Decatur (17 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Regrets

Mrs. Napoli sat in the kitchen for a moment to try and sort things out. She looked down at the marigold print on her apron and smoothed it out across her too-ample lap. In front of her lay the parish household accounts, such as they were. A thin black-bound ledger with green lined paper marked with neat columns in her own handwriting marking down weekly grocery shops, cleaning supplies, and other sundry expenses lay on the table-top of the dinette set where she would set out coffee and toast in the morning for the parish priests and their guest, Gar. That was the problem - ever since Gar had joined them the food bills had just gone up. It wasn’t his fault and Mrs. Napoli savored cooking for someone who was always so appreciative but the household allowance hadn’t increased and even with poor, poor Monsignor about to be buried on Wednesday, they weren’t likely to go down, as the old priest ate like a bird. She had tried to use less meat and stretch it out with potatoes and noodles but she wasn’t sure how long it would be before Father Weston would say something. She had asked on the sly for the some of the church ladies to bring her their excess dandelion greens, spring onions, and rhubarb from their gardens. Last week she had put a frozen turkey from her own freezer into a grocery sack from home, her mind full of ways to supplement the menus, turkey casserole, turkey noodle soup, turkey sandwiches, but Mr. Napoli now retired from the railroad had happened to come in the kitchen and had a fit
.
So that was out
.
She held a hand over her mouth - embarrassed and upset that she was trying to beg borrow and steal just to put enough food on the table because of Gar. As much as he tugged at her heartstrings, it was getting complicated. Mr. Napoli had asked her how long the parish guest was going to be freeloading. She had tried to explain all that Gar was doing but it sounded lame, a grown man working in the rose garden and bicycling errands around town… Mrs. Napoli got up and put the little ledger back in its drawer by the telephone. She was going to have to speak to Father W, even the butcher at the A&P knew from Mrs. Napoli’s fierce wrangling over cuts of meat that the allowance was too thin now that Gar was here.

Just as she shut the drawer with a little slam, Gar appeared in the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a loaf of bread and the jar of peanut butter. The parish house was empty with Father Troy and Father Weston on their way to Springfield for a nine o’clock meeting with the chief of staff for the bishop over the funeral mass. Gar stretched and smiled at Mrs. Napoli. “I really went down hard last night. Starving,” he mumbled in a sleepy way, dropping the bread into the shiny chrome toaster on the counter.

“You know, I could use you to take the vestments to the dry-cleaners. We use Cleary’s.” Mrs. Napoli tried to keep the disapproval out of her voice. He wasn’t her son, she reminded herself.

Gar’s eyes blinked at Mrs. Napoli and he said nothing for a moment. Then the toast popped up and he pulled out a pink Melmac plate from the cupboard and proceeded to slather the toasted bread with peanut butter. “Sure, Mrs. Napoli. There any coffee left or do late risers get nothing but guff?” he laughed, then winking at her, acknowledging his laziness and making her laugh too
.

Father Weston was just going to have to get the household allowance increased, Mrs. Napoli thought. It wasn’t Gar’s fault.

Gar loaded the vestments into the laundry sack and pulled Father Troy’s bicycle from the garage. Cleary’s Dry-Cleaning, here I come, he thought as he pedaled down the driveway with a little wave back to Mrs. Napoli who was hanging sheets in the side yard on the line, out of view of the public of course. It wouldn’t do for the parish to be thinking that the priests ate and slept just like the rest of the people. The traffic was light as everyone was already at work or school this Monday morning on the first week of May. Gar enjoyed the solitude thinking about how he was going to surprise Marilyn outside the Surrey tonight and walk her home. Almost everything else today was waiting, except for visiting the dry-cleaners. Suzanne Cleary deserved a little attention for all the attention she had been paying Gar.

Suzanne Cleary was already hot even though the morning was mild and the high predicted to be in the mid-seventies. Her little jar of just-bloomed heavy-headed peonies by the register were already drooping. She hated working the counter in the warmer months, the machinery threw off so much heat that all she did was leave rings of perspiration on her clothes. It was disgusting. She had her fan, her magazines, and she would dab her forehead with ice water all day long but it didn’t do much good. The radio was playing all the hits all the time but still if she had married Dick the insurance salesman she might have been spending her days on the golf course instead of working the counter. Suzanne was reading the recipe for Crab Rangoon in
Family Circle
when the screen door opened. She looked up and saw the big-chested man who was Father’s Troy project come in with a laundry sack. Her heart leapt up into her throat. Charlie was doing deliveries and she was here alone. She pasted a smile on her face thinking about how she could get out back to their private telephone line that she had already used once to talk about this stranger to the FBI. But now she had a real number and real agent to call, not just the tips line. Why was he still roaming around town anyway, shouldn’t he be held for questioning? She regretted not calling Agent Tooley last night after she saw him at the Front Porch with that waitress. She should have stuck to her instincts.

