Killing Orders (25 page)

“Oh, yes.” My voice was hoarse from gagging. “Yes.” My weariness amazed me. If I could forget this day . . . And the sooner it ended the sooner it would go away. I dragged myself up again, shook off Carroll’s supportive arm. Followed him back into the study.

Pelly, Murray, and Stefan were still there. From the prior’s closed inner office Rosa’s screams came in a mind-shattering stream.

Uncle Stefan, pale and shaking, rushed to my side and began murmuring various soothing things at me in German I thought I heard the word chocolate and smiled in spite of myself.

Murray said to Carroll, “Jablonski is in there with her. He’s called for an ambulance.”

“Just as well.” Carroll moved the rest of us back to the small room where he’d given me tea. Pelly could scarcely walk. His normally sunburned face was pale and his lips kept moving meaninglessly. Rosa’s demented outburst had shaken the remains of his self-confidence. The story he told Carroll confirmed my analysis.

They needed money to acquire Ajax. Mrs. Paciorek was supplying as much as she could, but it wasn’t enough. Besides, they didn’t want to get the SEC involved too early by having all the purchases come from one source.

Pelly knew about the five million in blue chip shares in the priory safe. He wrote to O’Faolin, saying he would be glad to use them, but didn’t want to arouse suspicions by their disappearing. Several months later, the forgeries arrived in the mail. Who created them he didn’t know, but presumably it was done under O’Faolin’s direction. Pelly substituted them for the real ones in the safe. After all, the shares hadn’t been used in a decade or more. The chances were good that the Ajax purchase would long since have become history when the deception was discovered.

Unfortunately, he was out of town when the chapter voted to sell the shares so they could build a new roof. When he returned from his annual retreat in Panama, it was to find the priory in an uproar and Rosa fired from her position as treasurer. He called Rosa and told her to dismiss me, that Corpus Christi knew all about the forgeries and would protect her.

“Xavier came to Chicago a few days later,” he muttered miserably, unable to look at either me or Carroll. “He—he took over things at once. He was most annoyed with me for letting so much publicity escape over the forgeries, especially because he said the amount was trivial compared to what we needed. He was annoyed, too, that—that Warshawski here was still poking around in the situation. He told me he’d take over, that he would see—see that she stopped. I just assumed she was a Catholic—Warshawski, you know—that she would be persuaded by an archbishop. I didn’t know about the acid. Or the arson. Not until much later, anyway.”

“The FBI investigation,” I croaked hoarsely. “How did O’Faolin put the brakes on that?”

Pelly smiled wretchedly. “He and Jerome Farber were good friends. And Mrs. Paciorek, of course. Among them, they have a lot of influence in Chicago.”

No one spoke. Beyond the heavy silence, we could hear the sirens of Rosa’s ambulance.

Carroll’s face, strained and grief-stricken, rebuked any comment. “Augustine. We’ll talk later. Go to your room now and meditate. You will have to talk to the FBI. After that, I don’t know.”

As Pelly wrapped himself in what dignity he could, I heard the sound I had been waiting for. A dull roar, an explosion muffled by distance and stone walls.

Murray looked at me sharply. “What was that?”

He and Carroll got to their feet and looked uncertainly at the door. I stayed where I was. A few minutes later, a young brother, red-haired and panting, hurled himself into the room. The front of his white habit was streaked with ash.

“Prior!” he gasped. “Prior! I’m sorry to interrupt. But you’d better come. Down at the gates. Quickly!”

Murray followed the prior from the room. A story he could use. I didn’t know what had happened to Cordelia Hull and her camera, but no doubt she was close at hand.

Uncle Stefan looked at me doubtfully. “Should we go, Victoria?”

I shook my head. “Not unless you have a taste for bomb sites. Someone just set off a radio bomb in O’Faolin’s car.” I hoped to God he was on his own, that no brother was with him. Yes, Archbishop. No one is lucky forever.

Chapter 27 - The Myth of Iphigenia

FERRANT LEFT FOR England the day of the first real thaw. He had stayed long enough to install a proper vice-president of special risks at Ajax. Long enough to help me furnish my new apartment.

His check for stopping the takeover was the largest fee I’d ever collected. It easily paid for a Steinway grand to replace Gabriella’s old upright. It didn’t cover the cost of a co-op. But a few days after O’Faolin’s death, an envelope containing twenty-five crisp thousand-dollar bills arrived in my office mail. No note, no return address. It seemed churlish to try to trace it. Anyway, I’d always wanted to own my own home. Roger helped me find a co-op on Racine near Lincoln, in a clean, quiet little building with four other units and a well-cared-for lobby.

