinging to the puttied sash bars.

Cardozo turned. His eye scanned the oriental rug where the splintered glass should have fallen. But it hadn’t. Nothing flashed or twinkled. “Funny, there’s no glass on the rug.”

“The maid already vacuumed in here,” Bonnie Ruskay said.

“That was before the young man died,” David Lowndes said. “Before we knew we were dealing with homicide.”

Cardozo told Lou Stein to mark the vacuum cleaner bag as evidence and take it to the lab.

On the wall, posters for Father Joe’s musicals glowed in their gold-leafed frames. Cardozo’s eye went to
Zip Your Pinafore.
Sally Manfredo’s first featured role. “Didn’t Father Montgomery keep a box full of photos of his performers?”

“Yes,” Bonnie Ruskay said. “His talent pool.”

“Is it still in his desk?”

“I don’t know.” She threw her lawyer a questioning glance.

“There seems to have been a break-in at that window,” Lowndes said. “Which gives the police the right to examine anything in this room.”

Bonnie Ruskay opened three drawers before she found the shoe box stuffed with photos. She placed it on top of the desk.

“Thanks,” Cardozo said. “I’ll take very good care of it.”

“This is probably what killed the housebreaker.” Lou Stein stood in the doorway. His plastic-gloved hand was holding an old-fashioned steam iron—a heavy, blackly corroded object actually made out of iron. “Apparently, it was being used as a doorstop.” He pointed to several dark curving marks on the maple parquet floor. “And we have a nice set of fingerprints.” He indicated a faint black-powdered pattern of concentric lines on the handle of the iron.

Cardozo swung the door through a 45-degree arc. It opened into the hallway. Something bothered him. His eye ran along the floor, stopping at the two dark curved marks. The iron could have been used as a doorstop; it could have scraped the parquet. That much he could accept. But there was a third mark.

“What’s this mark?” His foot touched a straight-line dent just inside the door. “Think the iron made this one too?”

“Possibly. But far greater force was applied.”

Cardozo swung the door open. He took a chair from the hallway and set it in front of the doorway. “Hold me steady, Lou.”

He stood on the seat and examined the top of the door. There was a small dust-free area. He examined the half-inch protrusion of lintel at the top of the door frame. There was another area without dust, and the two areas lined up.

“Alternate scenario.” He stepped down from the chair. “The door was left open three or four inches. The iron was placed up there, balanced between the top of the door and the door frame.”

“A booby trap,” Lou Stein said.

Cardozo nodded. “The intruder came through the door, and gravity did the rest.”

“That’s better, isn’t it?” Bonnie Ruskay stood gazing at the door frame. “I mean, better for Father Joe. If he didn’t strike the intruder himself?”

“Why don’t you ask your lawyer?” Cardozo said.

Lowndes did not have a happy face. “Striking an intruder would be considered legitimate force. Rigging a lethal device would not be.”

“Not even in his own home?” Bonnie Ruskay said.

“This part of the rectory is Father Joe’s office,” Lowndes said, “not his home. The public is admitted.”

“Do you know of any reason,” Cardozo said, “why Father Montgomery might have rigged a booby trap?”

“Yes, I do.” Bonnie Ruskay pushed her hair back from her head. “He was mugged in the park three weeks ago. The experience left him feeling extremely vulnerable. He mentioned several times since then that he thought he’d heard someone trying to break into the rectory.”

“Did he say anything was missing?”

“He didn’t mention anything specifically.”

“Do you know of anything missing?”

She looked toward her lawyer and then she shook her head. “Not offhand—but the windowsill’s been rearranged.”

Cardozo followed her to the window.

“The golf trophy’s been moved to the table,” she said.

Cardozo stared at the sterling silver cup with its engraving of two crossed golf clubs. His eye went to the window. In the courtyard outside, something sparkled on the cobblestones.

Lowndes was watching. “Did you find something, Lieutenant?”