“Hello. I’m dropping off vestments for the parish house at St. Pat’s. I think there’s an account,” Gar said in a neutral way. He wasn’t putting out the charm for this woman, after all he had done for her family her attitude was a real pain. It was very likely her who had sicced the FBI agent on him and Father Troy.

“Sure.” Suzanne took the vestments out of the sack quickly, automatically noting the satin and gold trim and marking them with little tags before dropping them into the canvas bins by the counter. “I think I may have some banners they wanted pressed in the back. Mind waiting while I look?”

“I got all day,” Gar replied. Mrs. Napoli hadn’t said anything about banners and the woman had a nervous tic starting in her eye.

“It might take awhile,” Suzanne Cleary said, feeling her eye beginning to twitch. She turned around swiftly and went through the red plastic beaded curtain that separated the counter area from the revolving racks and big chemical washers and dryers of the back. She was going to call that agent now. Maybe they could get a car over here.
Carnie Drug Murders Solved!
, she flashed on a headline in the Decatur Herald and her picture, front page. She picked up the wall unit and dialed the number the FBI agent had given her from memory. It was too dangerous to be carrying it around as her husband just dismissed her worries about Father Troy’s project as female nonsense. He’d see. Little Rhonda was safe at school so if she could just get Agent Tooley on the line she might have a shot at helping to solve the crime that had roiled their placid (all right too placid) existence.

The phone was ringing on the other end; she coiled the telephone cord around her forearm in excitement, the beige cord outlining the long brown hair that grew intermittently on her arms. She tapped her sneakers on the linoleum flooring, hearing the phone on the other end ring once, twice, three times when someone finally picked up.

“Agent Tooley? This is Suzanne…” she breathed into the phone when she saw like in slow motion the little hook and eye closure on the back door screen pull out of the wooden frame and the door swung outward. Gar, Father’s Troy’s project, stood in the doorway looking at Suzanne Cleary, who squelched a scream as she slammed the phone down.

“I was trying to call my husband who is going to be here any minute to see if he knows where the banners are,” she tried to keep the nervousness out of her tone.

“I don’t think there are any banners Mrs. Cleary,” Gar said in a low rumbling voice like thunder coming in off the prairie, “That’s what I came round back to tell you.”

“No? Okay then, I’m taking off now. Grocery store,” she said. The car keys were up by the counter, if she could just make it to the counter. The big man’s eyes were shooting sparks into the dumpy back of the store
.
He looked like he could swallow her whole.

“Happy shopping,” Gar said and turned back around like nothing at all had happened.

Suzanne Cleary’s head was spinning as she roared the car out of the driveway and headed as if on automatic pilot to the A&P. She had flipped the closed sign on the front door, feeling a flood of relief as she saw in the rear view mirror Gar pedaling away. She should go to the police but what would she say? A Vietnam vet dropped off vestments from St. Patrick’s? No, the local cops were dopes. If only she had been able to speak to Agent Tooley… She pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store, her heart slowing down. There was a pay phone in the separated vestibule on the way outside, separated by a steel bar from the way inside. Maybe she’d use that. She pulled a cart from a stack by the door, she needed canned pineapple slices and could use some Lipton onion mix. Grocery shopping had a soporific effect on her, which today meant she might be calm enough to use the pay phone to try the agent again after she finished shopping. The aisles of the A&P were crowded and narrow with dark smeary linoleum tiles. There was a small dairy section decorated with crimped crepe paper swagged in red white and blue with the butcher and deli section in the back. There were bunches of celery, iceburg lettuce, cantaloupes, radishes, net bags of onions, Idaho potatoes, naval oranges, lemons, and limes in the fresh produce section where bright green signs were stuck into bins with the prices marked. Everything else was conveniently canned, boxed, or frozen except for the bread which came in plastic bags in big soft white loaves and the soft drinks in cans and bottles.