For nearly a week after the bombing I spent most of my time in the Federal Building. Talking to the FBI, talking to the SEC. When I wasn’t there, I was with Mallory. His pride was badly wounded. He wanted to assuage it by getting my license revoked, but my lawyer easily put a stop to that. What hurt Bobby the most was a letter he got from Dr. Paciorek. A suicide note, really, pouring out guilt and grief over the doctor’s wife and daughter. They found Catherine’s body in front of the family room fire. His was in the study. Murray told me more about it than I wanted to know.

After that, I didn’t have anything to do except sleep and eat and furnish the new place. I didn’t like to think too much. About Rosa, or my mother, or the ugliness I’d found in myself that night with Walter Novick in the snow. Roger helped keep the thoughts at bay. At least during the day. He couldn’t do much about my dreams.

After dropping him at the airport, I felt empty and lonely. And scared. Roger had kept some demons away. Now I’d have to deal with them. Maybe I’d do it some place else, though. Take Uncle Stefan up on his offer to go to the Bahamas for a week. Or fly to Arizona and watch the Cubs go through spring training.

I sat in front of the apartment for a while, playing with the keys in the ignition. Across the street the door of a dark green Datsun opened. The car seemed familiar, with its creased fender and scratched paint. Lotty crossed the street and stood in front of the Omega, looking unlike herself, looking for once as small as a five-foot-tall person should. I climbed out of the Omega and locked the door.

“May we talk, Vic?”

I nodded without speaking and led her into the building. She didn’t say anything else until we were inside my apartment. I hung her coat on a hook in the small entryway and ushered her into the living room where a comfortable chaos was already starting to build on the new furniture.

“Stefan told me Roger was leaving today. I wanted to wait for him to go before I sought you out. . . . I have a lot to say to you. A lot to unsay, also. Can you—will you”—her clever, ugly face contorted in a surprising spasm. She steadied herself and started again. “You have been the daughter I never had, V.I. As well as one of the best friends a woman could ever desire. And I abused you. I want your forgiveness. I want to— not to go back to where we were. We can’t. I want to continue our friendship from here . . . Let me explain—not justify— explain…I’ve never talked about my family and the war. It’s too close to the bone.

“My parents shipped my brother, Hugo, and me to London in 1938. They were to follow but never made it Out of Vienna. Hugo and I spent the whole war wondering, waiting. Later we learned they had died in Buchenwald in 1941. My grandmother, all my uncles and cousins. Of that whole large happy family at Kleinsee only Hugo and I remained.

“Stefan—Stefan is a lovable rogue. If he were as hateful as your aunt, though, I would still need to protect him. He and Hugo and I are all that remain of that idyllic time. When he was stabbed—I went mad, a little. I couldn’t admit that he chose his fate. I couldn’t admit that he had a right to do so. I blamed you. And it was very wrong of me.”

My throat was tight and the first few times I tried speaking the words came out in a whispered choke. “Lotty. Lotty, I’ve been through hell and beyond this winter. I have been so alone. Do you know the torment I have been through? Agnes died because I involved her in my machinations. Dr. Paciorek. Did you see what happened? He killed his wife and shot himself. And all because I chose to be narrow-minded, pigheaded, bullying my way down a road the FBI and the SEC couldn’t travel.”

Lotty flinched. “Vic. Don’t torment me by throwing my angry words back at me. I’ve been in that hell this winter, too. But mine was worse. I created misery for my dearest friend. Stefan—Stefan told me about the scene at the priory. About Rosa and Gabriella. Oh, my dear. How much I knew you needed me, and how I tortured myself for knowing I had only myself to thank that I couldn’t go to you.”

“Do you know what my middle name is, Lotty?” I burst out. “Do you know the myth of Iphigenia? How Agamemnon sacrificed her to get a fair wind to sail for Troy? Since that terrible day at the priory, I can’t stop dreaming about it. Only in my dreams it’s Gabriella. She keeps laying me on the pyre and setting the torch to it and weeping for me. Oh, Lotty!

Why didn’t she tell me? Why did she make me give her that terrible promise? Why did she do it?”

And suddenly the grief for Gabriella, the grief for myself overwhelmed me and I started to weep. The tears of many years of silence would not stop. Lotty was at my side holding me. “Yes, my darling, yes, cry, yes, that’s right. They named you well, Victoria Iphigenia. For don’t you know that in Greek legend Iphigenia is also Artemis the huntress?”

The End