“The intruder didn’t break in this way,” Cardozo said. “The pane was broken from inside. Which is why glass landed outside.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Bonnie Ruskay said.

“You’d have to ask the person who did it.” Cardozo snapped a finger, catching Lou Stein’s attention. “Lou, would you get some of the glass from outside, see if it matches the broken pane? And we’d better have a look at the other windows in the rectory.”

Father Montgomery’s upstairs apartment was a far cry from the dapper photographer-ready manse that Cardozo recalled. The heavier furniture had been shoved into a sort of barricade by the window. Clothing had been thrown over chairs, ashtrays left unemptied, deli wrappings tossed on the floor.

“I don’t understand this at all.” Bonnie Ruskay was clearly startled at the state of the room. “Father Joe was usually much tidier than this.”

Cardozo sniffed a half-full tumbler from the bedside table. He smelled rum. The drink had left a wet ring on the table. Cardozo wiped it with the side of his sleeve and set the glass back down next to a stack of paperbacks. He glanced at the titles: mysteries and thrillers and horror novels.

“Father Joe has insomnia,” Bonnie Ruskay said. “He reads himself to sleep.”

A bottle sat on the floor beside the bed. Cardozo picked it up. According to the label, it was 150-proof Jamaican rum. “Is Father Montgomery a solitary drinker?”

“Not that I know of,” Bonnie Ruskay said.

“Was he having company in his bedroom?”

“I don’t know. I don’t live in the rectory.”

Cardozo uncapped the bottle and passed it under his nose. The fumes almost made him gag. “Unusual stuff. Potent.”

“I give him a bottle every year for his birthday.”

“Then he must like it.”

“I give that rum to several priests for their birthdays. None of them has ever complained.”

Cardozo recapped the bottle. “Aside from the mugging, has anything unusual happened in Father Montgomery’s life recently?”

“Unusual?” Bonnie Ruskay smiled. “Father Joe was planning to expand the church’s condom outreach program. Does that count as unusual?”

“You’d have to tell me.”

“A few parishioners were raising a fuss. But that was to be expected. Have you ever seen our newsletter?” She handed Cardozo a leaflet from a stack on the mantelpiece.

“You gave me several,” he said, “last year.”

“Oh, yes. I remember. Well, that’s the latest. You’ll see that we really haven’t changed much.”

“May I keep it?”

“Of course.”

Cardozo folded the newsletter and slipped it into his pocket. His eye traveled to the king-sized bed. It looked as if a litter of unsupervised puppies had been calling it home for the last month. The bedsheets had been balled into ropelike coils. The exposed portions of the mattress were dotted with cigarette burns and stained with spilled drinks.

“Father Joe’s been trying to cut down on cigarettes.” Bonnie Ruskay sounded embarrassed. “He knows he has a problem.”

“I take it the cleaning lady has been boycotting this part of the house?”

“Anna’s new.” The embarrassed tone became apologetic. “She hasn’t had time to get to this part of the rectory.”

“What about the one before? Is this the way she kept house?”

“Olga was a good worker.”

“Then how did all this happen?”

“Is this relevant?” David Lowndes sounded edgy. He stooped to retrieve a Milky Way candy bar wrapper from the rug. He placed it delicately in the fireplace on top of birch logs already laid for a fire.

“Olga stopped showing up two weeks ago,” Bonnie Ruskay said.

“Did she give any reason?”

“Excuse me,” Lowndes said. “How is this discussion relevant to the break-in?”

“What difference does it make?” Bonnie Ruskay turned almost angrily to the lawyer. “So the world learns that Father Joe’s gifts did not extend to housekeeping. Big deal.”

Nor, Cardozo reflected, did Father Joe’s gifts extend to interior design. The wall decorations were jarringly juxtaposed—an ebony crucifix had been mounted alongside polished spurs and saddle and a horsewhip.