Suzanne was deep into the canned fruits and vegetables aisle when she noticed the top of the head over in the mixes, cereals, and bake aisle. The top of the head was Gar’s, he had followed her there
,
she realized, her heart pounding. She looked down into the steel grocery cart with its little black wheels, no weapon this, she thought. Then before she quite understood what she was doing she had swooped down and picked up a fourteen ounce can of Libby’s pumpkin pie filling. She hurled it toward the head and took off running down the aisle past the rubber backed conveyer belted counters with only one clerk present being it was midday Monday and out the door to the Ford LTD.

A squat can lobbed over the neighboring aisle and fell onto the floor, denting and rolling away. Gar flicked his eyes back to where it came from and nearly laughed. This was going to be fun, he thought, as he trotted down the aisle and back to the parking lot. He was already on Father’s Troy bicycle as Suzanne Cleary, wide-eyed, gunned past him and out onto West Macon Street.

Suzanne couldn’t believe it as she wove through the leafed-out streets of Decatur, the big man just kept coming. He was always behind her on that damn bicycle as she looked in the rear-view mirror, like a male version of the witch in the Wizard of Oz. She tried running a light near the South Shores Shopping Center but then stopped when the cars surged out into the intersection blaring horns and she was forced to reverse the LTD to get out of their way. Think
,
she said to herself.
These streets are too easy, too much on a grid, where can I lose him?
She turned towards Lake Shore Drive, along the lake, the roads were windier there. Crossing over East Lost Bridge and onto Lost Bridge Road a little further out of town she began to breathe easier. She must have lost him. When she was sure it was safe she would go home and force the issue with her husband. She wasn’t imagining things about Father Troy’s project. The intersection to Mount Zion Road was just ahead, the houses were thinning out now, it was turning into the two-lane blacktop that surrounded the town, spreading out into the county like asphalt veins. The tires thrummed along the roadway, the sun blazing down, corn stalks knee high on either side, a farm close to town, would probably be swallowed up by subdivisions soon, she thought feeling her tension ease just a bit. It looked like she had lost him.

The telephone poles meted out the distance as the town began to fade behind her, if she took Mount Zion road she’d be at the state park soon, Spitler Woods. The black- and-white speed limit was posted at 30 MPH and she was careful not to speed as they loved to ticket you when you came out of town. A big semi was coming the other direction. It looked like a cattle truck to her as she squinted against the sun.

Then it happened, the big man came flying out of the corn fields on the bicycle directly in front of Suzanne Cleary’s car. He was smiling as he catapulted himself off the bike and soared out over the handlebars and onto the hood of the LTD.

Gar wasn’t afraid as he heard Father Troy’s bicycle fall onto the soft shoulder of the road. He had cut across the fields on a gut instinct, figuring he could surprise the damn interfering bitch on the other side by taking the diagonal. It had been a little rough but the corn was laid in neat rows and while it whipped his legs he was able to keep going as long as he pedaled fast. He landed with a smack onto the car’s hood, his face smooshed up against the windshield, holding onto the hot metal, his fingers gripping the sides of the hood where it closed down over the engine.

Suzanne Cleary was screaming now, her thin face contorted, brown pony tail whipping from side to side as she accelerated and swerved into the other lane trying to lose the monster on top of her car. The semi laid on the horn and she didn’t care. She had to get rid of Gar, he was going to kill her any way so what did it matter? What the hell, she thought and pressed her right foot harder onto the gas, the semi now was swaying and swerving but she kept on going fifty miles an hour, down into the grassy ditch and right back up - smack into the telephone pole.

Gar held on as she sped the car up, he had expected that. The semi he kept an eye on, hopefully the driver knew what he was doing. He could always jump off and live but a head-on was dicey even for him. He heard the big tires of the truck squealing and smelled the scorching rubber as it turned to avoid the screaming woman in the LTD with him on the hood. She sped up and Gar saw the telephone pole looming in front of them. Rolling off the hood, he slammed into the ditch as the Cleary family car went down and then gunned up out of the ditch straight into the pole. It took less then a second then. He rolled up on his feet, leaned over the hood and, pushing in past the mess of blood and glass, in one long slurp he took what was left of Suzanne Cleary, and felt the exhilarating pull of the spirit that almost got away, but no, he had it, and the maw opened and it went screaming but helpless to resist through to the black.