“The bishop of Kenya gave that to Father Joe.” Bonnie Ruskay nodded toward the crucifix. “The cowboy things are props.”

“Props for what?”

“A musical set in the Old West. We put on an annual amateur theatrical.”

Next to the whip, a photo framed in gold leaf showed a muscled samurai executioner holding a curved sword over a bound man’s neck.

“That’s from another of Father Joe’s musicals. It was a rap update of the
Mikado.
”

The executioner’s arms were heavily tattooed. They reminded Cardozo of convicts’ arms.

“Is Father Montgomery still working with convicted felons?”

“If you mean the Barabbas Society, yes—he was working harder than ever until he got mugged.”

“And are you a member of the Barabbas Society too?”

She looked him directly in the eye, as though he had challenged her. “I am.”

“No one broke in this way.” Ellie had been examining the bedroom window. She squeezed her way back through the chairs and drop-leaf table that blocked it. “What about the bathroom?”

Cardozo flicked on the bathroom light. He crossed to the window. It was unbroken, locked from the inside.

There was a strong smell of mildew, strongest in the neighborhood of the bathtub. The plastic shower curtain had a film over the lower half, and it was dangling by three hooks, as though a falling person had grabbed it for support.

The tub had two gray rings dating from distinctly different epochs.

Soiled clothes were spilling out of the hamper. The toilet had been used as an ashtray. So had the sink.

Cardozo swung open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet. The shelves were a jumble of toiletries, over-the-counter remedies, and prescription drugs. As he swung the door shut he caught Lowndes’s reflection from the doorway.

“I thought you were looking for signs of a break-in. No one broke in through the medicine cabinet, did they?”

“No, and they didn’t break in through that window either.”

Bonnie Ruskay appeared in the doorway. “Would you like to see the guest room?” She led Cardozo and Ellie down the hall.

The guest room was sparsely furnished—there was a bed, a table, a lamp, a chest of drawers, and a chair. The only decorative touches were a gray shag rug on the floor and several Gothic-lettered mottoes simply framed on the walls:

Suffer the little children to come unto me.

The kingdom of God is within you.

You must become again as a child.

Cardozo tried the window. It was locked from the inside. He examined the panes and found them intact.

A smell of old incense mingled with all the other old smells in the room. On the bureau, a conical mound of ash had heaped in a small copper bowl. An ashtray beside it overflowed with cigarette butts. Ashes had spilled onto a packet that had once held two condoms and two servings of spermicidal lubricant but now held only one of each. Bright red lettering urged,
For God’s Sake, Keep It Safe!

“Those are ours,” Bonnie Ruskay said.

Cardozo looked at her.

“The church has a safe-sex program. We distribute condoms, spermicide, and literature to young people—and to prostitutes.”

“I remember,” Cardozo said.

The same puppies who had worked over Father Joe’s bed seemed to have done the same to the guest bed, only more so. The bedclothes were tangled with bath towels and underdrawers; the sheets were stained with what appeared to be spilled cola or coffee. Two bobby pins and an unrolled but unused condom lay in a valley on the pillow.

“Someone’s been staying over,” Cardozo said. “Any idea who?”

“I honestly couldn’t say.” Bonnie Ruskay seemed uneasy. “As I told you, I don’t sleep in the rectory. My apartment is across the street. So I’m not always aware of the minutiae of Father Joe’s social or working life.”

A pile of Milky Way candy bar wrappers and Big Mac burger packing had been balled together on the table.

“Does Father Montgomery eat candy bars and Big Macs?”

“I don’t know his private eating habits.”

Copies of
Popular Mechanics
,
Soldier of Fortune
,
Guns & Ammo
;
Ammo
, and
Trains
had been stacked on the chair. Cardozo leafed through them. They’d been thumbed over; ads and articles were ripped out. “And are these magazines his usual reading matter?”

“I don’t know what he reads in private. They may not be his. Sometimes Father Joe takes in a runaway for a night or two.”